Saturday, August 26, 2006

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas Nothing.

I've been busy having some quality family time, so I've been away from the blogs for a couple of days. And guess what? I came back, and the world is still standing!

We've lost a planet, but other than that, the Solar System is remarkably unscathed. Of course, this is a bit of a bigger deal that it is for most people.

I am a friend of the Lowell Observatory, where we visit several times per year, and we even visited last year on the 75th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto. That is still the biggest accomplishment of the observatory, and my daughter and I got to actually see the original blink microscope and the slides that showed the first images of Pluto.

Of course the observatory will still be able to claim to be the discovery point of the first 'dwarf planet,' and a full 73 years before another was found.

7 comments:

Tom & Icy said...

It seems they change history every time we turn around! Too bad they can't change the present!

Cyn_NY said...

Eli, please visit Night Bird's Fountain asap.

Thanks

Beth said...

and please don't get upset with me, I forgot to say anything to Cyn.

Anonymous said...

It's hard to believe that Pluto will no longer be considered a planet... I'll have a hard time letting it go when I have to help my son list the planets for school when he is older... :)

Karen said...

Pluto shoulda been *Grandfathered In*... whasa matta with those people!?!

Eli Blake said...

Did anyone catch the irony of the fact that the decision was made in Europe?

Europe is geographically just a peninsula of Asia (or 'Eurasia' if you prefer). A single continent, a single geographic plate, the boundaries drawn by people, who for the most part go along various mountain divides but in some cases (such as the border between Kazakhstan and European Russia) boundaries drawn by politicians whose considerations had nothing at all to do with geography.

Anonymous said...

I didn't notice that the decision was made in Europe, but I was thinking about that, and I did find it amusing.

Of course, Europeans are so darn proud of themselves having spent all those centuries spiting and hating the Asians that they could never justify couting themselves among them, now could they?