Random Thoughts

While considering why astronomers can't think of anything better to do than to revise text books . . .

You know it's not going to be a good parent-teacher night when by the third class visit, you are the only parent at the school. Out of seven periods visited, four had less than four parents attending.

And about Pluto, is there nothing else to discover in near space? Is that the best your field has got, revising the definitions? So you can feel superior to those stodgy old fogies that got it all so wrong. Here's a thought -- do something. Achieve something. Find something. Instead, let's get rid of the only planet discovered by an American. Hey, that's it. Along with high gas prices, flooding New Orleans, screwing up Iraq and generally ruining the Earth, the government is responsible for a false planet.

Last time I checked, the old farts with slide rules and crew cuts:
Went to the moon.
Send a probe beyond the solar system.
Created many of the current concepts of space.

This generation:
Space telescope that needed contacts.
Meters? The distance to the surface of Mars wasn't in feet?
Uh, . . . . OK, we've got XBox360; all they had was Pong.

Just when you thought the hard sciences would not be prone to revisionism, we have the anti-Plutoians who want to fix the errors of the past. Personally, makes more sense to add Xena and the other new "minor" planets. But, that goes against the gated community mentality of the world -- we must exclude those we don't want to be around.

More I think about it . . . here goes the next Ozarks at Large rant.