Ford Street

Pining for Pluto

   

The world seems a shaky enough place as it is right now.  You’d think you’d always be able to depend on certain things, like, for example, THE F’ING PLANETS STAYING PLANETS.  What, a bunch of guys get together and decide that an entire planet gets yanked?  Yeah, yeah, yeah, Pluto is smaller than a lot of the solar system’s moons.  It’s still a serious demotion.  And what does Charon do now?  I mean, you go along thinking you’re Pluto’s moon for, what, 70 or 80 years, and now you get told that your master isn’t even a planet?  It’s like finding out that the Prince of Wales is actually a mechanic from Kentucky.  Now Charon needs a shrink, and Pluto has a massive identity crisis.  I don’t like this.  I don’t like it one bit. 

You know why they picked Pluto to snuff, don’t you?  Because it wouldn’t screw up schoolkids all over the world trying to remember the names of the planets with the mnemonic sentence “Mary’s Violet Eyes Make John Stay Up Nights Pining.”  So if they kill off Pluto, they still get to throw their weight around, and Mary still keeps John up nights but he’s not pining.  He’s just up.  What is he doing?  Is he doing something filthy?  Being up pining sounds quaint; it sounds sweet.  Just being up, thinking about Mary, invokes something darker.  More sinister.  I’m telling you, I don’t like it. 

What if they had decided that we were living on a star?  Would we have had to move?  What if they’re not done yet, and they announce tomorrow that Earth is a large cosmic dust bunny? And that they want us all to move to Saturn?  What if Saturn makes my allergies worse?  And will they allow dogs? 

I didn’t need this right now.

Think Google Earth is cool?

What could be better than Google Earth? How about being able to track real time weather, fires, floods, sandstorms, etc. all across the globe? And, maps of Saturn, the Moon, even a deep space viewer.  World Wind, from NASA, is amazing stuff.

From the NASA Web site: "Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has produced a set of visually intense animations that demonstrate a variety of subjects such as hurricane dynamics and seasonal changes across the globe. World Wind can take these animations and play them directly on the world. Anyone can immediately grasp where the event is taking place as World Wind rotates automatically into view."

Weather weenies everywhere -- unite! and get this software.

read more | digg story

Uh, oh

Stephen Hawking has a question for us.  It’s kind of a worrisome question.  I mean, this guy is world-class intelligent, right?  And he’s wondering about the future of the human race.  Not 10,000 years from now, or 1,000 years from now.  He’s worried about 100 years from now. 

Correct.  100 years. 

Go to Yahoo Answers.  Here’s the exact question: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"  He posted the question 3 days ago and nearly 18,000 people have posted answers to it.  Many people didn’t people that it really was Stephen Hawking, but it is, and some of the answers are kind of interesting.  There are a number of religious respondents, i.e., only Jesus can save us, etc.  and there are a lot of really negative answers (“we can’t”) and there are a fair number of folks who think we need to be getting busy colonizing space. 

Some of the others, though, are quite interesting:

“by answering questions, not asking them” (kind of snippy)

“if you’re so smart why are you asking us” (again, snappish)

“stop immigration” (funny, actually)

“by taking out North Korea” (scary)

“who cares, we’ll be dead, let our kids handle that” (a republican, clearly)

“put women in charge of government. Only when males are removed from power will there be a chance for survival.”  (more comedy)

“adaptation” (this one is quite logical)

I have no idea if Mr. Hawking is going to pick an answer that he favors, but I’m keeping my eye on this.