Pluto Gets Demoted

For whatever reason, I’m a little sad to hear this.

I have many fond memories of going to the Hayden Planetarium in NYC when I was growing up. It’s undergone a massive renovation since I was last there, but I vividly remember the old permanent exhibits there and all the information about the planets. Will they will have to renovate again now that Pluto’s been demoted?

Although this did make me smile a bit:

“It could be argued that we are creating an umbrella called ‘planet’ under which the dwarf planets exist,” [astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell] said, drawing laughter by waving a stuffed Pluto of Walt Disney fame beneath a real umbrella.

Darn That Job of Mine .. and Movable Type Too

Grrr. First, Forbes.com posts a massively sexist article about how men should steer clear of marrying “career women”, but I was at work & couldn’t blog about it.

Then I get home & found that Forbes.com had gotten smart (or perhaps their female staff members & subscribers objected loudly enough) and pulled the article offline. I started to blog about it alyway, but somehow Movable Type ate my first version of this blog entry.

So just go read Echinde’s summary and takedown.

UPDATE: this Opinionistas piece is really good too.

Tuesday Cat Blogging

Bear at the window

Because with a kitty as cute as this, why wait for Friday?

I need to figure out how to fix the ‘glow’ in Bear’s right eye. Red-eye reduce doesn’t seem to work when the glow is not red.

That Quotation Meme

So, Sour Duck tagged me with the following meme:

Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe.

It’s a huge list, especially if you add in some of the auxiliary collections available in the random generator. I found 5 quotes, but for all I know there might be others that are even better; I didn’t have time to page through them all.

So, here we go. Here are five random quotes that resonate with me:

Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’
Kahlil Gibran

To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

Stupid people always think they are right. Wise people listen to advice.
Proverbs 12:15

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. If you make a chair, you want to make a nice chair. You want people to admire it. I think doing something well is a form of respect for humanity in general. I have found that all incompetence comes from not paying attention, which comes from people doing something that they don’t want to do. And doing what you don’t want to do means either you have no choice, or you don’t think that the moments of your life are worth fighting for.
Hal Hartley

I would tag the Flabbergasted Time Lord, but he is on vacation right now. So I’ll tag Seamus instead.

*Sigh*

This is what we went to war for?

Nearly five years after the ouster of the fundamentalist Taliban regime, President Hamid Karzai plans to breathe new life into a strict Islamic institution that many Afghans were happy to see die: the Amr Bilmaruf va Nahi az Mankar, or literally, “Do the good, don’t do the bad.”

Last month, Karzai’s Cabinet approved a proposal to re-establish the agency also known as the Department for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, whose police under the Taliban beat and imprisoned Afghans for violating Shariah law. For many, the revival of religious cops raises painful memories of ruffians zipping around Kabul in Datsun pickups mainly in search of women and girls who refused to wear the head-to-toe burqa, donned high heels, wore nail polish or walked down city streets without a male relative. Men were cited for sporting short beards, drinking alcohol, working during prayer time, playing chess or listening to nonreligious music.

Update 6:55PM:

Lest it be thought that I am suggesting that idiocy is confined to just one part of the world, how’s this for stupid?

British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny – refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.

The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.

Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action.

It’s bad enough that we’re all treated like potential terrorists every time we get onto an airplane, but now racist passengers also get a say in who gets to fly?