Two-for-one today

First, the backstory:
Due to a lovely snafu last year, I had some issues receiving federal tax information. To fix it, I had to fill out a change of address form, and all of my mail has gone to Illinois ever since. The moral of the story? The post office sucks, or never fill out a change of address from your parents' house.

Now, the actual story:
So, I went to my parents' home this weekend to go to a Chicago Fire match. I pick up my mail, and contained within the bunch is an invitation to join the Sierra Club. I'm very conflicted about this. Have I become this crazy of a liberal? Has my environmentalism become such a red* flag? Heh.

*Red in the Cold War sense, not the Electoral College** sense.

**Have I stated my opinions on this issue before? I believe I should. That will be fun.

Pluto is now a plutino and a plutoid

A follow-up on a previous post is in order, since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) gave a new arbitrary designation to dwarf planets outside of Neptune's orbit. As opposed to calling it the No Ceres Club, they are calling these objects "plutoids." Apparently, committees were formed and had to convene during IAU conferences and everything. All that work to think up the word "plutoid." Great. At least I don't have to say "dwarf planet" as often, I guess.

Bwah ha ha!

So many weakly crafted jokes, so little time. Anyhow, read the story about how folks in Cape Cod "lost" a lighthouse, but someone figured out it has actually been near San Francisco for over 80 years.

Three weeks since a post, and I come back nitpicking

A press release shown at space.com and at MSNBC's website discusses the results of a study on the spiral arms of the Galaxy. (Just to pretend that I'm an educator, when I capitalize "galaxy," I'm referring to our galaxy, the Milky Way. Also, the word galaxy comes from from the Greek word "galaktikos," meaning "milky.")

The article informs us that with improved observations thanks to the Spitzer Space Telescope, two of the spiral arms of the galaxy are noticeably denser than the other two, lending support to the theory of the Galaxy having a central bar. Stop me if I've lost you.

Since brevity is paramount in crafting headlines, they all claim that the Milky Way has lost two arms, as if they fell off due to leprosy or a knife fight*. I was gonna say this bothers me like how headlines seemed to imply that Pluto disappeared after its demotion, but I don't think that was ever the case. So, I will say this bothers me like how the IAU chose to call anything that isn't a planet a "dwarf planet," which makes people think the "dwarf" part is superfluous. Couldn't they use the term "microplanet," "planetoid," "planetesimal," or something else that is hard for people to spell correctly?

Here's my extra-silly suggestion: Make it like RPG levels. (Stop here if you don't care. I'm serious.)

Objects that orbit the Sun but aren't round are level 1 planets, e.g. all the asteroids except one.
Objects that are large enough to be round are level 2 (Pluto, Eris, Ceres).
Objects that have cleared their orbital region are level 3 (Mercury).
Level 4 could be an atmosphere requirement that would would be somewhere around the thickness of Mars, either above or below.
Level 5 would require enough mass to retain hydrogen in the atmosphere, which would include Jupiter through Neptune, and Level 6 could separate the more hydrogen-rich giants from the giants rich in methane and ammonia.

I would stop here, because if Jupiter were over 12 times more massive, it would be able fuse nucleii. Not hydrogen, mind you, but it still transcends the heavy rock phase to the hot burning object phase. However, it gives me a jumping off point for this horrid digression, because these objects are unfortunately named "brown dwarfs."



*That's a big knife. And a big knife fight.