On Pluto

Aug 24, 2006 16:19

I don't see why an object which has an atmosphere thick enough to obscure viewing the surface doesn't constitute a "planet".

Leave a comment

tosk August 24 2006, 20:41:15 UTC
Because the powers that believe they have some justification for labeling things said so.

" I once overheard two botanists arguing over a Damned Thing that had blasphemously sprouted in a college yard. One claimed that the Damned Thing was a tree and the other claimed that it was a shrub. They each had good scholary arguments, and they were still debating when I left them. The world is forever spawning Damned Things- things that are neither tree nor shrub, fish nor fowl, black nor white- and the categorical thinker can only regard the spiky and buzzing world of sensory fact as a profound insult to his card-index system of classifications. Worst of all are the facts which violate "common sense", that dreary bog of sullen prejudice and muddy inertia. The whole history of science is the odyssey of a pixilated card- indexer perpetually sailing between such Damned Things and desperately juggling his classifications to fit them in, just as the history of politics is the futile epic of a long series of attempts to line up the Damned Things and cajole them to march in regiment.

-Hagbard Celine "Never Whistle While Your Pissing"

Reply

duriyah August 24 2006, 21:12:48 UTC
Very true. I like that.

Reply

tosk August 24 2006, 21:34:01 UTC
http://www.rawilson.com/whistlepiss.shtml

Robert Wilson to the rescue again!

Reply


Leave a comment

Up