Either we’re really starved for news in our data-soaked lives today, or there’s something that “they” aren’t telling us about all this planets-in-the-solar-system bit. What is the big deal about Pluto and its moons et al? So they’re in. So they’re not. Do we really care? And more importantly, given that the rest of the world isn’t exactly at a loss of areas requiring both active interest and funding, why are so many of the astronomic academia interested in, er, ‘demoting Pluto‘? Would it really matter if it were left with its existing “status”?
Aside from this being a glorious marketing opportunity for a lot of scientific toy manufactureres to sell a lot of “The Solar System 2.0″ models to a lot of kids and a lot of schools all over the world, I’m drawing a blank at all this hoopla about a planet that not many could, or cared enough to, see in the first place.
Maybe its got some astrological significance. Would natal charts for everyone change because of this? Would every natal chart created, till date, be wrong? And of course, that raises the even-more-interesting question ’bout how people in those ages knew about Pluto in the first place. I don’t think they had observatories and 25-cents-per-view telescopes available in the era that natal charts and the whole planets-to-astrology links were established.
If interplanetary travel was a reality in your lifetime, would you really choose / pay to visit Pluto? The way most astronomers paint it, its a block of ice; and technically, we’ve got much more beautiful blocks of ice at the poles on our dear planet. Heck, you may even get to run around the nearest conifer if a polar bear chooses to play catch with you. Can Pluto offer that?
And seriously, whatever happened to all the hype surrounding Poseidon? Is it just another name for the planet Neptune? Given that our nice astronomer community seems to be waxing eloquent a lot these days, could someone clear up that patch of cosmic smoke and mirrors? Does Poseidon really exist as a planet past Pluto in our solar system?
The diesel bit? After the jump…
Turns out there’s a gentleman by the name of Andy Green (who, I’m sure is related to neither Andy Dick nor Tom Green, and thank God for that…), who drove a really impractical car to race across a really impractical road to prove that diesel could be a viable fuel source to reach really impractical speeds for the average practical application.
So..am I knocking diesel’s capabilities to be “just as good as gasoline”? No. Its another example of me not getting the point. The planet, and the society atop it, is starving for reasonably-priced fossil fuel. Diesel may be a cheaper product of the extraction process, but its still a fossil fuel. Moving focus away from gasoline cars to diesel cars isn’t exactly going to stop us from wincing when we look at the dollar amount that the darn machine wants from us while at the pump.
(Oh, and by the by, there’s some “debate” around the numbers for that diesel-powered run. Click this link for a report that shows slightly different, and slightly lower, numbers for those speeds – as compared to the ones that made the news.)
The Tesla on the other hand, is real future-friendly innovation. Porsche and Ferrari should really take notice (and inspiration), especially since they had their expensive backsides stepped on by this quiet new kid on the block.
I love having facts like this to rub into the face of anyone claiming to have spent all that green on a fancy brand name sportscar, just to “satisfy their need for speed”.
