Tycho Talk

The Daily Show episode, the whole damn thing, from 1/29 was fucking hysterical. First of all, he picks on Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Man Who Killed Pluto, and who I love to hate. Okay, he is one of my favorite tv scientists along with Asian Guy With Luxurious Hair. Long live the ideological descendants of Carl Sagan! Even if the rat bastard killed Pluto.

Anyway, then there is talk of robots. Robots! Jon's question, naturally- when will they turn on us?

They were just really on with this episode.

Daily Show- full episode

'Plutoed' Chosen As '06 Word of The Year

Posted: Today at 8:40 p.m.

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Pluto is finally getting some respect - not from astronomers, but from wordsmiths.

"Plutoed" was chosen 2006's Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society at its annual meeting Friday.

To "pluto" is "to demote or devalue someone or something," much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto didn't meet its definition of a planet.

"Our members believe the great emotional reaction of the public to the demotion of Pluto shows the importance of Pluto as a name," said society president Cleveland Evans. "We may no longer believe in the Roman god Pluto, but we still have a sense of personal connection with the former planet."

"Plutoed" won in a runoff against "climate canary," defined as "an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon."

Other words considered: murse (man's purse), flog (a fake blog that promotes products) and macaca (an American citizen treated as an alien).

Republican former Sen. George Allen was ahead in his re-election campaign when he said "macaca," which some regard as a racial slur, and "welcome to America" in referring to a U.S.-born man of Indian descent who was volunteering for Allen's opponent. Allen lost to Democrat Jim Webb.

The 117-year-old American Dialect Society comprises linguists, grammarians, historians and independent scholars, among others. Members conduct the vote for fun and not in an official capacity to induct words into the English language.

The society chose "truthiness" as its top word last year. The word is credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

Last month, an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster declared "truthiness" the word of the year for 2006.

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

More from Rob:

PLUTO: SAME AS IT EVER WAS

The astrologers I respect don't believe that Pluto, or any heavenly body
for that matter, emits invisible beams that somehow manipulate human
beings as if we were puppets. Rather, the spheres orbiting the sun are
signs in the sky we read as omens that help illuminate the ebb and flow of
the rhythms of life here on earth.

As Richard Tarnas points out in his epic work *Cosmos and Psyche,* the
role of the heavenly bodies is comparable to that of a clock: The clock
tells time but doesn't cause time. Likewise, the heavenly bodies show us
big-picture truths about our lives but don't cause them.

That's why as an astrologer I say ho-hum to the International
Astronomical Union's decision to downgrade Pluto from a planet to a
"dwarf planet."

First, let's put the change in perspective: Only a tiny portion of the
world's astronomers voted for the change (428 out of about 9,000).
There's already a movement afoot among the majority to overthrow the
IAU's decision.

Second, for the last few centuries, since the days when seminal
astronomers Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei blended astrology with
their practice of astrology, the two disciplines have diverged.

Today, astrology is not a science. It's a symbol system. When used with
integrity, it engenders poetic approaches for deepening one's connection
to life's great mysteries, not predictions of literal events. It's meant to
open our minds to the mythic patterns that underlie the surface-level
interpretations of what we're all about, not compete with scientists'
rational, logical analyses of why things are the way they are.

We need both: the mytho-poetic and the logically analytical.

Five percent of the world's astronomers can juggle definitions about the
nature of the heavenly bodies, but their province is different than the
astrologers'. In our arena, Pluto is still the symbol of the underworld--the
heavenly body that speaks to us about our connection to the underside
of life, to the soul's perspective, to the secrets and hidden depths in any
situation, to the realm of dreams and death and altered states.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Recently, less than five percent of the
world's astronomers voted to demote Pluto from a planet to a "dwarf
planet." Some Scorpios were alarmed, since Pluto is the heavenly body
that traditionally rules your sign. My opinion? Don't worry. I agree with
mythologist Roxanna Bikadoroff, who says there's poetic justice in calling
Pluto a dwarf planet. In fairy tales, dwarves are often magicians who
possess hidden storehouses of riches and act as agents of creative
transformation. They typically live beneath bridges, which are symbols of
transitional thresholds, and are masters of in-between states. They
bestow blessings on anyone who is able to pass their demanding tests.
This is an apt symbolic description of you at your most potent, which I
expect you to be during the coming weeks.

My Very Excellent Mother Just Said Uh-oh, No Pluto. -Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report ( Read more... )

Things are not looking good for Pluto. The definition of a planet that was initially proposed (essentially, it's round) pissed a lot of astronomers off, so another definition was proposed that would de-planetize it. Well, that sucks!!!!!!!! Folks have mentioned that if that did happen, not only would the Animaniacs song about the planets be impossible to sing, but that the public would probably retain it's own definition of planet that included Pluto, in the same way that the public thinks 'acceleration' means 'speeding up' while to scientists it means speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction. Regardless of what the scientists decide, it looks like the public (the fraction of it that cares at all) wants to keep Pluto as a planet. Considering that this is not the public against reality, rather a difference in the arbitrary line that gets drawn to divide 'planets' from 'not planets', in this instance I am willing to side with the public. No takebacks, dammit!

Tim Krieder, my comrade on this issue, mentioned that some random guy (Colin Matthews) added a song about Pluto to The Planets suite by Gustav Holst called 'The Renewer'. Because iTunes has everything, I found this. It's got that weird, dissonant sound to it that a lot of music from that time, but it's cool.

In other music news, I heard a song on XM yesterday that I also found in the iTunes store. It's called 'Love Handles'. Yes, it equates food and love, and that's perilous for me, blah blah. But it's funny! If you can't laugh at your problems... ( lyrics )

Pluto: Is It a Planet?

Yes, it's a planet, dammit! If you don't think so, you are WRONG.