Cuts you Up

Apr. 5th, 2015 01:42 pm
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Woke up far too early yesterday morning, and decided that instead of lying in bed (more likely, tossing and turning), I'd get up and go for a walk. Quite glad I did - I got to watch a lunar eclipse happen as I hoofed it around the block! Very short totality, and just a lovely thing to watch pass.

Also seen on the walk: a few Blackhawks on the ground across the street at Bowman. A few hours later, they flew over the house, and man, five of those things at about 250' altitude means a lot of noice. Shook the windows!

Took The Niece to Mom&Dad's for Easter and her Spring Break. We had a really good afternoon and eveing together. Making dinner as a family brings me a lot of happiness, for whatever reason. Just being together, y'know?

Drove back to Louisville shadow-casting-bright new moon. So beautiful.

So, the Hugo Awards this year. The Hugos are a popularity contest - buy a Worldcon membership and you can nominate pieces and vote on 'em. I don't think I've ever bought something because it won a Hugo or didn't because it, um, didn't. A few years ago, Larry Correia started some kind of movement to disrupt the awards process, and the worse elements of his fellow travelers ramped it up, and got a slate of writers and their products on the ballot. It's a big ugly mess.

I'll cop to my bias. I lean left, and while I won't read an author because of his or her skin color or national/cultural/ethnic origin or genitalia, I won't not read for these reasons. However, I will avoid an author that I consider a terrible person, by my own private calculus. The puppies (and they for-real call themselves that, either sad or angry, depending on oh hell I don't even know) are aghast that there have been a growing number of nominated and winning writers who are not white and male. Many many strands of pearls are being clutched, I'm sure. I've read part of one of LC's books, and I couldn't finish it. I guess he's gotten better at the craft, but those hundred or so pages started the poisoning, and a face-to-face encounter a few years later sealed the deal. Fortuneately, there is no shortage of things to read, and I can easily avoid seeking him out.

Okay, there's my preachifying for the day. I gotta do some homework and send out a flurry of e-mails. Happy Easter!
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This morning, the International Astronomical Union voted on a formal definition of a planet, and ol' Pluto, way out on the edge of the Solar System, didn't make the cut.

Not that my opinion here means anything, but I believe this is the right decision.  With the improvements in telescopes since Pluto's discovery seven decades ago, several new planetary bodies have been discovered out in the Kuiper Belt, some larger than Pluto.  I think it makes more sense to establish Pluto as not-a-planet than to suddenly bump the number of planets to better than 50 - at least one body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was eligible for planet status under the round-body-with-circularish-orbit rule.

The Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud have hooked my attention and imagination of late.  The objects out on the system's fringe are a whole new area of astronomy, and relatively close to home.  A probe is on its way to Pluto and Charon now, and may be able to explore more objects in the Belt.

Man, I love science.

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