So Pluto is no longer a planet. So does this mean Plutonium is no longer an element? How about Pluto, the Disney dog? Will he be reduced to the lowly level of a cat, an opossum or, worse, Mel Gibson?
I can hear it now. “They had some layoffs in sales and Kevin got Pluto’d.”
We’re living in interesting times, indeed.
Last week, AOL (mistakenly?) releases the Web search info for 650,000 people. So what were they searching for? A new Internet provider?
Coke and Pepsi gets banned in parts of India for allegedly containing 24 times the safe limits of pesticides. So what exactly is my safe limit of pesticide ingestion?
Grigory Perelman, a hermetic Russian genius, wins the highest honor in math, the coveted Fields Medal and then Brando’s the ceremony by refusing to accept it. That means they’ll soon make a movie about him.
Speaking of which: The Coen brothers are filming Cormac McCarthy’s violent tale, “No Country For Old Men,” in Marfa, Texas, near where the old classic movie “Giant” was filmed. Tommy Lee Jones plays the sheriff. That’s worth nine bucks, a $12 Coke and a slimy bucket of $20 popcorn.
Sony batteries for Dell and Apple laptops are so hot they have to be recalled for posing a fire hazard. Got a new Apple laptop? Ever actually put it on your lap for more than 10 minutes? Yeah. We’re talking a crotch-fired leg roast here. That thing gets hot enough to fricassee your future offspring.
George Mason cans the SAT requirement for students with a 3.5 GPA. Apparently, they can find no compelling reason to believe that students who score well on an SAT do any better in college than ones who don’t. Maybe that’s because it’s a single five-hour test on one Saturday that determines an 18 year-old’s entire life. I hear they’re giving a single high-stakes test next Saturday to see if all American workers get to keep their jobs. Want to sign up?
Online e-textbooks are gaining popularity and Freeload Press (confidence-inspiring name, eh?) is putting them out there for free – with one catch: Ads. If this takes off, what will happen to the
multibillion-dollar a year, budget-breaking, five-pound bricks of verbiage-laden tomes students drag all over campus now? Maybe we can burn them for an alternative fuel. Back in the day, mine alone, if used for fire tender, would have kept me warm for at least a year. And I can use my laptop to fire them up.
Nano-coated pants are finally here and they’re resistant to coffee spills, ketchup, blood, you name it. Just what I need, a nano in my pants. However, blood-resistant business attire may be perfect for today’s brutal, cutthroat, vacationless corporate environment.
Knight Ridder, the gianormous newspaper conglomerate, is no more, imploding in a red-inked fog of newsprint. I read about it online. Which may be the problem.
Paramount fires Tom Cruise for acting badly. On-screen or off? Hard to tell.
But let’s get back to Pluto. Why knock down a stand-up planet like Pluto? Scientists get excited if they find a chunk of ice floating out past Jupiter (like Xena, which sounds more like a hot, spandexed female video game vamp than a planet) but they can’t get it up for our old friend Pluto anymore? We get astrological upstarts like Quaoar and Sedna but turn our back on faithful Pluto, who has been hanging around out in the galaxial back forty since we cobbled together enough thick glass back in the 1930s so we could make a lens to see that far.
Now that Pluto is just a Herbert Hooverish wannabe, I wonder what’s next. Uranus? In today’s heated politically charged environment, it does sound kind of dirty. “Hey, I was just looking at the Hubble and I saw Uranus shining like a big funky melon!” See what I mean. Let’s just wipe Uranus too. Either demote Uranus or at least change the name to Somebodyelsesanus. It’s no worse than Quaoar, which sounds like an ingredient in Barry Bonds diet.
