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Pluto Making a Comeback
anthemaniac writes "Space.com reports that the American Astronomical Unions Division of Planetary Scientists recognizes the IAU's authority to make a new planet defintion but expects it to be altered. Separately, 300 astronomers have signed a petition saying they won't use the definition. All this stems from the discontent over how only 424 astronomers voted on the proposal that demoted Pluto. Looks like this little dog is on the comeback trail."
FTA:
"And the chair of the committee set up to oversee agreement on a definition implied that the vote had effectively been 'hijacked'"
Shades of Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004? If you're not satisfied with the results of a democratic vote, the answer isn't to piss and moan about it--it's to take steps to ensure that future voting is done legally and judiciously. Plus, if only a small majority of eligible voters participated in the vote, well then who's fault is that? It's the fault of the same people objecting to the reclassification now.
And do you know what low voter turnout is anyway? Business and politics as usual: In many American municipal elections, an absolutely tiny percentage of eligible voters turn out to cast their vote. In my town, a paltry 6 percent of eligible voters voted in the last municipal election to see which butts would fill several empty City Council seats. SIX PERCENT! And this, despite the fact that local representatives have far more to do with how you live your lives on a day to day basis than the President.
I guess what I'm saying is that when you complain about a democratic process that closely mirrors every other democratic process we know about, it makes you look pretty foolish--worse, it makes you look like a bunch of whiny little crybabies who know far more about objects light years away than they do about democratic institutions right here on Earth. Highjacked, indeed.
Damn. You just managed to turn Pluto into a left-wing/right-wing talking point. Ever consider hosting a right-wing talk show? You'd go far.
Poor (stupid?) Americans *sig* - In my opinion all this resistance just exists, because Pluto is the only object Americans detected and which - due lack of knowledge - became accepted as planet of our star system. Why cann't they be prood of having found the first sample of this new group of objects Pluto belongs to? Why aren't you prood of all those other planets of other star systems you've found already?
When Darwin published The origin of species, it pissed off a lot of people.
Yeah, but not everybody. When Darwin published The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, it did not bother the Nazis at all.
I suspect the reason these people were pissed off is because they can't fathom that new observations means that what they were taught before was wrong, and that the new information gives a better approximation of reality.
You misspelled "fabrications*."
* regarding the first two, which absolutely are not and cannot be observed (seen, watched)