Geologists Angry About New 'Pluton' Definition 390
An anonymous reader writes "According to a story over at Nature, some geologists are ticked off at the International Astronomical Union for using the word 'pluton' to describe a round object orbiting the sun with a period more than 200 years. A pluton, it seems, is a common type of rock formation that exists in most Geology 101 curricula. IAU head Owen Gingerich is quoted as saying that he was only peripherally aware of the definition, and because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important."
Wow, that's an interesting take... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, the US Congress voted not to move to Linux, after Senator Binghaman discovered that MS Word's spell checker doesn't recognize it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that using MS Word is a pretty good way to check vocabulary that may be in the zeitgeist. Even abridged dictionaries are full of words that are virtually unused in our society... and from TFA, it appears their intention was to ensure whatever word they used didn't already have significant meaning in popular culture.
The question they seem to failed to ex
Re:Wow, that's an interesting take... (Score:5, Insightful)
MS Word's default dictionary is hunky dory for most people, BUT the second you want to start using technical terms, the default dictionary is worthless.
Example: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA01
"If you find it frustrating that the default Microsoft Word dictionary doesn't recognize the medical terms you use every day, there's a simple way to make the spelling checker work for your specific needs. Just customize your Word dictionary so that the default dictionary points to Stedman's Medical Dictionary or another medical terms list that you want to use."
And even un-abridged dictionaries will not include technical or specialized terminology that is limited to a single field. That's why you can buy subject specific dictionaries: legal, medical, niological, chemical, etc etc etc
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow, that's an interesting take... (Score:5, Interesting)
Angstrom, Joule, Candella.
They don't have "significant meaning in popular culture" either, but you would not go around redefining those words, would you?
Re:Wow, that's an interesting take... (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have "significant meaning in popular culture" either, but you would not go around redefining those words, would you?
Only in everyone's favourite 'most important' country, would Joule be classified as not having significant meaning in poular culture. Travel to the outside world, where people use decimal measurement systems, and you'll see kilojoules in the nutritional information of everything in your supermarket.
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Why would I travel out of the greatest, best, most wonderful country ever?
Well, ok, Prague makes the best beer, and Belgium is right up there. But other than that...
Car Culture, Manifest Destiny, Wide Glide (Score:4, Interesting)
The US obesity epidemic (sudden spike, hence use of the term epidemic) is a lot newer than our wide doors. Cultural differences around personal space are a far more likely culprit. Lay it to the size of the country, wild west mentality, or what you will, but Americans expect a larger cushion of personal space than do most other nationalities, and this is old news. More recently, our passageways are also influenced by laws about emergency egress and disabled access, with 3' mandated for wheelchairs in particular.
Considering which came first, it's more valid to suggest our expansive personal space caused our epidemic obesity. Think of it as Manifest Destiny of the self.
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You mean? (Score:5, Funny)
candella: (n) a scented candle, usually used to illuminate bubble baths
angstrom: (n) a digital write-once medium for storing memories of fear and anxiety
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Astronomers also dis Disney by calling some stars "red dwarfs" - implying that they're rednecks or drunks, yellow dwarfs (commonly called yeller in the south) being cowards, and white
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opening a can of worms.... (Score:2)
In this way I also seperate the real nerds from the 'wannabes'. A real nerd uses crack, cracking and cracker and hacking means slapping something together instead of really thinking and engine
Re:opening a can of worms.... (Score:4, Funny)
-goltrpoat
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Looks like the groaning beat its cue.
Re:Wow, that's an interesting take... (Score:5, Insightful)
So why in the world are geologists upset? Just been awhile since they had a rumble with astronomers, or...?
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"Hey, check out this here marklar on this here marklar."
Although, would a Marklar use the marklar "here" in his marklars?
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Given the size of (astronomical) plutons, if one crashed into the Earth, said geologists would have much important things to worry about. Such as the ongoing mass extinction and nuclear winter, for instance.
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Done before... (Score:4, Insightful)
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1st Time (Score:4, Insightful)
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Storm
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Oh lordy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh lordy (Score:5, Funny)
See that lumpy formation on the back of yo mama's leg? It looks like a pluton!
Take that back, mother fucker!
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Also coming up on pay-per-view, psychologists and meteorologists duke it out over the term 'depression' and disagreement between poets and parking enforcement officers over 'meter' finally boils over.
BFD. That's what those numbers are for... (Score:5, Funny)
1. n. some rock thingy that noone* cares about.
2. n. some astromomical thingy that nooone* cares about.
* by weight, not intellectual capacity.
Re:BFD. That's what those numbers are for... (Score:5, Funny)
Because of their distance from the Sun (and lack of magma), plutons typically lack plutons. So a pluton such as Pluto and its pluton Charon, would both likely be devoid of any plutons.
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"noo-ne" is slang (at least in the southern US) for a baby's pacifier.
obvious solution (Score:5, Funny)
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They obsessively watch their scopes for the perfect kill.
In not-so-related news... (Score:5, Funny)
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Geologist goes postal against Ballmer, fights back, actually throwing his chair at him (oh the irony) for not including the world pluton in the ms word spellcheck.
ITYM Plutony.
Suggested replacements... (Score:5, Funny)
Plutonite
Mini-Pluto
iPluto Nano
Re:Suggested replacements... (Score:4, Funny)
At least until the residents of the Bay Area and the Wal-Mart shoppers join up to beat me senseless;
Which would obviously be redundant anyway.
KFG
Re:Suggested replacements... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Suggested replacements... Plutonfox (Score:2)
Context (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, the word 'nucleus' has several different definitions in different branches of science, and I've never had problems with it.
Re:Context (Score:4, Funny)
Well I do because I don't know which one you've never had a problem with! *ARGH*
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It would be less confusing if they called those small objects "planes". Seriously, "Plutons on a plane" would be less confusing than "Plutons on a Pluton".
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Plane as in airplane/aircraft, plane as in supposedly infinite 2D structure, or is this something else?
Given that many words have different definitions, I really don't see the problem. Chemists might see a metal as a shiny element with ductile properties when solid, astrophysicists might call any solid object metal. IIRC, physics and chemistry disagree on whether the charge of a standard electron is positive or negative, and what direc
Geology and Astronomy are very much related! (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that geology and astronomy are in fact very much related. Ever heard of planetary geology? I'll note that there are plenty of planetary geologists who are faculty members in astronomy, not geology departments.
Anyhow, the point is that it is easy to imageine how overloading "pluton" could result in a lot of unnecessary confusion in the planetary sciences, so it would make sense for th
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Perhaps next time (Score:5, Insightful)
because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important.
Well next time, maybe the IAU should check Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] just to be sure. There is some really good info there. . .
Way to go Owen.
Re:Perhaps next time (Score:5, Funny)
Pluton = six = bingo! (Score:2)
Not a moot point (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, geology seems to be one of the most highly leveraged sciences in planetary studies, if you consider most of what the Mars robots were doing was geology. For a planetary scientists to miss this is bizarre.
Re:Not a moot point (Score:5, Interesting)
You are entirely correct. How a group of planetary scientists missed this is pretty strange, given that many planetary scientists are geologists! Apparently no planetary geologists were invited to this party.
No Internet connection? (Score:3, Insightful)
MS Word? (Score:5, Funny)
They should have googled it [google.com].
Sheesh, those astronomers sure are lacking in the geekiness department.
When you're an arrogant academic? (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when is MS Word the definitive guide to the english language?
When you're an arrogant academic? He got a nice bit of Humble Pie Smackdown, and I can't think of anyone more deserving at the moment. Not to mention, both groups and a lot of other scientists will learn lessons from this....
i just wrote an article about this at kuro5hin.org (Score:3, Interesting)
i'm basically saying that as we discover more and more exotic extrasolar orbital arrangements out there, the meaning of "planet" will come under ever-increasing fluidity
so basically i am saying:
1. anything round with an atmosphere is a planet. in other words titan is a "planet of saturn"
2. anything round without an atmosphere is a moon. in other words mercury is a "moon of the sun"
3. a gas giant should come to mean something different than a planet... something more akin to a star, since gas giants really are nothing but stars not massive enough to start fusing. a little more mass and we'd be in a binary star system, with jupiter shining bright
4. anything non-round=asteroid
my basic point is that the "what it is made of" should come to mean something different than the "what it orbits", and the "what it is made of" should be more important in our nomenclature than the "what it orbits." is mercury more interesting than titan? no. so why is mercury amongst the pantheon of planets and titan relegated to lowly moon status along with captured asteroids and other forlorn rocks?
titan certainly is more interesting to us than mercury, simply because it has an atmosphere. and our nomenclature should reflect that. why is something as complex and interesting as titan just a moon, like deimos and phobos, which aren't really "moon"s either, but just captured asteroids? and why is mercury a planet? it could never be as interesting as titan. having an atmosphere means something significant, MORE significant than orbital focus
look: elephants eat plants. so do ants. is that a valid system for classifying elephants and ants together, and keeping elephants apart from lions? not at all. lions and elephants are mammals, ants are insects. elephants should be classed closer to lions than to ants, because the "what it eats" is LESS important than the "how it is designed" in zoology. and this makes obvious sense. why should planetary classification be any different?
just like with planets and moons: the "what it is made of" is more interesting and important to us (titan is more important than mercury is to us) than the "what it orbits", mercury is just a moon. titan is a planet
our nomenclature should focus on composition over orbital focus. and our current system of placing orbital focus over composition will be shown to be more and more broken as our catalogue of satellites grows and grows as we discover more and more exotic extrasolar arrangements
Re:i just wrote an article about this at kuro5hin. (Score:4, Insightful)
2. anything round without an atmosphere is a moon. in other words mercury is a "moon of the sun"
Even our moon has an atmosphere. Is it really a planet?
If you set an arbitrary "value" for minimum atmosphere, what do you do with planet/moons that fluctuate with their orbit? Do they change categories when they warm up and get more of an atmosphere, and then return to being a moon when they freeze again?
very good points (Score:3, Interesting)
i'm not saying that this classification system i'm talking about is absolute and noncontentious and without any fluidity or controversy
NO system is
i'm just saying that the trade off in arguments from "is pluto a planet because it is so puny?" to "does pluto have an atmosphere worthy of consideration?" is a valid trade off in arguments.
that the atmosphere arugment is more highly contrained... not more arbitrary... not like we
and i agree (Score:2)
and those are the "planets", REGARDLESS of what they orbit
and that classification system, and that meaning of the word "plaent" makes the most sense
"what is it made of" is mo
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The first sentence is correct (and the term is from Greek), but the second isn't. The original planets were: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, in the order used by Ptolemy. The rest weren't known when the term was coined, though there is evidence that Uranus ha
Re:i just wrote an article about this at kuro5hin. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, in fact it's done all the time. There are many classification systems for most things, and you chose the one relevant to the phenomenon which you are interested in.
KFG
of course (Score:2)
it is also true, in any field of study, that one classification system comes to rise above the other as the most common shorthand for the most useful measurement of interest
this system comes to dominate, as well it should, as it is most useful to our minds
it doesn't stop the other systems form being used, in certain more rare situations, but that one dominant system comes to be most useful for introducing students to a discipline, etc.
let's say we find a new ex
Re:i just wrote an article about this at kuro5hin. (Score:2)
Which means the term "planet" has very little meaning and is realistically only useful as a means to determine research funding.
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A planet's a planet's a planet, a round (which implies large enough to form rounded under its own gravitation pull) object orbiting a star. If you want some other way of classifying objects, make up new words (or annoy geologists by nicking more of theirs).
If you start redefining words, you all of a sudden have to take the extra time to make
words change in meaning all the time (Score:2)
there is no magic lord of all language who decides what word means what. meanings drift all the time
go back a century or two and i think you'll find the word "gay" (happy) meant something different
that "imp" was a plant offshoot... then a child... then a little evil thing
that "cannibal" used to mean a native of the caribbean
how many more thousands of examples do you want?
and so as we discover more extrasolar objects, we could start calling things "planets" that or
It was an interesting article. (Score:2)
i agree with you 100% (Score:2)
How about a tertiary star system orbiting a common gravitational barycenter, each star with it's own planetary system... and one planet that, via natural harmonics between the three stars, switches orbital allegiance every now and then? Unlikely but possible. Well, what do we call such an object then with a nomenclature dependent first and foremost on what something orbits, rather than what it is made of?
How about a trojan
Re:i just wrote an article about this at kuro5hin. (Score:2)
the star's termination shock and outside. Those outside are
fundamentally different in that they start to feel the galactic
plasma more and star's radiation less. This is especially true
if we intend to eventually colonize things because we would want
to classify them by how much solar energy they get and how
consistent the cycles are. This also means that bodies which
orbit the star are different from those bodies' satellites, since
their weather patterns
i like it (Score:5, Interesting)
because whatever word we agree that would be this earthlike range of parameters of size/ atmosphere/ etc... say this word was "fred", then this word would rapidly become the most interesting word in use when talking about extrasolar systems
say we found 10 new systems
and we classified each according to our current definitions: gas giants, planets, moons, etc. the first thing everyone would want to know is where the "fred"s were: the bodies most like earth. the gas giants, planets, moons: who cares
"ok, this system has 20 planets, 3 gas giants, and 45 moons"
"whatever, where are the freds?"
"well, the freds, the most earthlike orbs, are: 4 orbitting the star, 2 orbitting the first gas giant, and one orbitting the third gas giant"
"ok, that's what i'll be researching"
the "fred"s are the most important things: the things that might harbor alien life, or be targets of our colonization.
and so in the future, whether we use the word "planet" or some other word to describe the most earthlike worlds, whatever word that is used will come to have the most meaning to us, and all other classifications will fall into more esoteric and archaic meanings, so that in a future of many known extrasolar systems, our current defintion of planets and moons will be looked down as ancient and archaic and useless
kind of like how modern chemists look at the quaint classifications of alchemists "earth/ air/ fire/ water", or how modern astronomers look at the whimsical classifications of astrologers ("libra", "virgo", "aries")
so will future astronomers look down on our current understanding of planets and moons and its basically useless emphasis on "what it orbits" as being more important than "what it is made of"
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I don't like it. An asteroid like Ceres potentially has as much living space as Earth currently does, because you can tunnel virtually the whole thing out. Things like atmosphere can be added. And being above a certain threshhold doesn't make it livable. After all, Jupiter isn't a great place to put a colony. There's no surface and the gravity is much too high.
My take is that being massive enough that the object is spherical, and orbiting the Sun is a better definition.Re:i just wrote an article about this at kuro5hin. (Score:2)
Titan certainly is more interesting to us than mercury
Perhaps it's more interesting to you
Messenger is well on its way to study Mercury.
BepiColombo will hopefully be launched in the not-so-distant future
It's clear that Mercury is indeed a very interesting place to go.
Now I don't dispute that Titan is a wicked/awesome place to go, just don't pick a fight where none exists.
There are a great many reasons why Mercury is a seriously cool object to study.
What are the composition
anything is interesting (Score:2)
but i assert that the amazon is more interesting than the sahara
simply because it is more complex (varieties of life/ water/ etc.)
my point is that more complexity is directly proportional to our level of interest
and titan is orders of magnitude more complex than mercury
ANYTHING with an atmosphere becomes more complex than something without, because it introduces an entirely new
yes, true ;-) (Score:2)
of course, when we are talking about things that massive, we would probably be talking about stars orbitting a common barycenter, rather than one orbitting another
but even with that just that concept considered, we have already entered exotic enough terrain to blow away our current rudimentary planet versus moon nomenclature system
and so
i second that system! (Score:2)
I'm sort of embarrased (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why? It's not like anybody's going to confuse the two meanings, even if the "old" meaning was commonly used among geologists.
From reading the article, it sounds more like one geologist who's spent his career studying plutons (and apparently could use a wee bit more perspective) is upset, not the field as a whole.
Re:I'm sort of embarrased (Score:5, Funny)
For what it's worth, as a mathematician, I'm furious at the use of the word "matrix" by geologists, "integration" by sociologists, "differentiation" by biologists, the use of the word "domain" by web users, and the use of the verb "to commute" by ordinary people stuck in traffic.
Then again, I'd better watch out for those geologists, they walk around with pointy hammers in their pocket.
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Pluton (Score:2)
Ironically... (Score:4, Informative)
pluton |plotän| noun Geology a body of intrusive igneous rock. ORIGIN 1930s: back-formation from plutonic .
Except that in Russian ... (Score:3, Informative)
Paul B.
So what shall we call them? (Score:2)
Morons
Pylons
Nylons
Klingons
No, not the planets - the scientists. Astro-types can be morons, geologists shall be klingons...
I figure if we give them names they can waste their time arguing about that instead of winding the mainstream media up into a frenzy of "Pluto's not a planet" stories.
Who's with me?
Funny thing... (Score:2)
has this guy ever heard of (Score:2)
I want to know how so many idiots get out of bed each morning?
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Something I noticed (Score:2, Funny)
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They won't do that until 2620.
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Clydon? (Score:2)
Why is there such a problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Now as for light within in the the heliosphere but not within the atmosphere of a satellite it must be called "space light type [star, phosphorescent gasses, space junk emitted]".
And the tails of comets must be re-termed as "debris of satellite [enter satellite name]" and that any solid particles put off in the tails of the comet over a half a gram must be termed "space pebble in the debris of satellite [enter satellite name]"
This of course will lead to the renaming of "meteor showers" to "space pebble fallout to natural space satellite Earth".
Furthermore we need to rename the "asteroid belt" to "natural space satellite collective between natural space satellite Mars and natural space satellite Jupiter". Objects within the "natural space satellite collective between natural space satellite Mars and natural space satellite Jupiter" that are not residence of "natural space satellite collective between natural space satellite Mars and natural space satellite Jupiter" for at least 300 years at a time must be rename "temporary natural space satellite not wholly belonging to the natural space satellite collective between natural space satellite Mars and natural space satellite Jupiter".
And this is just the tip of the iceberg! I have a million ideas on how we can further fuck up the order of things by bickering and fighting over some random bullshit that isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference under the sun.
Hold on! Damn it! A pebble is a rock formation! Jesus! My entire idea is for nothing! God damn those geologists!
A pluton is also... (Score:2, Informative)
One Small Planet, One Giant Fuss (Score:2)
I hope somebody nukes Pluto in the middle of the night[1] to end this. If the brats fight over the toy, you take the toy away. Maybe if somebody paints a big 666 on it, then nobody will want
Re:One Small Planet, One Giant Fuss (Score:5, Interesting)
We're going to be reworking this system anyway in a few years, as more extrasolar planets are discovered. You already see references to 'hot Jupiters' and such in the popular and semitechnical press. We should have just demoted Pluto, lived with a few subspecies of asteroids, and waited 'till we had more knowledge of other systems.
What we now have is just stupid. We're going to end up with a couple of hundred planets, of such diversity that the term will convey no information.
The IAU is going to be hideously embarrassed about the whole sorry episode, at some point. They may as well get started now.
It's a unit of currency! (Score:2)
Pluton just doesn't sound like a kind of planet. (Score:5, Interesting)
Picking a term that's also used in geology was a terrible misstep - when geologists finally get out to these smaller planets, they are going to get horribly confused. Is the rock a Pluton - or is it FROM a Pluton - or is that a typo and it's actually from Pluto? Yuk, yuk, yuk! If you have to make up a word - especially a word that's still going to be used a thousand years from now - at least think through the consequences *carefully*.
The term "Dwarf Planet" seems entirely suitable here. It indicates that it is a kind of planet (which is reasonable given that it's round and orbits a star) - and it tells you something useful about it (it's evidently smaller than you might expect a typical planet to be) - and it has strong similarities with "Dwarf Star" which is a nice thing. We could then apply a kind of uniform taxonomy to those kinds of things - yielding "Dwarf Moon" for those teeny-tiny (but round) moons out there. All nice and uniform, neat and scientific.
If we got really elegant about this, we could talk about a "Dwarf X" (where X is a star, planet, moon or other body) as being an object that's in the lower tenth percentile of the size range for objects of class "X" (or twentieth percentile - or whatever makes that work). Terms like 'Red Giant' for stars and 'Gas Giant' for planets are already set up kinda like that. By implication then, our moon would be a Giant Moon or something like that since I guess it's the largest moon we know of right now.
If the astronomers don't get this 100% right this time, they are only going to have to do it all over again in another 10 years. We're already in trouble over free-floating "planets" that don't orbit stars and things that are borderline between stars and planets (Brown Dwarf Stars for example). We're also in danger of finding tiny stars that orbit humungous stars such that their barycenter lies within the diameter of the bigger star - and we could end up having to call those things planets!
We also could find moons that have their own moons - and 'double-moons' that co-orbit each other whilst together going around a common planet (actually - I think we already have some of those around Saturn).
Defeat Snatched from the Jaws of Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that's talent!
Missing the forest through the trees (Score:5, Insightful)
Gingerich is head of the IAU. He's supposed to be pretty damned smart.
He used a word processor SPELL CHECK dictionary as the authority to determine the existence of a scientific/technical term.
A SPELL CHECK dictionary. Used as the authority to determine the exisatence of a scientific term.
The head of the International Astronomic Union. Spell check dictionary. Existence of a scientific term.
Is anybody home??
He may as well have done no research into the background of the term. He would have looked less stupid that way. Sloppy and careless maybe, but not stupid.
And how is it he got to this position and how long will he be allowed to remain? Maybe he was elected so he wouldn't hurt himself running with scissors.
Re:say what now? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, yes it does. Precision of technical terms is always desirable, so the trick is to find one that no one else is already using.
I suggest we look for some distinctive feature of Pluto and form the new word around that. Lesseeeeeee, it' been variously suggested that it's either an ex-moon of Neptune, or an ex-Kuiper belt object, so I suggest:
Exxon.
That one should be safe. I can' imagine anyone else wanting such an obviosly made up; and utterly stupid, word.
KFG
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When did astronomers become dumb?
The lexicon engineers at MS are... (Score:2)
Re:I blame the planetary naming problem on Microso (Score:2, Informative)
Or....maybe we should be angry at the academics who obviously are not running OpenOffice on Linux.
Nice tr(y|oll), but the OpenOffice dictionary doesn't recognize pluton either.
Anyhow, Word and OpenOffice both look like shit. If they want to be taken seriously, they should be using TeX, LaTex, or at least troff.