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Comment Re:9th planet = Pluto (Score 1) 82

"You don't really expect kids to memorize a thousand plus planets in science class."

Why should the question of whether kids can can memorize the names of the planets be a deciding factor in the development of a scientific definition of planet? That was one of the justifications used for this malformed, ill-considered, back-door approach back in August of 2006. Should we have stopped calling everything after Io, Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa a moon of Jupiter? My goodness! There's already at least 69 ... "things" going around Jupiter, we certainly can't call them moons!

So as far as Ceres, Eris, and anything else large enough to pull itself into a sphere and orbit a star, absolutely call it a planet. And that means Pluto, too.

Comment Re:No hope of terraforming (Score 2) 102

Venus doesn't have a magnetic field, either. Various space probes have measured the magnetic fields of the planets in our solar system, and both Mars and Venus share an immeasurably low value, suggesting no molten core. The solar wind impacts directly upon Venus' thick atmosphere, creating a very weak ionosphere, but it's effectively as weak as Mars'.

Comment Re: politicians don't recognize integrity (Score 1) 168

Oh, sure! That would have been helpful to Hillary, wouldn't it? That would have made it so easy to lump it all together and white-wash the whole sordid affair with one neat lie instead of having to change her story every time a new leak came out. She got what she deserved. It's a shame Podesta et al thought Trump would be the easiest one to beat.

Comment Re:True... but so what? (Score 1) 177

I'm still on my original Note. I've replaced the battery twice, and will need a new one soon if I don't replace the whole phone. I'd go with the new Note 8, since I love the series so much, but the battery can't be replaced and I prefer to run my phones into the ground before I replace them. This weird trend of making the batteries fixed components was an Apple 'innovation', I believe.

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