The practical problem is a difficulty of communication. The purpose of words is to help us communicate. If we have no word for a common idea we want to express, then we usually create a new word or phrase.

Let's say we observe an object, with mass less than a star, that is orbiting a star other than our Sun. What, exactly, do you call it? Under the IAU rules, you cannot call it a planet, because we generally cannot know if it has cleared its orbit. The standard solution in English is to call it a "planet". But if we call it a planet, then we should use the same definition everywhere.

As I commented years ago, the worst problem with the current IAU definition of "planet" is a practical one: we can't practically use it for objects orbiting other stars.

We are too far away to observe small objects around other stars, and I think we will always be able to detect larger objects but not smaller ones in many faraway orbits. So when we detect an object in another galaxy with the mass of Jupiter, and it’s orbiting a star, is it a planet? Well, under this current definition we don’t know if it’s a planet or not. Why? Because we may not be able to know what else is there in orbit. And that is a real problem. I think it’s clear that we will always be able to observe some larger objects without being able to detect the presence of smaller ones. If we can’t use the obvious word, then the definition is useless - so we need a better definition instead.

I think a much better definition of "planet" is "orbits a star, enough mass to become round". Yes, that means that Ceres and some Kuiper Belt objects become planets. That's a GOOD thing. A lot of people don't know of Ceres, yet that one object has about 1/3 of the ENTIRE mass of the asteroid belt.

Of course, none of this affects reality; this is merely a definition war. But clear terminology is important in any science.

Let me guess, you don't get vaccinated, either...

Are you just as histrionic over Lois Lerner's missing emails?

That was awful. Pick up just about any Harry Turtledove book for a more thoughtful take on the subject.

You need one of those gay European man purses to carry around all your loose change. Then it makes sense, I suppose.

So many schools, librarys and entire towns have no Internet access here in Rural Washington. The rich suburbs down the road near the lakes do, but not the inner city (very small city) does. My mothers town everyone is on dialup. They did start beaming in microwave to the town library and enable wifi. So People drive in and sit in the cars to get online, crazy. Funny thing, she use to get a flickering of 4G Verizon, but verizon shared the tower with the microwave isp, so company made a decision to cut Verizon's data to feed more bandwidth to the library. Now everyone is stuck on dialup. This is about 50 miles north of Spokane, WA.

This is crazy as everyone has underground power and telephone lines, but no internet. The power company put everything underground to save money from falling trees every year, and that had to be expensive as hell.

To this day, males 18+ must register. Those who do not cannot receive Federal financial aid, nor work as a GS or contract employee for the Fed.

Did it do a 4G inverted dive?

This is a big deal. If you use a browser on Windows that does NOT counter this, such as Internet Explorer, then you ARE vulnerable. I imagine Microsoft will come out with a special-purpose patch, but still, this is a pretty nasty issue.

Untrustworthy CAs have been a problem for a long time; we need mechanisms to address them. The terrible cert revocation system makes it even worse; you can't be sure that the certs are checked in many cases. Chrome's CRLSets are not the answer; they are not even the beginning of an answer. We need to fix the whole revocation system. Sadly, there hasn't been enough work or enough urgency on these problems; maybe this will light a fire under those efforts. I doubt it, but it's worth hoping.

Pfft. I invented the wheel with round corners.

Ah, thanks.

[cryptic response]

Hooray! Congrats!

I've never had a CFL fail. I've been replacing incandescents with CFLs whenever a bulb burns out. My oldest CFL is 7 years old and my newest is a little under 1 year old.