Pluto gets plutoed

All that time we spent memorizing the planets for the all-important science class jeopardy game in elementary school...worthless. Turns out, it's even harder to forget random pieces of information once you don't need to know them anymore. Regardless, in 2006, poor Pluto (see above likeness) was downgraded from planet to dwarf planet - more specifically, the largest member of the Kuiper belt. Actually, no one really learned anything new about Pluto. They just sat down and defined the word "planet" for the first time, and it happened to exclude Pluto. Oops.

So a quick science rundown: Pluto was first discovered in 1930 and enjoyed a happy life as the ninth planet in the solar system for 76 years. On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union defined a planet according to the following guidelines: 1) an object that is in orbit around the sun, 2) has enough mass to maintain a round-ish shape (good one rocket scientists), and 3) has a strong enough gravitational force to be the dominant object in its orbit, ie satellites are okay. Since Pluto only meets the first two of these criteria, it is confined to a sad, lonely life as a dwarf planet.

While nothing has actually changed astronomically, people seemed to take offense to Pluto's supposed mistreatment. Immediately following the reclassification, there was an outpouring of support for Pluto. Petitions, Facebook groups, websites, etc. cropped up to defend Pluto's rights as a planet, and to express appreciation for a chunk of rock and ice that had been there all along. Perhaps the best thing to come out of the Pluto scandal was the 2006 word of the year. "To pluto" was defined by the American Dialect Society as "to demote or devalue something." For example: Hey, what happened to Sarah Palin? Oh, she totally got plutoed.

Pluto is too dwarfy to see from Alaska anyway.

Reality TV

OK, so I realize that choosing reality TV as my inaugural "historical" breakthrough is slightly less than auspicious. The only reason is that I need to get this one out of the way so I can move on with my life. I am not one of the reality TV people (weirdos), yet somehow, I have been unable to escape it recently. The fact that it has completely infiltrated my brain means that I need to a) stop allowing other people to drive the television, and b) inform others of my thoughts on the pervasive culture of reality TV.

Once upon a time, the only "reality" television was game shows. Besides those, all small screen entertainment was relegated to people who had been deemed sufficiently attractive by the general public. Normal people do not belong in any sort of publicly televised situation without extensive coaching (and makeup). Along came MTV and The Real World, which apparently people still watch fifteen or something years later. Clearly, putting a bunch of annoying strangers in a giant house full of alcohol sounds like a brilliant idea. A little while later, Survivor happened. Having only seen tidbits of the very first season, I wonder what could possibly be holding people's attention after 17 seasons (seriously...17).

In the early days of reality TV, the shows were timid, and aware of the fact that they were putting regular (ugly) people on television, hoping that the results of their social experiments were entertaining enough for people to watch anyway. Now, it's hard to find TV that is just plain old non-reality TV. Apparently viewership has actually changed so much that every network ever created benefits from showing reality TV. So much so that it appears that reality TV is here to stay. Who knew.

A few gems you may have been lucky enough to miss:

Whale Wars: A Greenpeace expat recruits clueless dreadheaded volunteers (note the guy on the far left in the photo) on a mission to stop a Japanese whaling ship. This show oozes ineptitude in volumes you probably couldn't find anywhere else if you tried: they flip their Zodiac (in Antarctic waters), they fail repeatedly at disabling the Japanese vessel's propeller as the giant ship bears down on them, and best of all, when they are low on fuel and unable to find said Giant Japanese Ship of Death, the Actual Conservationists hang up on them when they ask for directions. Classic.

Half Ton Mom: This one chronicles the gastric bypass surgery of a 900 pound woman. She lost 60 pounds right off the bat, but then she up and died. Just like that. Since the whole point of the show was to encourage others in this situation to lose weight, they kept filming the show, inserting still photographs of the woman every time they didn't know what else to do. On the plus side (size?), you could make a drinking game out of the lingo: apparently the scientific name for people weighing over 550 pounds is "super morbidly obese." Awesome. Drink two.

Rock of Love Charm School: A classy-by-comparison Sharon Osbourne sics pieces of peroxide-blonde trailer trash on each other under the guise of training them in the art of marrying rock stars. Supposedly, bagging Ozzy Osbourne makes her an expert on the subject. The show might as well be one long blurred-out wardrobe mishap interspersed with the bleeped-out profanity that happens during an hour long cat fight. Oh VH1, how we miss the good old days of Pop Up Video.

Here's how this is gonna work

Recently, it has occurred to me just how awesome (in the most literal sense of this word) it is to be alive right now. When I say right now, I mean our general era - the millennium plus or minus ten years. No matter how frustrated,or disillusioned, or dare I say hopeful (that's a new one) we become with the state of things, there is no denying that our shenanigans are making for a pretty interesting history class sometime in the not-too-distant future (assuming the large hadron collider doesn't implode the universe first. If you are unsure of the status on this, check here). The past twenty years or so have borne witness to a lot of events that were immediately ingrained in our collective memory - whether we are okay with that or not. Since these little morsels of ready-made history are much more fascinating than anything I might manage to accomplish, they will be the primary focus of my adventures in interwebbing. I'll choose appropriate (or not) exploits from a variety of spheres - social, political, scientific, technological, etc. - to feature and banter about. All you have to do is read. It will be fun! The world will become measurably more interesting as a direct result of my delightfully refined repartee. I'd try to keep my snarky comments to myself, but it's just less fun for everyone that way. Also this way I get to make more snarky comments than I would otherwise. I'm pretty sure that's why people have blogs.