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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Thursday, August 24, 2006
Requiem for an Ex-Planet
Somewhere out between the orbit of Neptune and the Kuiper Belt, a small, spherical object is shedding an icy tear. Yes, it was the shot heard around the solar system: the International Astronomical Union has demoted Pluto from planet to "dwarf planet," a new category of orbital object that seems uncomfortably close to "Special Olympics." Bad enough that Pluto doesn't get to sit at the grown-up's table any more; did we really have to make a dig at its size, too?
The demotion has, of course, been a long time coming. Pluto couldn't pretend forever that it was the largest chunk of stuff out there in post-Neptunian space, or that it wasn't falling slowly to pieces as the solar wind whips its icy surface off. It's a comet, really, made from the same stuff; closer to the sun, it would have a tail. But bless the little thing -- it was the little comet that could. It tried so hard to get nearer to that dim star in the distance, even though the star would hurt it. And it did it. It came out of the Kuiper belt, and got a pretty damn stable orbit going. It kept steady, even with that blasted Charon, the Robin to Pluto's Batman, circling so close, throwing it off its game.
And why did the IAU demote Pluto? Because it hadn't "cleared its orbit of other objects". What other objects? Like, uh, Neptune. Every once in a blue Charon, Pluto hops over its neighbor's lawn, and one of these millenia, I suppose, they might bump into each other. But even leaving aside the obvious question -- hey, instead of picking on the little guy, why doesn't the IAU demote Neptune instead? -- it seems horribly unfair. I mean, Pluto barely skips over for twenty years or so, hardly a moment in Plutonian years. Lookit:
See? Pluto so nearly made it to being a planet under the new definition. And what does it get now? The status of dwarf planet. Oh, and it gets to "act as a prototype for a yet-to-be-named category of "Trans-Neptunian objects." Which is rather like kicking your kid out of the house and then saying "don't worry, you can still be a prototype for a yet-to-be-named category of our family."
Ah, you say, but look at the worldwide outpouring of grief for poor Pluto. Doesn't that prove we care for the little Neptunian Trespasser? No, not really. "Once a planet is deemed a planet, named a planet and represented in every grade school science fair with a ball of styrofoam painted purple," wrote a friend on an email list today, "it should remain a planet." We don't feel sorry for Pluto -- we feel conservative, as conservative as a 19th-century clergyman reading the Origin of the Species for the first time. We want science to remain the same. We want the solar system to remain the way we learned it. The mnemonics are suddenly useless. My Very Elderly Mother no longer Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. She Just Served Us Nine. It's all wrong. When the universe changes, it worries us. We get a glimpse of the awful truth that things are not as set in stone as they seem.
There's all sorts of emotions mixed up in there. We picture our future child sitting in the future kitchen, leafing through a future edition of the Bumper Book of Planets, cheated out of a whole chapter, of a whole "wow." Or worse, perhaps he will leaf to a page that says "your parents might tell you there's a ninth planet, but that's because they're fuddy-duddies who didn't pay attention to the news back at the beginning of the century." And our children will turn and look at us with pity, and we'll blush and mumble something about going for ice cream. Remembering Pluto will become another one of those age markers, like being alive when Star Wars came out. It will prove that you were brought up between 1930 and 2006. It will date you horribly.
But who weeps for the lonely ice-bound lump itself? No one. We don't write, we don't visit. And now we probably never will. Which is a shame, because Pluto, being slowly ice-stripped to death by the solar wind, could literally use our tears.
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