Writer's Block: Planet's Rights

[packbat]

How do you feel about Pluto's recent demotion? Should it still be a planet? View other answers

2006 is still "recent"?

Anyway: It most certainly should not be. Pluto is hardly unique in size, so any definition including it that is not wholly gerrymandered to avoid problems would include dozens if not thousands of other objects in mutually-intersecting orbits besides Pluto.

In fact, I could abridge my argument to one point - including dwarf planets like Pluto would mean a solar system that looks like this picture, courtesy Mike Brown, Caltech:



Any questions?

Comments

[toya121.livejournal.com]

thanks for the update on IF. I'll check it out when I have some free time. I'm "working" right ha. I love to read, I'm just not sure if IF will be something I like BUT... I guess I'll never know until I try it:) I'm inbetween books at the moment, can you suggest something I might like. I'm not into ScFi though.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Not sure, but just going through those you can play online:

• ADVENT (http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=1&game=1&mode=html), i.e. Adventure, i.e. the Colossal Cave Adventure, is the first classic text adventure - fairly primitive, but interesting, and typical in that you spend a lot of time picking up things and solving puzzles with them.
  
• Zork (http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=1&game=2&mode=html) is the other classic text adventure - less primitive, but similarly dedicated to problem-solving and exploration.
  
• Galatea (http://www.nickm.com/if/emshort/galatea.html), in contrast, is a very modern entry by Emily Short - an (almost) purely conversational game, wherein you have a conversation with a statue that has come to life.
  
• Aisle (http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=&game=232&mode=html) is another very modern entry - it's a single-move game. Try any command - "take gnocchi" or "examine woman", for example - and it will tell a little story, and then drop you back where you began.

Some shorter games can be found from IFComp (http://ifcomp.org/), one of the annual competitions in interactive fiction - I played several from the 11th Annual (http://ifcomp.org/comp05/), and liked "Chancellor" (although that one was rather surreal) and "Son of a..." (which was a cheesy little puzzle game, but fun). For those, though, you need your own interpreter - I think the main site has suggestions on finding them.