HOW I KILLED PLUTO AND WHY IT HAD IT COMING

 

This REMARKABLE LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT -- combining popular science, memoir, history, true crime and THE SURE AND CERTAIN HOPE OF DISCORD -- bears International Standard Book Number 978-0-385-53108-5.  Mike Brown is the author.  Took me forever to get to this one.  I APOLOGIZE, PROFESSOR BROWN!

ERIS FLICKED ME ON THE HEAD AGAIN AND AGAIN AS I SOUGHT OUT THIS BOOK.

I went to my library's online catalog.  The site said the book was currently available and allowed me to put a hold on it, informing me that it would be waiting in the NO-CONTACT BOOK HOLD AREA.  That's one of the local artifacts of the pandemic.  In 24 to 48 hours, the book would be mine to borrow.

I went in after 24 hours, and behold, it was not there.  I knew that due to nationwide understaffing and shorter working hours, there might be a delay.  So I patiently waited for 48 hours to pass and went back.  

As if by magic...the book had not appeared.  I asked at the desk and the librarian looked it up.  "It's in transit," she said.  "But it says on your website that the book is here in this building."  "It says it's in transit," quoth she, ensconced in her government bureaucracy and thus safely protected from HAVING TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING TO ME.  I understood IMMEDIATELY that I was safe in the arms of Discordia.  The book might be on its way.  Then again, it might not.  There was nothing I needed to do -- or indeed could do -- to change the course of events. 

THE BLESSINGS OF GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACY ARE ALL PART OF THE DEAL IF YOU'RE A DISCORDIAN.

ON THE THIRD DAY IT CAME TO PASS.  A different librarian noticed me stumping away from the NO-CONTACT ON HOLD AREA and shouted out "WHAT HOLD!?" (I never heard librarians yell until I moved here.)  "Who, me?" quoth I.  "Yes, I'm processing some holds now," she said.  I named the book and she happened to have it in her hand.  She said it looked very interesting and she might want to check it out herself.  I encouraged her to make this move, then checked out the book and brought my quarry home.  Sure enough, the book was NOT from my local library but had been shipped in from Hamtramck, Michigan.  I DIDN'T EVEN ASK.

I dove in immediately, AND OH, THE WONDERS I BEHELD.

The author of this book proves to be the guy who's discovered MORE NEW HEAVENLY BODIES THAN ANYONE IN HUMAN HISTORY.  And, frankly, he makes it sound like a real GRIND.  It seems that most of this task involves searching out MISFILED PHOTOS OF THE SKY and squinting at them in dimly-lit rooms, hoping that one of the dots of light in one of the photos will have visibly MOVED between, say, 1957 and 1992.  He gets to take new photos of his own, of course, but that's kind of a crapshoot and if you want one to use of the better telescopes, you have to write a proposal to the dark overlords, then TAKE A NUMBER AND WAIT.  So he relied quite a bit on existing photos.

But soft!  Here's how he described the very first hint that something was up:

"But after a few minutes, I stopped my quick flipping through images, because I had found one that confused me." (Italics mine.)   

He hadn't found Eris yet at this point -- this was a different space rock entirely -- but he was already starting to feel confused, am I right?  THIS SPACE ROCK WAS ONE OF THE HERALDS OF ERIS.  THERE WERE SEVERAL in the course of this story, changing not only their visible positions in the sky but their names and their intellectual ownership.  Pluto, of course, wasn't KILLED as stated in the title of the book, but in the eyes of his followers DEMOTED in the course of this book, from a true PLANET to a mere Kuiper Belt Object.  You can still buy T-shirts complaining about this change:

And there was much more going on here than confusion and job changes for space rocks.  There was TRUE DISCORD in the shape of what may amount to theft of an intellectual property, or space-rock poaching, or SCIENTIFIC ESPIONAGE.  Right before he was about to announce the discovery of one of his new rocks, someone else announced having discovered the same item. It's a long story and I'll let you read the book yourself to find out about it.   Mike Brown took the role of Detective Lieutenant Frank Columbo and found out some very interesting fingerprints at a very unexpected crime scene.  YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE THIS PART.

Part of Mike Brown's stated quest was to get a firm answer to the question "What is a planet?"  He'd harbored doubts about the question for ages and he returns to it again and again in these pages.  I'm pleased to report that he NEVER CLEARED THIS UP and in my opinion SPREAD MORE CONFUSION ABOUT THIS QUESTION THAN EVER.  He also reported the casting of SUBLIME DOUBT on the definition of a moon, and a number of other pretty basic definitions about space terminology.  

Here's another quote from much later in the book which I think captures a great deal of the gist:

"Sure, perhaps I was a bit on the exhausted side at this point and inclined to believe that the secret committee had also conspired to assassinate President Lincoln, Archduke Ferdinand, and Julius Caesar, but just because I was being paranoid didn't mean I was wrong." 

If that's not straight out of the Book of Discord, I don't know what qualifies.

I don't want to tell you too much about this Galilean-in-scope quest, but suffice to say that this is a WILD RIDE for a science book, very well written and at times hilarious.  And Eris finally made her appearance.  And the author was the one who chose the perfect name...

NO DISCORDIAN SHOULD MISS READING THIS ONE.  FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, YOU GET TO MEET ERIS IN THIS BOOK!

It's already that time again...

 

...and there's no question that WE HAVE A WINNER FOR APPLE ROLLER OF THE YEAR, 2021!

WELCOME, OMICRON!  

If a picture says a thousand words...

WOW.  WHAT HATH LADY CHAOS WROUGHT WITH THESE TINY BUGGERS.

Woolly Bears 1, Human Science 0

I have to say that this year at least, the woolly-bear caterpillars were ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.  They were very, very red this year and the winter was very, very mild. 

 

We're just a week or two off from spring. 

Woolly Bear Update (As We Get Closer To Xmas)

I'd have to say that so far, the Legend of the Woolly Bear is HOLDING TRUE.  I'm writing this on December 14th, 2019 and so far we have had only 3 really cold days -- in the 20s or lower (Fahrenheit) -- and only a little snowfall, swiftly banished by the next 40-degree day.  People are walking around in windbreakers today and we're in Michigan, for crying out loud -- the state where Alaskans complain that they wish they could go home because the winters are SO MUCH HARDER here.

So the wide red band on the woolly bears appears to be accurate, so far, in predicting a mild winter. 

I do wonder what the caterpillars look like in the areas nailed over the Thanksgiving weekend by Winter Storm Ezekiel.  Thousands of flights were cancelled, cars were twirling all over the roads until stopped by trees, and everything in the storm's path looked more or less like this:

I picture the blacker caterpiggles gathering in  places like Montana and signaling to the storm:  "This way!  We're over here!  Bring it, baby!" while the the redder ones where I live say something more like "Please do not step over the red line!  There is plenty of space to drop all that white stuff directly north of here, you will be welcomed father north, PLEASE PROCEED NORTH..."

...and somehow, the storm listened and obeyed!  OK, I'm sure it doesn't really work that way BUT IT'S NICE TO THINK ABOUT.

The Wooly Bear Rule

YES, IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN!  Driving down country roads is a HAIR-RAISING CHALLENGE at the moment as motorists swerve wildly to avoid flattening all the Wooly Bear caterpillars crossing the pavement.  The other day I counted 17 of them on a 15-mile trip.  I'm pretty sure I didn't kill a single one, thank you very much.

As you make one of these trips down the road, you catch yourself, and the other motorists, peering avidly at the little critters as they go undulating across the asphalt.  Not just to avoid hitting them, mind you.  We also want to check out the MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE of this adorable animal, the red midsection. 

LEGEND HAS IT that the redder the wooly bears, the milder the winter is going to be.  And those winters after the little guys appear in with jackets that are mostly black -- or, egad, 100% black -- are supposed to be BRUTAL, with heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures week after week. 

RESPONSIBLE SCIENTISTS claim that there is no relationship between the caterpillars' coloration and the severity of the weather.  But riddle me this:  can they say that without conducting a formal STUDY of the phenomenon?  Not just a snapshot-in-time study, either.  To really know the answer, they'd need to do a well-designed LONGITUDINAL study that matches up the weather to the woolies every year for DECADES.  Nothing less would satisfy the rigorous demands of true scientific inquiry.

DO YOU REALLY THINK ANYONE'S BOTHERED TO DO THIS?  I'd like to see the research grant applications, personally; they'd be good for a laugh.  The resulting articles in Nature or Entomologist Monthly might be, too.

THIS MUCH I KNOW.  If one Wooly Bear is blacker than usual, ALL OF THEM ARE.  This is a fact universally acknowledged and it must have something to do with the origin of the legend.  I have no idea what determines this.  They're generalist diners, and maybe they all laid their eggs on cherry trees that year instead of locust, creating blacker or redder offspring.  But, even if that's true, I suspect that what they ate all summer must have a little something to do with the weather, no?  And if the weather affects their diet and that changes their colors, then..?  ALL I'M SAYING HERE is that nothing happens without a reason.  How can Wooly Bear caterpillars NOT be affected by the weather?  They don't even have access to air conditioning in many cases.

And nature -- especially tracking the effects of one factor on another -- can be a slippery thing to dope out correctly.  That's true in even our current, radically simplified ecosystem, consisting mostly of Bradford pear trees and "Stella D'Oro" daylilies planted around the edges of our Kentucky bluegrass lawns.  First you have to factor in temperature, precipitation, food sources, and everything else like that.  And we also need to take into account the Wooly Bear's predators, diseases, and pesticide and fungicide exposure, not to mention those rotten kids who pluck them off bushes and skewer them on fish hooks or trap them in jars to die.  Do you know whether they prefer the redder ones or the blacker ones to victimize?  Neither do I.

And then there are other confounding factors, like the inability of human scientists to think of all the factors they need to take into account.  That kind of thing really fcrews up your raw data, and from there you still have to see and interpret all that information correctly.  Rotsa ruck coming up with conclusions that aren't a bunch of B.S. under those conditions.

Which brings us to the biggest confounding factor of all:  B.S., which stands for Belief Systems.  One thing I DEFINITELY know about the legend of the Wooly Bear is that it is just like any other part of the belief structure of Homo sapiens sapiens -- it doesn't just influence reality.  It CAUSES things to happen.  As we say in my line of business, PERCEPTION IS REALITY. 

A couple of years ago I became fully aware of this phenomenon as it applies to the Wooly Bear. Those little guys were black as the Ace of Spades that year, with a mere hint of red around the middle that said BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELT:  WINTER IS COMING TO KICK YOUR TAIL.   So, hey, I buckled my seatbelt.  I was interested to see how bad the winter would be because I had never seen such a radical shift in the color of the caterpillars before.  I put on new snow tires, added Dry-Gas to my tank and made a new, warmer scarf...

...and winter that year was only so-so.  There were more puddles than ice on the roads and not a single snow day for the kids all season.  Privately, I caught myself thinking:  do they have it backwards?  Is a redder Wooly Bear year a sign of a meaner winter?  Then I shook that off, and made myself go back to observing.

I finally got what I think was my real answer when spring sprang.  The same people who had been predicting dire weather based on the black Wooly Bears were all still there.  They looked back on the winter, shook their heads, and talked grimly about what a horrible winter it had been...And there was the answer.  The Order they'd imposed on Chaotic, unpredictable nature with the Wooly Bear was more important than being able to sit back and enjoy a fairly mild winter. 

So What's With The Robins This Winter, Anyway?

I just looked out the window to see a group of songbirds plucking crabapples off a tree outside.  There was a pair of cardinals, a couple of those spotty female starlings, a waxwing or so, and -- much to my surprise -- not one, but 8 robins.  It's mid-December, and robins are normally very hard to find in Michigan this time of year.  And you hardly ever see them travelling in packs, no matter what time of year it is. 

When I looked more closely, it got weirder.  All the other birds looked completely typical of their species, but fully half the robins were what I've thought of for some time as "pastel."  Instead of being dark brown along the top and back and brick-red in front, these have pale silvery-brown heads and wings, and their fronts are watercolor tangerine.  I've learned to call these "leucistic" robins because that's the birdwatching term for them.  And one robin, that looked pretty average at first glance except for a dusting of snow, proved on closer inspection to have white spots, like a reverse Dalmatian.

So all I'm saying is that there's something up with the robins this winter.

A Blessing From Our Lady Of Chaos

Yes...The Northern Lights were spotted this week in Alabama! Here in Michigan we're normally too far south to EVER see them. I have to like this, partly because certain spasmoid the-end-is-near types are BOUND to take this as evidence that the poles are shifting and Antarctica will soon be violently superimposed on Key West. Bring it, baby!