Well, I had all of these grand ideas about things I was going to post to keep you guys up-to-date on my life. I know, you're on the edge of your seats and nails are chewed to the bare nubbins....Apparently, the camera that I took the raddest pictures on, doesn't want to upload the rad pictures to my computer....(breathe...i'll figure out a way). Anyway, as to not dissappoint (being the people-pleaser that I am (thanks, Steph)) I will blog about random things going on in my life. What have I been doing with my life these days, you ask? Well....I've been hanging out with my friend, Stephanie....a lot. Since most of you who are reading this blog are Nebraskans, I just want to let you know...that even though, I've finally made friends with an Iowegian or two, I'm happy to report that she calls Sloppy Joe's....say it with me now.........TAVERNS. I'm telling ya, the friendship was meant to be. Anyway, she's really cool. You guys would like her. I took some pics of Stephanie's kids yesterday....I'm going to try to draw them....I haven't drawn for awhile, so I thought I better get back into it before I forget how. It's nice to have friends in Iowa....ones that I'm not related to. I love my family dearly, but...well.....you know.
Did you guys know that it's Friday the 13th in October this year?!?! The next time this happens is in 11 years!!!!!! I want to have a monster bash...or maybe a spooky game-night. I don't know, but I definately think the occassion should be celebrated somehow. Raise your hand if you love Halloween....and Friday the 13th during Halloween season!!
Pyro-palooza is this weekend. I'm going to burn things like I've never burned before. I'm so excited. It will be fun to hang out with Michelle. I haven't seen her since she left Affina. I'm starting to miss that silly Sally. The ulcers are coming back full-force. That kinda sucks....I've been a little stressed out ....nothing too major. Well, comparitively speaking....I just hope i'm not doomed to eating tums like they're skittles for the rest of my life.
Ok, well....I'm going to try to get my friend Amanda to load my pictures onto her computer and email them to me...she's supposed to call me tonight. If she does it....YAY!! I will post them tonight....if not, I guess this little post-let will have to do until then. Thanks for reading, my faithful bloggers, I love you all and hope to talk to you soon!
Holly
P.s. leave me comments....they make me happy. :)
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
If we do say so ourselves!
My friend Stephanie and I painted her kitchen last weekend.....it used to be white...and not so attractive.....but in one afternoon, her kitchen went from drab to fab. :)
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Friday, September 01, 2006
Just because you're not a planet anymore, doesn't mean we don't still love you!
*NEWSFLASH*
Did you guys know that Pluto, beloved Pluto is not a planet anymore?!?!? It's true! I read it on a friend's myspace and then googled it, and it's totally true. I can't explain to you guys how I feel about this. I can't believe this! I feel like everything I've been taught has been a lie! Now what is My Very Excited Mother Just going to Serve us? It sure as hell won't be Nine Pizzas! They will have to change that all together! Now it's going to be something dumb like "My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Nachos!" Well, I don't want Nachos! I want Pizza! Everyone knows that pizza is better than nachos!
Here is an article I copied from www.nytimes.com about it.
Pluto is Demoted to "Dwarf Planet".
Throw away the placemats. Grab a magic marker for the classroom charts. Take a pair of scissors to the solar system mobile.
After years of wrangling and a week of bitter debate, astronomers voted on a sweeping reclassification of the solar system. In what many of them described as a triumph of science over sentiment, Pluto was demoted to the status of a “dwarf planet.”
In the new solar system, there are eight planets, at least three dwarf planets and tens of thousands of so-called “smaller solar system bodies,” like comets and asteroids.
For now, the dwarf planets include, besides Pluto, Ceres, the largest asteroid, and an object known as UB 313, nicknamed Xena, that is larger than Pluto and, like it, orbits out beyond Neptune in a zone of icy debris known as the Kuiper Belt. But there are dozens more potential dwarf-planets known in that zone, planetary scientists say, and the number in that category could quickly swell.
In a nod to Pluto’s fans, the astronomers declared that Pluto to be the prototype for a new category of such “trans-Neptunian” objects but failed in a close vote to approve the name Plutonians for them.
“The new definition makes perfect sense in terms of the science we know,” said Alan Boss, a planetary theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, adding that it doesn’t go too far in cultural terms. “We have a duty to satisfy the whole world.”
The vote completed a stunning turnaround from only a week ago when the assembled astronomers had been presented with a proposal that would included 12 planets, including Pluto, Ceres, Xena and even Pluto’s moon Charon. Dr. Boss said today’s decision spoke to the integrity of the planet-defining process. “The officers were willing to change their resolution and find something that would stand up under the highest scientific scrutiny and be approved,” he said.
Jay Pasachoff, a Williams College astronomer who favored somehow keeping Pluto a planet, said, “The spirit of the meeting was of future discovery and activity in science rather than any respect for the past.”
Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, who as the discoverer of Xena, had the most to lose personally from Pluto’s and Xena’s downgrading, said he was relieved. “Through this whole crazy circus-like procedure, somehow the right answer was stumbled on,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming. Science is self-correcting eventually, even when strong emotions are involved.”
It has long been clear that Pluto, discovered in 1930, stood apart from the previously discovered planets. Not only was it much smaller than them, only about 1,600 miles in diameter, smaller than the Moon, but its elongated orbit is tilted with respect to the other planets and it goes inside the orbit of Neptune part of its 248-year journey around the Sun.
Pluto makes a better match with the other ice balls that have since been discovered in the dark realms beyond Neptune, they have argued. In 2000, when the new Rose Center for Earth and Space opened at the American Museum of Natural History, Pluto was denoted in a display as a Kuiper Belt Object and not a planet.
Two years ago, the International Astronomical Union appointed a working group of astronomers to come up with a definition that would resolve this tension. The group, led by Iwan Williams of Queen Mary University in London, deadlocked. This year a new group with broader roots, led by Owen Gingerich of Harvard, took up the problem.
According to the new rules a planet meet three criteria: it must orbit the Sun, it must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a round ball, and it must have cleared other things out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. The latter measure knocks out Pluto and Xena, which orbit among the icy wrecks of the Kuiper Belt, and Ceres, which is in the asteroid belt.
Dwarf planets only have to be round.
“I think this is something we can all get used to as we find more Pluto-like objects in outer solar system,” Dr. Pasachoff said.
The final voting came from about 400 to 500 of the 2,400 astronomers who were registered at the meeting of the International Astronomical in Prague. Many of the astronomers, Dr. Pasachoff explained, had already left, thinking there would be nothing but dry resolutions to decide in the union’s final assembly.
It was hardly the first time that astronomers have rethought a planet. The asteroid Ceres was hailed as the eight planet when it was first discovered in 1801 by Giovanni Piazzi floating in the space between Mars and Jupiter. It remained a “planet” for about half a century until the discovery of more and more things like it in the same part of space led astronomers to dub them asteroids.
In the aftermath, some astronomers pointed out that the new definition only applies to our own solar system and that there was so far no such thing as an extra-solar planet.
The decision was bound to have both a cultural and economic impact on the industry of astronomical artifacts and toys, publishing and education. The World Book Encyclopedia, for example, had been holding the presses for its new 2007 edition until Pluto’s status could be clarified.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, said children are flexible, when asked about the cultural impact of today’s redefinition. He said that he had not bothered to watch the International Astronomical Union’s vote in the Internet, as many astronomers did. “Counting planets is not an interesting exercise to me,” he said. “I’m happy however they choose to define it. It doesn’t really make any difference to me.”
Dr. Tyson said the continuing preoccupation with what the public and schoolchildren would think about this was a concern and a troubling precedent. “I don’t know any other science that says about its frontier, ‘I wonder what the public thinks,’ ” he said. “The frontier should move in whatever way it needs to move.”
Did you guys know that Pluto, beloved Pluto is not a planet anymore?!?!? It's true! I read it on a friend's myspace and then googled it, and it's totally true. I can't explain to you guys how I feel about this. I can't believe this! I feel like everything I've been taught has been a lie! Now what is My Very Excited Mother Just going to Serve us? It sure as hell won't be Nine Pizzas! They will have to change that all together! Now it's going to be something dumb like "My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Nachos!" Well, I don't want Nachos! I want Pizza! Everyone knows that pizza is better than nachos!
Here is an article I copied from www.nytimes.com about it.
Pluto is Demoted to "Dwarf Planet".
Throw away the placemats. Grab a magic marker for the classroom charts. Take a pair of scissors to the solar system mobile.
After years of wrangling and a week of bitter debate, astronomers voted on a sweeping reclassification of the solar system. In what many of them described as a triumph of science over sentiment, Pluto was demoted to the status of a “dwarf planet.”
In the new solar system, there are eight planets, at least three dwarf planets and tens of thousands of so-called “smaller solar system bodies,” like comets and asteroids.
For now, the dwarf planets include, besides Pluto, Ceres, the largest asteroid, and an object known as UB 313, nicknamed Xena, that is larger than Pluto and, like it, orbits out beyond Neptune in a zone of icy debris known as the Kuiper Belt. But there are dozens more potential dwarf-planets known in that zone, planetary scientists say, and the number in that category could quickly swell.
In a nod to Pluto’s fans, the astronomers declared that Pluto to be the prototype for a new category of such “trans-Neptunian” objects but failed in a close vote to approve the name Plutonians for them.
“The new definition makes perfect sense in terms of the science we know,” said Alan Boss, a planetary theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, adding that it doesn’t go too far in cultural terms. “We have a duty to satisfy the whole world.”
The vote completed a stunning turnaround from only a week ago when the assembled astronomers had been presented with a proposal that would included 12 planets, including Pluto, Ceres, Xena and even Pluto’s moon Charon. Dr. Boss said today’s decision spoke to the integrity of the planet-defining process. “The officers were willing to change their resolution and find something that would stand up under the highest scientific scrutiny and be approved,” he said.
Jay Pasachoff, a Williams College astronomer who favored somehow keeping Pluto a planet, said, “The spirit of the meeting was of future discovery and activity in science rather than any respect for the past.”
Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, who as the discoverer of Xena, had the most to lose personally from Pluto’s and Xena’s downgrading, said he was relieved. “Through this whole crazy circus-like procedure, somehow the right answer was stumbled on,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming. Science is self-correcting eventually, even when strong emotions are involved.”
It has long been clear that Pluto, discovered in 1930, stood apart from the previously discovered planets. Not only was it much smaller than them, only about 1,600 miles in diameter, smaller than the Moon, but its elongated orbit is tilted with respect to the other planets and it goes inside the orbit of Neptune part of its 248-year journey around the Sun.
Pluto makes a better match with the other ice balls that have since been discovered in the dark realms beyond Neptune, they have argued. In 2000, when the new Rose Center for Earth and Space opened at the American Museum of Natural History, Pluto was denoted in a display as a Kuiper Belt Object and not a planet.
Two years ago, the International Astronomical Union appointed a working group of astronomers to come up with a definition that would resolve this tension. The group, led by Iwan Williams of Queen Mary University in London, deadlocked. This year a new group with broader roots, led by Owen Gingerich of Harvard, took up the problem.
According to the new rules a planet meet three criteria: it must orbit the Sun, it must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a round ball, and it must have cleared other things out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. The latter measure knocks out Pluto and Xena, which orbit among the icy wrecks of the Kuiper Belt, and Ceres, which is in the asteroid belt.
Dwarf planets only have to be round.
“I think this is something we can all get used to as we find more Pluto-like objects in outer solar system,” Dr. Pasachoff said.
The final voting came from about 400 to 500 of the 2,400 astronomers who were registered at the meeting of the International Astronomical in Prague. Many of the astronomers, Dr. Pasachoff explained, had already left, thinking there would be nothing but dry resolutions to decide in the union’s final assembly.
It was hardly the first time that astronomers have rethought a planet. The asteroid Ceres was hailed as the eight planet when it was first discovered in 1801 by Giovanni Piazzi floating in the space between Mars and Jupiter. It remained a “planet” for about half a century until the discovery of more and more things like it in the same part of space led astronomers to dub them asteroids.
In the aftermath, some astronomers pointed out that the new definition only applies to our own solar system and that there was so far no such thing as an extra-solar planet.
The decision was bound to have both a cultural and economic impact on the industry of astronomical artifacts and toys, publishing and education. The World Book Encyclopedia, for example, had been holding the presses for its new 2007 edition until Pluto’s status could be clarified.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, said children are flexible, when asked about the cultural impact of today’s redefinition. He said that he had not bothered to watch the International Astronomical Union’s vote in the Internet, as many astronomers did. “Counting planets is not an interesting exercise to me,” he said. “I’m happy however they choose to define it. It doesn’t really make any difference to me.”
Dr. Tyson said the continuing preoccupation with what the public and schoolchildren would think about this was a concern and a troubling precedent. “I don’t know any other science that says about its frontier, ‘I wonder what the public thinks,’ ” he said. “The frontier should move in whatever way it needs to move.”
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