Patrick apparently tagged me some time ago for a book meme of some sort:

1. One book that changed your life: The Aeneid

2. One book that you've read more than once: The Lord of the Rings + Hobbit (twenty, maybe thirty times)

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: 1549 Book of Common Prayer, though I'd settle for the 1979 with the Commination stitched in.

4. One book that made you laugh: Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently books.

5. One book that made you cry: Harry McHugh, The Road to Vinegar Hill

6. One book that you wish had
been written: Chaotophilotic Principles of Natural Philosophy

7. One book that you wish had never been written: Mein Kampf

8. One book you're currently reading: (I finish books in a couple of sittings and thus the only books I'm currently reading are for orals.) But I'm not boring you with work books. The last book I read for pleasure was Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep.


9. One book you've been meaning to read: Richard Hooker, On the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie. (I should obtain it in book form.)


ESA(20060826.1)

Planetary Definition Resolution

The IAU proposal on the definition of a planet has been released from embargo. Simplifying the technical language, the new definition of a planet proposed is:

1. If the body did not rotate, it would be spherical and would tend toward being spherical if seriously perturbed by impact. (In hydrostatic equilibrium or gravitational relaxation).

2. It is not the satellite of a non-stellar body.

Space Daily claims that the additional planets immediately comprehended by this definition according to present knowledge are:

1 Ceres (the largest of the asteroids)

Charon (Pluto's "moon", which apparently is so large that the center of gravity of the Pluto-Charon system is outside of the body of Pluto), making Charon technically a satellite of the Sun.

2003UB313: Mike Brown's new planet

I am fairly sure that 4 Vesta also fits this new definition, because its oblate shape is only due to its swift rotation. It is also thought to be in hydrostatic equilibrium.

According to this definition, no canonical planets would lose status. There is no word from the International Astrological Union about what they think about this.

The definition will be considered and voted upon by delegates to the IAU meeting presently being held in Prague.

ESA(20060815.1)