Comments on: Texas as a benchmark for planethood http://intoallthat.com/2008/02/27/texas-as-a-benchmark-for-planethood/ Explaining the Inexplicable Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:13:56 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Chapacabra sightings « Into All That http://intoallthat.com/2008/02/27/texas-as-a-benchmark-for-planethood/#comment-405 Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:25:53 +0000 http://intoallthat.wordpress.com/?p=18#comment-405 [...] low 0 search results. In their defense, I suppose, one could arge that Texas is, after all, the size of a planet, and look how long it’s taking those NASA guys to search [...]

]]> By: David http://intoallthat.com/2008/02/27/texas-as-a-benchmark-for-planethood/#comment-29 Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:50:43 +0000 http://intoallthat.wordpress.com/?p=18#comment-29 This is a fascinating question! Two other commonly used yardsticks are: Rhode Island, and a cow. Whenever the talking heads on network TV discuss global warming, invariably the fact that “icebergs the size of Rhode Island” are calving away from the various massive ice sheets. No other state will do, even though Delaware is not very much bigger.

The cow, however, has huge importance in basic ecology. Piranha ferocity is almost always measured in “cow” units, for reasons that appear to go back to a Presidential decree by Theodore Roosevelt. I believe that John McCain is very much against maintaining the cow standard for piranha ferocity, however, both Democratic candidates have come out in support of it. Make of that what you will.

By the way, John Scalzi had a short story last year about Pluto’s unfortunate demotion. There was actually quite a spirtited argument between his daughter and another genre writer at a convention.

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