Hate to tell you this, but many young college graduates would refer to your chrished astronomy book as a "novel" because it is a hard copy offering.
--- Dar Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sometimes name changes just bug us. > > Scientists have been debating for a while what > is the definition of a > planet and this week a bunch at a scientist > club have voted that > Pluto is not a planet. I don't mind and my > grandkids are excited. > The only problem is that sometimes scientists > think that the > scientific jargon meaning of a word is the only > meaning. For > example, some people call all insects bugs and > some entomologists say > bug applies only to Hemiptera. > > When I was a small boy I read SF and books > about astronomy. I knew > from those books that the names of our sun, > planet and moon were Sol, > Terra and Luna respectively. Then at the start > of the space race > NASA started talking about planet Earth. The > press followed. In a > short time most people thought of the name of > the planet as Earth. > Now, that bugged this boy. I wanted to be > excited about astronauts > and rockets and such, but somehow that turned > it into a PR game. > > I wonder if some mathematicians or word lovers > were bugged when IBM > changed the name of sexadecimal to hexadecimal. > DEC used octal, > perhaps to avoid an offensive chimeric word > with magic spell > connotations, being based in Massachusetts and > all that. > > Sometime late last century I vaguely noticed > that there weren't any > Datsuns around. > > Dealing with name changes is part of how we > cope, I guess. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.erikhansen.org __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
