The Occasional Solipsist

I pride myself on being a pretty smart fella. Back before I did all that damage to my cerebellum in high school, I scored a 150 on an IQ test. More recently I still scored a respectable 123, so I don't consider myself too much of a dumb-dumb. Regretting some of the stupider things I did to myself when I was a kid maybe, but still not too shabby.

So it was with something akin to astonishment that I came across a post today discussing our solar system and its 11 planets. I was all over the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet a few years ago, but it was my understanding that we now had 8 official planets, and an as yet undetermined number of dwarfs. Turns out I was wrong. We have the big 8, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, but now we also have Pluto, Ceres and Eris, the three (so far) dwarf planets. And 6 more on the NASA/JPL 'watch' list.

Guess I should read the news more often. And I also guess its good that I didn't shell out that $100 on the ceiling model of the solar system for Trin's room. I have a feeling it might go on sale shortly.

If anyone else feels like getting an intelligence inadequacy adjustment (like I just did), hit these links:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/index.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system

Labels: everything else, narcissism