I opened my e-mail on Sunday to find a message from David Allen in Alaska. He wrote to point out that Monty Python star, Eric Idle, wrote the Galaxy Song that I mention on this site and have playing in the back ground. (Sorry, it won't play on a Mack). I received another message from Phillip Taterczynski in Milwaukee, who was nice enough to give me a grammar lesson about it's and its.  (My daughter Debbie, the school teacher, or my sister Pat, the College English teacher, are the ones that usually keep me from killing the King's English.)  I found out from Mr. Allen that Sun-Times Columnists, Zay Smith named this site the "QT" Internet Site of the Week for September 10, 2006: He wrote, "A glimpse at how large the universe is, showing not only how small the diminished dwarf planet Pluto is, but also how small Earth is, and even how small the sun is, and QT is not mentioning this site, not for a minute, just because it quotes QT several times, is at www.lopatka.net/planets/index.htm. "

To see the entire article, click here.

www.lopatka.net

A Retired Teacher Looks at Pluto

As a teacher, I loved Pluto because it was one of those words that could snap a day dreaming student back into my classroom.
Sun-Times Columnists ZAY N. SMITH stated in his QT column that his 3rd grade teacher used to use the mnemonic "Mary's Violet Eyes Make John Stay Up Nights Proposing" to teach the planets and their order.  I discovered that that same mnemonic worked better with upper grade students.  Zay pointed out that since Pluto is gone,

"We can now only guess what John stays up nights doing because of Mary's violet eyes."

I used to use "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" with my younger students.

I guess we can change that to "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos" since Pluto is gone.

Here is some information to use with your children, when you explain why Pluto got downgraded to a Dwarf Planet.  (It took us years to remove the word, "dwarf" from our PC vocabulary and now it is back.)
 

To be a planet, the assembly ruled, a world must meet three criteria:

(1) It must have enough mass and gravity to gather itself into a ball. Pluto passed this one

(2) It must orbit the sun. Pluto passed this one

(3) It must reign supreme in its own orbit, having "cleared the neighborhood" of other competing bodies. Pluto failed this one because it shares orbit space with Neptune for about 12 years, every 240 years.  Remember back in the 1990s Pluto was closer to the Sun than Neptune?

If Pluto had a good lawyer, it could argue that Neptune has not "cleared its Neighborhood" (since Pluto jumps in there every 240 years.)

It could also rule that our planet Earth has not "cleared its Neighborhood", since we are buzzed many times per year by asteroids and comets. 

Read what Adler Planetarium Astronomer, Larry Ciupik had to say about that in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Meanwhile, according to the IAU, the Solar System has eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; and three dwarf planets: Ceres, Pluto and 2003 UB313.

 

 

The following pictures show us that Pluto is not the only "Dwarf".

 OK, Pluto looks like a Dwarf in this picture.

 Now planet Earth looks like a Dwarf in this picture.

Now all of the planets look like a Dwarf in this picture.

Our Sun looks like a Dwarf in this picture.

Who is the Dwarf now?
QT

Not only are we not the center of the universe ...

August 28, 2006

BY ZAY N. SMITH SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

A call was placed.

"Adler Planetarium."

Astronomer Larry Ciupik, please.

"Larry Ciupik."

Pluto.

"Yes."

The International Astronomical Union now says Pluto is not a planet.

"That seems to be the ruling."

It is because Pluto does not fit one of the three requirements for being a planet, which is that it has "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit" of other orbital bodies.

"That is the one."

QT is now looking at statistics showing that Earth, in the next month alone, will see 17 asteroids coming through the neighborhood of its orbit. One asteroid recently passed almost as close as the moon. Doesn't it seem that Earth is not meeting this requirement?

"There is that school of thought among astronomers."

Thank you.

"You're welcome."

So we might as well accept it:

Earth is not a planet.

Centrifugal farce

 

News Item: "Earth might have spun on its side to keep its balance in the distant past, and could do so again, scientists reported."

This would be more impressive if Earth were a planet.

 

August 31, 2006

BY ZAY N. SMITH SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

No more pizzas

Matt Moeller, a Houston, Texas, reader, regarding the mnemonic device "My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" that was used for the nine planets until Pluto was ruled unplanetlike, writes:

"I was always taught: 'My Very Elderly Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Pizzas.' How many of these can there be?"

Quite a few. And now the need is for Plutoless ones:

•Julie Donovan, a Chicago reader, writes:

"My son simply changed it to 'My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nothing.' "

•Katie McCarthy, a Chicago reader, writes:

"Attending a Catholic school on the Southwest Side I was taught: 'Many Vigorous Earth Men Jump Straight Up Near Pluto'. Now I'll have to teach my son: 'Many Vigorous Earth Men Jump Straight Up Nightly.' "

•Lori Bruggerman, a Thornton reader, writes:

"Merry Vagrants Enjoying Moonshine Jugs Snore Until Noon."

•Walter Brzeski, a Chicago reader, writes:

"Most Vermont Eateries Mainly Just Serve Unheated Nachos."

•Pat McGarry, a Springfield reader, writes:

"May Vagaries Emerge Momentarily Justifying Somnolent Undecipherable Neocons."

We are starting to make less and less sense regarding a solar system with Pluto.

Which means we're getting there.

 

Here are 2 songs that I have used to teach Astronomy

Clint Black's  D'lectrified CD

Galaxy Song Introduction By Clint Black/Eric Idle

When you’re feeling inside out and insecure,
and life keeps getting you down.
When all life’s daily worries· hurry through your head.
You don’t want to even ·get up.
You just lie around in bed.
When you feel you just can’t take it anymore
And you wonder what on earth it is all for your love life’s like a war zone
Your tv’s on the blink it’s enough to drive a drinking man to stop and take a
Think

Galaxy Song By Eric Idle/John Du Prez 
·just ·remember that you standing on a planet that’s evolving, revolving at 900
Miles an hour. it’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see


Are moving at a million miles a day.
In an outer spiral orb, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the milky way

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a 100,000 light years side to side
It bulges in the middle 16,000 light years thick,
But out by us it’s just 3,000 light years wide.
We’re 30,000 light years from galactic central point.
We go round every 200,000,000 years.
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know, 12,000,000 miles a minute,
And that’s the fastest speed there is!
So, remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth.
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘cause I’m afraid that we’ve been cheated here on earth.

If you can't hear the Clint Black Galaxy song, Turn up the sound . This clever piece originated in Australia . It is so very well done  Just click once on the link below 
Photos by NASA. Enjoy Your Journey....!!!
http://dingo.care-mail.com/cards/flash/5409/galaxy.swf

 

Crazy Planet, from the Sound of Music 

(I couldn't find the words to this song, but I remember them quite well)

A crazy planet full of crazy people, is somersaulting all around the sky,

and every time we make another somersault, another day goes by, (Rotating on it's Axis)

Chorus 

There's no way to stop it, no there's no way to stop it, no you can't stop it even if you try,

You're a fool if you worry, You're a fool if you worry, over anything but number 1

While somersaulting at a cockeyed angle (23.5 Degrees), 

we make a cockeyed circle (ellipse) around the Sun, (Revolving around the Sun)

and every time we make another circle, another year goes by,

Chorus

There's no way to stop it, no there's no way to stop it, no you can't stop it even if you try,

You're a fool if you worry, You're a fool if you worry, over anything but number 1

 

I sent the following e-mail to Sun-Times Columnists, Zay Smith, so that I could get permission to use his material:

Dear Zay,
I love your column and I really enjoyed your fun with Pluto last week.  As a former CPS teacher, Pluto was always one of my favorites, because it was a word that could snap a day dreaming student back into my classroom.  I'm recovering from hip replacement surgery, so in a fit of boredom, I posted a web page about Pluto for my teacher friends and former students, using some of your clips.  Let me know if it is OK, otherwise I'll pull it.
 
You can view my page at: http://www.lopatka.net/planets/index.htm
 
Your 3rd grade teacher may have been a Chicago Teachers College graduate, because I learned the mnemonic "Mary's Violet Eyes Make John Stay Up Nights Proposing" in a Science Methods class there in 1962.  I discovered that that mnemonic worked better with upper grade students.  I used the Pizza one with my little ones.  I taught an astronomy class for 5 and 6 year olds at the Adler Planetarium in the 1980s and 90s.

Zay replied: 

I'm honored to be a part of your site, and will keep an eye on it with it in
mind to include it in my Sunday internet column. 

Thanks very much. 

Zay.

 
 
QT

Well, at least we're not cheeseheads

September 10, 2006

BY ZAY N. SMITH SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

The people at Bizjournals at www .bizjournals.com want you to know that Chicago Bears fans are statistically only the 27th most loyal fans in the NFL.

No. Please. Take it up with them.

College is no laughing matter

The Case for Zero Tolerance of Modern School Administrators (cont'd):

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, www.thefire.org, reports that the speech code of Drexel University in Philadelphia forbids not only the telling of jokes that are "inconsiderate," but also laughing at them.

A long, strange trip

AlterNet at www.alternet.org regarding a certain upcoming ABC miniseries:

" 'The Path to 9/11' is a mix of fact, fantasy and deliberate distortion adding up to blatant pro-Bush propaganda."

Put it this way:

If the miniseries shows that both Presidents Bush and President Clinton failed to take steps that might have prevented 9/11, then it will have the gist.

And everyone can go back to complaining about the steps taken since 9/11.

Moscow flush with success

Internet Headline: "Moscow takes the baton of the World Toilet Summit from Belfast."

Cities sometimes have to make do with the batons they can get.

Site to see

QT Internet Site of the Week:

A glimpse at how large the universe is, showing not only how small the diminished dwarf planet Pluto is, but also how small Earth is, and even how small the sun is, and QT is not mentioning this site, not for a minute, just because it quotes QT several times, is at www.lopatka.net/planets/index.htm.

A dying art

 

 

Tom McMahon ("The strategy of bingo. The excitement of chess.") at www.tommcmahon.net, observes that Nellie Connally, widow of the late Texas Gov. John Connally, was writing thank-you notes when she died last week, which, even without her age being listed, shows she wasn't a young person.

Where's Waldo?

 

 

There is a photo of 15 happy people from almost every conceivable background welcoming you to Britain's Cultural Diversity Network, www.cdnet work.org.uk.

All the British diversity photo lacks is a white British male.

Slow pitch

 

 

QT Annual Update of the Only Webcam Less Exciting than the Continuous View of the Alaska Department of Administration Division of Motor Vehicles Benson Boulevard Customer Area in Anchorage at www.state.ak.us/dmv/ AFOwebCam.htm:

The eighth drop of the Pitch Drop Experiment, www.physics.uq.edu.au /physics_museum/pitchdrop.shtml, at Queensland University in Australia, in which it was decided in 1927 to show the fluidity of high-viscosity pitch by warming the pitch, pouring it into a funnel with the bottom sealed and, after waiting three years for the pitch to consolidate, cutting the stem and waiting for a drop of pitch to fall every few years, hasn't fallen yet.

Nice talking to you . . .

 

 

QT Internet Quotation of the Week, 77 Trombones at 77trombones.blogspot .com:

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt.

It's been a lovely discussion, Mrs. Roosevelt, but sorry, we, uh, we really have to be going.

Keep looking

 

 

It has been 14 weeks since the Museum of Left-Wing Lunacy at www.mu seumofleftwinglunacy.com has found an example of left-wing lunacy, which would seem to be either a compliment to the left wing or not a compliment to the museum.

Every blog has its day

 

 

News Headline: "Sites are blogged down in controversy."

News Headline: "Web publishing as easy as falling off a blog."

Stop it.

Stop it now.

And why has no one anywhere written about a blog that comes in on little cat feet?

Well. Until now.

 

E-mail comments:

From Michigan

Yes, indeed, your web site puts things in perspective. 

Douglas Squiers Kalamazoo, Michigan

From Wisconsin

I don't know about others, but I always found it more difficult to memorize a silly sentence than the names of the planets themselves.   "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" is nonsense and almost as long as "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune Pluto" - same number of words, ten more letters.  Maybe I was unusual, but I had one teacher who was more concerned with the mnemonic than the names themselves; it always upset her that I refused to use it.  Besides, a mnemonic that's almost as long as what you're trying to remember isn't much good.  One that I did find useful was for the five Great Lakes: HOMES: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. I also wrote about this to QT.
 
On another matter, on your web site, there are the following statements:
 
If Pluto had a good lawyer, it could argue that Neptune has not "cleared it's Neighborhood" (since Pluto jumps in there every 240 years.)

It could also rule that our planet Earth has not "cleared it's Neighborhood", since we are buzzed many times per year by asteroids and comets. 

You don't specify on your site what subject you taught; I infer that it is science-related and not English since you do knot seem to know the difference between the third person neuter possessive pronoun (its) and the contraction for "it is" (it's).

Philip Taterczynski
Milwaukee  WI  

Dear Philip,

Thanks for the grammar lesson, I never was good at spelling either, but I think you should have spelled knot without the K.

Greg :-) 

From Alaska

I believe that's actually written by Eric Idle of Monty Python.  (He certainly performed it; maybe Black wrote it.)  Otherwise, thanks for your efforts; I hope you are recovered from your hip surgery and no longer have the time to research which is true. 

David Allen

Alaska

E-mail me at: g.lopatka@comcast.net

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