Damnit Degrasse Tyson
Just when I was beginning to be comfortable with Pluto being a “dwarf planet”, moon four was discovered. Now, the Hubble Telescope has just found a 5th moon orbiting Pluto. Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute actually discovered the moon – called P5 for now – on July 7th. On July 11th, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, made a semi-official announcement via Twitter. Alan goes on to say that they fully expect to find more moons around Pluto when the New Horizons explorer passes by in 2015.

P5 is astronomically very tiny. It measures between 10 and 25 KM across. While just finding such a small object is notable, the really interesting bit is how all of the smaller moons interact with Charon, the largest moon of Pluto. The spacing and timing of the moons will be a source of study for quite a few people. No, wait. I know how they work together and never hit each other. God did it. 😉

Catholic Liability
In a wonderful bit of Catholics VS “what is right”, the Catholic Church just lost their appeal in a UK court. The Catholic Church can be liable for their priests crimes. Just like in the USA, the appeals process continues on for ages… The court of appeals gave the Portsmouth Diocese an order to not appeal the decision until a similar case in their Supreme Court is concluded on July 23rd.

If by some chance the diocese’s future appeal is denied or they continue to fail in the courts, this will have some very fun implications. Think about people who were abused by Catholic priests suing the church. That’s like half of Ireland, isin’t it? Hell, I could entertain the thought of suing the priests/church for their condom policy that spreads AIDS in Africa. Think about how many wrongful death suits could come from that. Enough to bankrupt those bastards back to the stone-age.

Been a slow news week according to /teh googles/ unless you want to read gossip columns about Tom Katie.  I don’t.

~Wesley

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