Thread: Save Pluto Petition

Sign the petition to save Pluto. Insignificant people should stand up for this insignificant planet. Or not.

http://www.petitiononline.com/spaceguy/petition.html

Is it about to get eaten by a giant space-dragon who will only refrain if enough people sign the petition? Or what

It's been demoted to a dwarf planet, which people don't like. Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure that it was a dwarf planet under all forms of the vote from the IAU.

There are no giant space dragons. There are only dwarf space dragons.

Screw Pluto. It's not a planet. It was a mistake to let it be one.
Nostalgia is no reason to live in a make-believe universe.
We have to deal with reality as it is, not how we'd like it to be.

Eight planets. That's how it is.
Accept it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5282440.stm

You sound like you're taking this seriously. Have you actually read the petition?

No.

Isn't the very concept of an online petition to save Pluto slightly ridiculous?

Not really.
That is, it is, but that doesn't mean that it's not being done.

Is it a joke site? I still haven't clicked the linky.

I rather think that there will be a bit of a reaction against this. Losing a planet is a significant event. Some people won't like it one little bit.

On the other hand, it'll probably take a lot to get people's minds of Race Card Survivor...

I am unable to access the link from my work as it is filtered by the monitoring system. Clearly my corporate overlords have determined that my work efficiency could be seriously compromised by contemplating emotional appeals to retain the planetary status of Pluto.

I am glad that this decision postdates Clyde Tombaugh's death. It would have been rather sad for Pluto's discoverer to have its planetary status revoked in his final years.

Ok, went to the site. Wow...5 signatures...hmm.

Best of luck with that.

Wow, someone else who doesn't get the joke. Thanks for wishing me luck, because I really, really want Pluto to succeed.

Is it just that this isn't the kind of forum for humor? I registered here on a whim and would never have joined a science forum, but I thought this would be the place to put a petition like this. Maybe the science part of the humor would be seen for what it is...humor.

Two out of four people didn't get the joke or even seem to realize it was an attempt at humor. I'm not saying it's hilarious, because it's not, but to not even see that some type of humor is being attempted is just weird. I guess the stereotype is true. Science nerds have no sense of humor.

How in the world could these two guys take this seriously?

Mind boggling.

I think because it just wasn't funny. I took it as a waste of time an energy, I at no point thought it had a serious chance to do anything at all. DHMO is funny, this is not.

Sorry to ruin your fun.

Normally, online petitions are about as worthless as a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest. Rarely do the actual decision makers read them, and since signatures can't be confirmed, they are more of a placebo... they make people feel that they are "doing something" about something they care about. But this one has merit.

Big O...you should read it when you get home, it's pretty funny.

Rgame, I didn't know they cancelled SG-1, that sucks. I was hoping you could ammend the petition to also include the NBC show "Surface". For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it was another sci-fi show with an ongoing plot line, that had a cliffhanger season finale. They canceled it without tieing up the loose ends, leaving fans without closure....there should be a law. Hey, there's another idea for an online petition, start a law to prevent canceling unresolved shows!

So pull your head out of Uranus and sign the petition! :-D :-D

Before I wrote it, I read a petition to bring back Stargate and I also saw ones for Surface and Invasion. I was just trying to get the style of the way they were written, but I couldn't even make it all the way through them. I decided in the end to just write it as silly as possible.

Maybe I should have tried to be really subtle about it. It would have been great if a joke petition was taken seriously enough that it got linked at some sites and got thousands of signatures, even though it was a fake.

Originally Posted by RGame

Is it just that this isn't the kind of forum for humor?
........
I guess the stereotype is true. Science nerds have no sense of humor.

I for one use humour much of the time in my posts. It is typically so dry that I expect at least half the readers to miss it entirely. If more than that miss it I would assume it is because it was generally unfunny, not that the readers had no sense of humour.
Then again I insert most of it to amuse myself. If it lightens the moment for anyone else, that is a bonus.

Originally Posted by RGame

How in the world could these two guys take this seriously?

On science forums we run across many people who claim they can prove Einstein wrong; that they can build a perpetual motion machine; that they have mathematics to demonstrate how to travel faster than light; that evolution is not true and the world was created 6000 years ago; that alien spaceraft regularily visit the Earth and abduct people; that the government knows this and is covering it up; that we never landed on the moon.
In comparison a poll to save the status of Pluto is blandly and boringly normal.

On science forums we run across many people who claim they can prove Einstein wrong; that they can build a perpetual motion machine; that they have mathematics to demonstrate how to travel faster than light; that evolution is not true and the world was created 6000 years ago; that alien spaceraft regularily visit the Earth and abduct people; that the government knows this and is covering it up; that we never landed on the moon.
In comparison a poll to save the status of Pluto is blandly and boringly normal.

:-D Yeah, I guess so. I've been on a lot of science fiction forums and there are lots of weirdos there, too. Conspiracy theorists and everything, about TV shows.

Believe me, I have no problem with not being funny. I've had humor articles rejected by plenty of online magazines, and accepted by a few too.

I was just kind of confused by Insanity's antagonism. He says he just didn't find it funny. No problem. There were lots of other people who probably didn't find it funny either, and they didn't respond. But the sarcastic good luck and mention of the mere 5 signatures was antagonistic for some reason, and for that reason it came off as the guy taking the petition seriously. If he didn't, then why the anger? Just didn't, and still doesn't, make sense to me. He didn't ruin my fun, as he says. I don't even really understand what that means, or the part where he says the petition didn't seem to have a "serious chance at doing anything." I thought I'd pointed out that it wasn't serious. Not serious. With the lack of communication, and the abundance of angry people on the Internet, this is all probably pointless, but what's DHMO? If it's funny, I'd like to see it too.

Well, I finally managed to get into the site.

I was mildly amused by the content. I think someone scanning it, rather than reading it thoroughly, could think its intention was genuine. The plea to insignificant people to help save an insignificant planet could be read as irony, or the insignificant misread as significant. (One sees what one expects to see - Paris in the the Spring, for example.)

The latter explanation could be strengthened by your amusing selection of pissant, so close, as it is, to puissant.

We have a petition running at http://pleasesavepluto.org/ and we have over 115 petitions so far, please do help.

I think it should stay a planet. If you were adopted and didnt find out until you were 30 years old, would you suddenly hate your parents? I wouldnt. Plus, it used to be "My Very Educated Mother Just Bought Us Nine Pizzas". Now all of a sudden its "My Very Educated Mother Just Bought Us Nothing!"

Bought?
Since when does Saturn begin with a B?
And who needs mnemonics to remember the planets?

Perhaps his very educated mother actually just Sold nine pizzas. .

Did you like the way I inserted the asteroid belt? :wink: I mean we mustn't take all this to Cereously.

Why want Pluto back as a Planet, the decision has been made, and a new definition of the word planet has been evolved, do you really think that Astronomers will go back and change the definition of the word planet just for the sake of changing back Pluto? Don't think so.

Lots of times on a warm, summer night my little son or daughter will point into the starry night sky and ask me about it.

"That's Pluto," I always say.

"Which one?" my son or daughter will reply.

"Yes," I say.

I think he has been reading the Globe and Mail: in the letters to the editor, My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nothing. But I don;t really care what happens to Pluto anymore... it's just another scientific muddle.

whichever way you go, planet or non planet(sorry dwarf planet) the vote was unfair as less than 4% of professional astronomers got a chance to vote

Thats the only bit i dont like, the decision wasn't a true representation of the worlds astronomers

I do hope we don't drive the poor little critter away to another solar system.