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Vindication, or Pluto's Moons

A few years ago (I say a few because I don't want to admit that it was nearly ten years ago) I was at a table quiz held to raise funds for my old school. Back then, as now, I hated being wrong. But it was even worse to be told I was wrong when I knew I wasn't. Who doesn't hate that?

One of the questions at this quiz was "which three planets have no moons?" Oh that's easy! I know the planets. Let me see... Mercury, Venus, um... I complained to the quizmaster afterwards, and even named at least one moon of every other planet in the solar system (this was before any extra-solar planets had been discovered). Of course the quizmaster's decision is final, so on that evening ten years ago, Pluto was robbed of its moon.

Well now those nice folks at NASA have found two new moons to take its place. Take that, random person I barely remember! I was right, and you were wrong. And now I'm even more right than I was then. Now all I have to do is track down my third class teacher and show her some proof that the whale shark is bigger than the great white.

Comments:
Thu, 23rd Feb 2006 (15:08)

Perhaps you could go shark fishing on your next conference trip.

by Joe
Thu, 23rd Feb 2006 (15:45)

I remember that masked quiz master… He works in DIT faculty of science. That just about answers every question you could possibly ask about him. He is also balled and strangely tanned for someone that lives in Ireland.

Still, our one saving grace from that night (if memeory serves correctly which it seldom does) was beating a table of our teachers. Take that leaving cert validation commitee or what ever you are called.

On to the whale shark. If she can't tell the difference between 40 feet and 23 feet and a weigh difference of almost 12 tons, she has one lucky husband.

by Jamie O'Leary

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This piece was posted on Thu, 23rd Feb 2006 at 14:31.

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