Sadie Lou

Friends In The Sarah Lawrence Community And Beyond, When the SadieLou team got together to try to figure out what our next issue would be, it was decided collectively we would explore the controversy surrounding Pluto as an outcast planet. Our annual SLC science lecture on campus was approaching and the speaker set to enlighten was Dr. Michael E. Brown aka “the guy who outed Pluto” We decided we would post from our own perspectives about the situation, as is part of our diverse, wonderful, Sarah Lawrence dialogue, we had differing opinions on the matter. I have chosen to file these posts under “history” because a shifting of an entire planet in our universe is truly an event in time to be noted. Below you will find three posts from members of the community sharing their take on Pluto and here is mine: As a young student in most school systems, no matter the country, we are taught about the planets. It is a unifying piece of information no matter the culture, language or location.

My
Very
Educated
Mother
Just
Served
Us
Nine
Pizzas

translates to

Mars
Venus
Earth
Mercury
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto

When Pluto was outed, our collective knowledge as learners shifted. Our collective body of knowledge will forever be a little different. No matter the opinion on whether the tiniest planet should have been told to go (and I type this standing at five foot one inch tall) it is almost a melancholy thing to ponder: How much of my knowledge as a conscious changes because Pluto is not a planet, but now, really a ball of ice? or Was it always a ball of ice, and was I dreaming?

Humbly Yours,
Nicole Feldman
(blog editor, SadieLou.net)

The relatively recent demotion of Pluto and discovery of Eris has a lot of people upset, for various reasons. I’ve heard people declare their emotional attachment to the poor dwarf planet, which I can understand, but I’ve also heard people scoff at the lack of precision in the entire field of astronomy.

They are absolutely right to. The field in astronomy is unique in many ways, but possibly one of the most important ones is that it is entirely possible that we will literally never see most of what we’re studying. Humanity as a whole will never touch a star, poke an exoplanet, or prod the cosmic background radiation; the vast majority of what we study about the universe is thirdhand inferences and cautious assumptions simply because everything is so inconcievably far away. To put it in perspective, if you take the distance between the Sun and the Earth to be an inch, Pluto would be three feet away. Alpha Centauri, the nearest star, would be four miles away, and the radius of the Milky Way would be ten times the radius of the Earth. The nearest galaxy would be ten times further away from the Earth than the Moon, and the universe, as far as we know, would span a diameter of roughly fifty times further away than – well – Pluto.

And this is on the scale of the distance between the Earth and the Sun being one inch.

So no, astronomers hadn’t defined the word “planet” until recently. Frankly, they had bigger things to worry about.
-Kristen Koopman, Sadielou.net, May ’09

The Pluto formerly known as a planet is not the only, or indeed the first Pluto to be given less than their due. Anyone remember Mickey Mouse’s pet dog? What about him? He’s a dog, just like Goofy, but he has to wear a collar and walk on all fours while Goofy has a snazzy turtleneck and vest ensemble. Not to mention the fact that Goofy had his own movie in 1995, while Pluto was the only major character not featured in Mickey’s Christmas Carol. What’s up with all the Pluto hate?
For more on the differences between Pluto and Goofy, read this Mental Floss article: The Difference? Pluto vs. Goofy
-Joanna Bettelheim, Sadielou.net, May ’09

When I was very little. Pluto was Mickey Mouse’s dog. He was yellow with a black, whip-like tail. He was a happy puppy with a curious streak. Pluto was nothing else.

When I was little. Pluto became the ninth planet. It was cold and distant. I always imagined it was a blue, cat’s eye marble floating in infinite black.

When I was a little older, I learned later that Pluto had a moon roughly the same size, Charon. I always pronounced Charon like Sharron, who was my baby sitter. I liked the idea of Pluto having a friend for eternity.

When I was older, Pluto was removed from our solar system. I felt the loss. Suddenly, Pluto had spun outside the close-knit family. It was lost in the net of stars. Pluto was unfamiliar. It was part of the other now. From this loss, I learned eternity was a lie. I was a quick learner.
-Poppy Little, Sadie Lou, May ’09

School officially starts on September 1st, which means many of you East Coasters will soon be making the drive up (or down) from your respective homes. (Or, if you’re a first-year and have parents like mine, you—and all your stuff—will be traveling by mini-van halfway across the country.)

Whatever your travel plans, GOOD Magazine has its own to match, in the form of an interactive map/slide show charting “our history’s greatest journeys, from Magellan to Kerouac.” The feature’s called Wanderlust, and the map of trips is pretty eclectic:

See also GOOD’s blog post concerning controversial map design.

There’s no denying it: it’s summer and it’s scorching.

GeekDad celebrates the heated occasion (pun intended) with a few remarks on the godfather of air conditioning, Willis Haviland Carrier:

It’s thought that the first cooling of buildings was engineered by the Romans, who ran aqueducts through the houses of the upper class to cool them. In Cairo, during the middle ages, many homes used ventilators to move air through houses. Then, during the 19th century, there were several advances in cooling through evaporation. But it wasn’t until 1902 that Carrier put all of these concepts together.

A little over a month ago, a small but interesting exhibit on the Dreyfus Affair opened at the Yeshiva University Museum in Manhattan. The exhibit, which was made possible in conjunction with the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme in Paris, illustrates the infamous arrest and trial of Alfred Dreyfus, from the very beginning to the consequences that are still felt in France over 100 years later. The exhibit also utilizes original documents, newspaper articles, artwork, artifacts, and a series of never-before-seen photographs, which were found in the possession of a member of the Dreyfus family.

In the late 1890s, the effects of the Dreyfus Affair on French society were widespread, and divided the population. At the time, the event even had reverberations in the art world, as noted in The Jewish Museum’s new exhibit on Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. Nowadays, many in France—a country that has, historically, had its fair share of anti-Semitism—feel it is especially necessary to look back on the Dreyfus Affair as a reminder of the past.

As part of the exhibit, the Yeshiva University Museum will be holding two public programs. The first, a night of readings titled “From the Depths of My Heart: The Letters of Alfred and Lucie Dreyfus,” will take place on November 29th. The second, an international conference organized with the Cardozo School of Law, will take place on February 5, 2008.