2,500 Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital Prague for the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) general assembly have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.
The scientists rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and brought three other objects into the cosmic club.
Pluto has been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh. The ninth planet will now effectively be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks.
The eight official planets are now Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
The initial proposal put before the IAU to raise the number of planets in the Solar System to 12 – adding the asteroid Ceres, Pluto’s “moon” Charon and the distant object known as 2003 UB313 – was met with opposition.
Poor, poor old Pluto…
After 76 years of being a planet, it suddenly gets demoted and becomes just another sad lonely rock floating in space…
I don’t know why this somehow saddens me, it’s like losing a distant relative you’ve always wanted to get to know better, but never got the chance to…
But no worries Pluto, I don’t care what those stupid astronomers say, you’ll always be a planet in my eyes.
We should start a campaign and fight for Pluto’s rights as a planet till the very end!
Who knows what planet will be demoted next… What if it’s Earth??
I don’t want to end up living on some meaningless dumb rock…
I’m sure you don’t too…
First, a little background about LPG (Liquified petroleum gas) or GPL as it’s called in French and in Tunisia:
Liquified petroleum gas is a mixture of hydrocarbon gases used as a fuel in heating appliances and vehicles, and increasingly replacing chlorofluorocarbons as an aerosol propellant and a refrigerant to reduce damage to the ozone layer.
Varieties of LPG bought and sold include mixes that are primarily propane, mixes that are primarily butane, and mixes including both propane and butane. Propylene and butylenes are usually also present in small concentration. A powerful odorant, ethanethiol, is added so that leaks can be detected easily.
LPG is manufactured during the refining of crude oil, or extracted from oil or gas streams as they emerge from the ground.
LPG (also known as autogas) is widely used as a “green” fuel for internal combustion engines as it decreases exhaust emissions.
Which brings us to the use of LPG in cars and transportation in Tunisia; I remember as part of one of the eco-friendly pushes a few years ago, some buses running on LPG were introduced into the the transport lines. Unlike the regular yellow buses, these were painted orange, so they were easily identifiable. I don’t really know why they didn’t go on changing the bus fleet to LPG powered ones as I barely see any these days.
Anyway, over the past couple of days, I’ve been seeing more and more cars running on LPG, most of them taxis, but a number of them personal cars too, which I think is great.
I hope the number of cars running on LPG increases and that the number of fuel stations providing LPG grows.
Currently, from the bit of research I did online, I found that the LPG is available for the Tunis region at the Agil station on the Tunis-Bizerte Highway (RN8).
There is another Agil station that serves up LPG on the highway to the south of Tunisia.
Sfax and Gabes seem to be the cities where you’ll have no problem finding LPG, with Gabes even having an LPG-only station, and most of the taxis running on LPG.
Sousse has 3 fuel stations that provide LPG and Gafsa has one.
What I find really good about this all is the movement towards more eco-friendly fuels. I hope it continues and that the government encourages people to use cleaner fuels and technologies.
Up to now, there is only one Hybrid car in Tunisia, which is a Toyota Prius.
But with Toyota’s recent efforts to strengthen it’s presence in Tunisia, I hope more people will look at the hybrid alternative too.
After much anticipation, I got to watch “The Sentinel” last night, featuring Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, Kim Basinger and Eva Langoria.
I had some high expectations for this movie after the reviews that I read and all, but even though this is a really good movie, it was just a bit below my expectations.
The movie is basically a thriller about a plot to assassinate the president, with an insider from the secret service being part of the plan.
The pace of the movie was quite fast and the plot an exciting one, but still the bad guy was easily predictable, and the ending kept you feeling that something was missing.
I personally think they could have added to the suspense and made it a much better movie very easily.
Kiefer Sutherland did a great job as a secret service agent, but then again he has all the experience from 24 to thank for that; Michael Douglas gives one of his best performances lately; Eva Langoria does quite ok in her role as a rookie secret service agent; and finally I thought that Kim Basinger gave a more or less average performance.
All in all, this is a really good and enjoyable movie, but still what bugs me is that it could have been better with some minor touches. Anyway, I do recommend checking it out.
It’s been nearly eight years since I last played a Tomb Raider game, back then it was Tomb Raider 2: Dagger Of Xian on my PC, and it was a really nice game that I truly enjoyed.
Anyway, since then, even though I didn’t play any of the other installments of the game series, I heard it was getting crappy and boring, until I came across some reviews saying that this one, the 7th installment, going by the name of “Tomb Raider: Legend” was actually a surprise, that it was really good, and mostly that it was fun again.
So I grabbed the game and started playing it a few days ago, and it’s true, it’s a really fun game, the graphics are great and smooth, the puzzles are good, the action is cool, the controls are pretty fluid and intuitive and the story is a nice one.
Lara Croft looks a lot better in this game, more acrobatic too, taking some lessons from Prince of Persia. Her movements and abilities are also more realistic than previous installments.
This installment was developed by Crystal Dynamics instead of Core Design who worked on the previous six installments.
The only shortcoming of this game is that it’s quite short and is quickly finished. Though judging by its ending, there surely will be a sequel with the rest of the story, but I think they shouldn’t have cheapened out, and that they should’ve just finished the story with this one and made it a bit longer.
Anyway, I recommend this game to people who played and liked one or both of the first two installments, as well as to people who never played any Tomb Raider game and who want to give it a try with a cool installment.
More and more is coming out about how the US knew in advance about the Israeli plans to bomb Lebanon, even before the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers…
“Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah, and shared it with Bush administration officials, well before 12 July”, wrote Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, whose past work includes exposing the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and Vietnam’s My Lai massacre.
Israeli officials visited Washington to secure US support for its plans before Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on 12 July, the ostensible cause of the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.
“Israel began with [Vice-President Dick] Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of … the National Security Council,” an unnamed US government consultant told Mr Hersh.
With Mr Cheney’s backing secured, “persuading [President] Bush was never a problem, and [Secretary of State] Condi Rice was on board,” the source added.
Israel’s plan for an air war to turn the Lebanese people against Hezbollah was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran,” the article quotes an unnamed former senior intelligence official as saying.
The White House wanted Hezbollah’s missiles eliminated so they could not be used as retaliation against Israel in case the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, Mr Hersh says.
A lot of indications have pointed at how all this wasn’t just a reaction by Israel to the kidnapping of it’s two soldiers, mainly because Israel has been kidnapping hundreds of Lebanese for decades and Hizbullah kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in return shouldn’t really generate a response which is so out of proportion.
It’s clear this was a pre-meditated and pre-planned attack, and that the kidnapping was just a reason Israel jumped on to mask it as a reaction rather than an assault which was totally uncalled for.
And of course Israel wouldn’t go ahead and do something like this without informing and consulting with the US about it first, not so much to secure their backing really, as they always have the US’ unconditional support, but more to align themselves with the future US plans for Iran and Syria and to plan what the cover-up story should be.
So the whole thing about Israel being a victim simply reacting to an event and the US being a dedicated mediator for peace pretty much goes up in flames, much like the whole region has, as a result of their plans.
These past two days I’ve been listening to, and greatly enjoying I must add, Paul Anka’s latest album “Rock Swings“. I first heard some bits from it at a friend’s place and was hooked immediately.
On this album Paul Anka has taken a number of the most famous rock songs of these past years, re-arranged them using some cool swinging jazz beats, and the result is pure magic.
Some of the hits he’s covered and that I loved on this cd are: Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana), Wonderwall (Oasis), Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden), It’s My Life (Bon Jovi), Tears In Heaven (Eric Clapton) and Hello (Lionel Richie).
When I first heard a bit of this album at my friend’s place, I’d never have guessed that it was old 50s crooner Paul Anka, who can count my dad as one of his fans. But well, he did an amazing job on this album, and I’m truly enjoying every bit of it.
I really recommend listening to this album, it’s a great piece of music, that gives another dimension and life to a list of great songs.
And if you enjoy this album, I also recommend the following cool albums:
A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans — what it calls “substantial minorities” — harbor “negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith”. Nearly one in four Americans, 22%, say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbor.
While Americans tend to disagree with the notion that Muslims living in the United States are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, a significant 34% believe they do back al-Qaeda. And fewer than half — 49% — believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States.
Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D. That same number admit that they do hold some “prejudice” against Muslims. Forty-four percent say their religious views are too “extreme.”
In every case, Americans who actually know any Muslims are more sympathethic.
A great post about the sad reality we Arabs live in and how the commonness of conflicts in the region gives them a certain shelf life, after which we sort of grow numb to them, and wait for what will come next.
The new restrictions that apply to all passengers starting their journey from the UK or the United States of America and to those transferring between flights at a UK airport.
Microsoft is announcing new tools today that it says will allow people with little technical background to create video games for Windows and the Xbox 360 gaming system.
Dubbed XNA Game Studio Express, the free software is expected to be available in beta form by the end of the month, with a final product available sometime this holiday season.
With this release, the software giant is hoping to lay the groundwork for what one day will be a thriving network of enthusiasts developing for one another, something akin to a YouTube for games.
The idea is to bring new blood into the video-game business, which has struggled to retain talent and recruit new developers, said Scott Henson, director of platform strategy for Microsoft’s game-developer group.
In the first incarnation, games developed using the free tools will be available only to like-minded hobbyists, not the Xbox community as a whole. By the end of the year, Microsoft will debut a $99 annual subscription service that allows developers to target their games to the Xbox 360.
Next spring, Microsoft hopes to have a broader set of tools that will allow for games to be created that can then be sold online through Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade.
I think this is a good and smart move by Microsoft to lure new and potentially creative people into the game design business. I also think that opening up the Xbox to become an accessible game platform that anyone can develop for will help build a better following for it and some sort of sense of community around it, which can only be good for the company.
