“A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.”
Not that I get a vote on it. But, I would suggest one additional qualification. That the celestial body have a mean radius greater than 2000 km. Eventually, gravity will let all aggregates form into spherical shapes. For a planet, size matters as well.
For those bodies that have a mean radius of 500-2000 km, let them be called plutons, or minor planets, or something similar.
Let bodies with a mean radius of less than 500 km be asteroids or space junk or dark matter. Things to blow up as you are escaping the Empire’s Star Cruisers.
A question arose last Tuesday on how the SSA funds are accounted for in calculating the Federal deficit. So I started looking around and was surprised how long it took me to find an answer. If the SSA is off-budget, then its monies don’t count to the deficit/surplus figures (if I have that right)
After hearing all the glowing references to Hank Paulson, as the experienced Wall Streeter amply qualified to be Secretary of the Treasury, I was wondering why more people weren’t focusing on what Goldman Sachs was doing at the turn of the millennium.
I was sure I remembered that GS was instrumental in the dot com bubble.
Looks like there is some sort of coordinated Child Support Program. My idea was to make the state pay the court-ordered child support and then have the state collect from the paying parent. That way the children would get their support even if the paying parent doesn’t pay. With interstate cooperation, a parent would have to go far away to get away from paying child support.
