Dan Lipka Web Log

(After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. FULL STORY. ) Ode to Pluto Once you were so big, The hero of the Kuiper Belt. You shared the podium equally with the giants of the solar system, You were one of the nine great balls of dirt or gas that circle our sun. Alas, through no fault of your own, you are vanquished, Never to be a “planet” again, never to be a hero. You were just too small, too squashed, too far away. You are too cold, too lonely, too 1930s. Poor poor Pluto, you are just some icy nothingness now, Your once proud place in history is no more….OR Perhaps I shall choose to have hope in you, my Pluto. Perhaps you shall not die so quietly, Perhaps you will fight back. So if you can hear me, I challenge you to defy the odds once again, Gather passing dust with the arm of your gravity, Convince your icy brethren to live on your surface,

Team of Rivals , Team of Rival, Team of Rivals; thatss all I have been reading for months. This book never wanted to end. This poly-biography was the story of the four men who campaigned for the Republican Presidential ticket in 1960. They were William Seward (the statesman from New York), Salmon P. Chase (the radical abolitionist), Edward Bates (the conservative family man), and Abe Lincoln (the unknown rail-splitter). It seems like hundreds of pages were dedicated to the men before the Republican convention and they were grueling to say the least. Since I didn’t know much about three of the four men, I couldn’t put their youth into any context. Anyway, Lincoln was chosen at the convention and ran for and won the Presidency. The name of book, Team of Rivals, was appropriate because once Lincoln was in office, he choose his cabinet members from all political backgrounds, including all three of his former advisories. The story goes on and on, through the Civil War and vast polit

In the Connecticut’s Democratic Senatorial Primary, Ned Lemont is taking on incumbent Joe Lieberman. Lieberman is best known for adding nothing to Al Gore’s presidential bid and than siding with Republicans on several important issues like invading Iraq and his general support for Bush during the war. Basically, Lieberman is a true moderate, neither democrat not republican, neither standing for anything, not fighting anything. His ties to the Democratic Party are so weak that if he loses the primary, he said he would run as an independent (yes, he would run against the very person he just lost to, in hope that he take many republican votes away from the actual republican candidate). Now, I admit, I know very little about Ned Lemont, except that he is really rich, is opposed to the war, and wishes he had a different first name. So my vote goes against Lieberman because I know he and I share very little in the ways of political ideology. As a resistant of Connecticut, I think Lemont will

For years I have happily used ebay, buying and selling hundreds of items and getting 267 feedback messages (100% positive). Over the years, Ebay bought and integrated Paypal, an online payment system, which made payments easier and more accountable. As a seller I had the choice to have a regular Paypal account (which I don’t have to pay extra, but can’t accept credit cards) or a Business account (which I have to pay a commission on all transactions, but could accept credit cards). I choose the first option and told people in my listings that I could only accept Paypal if its through a bank account and not a credit card. I did that for over a year and was happy paying ebay a commission on everything I sold and using Paypal for free. I put an item up for sale last week, and a few hours before the auction was to end, I got an email from eBay saying that it was removed because I can not say that I do accept Paypal, but not with credit cards. Now if I want to use Paypal I am forced to