It only just hit me...

[trinityvixen]

I mean, I'd heard about the whole naming the 10th planet "Xena" thing, and the moon being named "Gabrielle," but it took the most recent SomethingAwful article to really make me sit back and think about this. The SA article was talking about the hobbit-people bones they found and how referring to them as hobbit-like is just one more way scientists are over-nerding themselves. Then the Xena and Gabrielle thing came up at the end.

Yes, we truly have the most majestic solar system. Eight planets named for gods, one inaccurately named for what is only 1/3 of its surface, and one named after a fictional television character. Somewhere there are aliens laughing at us.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

What - Earth? Earth is a god too - and ascribing the naming convention of Earth to the same scheme as that for the other planets is a bit of a malapropism. After all, the namers were standing on earth on Earth, and we call earth earth because it's on Earth.

I just got semantic satiation.

earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth, earth...

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Besides, Pluto isn't a planet. It's a planetoid.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You are one of those land-nerds, aren't you?

It's okay, we like you anyway.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Land nerd? More like a word nerd. I'm a poet and I didn't know it!

earth, earth, earth

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

Media is our new deity.

[umeyard.livejournal.com]

Actually thats a given
its in the book American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

I really hope you are making refrence to this book
if not i am very very scared.

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

I didn't think about it until after I started writing the comment. It's not exactly a unique idea though.

[umeyard.livejournal.com]

I think that just adds to the validity (sp?) of the arguement

people worship media and technology these days
I only thought of that refrence because Trinitys brother is reading American Gods for the first time right now and we were just talking about this last night.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Well... but the gods that those other planets were named after had pretty similar entertainment value to Xena. All those myths were kind of the ancient Greek equivalent of tv dramas... especially in the hands of the Christians (ie non-worshippers of Greek gods) who named the planets after them...

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

The only thing that's wrong about it is that the planets are named after Roman gods. If we change all those to the names of their Greek counterparts, we'll be all set.

Seriously, wouldn't landing a probe on Ares be more interesting? I bet some people think so...

[arkanfel.livejournal.com]

Or... we can just probe Uranus! bwahahaa