PLUTO OR BUST

This entry isn't going to be about the stupidity committed by "earthlings" on a second-by-second basis day after day after day. Instead, we're going to travel to the far reaches of the solar system and talk about what Plutonians are up to these days. OK, how about some mind boggling Pluto facts then?

Pluto-mania is catching on as the New Horizons space probe closes in on the former planet, now dwarf planet. Yeah, some idiot earthlings came up with that because somehow a world with at least 5 moons orbiting it isn't a "planet". Anyhoo, it's the first time an earth vehicle has ever visited Pluto so we're all going to get to see what it's all about for the first time ever.

Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh. Not only was Tombaugh the first to discover Pluto, he will also be the first to ever visit Pluto. Well, at least his ashes will as they are aboard New Horizons.

Being over 3 BILLION miles away from the sun, Pluto is a cold, cold planet. The average low temperature on the surface of Pluto is -387°F. Game of Thrones winters have got nothing on Pluto's winters. Daytime highs, however, reach a balmy -369°F. Being over 3 billion miles away from the sun, it takes the light from the sun 4.3 hours to reach Pluto and daylight on Pluto is about as bright as a moonlit night on earth. You can see stars in the daytime, provided you're far enough away from big Plutonian city lights.

It's hard to grasp these kinds of distances, especially when we grew up with solar system models in school that had all the planets lined up in a row. Those models were nowhere close in scale to giving us an inkling of the distances between planets. To be fair though, there's really no way schools could have made a model to suffice. To do so they would have had to tell us that if the earth was the size of a basketball, Pluto would be the size of a golf ball. They would then have to place that basketball representing earth, in downtown Houston, TX. Then they'd have to take the golf ball representing Pluto and place it on Seawall Blvd. in Galveston, TX for a true scale of the distance between the two.

New Horizons, about the size of a grand piano, was launched in 2006 on the fastest rocket ever made. New Horizons used Jupiter's orbit to help it pick up speed and at over 31,000 mph, it has taken New Horizon's 9 years to reach Pluto.

The pictures New Horizons takes will be sent back to earth via radio waves which will take 4 1/2 hours. Then it will only be able to be downloaded at 1kb per second. That's 56 times slower than those dialup internet connections we used to have.

If you were going to drive to Pluto and you could do it without ever stopping for gas or restrooms and your average speed was 70 mph, it would take you 4,892 YEARS to get to Pluto.

A day on earth is 24 hours, meaning that's how long it takes the earth to make one full rotation. A day on Pluto takes over 6 earth days. Great for weekends and holidays but Mondays on Pluto have got to be the worst. Pluto also spins in the opposite direction of earth, meaning the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

365 days is one year here on earth, a complete cycle around the sun. It takes Pluto 248 YEARS to circle the sun. 90,410 earth days make a year on Pluto. And amazingly February still has just 28 days on both planets.

One year ago on Pluto, the United States wasn't even a country yet. We were about 8 years from declaring independence from Great Britain, we were 134 years from the Wright Brothers 1st flight, and over 200 years from landing on our own moon. All within one year on Pluto. In Pluto time, Christ walked the earth just 8 years ago.

A 200 lb. person on earth would weigh a little over 13 lbs. on Pluto. New Horizons can go ahead and send that Plutonian diet back to earth pronto! Basketball players would be able to dunk on a 150 foot high goal. Probably have to lower it to about 147 feet for me.

So, that's probably more than you ever needed to know about something that's over 3 billion miles away from you, but now you know. And there's a lot more we'll learn in the coming days as New Horizons starts sending data back home.

Na-Nu, Na-Nu!

THE PRICE IS "NOT" RIGHT

Whole Foods Market is a supermarket chain that specializes in organic/natural foods. They opened for business in Austin, TX in 1980, and now have 420 locations throughout the U.S. Canada and the U.K.

Because they deal with organic, natural products almost exclusively, their prices are a little higher than your typical grocery store. They make sure the eggs they sell don't come from hens confined to battery cages. Their nutritional screening doesn't allow for foods containing trans fats or artificial coloring. Non-food organic products such as shampoo, soap, etc. are required to contain 95% or more certified organic ingredients. So you can see why the prices at a Whole Foods Market are going to be a little higher.

Questions dot their history about the claims they make of their food and products being of a natural/organic quality. Articles in the Wall Street Journal have claimed that Whole Foods has become more concerned with competing with other big box grocery chains and less about the quality of their products. It wasn't until 2011 that Whole Foods was required to meet the 95% standard of certified organic ingredients in their products they labeled as organic. And they are not without controversy involving business practices, product selection and failure to support farmers and suppliers.

The most recent uproar regarding Whole Foods is a price scam accusation by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs. They claim that 8 Whole Foods stores in the NYC area consistently listed improper weights on their pre-packaged foods resulting in overcharged pricing by as little as 80 cents to as much as $15 an item.

After first denying any wrong doing, Whole Foods has just come out and admitted mistakes being made with the way the operation works. They claim, of course, that it was unintentional, that the mistakes sometimes overcharged the consumer and sometimes undercharged them, and attributing it all to human error. The same human error in 8 different stores. And, of course, no one ever stumbles upon this error until someone gets caught.

Now, I can understand human error, it happens. This is what I don't get. When I go to the butcher counter at any grocery store and ask for a pound of shrimp, the butcher fills up a bag with shrimp and sets it on the scale. Most of the time it's not exactly 1 pound, so the butcher will either add a couple of shrimp, take a couple out, or ask me if that's close enough to the pound I wanted. Whether it's a little over or a little under is then my choice. When I give him the OK, the scale prints out a label with the proper weight, that I saw with my own 2 eyes, and the price per pound and total price.

Question - does Whole Foods not have these types of scales?

Umm, this one feels about 1.2 lbs.

Now to be honest, who of us grabs a pre-package of porterhouse steaks and then puts them on the scale to see if the weight matches what's on the label? And I honestly don't know how Whole Foods operates, but I'm assuming they aren't just holding the product in their hands and guessing a weight. If so, I can see where the human error comes into play. But having a scale and missing on the weight, so much so that a product can be $15 over priced, that's not human error, that's highway robbery.

So there's that information for you to do with what you will. And believe me, people are doing just that. Social media gives us all the opportunity to hear what people have to say about anything almost instantly. Or at least as instantly as we click on that medium. And I just don't get "those people" who blindly support Whole Foods because they feel the products are better for them and can't get them anywhere else, or they aren't as easily accessible.

For the sake of this argument, let's just assume that the organic products they sell are what they claim they are, better quality, better for you. With that, I have no qualms about the prices being higher than the Kroger down the street. The higher prices for better quality is fine, but charging $12 a lb. for organic beef is one thing. Charging $12 a lb. and getting well less than a lb. is another. That's disception, dishonesty and flat out stealing.

Human error? The only human error I see is people rationalizing that they're OK with someone stealing from them as long as they still get some sort of benefit from it. Crazy freaking world.