How does something big enough to have moons not qualify as a planet?

Because there's no "big enough" -- under the right circumstances just about anything can have satellites. Our moon could have its own sub-satellites. It'd still be a moon, because it's not orbiting a star.

under the right circumstances just about anything can have satellites.

That's true.

Now I'm wondering - if I was floating in space and there was a marble that was orbiting me at, say, five feet away - how long would it take for one orbit?

Now I'm wondering - if I was floating in space and there was a marble that was orbiting me at, say, five feet away - how long would it take for one orbit?

I used to be able to do the math for this, but all you need to do is figure out how fast it would need to orbit you so as to never either crash into you or go flying away into space. Once you have the velocity, you can easily figure out your moon's orbital period.

DX would probably know.

Also, I'm all excited, because I just realized that tonight is the start of the new Survivor, followed by a two hour rebroadcast of last season's CSI ending, which means next week is new CSI.

Tonight is the new Survivor?! Damn it. We changed our writing group to Thursdays, which was good when it meant I wouldn't miss Project Runway, but now I'll miss Survivor.

I really have to get Tivo.

new Survivor

Woo hoo! Bring on the controversy!

Survivor? Yay!

Signs you may be getting into a rut:

Called C last night from the bus to see if she wanted to meet for a drink. I left her a voicemail since she was apparently still at the gym (damn her). She called me back a few minutes later and we figured out that we should both arrive at about the same time. Perfect!

Except for the fact that she had accidentally listened to my voicemail from last week when I was on my way home from work and she was at the gym, and when I had suggested the other of our two regular bars, so as it turned out, we ended up each waiting at a different bar about a mile apart. Oops.

Probst was just on the radio talking about the controversy with the morning show guys out here, it was really funny listening to him detail the differences between people who have a well thought out and well presented issue about the new season and its "controversy", and the people who have clearly never watched the show or know what it's about and who just want to use it as an excuse to loudly thump their own personal race issue in some moronic way. Unfortunately his experience has been that the latter is much more common than the former.

He also mentioned that he's a little irritated that, in the mass media, it's the loud, uninformed morons who are getting the loudest megaphones.

Bravo's website is not functioning this morning. I want my Tim's podcast!

I don't like the county newspaper I get (not subscribed to, they just started mailing it to me). The last one's front page article was about how people who oppose the Iraq war are unpatriotic and should shut up, just like the people who opposed the Vietnam war should have shut up (plus a lot of stuff about flag-waving, supporting the president, and how the war was started by our enemies not by us). Okay, annoying, but really, comparing the Iraq war to the Vietnam war isn't a good way to make the case that war opponents should shut up..