Giggles

According to an article written some years ago by Isaac Asimov, an attempt was made in the middle 1960s to change the pronunciation of the 7th planet from the sun from "yer A nus" to "YUR a nuss."

This artificial attempt to modify our spoken language was made for one reason and one reason only: school children were no longer muffling their giggles when science teachers taught them things like, "Uranus is a gas giant," or, "Uranus has rings around it of varying dimensions," and "Uranus is blue."

I believe this strongly implies that there was a secret conference somewhere at which this change of pronunciation was the only topic.

I would like to believe that they had to throw some of the invited participants out of the proceedings. I want very much for that to have been the case. I don't want to be part of a culture that can convene a conference of high brows who are capable of repeatedly saying "yer A nus" to one another in different and varying contexts and not eventual have some of them start grinning.

And can you imagine the horror of finding out that your mom and dad MET at this conference and were attracted to one another because of their shared dedication to stamping out 'inappropriate' giggling among students and lay people? Yikes!

Anyway, this post was inspired by the fact that we can now see the rings of Uranus edge on. Things have been going on around Uranus that scientists are interested in. Uranus is going to be in the news and you'll be seeing photos of Uranus on the internet. I hope we give Uranus the respect it deserves.