A relative way to remember our solar system's planets

Astronomy can be confusing, but if you don't know the difference between a random planet and Uranus (hah! The inevitable joke!), I've got a trick to remember the planets in our solar system.

The eight planets (nine if you count Pluto) are like an extended family.

While the sun is the combined grandmother/grandfather around which many (both healthy and dysfunctional) families rotate, the planets are each a type of cousin. You are Earth in this discussion. The others? Starting from those closest to the sun:

Mercury and Venus, the two closest planets to the sun are our cool cousins who generally blow off family events because they're doing things beyond our imagination (following their favorite band on an around-the-world trip; hiking the Pacific Crest Trail; living in a trailer in Mexico for a year). Mercury and Venus are different and a little crazy (did you know Venus rotates in the opposite direction of the other planets?). They're both way too hot to explore. We secretly like them, but don't know them. They're our cool cousin planets.

Mars is our closest cousin. Mars spent two weeks at our house every year when we were young. We were in Mars' wedding party and vice-versa. We talk about taking vacations together with Mars, although we haven't done it. If we were to die an early planetary death, Mars would be asked to be a pallbearer and to speak at the funeral.

Jupiter is the older, slightly intimidating cousin (Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has 63 moons and a ring system we can faintly see). We've always known Jupiter existed, but it feels more like an adult than most of the other planets. Jupiter didn't pick on Mars and us when we were younger planets, because it didn't interact with us. However, we still watch it. From afar.

Saturn is the crazy cousin who we don't really understand but admire. It's the best-looking of all the cousins because of its rings, but it also has a cool name and is mysterious. Like Jupiter, it has more than 60 moons, but we suspect Saturn's moons are bizarre in some way. If Saturn shows up at a family reunion, it's dressed differently than anyone and listening to a kind of music we've never heard.

Uranus is our oddball cousin. The name, for self-evident reasons. But Uranus also spins on its side – different than any other planet. The entire time we've been in the same solar system, the other planets have snickered at Uranus' name and the way it rotates. Meanwhile, Uranus stays consistent. It comes to every family gathering and talks about science fiction that we don't understand.

Neptune is cold and distant, both as a relative and as a planet. We know it's there but don't know when it will be anywhere near us. Most of us don't know much about it (Was Neptune in the Army? Does it live in Nevada? Montana? Tennessee? Was it ever married? Divorced?). Neptune is part of the family, but a distant part. Neptune may come to a family gathering once a decade and when it leaves, we know nothing more about it.

Pluto is not a planet, officially. It's the "cousin" who is really a neighbor who still shows up at our family reunions. Kind of the Cousin Oliver of planets.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

How fifth-graders 50 years ago had more common sense than billionaires

Billionaires: They're just like us!

In this case, they're just like I was in fifth grade.

Consider this: Billionaires are increasingly planning new, utopian cities. About 50 years ago, I worked with classmates to create a new, utopian island. We were 10 and we knew it was a silly exercise, but they're serious.

Proposed utopian cites are a real thing. An article on Axios shares the details of a city called Telosa that will be built in Utah, Nevada or Arizona (who can tell the difference, right?) by billionaire Marc Lore. Lore is a guy who apparently builds and sells companies. He sold Jet.com to Walmart and Diapers.com to Amazon. I'd never heard of him before this, either.

Lore plans for 5 million people to ultimately live in Telosa, with 50,000 folks moving there by 2030 (less than eight years from now!). According to the report, Lore is currently looking for 150,000 acres on which to build the city, which will have autonomous electric vehicles, no on-street parking and 36 districts that have everything you need within a short walk. There will be vast amounts of renewable energy and some sort of "drought-proof" water system.

Lore isn't the only billionaire with such plans. According to Axios, Bill Gates wants to build a "smart city" called Belmont in the Arizona desert (if it's so smart, why is it in the Arizona desert?). Elon Musk wants to build a city called Starbase in southern Texas. I presume if Warren Buffet considered doing something similar, he would simply look around Omaha, Nebraska, and figure it was already utopian.

American billionaires aren't alone in this dream. Toyota is building a model city in Japan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is building a city in Saudi Arabia and Tech company Tencent  is building a city in China. They all have the same thing in common. Each of these billionaires or companies thinks they can use smart technology to make a utopian world, where everything runs well and everyone gets along. Most of the cities have some plan for the perfect government, too.

Of course, they forget that every such attempt in history has failed. Movies show us how it ends up: With some powerful group in charge, exploiting people while everyone wears monochromatic jumpsuits until a traveler from the past or future finally rallies the people to rebel.

It's equally inspiring and terrifying that people who are good at business think they can build a utopian society.

My classmates and I had the same view, but it was more practical from a 10-year-old's perspective. The island we imagined had volcanoes that erupted with edible chocolate, trees that grew candy and wells full of soda. Kids were in charge of everything. Everyone played and ate sweets every day. It was an island, so it was protected from the adults who presumably ran the rest of the world.

Of course, that wouldn't work. There would be problems that would have to be solved. We knew that our invented island wasn't practical, it was just an assignment from a creative teacher.

Who knew that 50 years later, billionaires would have similar plans, but would lack the common sense of a 10-year-old?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

Making a shaky case for the need for adults to wear watches

Wearing a regular watch every day has become akin to wearing a fedora or using a landline. It marks you as outdated.

The standard watch (not a fitness watch) is going out of style. Every year, the percentage of watch-wearers goes down–the latest numbers indicate that less than one-third of people wear watches every day and most of those are the aforementioned fitness watches.

Oh, sure, watches are still sometimes seen as stylish. But they're jewelry, like wearing cufflinks or tie clips were seen back in the day.

Wearing a watch every day as a way to keep track of time? It's slipping away, largely because we have smartphones.

When I was a kid, there were a few things that identified a grown man  based largely on my dad):

• An adult male always had a comb in his pocket.
• He also carried a handkerchief (disgusting in retrospect).
• He had a wallet, where he carried cash and various other things (I'm not sure what. I doubt that my dad had more than one credit card, so what else he had in there is a mystery.).
• And he wore a watch. Because how else would he be able to track how long it had been since he'd had his last cigarette or made the last sexist/racist joke to male co-workers?

I attempted to grow into those standards as a teen. I carried a comb in junior high and high school, though I rarely used it. I briefly carried a handkerchief. I carried a wallet, where I kept my student body card, a couple of dollars and a few other things (library card? Baseball cards? Pictures of myself? It's a mystery.).

But those things faded. I stopped carrying a comb. And a hanky.

Wallets have faded greatly, but are still around. We now have digital money and digital IDs, but you still need to carry your driver's license somewhere (I presume we'll soon have digital driver's licenses). Many people in their 20s don't carry a wallet.

The watch is disappearing, because, of course, why wear a watch when you have a phone?

Here are two reasons:

• The first is that it's much, much easier to look at your left wrist when you want to see what time it is than to dig a phone out of your pocket. Pulling out a phone isn't like completing a triathlon, but still, a watch is less work. Watches are good for lazy people.
• But the most important reason to wear a watch is that it signifies that you're an adult and you're serious about life. It shows that you're professional and have grown up. Having a watch (particularly a metal one that expands and contracts) shows that you've grown up, for crying out loud! They have to respect you as an adult!

Wait.

Maybe my watch love is just a secret way to overcome my childhood fear of growing up  but never being taken seriously.

Mind your own business! I can still tell you what time it is in a couple of seconds!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Science has been lying to you, but we finally have a true millipede (plus)

We finally have a millipede that lives up to its name.

And it's still wrong: Milli means one thousand (even though it should mean "one million," right?). Pede means feet. A millipede should obviously have 1,000 feet, which would require 500 pairs of shoes, which would definitely make back-to-school shopping expensive for the Pede family.

Turns out, millipedes don't have 1,000 feet. Madness!

Until recently, the millipede species with the most legs had 750 legs, making it a .75 millipede if we want accuracy. However, insect scientists (by that, I mean scientists who study insects, although the idea of insects who have jobs as scientists is an interesting possibility.) found a change.

Eumillipes persephone came along.

Legs? It's got plenty. It's got the greatest legs since Joey Heatherton, which is a great line for anyone 80 and older. OK, the greatest legs since Beyonce. Or Justin Tucker, the Baltimore Ravens kicker who is seen as the best in the league at his position.

So, great legs. A lot of legs.

It has 1,306 legs. That's right, the first true millipede – actually, a mega-millipede, which would require (if my math is correct) 653 pairs of tiny shoes for a new school year.

Eumillipes persephone (that's the species' name) also has no eyes, which leaves open the possibility that its parents could buy cheap, ugly shoes and the 1,306-foot bug wouldn't know. Maybe that could save some money, which when you're buying 653 pairs of shoes, can really add up.

Scientists found eumillipes persephone below ground in Australia – about 200 feet below ground. The guys in white jackets were thrilled.

“We always hypothesized that there would be a ‘true’ millipede discovered someday,” said Jackson Means, a myriapodologist at the Virginia Museum of Natural History in an article on Vice.com. But the discovery of one with over 1,300 legs, almost double the previous leg count? “That was pretty astonishing,” he said.

You know what else is astonishing? That scientists and our teachers let us believe millipedes had 1,000 legs when they knew (or should have known) that wasn't true. It wasn't even close.

By the way, it's not the only such lie. Centipedes, which should have 100 feet (centi = 100) don't have that many. According to a random website I checked, centipedes range from 30 legs to 354. Hopefully, it's always an even number, or they might walk in a long circle.

But I digress. Centipedes don't have 100 legs. Millipedes don't have 1,000 legs (although eumillipes persephone has 1,306ish).

Do you know what else is true?

Strawberries and raspberries are not berries.

Koala bears are not bears.

Jellyfish are not made out of jelly and they aren't fish.

Guinea pigs are not pigs, nor are they from Guinea.

I guess I'd be even more upset if I didn't have sports to keep me straight. I know that no matter what happens, the Boston baseball team wears red socks, the Green Bay football team works during the week packing boxes and the Utah NBA team members all play jazz music.

But back to the main point. We now have our first true millipede, albeit one with an extra 306 legs.

You're now smarter. And the Pede family is out the money for several hundred pairs of tiny shoes.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.