CSotD: Up the poll without a vulcanizer
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Jeff Koterba on the tempest-in-a-teacup over naming Pluto's newest moons.
Egypt isn't the only place where asking people what they want can result in problems when what they want isn't what they ought to want or what you wanted them to want or, at the very least, what you (in your wisdom) feel is best for them.
This is a lesson parents learn in about Year Two, when they figure out that saying "It's time for your nap" is a whole lot more productive than asking, "Are you ready for your nap?"
Attorneys apply this in their rule, "Never ask a witness a question to which you do not already know the answer."
Whatever the context, you're courting trouble by asking people their preference if you aren't prepared to let them have their way.
In this case, it's particularly foolish: We should, really, all know that if you ask the on-line public anything about space, the answer will involve (a) a stuffed ballot box and (b) living long and prospering.
Which is how the IAU, who hadn't proposed this non-poll-poll in the first place, found themselves in the position of the parent whose helpful friend has asked their toddler, "Are you ready for your nap?"
Thanks.
Half a year ago, the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, invited the public to "vote" on names for the two new moons that the Hubble had spotted orbiting Pluto.
Granted, it was people at SETI who had actually done the spotting. Hubble just collects data, it doesn't interpret it. And, if they had been a pair of new minerals or a pair of new species of seagulls, the discoverer would have had the right to name them anything.
But fans of Spock should realize that logic rules in space and that the IAU has guidelines for naming planets and moons. Nevertheless, egged on by both Shatner and Nimoy, they stuffed the ballot box in favor of naming one of the moon's after Spock's home planet, Vulcan.
I can't find a permalink to the relevant page, so here's a screen grab of the results:
There are some interesting logical issues at work here:
First is that the IAU had already declared that, given that the body they orbit is "Pluto," the names chosen should have a mythological relation to the Underworld. There's no reason why "Vulcan" should have been listed as a possible name in the first place, despite the ballot's identification of him as "Roman God of fire and smoke, son of Jupiter/Zeus, nephew of Pluto/Hades."
Now, to start with, planets are named for Roman gods, moons for Greek gods, so it should have been Hephaestus, not Vulcan.
And "nephew of Pluto/Hades" is a pretty slim thread to the Underworld, given that, since Jove/Jupiter was the progenitor of nearly all of the Olympians, almost everyone up there was a niece or nephew of Pluto/Hades and of Jove/Jupiter's other brother, Neptune/Poseidon.
Ain't you people got no culture?
Anyway, the IAU noted that "Vulcan" had already been used to name a planet that turned out not to exist, which is slightly different than using "Pluto" to name a planet that turns out not to be a planet, but still rates disqualification.
As it was, they had to use the Greek spelling, "Kerebros," because "Cerebrus" is already an asteroid. (Yes, this does undermine their appeal to logic.)
The other Main Bothersome Point is how Spock came from a planet called "Vulcan" in the first place, and, for that matter, why he is a "Vulcan" and not a "Vulcanian."
Star Trek was always very careful to avoid cultural geocentricity by adding non-Earth names to discussions, so that people would say things like, "a great conqueror, like Caesar, Napoleon, Beldar of Remulac …"
So you'd think that they would use the planet's actual name rather than some name apparently assigned to it by Earthlings or Terrans or whatever we'll be once we're no longer the default for "people."
Maybe it's like "Indian," wrong but preferable to the alternatives.
The people who prefer their own name, "Lakota," to "Sioux," (an insulting one told to the French by their rivals,) like nearly everyone else who was here from the start below the 60th parallel but who can't be called "aborigines" because the Aussies already took that one, have thrown up their hands over the inevitability of "Indians" and find "Native American" not only more confusing but a bit, well, obsequious and condescending and stupid.
If nothing else, they consider it pointless. I once asked a Saginaw friend which spelling was preferred, the American "Chippewa" or or the Canadian "Ojibway," and he responded that it didn't matter, since the only time anyone ever wrote it down, they were taking away something else.
Maybe Spock feels the same way. Or maybe the actual name of his planet, like the actual name of the mermaid known as "Madison," is problematic.
Or maybe it's just embarrassing.
I remember an article from Science Digest years ago in which someone said that, while "Venusian" is a linguistic horror, the correct adjective, "venereal" has clearly acquired a different association and that the Greek-derived equivalent, "aphrodisian," is hardly less fortunate, so that creatures from Venus should be called "Cythereans," after the alternative Greek name for the goddess, which has, since then, been assumed as the fictional name of some people in Star Trek, the Next Generation.
Proving that, indeed, you can make this stuff up.
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