Today is Sysadmin Appreciation Day.

Be nice to your geeks today.  You may not appreciate how hard they work to make sure stuff Just Works when you need to use it.

Self-referential post

This post, oddly enough, is not about some other subject that has caught my eye, but about the "Now Playing" selection, Chris de Burgh's Crusader.

( Cut to protect the innocent )

We have always been at war with Oceania.

WWBRD

What Would Burt Rutan Do?

(Finder's credit: darthgeek)

Whoa. Nine? Ten? Keep counting ...

First, james_nicoll pointed out this New Scientist article, followed shortly by this one from Nature, about 2003EL61, a trans-Neptunian object at first thought to be larger than Pluto, now estimated at a quarter to a third of Pluto's mass, but with a moon of its own accounting for the earlier overestimation of its brightness and hence size (and from the orbit of which the new mass estimate for 2003EL61 was derived).

Now, dmmaus just pointed me at this Sky & Telescope article about 2003UB313, a Kuiper-belt object in a highly inclined (44° from the ecliptic) orbit, which appears to be between Pluto and Luna in size.

"We tried looking at it with the Spitzer Space Telescope and didn't detect it.  So we have an upper limit on the size.  It can't be any more than 3,000 kilometers across^[1]," says Brown.  But the lower limit derived from its brightness — even by assuming its surface is 100 percent reflective^[2] — still makes it larger than Pluto, which is 2,250 km (1,400 miles) across.

So, how many planets DOES this system have?  Ten?  If Pluto's big enough to be a planet, 2003UB313 certainly is.  Eleven, if we count 2003EL61?  Twelve, if 1,600km Sedna qualifies?  Thirteen, counting Quaoar, at 1,250km?

And by all indications, we've barely begun to chart the Kuiper Belt -- especially if there's bodies out there in orbits this highly inclined.  There could be monsters out there, in arcs above and below the ecliptic we've never even thought of looking for planets in.

If we assume the upper limit of 3000km for 2003UB313, and we assume it's a mostly rocky body^[3], a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests a surface gravity on the order of .12G, just under an eighth of a gee, three quarters of the Moon's gravity.  That's probably enough gravity to establish a permanent base on it someday, if we could get out there.  Even if it's no bigger than Pluto, somewhere around .08G is still a reasonable assumption, just shy of a twelfth of a gee, half a Lunar gravity.

---

^[1] Unless, of course, it's a very dark body indeed, which appears not to be the case.

^[2] Emphasis mine.

^[3] I'm not sure how a dirty-snowball structure would affect the numbers.  It's probably too far out and too cold to have much of a gaseous atmosphere.

Employers unworthy of their employees, part [mumble]

The son of a friend has spent the last five years working for a small real-estate development company.  They wouldn't advance him, or train him, or pay him what he was worth, and he has a wife and a mortgage.  So, after five years, he gave in his notice to move on to a better opportunity with more pay and benefits.

Many employers, in this position, would at least wish him well, if not see if they could make him an offer to make it worth his while to stay.

These fuckers fired him, apparently out of spite for having the temerity to leave.

He's going to be fine.  He has three job offers in hand, all of them for better jobs than he just left.  I like to think that when the economy finally drags itself out of the toilet and recovers to the point that it's no longer an employer's market, employers like this one will suddenly find themselves with all their staff quitting and unable to hire replacements, because the word's gone out that they're assholes who treat their people like dirt.