Violence Lies

"What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead."

- James 2:14-17

faith without works is dead. peoples children are dead. childrens mothers and fathers are dead. brothers, sisters, grandparents, nieces, nephews, students are dead. teachers are dead. husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and friends are dead. and your prayers aren't doing anything to help them. your prayers make you feel good, they make you feel like you've done something when you pray or you share an image on facebook or you discuss your outrage on your lunch break and sadly shake your head saying, "what a tragedy."

it is a tragedy. children are dead. every single person laying in the morgue or a cemetery today was someone's child--including the people who killed the rest of them. we talk about gun control and freedom and fear and terrorism, and we debate and take sides and politicize all of it, and somehow in all the conversation that takes place nothing ever happens. the hate continues, the violence continues, the tragedy continues, and whether its the queer community or an elementary school or a movie theater, the motive is the same. it's hate. someone has to hate to do something so awful. and we can't wrap our heads around it, and so the people who commit these awful crimes are demonized. "they're not even human." but you know what? they ARE human. they're someone's child, too. and if i can steal a few words from jed bartlet, who has something to say for all of these unimaginable horrors, they weren't born wanting to do this.

these shooters, these murderers, these rapists and gangbangers and terrorists were not born wanting to do these things. they were born innocent and pure, just like all of us were, and then things went to hell and the world failed them. WE failed them. we fail each other every single day. all of us.
these tragedies that plague us *are* preventable. they are a failure on ALL of our parts, every single one of us. whether we're talking a mass shooting or a guy who stabs his girlfriend to death and mutilates her body or a parent beating a child or someone torturing animals in a fighting ring. every act of violence is an act of failure. it's an act of education and religion and cruelty and abuse and hate hate hate. children are not born into this world hating. we teach them to.

we create monsters and then rid ourselves of responsibility and make them "other" so we don't have to acknowledge our failures.

i understand that many people out there can't do more than offer thoughts and prayers. that you may not be able to donate blood or money or volunteer. you probably feel helpless, just like i do. you don't know what else to say or do. so im here to help you. what can you do? you can teach people around you not to hate. you can speak up when someone you know is being abused or committing abuse. you can be there for someone with mental illness no matter how exhausting they are. you can think twice before making disparaging remarks in front of your children and you can correct other people who make disparaging remarks in front of theirs.

will they appreciate it? probably not. but when they tell you, "this is my child, and i will raise them how i see fit." you can tell them, "your child didn't know how to hate until you taught them to." maybe it will make them think, maybe it won't. but you can try. because THOSE are the thoughts and prayers we need. we need action, we need change, we need people to be aware that they are teaching their children to hate, that they are creating a monster where there wasn't one. that we are failing our children and WE have to change.

every single act of violence is a reflection on ALL of us. every single one. they weren't born wanting to do this.

"Apathy kills anger - and this is what ya choose.
There's always gonna be somebody who will lose.
Did ya ever stop and think about the world as is.
Life's about living, can't believe it's come to this.
It's not about me. it's not about you.
It's not about them or what they do.
It's not about pride, it's about
We must all understand:
Violence lies."

 - Bif Naked, Violence

people are getting high, so let's criminalize the disabled.

 According to the agency, Kratom taken in low doses can give you a boost, making people feel more alert. But taken in high doses, the DEA warns, it can act like an opioid, making you feel euphoric and addicted.

- Lawmaker looks to ban [kratom] in NJ

the first thing you need to know is that the quack behind this is someone who makes his bones passing out methadone to addicts. because kratom is well-documented as a method of kicking opiate addiction. and if people are able to help themselves and chew a couple of leaves instead of being forced into dependency on expensive chemicals, dr. douche is out of a job and the pharmaceutical companies are out god only knows how much money.

and this? this. this may be one of the dumbest things i've ever seen:

“They should get rid of it,” said Brick resident Hannah Hall, “There are people getting high around here. Kids are dying.”

- Lawmaker looks to ban [kratom] in NJ

who is hannah hall? what does she know about anything? well, a cursory search is rather enlightening. ms. hall, who is in her 50's, knows a thing or two about the law, because in february of 2012, the brick resident was the subject of an arrest warrant.

Hannah Hall, 53, of Taft Drive, arrested by Sheriff’s Detectives S. Metta and J. Mercado on a Superior Court Warrant for failure to appear for sentencing on original charges of credit card theft. Hall was processed and lodged in the Ocean County  Jail with no option for bail.

- 7 Brick Residents Arrested in Sheriff's Sweep

so ms. hall feels that it is okay to steal someone else's credit card and then evade punishment for it, but has no tolerance for people getting high. it's all about priorities, i suppose.

pretending for a moment that ms. hall isn't a criminal who victimized another human being, i would be keen to ask her what kids are dying from kratom, in ocean county or anywhere else. i don't see a list of names attached to autopsy reports showing they died from using kratom. it seems odd to me that such an epidemic would go totally unreported, but ms. hall is the expert, after all.

we have to give the author of that article, christine duffy, some credit as well, of course. she did write the thoroughly unresearched article, post claims that have no basis in fact, and present ms. hall as some kind of kratom death expert. perhaps someone should ask ms. duffy if she often makes a habit of reporting unsubstantiated 'facts' on her twitter page.

---

i used to love my country. growing up, i wanted to serve in the marine corps. i taught myself about politics, government, and law from the time i was 5 years old. i was already using a wheelchair when i signed up for ROTC--knowing i would never, ever be allowed to commission--and nearly killed myself for a few weeks before a PT session that i refused to give up on landed me in the hospital.

even in the face of the many awful things my country has done, i still loved it, still felt loyalty to it. i was still willing to sign up to die for it. i crawled across a field on my stomach, ignoring my feeding tube as it ripped into my body and bled, because ROTC was as close to serving my country as i would ever be able to come. i wanted it bad enough that i bled for it. i vomited through it. i passed out, i fell down, and i did serious damage to my body with one single PT session. that's how badly i wanted to be a part, to any degree, of my country's military. that's how much i wanted to serve the country i love.

and now all i do is dream about leaving it.

i love america but
america doesn't love me.

because my country doesn't love me back. it doesnt care about me at all.

it does not care that i suffer, that my needs arent being met, that i try harder than 99% of people every single day. i get up and i go to school and i work and i bust my ass all day, every day, when i could very easily and justifiably say "i'm too sick." and give it all up and just lay around all day doing nothing. i'd feel better if i gave up. id be entitled to more benefits and help if i gave up. my home health aid hours were cut to only 6 hours a week. because i am "too independent" to need the 9 they originally approved for me.

if the money used to fight the "War on drugs" were funneled into medicare instead, every disabled, sick, and elderly person would be able to have access to the treatments, supplies, doctors, procedures, and equipment they need to live the fullest version of their life. but instead, that money is used to lock up people for smoking a joint or eating mushrooms. and probably soon for ordering kratom--which has its largest user base among people suffering from chronic pain, people with anxiety, and people who are using it to relieve the symptoms of withdrawal as they get themselves off opiates without the help of a methadone clinic.

but who cares about the legitimate medical needs that drive kratom or marijuana users? there are people getting high.

---

my 50lb wheelchair. which is also ill-fitting, but
a custom fitted one costs more than my life is worth.

i go to school, and on a bad day--which are getting more and more common as my conditions progress--i slide around the side of my car to my trunk. i sit on the bumper because my legs are too weak to hold me up while lifting a 50lb wheelchair out of the car. i use the wheels as much as possible to roll my chair down the back of my car. by the time i get the chair out, attach the legs, get myself situated, and then roll myself across the street, up a ramp thats too steep and not flat, that i've fallen out of my wheelchair while trying to use twice in the past month, and get to my classroom---by the time all that is done, i am drenched in sweat, my heart rate is dangerously high, and every inch of my upper body throbs and aches with muscles that are just too weak to do that kind of manual labor.

and i do it all the time. because it's what i have to do, to get my education. i have no one here to drive me around. i have to do it all myself--or i have to stop doing anything. i have had over a decade of illness, of misery, of hospitalizations and infections and a wide range of humiliating symptoms and accidents, along with a million other things healthy people don't want to know about.

and there are exactly two things that help: marijuana and kratom. i have to do battle with every refill of marinol, the synthetic THC pill i take that lets me ingest things using my mouth. without it, i can't even run my tube feeds. without it, i was about to get put on TPN (IV nutrition) because i am so broken that i can't even manage to meet my bodys most basic needs on my own.

a few decades ago, i would already be dead.

but, you know. that's not important. because there are people getting high.

---

the so-called "war on drugs" isn't a war on drugs: it's a war on people. people like me. we are the only casualties in this war.

people who want to get high will find a way to get high. people who use drugs recreationally will not stop doing it just because those drugs are illegal. outlawing weed, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, whatever, has not stopped people from using them. what it has done is stop people who are uncomfortable breaking the law, would not do well in jail, or bound by a pain management contract to only take
what that dr gives them even if it doesnt work or has awful side effects. it has stopped people who are too ill to go into the world and make friends with someone who has access to weed or pills or whatever makes them feel better.

hard to get. not impossible.

i hear the party line response:

"making these substances illegal makes it harder for people to get them and keeps them out of the hands of kids."

and obviously that works, which is why prohibition is still in effect and there's a huge market for moonshine runs and speakeasies. obviously that works, which is why we have seen illegal drug use decline. obviously that works, because countries that have decriminalized drugs like portugal have seen a rise in use and drug related crime.

except, oh wait. they havent:

14 Years After Decriminalizing All Drugs, Here's What Portugal Looks Like
 http://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening )

this approach is exactly as successful as abstinence only sex ed--which is to say not even a little bit.

portugal's stats:

but who cares about science and fact? there are people getting high.

---

im sick of being treated like a criminal for being ill.

im sick of this country and the absolutely ridiculous laws governing every aspect of the lives of the sick, disabled, elderly, indigent, and indigenous.

im sick of the COMPLETE HYPOCRISY of people trying to outlaw and control and deny people of drugs that help because "Drugs are bad!", while allowing alcohol companies to advertise on TV. im garbage for wanting relief from my chronic pain or wanting to be able to eat without having it be through the tube in my gut, but alcohol use is just fine.

i ate through my nose for a year
before they made the tube a
permanent one in my gut.

 im sick of doctors that dont listen or care, and a government that would rather i just go die and stop costing them money.

im sick of being denied things that help me live an actual life, instead of being trapped in bed all the time, because someone has decided that my life is not worth a specific amount of money.

im sick of the overreaching by the FDA and the DEA, to make sure everyone is on a bunch of shitty prescription drugs that have more side effects than benefits while denying us the option of using natural herbs like marijuana and kratom and poppy seeds.

im sick of the criminalization of drugs that have literally been used since the neanderthals were at the top of the food chain.

im sick of facing problems every single month in getting my LEGALLY PRESCRIBED PAINKILLERS because the insurance or the pharmacist or the governor feels that i am suspect because im not 90.

im sick of insurance companies making decisions instead of doctors.

im sick of being sick and everyone in a position to help me feel better doing everything they can to keep me sick.

im sick of having pills shoved down my throat that dont work because it's all there is.

im sick and nobody gives a damn.

because there are people getting high.

---

they'd rather pay for hospital visits
and hope i get MRSA.

i had a conversation a few years ago. it was with a friend who was on IV nutrition and hadn't eaten a single bite of food in over 5 years. while she was inpatient yet again, they gave her marinol, the miracle synthetic THC pill that i take every day. i spoke to her while the side effects of it made her sleepy and surprisingly helped ease the spasms that were taking over her legs as well. i spoke to her after she'd just eaten a container of jello--the first food to pass her lips in half a decade.

friend: it's too bad this is all temporary.
me: they won't write you a prescription for marinol once you leave the hospital??
friend: they will. they did. medicare denied it, though. too expensive and they don't think i need it.
me: too expensive? its $500 a month. isn't TPN more?
friend: my TPN is about $1,000 a day.
me: ..so isn't it cheaper for them to pay 500 a month rather than 1000 a day?
friend: in the short term. but in the long run, they'd rather pay for the TPN. if i'm on TPN, ill die a lot sooner and dead people don't cost anything.

dead people don't cost anything.

i hope everyone who just read this post thinks of those words every single day. dead people don't cost anything. because that is the bottom line. that is what it all comes down to. if people have options for treatment, if people can keep their illnesses at bay enough to keep being alive, they are going to cost money for longer than they would if they had no options.

and here's the rub: even if someone sick or disabled CAN work, sometimes they don't. because the jobs they are qualified for or capable of doing, are ones that don't have the kind of health insurance coverage that someone with serious chronic conditions needs. medicare and medicaid are incredibly limited, but they do cover ER visits. they do cover some medications and specialists. if you know how to do the medicaid tapdance, they may even cover a wheelchair or a feeding tube. good luck finding that kind of coverage in a job at walmart or mcdonalds.

i have to eat this way because
there are people getting high.

people who are alive and too sick to work cost money. (never mind that our families paid into the system for generations with the specific hope that should they or their loved ones fall ill some day, they would be taken care of.)

elderly people who aren't working anymore cost money (never mind that they earned it.)

disabled people who can't work or who can only work part-time or menial jobs that don't pay a living wage, cost money.

anyone with medicare or medicaid, many of whom are children, costs money.

people are getting high and dead people don't cost anything. it's a win/win situation for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, not to mention politicians who know they can woo uneducated masses into supporting any anti-drug cause without thinking about it too much.

and of course, the self-righteous uneducated masses like brick resident hannah hall, who is interested in purchasing that bridge in brooklyn using someone else's credit card if you're willing to sell it to her.

#icantbreathe aka the time police almost killed me but didn't.

i want to talk about white privilege. before you click that little X in the corner, i want to tell you that i understand what you’re feeling right now, reading that. you’re thinking, “i’m poor” or “i’m disabled” or “my grandparents imigrated here”, or any one of a thousand other reasons you feel that you aren’t privileged. i understand that because i used to feel the same way. i grew up in a welfare family. at the end of the month there was never food in the fridge. i wore tattered hand-me-downs and our christmas presents came from the telephone company or the salvation army or whatever charity took pity on my single working college student mother and her two young daughters. i am also seriously chronically ill and physically disabled. i use a hearing aid, a wheelchair, a walker, and i eat through a tube stuck in a hole that was surgically punched through my stomach wall. i am gay, autistic, and 5th generation american.

i am also white.

i used to think, probably like you are right now, about the terribly difficult life i had and still have. how could i be privileged? look at all the evidence that i’m not privileged, right? but privilege has different levels. if you are in a heterosexual relationship right now, you have heterosexual privilege. this is true no matter what your skin color is—you are privileged in a way that i, as a lesbian, am not. you do not have to live in fear that someone will hurt you or the person you love for being together. you can get married and never worry about what state you’re in. you can adopt a child, you can visit your partner in the hospital, and should your spouse die without a will, you will get whatever rights are due you, including survivor benefits and unquestionable custody of your children. none of this is true of me. so in regards to sexuality, you are more privileged than i am.

so when i say the words “white privilege”, i want you to understand that i am talking about your skin color and nothing else. the rest of your life is objectively excluded from this argument. it doesn’t matter how poor you are, or what gender or sexuality you are. it doesn’t matter if you have a wheelchair or a seeing eye dog or an ostomy. if your skin is light, you have a privilege that people who are dark-skinned simply do not have.

when a police officer sees you standing on a corner they assume that you are waiting for a friend, waiting for a bus, waiting to cross the street, or just hanging out. if you’re in a mostly black neighborhood, he will assume you are lost.

but if you have dark skin, and are standing on a corner, they assume you are buying or selling drugs, looking for someone to carjack, waiting for your fellow gang members, casing a place you intend to rob, or, if you’re a female, prostituting yourself. if you’re in a primarily white neighborhood, he will assume you are there to commit a crime.

white privilege is being able to walk down the street and having nobody notice you. when your skin is dark, you cannot blend into the background that way. you stick out even among other dark-skinned people as a target of interest to suspicious whites.

i want to tell you a story from my life now.

this all happened only a few weeks after my 18th birthday. a legal adult and in a bad mental place, i made the poor decision to steal a book from a toy store. it was stupid, it was illegal, it was wrong, and it ended with me in handcuffs getting stuffed into a police cruiser and taken to one of philadelphia’s hovels that passes as a police station. i deserved to be arrested and punished—i broke the law. i took something that i did not pay for and i didn’t even have the moral high ground of it being food or medicine.

i was brought into the station around 2pm and put in a cell. as the hours passed, my cell and the ones around me filled up because the police had been doing a bust on several crack dealers in the area. sitting on a cold, dirty metal shelf and staring at a corroded privacy-free toilet-slash-water fountain, chewing slowly on a stale cheese sandwich and purposely not sipping the carton of iced tea i’d been given because i didn’t want to piss in front of 40 strangers, i was surrounded by drug addicts and scared out of my mind. one black woman sat next to me, using a fake nail she’d snapped off her finger to slash into her fingertips, attempting to obscure her fingerprints. the cells overflowed with other black women and a handful of white women.

im gonna interrupt myself to point out that drug users in general are predominantly white, while crack users are predominantly black. if you think it’s a coincidence that they were cracking down on crack, i refer you to leroy jethro gibbs, who doesn’t believe in coincidence.

after a few hours of sitting with my knees pulled to my chest, the elmo fabric of my pants getting increasingly dirty from the squalor of the cell, crying on and off quietly and wanting nothing more than to just be home with my mom, the woman who’d been trying to scratch off her fingerprints looked over at me and frowned. “how old are you?” she said. “shouldn’t you be at juvie?” i wiped my cheeks and shook my head. “i turned 18 last week.” the woman sat up straight and i shrank into myself, afraid of this stranger who’d been arrested—never mind that i’d been arrested, because i wasn’t a real criminal, i wasn’t buying crack.

and this woman, who had made a career out of sitting in jail cells at that point, reached out and gently touched my shoulder. she said, “honey, tell me you didn’t tell them you were 18. tell me you lied about your age.” i told her no, i hadn’t. that i’d figured they would know if i was lying and i’d be in more trouble. she, and a few other women from our cell and the others, then gave me an hours-long lesson on police procedure, on law, on attitude, and on the fact that because i was a young white girl, if i had told them i was only 17 or 16 or 15, i would be home with my mom right now, the way my younger sister who had also taken something and who also was arrested, but had been brought to juvie and released within a few hours, was.

later that night, around 8 or 9 pm, i had an asthma attack. i felt it coming on, felt my lungs tightening, and i kept telling the police officers that i couldn’t breathe, that my inhaler was in my pink backpack i could see hanging on the wall behind a desk. they never looked up, never acknowledged me. i fell to the floor and while i was half-conscious, my cheek resting on the ground in a puddle of my own vomit, my vision going dark and my lips turning blue, choking and gasping for breath, i heard a woman in the cell opposite mine—one of the only other white women in there, and whose husband was a lawyer who probably would not be happy to hear she’d been picked up at the crack bust—shouting that they were going to have one hell of a lawsuit if i died there, and that every last woman on the cell block was a witness. the women shouted and stomped and banged on the bars, all of them yelling and rubbing my back and trying to get me to breathe, screaming at the cops to get the inhaler out of my backpack, telling them i was dying.

at some point someone pressed the inhaler into my hand and, too weak to lift it to my mouth myself, a dark, feminine hand lifted the inhaler to my lips and depressed it, thumping my back, rolling me to my side, trying to force me to take one last breath, to pull the medication into my dying lungs. the next thing i knew my own hand was on the inhaler and i pumped it a dozen times, gulping in the albuterol and forcing my lungs to keep working until the EMT’s arrived. with a blood pressure of 250/180 and oxygen being forced into my lungs from a tank, they took me to the hospital via ambulance and kept me there until my blood pressure dropped. the triage nurse made them take the cuffs off of me when she found out i was in for shoplifting a $5.00 book, and threw the cop out of the room. she told me i had to calm down because i was about to have a heart attack. after she’d stabilized me and i’d been forcibly drug tested at the officer’s request (i was sXe & they had no reason to believe otherwise), i was taken back to the cell. every woman in the hall reached out as they marched me back to the cell, touching my shoulders and thanking god that i’d come back, because they didn’t think i would. those women, those "hardened criminals" that i'd been so afraid of, saved my life. they protected me while i was there, they comforted me and enabled me to survive one of the worst experiences of my life.

after that, i was kept at the precinct all night before being transferred to the “round house” the next day. we were herded around like animals and finally, at the round house, given toilet paper for when we had to use the bathroom. later that second day i went before a judge in a little room with a bunch of individual video-phones. i never spoke. the judge looked at me and released me “ROR” which means “Released on Recognizance”—basically that i realized i’d committed a crime and i was sorry about it. i did not need bail money or a lawyer. i was told i would receive a date and time and location to attend a criminal justice class, which did cost several hundred dollars to attend, but that after spending two hours learning about the justice system, my record would be expunged and no one would ever know what i did. and that’s precisely what happened. the only reason anybody would know what i did and what happened to me, is the fact that i am blogging about it right now.

now that i’ve told you my story, i’m sure you’re saying, “but look there, you are white and you almost died, you were on the ground crying out ‘I can’t breathe’. so how is that privilege?”

the privilege is that i am here. telling you this story. i did not die on that jail cell floor. my heart did not stop beating. they brought me my inhaler when they realized i wasn’t pretending, when they realized what an outcry my death would cause. when they realized that if a young white girl was left to die on the ground, people would be angry. people would care.

eric garner did not have that privilege. the policemen and EMTs that left eric garner to die did not think to themselves, “people will be angry. people will care that this man is dead.”

the only reason that i am alive right now is because i am white. because my picture on the evening news would outrage the nation. a young white girl with a life full of potential was left to die over a $5 book, the politicans and news anchors would say. how could such a tragedy be allowed to happen? how could these officers, these people charged with upholding and enforcing the law, let this child die?

Michael Brown, 18.
Eric Garner, 43.
Kimani Gray, 16.
Kendrec McDade, 19.
Timothy Russell, 43.
Ervin Jefferson, 18.
Amadou Diallo, 23.
Patrick Dorismond, 26.
Ousmane Zongo, 43.
Timothy Stansbury, Jr., 19.
Sean Bell, 23.
Orlando Barlow, 28.
Aaron Campbell, 25.
Victor Steen, 17.
Steven Eugene Washington, 27. (Autistic)
Alonzo Ashley, 29.
Wendell Allen, 20.
James Brissette, 17.
Ronald Madison, 40. (Mentally disabled)
Travares McGill, 16.
Ramarley Graham, 18.
Oscar Grant, 22.
Trayvon Martin, 17.

all black males. all unarmed. all murdered by police officers.

all somebody’s child, too.

white privilege is not having to think of these names every time you leave the house. white privilege is not having to be afraid of being killed for existing. white privilege is having the police assume you are unarmed, assume you are where you are for legitimate reasons. white privilege is being given a pass, being given the benefit of the doubt, being assumed innocent until proven guilty rather than guilty until proven innocent. white privilege is never being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

white privilege is surviving to tell the story of the time you almost died in police custody, rather than having the story told by your surviving loved ones while you are six feet under.

it's okay pluto, i'm not a planet either.

 “Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, 

but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, 

because they lead little by little to the truth.”
― Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

for some reason, every time a conversation about space comes up, there's always a comment war about pluto. today i saw the above image, a gorgeous piece of art that unites all the planets and pluto together as one. as i was taking in this brilliant image, my eyes drifted to the comments section to the right, and felt the wonder quickly leaving my body with a heavy sigh as i saw that, once again, people were all but marching around with picket signs saying "boycott nasa", and their rabid fanatacism about something they know nothing about beyond that it's name is pluto and it used to be a planet led me to this blog entry. i see this all the time, any time the subject comes up. even on "the big bang theory" the brilliant physicist sheldon cooper takes neil degrasse tyson (guest starring as himself) to task for "demoting pluto".

 and so i have to say to those insisting that pluto was a planet when you were young and therefore should still be a planet now.. things change. that's what makes science and the universe so beautiful. every day we learn new things, and we should be appreciative of that. pluto was labeled a planet when you were young because at the time, the best minds on our planet believed it was. but the best minds of today have a lot more knowledge and resources for gaining that knowledge, and as we discover new things about the universe, we must adapt to new truths.

we used to think the earth was flat, too, until the brightest minds figured out the truth: that not only is our planet round, but there are other planets out there that are too! defying new truths and information demonstrates a serious lack of ability towards adaptation. and science has also taught us that those beings which can not or do not adapt to their current environment are doomed.

instead of reacting like toddlers--kicking and screaming that pluto is a planet as though you and a test you took in third grade know better than brilliant, educated people who have devoted their lives to studying space--perhaps you should sit back for a moment and think about the beauty of discover, about how much information is right there at your fingertips, about the amazing technologies we've developed.

our grandparents went through life learning only what was taught in a classroom and knowing of the world only what they saw on the evening news or read in a news paper, if they even had access to those things. and here we are, with all of history, all of science, every single piece of human knowledge in the world, only a few pushed buttons away. you can learn anything you want to within seconds.

so why, in the face of all that, is it so very important to you to deny those beautiful truths? if you truly feel that pluto should still be classified as a planet, go to school. study the sciences. learn everything you possibly can about the universe and then go work for NASA and prove them wrong. otherwise, you're just wasting a perfectly good brain by clinging to falsehoods simply because they're familiar to you and more comfortable than forcing your brain to process and understand new ideas.

"Discovered in 1930, Pluto was originally classified as the ninth planet from the Sun. However, its status as a major planet fell into question following further study of it and the outer Solar System over the ensuing 75 years. Starting in 1977 with discovery of minor planet 2060 Chiron, numerous icy objects similar to Pluto with eccentric orbits were found. The most notable of these was the scattered disc object Eris—discovered in 2005, which is 27% more massive than Pluto. The understanding that Pluto is only one of several large icy bodies in the outer Solar System prompted the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to formally define what it means to be a "planet" in 2006. This definition excluded Pluto and reclassified it as a member of the new "dwarf planet" category."
- Wikipedia