March 1, 2010 Spokesman

Guests:

David Bouree from Kirkland Morning Club.  David announced their Auction & Crab Feed on Sat., March 27th at the Northshore Community Center.  All are invited.

Rich Bergdahl , representing the Foundation, informed us our goal is 100% participation.  Give what you can whether it is a little or a lot, everything helps.

Rachel Knight left a note adding the interviews for Best High School Student of the Month are March 23, starting at 9:30 AM.  Let Rachel know if you can help out.

Brandon Honcoop will be organizing Scholarship signups and interviews.  Let Brandon know if you can help.

Gary Bruner announced Rotary First Harvest is having an event on March 13th; give Gary a call if you can help out.

Katherine Kehrli announced there is an event coming up for the NW Baby Corner; date TBA.

John Overleese announced our Bowling Extravaganza at Tech City Bowl on March 19th from 6-9 PM.  Contact John to sign up.

Thanks to David Aubry (of the first place Cal Bears!) for our new Rotary plaque at the Woodmark!

 

Chuck Brockway did a fabulous job with Happy Dollars-he almost became our Program, but failed because he thought Pluto had more to do with cartoons rather than our Solar System!

 

Our speaker was MSNBC.com's science editor Alan Boyle.  Alan runs a virtual curiosity shop of the physical sciences and space exploration, plus paleontology, archaeology and other ologies that strike his fancy.

Since joining MSNBC.com in 1996, Alan has won awards from the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Association of Science Writers, the Society of Proffesional Journalists, the Space Frontiers Foundation, the Pirelli Relativity Challenge and the CMU Cybersecurity Journalism Awards Program.

Alan is the author of "TheCase for Pluto", a contributor to "A Field Guide for Science Writers", the blogger behind Cosmic Log-and an occasional talking head on the MSNBC cable channel.  During his 33 years of daily journalism in Cincinnati, Spokane and Seattle, he's survived a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, a total solar eclipse (has anyone died from a solar eclipse?) and an earthquake.  He has faith he'll survive the Internet as well!

Alan spoke about the Pluto planet/non-planet controversy.  Clyde Tombaugh was credited for discovering the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930.  Since then, science has become better equipped to follow planets, their orbits and other details to be able to conclude that Pluto is not really a planet as the other 8 are.  He still lobbies for Pluto, but the powers that be have designated it a Dwarf Planet, not one of the Big 8!

 

Jerry Campo,

Scribe