I wanted to share a couple of things I’ve come across on the web over the past month.
First, there’s a New York Times article about two of Pluto’s moons getting named after Greek mythical figures, both from the underworld. Pluto is one of the many incarnations of the god of the underworld that most of us know as Hades. Hades is arguably one of my favorites from the Greek pantheon, and I was very pleased to see that these scientists chose to stick with this chthonic theme. The first moon is Kerberos (or Cerberus), the three-headed guard dog of the underworld. He’s had pretty recent incarnations in storytelling such as Fluffy in the Harry Potter series. The second is Styx (sometimes spelled as Stix, not to be confused with Strix, two totally separate myths), which is the name of the river of the dead. Pluto already had a moon named after the ferryman that paddled through the Styx–Charon. Pluto also possesses Hydra and Nyx. Please remind me never to visit.
The second thing is this amazing non-profit I came across called the Traditional Cultures Project. They work in indigenous cultural preservation, a subject close to my own heart. I did a lot of preservational work during my time in Ecuador, mostly recording myths and trying to get my head around the Kichwa language well enough to help preserve some of it before it goes extinct. I would love to go back out and do more fieldwork like this in the future, and I’m glad others are taking the initiative as well. Please consider supporting these guys and projects like them.
Lastly, I’ll leave you with a picture I took at Comic-Con of a giant LEGO drow:
Yeah, I guess it was kind of fun.
