Still hope for Hercules

It appears that there is not going to be a (dwarf) planet called Xena after all. Instead the object formerly known as 2003 UB313 will officially be known as Eris - appropriately the Greek goddess of discord. Its moon is now designated Dysnomia, the daughter of Eris known as the spirit of lawlessness.

I rather liked the whimsy of calling it Xena but I also see that it could be a dodgy precedent. Before we knew it we would have planets named after Idol contestants.

(2^32582657-1)(2^32582656)

Does this announcement rock your world? Surely the notion of a new Mersenne prime and therefore a new perfect number just has to be the best thing you have heard for ages. No? Well maybe not, but when I was very much younger it would have excited me a lot. I thought perfect numbers were very cool and spent a lot of time working out a way of generating them. I was hardly disappointed at all that somebody had found the mechanism before me and that the primes needed for the mechanism had been known since the 17th century and even had a special name.

All this is a way of saying that today I attempted the Sodoku and Kakuro puzzles in The Listener for the first time. It was a pleasant way to spend some time as I worked out the techniques needed to solve the puzzles. Completion gives the same little buzz that completing a crossword does. The thing is I have way too many sedentary time wasting activities available to me as it is without adding another. Perhaps I should see if they are as much fun next week.