Planet envy

Published 7:35 pm Friday, July 17, 2015

Call me a dwarf, will ya? NASA geologists, reviewing images from the New Horizons probe, are struggling to explain how Pluto got its elephant skin-like surface. One theory is that it’s caused by heat from the dwarf planet’s interior.

And the only explanation for the heat is the boiling rage Pluto felt when it was demoted from the planetary varsity team.

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Channel-surfing the vast cultural wasteland: “Hell on Wheels,” is still working on the railroad but begins its fifth and final season on AMC tonight at 9. Cullen Bohannon and his crew are now in Truckee, Nevada, trying to tunnel through the Sierra Nevadas.

When he’s done there, would Bohannon consider taking over the reins of Big Bertha, the long-stalled boring machine that’s supposed to be digging a Highway 99 tunnel beneath Seattle?

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Don’t know much about history: On this day in 1947, President Harry Truman signed an act that established the speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore as next in line if the president and vice president died in office.

Originally, the line of succession went vice president, secretary of the Department of Short Straws, eeny, meeny, miny, moe, rock, paper, scissors, lesser of two evils, second cousin once removed and then Al Haig.

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