Dear Wall Street, Financial big-wigs, et al.: please stop bandying about the phrase "too big to fail."

You are tempting market forces far beyond your control, and obviously have something to learn from astronomy.

To wit: when a small star decays to a certain point, it falls in upon itself and becomes a more massive, darker star; say, a red dwarf from a yellow giant (case in point, our sun).

When a larger star decays and ages, it becomes one of the strange quasars or pulsars, where light is physically sculpted by gravity. This is weird.

When enormous stars fail, they become black holes.

I think the analogy is rather fitting: the bigger they are, the more it sucks when they implode—and they can implode, no matter their size.

As I'm sure most of you have already heard, a group of Japanese scientists think there may be a planet very similar to Earth orbiting out in the edge of our solar system. All well and good, but what in heaven's name are we going to call it?

Much as I love "Planet X," the public will not stand for it, much less astronomers.