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It is absolutely the perfect name. She causes strife by causing arguments among men, by making them think their opinions are right and everyone else’s is wrong. It really is just perfect.

Dr. Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, commenting on the recent renaming of the planet Xena to Eris, after the goddess of discord and strife in Greek mythology. As reported in this morning’s New York Times.

Xena fans, who may be bitterly disappointed in the name change, might perk up to hear that he renamed Xena’s moon Dysnomia, after Eris’s daughter, a daemon spirit of lawlessness – in what I suspect was an entirely accidental nod to Lucy Lawless.