Guinness Book Is Latest
Target of “Lawsuit Zeus”
A Kentucky inmate who’s filed 3,800 lawsuits against an eclectic combination of historical characters, contemporary personalities and even heavenly bodies, may have reached the end of the line. Kerry Harvey, the state’s Attorney General, is seeking to prevent him from filing any more suits if they’re deemed baseless or frivolous.
Lee Riches, who is in a Lexington prison for 
credit card theft, has filed suits against the Greek philosopher Plato, who lived in the 400s BC, Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party, former U.S. President George W. Bush (we know…), some Somali pirates, Bernard Madoff (for defrauding him, his siblings and pets), even Pluto, the celestial body that’s the focus of intense debate as to whether it still can be considered a planet. (Please see Comments.)
But upon learning that the Guinness Book of Records was planning on naming him the most litigious man in America, self-named “Lawsuit Zeus” took offense and filed suit against the good book. That’s when Harvey thought that was one suit too many and it was enough already.
It’s not up to him to decide it, though, but to the Kentucky Bureau of Prisons, and any ruling involves the delicate matter of inmate mail privacy. Will the issue not be processed properly, we should all expect a civil rights organization to step in and, you guess it, file a not-at-all frivolous lawsuit on Riches’s behalf.
CollTales 
Pluto is NOT a “former planet.” Please do not blindly accept the controversial demotion of Pluto, which was done by only four percent of the International Astronomical Union, most of whom are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately opposed in a formal petition by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader planet definition that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body in orbit around a star. The spherical part is important because objects become spherical when they attain a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning they are large enough for their own gravity to pull them into a round shape. This is a characteristic of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects. Pluto meets this criterion and is therefore a planet. Using this broader definition gives our solar system 13 planets and counting: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. At the very least, you should note that there is an ongoing debate rather than portraying one side as fact when it is only one interpretation of fact.
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