I appreciate the philological point underlying Dan Henninger’s Wall Street Journal column today. Unless you are from a galaxy far, far away (like, say, Planet Gore) the Earth would never be described as a “planet” in the original sense — πλανήτοι, “wanderers,” reflecting the astronomical observation of the irregular movement of our nearest supralunar neighbors.

Henninger strikes this chord: “Which planet are they living on? The Earth is about the here-and-now. The Planet is about the out-there.” And then riffs from there.