This is old news, but I felt I should comment on it anyway.  Pluto, our ninth planet, has been relegated to the status of “dwarf planet.”  Does anyone else feel sad about this?

I learned the nine planets as a four year old on my Grandfather’s knee:  Mother Very Thoughtfully Made A Jelly Sandwich Under No Protest.  (Mercury, Venus, Terra, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.)  I suppose we need a new way of remembering the planets.  Disney may have to rename the faithful companion of Mickey Mouse.  The Roman god of the underworld is probably seething right now in the depths.

I understand the scientific compulsion to make sure that definitions and taxonomy are applied consistently and logically when describing objects, but the emotional impact to our culture as a whole weighs heavily in favor of waiving the new definition in order to include Pluto in our definition of a planet. 

But then again, who am I kidding?  I asked a high school student today in the grocery store (who had his nose buried in a Chemistry text book while his mother tossed things into a shopping cart) if he enjoyed science.   His reply astounded me.  “I just need to get a good enough grade to get into college.”  Unspoken was that the grade would probably be obtained by a combination of cajoling, cramming, and cheating.  He certainly wouldn’t care that Pluto had been demoted, since his interest in science extended only to receiving a good enough mark to go to college. 

Probably no one cares but a select few journalists and academics, as well as a few of us in the blogsphere.

Vaya con Dios, Pluto.