Pluto: Dwarf Planet

It's About Size...

So reason triumphs over the imagination once again. Pluto is demoted by near unanimous agreement of those astronomers gathered in the Czech Republic to debate its future. It's about its size. It's about its unacceptably erratic orbit around the sun. It's also, it seems, about its failure to "clear its area." Which means, insofar as I understand these things, Bush, that to qualify as a planet it needs to be able to dominate its neighborhood and prevent competitors from invading its space. Sounds a bit like your administration's foreign policy, no?

I'm sad that it all came down to size and clout. The bully boys win out again, and the little guy slinks off to the corner of the school yard while they point and laugh at his diminutive stature. A "dwarf planet". I kind of thought that term had been given the PC treatment. Little people. Isn't that the term of choice today? I do understand that there are a zillion little, round-ish celestial bodies out there in the Kuiper Beltway, busy making their circuits around our sun, and no matter how clamorous their lobbyists, we can't give every one of them the dignity of planet status. Besides, no profitable commercial ventures so many billion miles away. Still, I'm surprised they didn't have the common decency to give this little one a free pass, after seven decades of full membership in the planetary club.

My favorite comment in this whole affair comes from six year-old Jaykb Olivas (quite a handle, that!) who was quoted in today's Los Angeles Times . "It's an awesome planet," he said. "Since Pluto's the smallest planet, we could visit it and be like giants." Way to go, Jaykb! Quite a concept! Giants, eh? We could all use a little of that feeling.

Makes you wonder, though, doesn't it, Bush? Might there not be some superior galactic council out there somewhere checking into the status of the planet Earth? Size is acceptable, of course. But the behavior of its current dominant species? Way out of control. Maybe they'll haul us up before the Supreme Galactic Court, like they do in those sci-fi movies, and indict the lot of us for "disturbing the peace" or some such offense. Send us to insterstellar Coventry. (Is that concept familiar to our American readers, Bush?)

Anyway, we'll sure look like a bunch of idiots then, for presuming in the vanity of our half-assed rational belief-system to send poor Pluto into exile.