Dear Pluto fetishists,

[gordonzola]

WTF? No one knocked it out of the sky. It's still there. It can still be your favorite interstellar object even if it's not a planet.

As I said in a comment elsewhere, it's like being upset that evolution is (mostly) being taught in school or that Drake's Plate is now taught to be a fraud (which was a big issue when I was in grade school). I am fully willing to let scientists in that field decide on the definition of planets and do not feel like it should be up to popular vote.

It's not like science doesn't have an agenda at times. But it's hard to find one here beyond having a reasonable definition to work with.

Comments

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

haha. I also just realized that most of the people who would get mad at this post are at Burning Man.

Love this post.

[twostepsfwd.livejournal.com]

And, if all else fails, Pluto is STILL A DOG!

[smallstages.livejournal.com]

I was bummed when I clicked the "unpopular posts" tag and this was the only one. Make more unpopular posts, G! They're my favorite, especially since I can't fully grasp the magnitude of the cheese-centric posts, though they are always very pretty and well-linked and seem very thorough.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

that was upsetting it's true. But mostly because of the fact that such an unlikely looking animal didn't exist! Brontosaurusses were cool looking!

[masscooper.livejournal.com]

Or when the Piltdown Man turned out to be a hoax! Boy, was my face red.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

ha. often I end up locking the ones that were really unpopular. but I was thinking of going back and tagging some because I like this tag. It has lots of potential.

Re: Love this post.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

Those eggheads can't take that away from us!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

OMG, I couldn't show my face in town for a month!

[masscooper.livejournal.com]

Talk about jaw-dropping!

[chreebomb.livejournal.com]

*gasp of horror*

it all makes sense now. i kept asking myself, "where's the brontosaurus of my childhood!" when reading my son's dinosaur books.

[nihilistech.livejournal.com]

Wait. People are actually really upset about this?

It's not like we've declared war on Pluto because it was a planet even though U.N. inspectors said it wasn't and then decided it really wasn't but kept sending troops there anyway.
It's just an amusing astronomical adjustment.

What about my

[barthanderson.livejournal.com]

These friggin bastards are wreaking havoc with my natal chart.

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, my friend with the astronomy degree says they should have kept it a planet, and my friend with the zoology degree says they should have stuck with "brontosaurus". Both cite the feelings of the public in their arguments.

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

The best part about Piltdown Man is that the hoaxers put a cricket bat in as a supposedly ancient artifact, probably because they were thinking things had gotten out of hand and it was time for the scientists to know it was a forgery. But they blithely classified it as a primitive tool.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

wow. I didn't picture you as an anti-science enabler. ;)

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

I think the problem was that Pluto failed to report planet-enrichment activities to the UN Astronomical Agency inspectors, and it got punished in return.

[chreebomb.livejournal.com]

awww! wrong head! thick lips!

who knew!

Re: What about my

[lemon-says.livejournal.com]

It's obviously an anti-Scorpio bias. Who will be our ruler?? We're positively adrift, I tell you.

I think they should have left it an honorary planet or something. You can't just snatch planethood like that!

[aparecida.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I wish people would STFU about this already.

Oops, I said that out loud (so to speak).

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

it's just way, way too much anthropomorphization for my tastes. someone on my flist posted about wanting to go out in space and give pluto a hug. OK, then, see you never, dude. someone else posted this cartoon about pluto being sooo sad that he was being "dumped." little sniffling planet comic, with a cell phone on its ear.

yeesh

[spoonfeeding.livejournal.com]

ACTIVIST ASTRONOMERS!

[albatrossity.livejournal.com]

does the warrior princess get to be a planet yet?

[nihilistech.livejournal.com]

It'll start threatening to lob asteroids at us or something.

I was guilty of linking to Pluto-related things, but I never thought either determination would be fabulous or tragic.

Then again, I remember hearing about Pluto's possible demotion several years ago.

!!!

[sparkle-shortz.livejournal.com]

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Actually, I got more irked about this after hearing about the way the process happened: by popular vote. Total votes: 424 out of 2700 attendees at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague.

So, if I understand this correctly, Pluto got downgraded by the same mechanism that a rule change is voted on at a science-fiction convention. That's not so much about science as it is about the feelings of people who come to the business meeting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_redefinition_of_planet makes for entertaining reading on the topic. It doesn't include the post-vote comment by astronomer David Brown (in a USA Today article for which I can't find the link at the moment), who said that the new definition "brings magic back into the solar system."