"Phil Loves Pluto" joke

I read the news today (oh boy!) that Pluto is no longer an official planet. After years of being one of the planetary gang, followed by additional years of contentious debate by astronomers who seem to have nothing better to do with their time, Pluto was (to paraphrase the slogan of a tiresome reality show) voted off the universe.

Honestly, I always loved Pluto as a planet. Being the smallest of the bunch and the furthest from the Sun, Pluto always seemed like the plucky underdog of the heavens. In fact, no one even knew it was there until 1930 – and it took an amateur astronomer to find it, no less (all of the so-called professionals didn’t even know it was there). Plus, it moved to its own drumbeat: rather than run in parallel orbit with the other planets, it had the audacity to cut off Neptune and muscle in on its orbital path.

I can also sympathize with Pluto for being told it’s not good enough to belong. Hell, I think everyone’s been in a situation like that at one point or another.

But I must say that I love the astrology community. Read this from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s L.A. Johnson:

Planet, schmanet.

Astrologers are unfazed by news that the world's foremost astronomers yesterday kicked Pluto out of the planet club. (And presumably won't allow Pluto to play in any celestial object games.)

"What people call something has very little to do with what it is," said Rob Hand, a leading U.S. astrologer from Reston, Va., who teaches the history of astrology at Kepler College, an online college based near Seattle. "What anybody chooses to call something is irrelevant; it's what sort of effect and use it has."

Fortunately, the astrologers refrained from the obvious response to the astronomers: Take your official designation and shove it up Uranus!

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