I tell you what: you get these astro-types wound up, and they get one hell of a power trip going.
As you know, the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto in 2006, reclassifying it as a dwarf planet and instantly obsoleting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of science fair projects worldwide.
So now National Geographic holds a solar system mnemonic contest including this new classification of “dwarf planet” and the three known examples, including the recently stripped Pluto. A Montana schoolgirl named Maryn Smith came up with the winner: “My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants” for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres (which used to be just an asteroid), Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and, um…Edwina. Yeah, that’s it. Dwarf Planet Edwina.
Yeah, well, all y’all just shove it up your asses. (The astronomers, not the contest winner.)
It’s like you got drunk with the power. You got to (holy shit) demote a planet, so now you’re going to fuck with the solar system every year? “Hey, let’s have a mnemonic contest and throw the dwarves in there! Woohoo, we are having some big fun now!”
Nope. Not playing. There are eight planets. You said so when you demoted Pluto. You can score your federal grants and wax philosophical about focal lengths and tell puns with “Kepler” in the punchline and grope each other’s naughty bits in the maintenance closet and whatever else you funsters do, but you don’t get to be in the news all the time. I mean, sheesh, the article above says there may be as many as 200 “dwarf planets” in our solar system, just awaiting discovery (and, one would presume, new mnemonics).
Stop the madness. Eight planets.
Possibly related posts (automatically generated):
- God, Galileo, and gays Oliver Thomas, a Baptist minister (obviously with enormous cojones, God bless him), has written an important USA Today editorial on the Bible and homosexuality called...
- Joe Paterno: could not coach again, and Penn State made the correct decision in terminating him. deserves more than the instant and total excoriation he’s receiving in...
- Oh, the things you learn at Wikipedia The happiest nation in the world is Denmark. Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli and Howard Cunningham are the only two characters to appear in every single...
- Gimme a C! Gimme an H! Gimme an L!… Despite late rallies from drug-resistant gonorrhea and congenital syphilis, chlamydia finished first in the 2006 bacterial sexually-transmitted disease championships, with over 1 million cases reported. ...
- Behold the $578 million public school The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex, part of the public school system, was just completed on the site of the Ambassador Hotel, where its...
bigdave on 
Bo on 
BamaDan on 
Jack Eason on 
Very funny post, but you gotta cut back on the caffeine!
I never liked Pluto much anyway.
Ceres and Edwina? Wow, I’m out of the loop.
Edwina is really Eris.
Eris??? Lol. I’m still out of the loop.
Regardless of if Pluto is a planet or a dwarf planet,it still a facinating object on the outer fringes of our solar system.And it is still worthy of our scrutiny.Remember,the casini space probe is still earmarked for that planet.I,m really excited about the surface detail and topographical features that will be transmitted back to us upon its arrival.