Motus Mentis

Property values on Pluto plummeted today as the icy worldlet, long considered a bit of an arriviste by such solar-system Brahmins as Jupiter and Venus, had its status demoted from “planet” to “dwarf planet”.

It’s always been a tough go, socially, for the frosty little fellow. A swarthy vagabond, born on the wrong side of the tracks, and puny in comparison to the “better” planets, it has an orbit that inclines at a boorish 17° to the ecliptic, and, obviously not knowing its place, quite impertinently passes inside the orbit of stately Neptune from time to time. Even the moons of the “real” planets look down on pipsqueak Pluto; it is smaller than many of them, including our own, and is rightly seen by them as something of a poseur, given that its accomplice, Charon, is not a “real” moon at all, orbiting as it does a point that is not even located within Pluto proper, but rather somewhere in the space between.

So the International Astronomical Union, tired of having this ill-bred gate-crasher at its garden party, has decided that from now on Pluto is not a planet at all, but a “dwarf”. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of it, though; just wait till these folks get involved.