Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

US & Int'l Papers

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Pluto, R.I.P.

Friday August 25, 2006

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Just when you thought the world had just about enough to worry about, Scientific American magazine informs us that "a small cluster of astronomers has voted to demote Pluto from its planetary status."

Instead of the nine planets in the Solar System which we have been learning about since third grade; now there will be only eight:

Mercury;
Venus;
Earth;
Sneezy;
Sleepy;
Doc;
Dasher; and
Blitzen

The new definition of what makes a planet is, "a celestial body must be in orbit around the Sun; must be large enough that it takes on a nearly round shape; and has cleared its orbit of other objects."

According to the BBC, Pluto, "which was discovered in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh," will be referred to as a 'dwarf planet' "because its highly elliptical orbit overlaps with that of Neptune" and, thus, has not cleared its orbit of other objects.

That business about "clearing its orbit" sounds less than scientifically precise to me, but then I was 47 before I knew there was a difference between a cosmetologist and a cosmologist.

For those who still don't know: Madge (the "you're soaking in it" manicurist) was a cosmetologist. Carl ("billions and billions of star stuff") Sagan was a cosmologist.

Pluto, it turns out, is actually smaller than some other bodies which are at the outer edge of the Solar System in a region called the "Kuiper Belt" which is not, I am assured, named for the thing holding up the pants of Mel Kiper, the ESPN guy who bores us to death about the NFL draft starting the day after the previous NFL draft has been completed.

Dear Mr. Mullings:

Are there any more puns you can stick into this thing before you move on to another - ANY other - topic?

Signed,
Tom Friedman, President
The Flat World Society

Well � I was going to try and work around to a really amusing Uranus line, but I'll let that go.

New Topic: Earlier in the week I did a panel discussion with Mullfave Donna Brazile. She, of course, told the Midwest Legislators Conference that the Dems would pick up the House and probably get to 50-50 in the Senate.

I said the Ds might pick up as many as 10 to 12 in the House but not more than three in the Senate.

My reasoning had to do with the CNN/Gallup poll which had been released that morning showing the measurement known as the "generic ballot" had collapsed from plus 16 for the Democrats to only plus two which was within the margin of error.

I said this was what was going to happen on election day: People will go into the polls somewhere between ambivalent with, and angry at, Republicans in the Congress. But, as they prepared to pull the lever, or press the button, or punch out the chad they would say to themselves, "I'm not happy with these guys, but I am very uncomfortable with the notion of putting the MoveOn.org/Al Sharpton wing of the Democratic Party in charge of national security."

Finally, as we move toward the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, CNN and others carried a Reuters story quoting the head of the National Hurricane Center, Max Mayfield, saying "we're going to have a very powerful hurricane in a major metropolitan area worse than what we saw in Katrina and it's going to be a mega-disaster."

Another global warming effect? George W. Bush's fault again? Should we begin shipping rowboats to Mobile? Or find plans for an Ark on the Internet?

If you read as far as the fifth graf you found that Mayfield wasn't making a prediction about this hurricane season and wasn't warning about the effects of driving SUVs:

"� as long as we continue to develop the coastline like we are, we're setting up for disaster."

Oh. Not tomorrow. Good. Well, thanks for the scare, Reuters.

Uranus.

On the Secret Decoder Ring Page today: Links to the BBC's Pluto explanation and the CNN Hurricane Terror piece. In addition, two - count 'em - TWO Mullfotos which include a handy Travelers' Tip you won't want to miss, and a Catchy Caption of the Day which will make you giggle.

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