Planetary Update

Well, they've booted Pluto.

And I just ran across this entertaining op-ed piece in the Times, an impassioned plea to "grandfather in" Pluto, which makes a lot of sense to me, but which was evidently too little, too late. You should read the whole thing. Here's a fragment:

The situation this seems most similar to is the inextricably tangled social nightmare that is inviting people to your wedding. You truly want to invite your distant and eccentric but dear old friend Pluto, but this necessarily means inviting his horrible girlfriend, too, plus then maybe you’re obliged to invite all the other people you were both friends with in college, friends he’s still in contact with who will be offended if he’s invited and they’re not but who, frankly, are now boring people with whom you no longer have anything in common.

Some would suggest we just have to be harsh about this and not invite any of them, Pluto included. But these people are forgetting that we already sent Pluto an invitation, 76 years ago. Pluto has rented a tuxedo.