"It's disappointing in a way, and confusing," said Patricia Tombaugh, the 93-year-old widow of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh.I think reporters call something "dramatic" when they have already reported something else -- in this case, the astronomer's trial balloon of calling Pluto a "pluton planet" and thus not completely kicking it out of the planetary canon. Pluto is now a "dwarf planet".
"I don't know just how you handle it. It kind of sounds like I just lost my job," she said from Las Cruces, N.M. "But I understand science is not something that just sits there. It goes on. Clyde finally said before he died, 'It's there. Whatever it is. It is there.'" --Dinky Pluto loses its status as planet (Yahoo! News (will expire))
Next we'll hear about Pluto losing its job as Mickey Mouse's sidekick.
Loosely related: I will check out this Palm astronomy application later: http://www.aho.ch/pilotplanets/
Update:
My kids had a "Pluto party," where they ate cold chocolate and sang, "We love you Pluto, oh yes we do..."
I blogged earlier about how upset my children were about Pluto's demotion. To make them feel better, I composed this new acronym:
Meddling
Villanous
Eggheads
Mercilessly
Just
Stomped
Upon
Nostalgia.
I'd rather remember those than try and insert Ceres, Charon and Xena into the mix :) I have a song that sings all of the planets - except one. At the end, one character turns to the other and says, "Hey - you forgot Uranus!" (with the long a sound). The other character simply says, "Goodnight everybody!" Sheesh...