Oh Pluto, You Devil

While I understand the need for there to be a clear and distinct definition for what exactly constitues a "planet," not just in the case of our current solar system but also for the future as humanity's reach (and hopefully humanity itself) expands outward into space, I cannot help but be amused over all the time, energy, and emotion (not to mention newsprint) that is currently being expended in the "battle" over Pluto's status. Scientists do tend towards being a distracted lot with assorted disconnections from reality anyway, willing to battle to the death over the most excruciating of minutiae while outside the sun is exploding, but something about this debate being so in the public eye has taken it, for me, right into the realm of the absurd. I mean, come on, there have actually been *picketers* out there on this matter. It's an icy ball of rock in the outer reaches of the solar system! Relax, people.

In other astronomical news:

Dear World,
No, Mars is never going to be as large in the night sky as the full moon. At least, not until the apocalypse. And probably not even then, because if God wants to smite us I'm sure he can think of more interesting ways than crashing a planet into us. I mean, this is the deity who busted out the locusts, boils, and frogs on the Egyptians. He's creative.
The "closest approach to Earth" that you all keep sending emails around about actually happened over 3 years ago now, in August of 2003, and I'm sure that none of you remembers a giant Mars in the night sky. Because it didn't happen. There was another one in October of 2005, but 2003 was the king, and the next time Mars gets as close as that will be in 2287 and you will all be dead. So stop wasting bandwidth. It doesn't grow on trees, you know.