Enjoy!
Normally, I try
to be tolerant and understanding of opinions and perspectives that differ from
my own. There are limits, however, to
how far I am willing to go. Last summer,
the disgusting psychopaths finally did it!
Yes, I am talking about the reprehensible decision to demote Pluto from
its rightful status as a planet to non-planethood. You might argue that these bozos—however
incompetent they appear to be—were well intentioned, but as former President
Dwight D. Eisenhower remarked, “Well, if the driver of your school bus runs
into a truck, hits a lamppost, ... You get a new bus driver.” With Pluto being by far the most eccentric of
all the planets, this is a thinly veiled attack on eccentrics. As an eccentric, I am deeply offended. As God puts it in a cartoon that sets the
record straight, “I could have sworn that I made nine planets!”
As one of their justifications for their
outrageous act, some of the bozos point out that a larger astronomical body has
now been found orbiting beyond the orbit of Pluto. So what?
Why be so stingy? As I understand
it, neither the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud, the Tibetan Book of
the Dead, the Bhagavad Gita, or any other source of religious authority decrees
that the number of planets orbiting the sun most be in the single digits. According to my calculations, the surface
area of Pluto is a whopping 17.95 times that of the State of Texas?
Those who consider this “too puny” to be treated as a “serious” planet
are now messing with both Pluto and Texas. By the way, Pluto’s surface is also almost twice
that of the entire U.S.!
I am a
reasonable guy. I don’t think this would
have been a particularly useful idea, but if the bozos and wanted to demote a
pathetic planet such as Mercury—which has no moons—to non-planethood, I could
have lived with that. Wouldn’t that make
more sense, especially since, in recent years, it has been determined that
Pluto actually has at least three
moons instead of just the first one discovered a few decades ago, to sacrifice
the more pathetic planet?
If the bozos had
come out the idea that Uranus should be demoted because it spins at an
untraditional angle, their unmitigated bigotry would have been immediately
decried by righteous people around the World.
Why have people been more tolerant of prejudice against an eccentric
planet than one that is axially challenged?
Discriminating this way is no more fair than punishing Jupiter for its
red spot—or taunting Saturn for harboring an excessive number of moons. Are the psychos trying to punish their
mothers for a bad childhood by forcefully destroying the mnemonic “My very
excellent mother just sent us nine pies?”[1]
The one thing I will
say in defense of the psychopaths is that they at least waited until after the
passing of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930. Implementing the demotion while he was still
alive would have added injury to the insult that he was never awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor that he so richly deserved for his discovery. Professor Tombaugh’s wife remarked after the
announcement of the act of travesty that her husband had come to peace with the
situation, philosophically remarking “Whatever it is, it’s out there.” I have to say that is an exceptionally
generous attitude toward those clowns.
Last year was
not the first time that the lunatic idea came up. If it had been, an argument could have been
made that the perpetrators acted hastily on a poorly thought out idea. I remember clearly back to the tremendous
sorrow I experienced when the bozos first embarrassed the profession of
astronomy by proposing to rob Pluto of its birthright. I did not realize how many righteous individuals
actually shared my perspective and I was deeply touched to hear the righteous
indignation that emanated. I thought the
psychos had learned their lesson when the idea was abandoned in the face of the
backlash that had resulted. I had been
lulled into a false sense of security. I
simply could not conceive the evil of which those psychos were capable.
The good news, at least, is that the bozos
do not have the power to tyrannically impose their misguided perspective on
those of us who know better. Pluto will always be a planet to me, and
presumably to the vast majority of good, decent people around the World.
[1] Not having gone to elementary school in
an English speaking country, I only learned of this device after the
controversy started.
Posts
