really bad timing, wouldn't ya say?

ok, so this from the nyt........Pluto dodged a bullet today.

In the hope of ending years of wrangling, a committee of astronomers and historians has proposed a new definition of the word “planet” that would expand at a stroke the family of planets from 9 to 12 and leave textbooks and charts in thousands of classrooms out of date.

But astronomers immediately began to wrangle about it.

“It’s a mess,” said Michael E. Brown of the California Institute of Technology.

Among the chosen few within the solar system would be not only Pluto, whose status has been challenged in recent years, but also Ceres, the largest asteroid; 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena, an object discovered by Dr. Brown in 2005 orbiting far beyond Pluto in the outer solar system; and even Pluto’s largest moon, Charon.

In addition, at least a dozen more solar system objects are waiting in the wings for more data to see if they fit the new definition of planethood, which is that an object be massive enough that gravity has formed it into a sphere and that it circles a star and not some other planet.

so....we are at war on many fronts in the middle east...and there are folks who are spending somebody's tax dollars figuring out the definition of a planet.......huh......?