Is That Uranus or just yer Ass-teroid?

Gotta love the new mnemonic for the names and order of the planets in our solar system.

(Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune)

It used to be "My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas". Or "Man, Very Early, Made Jars Stand Up Nearly Perpendicular", as my boss rat-a-tat-tatted off yesterday. But with Pluto demoted to the status of "dwarf planet", a new sentence is required.

Heard on 680 News yesterday: "My Very Exotic Mistress Just Showed Up Naked".

Who said astronomy was boring?

(Reminds me of that classic Futurama moment when Fry makes reference to the planet Uranus. He's informed that nobody's called it that for nearly a thousand years, on account of all the stupid schoolboy jokes. "So what's it called now?" asks Fry.
"Urrectum.")

All kidding aside, I suspect most people greeted the news of Pluto's exile with a yawn...the same way they'd greet any other off-Earth news. The prevailing attitude concerning all things extra-terrestrial is sad...and more than a little baffling. NASA is one of the few government programs stateside which has paid for itself many times over. Too many times I've heard people ask "why go into space when there are so many problems here on Earth?" Umm, to help solve them, perhaps? Hard vacuum offers unlimited solar energy. There's more wealth in the asteroid belt beyond Mars than there is on Earth. Population pressures dirtside could be eased with orbital cities at Lagrange-4 and -5, the colonization of Luna, even the terraforming of Mars. All of this could be done with present technology. All that is lacking is the will.

Note to those who believe that human beings, admittedly having made such a mess of this planet, do not "deserve" a new homeworld: Please don't tar me with that brush. Historically and at present, the 'mess' on Terra is due largely to insular thinking. A narrow worldview produces a certain reality: a wide view produces entirely another. Those of us who look to space aren't out to make the same mistakes our fellows have down here, believe me.