"When I heard the hubbub about Pluto, my very first thought was, "How much lower can Pluto be demoted?"

I was thinking, of course, about Walt Disney's animated dog, whose master is a mouse -- a mouse that must be a giant of a rodent -- and Pluto's friend, another dog who wears pants, is taller than many of the Disney characters and talks. OK, talks "goofy."

But astronomers were talking about the former ninth planet in the solar system. According to the International Astronomical Union, Pluto no longer meets the guidelines of a full planet and has been stripped of that status. Pluto had been called a planet since its discovery in 1930.

Of course, it's still called a planet, but now it's a "dwarf" planet. So, rather than demoting Pluto, the scientists just insulted it.

I wonder if those scientists who voted Pluto out of the planetary lineup know how much influence this rock has on our daily lives . . . our astrological lives, anyway? I wonder if they checked their horoscopes -- the REAL importance of the stars -- before they went into their meeting to vote on Pluto or if any of them were a Scorpio."

Get the Story:
DORREEN YELLOW BIRD COLUMN: My stars, don't demote Pluto (The Grand Forks Herald 9/2)

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