MY VERY EARNEST MOTHER JUST SENT US NEWS. No plutocracy can preserve Pluto's planetary pretensions.

Pluto, a planet since 1930, got the boot because it didn't meet the new rules, which say a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must "clear the neighborhood around its orbit." That disqualifies Pluto, whose oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, downsizing the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine.

Under the new definition, Neptune is now obligated to invoke the Law of Gross Tonnage and clear the dwarf planet known as Pluto out of its orbit when that overlap produces a near collision. (I think there's a fixed point argument that assures the existence of such an event, and I bet some astronomer has already calculated its timing.)

Astronomers have labored without a universal definition of a planet since well before the time of Copernicus, who proved that the Earth revolves around the sun, and the experts gathered in Prague burst into applause when the guidelines were passed.

Which gives Poliblogger a moment of Schadenfreude.

And the hard science types make fun of us social scientist because we argue about definitions….

But, as with any other debate, there is No Final Say.

Pluto and objects like it will be known as "dwarf planets," which raised some thorny questions about semantics: If a raincoat is still a coat, and a cell phone is still a phone, why isn't a dwarf planet still a planet?

NASA said Pluto's downgrade would not affect its $700 million New Horizons spacecraft mission, which this year began a 9 1/2-year journey to the oddball object to unearth more of its secrets.

But mission head Alan Stern said he was "embarrassed" by Pluto's undoing and predicted that Thursday's vote would not end the debate. Although 2,500 astronomers from 75 nations attended the conference, only about 300 showed up to vote.

"It's a sloppy definition. It's bad science," he said. "It ain't over."

I'm waiting for the radical semioticians to put their two cents in. If the concept of "planet" is a social construction reflecting the interests of a power structure, of what meaning the concept "universe," let alone the perception of "universe?"