It should be no secret by now that I'm an astrophysics (and plain old physics) nerd. Admittedly, I read David Bodanis' E=mc^2 and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time last spring...for fun.***On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto, as it turns out, is not a planet. It was a terrible, terrible day for our solar system.
Clare & the Reasons - Pluto (highly rec'd)
Blair - Halfmoon (Pluto EP)
...it says so on her myspace, Blair named her first EP after Pluto was deemed a "Dwarf Planet." Dwarf planet my ass. Previous post on Blair.
My favorite portion of Holst's "The Planets" (he didn't include poor Pluto):
Montreal Symphony Orchestra - Mercury, the Winged Messenger
***I probably would have read more nerdy physics books if I hadn't gotten caught on a biography phase, which meant reading Howard Sounes' Dylan biography, Adam Feinstein's biography of Pablo Neruda, Bob Spitz's Beatles biography...then The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum, which isn't a biography at all. I managed to finish Robert Caro's book on Lyndon B. Johnson, Master of the Senate last fall before I became too overwhelmed with school work and stopped reading for fun for 6 months.
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Ah, I'm afraid I have to disagree on this one. My post last year on Pluto to explain why.
*impish smile*, i actually agree with you on the iau rules, but you know...it's kind of like tomatoes being classified as a fruit.
On August 24, 2006, four percent of the IAU, most of whom are not planetary scientists, adopted a sloppy, and linguistically nonsensical planet definition that excludes Pluto. It was immediately rejected by over 300 professional astronomers in a petition led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and one of the leading experts on Pluto in the world. This definition will not stand, and there will be a strong effort to overturn it in 2009. Pluto is a planet, as is any non-self-luminous object in hydrostatic equilibrium orbiting a star.