"This would be like if botanists had found something between trees and bushes and invented the word 'animal' to describe it."

If you've ever spent days^h^h^h^hweeks on end arguing with people about the definition of a word, you'll find this article both comforting and hilarious. If not, you might find it hard to understand how anyone couuld get so worked up about such a thing.

[ I'm total agreement with the geologist's point of view. The word exists and is in common use in it's field. Hijacking it doesn't make sense, particularly when the whole intent behind the "creation" of the term is to create an entirely novel classification. Come up with something novel, or go generic and use "dwarf planet," which is perfectly comprehensible, if not particularly exciting.

And don't get me started on this astronomer's assertion that the extent of their fact checking was the built in dictionaries in Word and WordPerfect. Aside from reinforcing the stereotype that science geeks are disdainful of the humanities, it's just lazy. I know *someone* at that conference has, or knows someone who has, a decent dictionary, or access to one. Major universities often have a full 20 volume OED or the next best thing, the Shorter Oxford, which is only about $100, and is extremely comprehensive. Someone could've identified this issue. -k ]

Plutons, planets and dwarves