With the recent news that Pluto is out of the exclusive Club Planet, Kathleen and I decided to come up with ten ways to help you avoid becoming the Pluto in your group.
10. Beware the outskirts. In your group are you trying to be the fringe member, always wanting to do things your own way? Is your orbit a little farther out than the rest? You may be in danger.
9. Be big. At least, be bigger than someone else in your group. And it’s okay to start small, but don’t become complacent. Pluto’s seeming contentment with remaining the smallest of the planets ultimately led to its downfall.
8. Choose your allies carefully. Yes, Pluto had three moons pulling for it, but were they the right moons? Also notice that the number of moons makes no difference. It’s always about quality. Earth, for example, seems to be doing just fine with one. Of course, Earth chose to align itself with not just any moon, but The Moon.
7. Don’t give us the cold shoulder. Pluto shot itself in the foot twice when it chose to go that far out there. Not only was it on the fringe, it strayed a little too far from the Sun and bang! it iced over completely. You gotta crack that shell and come sit by the fire if you want some lovage, my friend. Pluto’s mean temperature is 37° Kelvin. That’s ice, ice, baby. Word to your mother.
6. Pick a good name. Pluto, the god of the underworld. It doesn’t get much more depressing than that. Unless of course you also have a moon named Charon.
“Hey, let’s all go out for drinks!”
“Great! Okay, who’s calling the god of the underworld?”
“Not it!”
“Not it!”
“Is he going to bring Charon, the ferryman of the dead, with him this time?”
“Ooh, I didn’t think about that.”
“Let’s just go and then we’ll send him a link to the photoset on Flickr.”
“Agreed!”
5. Dress up a little sometimes. Apparently, bracelets are still de rigeur for a night out on the town with the planets; just ask Saturn. Jupiter has a spinning, red tattoo. Mars is all red and has a big tattoo of a face. Pluto could learn a big lesson here.
4. Atmosphere is important. Look at the Earth. It’s where all the party people are. Why? Atmosphere. If you don’t have a unique ambiance, why bother?
3. 37 pieces of flair. You know you need 15 minimum, but if it’s the only thing you’ve got going for you, go for broke. The Sun’s definitely got flair [sic]. Pluto refused to buy into this superficial social booster and was severed from the group.
2. Avoid Disney entanglements. We’re just speculating here, but knowing how tight the leash is on company trademarks, we think someone at Disney probably infiltrated the IAU. If that’s the case, Pluto never had a chance.
1. Embrace lifelong learning. Take a dance lesson. Learn a new language, or master your first one. Learn how to cook, how to take photos, how to paint, how to ride a horse, how to play a sport, how to choose wines, or how to build a web application using Ruby on Rails. See 43 Things for more ideas. Get rid of your cable TV ($1,000 a year) and travel to a foreign country (or at least to the beach). Sell your TV on Craigslist and crack open a book (tip: books are free at the library). The point is, people enjoy meeting and talking to interesting people. People who are passionate about their subject are interesting, even exciting, even if the subject isn’t exciting to anyone else. As far as we know, Pluto only cared about Pluto. Not a smart move.
We hope this has been helpful to you. We certainly learned a lot from Pluto’s demise and think it’s worth further exploration. The planet with ears to hear, let him hear.
