Get Pluto out of Here!

History has no record of Grover Cleveland and Grover Cleveland ever sitting down together. That’s odd, since the two Presidents occupied the Oval Office just four years apart–Cleveland from 1885 to 1889, and Cleveland following him there in 1893. Had it not been for the four years Benjamin Harrison served as President between them, the country could have transitioned from one Cleveland to the other without even changing the monogrammed bathrobe in the White House residence.

Had Cleveland and Cleveland ever spoken, it would have been a decidedly one-way conversation, since they were the same man. But you wouldn’t know it from American history books. Right there in the great march of Presidents, from Washington at No. 1 to Bush at 43, is Cleveland clocking in at 22 and then again–like a presidential whack-a-mole–at 24. We’re a country with 43 Presidents, but only 42 men have held the job. The two President Bushes affectionately refer to each other by the nicknames 41 and 43, but the fact is, they’re really 40 and 42.

It was last week’s coverage of the controversy concerning the planet Pluto that brought Cleveland to mind (and, no, not because of his physique; that was Taft). Much the way 19th century pundits no doubt fought over which numeral to assign the inconveniently nonconsecutive Cleveland, astronomers have spent the past few years debating whether or not Pluto is in fact a planet or whether new findings place it in a family of smaller, humbler objects. The problem is more complex than just firing a planet and downsizing the solar system from nine to eight. If you keep your definitions loose enough to retain Pluto, then you have to award the planet label to at least three similar objects in our solar system. Think Congress gets into a slapfest over the problem of immigrant workers? That’s civil compared with astronomers’ catfights over immigrant worlds.

So let’s be clear: Pluto has to go. Clean out your locker, turn in your playbook and go see the coach. Oh, and on your way out, tell the other walk-ons and wannabes that the roster is frozen. We’re sticking with the original eight.

There’s sound scientific reason to return the solar system to what it was before Pluto the poseur was discovered in 1930. True planets form in roughly the equatorial plane of the sun, occupying specific, permanent orbits. That’s not Pluto. It is a tiny joyrider from the rubble stream surrounding the solar system that broke free and orbits the sun in a tilted, elongated orbit.

But astronomers don’t see things so simply. Instead, they’ve appointed a committee that met in Paris in June and July and drafted a proposed solution that defines a planet by shape, center of orbital gravity and more. Committees and clarity don’t go together, and the proposal is just what critics feared: science as tax code, with the cosmos codified in such elaborate ways that, never mind nine planets, we could end up with dozens.

It’s this kind of overthinking that leads not just to the cosmic sloppiness of a crowded solar system but also to the existential absurdity of counting Cleveland twice. You don’t have to be a stickler to want to heed the dictum of William of Ockham, the 14th century monk who famously declared, “Things should not be multiplied unnecessarily,” which is how they said “Less is more” back then. So in honor of Ockham, let’s dispense with a few other stubborn, definitional problems once and for all.

Europe: you’re not a continent; you’ve never been a continent. I know, it would be galling if a raw cowboy island like Australia retained its glittery Continent label while you were downgraded to Midsize Peninsula of Western Asia. But hello? Look at a map. Besides, these days you’ve got the euro, which is currently trading at about a buck thirty against the dollar. Don’t be greedy.

Y: a vowel? Please. Y gets plenty of work as a consonant without having to moonlight in a job it wasn’t designed for. Someone needs to show some guts and either change the spelling of problem words (what’s wrong with fli, cri, cript?) or relax the rule about every word having to have at least one vowel in it. Either way is fine, but the whole “sometimes y” thing has always smelled like a dodge.

Panda: raccoon or bear? Seems the lesser known red panda has a scrap of raccoon in him, which has thrown the whole panda clan into question. I say split the difference: go with bears for the white ones, raccoons for the red ones, and do it quick. (These are biologists we’re dealing with, not astronomers. Give them too much time, and they’ll start dissecting things.) And if we ever find yet another type of panda out there, just call it Grover Cleveland. There are plenty of those to go around.