The space shuttle just -- what, came apart, blew up? We don't know. The usual suspects -- how awful it is that we even have 'the usual suspects' -- are going to be blamed. And who knows, maybe they're right. Maybe right now someone evil is quite happy. The polished, glib talking heads, both media and governmental, are undoubtedly already gearing up the sonorous words, dipping into their stock of Phrases That They Hope Sound Like Winston Churchill. Well, here's my contribution.

The spirit of exploration and discovery is one of the few constants in our world that speaks against the spirit of hatred and acrimony (another of the constants). NASA may be an overblown federal bureaucracy that has as little in common with the spirit of exploration as the Concorde has with the Wright Flyer, but they are as close to a guardian of that noble spirit as we seem to have, these days. I hope that this tragedy -- that overused word that is precisely the correct one here -- does not cause their resolve, or the resolve of their supporters, to weaken. We need them. At times, perhaps, not as much as the ten thousand other things we need, but we need them.

Requiescat in pace, Columbia.