I watched NASA TV last night, as the Mars rover "Curiosity" approached the planet and touched down. It was pretty amazing.
Eight and a half months, covering 350 million miles, executing an enormously complex and ingenious landing process right on time and exactly on target -- it approaches impossible. And yet, there it was. With pictures. The men and women at JPL went nuts. How could they not.
The value of such missions can be argued. But no matter what you think of the effort and its expense, it's impossible not to be impressed with the technology, the engineering, the genius of what goes into it all.
And -- far be it from me to point it out or to take an opportunity to state the obvious -- unless you believe the whole thing was faked, you must accept that science works. And, therefore, you cannot deny anthropogenic climate change or evolution. You can't. I've said it before: people who deny such things must not fly in planes, use computers, take antibiotics. Because that would be, you know, inconsistent. And no teabagger would want to be that, would they?
I apologize. I've taken an amazing moment and poisoned it. It was nothing short of incredible, and I loved every minute of it.
