What we are saying goodbye to...
Space Shuttle launches are now a thing of the past. Today's launch of Atlantis is the last one ever. After this mission, the whole programme goes into retirement. I remember, as a kid, feeling excited by the whole concept of the space shuttle. Now, that whole era has come to an end. An exciting age of exploration and discovery - humans forging ahead into a new and better age - has ended, without anything to replace it.
What we are ushering in instead...
On the same day of the last ever shuttle launch, we have presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann signing 'The Marriage Vow', a far right homophobic and blatantly racist document which owes more to an age we thought we had left behind decades ago. This woman is a climate change denier, an advocate of anti-vaccination lunacy, believes in digging up half of Alaska in search of fossil fuels, opposes any sort of social security for the most vulnerable in society, considers a nuclear strike on Iran as a serious option, and would ban any sort of equality based on sexual orientation. She has an imaginative view of American history, with a view that the founding fathers of the United States would agree with all of her nasty, bigoted and ignorant views.
What is particularly sad is that her Victorian views have struck a chord with the underbelly of american opinion and she is being spoken of as a serious contender for the presidency. At one and the same time, we are waving goodbye to an age of serious scientific exploration and witnessing the emergence of an era of stupidity, anti-science, anti-reason, open-faced bigotry. Bachmann is dangerous because she doesn't understand just how stupid she really is. And for some reason, Americans quite like that...
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