Deep Impact

Now, I don't mean to be flippant about what was, by any measure, one of the greater recent successes for the space program, nor do I have any illusions about how much we can learn from this, but does anyone else detect a sort of perverse vibe to the coverage of, and excitement about, our ability to throw something at a comet really really fast?

"Our experiment went very, very well," said co-investigator Pete Schultz of Brown University, who seemed to be brimming with enthusiasm. "We touched a comet and we touched it hard."

Could Vonnegut have said it better? Or Kubrick? Indeed, there's something oddly Strangelovian about the glee evident in the coverage of this event.

Maybe it's a White House plot: after all, if we can hit a comet traveling 23,000 miles per hour at such a great distance, surely it should be no problem to knock down a single, incoming rogue nuke, right? Right? Anyone?