So we've lost another shuttle. And my reactions are twisted.

"You can say it's a built-in biological reaction," said William F. Fry, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. "Sometimes people respond in tasteless ways, sometimes in artistic ways."

My reactions don't seem to tend toward the artistic.

What's the last thing that passed through Capt Husband's mind? His forehead.

Seven professional risk takers dying while doing what it is that they do as an expression of their complex characters of risk taking, adventure seeking, courage, sense of duty, etc is many things. But tragedy is not one of them. Nor is it an occaision that calls for us to wear the hair suits and beat ourselves up with calls for 'human decency.'

Seven Brave/Crazy/Stupid people died. And we are poorer for their loss.

Folks tried to sell shuttle debris on ebay. Probably not a good thing. The ebay sales would be much funnier if they were for pictures of the debris in site, followed by plaster casts of the impact craters.

I had random thoughts of 'recreations' of the impact craters of the 'organic debris.' Another sick response.

The world is right about decency, et al. Twisted humor is just my way of dealing with yet another whack at what were the core beliefs of my youth.

I believed in many things, Boy Scouts and Apple Pie, We all love the FBI and our leaders never lie, but under it all was a near worship of science and technology.

And that belief was most represented by the space program. Rocketships created by men who wore the haircut and glasses that Cory Doctorow wears, but without his sense of style, and of the brave men who heroically mounted these slide rule creations made large.

And then I learned more, and learned there is no truth, or at least not one single truth. And then Challenger went boom, and I gasped, and cried, and I still have the newspapers, and printouts of news reports from Compuserve.

And then it all came down to a stupid O ring, and to money, and greed, and deception.

And now seven more people are dead, and a big piece of American Technological Big Dick Swagger is spread across the home of Big Swaggering American Dicks.

And the blow to the families, and friends, and colleaques of these men and women lost is large. And sad. But they made their own choice, in the immortal words of Buzz Lightyear 'I just lit a rocket. Rockets explode.'

And that attitude will keep me safe. After all, I have the damn good sense not to tie a rocket to my backside and light the fuse.

But rockets come in all shapes, and sometimes fuses don't look like fuses.