Posthuman Blues

One would think a sane society would invest a sizeable percentage of energy and money to the location and prompt destruction of incoming near-Earth asteroids. But no, not us. "Enlightened" Western civilization is just too macho for such things, apparently. Even NASA's official Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking website looks like something thrown together at the last minute by a freshman Computer Science minor.

Even if we happened to locate a "global killer" using the scant resources available, what would we do about it? Have Bush broadcast snide remarks at it? More tax cuts, perhaps? We simply don't have the faintest semblance of an alert/avoidance system.

Compounding the problem, an untold number of people across the world have been trained to expect and even look forward to the End of the World. (Exhibit A: "In Case of Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned.") Whether it's a designer virus, climate change, greenhouse emissions, inbound comets, industrial toxins or good old-fashioned nuclear weapons, we'll eventually be done in.

But in the meantime, let's all buy Hum-Vees and watch Monday night football.