(8 hours after the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster) - Ken MacLeod

When you’d lived long enough, she’d sometimes reflected, when certain habits had become ingrained no matter what refreshment of the neural pathways the immortality genes could bestow, ethics and etiquette became ever less distinct. Hitherto the involuntary equation had read one way, in disproportionate pangs of conscience over a small breach of manners. Now the terms had been inverted, and she felt over the Council majority’s horrible, criminal, potentially murderous mistake the sort of acute embarrassment that might have been appropriate for some ghastly faux pas. Dreadfully sorry, I’m such a ditz about these nuclear attack protocols...

I’m sure they’ll come up with all kinds of rationalizations, if the human precedent is anything to go by.

Of all the sciences, astronomy was the one the superstitious liked least.