Intelligence Professor of Hard Heart & Soft-ish Head

Kieran Healy rightly takes umbrage with Professor Reynolds for stupid, inconsistent comments about how the Space Shuttle disaster is not being covered sufficently in France.
Here's another to add to the list. 34 people died in a train crash in Zimbabwe and all Instapundit can say is this:
‘THIS is a tragedy, too. What makes the Columbia's loss more striking than the deaths of train passengers is that space exploration is forward-looking, not just part of ordinary life, and such a loss is a setback to something important, and noble. It's not that astronauts' lives are worth more than those of anyone else; it's what they do, and what it stands for.’
This sort of nonsense is just so unnecessary. Who the fuck does Instatwit think he is to even bring the two things into the same discussion? What does it even mean? If his concern is with a number of unfortunate people dying, then just let him note the tragedy and leave the world-weary evaluations alone. He can protest all he likes that he is not saying the astronauts are more important, but that's exactly what he's doing. It's a bigger tragedy because they were doing more important work. What a crock.
And btw: nine people were killed in a Sydney train crash the other day. Am I allowed to take Reynolds to task for not mentioning it? No, I'll just do what he does: "Hmm. That's representative, too."
Perhaps he could write and tell me that the train passenger aren't as worthy of attention because they weren't involved in important enough work.
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