Contemporary American Christianity is often accused of consciously 'dumbing down' in a number of areas including theology and worship. The lack of academic achievement in public schools over the past several decades has resulted in downward spiraling performance expectations from our students simply in order to continue promoting through the educational 'system.' The media is criticized for creating a 'sound-bite' mentality steeped in flashy multimedia and light on content that can supposedly actually make you less intelligent...

Well in case you've been living under a rock (and you may well be if you're reading this!), I must confess, it IS true. The news media has dumbed us down and is doing very little to raise our sights toward anything above about the third-grade level. You've surely read or heard about the freight train derailment in Alabama on Wednesday (May 2nd). This train was carrying shuttle solid-rocket boosters from the Morton Thiokol plant in Utah to Kennedy Space Center in Florida...interestingly enough, this shipment was carrying the SRBs slated for use on my flight, STS-120, scheduled to launch in October.

Here's how Katie Couric, herself the paragon of intellectual journalism, reported the facts. (Fair warning, there is a bit of technical jargon here, but remember, we've been hearing about SRBs and other shuttle-related hardware for 26 years, so the terms should be a least a little familiar):

The so-called solid rocket boosters or SRBs are the two skinny tubes connected to the large external fuel tank and attached to the belly of the shuttle. The boosters are like giant bottle rockets , they burn a rubbery fuel at 5,000 degrees and under tremendous pressure to propel the shuttle 28 miles into the sky.

Pure, unadulterated genius...