Tigers on the moon? Not.

I recently watched the BBC's Planet Earth series, one segment of which featured a "DNA bank" which is storing the DNA of endangered species so that if they do go extinct, perhaps someday they'll be brought back to life. Well, that's wonderful -- I hope someday someone can.

But the segment ended by musings about someday repopulating those now-endangered species on other worlds, perhaps even "tigers on the moon." It was all in the tone of starry-eyed science fantasists of the kind you'd find at science-fiction conventions, the folks whose deepest conviction of faith is belief in Science as Omnipotent Savior. That whatever they can imagine, someday Science will make come true.

The curious theology aside, apparently it has never occurred to them that just because something is far-fetched today doesn't mean it'll become a good idea in the future. It's true that time and progress can cure ignorance, but stupid is forever. I mean, the moon is an airless body bombarded by radiation where the temperatures swing from over +200F to below -200F, and hundreds of years from now, when we know much more about science, putting tigers on the moon will still be stupid. Get a clue, people.