Promising the moon

Today, India sent out a successful mission to the moon. I am not in India at the moment and don't have access to the Indian news channels , but I am sure that the airwaves are flooded with self-congratulatory reports. And worse.

I can picture it right now: an NDTV spot where the newscaster is interviewing a "reknowned astrologer" about the effects of such an event. Of a man-made object landing on the moon, an how it will affect astrological conjunctions and so on. It is really fortunate that we haven't sent a man to the moon yet. Or it would be quite a difficult proposition for an astrologer to predict how the man's future would be affected!

It fills me a sense of hopelessness to think that in a country that is successfully able to send probes to the planets, the vast majority of the people still live in terror of what effect those planets have on our fates.