In 1969, Astronaut Neil Armstrong slowly made his way down the ladder of his lunar landing craft then took a breathtaking leap to place the very first human footprint on the surface of another world. Billions of people sat transfixed in front of television sets all over the world waiting for him to speak. His words, so very carefully chosen in advance, instantly became a fixture of human history forever:

“That was one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”

Yesterday, the communications software aboard the International Space Station was upgraded to provide direct access to the Internet. Astronaut T. J. Creamer took advantage of the technological advance to secure his own place in human history by posting the first unaided Tweet from outer space:

Centuries from now, the future slaps its collective forehead.

Do kids even still want to be astronauts when they grow up?  That was always right near the top of my list when I was a little boy.  I was not quite six years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, and I’ll wager there weren’t many American boys born between 1955-1965 who didn’t harbor at least a passing fantasy about it.  But I’m not even sure that my daughter even knows what an astronaut is.

Well, all you gentlemen of a certain age, there’s still hope.  NASA’s hiring.  The pay’s decent, and the requirements don’t seem all that tough:  you have to be a U.S. citizen, pass the drug test and the physical, oh, and the posting says “some travel required”.

(Just make sure your diaper-wearing obsessed girlfriend doesn’t already work there, mm’kay?)