Andromeda

Although we at Andromeda had hoped to provide daily commentary on the shuttle's return to flight, all the news today is good, leaving us with nothing to grouse about. So we're going to talk about something else: the indomitable human spirit.

For is it not that spirit of striving, forever striving, which makes a man a man, a woman a woman, and so on? Did the humble monkey ever dream of such modern marvels as ALT-TAB window-switching, or the coolatta? Or, even if he did, did he throw himself down in the dirt and roll around screeching when the first coolatta prototypes exploded in Earth-enveloping balls of fire, or when the first ALT-TAB switching attempts caused sharpened steel rods to be driven through the computer user's eyes, or did he do what humans did, and pull the steel rods out of their eyes, roll around in the dirt screeching and then pick themselves up and dust themselves off and try again? Sure, they next tried the coolatta with MORE fissionable materials and the ALT-TAB switching with even stronger springs on the steel rods, but what's important is they did not give up.

No, they kept trying and trying until, finally, they unleashed their intercontinental ballistic coolattas and their multiple independently targeted ALT-TAB switching upon their quiet neighbors and took all their space shuttles. And that man was Eli Whitney.