When I started writing these posts in 1996 — at $500 a pop for the first three years — I took no time off. Hey: $500 for a half hour’s work? Do you even begin to know how money motivates me? Once the money stopped, I found myself working harder on them — some perverse thing about doing it because I “wanted to” versus doing it because I had committed to. But I did feel entitled to take, occasionally, what I used to call “Andy days,” though rarely if ever more than one every month or two. And I reserve the right to do that again.
This in fact is sort of one of those days.
But it’s a chance to offer you two things.
First, the story of how the $500 a pop stopped, 20 years ago.
Second, part II of my pal Bryan Norcross’s wonderful remembrance of the moon landing. It should have posted July 20, on the 50th anniversary, but got crowded out. (Part I, which I did manage to post timely, remembered the mission’s launch.)
It is so uplifting . . . and a call, by implication, for America to work together on great projects again, and to exalt science, as administrations pretty much all the way up to, but ending with, this one, always have. (This one suppresses and defunds science; fires scientists en masse; exits the Paris Climate Accords.)
Whenever you’re reading this — perhaps a few days from now, because it’s just too damn hot to write anything, or this fall or winter, because I suddenly remembered, two frozen margaritas in, that I had it in reserve — remember: If we can get out from under the Russian attack designed to make us hate each other, we can come together to do great things.
