The second time a nuclear weapon was used in anger was three days later, over Nagasaki, Japan. That was a plutonium bomb of a type tested just once, less than a month before, in the New Mexico desert. That design worked, too.

The third time a nuclear weapon was used in anger hasn’t happened yet, 65 years later.

I’m not sure what that tells us, but I sure hope it means something.

Look for a booming industry here in the United States soon, catering to the upscale death market.

I’ve been thinking about things I’ve known about for a long time, and letting myself be astonished all over again. Things that would make a sophisticate roll his eyes and say, “Well, duh!”

Things like this:

Ludwig van Beethoven started losing his hearing early in his career as a composer. His deafness grew progressively worse over time. Yet Beethoven wrote some of his greatest works — some of the greatest music ever written by anyone — when he was already profoundly deaf.

Or this:

During the entire time he served as President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt was totally paralyzed from the waist down. From a wheelchair, he led the country out of the Great Depression and through World War II. He died less than a month before the surrender of Germany, and about four months before the surrender of Japan.

Human beings are pretty remarkable people. There’s always more to them than meets the eye. Sometimes, a lot more.

Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now. —Denis Waitley

So, I guess you’re saying my strategy of regretting the past, dreading the future, and being paralyzed in the present isn’t the best option? If only you had told me this in the past!

It all began when someone bet Ernest Hemingway he couldn’t tell a complete story in just six words. Hemingway won the bet, with this:

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

Lots of astonishing stories at the site.

Yeah, it’s all fun until somebody loses an eye.

That kid sure took the long way home.

We spoiled baby boomers are getting old now. Expect “I Want My Poligrip” and “I Want My Hip Replacement” ads any moment now.

His teacher said, “No, the Black Belt means you are finally ready to begin learning karate.”

I’ve remembered that story for decades, now, but I never really understood it until I was learning to program computers. I’m a “self-taught” programmer; I never took classes, but I read books, studied programs printed in magazines, and talked to a more knowledgeable friend when I got stuck. I started with the BASIC programming language, but eventually I learned assembly language, which is much closer to the native ones and zeros that are the computer’s true native language.

With assembly language, I could create routines that worked ten, a hundred, or even a thousand times faster than similar code written in BASIC. That’s a good way to impress a BASIC programmer.

If you don’t know how to do it, assembly language programming is a dark and mysterious art, and the people who can do it look like wizards. When I set out to learn it, I thought it would make a pretty lofty capstone to my education in programming. But when I’d learned it, and used it for a while, I realized assembly language wasn’t a destination; it was a starting point. Everything I’d learned formed only a foundation on which to build a real education. Assembly language was a Black Belt; it meant “Now you are ready to begin.”

I’ll bet it’s the same way in many other fields, as well: the apparent goal is only the starting point. I’d guess that, even if you attain the top rank beyond Black Belt in karate, you look at what you’ve learned and say, “Oh, now I see how to begin.”

It doesn’t end.

I think reason #2 probably hits the nail on the head.

The first-ever video advertisement will be published in a traditional paper magazine in September.

The video-in-print ads will appear in select copies of the US show business title Entertainment Weekly.

The slim-line screens – around the size of a mobile phone display – also have rechargeable batteries.

The chip technology used to store the video – described as similar to that used in singing greeting cards – is activated when the page is turned.
Each chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video.

I think Jetsons. BBC thinks Harry Potter. Either way, Pepsi will be getting a lot of buzz, and not just from poorly-connected batteries.

“Those who really understand what we do here at Apple are going to love this new product,” Schiller continued. “Unless, you know, they happen to be totally lame.”

When you’re using something this advanced, some people look at you as if you were crazy, which just shows that they don’t “get it.” I feel sorry for those people.

There’s even more than one famous Michael Collins.

So, when I saw a song titled “For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me” on Jethro Tull’s Benefit album, I never seriously imagined the song was about the astronaut Michael Collins, who orbited the Moon in the Apollo 11 command module while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin flew the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) down to the surface and walked on the Sea of Tranquility.

I played the record a number of times without ever paying much attention to that song. But I had it playing softly one night as I fell asleep, and in a lucid moment between sleep and waking, I heard this:

I’m with you, LEM,
Though it’s a shame
That it had to be you.

The mother ship
Is just a blip
On your trip made for two.

I’m with you, boys,
So please employ
Just a little extra care.

It’s on my mind,
I’m left behind
When I should have been there
Walking with you.

That was how I felt about the entire Apollo program: I wanted to be there. I wanted to experience zero gravity in orbit, and on the way to the moon. I wanted to glide in lunar one-sixth gravity over the rocks and craters of an alien world. I wanted to see the far side of the moon with my own eyes, and see the earth — the entire earth — as a blue marble floating in black space.

I think I missed the point. I think almost everyone misses the point.

One-sixth gravity is fun. Lunar rocks answered persistent questions about the origin of the earth and the entire solar system. The miniature on-board computers were technological breaththroughs. The earth, seen whole from a quarter million miles away, is poetry.

But I think the most important thing about Apollo was not the fun, the science, the technology, or even the mind-altering change of perspective it made possible. All those things are by-products.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade,” said John F. Kennedy, and to confront other difficult challenges, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

Should we return to the Moon now? Should we set a goal of landing a man on Mars? I don’t know. How hard are they?

Is it possible to find a challenge here on earth that will demand the best we have to give? Can we find a challenge that we are willing to accept, unwilling to postpone, and which we truly intend to win? Can we do anything with the realization that this planet, our home, is a small jewel in a vast emptiness?

Happy Moon Day.