The buying or selling of religious offices, indulgences, or other benefits (instead of earning them or obtaining them by more above-board means). A coin here, a few fewer years in purgatory there, and bob's your uncle.
SeinfeldReactionsRight1990sThe last time jeans without belts were coolOpposite of NASCAR?
On Saturday, it's fifty years since the first person set foot on the moon. Fifty years later, it's still probably the greatest feat of human exploration and collaborative engineering the world has ever seen. BBC World has been running a podcast series called "13 Minutes To The Moon", using the final, tense descent to the moon's surface as a backdrop to exploring the entire Apollo space program. It's excellent. Go listen to it.
I also want to note that knowing Steve Bales, the person pictured above, has always felt like a gift. He's one of the two smartest people I've ever met—a polymath who reads voraciously and thinks strategically about a myriad of subjects—but also one of the most humble and soft-spoken. A man who made a critical decision in the first moon landing (listen to Episode 2 for that story) explains things at everyone else's level and wants to engage with them. The most interesting thing about 13 Minutes To The Moon is really how down to earth and humble many of these people are. There's egos for sure, but there's a remarkable amount of honesty and humility, just like Steve Bales. It's a testament to the project that the people were as good as they were, especially under unbelievable pressure and stress.
We'll have more tomorrow. For now, go check out the podcast.
PodcastsApolloGoing to the moon13 minutes to go, I wanna be sedatedNASAThe Final Countdown?