Posts Made By: James Brown

Maurice Clark said:

Hi All,

Found this one online. It had me laughing out loud! Typical British homour. (Make sure you read it all)

https://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPage/photos/a.235978145664.135781.207730000664/10151144133110665/?type=3&theater

Maurice

Jim Brown said:

You feelin' the Bern yet Rod?

David Cotterell said:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/us/politics/obama-supreme-court-nominee.html?_r=3

Making popcorn now.....

Dave

Rod Kaufman said:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/29/politics/donald-trump-ted-cruz-nominee-pledge/index.html

Russ Carroll said:

I'm moving to this BEAUTIFUL remote observing site in New Mexico, purchased here an Amart. Thanks, Mike, for the really great site. You did a great job with it!

PS Richard could become President and I'm still going there to develop the site out.

I've not have a rig up and in use for years. The story of how the Anza site I got turned into this is a whopper. "Bank error in your favor" California government style

Russ Carroll said:

So, as I mentioned, I bought the beautiful 40-acre/observatory in "dark-skies" New Mexico. How this came about is a head-shaker.

2 years ago, I bought 2 parcels in Anza, CA totaling 7 acres. My intention was to build an observatory on the acreage. For almost two years, we have had horrible seeing conditions in the SOCAL high deserts, and I got discouraged, never doing a thing to the site. I didn't really want it a some point.

I got a call from our Realtor who said "You want to sell your lots? THere's a 'bubble' in Anza". How in the heck can that be?? Anza is in the middle of nowhere in California.

The fact is I had 2 people interested in it before I had even talked to her, and a pending offer from a third.

Apparently, a new law went into effect in CA this past January defining a few areas where it is legal to grow "medical" marijuana, and my property was smack dab in the middle of one of the only ones defined.

I sold the property for almost x4 my cost cost only 2 years later. It will fund not only the purchase of the property, but a VERY nice new scope and camera to boot!

California...go figure.

william caspe said:

Hi: I've asked this question before, but in a slightly different way. I would like to do narrowband imaging from my light-polluted back yard. I can place a pier in a corner of the yard approximately 50 feet from my two story home and most of my images would be taken to the west, directly over the top of the house, but minimally 10 degrees higher. Would the thermals coming off of the house interfere with the quality of my images. Thanks in advance for your answer. Bill Caspe

Rod Kaufman said:

Geez...
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/09/politics/gallery/bush-september-11-photos/index.html

Steven Phillips said:

Hello All
I recently joined AstroMart, looking to buy my first (serious) scope.
It all seems great, so many scopes available for sale at any given time.
This lead me to wonder--where do all these previously owned scopes come from?
I had supposed that most scopes would come from backyard astronomers who occasionally sell one from their own personal collection.
But now I realize that many or most are coming from people who buy and sell astro equipment very frequently, having done so dozens or even hundreds of times on AstroMart.
Nothing wrong with that, it's the American Way to buy and sell freely!
I just wonder where all the previously owned scopes are coming from? Estate sales? Pawn shops?
It's not just curiousity, I'd like to know e.g. whether a seller typically knows the history of a scope he's selling, the source of its component parts, how the scope was treated in the past, or is able to judge the current condition of the optics and mechanics as an astronomer.
I'm sure the situation varies from case to case, but maybe someone can tell what's typical?
thanks
Steve

Russ Carroll said:

of executive powers:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-fracking-comeuppance-1466638580

"Another day, another judicial rebuke to President Obama’s contempt for the rule of law. On Wednesday a federal judge struck down an oil and gas drilling rule imposed with no statutory authority.

In 2015 the Bureau of Land Management published new regulations about well construction and water management for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that takes place on federal and Indian lands. The BLM asserted “broad authority� to control oil and gas operations on the basis of laws that were passed in 1920, 1930, 1938, 1976 and 1982 and were allegedly ambiguous. Thus the agency said it deserved the benefit of the interpretive doubt that the courts call Chevron deference.

Abusing Chevron is an Obama specialty. But BLM’s overreach was notably egregious because Congress passed an energy law in 2005 that stripped the executive branch of fracking jurisdiction and gave that power to the states.

The BLM argued that Congress’s choice didn’t matter because the bureau wasn’t mentioned by name in the 2005 law. That claim inspired Judge Scott Skavdahl of Wyoming—an Obama appointee—to conduct a remedial seminar in the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Under the BLM argument, Judge Skavdahl writes, “there would be no limit to the scope or extent of congressionally delegated authority BLM has. . . . Having explicitly removed the only source of specific federal agency authority over fracking, it defies common sense for the BLM to argue that Congress intended to allow it to regulate the same activity under a general statute that says nothing about hydraulic fracturing.�


Judge Skavdahl also rebukes the administrative agencies that “increasingly� rely “on Chevron deference to stretch the outer limits of ‘delegated’ statutory authority by revising and reshaping legislation.� He reminds that agencies derive their “existence, authority and powers from Congress alone,� and that Congress’s “inability or unwillingness to pass a law desired by the executive branch does not default authority to the executive branch to act independently.�

A President who rewrites inconvenient laws ought to alarm Americans of all political persuasions. Principled decisions like Judge Skavdahl’s help restore the constitutional norms that Mr. Obama has done so much to dismantle."