Posts Made By: Maurice Clark

Just when you thought it was safe to go back...........

Maurice

Hi all,

I have been spending the past few weeks scanning all of my old photographs and I am a little concerned about the aging of some of the films.

Kodak and Fuji slide and negatives, from as far back as the 1970's, still have excellent colour. However, several Fuji negatives from 2001 and 2002 have badly degraded colour. They are now far too blue.

Anyone else noticed this?

Cheers,

Maurice

Hi everyone,

Hard to tell if this belongs here of in R&P, but it is an interesting article on bringing religion into politics in the US.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3813637.stm

Cheers,

Maurice

Hi Bill,

Yes I have seen those reports as well. Very sad.

Regarding how this can be done in the name of religion, unfortunately it is something that has happened all too often in history when people have mixed religion with politics. It seems to be a case of people saying "I am right, therefore you must do as I say. If not, I must kill you to stop you contaiminating others". Looking over history, there has never really been true freedom of religion anywhere in the world. Religious persecution and oppression seems to be the norm whenever a group of religious fanatics obtain political power. From the Jews in Biblical times, to the moslems during the dark ages, to the Catholic church and others during the reformation, to the colonists in America, and on to today.

Actually, I wonder just how much these people believe in their religion. Do they really believe it, or are they just using it as a way to further their power? I am not sure.

Regards,

Maurice

Hi all,

Sadly, I see on the news that the South Korean captive has been beheaded. To me it is becoming clear that these cowards are only interested in power, not religon, and will stop at nothing to get their own way.

Normally I am a peaceful person and opposed to capital punishment. However IMHO the sooner these murderers are 10 feet under in pig entrails, the better this world will be.

I also note the deafening silence over these from such nations as Iran, Indonesia, Syria..... the list could go on.

Regards,

Maurice

Hi everyone,

Over the past 12 months I have been rescanning all of my old astronomical photographs (going back over 30 years! 8O) and updating my website. If you are interested in photographs of the southern sky then goto http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/mclark/ Just be warned, there are a lot of photos!

I have also added some photographs of the Venus transit and comet 2001q4 NEAT. As yet I have not started to redo the CCD images. That will be the big job for the next 12 months! Once that is done, I hope to start adding pages of my asteroid light curves and other university research, and information on astrophotography and image scanning and processing.

Enjoy,

Maurice

Hi everyone,

First is was the moon landings being hoaxs. Then Richard Hoagland came along with his nonsense about NASA coverups of advanced life on Mars. Now some nitwit who claims to be a scientist, is claiming that transits of Venus cause the Yellow River to flood! 8O

You can read about it, along with Phil Platt's (AKA the Bad Astronomer) debunking of this one at;

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/venus_flood.html

I wonder what is next!!

Cheers,

Maurice

Hi all,

In the past there have been several threads on what scopes people have owned or how many scopes people have. Some people admit to changing their equipment quite regularly, so I am just curious, what scope have you owned the longest?

For myself, the scope I have owned the longest is my 5" f/5 Jagers refractor. It was manufactured in 1956, and I first aquired it in 1971. I did sell it in 1983 to fund a 16", but bought it back in 1986. It still gets considerable use, primarily for photography, at which it is a great performer.

Cheers,

Maurice

Hi everyone,

As requested here is a thread on dealing with the prophecies found in the Old Testament book of Daniel, starting with the one found in chapter 2.

A brief introduction. In 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, invaded Judah and captured Jerusalem. When he returned to his own country, he carried away as captive, a number of young men from the royal family to be trained to work in the Bablyonian court. One of these young men was Daniel. For 3 years, Daniel trained in the schools of Bablyon, (which were the top schools of the day, much of our astronomy and maths comes from them) after which he started work as one of the advisors to the king, eventually becoming the king's leading advisor, effectively the prime minister. He lived until after the fall of Bablyon in 539 BC.

The book of Daniel and its companion, the New Testament book, The Revelation, are written in what is called apocalyptic. In apocalyptic writing, symbols are used to represent kingdoms, events, etc. In a sense the prophecies are "coded". This has caused some problems when people trying to interpret these prophecies, try to put their own interpretation on those symbols. As a result there are some very fanciful interpretations. However this is not necessary as the Bible gives the interpretation of each symbol, so as long as the bible is allowed to interpret itself, there is no ambiguity as to the meaning of the prophecies.

Daniel Chapter 2

In the second year of his reign, king Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that worried him considerably, especially since he could not remember it. He called his advisors and ordered them to tell him the dream and its interpretation. He promised great rewards if they did, but death if they did not. His advisors eventually admitted they could not do that, so they were ordered to be executed.

As one being trained to be an advisor, Daniel was one of those ordered to be executed. Daniel requested and was given overnight to try and find out the dream and its interpretation. After praying during the night with his 3 friends, Daniel was shown the dream in a vision. The next morning he went into the king and told him the dream and its interpretation.

Hi everyone,

Just saw this on the BBC news.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3813267.stm

"US to open huge embassy in Iraq" "Yearly budget of up to $1b in 2005"

Is this for real?

Cheers,

Maurice