Posts Made By: Mark Costello III

You know your game is rigged, right?

(It has to do with a multiple of a certain one digit perfect square, that particular multiple being limited to a certain number of digits.)

Hi Dave. With my occasional posts, hopefully I exhibited some conservative credentials, but here IMHO we should give the President a bit of a break.

You have in the fields five candidates for president. Four of them are campaigning to get the President's job. The fifth one is the President campaigning to keep his job. As President, he probably has to travel with "security vehicles, armored limousines, [the former two for the Secret Service to protect the President] and communication vehicles [to be able to immediately react to and take control of any crisis]."

The next question is: can all the gear necessary to go with Mr. Obama when he travels fit on Air Force One? Possibly, but probably not .

Finally, although I'm voting against Mr. Obama, I fully expect him to get out in the field and try to convince us to retain him for another term.

As this is a campaign trip and not an official trip, presumably the Democratic Party is paying some of the expenses. But I would even expect them to have to pay for all of them.

Anyway, while aligned against the President, I'm willing to cut him a bit of slack on this one....

Best,

I have to ask: Did Mr. Buffett ever send in that extra check to the IRS?

Current home state: 8th

Original home state: 28th

John Meiners said:

By no means am I asking this question as a joke or am I trying to make light of Today's holiday Easter Sunday, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I read after Jesus met again with His following, he then, "rose up into the clouds" my question as an astronomer is: Where did he go? I am sure there will be some explanation that will help me understand this event. JM

Hi John, I'll take a shot at responding to your questions, although like Doug, I won't be able to tell you much.

First, as you correctly state, Jesus went to Heaven, to be at "the right hand of the Majesty on High," "into Heaven itself, to appear in the presence of God for us..." as the writer of Hebrews states. It appears that you want to know the location of Heaven. There we - or I - can help you very little - but maybe a bit more than nothing, based on passages from both Old and New Testaments.

First, it appears that the direction to Heaven is "up." You see this beginning at "Jacob's ladder" in Genesis and on through all the various places where either angels or God (appearing as The Angel of the LORD) comes to us, or where Elijah (II Kings) goes to be with God. Now the next thing is up where. There it gets harder. But some New Testament passages are of interest here. Beginning with the visitation of the Holy Spirit at the baptism of Jesus and ending with his victorous appearance in Revelations, 19, and several passages in between, you'll read the phrase or clause "the heavens opened" or "Heaven opened." To me this suggest that whereever Heaven is, it's outside the confines of this universe and that the opening of the heavens makes a path of sorts between the "abode" of God and us. Jesus also tells us (John 18:36) that His Kingdom was not of this world.

Finally, as to why Jesus left the way He did, that question is answered within minutes by two men - angels - who told the disciples - and us - that He will be coming back that way - in glory (Acts 1).

Best Regards,

Your posts implies that conservatives are just counting down to retirement. You err as far as I am concerned. I'm still working at 61 and plan to do so as long as I have to ensure that my wife I can live as we do now: 65, 66, 68, 70, whatever.

Hi Tom. The answer to your question is "Yes!"

Well, that's the smart-aleck answer, but there is a bit of truth behind it. Your Meade 10" is classified as a catadioptric telescope. Popularly denoted as a cat (for short), a catadoptric telescope uses both lens and mirrors to bring the incoming light to a focus and produce an image. Your Meade can be also classified further as a Schmidt Cassegrain. The lens in the front was designed originally by Bernhard Schmidt and the secondary mirror is a convex surface, making the overall system a type of Cassegrain telescope.

The following is just my personal opinion. If someone told me to limit my choice to refractor or reflector, I'd say that your Meade 10" is a reflector. The mirrors do most, nearly all of the focusing. The lens actually corrects for "errors" in the focusing by the spherical mirrors (should not be spherical for a true Cassegrain) and actually allow Meade (and Celestron) to make spherical mirrors*, an easier job. The lens is more often just called a corrector.

* If your Meade is an "ACF" )Advanced Coma Free), the secondary mirror is not spherical. It is built so that it, the primary mirror, and corrector work to produce an image similar to that produced in Richtey-Chretien telescopes (hyperboloidal primary and secondary mirrors).

Best Regards,

Thanks for your commentary, Jim.

I don't have any meaningful comment on the Jews in the article. Here is a biography of an American Christian who considered long and hard over whether he should stay out of the fight of his time. He stepped in and did

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_C._York

what reminds me of Gideon.

Best,

That's good to see. Thanks for pointing that out.