Posts Made By: Jeremy Schmit

The part I don't understand is why Bush thinks the elected government will have any more stability than the governments that have been there before. If he thinks that the warlords are going to just accept the new govenment he has another thought coming. We have how many troops there, 10,000? 20,000? There is no way that will stabilize a new government. Bush claims that the peoples' desire for freedom will stabilize the new government. That isn't a plan, that is a best-case scenario. Of course this is coming from a man whose plan to win the peace in Iraq was "we will be welcomed as liberators."

Minor nit-picking here. But electoral-vote.com only uses the single most recent polls. So there are massive swings depending on who did the most recent polling. Currently the most recent polls are from Strategic Vision (a GOP polling firm whose results are consistently skewed toward Bush). When Zogby releases its next set of polls it will swing wildly back to Kerry. The truth is somewhere in between.

Although electoral-vote.com has the nicest interface I've seen (at least till they started getting hit with DOS attacks) I'm starting to prefer www.race2004.net . They take an average of all the most recent polls. Looks like today they gave Florida back to Kerry. Hmmm, I'm not sure I'm ready to believe that.

I think these quotes answer your question:

"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."

-Joseph Goebbels - Nazi Minister of Propaganda

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945


The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism."

-HERMANN GOERING, Nazi Gestapo

Here is a close up of the upper cage and the proud owner. There are a few other interesting things to see (the circular spider, the stowed configuration, etc.) but I don't have photos of them now. I'll try to get them tomorrow night.

I agree that the 45 degree cut should not end up any higher than the arc cut. If you want the 45 degree cut that allows the same lowering of the box as the arc cut, then it must have the same beginning and ending points.

The part that has been left out of the conversation so far is what is happening inside the mirror box. Keep in mind that you need to have room for the cell and mirror. This is the problem I see with your box #4. The cut is at such a shallow angle that it would be hard to leave room for the mirror without making a bigger box. This is the advantage of the 45 degree cut: it allows most of the cutaway to occur in the wasted space below the cell. (Of course, the arc leaves the most room of all allowing for a smaller box and/or a lower placement of the mirror.)

First, the things we agree on
1) $12/year is (too?) cheap
2) AM is well worth paying a fee for
3) Herb deserves to be rewarded for his efforts

But that being said, I'm very hesitant about charging for access to this site. I have only been in astronomy for about three years, and I have found that the astronomy online is very "closed-doors" compared to the rest of the online world. When I was looking for answers to my questions, I would google the question and start looking for the answers. This is how I found AM, and I stuck around because it was a place I knew I could consistantly find answers to my questions. If you start charging a fee for access, you kill off all the potential new users from the search engines. Building an online community by word-of-mouth may have worked before, but my generation expects to be able to explore the site before plunking down the credit card.

Since the question is being raised, I assume that this site is in need of revenue. That is fine, but make sure that you don't cut off the new users in the process. IMO, browsing the forums and classifieds are the two biggest attractions to this for new user. These activities should not be touched by fees. If advertising is not sufficient to support the site go ahead and charge for the right to post (and respond to?) classifieds, post to the forums, and read the articles.