Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

Dang, Mitch beat me to the 3000th post!

"But the fact remains that no matter how many varieties occur in each family, none of these "kinds" can commingle genetically."

Certainly not, after aeons of genetic divergence. Of course, 75-95 million years ago when mice and men shared a common ancestor it was a different story. Similarly, today there may be slightly different variations WITHIN an existing species still mingling that may be irrevocably divergent a few aeons from now.

Don't misunderstand me I consider myself rather religious in terms of belief in a higher spiritual power but as far as creation goes the crystal-clear evidence of evolution surrounds me every day. My cat, for example, just like me, has body hair, four major limbs, each with five digits, with fingernails, along with two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, a mouth, tongue, teeth, almost all of the same internal organs, etc. ad nauseaum. So much similarity, there is no reason to design animals so similarly to humans it seems fairly obvious they have natural common origins or else it's an incredible, unbelievably fortuitous coincidence.

Expanding, or outside the focal point. I think as a rule the distance from the center of the primary to the optical center of the eyepiece is supposed to be the sum of their focal lengths.

"There is huge chasm between where we are today w.r.t. this stuff and where we would have to be in order to even begin to have to worry about the moral issues you have brought up."

I said this century, not this year. And I was not bringing up any moral issues, just philosophical ones. At least, I was not intending any sort of moral stance.

My first project was a copyscope I built as a teenager. It was big and heavy and worked about as good as any $10 scope would, LOL!

My first 'real' project was a 4" f/15 refractor built with a nice research-grade Japanese lens and a galvanized aluminum vent pipe for the tube. Results were just dandy.

My first (and so far only) newt project is my 10" f/8 planet-killer dob which was buggy at first because of my poorly designd spider, mirror cell and secondary squeezed impractically small. With a few tweaks/improvements it's absolutely outstanding.

I learned that NEWT is a great tool, I also learned not to try to engineer things so tight with respect to secondary size and focuser position that you have almost no wiggle room.

Brien -- thanks for taking the time to post all of this. Pretty meaty stuff.

It is my understanding that the genuineness and inclusion of 2 Peter was a rather controversial issue and was heavily debated, agonized and prayed over even then. Also some early fathers had mixed feelings about Peter generally since rightly or wrongly his name by this time had come to be associated with many of the gnostic writings. Many scholars today believe 1 Peter and 2 Peter were written by two different individuals, the prevailing view in this case being that 2 Peter was a pseudonymous book. The Church of course disagrees.

Mars first...

for if we can reach Mars, then we can reach the Asteroid Belt...

If we can reach the Asteroid Belt, we can build mass-drivers...

Then we can bring the asteroids into Earth Orbit...

From high orbit we can fling them at whomever we desire!

And with such a weapon that makes puny nukes look like firecrackers, we will make the entire world quake with fear, ha ha, haha mwahahahahahaha!

On the other hand maybe 10 million years ago we should have just stayed in the damn trees eating bugs and berries all day.

Just curious, why would you want to do a truss design for a scope as small as 6"? I wouldn't think it would save much space on that scale.

The other night on local news they were interviewing people at the mall for war opinions. It's scary how some of these born-again Christians are all jazzed up for the war simply because they believe it will precipitate the apocalypse and judgment day and all that.

I hear ya, but don't carry things too far. In general I think they're oversized for 'full field illumination' for photography and visually to have maximum image consistency across the whole of the apparent field. Also I think once you get down to about 15% you reach a point of diminishing returns in terms of the gains you make.

And if you squeeze it too tight, i.e. start vignetting the light cone, it has the same optical effect as an aperture mask covering the outer edge of the mirror -- which can mask a turned edge, or over/under-correction, which can make even a 'lousy' mirror suddenly perform 'great'!