Posts Made By: James Brown

Paul Kammueller said:

The righties have won and will soon have the overcast hothouse that they are working so hard for.

Paul, this portion of your post is not worthy of you. Count the number of SUVs you see with Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers today. Are you lefty pals eschewing nice homes and plastic consumer goods?

Public resistance to conservation and love of the comforts provided by fossil fuel incontrovertibly crosses party lines. From one perspective, the lefties are more odious, because they compound the evil of an energy wasting lifestyle with unchecked hypocrisy.

Jim

Rod Kaufman said:

The Bush administration Friday announced plans to sell off more than one billion in public lands, including 85,000 acres of national forest land in California. The funds resulting from the sale will make up for a federal subsidy eliminated by Bush's 2007 budget. The subsidy would have been used to fund schools and roads.
"This is a fire sale of public lands. It is utterly unprecedented," said Char Miller, professor of environmental history at Trinity University in Houston.
So now we can look forward to a fast food joint in the Bitterroot, Sierra or Yellowstone national forest thanks to the genius of George W Bush.
Bush
Bush voters...

Hi Rod:

Wow. This sound pretty bad. Since I value our National Forests a great deal in a deeply personal and intimate way, I am highly motivated to look into this issue and worry about it.

Your "billions" must be a typo. We only have about 200 million acres of national forest. Including Alaska. Heck, the whole acreage of the nation including Alaska is only about 2 billion acres.

The details (so far) of the USDA proposal are here:

http://www.fs.fed.us/land/staff/rural_schools.shtml

Take a look at the parcel list, take a look at the maps. Is it possible that many of these small outlying parcels should be sold? I am not sure about this, in general I would oppose any sale outright of public lands. But if a 20 acre parcel is separated from the main forest mass by some distance and totally surrounded by private land, well that parcel really does not add much to the forest holding as a whole. It is probably a forest management PITA. It looks like there are a lot of these types of parcels on the maps and lists.

Regarding the "fast food joint" comment; that is pure exaggerated silliness. Take a look at the maps. Anyone who wanted to open a fast food joint would be well advised to focus on the little towns around the forest rather than buying an isolated rural parcel.

Regarding the "genius of George W. Bush" comment; give me a break! Do you really think W thought up this plan, or is it possible (though not nearly as fun for you) to consider that this might be a reasonable plan developed by professional forest managers within the USDA? No, No. I am sure that W sat down and personally decided to sell off our national heritage, probably to his cronies at Halliburton by closed bid. 8O

Regarding your thread title; well, exaggeration like that is hard to come by.

Regarding your final comment:

"Bush
Bush voters..."

Is this a secret code? Was your computer taken over by the NSA just as you hit send? I'm curious what you meant.

I will follow this story. Public comments can be submitted to the Forest Service for those of you who actually care, as opposed to those who merely want an excuse to skewer W. I will also be watching the page of one of my favorite charities to see what they think about this. http://nature.org/

We will see.

Jim

Darrell Fichtl said:

Harry Whittington, the guy Cheney shot, has now had a heart attack. What I read it was supposedly caused by the shot he received. What happens if he dies? I mean Cheney was hunting illegally wasn't he?

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Hi Darrell:

What do you mean what happens now (if Whittington dies)? I hope Whittington goes to heaven, although he is a Republican, so that's got to be dicey. Cheney I assume would face a minor violation of hunting regulations charge, since the shooting was by all accounts an accident. Probably the same charges he faces now. It's not like he was driving drunk, killed an innocent victim and left the scene of the crime or some other scenario where the law typically imposes justifiably severe penalties.

Whittington's heirs might have a civil court wrongful death claim against Cheney, but they might not.

Jim

Hi Brett:

That is a very cool image, but I think it must be a Photoshop collage. The moon and sun typically have about the same angular diameter when viewed from earth (about 30 arc minutes each). These angular diameters, (particularly the moon's) vary a bit as we get closer or farther away in our eccentric orbits. That is why sometimes a solar eclipse is annular and sometimes it is absolutely total. I do not think that the angular size of the moon ever comes close to varying as dramatically as the photo would suggest.

Amazingly, Snopes, my go-to source for political urban legends already has an article about this photo. They don't have a conclusion yet though.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/northpole.asp

- Jim -

Floyd Blue said:

I once again ask this question. Is the color seen with or without a filter?

Hi Floyd:

When I was 22, M42 was decidedly the palest green in my 10" Newtonian without any filter. I read about O III emission lines long after my eyes had seen the light green shade, so I know that I was not just seeing what I expected to see.

Now, 22 years later, I see no green.

Jim

Darrell Fichtl said:

Somehow this just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Here's a state that is loosing population like it has the plague. So what does it do; ban abortions!

Boy, that's really going to make young people stay in the state isn't it?


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No one (including the lawmakers of South Dakota) expects this law to be enforced. It was passed merely to set up a legal challenge of Roe v. Wade. The attack seems to be a bit premature in my opinion.

FWIW the only abortion provider in all of South Dakota appears to be one Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls. Even if the law were enforced some day, not much would change. I imagine young people will find lots of reasons to flee S.D. (or stay for that matter) other than the availability of abortions.

Jim

p.s. "Boy, that's really going to make young people stay in the state isn't it?"

I think you might be underestimating the number of conservative pro-life young people living in the heartland.

This is hardly relevant or political, but a couple of years ago I was fully parked at a stop light and then rear-ended by a full sized Hummer having a winch on the bumper. I saw him coming from a mile away, there was a car in front of me, and I had no where to go.

I was driving a Pathfinder at the time and it crumpled and folded around the Hummer like it was paper. The Pathfinder frame bent, and the rear wrapped around the Hummer. The Hummer was un-scratched. I'm quite lucky I was not in a Myata or something else built low.

The driver of the Hummer, (who had been talking on his cell phone at the time... he actually completed the call before he got out to assess my condition > ) was a tall dark and handsome Colorado University student from France (Jacques). He must have come from a very wealthy family. He was nice and chatty while we waited for the police. He told me that he had just bought the Hummer and owned it free and clear. The capper though is that he had not gotten around to insuring his $80,000.00 toy! 8O

The young cop who arrived at the scene was about the same age as our Hummer driving playboy. Boy was the cop livid when Jacques started telling fibs. (There were no skid marks, but Jacques told the cop he had braked appropriately but still slid into me!)

Picture a 20-something year old cop working his butt off to put food on the table for the wife and kids faced with an unnaturally good looking, rich, lying French playboy who was too stupid to buy insurance! I am surprised that the cop did not execute Jacques right then and there.

I know that my insurance company collected over $8000.00 in repair costs from Jacques. They told me so when they refunded my deductible. My poor Pathfinder was never the same though.

Jim

If I were going to sell a telescope this rare and valuable I would search the classified ads here on astromart for a good ball park value, and then place an auction with the ball park number as a reserve.

I too think that selling the 6" AP is not going to greatly enhance the ease-of-use factor for beginners. A lot of good points have been made above in that regard. Gemini is very easy to use after a day of practice, although a novice would be frustrated if they tried to walk in from the cold and navigate the menus without any instruction. the same could be said for any go-to mount though.

Jim

Heaven's sake Darrell, it's Vermont! Wake me up when some city in Kansas votes to recommend impeachment.

J

Rod Kaufman said:

To hear Bush tell it today, you'd think all of current sectarian warfare is due to the direction of the former dictator and absolutely none of it today has anything to do with the presence of US armed forces presently occupying Iraq.

I think the lead paragraph of the AP story mischaracterizes W's comments in this instance Rod. At least any implication that Saddam is pulling strings from his jail cell is a mischaracterization.

Contrast the time context and "present" tone of the lead:

[COLOR="Blue"]"President Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government."[/COLOR]

With the time context of the direct quotes:

[COLOR="Blue"]"Bush said that Saddam was a tyrant and used violence to exacerbate sectarian divisions to keep himself in power, and that as a result, deep tensions persist to this day."

"The enemies of a free Iraq are employing the same tactics Saddam used, killing and terrorizing the Iraqi people in an effort to foment sectarian division," Bush said.

"Iraq is a nation that is physically and emotionally scarred by three decades of Saddam's tyranny," Bush said

Bush said Iraq's instability "is the legacy of Saddam; a tyrant who exacerbated ethnic divisions to keep himself in power."[/COLOR]

It does appear likely that W is trying to deflect the heat. No surprises there. My only point is that the conclusion:

"The last I looked, Saddam has been locked up in what amounts to a vault, only to appear for his regular rantings in his horse and pony show trial. To hear Bush tell it today, you'd think all of current sectarian warfare is due to the direction of the former dictator and absolutely none of it today has anything to do with the presence of US armed forces presently occupying Iraq."

is an incorrect extrapolation of W's comments.

Jim

Source: http://www.comcast.net/news/index.jsp?cat=GENERAL&fn=/2006/03/29/356360.html