Posts Made By: Ed Moran

I bought some self-adhesive felt disks at Home Depot for another project but found that they worked pretty good for snugging up a loose dust cover on my NS11.

Of all the arguments against war with Iraq the argument that "We helped him in the past and now we want to kill him, we're hypocrites" is the weakest.

As I recall we were buddies once with the world's greatest mass murderer (Stalin) in the fight against the world's second greatest mass murderer (Hitler). Does anyone believe that "friendship of convenience" made us hypocrites for resisting Soviet attempts at world domination after WWII? Hello? Anyone?

One could make the argument that the perceived necessity for the "alliance" with Saddam is the fault of Jimmy Carter, who strong-armed the Shah of Iran (our ally who didn't have territorial ambitions, but was oppressive to some of his people) into resigning, turning Iran over to the radical Islamic fundamentalists, who were then perceived (accurately, as judged by their support for international terror AND oppressing their own people) an even greater threat than Saddam.

This is the 27mm eyepiece with a reticule consisting of concentric circles right? If so, I have one but don't use it much. It works well for low power initial collimation but eventually I need to be collimating at 400x and so I can't use it then. It works as an acceptable alignment eyepiece for GoTo scopes though....

We get fairly balanced coverage, but you have know where to look for it. The Big 3 broadcast networks are mostly anti-Bush, but some of the cable/satellite channels are more even-handed.

As for balance and reasons to support or oppose the war, does the European media cover the French & German oil contracts with Saddam? Their cozy backroom deals with Saddam might explain part of their reluctance to go to war against him. And what about French sales of military equipment (proscribed by sanctions) to mysterious middle-men who then route the equipment to Iraq? Are these stories part of the "thorough analysis" presented by the "balanced" European media?

Very pretty dob, is the Telrad mount really made of wood?

Hi,

The following links deal specifically with SCT collimation...

http://perso.club-internet.fr/legault/collim.html
http://skywatch.brainiac.com/sct-user/collimation.pdf
http://home.att.net/%7Estarastronomy/Astrophotos/Articles/SCT-Collimation/sct-collimation.html

The majority of the population of the world used to believe:

That slavery was good.
That the Earth was flat.
That the Sun revolved around the Earth.
That the Earth rested on the back of a big turtle.

Just because the majority of the population holds a certain belief doesn't mean it's true...

Revised post:

You seem to be upset because the carnage is "one-sided". Would you feel better if more Americans were killed? If so, why? If not, what is the point of your post?

No one is arguing that Iraqi lives are worthless (although Saddam is demonstrating the HE thinks they're worthless). To the contrary, we are taking extraordinary measures to AVOID killing more of them than is absolutely necessary. A behavior that is relatively new in the History of Warfare.

Maybe we can elect a man like Chirac, who helped Saddam build his nuclear reactor, sold him arms in violation of the U.N. sanctions and made oil deals in order to profit from the suffering of the Iraqi people.

As for our current President's capabilities, he appears to be far more capable than current European leadership, who are reduced to impotent hand-wringing and useless gestures.

My plea to Europe is to please choose leaders who are men of decency and principle, instead of cynical, greedy, elitist snobs who would gladly sell their mothers into a harem in exchange for an oil or arms contract with a dictator.

Aquote from the Guardian (UK):

Ajami Saadoun Khlis, whose son and brother were executed under the Saddam regime: "You just arrived," he said. "You're late. What took you so long? God help you become victorious. I want to say hello to Bush, to shake his hand. We came out of the grave."

Maybe someday this poor soul will want to shake a European leader's hand...but I doubt it.

P.S. Here's a pic of an evil U.S. soldier oppressing an innocent Iraqi child by forcing the poor kid to take some M& M's....how cruel.

Boo hoo, someone hand me a tissue. I'm simply wracked with sobs over the poor treatment (alleged, not proved, maybe we should ask the U.N. to send in inspectors...)of the so-called journalists. The day the world holds itself to the same standards it demands of the United States is the day I'll give a flying f**k about some poor Euroweenie journalists...until then DILLIGAFF?

BTW, did you see the interviews of the journalists arrested by the Iraqis? Their descriptions of the screams and beatings they heard while in jail were most enlightening...