Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

I vote for staying with the long f/l. Taking a few steps up the ladder is a small price to pay for the large diffraction-limited field, the contrasty planetary views, the non-fussy collimation, etc. f/8 has been my personal route to inexpensive telescopic nirvana.

A bearing that size would only be showing 2.25" of box on either side of the bearing, it wouldn't look that small really.

IMO once you get above the mirror-size level, the size of the bearings starts to depend on what you'd like the telescope to look like more than anything else. 12.5" bearings will certainly be adequate for a 12.5" scope. But if it would look odd to you, then you should make them bigger. :-)

Marriage ultimately has biological underpinnings. On the secular level it is a legal contract governing the rights and obligations associated with choosing a permanent mate. On the religious level it is a ceremonialization or sanctification of the mating process, a sort of mating ritual particular to our species.

The state cannot meddle with the religious aspects. But as a secular legal contract, this is where the state's jurisdiction lies. In other words, the state can choose to recognize, or not recognize, a legal partnership. But it of course cannot force the church or churches to do the same, or expect them to perform the relevant ceremonies.

I think this is fate telling you it's time to take the plunge and become a homeowner. :-)

Ditto here... Saddam's capture was the best news I've heard all year.

There will always be some sort of 'belief' ... we can debate whether it will be 'religion' as we understand it or not but really who knows.

I have often pondered the very issue of 'faith' -- why does it exist, etc. Some have simply posited that it exists as a by-product of a fear of death but this is too simplistic. Not all religions even have an afterlife doctrine.

We have the power of abstract thought to deduce or 'guess' what something is doing once it is out of our sight. But why do we have the ability to believe in things which we have never even seen? This seems universal across cultures, across religions, etc. Why are we even capable of this? It goes way beyond simple conjecture based on extrapolation of known things. It must serve a purpose or why would such ability have evolved?

I think it may be partly a result of the need to work in complex societies. To work with other humans even in small groups, we have to have 'trust'. Trust that they will work to the common good of the tribe, that they won't steal my food or just bean me with a club, etc. In order to function as a group, in order to 'trust', we have to believe that others will behave a certain way, although objectively we cannot know that they will. So we NEED to have the ability to believe things that we do not have objective evidence for. Enter abstract thought. The more complex the society, the more abstract this becomes. In a highly complex socety, you have to believe in other people's belief that useless little green pieces of paper are worth something, otherwise why would you go to work to get these useless little green pieces of paper? So not only must we trust, we must trust in other people's trust, believe in each other's belief, etc. try to get your arms around that.

So throw the evolved necessity of 'belief' as a mental process, together with the power of abstract thought, slap it against the great unknowns of life, the universe, and everything, and Viola! Religion in some form or other is all but inevitable. I'd say it sticks in some form, at least for a very long time.

Nice to have you back, Christine, as one of the 'voices of reason' for the board.

I think it is fortunate for this forum that Brien is as thick-skinned and good-natured as he is.

OK everybody be nice. It's Christmas, dammit! :-)

>>You had better recognize that and give some of it back,<<

But what would the gods do with it once you 'gave it back'? It just seems like a lot of religions jumped on this 'sacrifice' bandwagon but no one really thought it all the way through.

1) We support Israel, their sworn enemy, this constantly puts us in each other's face
2) We constantly have to intervene in the region because all the oil is there and we are hopelessly dependent on it, this constantly puts us in each other's face
3) Because as a group we have, and they have not (freedom, wealth, comfort, power, etc.) and it is constantly rubbed in their face, in HDTV SurroundSound via satellite
4) We have but two envoys to represent ourselves and our culture: (1) Hollywood and (2) the Military.

Republicans and democrats both love spending. It gets them re-elected. The differences seem only to lie in what they like to spend it on, i.e. education and science and other sissy programs vs. blowing stuff up. I mean, let's face it, blowing stuff up is pretty cool, maybe that's why every teenage boy I know is a republican.

The democrats at least seem more often have some realistic expectations about having some way of paying for said spending, while republicans ignore that side of the equation utterly, cutting taxes and leaving it to the next president to deal with the resulting funding issues. That way they can come back later and blame the democrats for taxing the life out of the country.