Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

>>Why not go rape, loot, pillage and rape?<<

Let's take them one by one:

Why not rape? Uh, because it would be going to an extraordinary amount of work and effort to get something (sex) that is freely given.

Why not loot? Because it would mean working a lot of nights, which would cut seriously into time allotted for astronomy, sex & sleep.

Why not pillage? If I had a longboat and a some friends named Thor & Olaf with swords, shields and horned hats this one might be fun. But since I don't, I'll give it a miss.

To get back to the original question. In a series of semi-serious posts, the point I am ultimately getting to is this: people lead (or attempt to lead) moral lives, religious or not, for the same reason they choose their particular religion -- to be afforded the privilege of belonging to the society at large (do you really think it's just coincidence that you belong to the same religion as everyone around you?). We are social creatures and thousands of years of civilization has conditioned us to accept that reality and behave accordingly. This behavior is called living a 'moral' life.

If you do NOT behave accordingly, you get removed from society. You go to prison, or you eke out an existence in a gutter criminal sub-society devoid of the stable relationships that the population at large enjoys. Odds are pretty good that eventually you will be killed, either by yourself, a rival criminal, a rival gang, an unexpectedly-armed victim, a police officer, etc. You can expect a relatively short life in any case.

What I'm getting at is, the lives of criminals and drug addicts are not nearly as fun and hunky-dory as you paint them to be.

"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me."
-Emo Philips, stand-up comedian

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. - H. G. Wells

>>When looking at deception, would our enemy the devil, put up only one decoy (and not a very good one compared to the others) among many, or many good looking decoys around the one true one? <<

If I were him I'd make them ALL decoys.
;-)

It would be a tough sell.

Skeptics would reject Him because it could easily be a more advanced race using superior technology to make a god-like appearance.

Religious fundamentalists of all types would reject Him because something about his appearance or behavior would be at variance with scripture and thus conflict with the presumed infallibility of their respective holy texts.

Everyone in between would reject him because god is supposed to be sort of a vague, remote & ill-defined thing and to just have Him show up one days is, frankly, just too weird.

Daryl -- if you select "Flat -- Newest First" it looks like it displays the "old" way.

As for exhaust, realize that your car should only be running for a couple of seconds in the garage. Sitting with the car running in the garage is generally not a recommended procedure.

Given that, unless your scope is *very* close to the tailpipe, it is unlikely that any exhaust fumes could reach any sort of concentration that would do anything to your mirror that just plain old dust floating in regular air won't do.

Of course, it can depend on your exhaust too -- if you're driving an old diesel vehicle, or if you're the sort of person who changes his oil once every 3 years, well then you might have a problem.

Wow I went over and checked it out as soon as I saw your post. Yup, looks like he's found a new holy war. That thread is 56 posts long and counting!

If you take the 'insert' out, you change the eyepiece's properties of focal length, correction, etc. Don't worry there is no vignetting of the field caused by the 'small' looking 1.25" barrel within the 2" barrel. Small lenses at the barrel end with big lenses in the middle is a property of this eyepiece design. Dual barrels make it possible to use them in either 2" or 1.25" focusers as-is.