Posts Made By: James Brown

That's beautiful Tyler! I'm amazed that you got 400 minutes of data in one night, In August! You must be very efficient.

Jim

Floyd Blue said:

Go ahead and let them build the Mosque. Then do as their leader wants and embrace Sharia Law and become a Muslim if that suits you. But, it is your generation and your children that will have to deal with what comes of all this. You will give away your freedom by giving it to those that wish to destroy your way of life and all in the name of freedom. But I will be dead and gone by then and it will not be my concern anymore. But, it will be something that everyone will look back on and regret their passive attitudes.
The Muslim religion is very straight forward, be Muslim or else. There is no law but Sharia and that is that. Even England is beginning to fall into the clutches of Sharia Law, though it would have been thought to be impossible by many. Our own courts are allowing some forms of Sharia law by ignoring the rights of one for the religious beliefs of another. It is a slippery slope and the grease is being spread for the slide.
Now some might think that this is silly talk, but remember there is suppose to be a separation of church and state. This was done for a reason by our founders. I would bet you that the writers of the Constitution would not agree with our new reasoning. We forget so quickly the slap to our cheek as we turn the to show the other.
I went to war for this country to keep freedom and our way of life secure, but I did not realize that my generation would slip so far down the slope or I might have thought twice.

I had to sleep on this reply Floyd; I was pretty bummed to see such a defeatist attitude coming from you last night. Our universal goal here is preserving freedom. I agree that immigrants or citizens who would want to have Sharia law are a threat to freedom. Please understand that I am taking your lead here and talking about the big picture, not just this particular mosque issue.

So, when confronted with a population that wants to restrict freedom (actually a population with religious leadership that wants to restrict freedom) we have two choices. (1) We can compromise the Bill of Rights and outlaw this religion or (2) we can enforce the Bill of Rights and count on things to work out for the benefit of freedom because the Bill of Rights is the best thing we have ever invented for preserving freedom.

I firmly believe that option two is the way to go. The Establishment Clause guarantees that Sharia courts can never supersede our regular secular civil and criminal court system. Do you think that the US Imams now living in our cities have the kind of control over their followers that Saudi or Iranian Imams exercise? I don't, and the reason is twofold: without the full authority of the government police behind Sharia law it is impossible to have the type of iron-fisted control that has eliminated freedom in much of the Muslim world. In other words, the "absolute rule" theocracy model of social control and governance that makes Iran what it is today cannot work here provided we do not compromise the Bill of Rights. Also, the girls of Islam who are no more than property in the Middle East have genuine opportunity and more fundamentally they have human rights here. That will make all the difference in the world over a few generations. If enough girls can be educated without the threat of death Islam will become modernized.

In a nutshell, I am unwilling to support a ban on this mosque location, even though I can concede that it might be a huge and intentional symbolic insult to the United States. Any ban based upon the symbolic nature of the mosque weakens the Bill of Rights and that weakens our ability as a nation to preserve freedom over the long run.

Jim

Great photos Jim! I love the dunes. We were there last winter after a decent snow storm. The scenery was great and the sledding extraordinary!

Jim

Jim Carpenter said:

Here's a few images from last week at Great Sand Dunes National Park near Alamosa, Colorado. The dune field is located along the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley, nestled against the western base of the Sangre de Christo Mountains, and is approx 30 sq miles in area. Elevation of the valley varies between 7500 and 8000+ feet, and mountains behind the dunes vary from 12K to 14K feet. The first two images are taken with a Nikon D70, and the second two are taken with a Canon G10. C&C welcome.

Jim

Check the foreground out carefully... Obviously two great artistic minds with shared vision!



Jim (the other Jim)

John Wemesfelder said:

If we may, let us assume that a Federal statute has been passed by Congress, and confirmed by the Supremes, which states that: " Any human fetus/fertilized egg is a human being, with all of the rights and responsibilities of a full-term human."

I would like to hear concrete proposals as to how one would enforce such a law. Fluff proposals are not of any value...Would we require that all female humans capable of ovulation submit to mandatory pregnancy testing on a monthly basis? Are the names and social security numbers of sexual partners entered into the record for purposes of responsibility? Will all OB/GYNs be required to undergo law enforcement training?

I could ask more questions, but I'm sure that you get the idea.

Enjoy yourselves,
John W

John:

I understand your premise. I'm not sure why the extraordinary enforcement measures you have suggested are required at all. Consider this; you personally are not required to check in with the state each month to verify that you have not been murdered. You do not have to call the cops each month to verify that your furniture has not been stolen. From the perspective of the state an undetected crime is no crime at all.

On the other hand, if your body turns up dead, or you call the cops and say "my furniture has been stolen" they will open an investigation, which hopefully will lead to the enforcement of the appropriate law.

With respect to your hypothetical, we can agree that illegal abortions will occur, as they did in the past when all abortion was illegal. If this crime is reported or detected, a prosecution might commence. If this crime is not reported or detected, nothing will happen and the law will not be enforced. This is exactly the same as the case with any other criminal statute.

So in the end, I would say that we enforce your hypothetical the same way we enforce all other statutes.

I might discover as I read through these many posts that you are spring-boarding off of a deeper point. I'm starting at the top and working down, more or less. If this hypothetical is designed to demonstrate that illegalizing abortion is un-workable within the limited context of "difficult enforcement", I don't think that you have accomplished your goal.

Jim

Doug Matulis said:

So is this when we use our 2nd ammendment rights for the purpose it was designed for?

Doug:

What do you think the 2nd Amendment was designed for?

Jim

Floyd Blue said:

Well, I am trying to figure out what to image this weekend. I would like to do M33, I do not have what I would call a great image of this galaxy. But I would like to image something unusual too. Anyone have any suggestions?

I'm going to be imaging the nebulosity around Sadr in Cygnus as "first light" for a Pentax SDUF II APO I picked up quite affordably on Astromart a few months ago. The Sadr region looked interesting in the Cygnus widefield I posted a few weeks ago.

Jim

John Agnew said:

I found my avatars grazing up on Mt Evans, west of Denver at 14,000ft.

Hi John:

Gorgeous!

The goats on Mt. Evans are so cool. Here's my version from about 4 summers ago.

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=449924&poll_id=&news_id=&page=

I've seen goats a few other places in Colorado, but never as often as on Mt. Evans. Once my elder son (about 12 at the time) and I were climbing a peak named Quandry near Breckenridge. A big male goat was right in the middle of the trail with a couple of little ones behind him. He was not going to move and he was looking at us with a lowered head. We skirted around him, giving him a wide bearth. He eyed us the whole way around. It was kind of scary for me, because I knew that if he charged I would have to take the hit for my little team.

How about that shedding! There's a big difference between the weather on Evans in August and January!

Jim

Tom Andrews said:

Congratulations Jim!!!

Thank you! Thank you! (applause)

8)

Roland Christen said:

Last night was clear and good seeing. Had a 2 hour window of opportunity. M32 has such a large variation of brightness from the outer arms to the core that it is difficult to bring out detail over the whole galaxy. The exposures were limited to 60 seconds to prevent the core from burning out. The result shows the tiny star-like core with surrounding dust.

There was a fairly large gradient caused by the nearby gibbous Moon. Required a bit of processing in Photoshop.

AP 305F3.8 astrograph, SBIG-STL11K camera. Approximately 45 minutes total exposure, 60 second subs.

Rolando

Hi Roland:

I think that is a very nice result. I love the "wispiness" of the Galaxy as you have rendered it with such short subs. It's very natural looking.

Jim