Posts Made By: Mike Hart

Kenny,
I ordered mine in October, so I am ahead of you. I contacted Sandy yesterday and have an update that the latest estimate for my dome is late February. They have stopped taking orders until they are caught up and are going to be working on improving their communication with customers by estimating delivery dates at the beginning of each week (but they will be out of town until Jan 5 so don't expect an update until they are back ).

Sandy indicated that Matt Welsh (who posted here earlier) ordered a 10 foot dome in Sept and his was shipped out a week or so ago so there is progress being made on completing orders. He would be the guy to talk to about what he thinks of his dome.

Matt Welsh, are you out there? Please fill us in.

I have put half down on my dome, but I still don't think of it as a being particularly at risk. I still have a good feeling about the company despite the negative speculation in this forum . I think lack of info breeds a lot of speculation (usually negative) I think hearing from actual customers is what we need to get better data and improve the signal to noise ratio.

Next time I talk to Sandy or Jeff, I will try to get a list of past customers to contact and will try to find out how many orders they have on the waiting list. If I can contact dome owners, I will ask them to contribute to this forum or will share what I learn.

After talking with Sandy at Moonshine domes about the situation with their operation getting increasingly behind schedule and their own desire to modify the design of their domes and retool their shop. Sandy made me an offer that will be made to all existing Moonshine Customers. I asked if I could share this offer to those on the AstroMart Forum and she agreed.

All customers who have placed orders with Moonshine domes (there are roughly 10 of us) can choose to keep their order in place (knowing that they are even further behind now by an additional 2-weeks or more) or ask for a refund.

Those who leave their order in place will receive half off of the shipping charges when the dome is complete. Those who desire a full refund will be given one but Sandy asked for people to follow the following procedure.

Refund requests should be made in writing and sent via registered letter to:
Moonshine Domes
9568 Japonica
El Paso TX 79924

Refunds will be made and returned by registered letter. Sandy said those requesting refunds should realistically allow 3 to 4 weeks for the transaction.

I very much enjoyed the exchange between Geof and Don. Though their views seem antithetical but their aims are the same. The elimination of oppression with the lowest possible cost/sacrifice and the greatest freedom for souls enslaved by brutality.

I cannot disagree that SH is an evil menace we need to deal with, so is Kim Jung Il, so was Augusto Pinochet, and countless other past and present brutal evil thugs. I worry, that we also support other such regimes, not likely as brutal as SH but likely of the same ilk. Here is my question. What is the threshold for action? And how much hypocrasy do we accept in holding our nose about oppression as long as it is served up by our allies?

One of my problems with the current war is not the cause but the timing, the hypocrasy and the consequences. If our motive is liberating the oppressed, we should have acted long ago. The just cause argument rationalizes the action but not the timing. Also, if we are to be the world's moral policeman because the U.N. is inept (which it is), why should we limit ourselves to the "Axis of evil" and make a complete list and just go on a world moral cleaning spree? I don't like war, but I despise oppression and can see that inaction can feed oppression.

On the other hand, if our motive is strictly our own national security and eliminating terrorist threats, I think this is the wrong front and the wrong strategy. It will create more problems (in terms of terrorism) than it solves.

I don't think being isolationist is reasonalbe, nor do I think we have the ability or right to be the world's policeman. But as the worlds only superpower, what is the right balance?

Sadam has been evil for decades so has Kim Jung Ill and his father. Numerous regimes in Africa have and still do commit outrageous atrocities. On the sliding scale of Evil to Horrible where do we stop.

BTW - My thoughts were triggered by reading Pat Buchanon's predictably isolationist arguements.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-buchanan23feb23,1,598172.story

If you had a few tens of billions to invest? Which your you buy, a Missile Defense system or a Mission to Mars?

I recently moderated a forum on health care costs. One of the factors that came up as a significant cost driver was personal behavior. We want the best care but with the insurance industry (or government) between consumer and the actual costs, the market system doesn't work very well.

e.g. Hospitals are swamped in Nov. Dec. because of elective surgeries, why? Deductable have been met. If we had to pay for them ourselves, many wouldn't occur. My wife's illness (lupus) was uninsured so we picked up her prescriptions out of our own pocket ($400/month). If we just went to the most convenient pharmacy it would be anywhere from $600-1200. Would I shop around if there was a $20 co-pay?

Finally, if my wife was dying, there is no difference to me between a $1,000 or a $50,000 procedure. My psychology is not market driven, but that is the way we all think as individuals, and we can't manage "the commons" based on that type of psychology and not go bankrupt. It sounds cold hearted, but at some point isn't rationing services resonable? No country can afford health care that spare's no expense.

News coverage of the war has been awful. Al Jazera tells the Arab world what they want to hear (blood, guts and bleeding civilians) and the U.S. media gives us a Hollywood images of clinical bombs without blood like its a Bruce Willis movie adapted for TV and scripted by the Pentagon to reinforce the message that precision weapons make war clean.

The Lehrer Report provides good reasonably objective and thoughtful analysis and C-span occasionally carries other country's coverage, but has anybody found objective media coverage with critical analysis that is worth the time.

I spend very little time in front of the tube and don't have time to do the channel surfing to find decent coverage. Any recommendations out there? P. Arnett and Geraldo asside, the signal to noise ratio of U.S. media coverage is abysmal.

I just read a long article in the Atlantic Monthly on the Saudi goverment, the politics of the royal family, the corruption and influence peddling and ties to U.S. politics. It doesn't bode well for the region or our influence there. The Saudi regime is U.S. friendly but is unstable and borderline schizo. Our dealings with them are equally schizo.

My wife's theory is that our move on Iraq is totally strategic - and I suppose by that, it is imperialist. With a strong foot-hold in Iraq, you can project power deep into the region all along the Iranian and Saudi Border all the way to Soviet E. Asia. Who needs Turkey if we can have Iraq for an ally and bases? Furthermore, we can protect Saudi and Iraqi oil fields with our own forces.

There is no question it is about oil, but not in the naive way so many think. The global economy and regional oil reserves are joined at the cranium. If Osama wanted to bring about a revolution, and bring the U.S. to its knees he would have targetted Saudi oil production not the WTC. Without the Saudis, the price of oil could go to over $100 a barrel - those would be tough economic times indeed.

The U.S. and the western developed world would be hit harder than anybody else. Its not about whose oil it is or which government or company makes money producing it, its about making sure no one threatens the supply. We cannot afford for the valve to be turned off - the economic engine of the world depends on it and 6 of the 8 cylinders of that engine are ours. I don't agree with the war, but there will be benefits to winning it.

As for democracy in the region, I actually think democracy could work in Iraq and Iran, but if the Saudi royal family was thrown out and replaced with a democracy today they would vote in a Bin Laden type faster than you can say Ayotollah. I doubt Jordan, Syria or Egypt would elect very U.S. freindly governments if they had democracies tomorrow.

I am a bit uneasy about regional democracy taking hold too fast - that part of the world isn't exactly happy with us and won't be for many election cycles. Be careful what you ask for, for it may be given.

I always liked http://www.sodaplay.com/
You can have a lot of fun playing with gravity and elasticity.

I thought of the Marines who participate in this forum and thought this was worth sharing. This came to me as a powerpoint file, but I adapted it to the file size restrictions of this forum. Just follow the sequence.

This is my first ever attempt to dabble with a webcam. I took the shot the same night I built the camera. I simply cracked open an old Kodak DVC323 webcam and put a 11/4 nose on it wrapped it in duct tape. I used a 12" LX200 with a 2X barlow.

I was only able to take two AVI's between clouds (roughly 70 or so frames each) and just messed in registax at random until I liked what I saw.

Two Qs

1) Should I use another barlow to increase image scale to improve resolution?
2) Is 320X240 enough or should I find a better webcam?
3) Any advice on registax? I was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of choices it offered and would appreciate shortcuts.