Posts Made By: Joe Lentz

Jesus is coming. Look busy!

Guess what? That 900 page report just released about intelligence leading up to 9-11 has 28 blanked out pages. For reasons of national security, the White House blacked out the entire section entitled "Finding, discussion and narrative regarding certain sensitive national security matters." My understanding is that the blanked out pages are about the Saudi policy of supporting fundamentalism in the absence of repressing al-Qaeda's terror network despite US alerts to Riyadh since 1996. The report also confirms press revelations suggesting that Omar al-Bayoumi, an associate of two of the hijackers, could have been a Saudi government agent. It details his ties with September 11 suicide attackers Khaled al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. But of course these pages can't be read now; we don't want to embarrass our allies right?

Maybe he could go into the entertainment industry where he might actually accomplish something. He could play to SRO crowds in 2 horse texas towns ;-)

Well, I certainly agree that the Bible is not a book of science, although these days there are some who try to lay claim to that type of legitimacy. Trying to glean scientific proofs from bible passages reminds me of a little exercise we did long ago in grade school:

The students would all form a circle and one would begin by whispering something to the student next to him or her. That student would then in turn whisper what they were told to the next student in the circle, and so on. By the time the last student was told, the message would be compared with the original. More often than not, the message which was passed around had mutated in meaning well beyond the original.

Imagine the potential for transferred misinformation over the course of history since biblical times. Without even going into the whole fantasy, symbolism and motivation connected with all the writings and interpretations, how could one reasonably be expected to take such information literally? This isn't to say that a book so brimming full of stories isn't going to provide a certain amount of fodder for such "proofs".

It is my belief that those religions leaders (and government leaders as well) who try to encourage the blurring of lines between religion and science, and religion and government are doing a major disservice to all three institutions... and they need to get a clue!!!

There! I'm glad I was able to clear that up for everyone.

That is just pathetic, I can't think of any other word for it. Glad your keeping your sense of humor intact Herb, in the face of stuff like that humor is the only appropriate response. "Rampant with criminals"? Good grief...

http://www.astromart.com/viewad.asp?cid=211074

...and reply:

http://www.astromart.com/viewad.asp?cid=211076

Jeff, you might also want to take a look at the Discovery Telescopes forum on Astromart for other owner impressions (and tweaks) of the 8" f/8. I've made a few changes on mine in the way of improvement, and am quite pleased with it's performance. (none of the changes were absolutely critical, with the exception of relocating the mirror forward a bit so that a couple of my eyepieces would come to focus I've been getting some great views of tight doubles and also Mars. I'm looking forward to viewing Jupiter and Saturn with this scope..

Hey Ron, here's a link for flocked paper:

http://www.fpi-protostar.com/flocked.htm

Mike, you're making too much sense!

In addition, he returned with interesting plans for new scopes and eyepieces, including a 93mm f/6.9 apo. Most importantly though, (as Mark has noted) he said shipping of the 1026 scopes will commence tomorrow. I certainly enjoy hearing about plans for exciting new products, but at this juncture the priority of getting the 102 and 127 scopes shipped is obvious.