Pagan mom challenges Bible giveaway at North Carolina school
I think the best summary of this story is the relevant Fark headline:
Jan 192012
Jan 182012
Now in production, and in a Man’s Scale… 1/72, not the original 1/96 scale.
XSL-01 Moon Rocket
Jan 182012
If you don’t know, you guess…
Jan 182012
Face it: Damantion Alley was just a bad movie, Goofy story, bad special effects and laughable “science,” it did have one thing going for it: the Landmaster, perhaps the neatest functional land vehicle ever actually built specifically for a movie. The Landmaster is, in a word, just damned awesome.
It has been unavailable in any format other that old, old VHS tapes until apparently quite recently. I just noticed that Amazon.com has it available on both DVD and Blu-Ray. Came out in July, it seems.
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Jan 172012
Jan 172012
A NASA-Langley film showing some early testing of the parawing (Rogallo wing) concept. This was originally intended as a stowable wing that could be deployed from space capsules, stricken aircraft or ejected pilots. Testing was done with landing-gear-equipped Gemini capsule mockups (see HERE), and on a whole range of models, including the B-70 and the Saturn I first stage. But while NASA and the USAF never really did anything with it, it gained a whole lot of popularity at the first truly practical hang glider wing.
The video is 20 minutes long. My favorite few minutes, however, are the first few, showing some introductory flights.
[youtube LlwZ1R_wHZg]
Imagine an alternate history where nothing like the parawing has been invented, never mind demonstrated. Imagine further that you work at NASA and dreamed this idea up. Now… try to imagine that your idea of demonstrating the concept *today* involves something other than CGI, costing spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations.
Jan 172012
As of November 1961.
Jan 172012
See if you can spot the “teachable moment.”
[youtube z4-rppMbp4Y]
Jan 162012
Wow.
Stripped down spectroscopy to probe single molecules
Spectroscopy, a key method of identifying atoms and molecules with light, has been taken to its most fundamental level – a single photon absorbed by a single molecule.
The ability to emit and detect a *single* photon just boggles the mind. Sometimes humans are just neato.
Jan 162012
As Christians around the country are met with violence and marginalization, Dr. Gary Cass, has founded the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) a new organization that aims to counter threats to millions of Christians’ First Amendment rights. While the overwhelming majority of Americans are professed Christians, it has become routine for the media and elites to openly mock and trivialize Christians because they choose to express their faith.
And…
Why do they mock Tebow?
And why do we let them?
…
Tim Tebow is mocked not because he is religious, but because he is Christian.
Oh for gods sake.
I’d take a bit of mockery over what passes for Christian love any day. Behold:
Teen atheist abused via social media after prayer banner ruling
Rhode Island: Teen atheist Jessica Ahlquist has faced a blizzard of taunts, abuse, and threats of physical violence after a federal court ruled a controversial Christian prayer banner hanging in her high school auditorium must come down.
It seems that some people just *need* to feel that they are being oppressed. I guess the feeling of being beset gives some people a sense of their importance… if they weren’t right and standing up to evil, then they’d be ignored; if they’re being mocked, then they must clearly be The Righteous. And being Righteous, they can go beyond mockery straight to death threats for anyone who disagrees with them, such as the girl referenced above. I’ve seen this sort of thing first hand; nothing seems to inspire hate quite so much as not having a sufficient level of belief in some god or other.
As for the demand that Christianity be granted the same putative freedom from mockery as all other religions… no. All religions should be subject to constant and unrelenting debate, skepticism and mockery. Any philosophical system that cannot stand up to mockery is a *weak* philosophical system unworthy of much consideration. Children become adults not through coddling and being protected from all the harshness of the world, but through being exposed to all the bad things and being allowed to adapt to it and grow a tough skin. Same goes for philosophies, religious or otherwise.
[youtube oIvk1zrQng8]
The Tebow thing? I’ve not paid much attention to it. But from what I gather, it’s about some millionaire who plays a childish game with other millionaires in front of a bunch of poor people who make bad financial decisions (such as buying very expensive tickets to watch millionaires run around on a field), and when he shoots a hometouchgoal, or whatever the hell it’s called, he puts on some theatrics where he implies that his performance is due to the intervention of some god or other (one apparently so involved in athletics that he doesn’t have a few moments to deal with issues like THIS or THIS). I can’t really say what aspect of this is deserving of special reverence.