Still using Imperial measurements?

Twelve is a more logical base than 10. It divides evenly by 2, 3 and 4. Base 10 only does 2 and 5. Mirroring fingers is so stone-age.

[they believe] that religion in school meant students were better behaved and more obedient, and society as a whole was just better off

Note there is no real evidence that the threat of a ghost-father BBQ-ing your ass for eternity if you are bad actually works as an incentive. Shorter-term feedback is usually much much more effective on humans (and all animals).

the problem with "Intelligent Design" is not that whether it's "true" or not, but rather that it's not science because it ignores the Scientific Method

I disagree. ID is a valid theory, in terms of a possible explanation. After all, Monsanto is doing ID (and some DD - Dumbass Design), so we know it can happen to some degree. Old-fashioned breeding is also ID.

But, the evidence for it is very week in the big-picture sense. We normally don't discuss very week theories in science class. I don't mind if a state textbook puts in a blurb about it, but the "Evidence" section would be blank.

An interesting side discussion for students is if complexity alone is evidence for ID. In other words, if a natural explanation is not currently known, is that strong evidence for a creator, or merely evidence of humanity's knowledge gaps?

Asking those kinds of questions is a great way to learn such that I am all for bringing up ID in a science class, if done well. I really hate to say it, but I agree with Bush in terms of bringing it up. (I have to shower after that admission.)

Comcast: "The dunce-caps we are wearing are not really dunce-caps, but rather dandruff routing devices."

It's "forked up", if that's what you mean.

Indeed. Civilized nerds don't fight; they fork. (God won't let us fork the Middle East, unfortunately.)

I have to agree with conservatives on one point: we don't know enough about Earth to make any reliable predictions.

Maybe the Earth will somehow balance itself and the warming will level out. Or trigger positive feedback mechanisms that accelerate warming and/or change. We just don't know.

However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about altering the "normal" path. It's pretty clear we are gambling big-time via pollution and green-house gasses.

Some of the more thoughtful conservatives say we should go ahead and gamble: humans will adapt around change. Even though I disagree, that's a valid position, for science can't tell us WHAT to do, only what will happen (at best). If simulations show that juggling rakes has a 20% of putting your eye out, and you agree with the odds, and do juggle rakes and your eye gets put out, and you accept the consequences, at least you are honest. Blind, foolish, but honest.

I guess some conservatives want to be proverbial lion trainers. The problem is that we all have to be in the same cage with them.

Those who believe we should end EVERYTHING because it's not perfect generally need medication or serious counseling. I mean it. Get some help, dude.

Resembles my last X-Ray: Digestive track of an overweight dude.

There's a fungus among us.

Suddenly the world was more productive!

No, we all came to troll on Slashdot instead

Too late. I wore it out printing nukes

I looked through one of those from a relative, and it sucked eggs. Don't do it. Horrible horrible optics. Maybe it's better than nothing, but barely.

That's a bunch of hogwash. I have a 60mm refractor and it can see bands on Jupiter and the Cassini gap between the inner Saturn ring and outer (under ideal conditions). Binoculars will not even show the rings separate from the ball of Saturn, and will not show bands on Jupiter. I can also see spots on Mars and the polar caps under ideal conditions. It did take some practice to learn to see some of these, though. It wasn't instant.

Just make sure the optics say "precision ground". That has a legally-enforced trade meaning.

That being said, reflectors are more cost effective for looking at nebula. For "bright" objects like the moon and planets, refractors are more bang for the buck because the center mirror in the reflectors tends to blur planets etc. via diffraction. It's a trade-off.

It all depends on the preferences and behavior and discipline of the kid.

I have a cheap mount (simple tripod). It's annoying, but I've learned to live with it via practice by knowing how to manually track. Being bare-bones, it didn't stop me from seeing anything I wanted to see.

And don't be fooled by extra or gimmicky attachments, such as a Barlow lens. They are often useless. The only attachment I really enjoyed was the sun filter lens, but there are other ways to view the sun via projection.

Auto-targeting gizmos can be nice, but they do take a fair amount of setup and fiddling before they can do their job.

But, I personally think it's better to just learn how to aim the thing manually. Start with the moon to get used to aiming, tracking, and focusing. You then apply those skills to progressively dimmer objects.

If the kid is not disciplined or motivated to practice and use the scope to its potential, then no scope is "good".

from a probe built in the mid 70s.