First, there are two kinds of atheism: active and passive atheism. Active atheism is a religion. It is an active belief, even a need, that there MUST BE NO GOD.

Passive atheism again is of two kinds. The first is actually a form of self-worship, and is the most common; in the end, such a passive atheist ends up enslaved to many things. The second, I think to be extremely rare, but is more of an unawareness of God.

That last kind of atheism, yes, is not a religion.

As far as it goes, it takes actual believing effort to ignore or deny the gaps. Moreover, when I talk of gaps, they are different for you and for me, because I have no gap for (for example) the Bible, Noah's flood, and asteroids. You may have no gap for asteroids, but have a gap for Noah's flood. BOTH of us have gaps for the severity of the asteroid problem: is the Holocene Working Group more right, or is the traditional interpretation of asteroid frequency more right? We discuss and read and argue, but currently we don't know.

The gaps don't terrify either the Christian or the atheist, surely. To say otherwise is to be hot-winded. But the gaps are evidence that one's current working theory might be wrong. And my point was that to be SURE in your atheistic faith (for an ironic association of terms), you have to deny the gaps.

I acknowledge the gaps. Maybe that is why I can be a Christian, and yet sometimes be on the edge of despair. But that isn't all of it. Some of it has to do with the future I see. Some of it has to do with the people around me. A lot of it may have to do with my own biochemical and genetic makeup. As I wrote before, I'm not quite 100% sure what the source is. It may not matter.

Reeves showing how he 'flew' as superman using special effects, did not debunk the annual migration of geese.

Or again, the proof that 99.99999% of people do NOT have eidetic memory does not prove that Tesla was a fraud, and all his inventions nonsense. I happen to claim that I know one of few in our country who has been documented as having such memory, and it has caused her great trouble.

To put it shortly, yes thereeare frauds and chareletans.

There also exist the works of God, and there also exists healing. The first does not compare with the second.

The woman who was healed, a family friend of ours, seems to be okay with it.

First of all, religion is not irrational. You have to ignore a ton of evidence about what you cannot explain, to actively deny that there is a God.

Second, though, I think the article and the title are very intuitive, and point out the irony of the department: 'need a way to cheat death'. Because one of the real complete failures, as you have noted, is the need-to-cheat-complete-meaninglessness.

And most religions, whether utter nonsense, or really evil, or extremely dangerous, do offer some kind of meaning, even if it is false. And that is probably why many atheists, while officially of that religion, in fact end up believing in government as god. They need something to fill the void, and government really reeeally wants to.

Not that there isn't a level of dispair there: there will be. If I. as a Christian who has seen healings, and experienced the voice of good, and seen his power, can bounce along on the edge of despair, surely someone with less evidence might as well.

And I'm not 100% sure why.

I think you're off by at least one order of magnitude (if the way you go about it is smart), maybe two.

Actually, science works DESPITE many scientists not having integrity.

That's one of the reasons that I actually FAVOR creation science despite the fact that I think it is not a correct theory.

Because there are a ton of scientists out there who do fudge their data, or take their data and deliberately misinterpet it, beyond those who take their data and accidentally misinterpret it.

Then others go around and BELIEVE the studies, far in excess of the claims of the study. So then you have general academia all saying "well, science proves that lack of funding will destroy education." Or whatnot. Because they heard it, and want to believe it.

And there, to break through all the dogma, is the creation scientist who says, "uhhh.... a lot of your data looks okay, but you draw absolutely nonsense conclusions from it. Here, look at the limits of accuracy of your pb-pb dating, and consider...."

Now: Don't take my word for it... I'm making up numbers to give the gist of what I'm about to say, but 90 percent of the scientists will refuse to listen to what he said. 9% will attack him virulently. And 1% will say, "That's very interesting. I still think the theory is basically valid, but what would that imply, then?" And sometimes he discovers a fraud. Sometimes he discovers a new law.

So it is the creation scientists who battle the dogma, and help ensure that science moves forward.

So don't worry that science wouldn't move forward if scientists didn't have integrity. For it is very possible (and indeed, from what I have seen it is moderately often true) that don't, and it does.

You just have to figure out what to ignore.

What you describe is with the current situation, which is currently crashing all around us. Bus usership is skyrocketing in the city where I am (Hampton Roads). If that trend continues ... and I admit that I do NOT see national statistical evidence that bears me out, but if it continues, then the automobile may be less relevant.

Now, that said, I think there is something far more important than electric buses, and that would be electric metro trains that can dock at speed.

  First, because electric is best suited to short stretches without power, and buses and autos fail at that.

Second, because if you can use a system in which every trip is nonstop, one way, and moderately fast, it will clean out the short-hop airline industry AND some of your more extensive auto use.

Third, because if a reasonable public transit system is offered for medium- and long- trips, then short-hop electric becomes more viable.

I wonder how much they are duped. I repeatedly see spam-ads in forums for "moneyrelative.com" except that isn't what it is. It's money ... ummm... something else.

And the spam ads always look like somebody misplacing a comment from a completely different forum, "uhh, yeah, what kate said, it's amazing how you can earn yada yada dollars in only a month..."

But they never say what you do for the money.

Now, I *DO* earn yada yada dollars in a month, because I am drafting working drawings for real bridges that get built. I KNOW what I do is valuable. But if you are employed... no, let me adjust that.

There are LOTS of jobs out there for which you can be paid a reasonable looking wage for no particular service other than time spent. How is that? Because the purpose you are serving is reducing the risk to your "employer". So you can get a job flipping houses with no money invested, taking 10% of the profit, but ALL of the loss (that is, bankruptcy) if the market crashes. And that is how your employer steals money from banks. Or you can get a job running drugs: your risk is 20-to-life if caught and you DON'T rat out your employer; or death to you and your family if you do. He makes millions, you make a good , what, maybe $70k in a year. And so on. Now, this money-relative-dot-com (name changed to protect the probably guilty) , I half suspect is nothing more than recruiting US accomplices to the Nigerian gangs. But I don't know, and I'm not willing to go over to the site and risk my browser (in case it's actually recruiting spam bots).

But I rather suspect that most people know that it's illegitimate when they sign up for it. But they hope that it's legit, and even if not, they hope that somehow they'll slide. Because that reeeeeeaally need the money, and they've maxed out their credit cards, and a person shouldn't just give up when they can do SOMETHING to get money.... ... but a lot of times, they set themselves up for that, deliberately, before, when they chose to get the things they wanted, knowing that they'd have to go to the shady side to pay it off.

I don't think it's a coincidence OR a conspiracy. I think that as a comet or multi-part asteroid approaches close to a planet, it breaks up like Shoemaker-Levy 9.

As it misses, the different fragments get accelerated at different angles around the planet. At that point, they will end up with vastly different orbits, all focused on the same approximate point in space.

But from a solar-centric perspective, they all still have the same energy, and thus all have the same period.

So they hold a reunion of sorts after that, all passing close by each other.

And if the planet also happens to pass by again, the astronomers can be watching one asteroid, and not see the rabbit punch coming from a completely different direction.

Just a crazy comment/question... is this systemd issue kindof like the SSL question, in which a specific weak class of random number generator was selected for SSL and PUSHED THRU?

The heavy-handed tactics of labelling the opposition as troll does seem very normal to human nature, but it also seems normal to this particular cloak-and-dagger government we've inherited from the post-ww2 years.

Well, if I remember correctly,first theyor other private corporations fight the government on whether they should be allowed to have propellant; then they have to fight the government on whether they should be allowed to launch. Then having proved their technology they have to fight the government on what new paperwork they have to fill out to sell US-made rockets to the government, rather than buying from the standard graf^H^H^H^Hgovernment contractors like boeing that illegally buy Russian rockets, mark them up, and sell them to the US government for nonbid profits galore.

Then they have to fight the government on quickly having signed an exclusive nonbid contract with said preferred contractors while the previous issue was still being dealt with.

Idon't know, it seems pretty par for the course, and was why Mircorp went under.

Why did you want to know how companies like spacex do it?

One thing I wish I *HADN'T* given up? The old Apple ][. Automating the controls through the I/O port and Applesoft was a breeze. Nowadays, I don't know how I'd do it.

You said that we can't predict volcanos and quakes. That isn't entirely correct. Mt. St. Helens was predicted, and they cleared the mountain of most people.

And we do have signs of impending quakes, including certain mediterranian ants. Also, IIRC, methane gas release is also considered to be a quake precursor.

Which DOES make me wonder, if this methane release is normal, or recent. I guess we won't know, or even have an idea unless we compare it to other areas.

Making the earth's crust rise should not directly affect the strike-slip San Andreas fault at all. However, it has been anecdotally noted on syzygyjob.com forums that thrust quakes seem to be on the rise, along with hypothesizing that the rising crust might release friction allowing exactly that.

For my own part, I've noticed a large increase of small quakes surrounding the great elliptical basin, the southwest of which coincides with the rising sierra nevada; and occasional time-coincident radial forays into the same basin.

So I half wonder if the rising isn't part of a larger-scale process.

Why not... get with small museums and astronomy clubs in remote (low-light-pollution) locations across the US, and use smaller scopes not just at your location, but set up all across the US?

Then phase the scopes together, and use scheduling software to let the museums (and you) use them.

Early on, you should be able to get an image under any weather conditions.

Later, as you upgrade and develop your software, you should be able to get excellent 3-D images of planets, better identify the orbits of asteroids and comets, identify new asteroids (take one image, align it to others, and subtract the scaled values to minimize the overall light. Then look for arrays of speckled dots, that indicate a closer object. )

Eventually, what you could end up with is a very large phased array.