top secret
via twidroid
You might not think about the finish of your homemade telescope but if it’s build from solid oak you probably should. [Gregory Strike] built this 8″ telescope a few years back but just posted about it a few days ago. The optics are quite expensive but the rest of the build was done dirt cheap and he did a great job of it.That includes taking care to finish the oak boards that make up the octagonal body of the instrument.
This is much more approachable for the average hacker than something like the 22″ binocular build (or going way too far and building your own observatory). [Gregory] developed his design after looking at a couple of others. If you need a bit of a push to get started check out the telescope resource we ran across in our days of Internet infancy.
Patrick Lencioni has a great article over at The Simple Wisdom Project on the problems that come from the fact that members of congress often do not have to live with the consequences of the laws they pass. Universal health care is the latest example.
Here’s a great quote:
As it stands today, Congress is considering legislation that would substantially change the way health care in America is paid for and delivered. And regardless of how one feels about that, one thing is certain: members of Congress won’t have to participate in it. The bill expressly states that they are exempt, and as we know, they have a much better, richer plan.
Regardless of whether you’re a man or a woman, a liberal or a conservative, a teenager or a senior citizen, this just doesn’t make any sense. It gives one the impression that politicians are masters of the people rather than public servants, and that they see themselves as being more important than the people they are supposed to represent. Otherwise, why would they choose to exempt themselves but not firefighters or teachers or police officers or doctors?
Related posts:
A good article from CNN Money.
(HT: JT)
Related posts:
Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves. This is what Conroy was hinting at in his account of adolescence, the way books enlarge us by giving direct access to experiences not our own. In order for this to work, however, we need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise.Such a state is increasingly elusive in our over-networked culture, in which every rumor and mundanity is blogged and tweeted. Today, it seems it is not contemplation we seek but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. Why? Because of the illusion that illumination is based on speed, that it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time.. . . What I'm struggling with is the encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there is something out there that merits my attention, when in fact it's mostly just a series of disconnected riffs and fragments that add up to the anxiety of the age. [bold emphasis mine]Are others out there experiencing something similar? If so, what are you doing to swim against the information stream?HT: First Thoughts
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
