I went to AirVenture...

Untitled, a photo by fly44d on Flickr.

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Tom Hail shared an Instagram photo with you

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"I'm at Oshkosh! #osh13 "

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Tom Hail shared an Instagram photo with you

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"Different kind of fixed gear! #OSH13 "

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Tom Hail shared an Instagram photo with you

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"This is one way to get to #osh13 AirVenture. We're on our way!"

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Tom Hail shared an Instagram photo with you

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"I'm almost ready to go to #OSH13, get on a jet plane in the am early. Ernie isn't coming. "

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Getting ready to go to AirVenture!

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"Young Eagles in 44D. #EAA119"

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3D Movie

Liz and I went to see our first 3D movie yesterday. Star Trek Something Something 3D. Very sad. Liz is one of those people you sometimes wonder which eye to look at when she's talking to you. Her brain doesn't use both eyes at the same time, she normally wears one contact for far vision and the other eye can see near. She just switches between them as necessary. Her glasses are the same, one eye has a prescription to see far, the other has no correction. No bifocals necessary! Lucky girl! So... of course the 3D effect in the movie... totally lost on her. She had to wear the glasses to avoid the blurring on the screen, but no 3D. I didn't think the effect it was worth watching through the narrow field of view with scratched and fogged lenses. Only with large clean lenses will I try this again. We had fun anyway and got to see the planets later that evening.

Twilight of an Empire

From Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/24/1211496/-Twilight-of-an-Empire-More-than-Just-Bridges-are-Crumbling-in-America#

Iconic of the state of American civilization in general? "Too expensive... let it rot." "Too difficult to have a functioning government... let it do nothing." Infrastructure and institutions of a once proud nation, dwindling away into embarrassment and farce. Our leaders no longer care about providing the American people with even basic public goods that can be relied upon. So we -- supposedly the greatest country in the world -- let roads and bridges in major American cities collapse.

It used to be that America put men on the moon.

We have become a society deeply in decline. And for anyone who is proud to be an American, it is sickening to watch it unfold.

The only question that remains is this: Will the American people rise up, with renewed pride in what their country once was and could be again, and demand better of its leaders?

This is not their day.

We are better than those who did this. This is not their day.

The Thinking Atheist · 128,185 like this

7 minutes ago · 

• We look at the horrors of Boston today, and we're again shaken to our core. 
  
  Throughout our history, there have always been monsters among us, their terrible deeds searing us with confusion and pain. They've peppered our history books and our headlines with terrible acts done for terrible reasons, and they will always be among us. 
  
  But I will not give them this day.
  
  I give today to those who could have run from the chaotic scene, but instead broke through barriers and rushed to the sides of total strangers in pain. I give today to the paramedics, police, firefighters and physicians who worked to heal what another had so horribly hurt. I give today to the communities, both physical and online, working to find avenues that might provide financial and emotional support to the wounded and grieving. I give today to the best of us.
  
  It is a terrible day. But when I look at humankind, I will not define it by the anonymous cowards bent on destruction and chaos. I will define it by so many more who demonstrated something beautiful in the face of so much ugliness.
  
  To the good, the compassionate, the brave, the helpful, the kind, the loving and the generous...I give the day to you.
  
  -Seth

Intellectual Collapse of Islam... and US?

From 800 to 1100 AD, the Arabic world was the center of knowledge in the world.  Mathmatics as we know it today was developed, the stars were named as navigation and astronomy were refined.  We’d be speaking Arabic today but for one thing.  Around 1100 AD, a Muslim scholar, Hamid Al-Ghazali, declared that mathematics was the work of the devil.  That was the beginning of the end of the 300 year Arabic renaissance and intellectual domination.  Today, out of the billions of Muslims on the planet, only two are Nobel prize winners.  Out of only 15 million Jews, one quarter of the prizes have been given to Jews.  Significant scientific discovery by the Muslim world ended in 1100.   Is the US headed in the same direction?  The religious right and social conservatives seem to be trying to drag us into the dark ages.

http://youtu.be/Fl1nJC3lvFs

Facebook rant:

The 2014 Obama NASA budget proposal. Essentially unchanged from 2012 and 2013. It should be doubled. Where is this out of control spending I keep hearing blather about? IT SHOULD BE DOUBLED! This country is going down the tubes, heading the same way the Arab world went in 1100AD, the moral religious right got it in their heads that math was the devils work and now the Arab greatest accomplishments (algebra, math, astronomy, navigation) are from 900 years ago and they are still beheading and stoning people. Without investment, research, and exploration, we will follow the Arab world. Fuck the Tea Party.
  

An atheist's ten commandments.

From Adam Lee's Daylight Atheism blog his "ten commandments".

First Commandment: Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

Second Commandment: In all things, strive to cause no harm.

Third Commandment: Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

Fourth Commandment: Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

Fifth Commandment: Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

Sixth Commandment: Always seek to be learning something new.

Seventh Commandment: Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

Eighth Commandment: Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

Ninth Commandment: Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

Tenth Commandment: Question everything. (Including these commandments.)

Comet PanSTARRS

I managed to find the comet PanSTARRS and get a couple of pictures.

Offended?

No one has the right to spend their life without being offended.

http://youtu.be/HQ3VcbAfd4w

Murder moral?

@daytonhartman @unbelievablejb
"so it [murder for pleasure and self relief] is absolutely, objectively wrong? On what basis besides subjective opinion? Further...why is prioritizing your pleasure over another's wrong? Atheism says their just fizzing organic matter. Also...is your standard for judging moral actions the objectively/absolutely correct standard?"

Murder for pleasure is wrong because it harms the community, if the community doesn't thrive then the species doesn't and we suffer. The fizzing organic matter wants to thrive and alturism and charity assists that. It is natural and shown in all populations down to single cell organisms. Religion needs absolute objective measurements, rules, laws in order to control the masses. Atheism doesn't because it uses reason and rational thought. So I take back my tentative agreement that absolute objective rules are necessary to determine morality. If you aren't somehow relieving or preventing suffering or giving pleasure in your actions, you are at risk of not being moral. Are there actions that don't do these things that are not immoral? I can't offhand think of any.