Our Solar System: You Are Now Leaving Earth

By Christoph Seidler and Anne Martin  (Videos)

With eight planets, five dwarf planets, at least 146 moons, more than half a million known asteroids and about 4,000 comets, the solar system is more crowded than you might think. Come join us on our cosmic voyage. And don't forget to turn on the Sound

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-1045692.html

 

 

To Gay Journalist Michaelangelo Signorile: Let's Have a Civil Debate

BY MICHAEL BROWN , CP OP-ED CONTRIBUTORSeptember 5, 2015|9:21 am

Dear Michaelangelo Signorile,

In your recent Huffington Post column, you referred to Americans who refuse to redefine marriage as "religious extremists," stating that, "We," meaning the LGBT community, "cannot be held hostage to the theatrics of religious extremists, nor should we allow them to think that supposedly bad 'optics' will deter us in demanding our rights."

You were speaking in particular about the national controversy surrounding the decision of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk, to refuse to issue marriage certificates to gay couples.

For you, this is a matter of religious extremism, and you are urging gays and their allies to stand against her decision and to refuse to back down, even if, for the moment, it may make your side look bad.

I see it in the exact opposite way, and I'm urging Christians to stand with her and to continue to challenge the Supreme Court decision, just as we have challenged Roe v. Wade since 1973, even if, for the moment, it makes our side look bad.


Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/to-gay-journalist-michaelangelo-signorile-lets-have-a-civil-debate-144441/#ppFB80cfHP2IXz8T.99

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Michael Brown wants a debate but on his own turf... So there is no point in having such debate. 
But, just in case, where should such hypothetical debate be held? In which court?
Christians have a peculiar and limited view of the world. So there is no point of trying to widen their horizon because they don't want to look at reality. So, a secular or a religious court?
And whether it's Christians, Muslims or Jews, it's the same narrow-minded state for which whatever is done by humans has to be done according to their own rules downloaded from their fictitious gods. 
It makes no sense of course, but one cannot argue against this narrow-minded attitude. We can study this viewpoint and find it sets values according to erroneous interpretations developed over centuries of what did not happen in order to make us believe it did happen.  
But people in power make try hard to make people believe it did happen, in order to control their behaviour. 
Free thinkers are dangerous to those who wish to control people. Most free thinkers are no threat, really — they just don't want to go to church nor to war.
In religious circles, the instructors give their flock a bit of illusive leeway in interpreting of few points such as "was Joseph wearing sandals or was he walking barefoot?"or " what was the life of a carpenter then?". It does not go very far on the track of understanding the real human condition. 

So what is the human condition? 
Straight away, we have to mention evolution and the mention of evolution makes the religious mob hiss... 
And yet the human condition is dependent on nature — not about plunder but to protect in evolution. And Pope Francis is the first major religious person to come to term with this reality. 
Beyond this environmental interaction in evolution, the "human" is a most imperfect animal.

We are ill-equipped for natural naked survival. In this context, the human uses a more evolved brainpower (evolved by necessity) to defend against predators and destruction. Cunning and deceit are at the core of human survival in this context. THIS IS THE ONLY CONTEXT WE SHOULD CONSIDER FOR THIS DEBATE with Michael Brown. 
In this context, the stylistic demands we make on ourselves, whether religious or secular are NOT ABSOLUTE, but relative to our survival on this little planet. For most societies, survival is assured and managed by our stylistic visions, including beliefs. Beliefs are no more than part of a gamut of stylistic choices for groups of people. 
In analysis, religions are hypocritically devising dictums that have short historical value and little natural basis where the context of the present is eliminated by traditions because it is tradition. When some religious people mention the bible (or any other religious holy book) as a reference to their behaviour and beliefs, they often forget to accept that these books contain many contradictions to what they want to believe and to the present context. In order to make things fit when they don't, religious people purge the contrary information and adapt the rest of the book to suit the now situation, while telling us about the integrity in the entirety of the reference. It's deceitful. 

So what about marriage? 
First, under religious rules, women have to obey their men and masters. Women are not equal in decision making. For women, religious marriage is a vow of submission. When the religious people talk about marriage being between a man and a woman, they often omit to say it is designed as an unbalanced union. It is. 
The traditional view of the old testament is for a king to have as many wives as he can to show how much money and power he has — and to have as many descendants as possible to go and conquer foreign lands (this concept often does not work, as siblings fight each other to take over Daddy's kingdom). Of course the biblical narration involves a lot of godly mentions and sinning. 
When wives are a bit too expensive and demanding, the king gets concubines on the side for pleasure. 
The next view on marriage was possibly devised by grannies who "favour the grandchildren who are most closely related to them genetically, through a phenomenon called "sexually antagonistic grandparental care." It has been known for some time that a grandmother will naturally prefer her son's daughters (with whom she shares 31 percent of her genes) to her son's sons (with whom she shares only 23 percent, suggesting she will most nurture the grandchild who inherits more of her genes." 
Should the little male bastard play around, he might get shot by granny. Not quite.
The "traditions" came in... 
In a society where most of the children died young, where single parents were ostracised and concubines were tolerated, there was a need to procreate at the speed of copulating rabbits, especially in time of wars to supply fodder for the killing fields. So, most people had to believe that dying for a cause was worth it. Including religious causes. As well pestilence was not an illusion. Not part of the apocalypse, pestilence was part of poor hygienic practices and lack of medical understanding. Things have evolved. 
We live longer, kids don't die like they used to. We have to adapt to these new dynamics that, should we not wake up from the religious slumber, will increase the unstoppable population of humans beyond the size of plagues. We're there already.
Meanwhile, for as long as the human species has existed there has been homosexuality. Under various decrees of the new religious traditions, homosexuals and transgenders were ostracised as sickos or sinners. They are not. They are part of the natural construct of the human species.
And they have the rights to be. They exist and, unlike the proselytising religions who are fighting to the death to convert people, they are not trying to convert people to their status. They only are trying to get recognition and legal status, should they want to be married. They love each other and there is nothing wrong with that.
They want to share their life quite equally and it's more to be said than the unbalance version of marriage under the religious dictum. This is where acceptance should come in — in their direction rather than the other way since the other way has often imposed diabolical restrictions on their very existence. 
Michael, It won't change your life for the worse. It will improve theirs. Is this so bad?

Now to the Christian joke of the day:

Lie Detector

A minister told his congregation, “Next week I plan to preach about the sin of lying. To help you understand my sermon, I want you all to read Mark 17.”

The following Sunday, as he prepared to deliver his sermon, the minister asked for a show of hands. He wanted to know how many had read Mark 17. Several went up. The minister smiled and said, “Mark has only sixteen chapters. I will now proceed with my sermon on the sin of lying.”

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Good one reverend. But possibly some of the smart-arse flock managed to find some Mark 17..., even with another number in front of it... ESPECIALLY THIS ONE:

Mark 10:17-22
New International Version (NIV)

The Rich and the Kingdom of God

17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 

19 "You know the commandments: You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.”

20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Now how many good religious person of great wealth, especially in the USA, will decidedly become as poor as a farting goat on a mountain?

None did I hear...?

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Then one could come along and browse the mark 17. Not a good look here:

The Mark 17 (and Mark 24) were the first mass-produced hydrogen bombs deployed by the United States. The two differed in their "primary" stages. The MK 17/24 bombs were 24 feet 8 inches (7.52 m) long, 61.4 inches (1.56 m) diameter. They weighed 21 tons. The Mark 17 had a yield in the range of 10 to 15 megatons TNT equivalent. Total production of Mk 17s was 200, and there were 105 Mk 24s produced, all between October 1954 and November 1955.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb

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Then we enter the war zone of gaming:

 

The Mark 17 (Mark XVII), famously known by its name as the "Heartbreaker", is an Artillery Level RT Suit, and was one of several new Iron Man Armors created by Tony Stark as part of the Iron Legion. The armor was created sometime after the Battle of New York.[1]

http://ironman.wikia.com/wiki/Mark_17

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Com'on, Mr Michael Brown, ease up and take the debate without refuge behind the fictitious wall of you religious beliefs. Then accept the equality of marriage for those of the same sex who love each other. Simple. Easy... Even if it's not for you.

 

Bathed in bright blue and fluorescent pink light, the galaxy cluster in this image is home to the most powerful explosion since the big bang.

What's more, the explosion is ongoing and has been continuing for the last 100 million years, releasing as much energy as hundreds of millions of gamma ray bursts.

The blast is generated by the largest black hole in the known universe, a gravitational monster over 10 billion times the mass of our Sun.

Astronomers calculate this behemoth has consumed almost 600 million times the mass of the Sun in order to generate such a powerful explosion.

To create the image, X-ray and radio wave data was combined with optical images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The X-rays are shown in blue and were detected by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

They indicate the hot gas that makes up most of the mass of this enormous galaxy cluster.

Shown in pink are vast cavities each over 600,000 light-years in diameter, blasted out by powerful supersonic jets from the gargantuan galaxy at the very heart of this image.

These cavities have displaced a trillion suns' worth of mass and have been filled with magnetised, extremely high-energy electrons emitting radio waves, which were detected by the Very Large Array radio telescope.

Most, if not all, galaxies are thought to contain supermassive black holes at their centres. Astronomers are still trying to determine which forms first — the black hole, or the galaxy around it.

Galaxy cluster MS 0735.6+7421 is located 2.6 billion light-years away in the constellation Camelopardalis, the Giraffe.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-09/most-powerful-explosion-since-big-bang-black-hole-galaxy/6879040