Thomas Jefferson and the Tyranny of Religion

"... To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.... And in confiding it [an enclosed syllabus] to you, I know it will not be exposed to the malignant perversions of those who make every word from me a text for new misrepresentations and calumnies. I am moreover averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public; because it would countenance the presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed...."

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth. ... Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establishment at all. The experiment was new and doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond conception. They flourish infinitely. Religion is well supported; of various kinds, indeed, but all good enough; all sufficient to preserve peace and order: or if a sect arises, whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without suffering the state to be troubled with it. They do not hang more malefactors than we do. They are not more disturbed with religious dissensions. On the contrary, their harmony is unparalleled, and can be ascribed to nothing but their unbounded tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in which they differ from every nation on earth. They have made the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may, of those tyrannical laws."

"Open carry" extremists target women and survivors of gun attacks

This was posted on Mother Jones before the UCSB massacres: Spitting, Stalking, Rape Threats, How Gun Extremists Target Women. There have been stories posted here about open carry advocates in Texas and elsewhere carrying their guns into public places to intimidate people; that bullying behavior has been extended:

Thanks, Octafish! I've long been critical of the way the Space Shuttle's design was........

.....compromised from the beginning. I'm also very critical of the way that some technologies from the Shuttle era are being recycled for asteroid and Mars missions intended for the 2020s and 2030s, mostly the same segmented solid rockets used on the Shuttle.

I did a quick Google search on "Prescription for Disaster Challenger." One of the more interesting sources I found was a pdf file of a report from the University of Texas Austin for a course in Studies in Ethics, Safety, and Liability for Engineers:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=23&ved=0CDkQFjACOBQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.engr.sjsu.edu%2Fnikos%2Fcourses%2Fae171%2FSS%2520Design.doc&ei=RdtrU5O2EYqpyAGW6YCQDA&usg=AFQjCNEtDtoynqohGA3QvnWQXbbitPTtJQ&sig2=wA_ZZaBvA4V4K7PSNE1oLA&bvm=bv.66111022,bs.1,d.cWc

The authors asked some very important ethics and safety questions:

50 years ago, Alan Shepherd was the first American in space

Photos from Space.com: http://www.space.com/11554-photos-nasa-mercury-alan-shepard-freedom-7-spaceflight.html













I've seen actual Mercury capsules at the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, AL and at the Johnson Space Center. Once you've seen one of them, you'll realize why the requirements for the Mercury astronauts included a maximum height!