Get Cynical

My grandfather was on hand when Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator during World War II, was executed. He brought back some photos from the scene. I also include other photos of Mussolini, both living and dead as an educational service.

In a previous post, I counted the number of people that were killed by the God in the Bible. I came up with 2,038,334, which, of course, greatly underestimates God’s total death toll, since it only includes those killings for which specific numbers are given. No attempt was made to include the victims of Noah’s flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc., with which the good book is filled. Still, 2 million is a respectable number even for world class killers.

But how does this compare with Satan? How many did he kill in the Bible?

This web page is the culmination of the “A Day In The Life of AP – 1/1/2005″ project. It was conceived and performed by members from around the world of the aerial photography forum on rcgroups.com. Each entrant for this project agreed to post a photograph taken on January 1, 2005 using their radio controlled aerial photography aircraft. Along with the photo was posted pertinent information such as location, weather, aircraft, camera and in most cases a description of the event. When the situation did not allow for an aerial photo, such as bad weather, a ground photo was allowed.

At the end of World War II on August 6, 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by the Americans. The plants and trees in the area around the epicentre were examined in September 1945. Among the survivors were the four Ginkgo biloba trees shown on this page. They were situated near the blast center and appeared to bud after the blast without major deformations and are still alive today.

WASHINGTON (AP Descendants of extinct mammals like the giant woolly mammoth might one day walk the Earth again. It isn’t exactly Jurassic Park, but Japanese researchers are looking at the possibility of using sperm from frozen animals to inseminate living relatives.

So far they’ve succeeded with mice some frozen as long as 15 years and lead researcher Dr. Atsuo Ogura says he would like to try experiments in larger animals.

“In this study, the rates of success with sperm from 15 year-frozen bodies were much higher than we expected. So the likelihood of mammoths revival would be higher than we expected before,” Ogura said in an interview via e-mail.

While frozen sperm is commonly used by sperm banks, the team led by Ogura, at Riken Bioresource Center in Ibaraki, Japan, worked with sperm from whole frozen mice and from frozen mouse organs.

“If spermatozoa of extinct mammalian species can be retrieved from animal bodies that were kept frozen for millions of years in permafrost, live animals might be restored by injecting them into (eggs) from females of closely related species,” the researchers said in a paper appearing in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

WASHINGTON (AP Descendants of extinct mammals like the giant woolly mammoth might one day walk the Earth again. It isn’t exactly Jurassic Park, but Japanese researchers are looking at the possibility of using sperm from frozen animals to inseminate living relatives.

So far they’ve succeeded with mice some frozen as long as 15 years and lead researcher Dr. Atsuo Ogura says he would like to try experiments in larger animals.

“In this study, the rates of success with sperm from 15 year-frozen bodies were much higher than we expected. So the likelihood of mammoths revival would be higher than we expected before,” Ogura said in an interview via e-mail.

While frozen sperm is commonly used by sperm banks, the team led by Ogura, at Riken Bioresource Center in Ibaraki, Japan, worked with sperm from whole frozen mice and from frozen mouse organs.

“If spermatozoa of extinct mammalian species can be retrieved from animal bodies that were kept frozen for millions of years in permafrost, live animals might be restored by injecting them into (eggs) from females of closely related species,” the researchers said in a paper appearing in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Back in July 1969, the first moonwalks by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are frozen forever moments in the history books. But it turns out that millions of riveted spectators back on Earth were on the receiving end of substantially degraded television showing the epic event.

The highest-quality television signal from Apollo 11’s touchdown zone in the moon’s Sea of Tranquility—from an antenna mounted atop the Eagle lunar lander—was recorded on telemetry tapes at three tracking stations on Earth: Goldstone in California and Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes in Australia.

Scads of the tapes were produced—and now a search is on to locate them. And if recovered and given a 21st century digital makeover, they could yield a far sharper view of that momentous day, compared to what was broadcast around the globe.

Back in July 1969, the first moonwalks by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are frozen forever moments in the history books. But it turns out that millions of riveted spectators back on Earth were on the receiving end of substantially degraded television showing the epic event.

The highest-quality television signal from Apollo 11’s touchdown zone in the moon’s Sea of Tranquility—from an antenna mounted atop the Eagle lunar lander—was recorded on telemetry tapes at three tracking stations on Earth: Goldstone in California and Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes in Australia.

Scads of the tapes were produced—and now a search is on to locate them. And if recovered and given a 21st century digital makeover, they could yield a far sharper view of that momentous day, compared to what was broadcast around the globe.

Then you come to moral questions. There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching — an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all remember the sorts of things that Socrates was saying when he was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to people who did not agree with him.