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Brightest Moon Fallacy
theLunchLady writes "Unfortunately, on 22 December 1999 we will not behold the brightest moon in 133 years. An article in Sky and Telescope dispels this myth. BTW: the story about the American Indians conducting a raid under this moon 133 years ago, because it was so bright, is also a myth; the raid was conducted while that big fiery thing was in the sky. " While I'm unqualified to comment on both comments, I'm sure some of you have comments.
Last night/this morning I woke up and thought "Wow, that moon really is bright", and went over to the window. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was my neighbor putting up Christmas lights, with the help of a 500 watt halogen work light aimed right at my window.
As the article points out, the moon will still be at perigee (closest point in its orbit to the Earth) and it will be about 19% brighter than usual. To most of the people (who have received this email, and I know I've gotten it seven times so far) looking at the moon, this will not make a big difference. Full moons are always bright, and so they might *think* it's a lot brighter and then not bother to look next month to compare. Personally I observe the moon every month (leftover habit from astronomy classes) and I have noticed the slight difference, but yeah, it doesn't merit the bandwidth that's been wasted on this.
:)
I still think it's neat to have a full moon on the Winter Solstice, though
You choose who you want to believe.
Malachi
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
Call me cynical, but I bet that most people who've gotten the email will see that the Moon is brighter than usual ... because they expect to. Humans are notoriously poor observers, and will often see what they expect to see, whether it's there or not.
On the plus side, maybe a few more people will remember to look up. Maybe it's partly because I live in a city, but sometimes I think I'm one of the few people who ever notices the sky.
Okay, maybe this isn't going to be the brightest moon of all time. I'm sure that the original information upon which the story that this refers to never claimed it would be. However, for those of us who are blessed with a clear sky tonight, the full moon should be brighter than we typically experience during a normal month.
As far as stories of secret indian attacks carried out by the bright light of the full moon, it is about as plausable as the story about the Space Shuttle size being dictated by Roman Chariot wheel spacing. Sure, it sounds like a neat explaination, but that doesn't make it right. I'm not qualified to say whether its wrong.
Regardless of the relative brightness of this full moon, I doubt if I will get to see it, based on the local weather. Anyway, this isn't the full moon I care about. Its Next Month's full moon that is something to look at. That is when we get to see a Total Lunar Eclipse. This event occurs on the evening of January 20, between about 9:30 pm EST and 2:30 am EST., with totality lasting from 78 minutes between about 11:00 pm EST and 12:20 am EST. Be sure not to miss this one, because we won't see another one in the us until May 16, 2003.
Mike Eckardt meckardt@spam.yahoo.com
I haven't recieved the Full Moon Forward yet. I feel so isolated and lonely :)
:)
On the other hand, I have recieved Elf Bowling *seven* times, The Elf-Bowling-Is-A-Virus thing twice, and Christmas Carols for the Mentally Deficient 4 times.
I think junk email distribution patterns would make an interesting area of study for Information Theorists
Dana
How am I supposed to sacrifice my goats to the god reatsintpeont now that the celestial brightening will not commmence tomorrow...oh well..they're taking care of the garbage in my yard pretty well....i guess I'll leave them there.
Until next time....then the celestial provocation shall commence! All shall fall to my feet!
I'm serious. No, really, I am.....*snicker* DAMN! oh well. I guess you know the truth now.
What amazes me is how people continually will believe anything they find in their inbox or on a web page. Our parents, our friends, even the news media (does anyone remember the Arizona news station that reported on a "Good Times"-like virus warning they got in their mailbox?)
It seems so obvious, but so many people are led to believe that if it's in print and sounds semi-official, it must be true. People believe unless they have a reason to doubt, and on the net you don't survive unless you do it the other way around.
Someone tried to convince me that this was true today by arguing, 'Well, the moon is going to be really close to the earth and the sun's going to be directly behind it.' Hrm, sounds to me that it would be day if the sun was in the sky.. It's funny hearing how people get mislead and everything just propagates. Wish this got posted last night ;)
;)
A few folks said they heard it was going to be possible to drive without their headlights since the moon was going to be oh-so-bright... Let's watch for an increase in accidents
Oh well, we all know that night's when the sun goes to sleep anyway - 's why NASA's planning their Sun Polar Observer mission to land during the night...
-keen
The brightness will also be from Santa giving his test run about the sky. He'll probably be going about in his excercise clothes, shorts and tank-top. Due to the cold at the north pole, Santa will be white as a ghost, and make an excellent reflective surface to add the extra bit of brightness.
marotti.com
This is easy.
There was a movie starring OJ Simpson called "Capricorn One." It showed that it was possible to explain the moon landing as a Hollywood production. By Occam's Razor, we shouldn't add unnecessary complexity to our explanations if we don't have to. Why in the world would we need to introduce huge 30 story rockets, crazy moon cars, and a lunar lander that looks like a bug into the explanation? The simplest explanation is that the whole thing was filmed in Arizona.
Probably the most unbelievable thing is that they expect us to believe that we'd spend so much money and 3 guys would risk their lives just to show some silly Russians that we're better than them. I mean come on people! The Russians are our friends! We've been friends with Eurasia, er, I mean Russia for centuries now!
Sheesh.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
See, I saw the e-mail and thought, 'Wow, what a funky hoax!' But then I realized that the e-mail is partially true. What's really the fact here is that this is indeed (at least in the northern hemisphere) going to be the darkest night. Why? Well, the night will be the longest of the year and thus, darkness will have a chance to soak in and penetrate everything. Couple this with a new moon and the moon becomes even brighter, because as everyone knows, light objects on a dark field are lighter than the same shade object on a lighter field (it's a perception thing). Thus, it's really about the darkest night of the year.
As for the Indians, I thought the US's Thanksgiving was last month.
Oh great, the next one just started. 'This is part of a study looking at junk e-mail flow in modern society, please forward this on to whoever you usually forward this crap too.'
:)
I guess I'm going to hell now (if you're right, I'll deserve it!)
Dana
your unqualified?
It is easier to understand the proliferation of messages that communicate ideas that are contrary to the intent of their proliferators (in other words, people think they're spreading legitimate information but in fact are talking crap) if you see these communications as the result of natural selection rather than conscious creation.
It's the same principle that has allowed us to make much more sense out of the natural world by trying to understand it as the product of evolution, rather than trying to interpret it as the residue of God's Plan.
I could easily be wrong, but I'm not sure there's any more silliness than usual. Maybe you're just noticing it more because you're expecting it, and The Millenium is an easy thing to pin it on?
[shrug] Or maybe you're right. But it's hard to know for sure.
For those of you who don't know, Excite lets you add tide tables as part of their customization. This is what mine currently looks like:
Old Saybrook Point, Connecticut Tides
December 21
Low3:25PM -0.50
High9:27PM3.08
December 22
Low3:23AM -0.31
High9:49AM4.11
Low4:23PM -0.58
High10:28PM3.11
These don't appear to be all THAT unusual to me at all....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
You are probably correct about the albedo being increased by the mirror (to an insignifigant amount). I doubt however it will be increased in our direction, but towards the sun.
:) The moons albedo will not have increased.
The mirror that was left behind was a special kind made up of individual triangles that were attached at right angles to each other. Thus every 3 mirror triangles form a tri-right angle reflector. (If you have a bicycle, take a close look at the reflectors, you will see little pyrimids and valleys made of plastic, composed of triangles, this is the same thing.)
The remarkable thing about this is that the mirror when made in this way is that it always returns light to its point of origin, despite the angle that it hits the mirrors from. A laser was aimed at the moon, and the reflection could be detected. Hence the exact distance to the moon could be measured.
(Due to scattering of the photons, the laser while about 1mm in diameter on earth was about 1 Mile on the moon. Not important but neat nonetheless!)
Now, the albedo has probably gone up due to reflections from right where YOU are, but if the place that you happen to be is emitting no light (hightly unlikely, must be VERY cold eh?
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
It's a hoax. Look at
a me.hoax.html
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/y2kg
My guess is that someone noticed that the game tries to connect to the internet when the player wants to save the high score, & assumed the worst. I've played it enough times to seriously doubt that it's a trojan -- it's just a cheesy & fun little game.
You can also follow the thread in alt.comp.virus, too -- although last I looked it had degenerated into a flamewar.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
> The end times were prophesied ages ago, and I firmly believe that we are living in them. Firmly enough to send me a signed contract assigning your worldly belongs to me as of 1/1/2001? After all, if you're right, you won't be needing them... Let's see you put your money where your mouth is.
[grin] I am human, and as a result I'm generally a poor observer. But it helps a little that I'm aware of it. Most people are under the delusion that they're good observers, and so they don't have any clue how many mistakes they make.
(And don't even get me started about poor reading skills and lack of basic reasoning ability! Argh!)
It is a common misconception that the winter solstice is on the day that the Earth is at perihelion (closest approach to the Sun). Actually, even more common is the belief is that the winter solstice is the day that the Earth is *farthest* from the Sun, but that's another matter.
Anyway, "Perihelion Day" is actually sometime around the second or third of January (S&T's skygazer's almanac can tell you). This puts the Earth-Moon system closest to the Sun. The closer to a luminous object you are, the more of that object's light impacts your surface.
During a full moon, the moon is directly opposite of the Sun (from Earth's point of view). The day in which the bodies line up Sun-Earth-Moon (ie. full moon) on which the Moon subtends the largest solid angle of the Gaussian sphere centered on the Sun is on "Perihelion Day". Making the assumption that the Moon's albedo is constant (a pretty good one), this is the set of circumstances that will maximize the amount of reflected sunlight from the Lunar surface.
Thus, I believe the guys at Sky & Tel. After all, Discover is a general science/technology magazine. S&T specialize in this stuff.
Eric
Not since 1866 have a full moon, the winter solstice, and lunar perigee been bunched so closely in time, within ten hours of each other. The Earth, the sun, and the moon will be in a straight line and the moon will be in perigee, circumstances that produce the highest tides.
The situation is called a perigean syzgy, and it has dramatically affected weather patterns in coastal areas in the past. Storms that reach the coast during these times of unusually high tides have been known to cause sizable storm surges.
But it'll still be pretty bright...
That is from an excellent debunking and explanation of this e-mail, which can be found here, at the Urban Legends Reference Pages, an excellent source of well-researched debunking. (I was a couple of days shy of being the first one to debunk the violent kangaroo myth.)
Apparently, the last time the moon was at perigee during the full moon was...last month. It just wasn't the solstice.
Like I said, whoop. Dee. Doo. (I'll have to at least take a look anyway...I actually set my alarm to get up in the middle of the night to watch the Leonid meteor shower, which turned out to be a total bust.)
[command INSERTWITTYQUIP failed: insufficient wit]
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Strange that you mention this. During the solar eclipse last summer, there was that bizarre cult built around a strange piece of computer software. The members of this cult did exactly that: many signed away most of their life savings to an obscure startup in North Carolina. Some even got upset when said startup wouldn't accept their pagan gifts.
The error occurred in the 6th Century. Calendar research was done by the Church to solve the practical problem of calculating the beginning (and end) of Lent. Easter was celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the equinox. Because the season of Lent began 45 days before Easter, they needed to know this in advance. This mixing of solar and lunar calendars makes the calculation difficult. A 532 year cycle made the calculation easier. The year 532 A.D. was set at the end of such a cycle and the year 1 A.D. was inferred. It took several hundred years before the system was widely adopted. The Venerable Bede (8th c.) knew that the system did not give the right date for the birth of Christ, but thought that trying to fix it wold cause more problems than letting it slide.
There is more in the Brittanica article on the calendar.
The true end of "the millennium" really depends on which millennium is "the" millennium. Any period of 1,000 years is a millennium. The 2nd millennium A.D. ends on 12/31/2000. The millennium of four year dates beginning with 1 ends on 12/31/1999.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Why don't you go hide in the woods with the other nuts and eat your K-rations. The rest of us will live our lives realizing that there is no special significance to the year 2000. Keep in mind that: A. historians are in universal agreement that Jesus of Nazereth was NOT born 2000 years ago...but somewhere between 2002 and 2006 years ago. The bible says he was born during the reign of Herod...and Herod died 2002 years ago. So we already passed the 2000th anniversary of his birth. B. It is only the year 2000 for Christians. It is 57??-something for Jews and god-knows-what for the Chinese. For more than half of the world's population this year has no significance whatsoever. Christians like yourself have such a Christian-centric view of the world that they have lost their ability to think rationally. Hell....half the Christians I know think it's blasphemy to say that Jesus was a non-white Jew. The 'events' that you are giving such significance to are no more prevalent this year than in years past...you are just noticing them more because you are a flaky religious nut who has been looking for signs of the apocalypse ever since the day you were "born-again".
-----------------------------------
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Photons are just a fake concept to hide the truth from the common man. Light is just the absence of dark. Dark is spread by sub-atomic particles called "darktrons", and the effects you observe are easily explained. What we know as "lights" are really only darktron suckers. They remove the darktrons in a straight line from where they are. This is why you can put a piece of wood between you and the "light", and it is darker on your side - you are creating a dam for the darktrons. The "bending of light" effect is also explained by darktrons. The sucking power of these "lights" (notably the Sun) is strong enough to even pull some darktrons from around corners, which creates an slightly curvi-linear pattern. This is just another conspiracy by "The Man" and his white-lab-coated minions to deprive us all of the truth!!!
So his comment about dark "soaking in" is perfectly ok - since the darktrons take time to replenish - in super slow motion you can actually see the dark making its way back towards the "light"... foolish mortals
8^)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Yes, the moon will be 20% brighter than it has been in the last 60-odd years. This would be all the more interesting if the human eye reacted to light linearly, rather than logarithmically. (1/5th brighter... wow! Right? nope...)
.3 (mA - mB = - 2.5 log (IA/IB)).
:-)
The moon has a "normal" magnitude (estimated brightness the eye perceives) of about -16.9 (the smaller the number, the brighter the object; the sun is magnitude -26.8).
Increasing that by 20% - heck, let's be generous, 30% - gives us a difference in magnitude of roughly
So the apparent change in the moon's brightness - in its magnitude - will be from -16.9 to -17.2. This difference IS linear, so I'll let you do the math - not one heck of a difference, and not really enough to be seen with the naked eye.
Just thought I'd clarify
Everybody put in everything that they own and the ones that don't get raptured get to split the pot.
If you ask me, I'm not gullible enough to believe that all of this is some sort of fantastically remote coincidence. Absolutely not. The end times were prophesied ages ago, and I firmly believe that we are living in them.
Really, people have been convinced that they're in the End Times in every generation for way more than 2,000 years. The "signs" you point to are just coincidences. An arbitrary number of "unusual" events will occur within any arbitrary time span if you have enough potential "unusual" events to choose from. Earthquakes, mudslides and random celestial events happen all of the time. Remember Odd Day?
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I guess I need to continuing putting my disclaimer on my posts ...
...
.. he said 'moon'."
NOTE: This post not for the humor (or humour) impaired
And now, to bring this slightly back on topic
"Hehe
The Venerable Bede was obviously concerned about:
>cal 1 750
January 750
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
>
But he was wrong to be concerned - no one complains about:
>cal 9 1752
September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
>
Foolish Bede.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
There is one thing that the full moon at perigee provides, and that is an opportunity to photograph the full moon when it appears at its largest in the sky. Then the same photographic arrangement can be used in six months to capture the full moon at close to its smallest in the sky. If you then place the two photographs together side-by-side, the 10% size difference between the perigee full moon and the apogee full moon will be noticeable.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
how typical of a rich suburban porch honky to proclaim that we do not and never have existed...and do so as an "anonymous coward".
more apropriately, you should have posted as "INSECURE WHITE BITCH".
i knew once i saw this irrelevant story & it's mention of my people that some little culturally-deprived BOAT PERSON would try, yet again, to convince the world that we never existed so that YOU DON'T HAVE TO ACCEPT THE FACT THAT YOU ARE NOT NATIVE TO THIS CONTINENT. "scientists" have been trying for decades to convince the world to believe in the theory that we 'migrated' to this continent centuries ago from asia. too bad that theory is a load of shit. try reading "red earth, white lies" by vine deloria & you might start *admitting* that you've been lyed to all of your life, instead of passing on the tradition. your boat people predecessors came to this country to seek religious & political freedom from the cesspool that europe had become - even your history books don't deny that fact; but what happened was that they choose to persecute OUR ways of life. never mind the fact that the basic concepts of the u.s. constitution, which "give" you your way of life to this day, were based on the ideals of the iroquois. you can also forget the fact that if it weren't for MY PEOPLE, you wouldn't BE HERE...THAT'S WHY "THANKSGIVING" EXISTS: BECAUSE THE 'PILGRIMS' WERE ALMOST DEAD FROM STARVATION AND COULD NOT FIGURE OUT HOW TO OBTAIN FOOD WITH OUT DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND LABORED CROPS...but we helped them.
only to have them turn on us and act like we never existed.
it's people like you that that this world would be better without. i try as hard as i can to see others as *people*, not *skin*. but when i hear sheltered ignorance spewed out as if it were fact, i cannot help but to lash out.
maybe i shouldn't, though. after all- you really just are another pathetic product of what uncle sam wants you to be. of course there is barely any mention of us in your history books. why would he want you to know that this country was founded on theft, deceit, murder, rape, greed and corruption? we *all* know that that is exactly what runs the country today, but you never hear the government (in any form) admitting it, do you? no. so why is it so hard for you to realize that while society has made great advances, human nature never changes? those that kill and steal to gain power are not going to admit to the uninvolved (the little people- like you & me) that they ever did so.
put down "the white man's bible" and pick up any book by vine deloria. pick up "bury my heart at wounded knee" by dee brown. read "in the spirit of crazy horse" by peter mattiessen. but i must warn you: you just might end up being ashamed of what you stand for right now. because you'll actually learn some of the brutal truth about "how the west was won", and how my people were slaughtered so that yours could fill thier pockets with yellow metal.
...now back to my hacking.
@end
big boys use bsd.
I do too. Many of them can also read English. Reread what he wrote and then try again, Sparky:
He didn't say the people going around spreading this were Christians. He merely stated that the years were Christian years. And then he talked about "supersticious apolcalyptophiles." No mention of actual Christians there.
Probably because he was too busy going after the Jews. He was a "Christian" too, you know. He did, AFAIK, also persecute/imprison/kill a good amount of Catholics, but nowhere near the scale to which he persecuted/imprisioned/killed Jews.
The earth-luna system is *not* a tidy little two-body problem where every player always follows the same orbit. It's not even a pure three-body problem since any real solution must account for the earth's equatorial and tidal bulges (although they are often time-averaged into a single bulge).
On earth, we get our angle of inclination bobbing around between 22-24 degrees (approx) *and* slowly drifting around the entire sky over tens of thousands of years. We also get slow changes of the earth's orbit due to the other planets; many people believe these changes are directly related to the ice ages.
On luna, it gets an orbit which oscillates between nearly circular and slightly elliptical, all while slowly moving away from the earth as energy is lost raising the earth's tidal bulges. (Remember: less total energy = a *higher* orbit due to the tradeoff of kinetic energy for gravitational potential energy. It's only hard for us because we're coming up from the planetary surface and have no KE.)
All of this means that lunar perigees are not created equal and the perigee tonight is *not* the same as the perigee last month or a perigee a month from now.
More generally, the perigee is solely a function of the earth-luna system and a full moon is solely a function of the sun-earth system -- there is absolutely no connection between perigees and full moons. This means that perigees and full moons occuring at the same time are a statistical fluke - you're just as likely to have a new moon and perigee at the same time.
Finally, the local newspaper reported that the full moon will be unusually high in the sky (in the NH) because of the solstice, but I'm not sure about their logic. If true, this full moon could very well light the ground better than average for the same reason our seasons are tied to the position of the sun in the sky instead of our orbital position.
P.S., as other posters have commented the actual difference in the brightness of the moon is modest enough that few people will legitimately notice a difference. I don't know what the urban legend claims, so I can't answer it's claims, but the astronomy is solid and usually covered in any introductory astronomy class. If you've been "debunking" it, expect to eat plenty of pie, humble pie, over the next few weeks.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Ask any Mexican astronomer and he'll tell you. :P
With all of this misinformation floating around, I thought this would be a good time to learn about our solar system from the former national expert himself, Dan Quayle:
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit. Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If there is oxygen, then we can breathe."
I know that there have also been a few questions about NASA and people possibly losing faith in them due to the recent problems with the Mars projects. Dan, once again, reassures us:
"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
Buck up, kids, as Dan says, "The future will be better tomorrow."
Even though the moon won't look much brighter than normal tomorrow night, it'll still be a good time to look at it through a telescope because it's a full moon at its perigee, so you'll be able to see an entire side and it'll be closer to Earth than it usually is. It's a good excuse not to pack it up. :)
There's another lunar eclipse on July 16, 2000 that is visible from east Asia, Australia (best view), and most of the Pacific which is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the longest lunar eclipses. The same circumstances that make the full moon of December 22 worthy of Slashdot discussion also conspire to make the lunar eclipse of July 16 2000 noteworthy:
The apogee and aphelion combination makes the eclipse slow, and the really central nature of the eclipse maximises the duration. Together, this makes totality last for 148 minutes, the longest that lunar eclipse totality can last. This is probably the longest lunar eclipse of our lifetimes.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
From Websters:
:-)
fiery:
1: consisting of fire
2: hot like a fire
3: of the color of fire
4: full of or exuding emotion or spirit
I think your Physics is better than your English
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
I feel so fulfilled now :)
I think one of our local newspapers must have pretty much cut n' pasted this straight out of an email as used it as a story.
Dana
It seems that most people I see "quoting" the bible are merely paraphrasing what they have heard. I know the AC that posted this didn't really quote, but they did say "but the signs are still there." AC here is assuming the role of interpreter for those that read his post. Those that are interested may want to consider the following quotes. For those that are uninterested , then please ignore the following, it probably wasn't meant for you.
Mark (KJV) 13:22-33
22 For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.
23 But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.
24 But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
25 And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.
26 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.
27 And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.
28 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near:
29 So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors.
30 Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.
31 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.
32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
33 Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
Now, my interpretation is something like this:
Man either believes or he doesn't. If you truly believe, then you will always be ready. The things I've read from the Bible, Torah, Koran and Book of Mormon are quite similar in concept. They all had a much richer meaning than the mis-quotes and incorrect paraphrasings conveyed from people who hadn't read much.
For the curious, read for yourself and make an honest search for truth. I know people that are being seduced by much of the hype into believing that some things of momentous importance are going to happen on some particular day or time. Their faith will be damaged when the appointed time comes and goes without the promised event. What a shame, if they knew the books that their faith is supposed to be based on, they would understand the deceptions.
A "generation that shall not pass" reference can be measured by the exodus from Egypt. The Jews saw fit to make the golden calf to worship and God said they would not be allowed to enter into the promised land before that generation had passed away. I am looking for some length of time shorter than forty years from now to hold some very terrible events for the earth and occupants. But when? I'm pretty sure it isn't going to be 1-1-2000. But, then again, I have no way of knowing for certain.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I don't know that it's such a bad thing that people tend to believe, rather than disbelieve. Do you know how much harder it is to prove, rather than disprove?
IE, a disproof only requires a contradiction where a proof requires the lack of a contradiction, so it seems to make sense that people believe rather than disbelieve, because it's much easier to disprove to a person once the person believes, than it is to prove to a person once they don't believe.
If the net is to be a viable, working, self-adjusting ecosystem/social system, I suspect it should also run on the 'tend to trust/believe' system, rather than the 'other way around' Sorta like credit cards online(unless someone can disprove me=), it's pretty safe if people trust the system.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
"big fiery thing " uh...to the indians, thats probably what they thought the moon was
~Jay (Negative Seven)
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
What a relief...I was so worried about whether the moon would be the brightest in 133 this December 22nd...I mean the anxiousness, and nervousness was gnawing at me, I could hardly sleep. I'm glad Slashdot has finally put this nagging enigma to sleep.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
There are no bad The Tick references....
I still wonder why he only left enough space for the "CHA" on it though...
May contain traces of nut.