The ring nebula was a star exploding 2000 years ago. Star of Bethlehem?

The more we know, the more we need to know.

Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability. The novel uses a style of Socratic dialogue to deconstruct the notion that humans are the pinnacle of biological evolution. It posits that human supremacy is a cultural myth, and asserts that modern civilization is enacting that myth with dangerous consequences. It was awarded the $500,000 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award.

::snip::

Ishmael begins with a newspaper ad: “Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.” The nameless narrator and protagonist begins his story, telling how he first reacted to this ad with scorn because of the absurdity of “wanting to save the world,” a notion he feels that once he foolishly embraced himself as an adolescent during the counterculture movement of the 1960s. However, he responds to the ad anyway and, upon arriving at the address, finds himself in a room with a gorilla. He notices a polysemous sign that reads “With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?”

To the narrator’s surprise, he finds that the gorilla, calling himself Ishmael, can communicate telepathically. At first baffled by this, the man learns the story of how the gorilla came to be here and soon accepts Ishmael as his teacher, regularly returning to Ishmael’s office throughout the plot. The novel continues from this point mainly as a Socratic dialogue between Ishmael and his new student as they hash out what Ishmael refers to as “how things came to be this way” for mankind.

I think I want to read it, myself.

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Then I keep thinking about what would happen, what would the reaction be IF…. we had a GOP president govern-mentally target a faction of the Democrats? Let me just create the headline if Bush were still illegally in the Oval Office”
Green Party Targeted By IRS.

At some point, you have to be angry at the antics of your own party, whichever party that might be.

Then Kathleen Sebelius is being made to crawl these days. She was a great governor. But is really sucky at the federal level.

Stolen from Lambert who posted at CR the other day.
Enjoy

AK-47 magazine created with a 3-D printer:

Single shot .380 where the entire gun (barrel included) is printed with a 3-D printer:

AR-15 magazine created with a 3-D printer (large image):
LINK

Blog of the people developing all these things:
http://defdist.tumblr.com/

Repository where all patterns for printing guns and magazines can be downloaded:
http://www.defcad.org/