But the moon base idea is just cool!

"I have no objection to building a moon base, but if you're going to go to Mars, the cheapest way to do it is to base it on the Earth and then make Mars the second safest place in the solar system for humans, and then send the humans to Mars," [Humboldt] Mandell said.

He said there would be "logistical nightmares" lurking in the plan to transport equipment and humans to the moon and then launch a mission to Mars from there.

"With one-third of the NASA budget, in six or seven years you could be at Mars," Mandell said. "It doesn't compute with me to try to drag it out."

Mandell proposes an alternative that sounds much more reasonable:

A faster method -- ranging in price from $20 billion to $100 billion as opposed to an earlier NASA estimate of about $400 billion -- would be to build a beachhead on Mars before humans arrive, he said.

"The right way to do this job is to build a little village there before you ever send humans," Mandell said. "You'd put Winnebago-size (bus-size) payloads there and they would connect to each other robotically."

These payloads would include living quarters, hospital and kitchen -- "all the things that you need to sustain a crew of six or seven people for a year and a half," he said.

This would include a plant to produce water from the ice that might be available beneath the martian surface. The water would be for human use during the mission, and could then be split into hydrogen and oxygen to fuel the trip back to Earth, according to Mandell.

from If Humans Get to Mars, What Might They Do?

Edit: Of course, it says that water might be available under the surface. What if it isn't? That's their drinking water and their fuel for the return home. They'd be in a real bind if they got there and found it wasn't there, wouldn't they...?

Why would the Vatican lie about having a huge frickin' menorah? They don't need it, for chrissakes

Israel's chief rabbis, who will meet the pope Friday, said they hope to get permission to search Vatican storerooms for artifacts such as the huge golden menorah that stood in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

... When the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D., they took huge amounts of booty home. Legend has it that religious articles from the Temple, including the menorah, were among them. The Arch of Titus in Rome depicts victorious Roman legions marching off with the seven-branch menorah in hand. Amar said the Vatican official denied the menorah was there. "My heart tells me this is not the truth, but that it is some kind of camouflage," Amar said. An aide to the rabbi said the Vatican was not likely to permit a search.

...Some Orthodox Jews believe the restoration of the menorah and other holy vessels to Jerusalem would be the first step in rebuilding the Temple, whose site is now occupied by the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine of Islam.

from Israeli Rabbis Hope to Search Vatican

The Divine Feminine in the Gnostic Tradition - An Overview

Unlike the Jewish and Christian traditions with which the Gnostic tradition is historically associated, the Gnostics placed a strong emphasis on the female aspects of divine presence. In fact, it is not unreasonable to imagine that the Gnostic emphasis on divine femininity is in part a response to the lack thereof in the Jewish and Christian tradition. It also reflects the influence on Gnosticism of Hellenic and Egyptian mythology and mysticism.

It is not quite accurate to call divine female figures in Gnostic myths "goddesses," since they do not appear to have been specifically the object of worship. Nor is there much to demonstrate that the Gnostics thought of them as anything but mythical or metaphorical figures. They shall herein be refered to as aions, since they were apparently thought of as infinite facets of a multifaceted godhead.

( Read more... )

crossposting to my journal and crossposting to gnosticism

(no subject)

The teleological argument for the existence of God, perhaps in many ways the strongest of the rational arguments for God's existence, is no more an argument for God's existence than it is an argument for the existence of extremely technologically advanced beings who could have crafted the universe we know now.