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To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and " improved " by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries. This may explain some of the sheer strangeness of the Bible.

But unfortunately it is this same weird volume that religious zealots hold up to us as the inerrant source of our morals and rules for living. Those who wish to base their motality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it.

THE OLD TESTAMENT.

Begin in Genisis with the well-loved story of Noah, derived from the babylonian myth of Uta-Napisthim and known from the older mythologies of several cultures. The legend of the animals going into the ark two by two is charming, but the moral of the story ofNoah is appalling. God took a dim view of humans, so he drowned the lot of them including childrenh and also, for good measure, the rest of the animals as well.

In the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Noah equivalent, chosen to be spared with his family because he was uniquely righteous, was abraham's nephew Lot. Two male angels were sent to sodom to warn Lot to leave the city before the brimstone arrived. Lot hospitably welcomed the angels into his house, whereupon all men of Sodom gathered around and demanded that Lot should hand the angels over so that they could sodomize them. ' Where are the men which came in to thee this night?? Bring them out unto us, that we may know them. ( Genesis 19:5) Yes, know has the authorized versions usual euphemistic meaning. But Lot's halo is tarnished by the terms of his refusal... " I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly, Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man, let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes, only unto these men do nothing, for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. ( Genesis 19: 7- 8).

With good weather in the offing and no bumps in the countdown, NASA pushed ahead with Saturday's planned launch of space shuttle Discovery on a delivery trip to the International space station.

The mission has taken on a new urgency, the seven shuttle astronauts will take up a new pump for the space stations malfunctioning toilet.

They're also ferrying a $1 billion Japanese space lab that has been more than 20 years in the making. Dozens of Japanese journalists and space program officials jammed NASA's launch site Friday 30th., their excitement growing with every passing hour of the countdown. As many as 400 Japanese were expected for the late Saturday afternoon launch.

" We are on the verge of a very historic event, the launch of this amazing spacecraft, the first major manned element for the Japanese Space Agency." The Japanese lab, named Kibo, which means Hope, will be the biggest room at the space station once its installed. It's 37 feet long and more than 32,000 pounds, and fills Discovery's entire payload bay.

The Russian toilet pump, on the other hand, is a mere 1 1/2 feet long and tucked into the crew cabin. It was flown to Florida from Moscow on wednesday, a rush job precipitated by last weeks toilet breakdown at the spacestation. The stations three residents can use their toilet, but have to flush it manually with extra water after every three or four uses. The problem is on the urine collection side. They will use Discovery's toilet, once the shuttle arrives.

Three spacewalks are planned during Discovery's 14 day flight, to install Kibo, replace an empty nitrogen-gas tank and try out various cleaning methods on a clogged solar-wing rotating joint.

A star is a massive, luminous ball of plasma. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on earth. Other stars are visible in the night sky, when they are not outshone by the Sun. For most of its life, a star shines because thermonuclear fusion in its core releases energy that traverses the stars interior and then radiates into outer space. Almost all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were created by fusion in stars.

Astronomers can determine the mass, age, chemical composition and many other properties of a star by observing its spectrum, luminosity and motion through space. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant in its evolution and eventual fate.

A star begins as a collapsing cloud of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium and trace amounts of heavier elements. Once the stellar core is sufficiently dense, some of the hydrogen is steadily converted into helium through the process of nuclear fusion. The remainder of the stars interior carries energy away from the core through a combination of radiative and convective processes. the stars internal pressure prevents it from collapsing further under its own gravity. Once the hydrogen fuel at the core is exhausted, those stars having at least 0.4 times the mass of the Sun expand to become a Red giant, in some cases fusing heavier elements at the core.

The star then evolves into a degenerate form, recycling a portion of matter into the interstellar environment, where it will form a new generation of stars with a higher proportion of heavy elements. Binary and multi-star systems consist of two or more stars that are gravitationally bound, and generally move around each other in stable orbits. When two such stars have a relatively close orbit, their gravitational interaction can have a significant impact on their evolution.



The Pleiades, an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Taurus.