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Ever been called an "anorak?"


jakey

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Ridiculous isn't it, that someone with an interest in our place in the cosmos, the origins of our solar system and our galaxy can be ridiculed by those who focus instead on consumerism, football, Strictly Come Dancing and mindless celebrity gossip.

Wear your 'anorak' with pride!

Well done Steve. I'm really glad somebody said this.

START RANT:

People these days take it for granted that we live in a world which has progress built into it and as long as the boffins keep improving the mobile phones and the quality of dvds then all they have to do is sit back and ride the gravy train. It don't work like that. Human beings have no reason to be smug about anything; the more you obsesss over trivia, the more detached you become from the material world you actually live in. Every other organism on this planet lives inside the boundaries of having a material existence in a material world. 200 years of industrialistaion has disconnected us from this type of simple reality and left us in the ironic position of of having to spend a huge amount of time and effort just trying to understand our impact on the material world around us, let alone figure out what we're going to do about it.

Hope this makes sense, its just the importance and reverence assigned by our culture to boring, low-brow, vaccuous, uninspiring R-soles like Robbie Williams, Tom Cruise, Heather Macartney, Kylie Minogue, celebrity chefs, sports people,snot nosed aristocrats, etc etc etc is driving me bonkers!!!!!!!!!

END RANT.

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There's [removed word] on the internet?!

:D

TBF - I agree with everything - except the Kylie bit!!!

The wife calls me an sad git some times and moans when I go out. But as I say to her, I'm 10 feet away in the garden. You wanna talk? Come outside!

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I keep telling my wife how lucky she is for the same reason.

Astronomy is one hobby that (in most cases) you can do from home - if you have a garden that is (although some use balconies etc).

Once you have bought the kit Astronomy is actually free, if you have a driven mount then there are a few pennies involved.

Every other hobby I can think of costs money.

I love astronomy and even during my off asro period I used to just look up and marvel :D

Ant

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Costs no money?

ETX105PE - £700

Orion ED80 + mount - £300

Eyepieces - £200

Laptop - £350

LPI imager - £110

Nikon D70 + lenses - £530

sundry extras - £150

All that and I only get a couple of nights a month observing thanks to the weather and other commitments. If I had the cash I'd have much better kit, but since I'm a pauper I can only lash out a couple of grand. Even so I doubt my meagre kit qualifies as cheap by the standards of a hobby.

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the only slagging I get, is at work. The guys seem to think that you only

use a telescope for peering through folk's windows. which they have a

good time laughing about.

They also though I was a loser when I mentioned earlier this year, that

me and the wife (to be) planned to go to the Grand Canyon star party while we were in

America, getting hitched. Unfortunatly there were no hotel rooms left within a

150 miles so we never got to see the night sky in all its glory :D

My wife is the opposite. Spent many an hour in the garden, using

the 'scope and binoculars .. usually fighting over who gets to use the

telescope first :D

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Once you have bought the kit Astronomy is actually free,

After you have bought the kit...

Just checked with some guys in the office who are into football. Tickets to a premiership game cost in the region of £40 :shock: plus you have to get there... They reckon that by the time you have bought a pint or two, got there, had food etc etc. It's a £100 day out. How often is a football match? every week? fortnight?

Assume it's once a month? 12 x £100 = £1200 a year EVERY YEAR. I actually think that games are more frequent than that (as you can tell I know sod all about footy)

Take fishing, once you've bought the rod, line, hooks, bivvy etc etc etc, my brother fishes and the stuff isn't cheap. He has to pay every year for rod license, membership to a place with a lake and then he has to leave his house and go somewhere...

I think that astronomy is a very cheap in comparason to other hobbies...

Ant

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Costs no money?

ETX105PE - £700

Orion ED80 + mount - £300

Eyepieces - £200

Laptop - £350

LPI imager - £110

Nikon D70 + lenses - £530

sundry extras - £150

OK a couple of grands worth of kit but

1) that's only the price of an average family holiday

2) It'll last for years and years

3) Some people spend 20,30,40,50+ grand on cars

4) If you go out regularly it doesn't take long to spend that much on food and drink and taxis etc

Plus, you don't buy it all in one go, so across a life time its quite an inexpensive hobby.

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There's [removed word] on the internet?!

Last I heard there are 27,000 new [removed word] sites every DAY. When we use a technology that can unite the world in a web of instant communication, and bring freedom and peace to billions, for looking up people's knickers, it makes me want to give up hope.

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Indeed, WH. A good point. I also think 10x50's point is also very valid. Once kit is secured, you'll keep it for years, and when you upgrade, you'll likely sell it for less, but you're still getting the money back. It's like buying a new house. Nobody says you're wasting your money on a new house, because once you're on the property ladder, you can't really lose.

Hope that makes sense.

And anyway (hah! you thought I'd stopped!) even if it does cost a lot, your enthusiasm for it, and the results (if you image) should always justify the cost. If it doesn't, then you've got too much money and you don't know what to do with it.

Andrew

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It's like buying a new house. Nobody says you're wasting your money on a new house, because once you're on the property ladder, you can't really lose.

Hope that makes sense.

It does. Also, use of Astronomy equipment generally doesn't involve wear, so the gear can stay in good shape for years. Not like a set of golf clubs, eh?

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I never cease to be amazed by the things people would rather have than money. Some might think us a bit daft swapping ours for optics...

I'm convinced that if you took a few hundred modern, mid-range telescopes back to the 19th century and adjusted the price for the period, you would sell them to anyone who could afford them within days, and probably thousands of people would have looked through them in the space of a few weeks, such would be the interest. I'm not one of those people that thinks the world was better back then, its just that in the 20th century we created a very disturbing and artificial division between science and popular culture, as if its got nothing to do with everyday life, and all this while people talk on their mobile phones, drive to destinations using gps, watch films edited on computers and watched on discs read by lasers, take drugs for a whole range of diseases, listened to bands that record music using some rather sophisticated wave processing technology etc etc.

Up against that lot , a scope is quite a crude instrument and yet its a nerdy thing to want to own and use?

Then there's the schizophrenic reaction of my brother who jokingly called me an anorak for buying a scope and 2 minutes later said he'd pop over when the weather got warmer to have a look throught it . Go figure.

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I've never been called an anorak. Well not to my face :D

If anyone asks me why I like astronomy I gave the usual 'looking througth a scope will blow your mind' response and whay other hobby can you work with Pro's & get published?

Cheers

ian

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You ANORAK storebror.....

I work on building sites most days amongst the stereo typical meatheads.....I go out of my way to "bore" them with anything spacey. Get called sad, geek, gay, you name it. All in a [removed word] way so no harm done :D

Even if it wasnt I have never really been the sort of person to care what someone thinks about me :D

Chub

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