re vandalizing the sky nicho vnet ibm com greg stewart nicholls writes in c y t w news cso uiuc edu george f krumins writes it is so typical that the rights of the minority are extinguished by the wants of the majority no matter how ridiculous those wants might be umm perhaps you could explain what rights we are talking about here greg nicholls vidi nicho vnet ibm com or vici nicho olympus demon co uk veni i was suggesting that the minority of professional and amateur astronomers have the right to a dark uncluttered night sky let me give you an example when you watch tv they have commercials to pay for the programming you accept that as part of watching if you don t like it you can turn it off if you want to view the night sky and there is a floating billboard out there you can t turn it off it s the same reasoning that limits billboards in scenic areas pat writes george it s called a democracy the majority rules sorry if ytou don t like it i suggest you modify the constitution to include a constitutional right to dark skies the theory of government here is that the majority rules except in the nature of fundamental civil rights i say any reasonably in depth perusal of american history will show you that many wasps have continued the practices of prejudice discrimination and violence against others of different races religions and beliefs despite the law pat says if you really are annoyed get some legislation to create a dark sky zone where in all light emissions are protected in the zone kind of like the national radio quiet zone did you know about that near teh radio telescope observatory in west virginia they have a mile emcon zone theoretically they can prevent you from running light ac motors like air conditioners and vacuums in practice they use it mostly to control large radio users i say what i m objecting to here is a floating billboard that presumably would move around in the sky i for one am against legislating at all i just wish that people had a bit of common courtesy and would consider how their greed for money impacts the more ethereal and aesthetic values that make us human this includes the need for wild and unspoiled things including the night sky george george krumins the serpent and the rainbow gfk uxa cso uiuc edu pufferish observatory o
