One of the grandchildren that have left the church have found out a bit more information about why he was excommunicated:

The excommunication occurred after the formation of a board of male elders in the church. The board had defeated Shirley Phelps-Roper, the church’s longtime spokeswoman, in a power struggle, and Fred Phelps Sr. called for kinder treatment of fellow church members.

The board then ejected Fred Phelps Sr., who founded the church in the 1950s.

Oh, the irony.

Source: Towleroad

Congratulations and best of luck in your new role!

Congratulations! I'm certainly going to be doing some PvP in the near future.

Thanks all! Soooo much fun! Looking forward to more events like this!

Congratulations Aikune! Welcome to the team and I'm super excited for the PvP deptartment. :)

I want to see the behind-the-scenes footage!!

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Congrats! :woohoo:

Quote by Vidan@notaredshirt79

I know I shouldn't be happy about the death or near death of someone. But I mean come on. Just this once? Please!

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2014/03/report-fred-phelps-founder-of-westboro-baptist-church-near-death/

Out of the 7 billion humans that crawl, skitter, grub, walk and run on the face of our planet, I feel that we have the right to feel happy about the end of a few of them.

Hitler, what a bastard. I reckon a fair few felt pretty happy to see him kick off, eh?

And what about that other guy. Um... What's his name?

...

Oh yeah, Piers Morgan. :3

On a more serious note, I'm sure more than a few people will feel a little relief or happiness at seeing him exit the mortal plane, but then his church has hurt a lot of people's feelings. They've done and said things that have created emotional trauma in people who are already grieving the loss of their entire world. They, and those who empathise with them, have every right to feel whatever they want about his passing.

So feel what you want. It's your mind. Just, y'know, be civil about it and don't preach your feelings to others as a dogma. :3 (As with all negative emotions, keep them between yourself and some close friends who can empathise with you without judging you for having feelings. :) )

I was very ready to stand corrected then read section of the article you linked. Yes, Dyson does mention a ring, but according to your link, only to say that it would be mechanically impossible, going on to say that his vision was of a swarm of objects orbiting a star. So a Dyson Ring is a swarm of objects rather than the single megastructure envisaged by Larry Niven. Dyson was Leonardo Da Vinci to Niven's Igor Sikorsky. (Except no one will ever know if a Ringworld concept could come to fruition because humanity will, in all likelihood, fizzle out when the sun goes nova; the people and corporations who hold the majority of the Earth's currency simply will not see the profit in serious, dedicated space exploration until it is far too late.)


That said, described within the confines of the novel Ringworld is a Niven Ring with an inner Dyson Ring (orbiting between the Niven Ring and the sun, providing a diurnal cycle to the Ringworld.)

Oy. Exactly one wikipedia search later, here's Dyson in writing referring to a ring-shaped superstructure in 1960: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#cite_ref-6 On the same page, Dyson is quoted saying that his thought experiment was inspired by superstructures in short stories written in the 30s. There's no such thing as originality, folks.

Frankly, I don't think that it really matters which name we associate with our fictional superstructures, so long as everybody knows what we're talking about. Both gents are equally deserving of a shout out. In the future, if I grab images from the 'net, I'll be sure to credit the source. :)

Congratulations!

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Congratulations, Tsar! Was a pleasure working with you in F/R.

All the best going forward.

Steve

For those that would like to be added to our tribble fleet (KDF or FED)Please send ingame mail to @rainbowwargames and I will add you to our fleet! Im usually on there once per day at least! I know a lot of you want to see the new Delta Rising stuff so come and join us! Also please remember not to give SPOILERS away to those in the main stonewall fleet chat channel! We have our own chat channel to discuss tribble stuff for those that want to see it! SWF_Tribble is the name of that channel join it just like the main stonewall channel!

If you would like to transfer your character to tribble here is the new character transfer page. http://www.arcgames.com/en/my/character/copy/sto

If you have any other questions please feel free to ask me at any time!

War Games
PVE Fleet Captain

Gratz, Paul! :D You sure know how to party! ;)

good on ya slick! :silly: :silly: :silly:

When I started I had a great profile planned out for my Bajoran officer - then I decided to try out the Romulans and everything changed!

Shelenko profile / biography

I have kept my profile purposly devoid of too many specific references or events. I have however taken an NPC with a backstory (namely Tovan Khev) and "adapted" this slightly to suit my needs - Charva was just a phase he was going through :laugh:

I have a qwerky little hypothesis about Fred Phelps. You see, back in 60s he was a passionate civil rights lawyer. I think it is entirely possible that Fred started his church not really to spew hate but to push buttons. How do you fight the closed-minded bigotry that claims justification by being the "word of God"? By showing just how closed-minded and hateful it can be. By doing what they've done, the Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church has slapped the collective face of America to the reality the religious fanaticism is hateful and destruction. By doing what they've done, they've made most of the rest of us allies against them. For instance when the KKK will stand with you in opposition to the WBC, that's powerful. I think it is also possible that Fred is remorseful on his deathbed and that is why he's been excommunicated from his own church now.

I could be completely wrong but this just seem highly possible to me.

Congratulations Aikune!

Congratulations!! Maybe I'll even give PVP a try now! (after you help me make a pvp build!!)