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When someone tells me they’re a Christian, I ask: Classic Jesus, or Republican Jesus?

I suggest some research, even Wiki, of the Greece-Turkey tensions and conflicts, especially the Cyprus situation. It has briefly turned 'hot' a few times, but it is exactly because both are members of NATO ( Turkey is NOT EU ) that pressure could be brought to bear and hostilities stopped ( but tensions remain ). Similarly if Canada were attacked, the UK is duty bound ( NATO treaty ) to come to our aid, along with the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the rest of the 30 odd member states, including Poland, Hungry, Greece, Turkey and all of the former Yugoslav states. And no, Hungary was not part of NATO in 56, but of the Warsaw Pact. Australia and New Zealand, on the other hand, belong to SEATO, to which the US and UK were also signatories, but it hasn't been as successful' as NATO; it doesn't have its own headquarters/command and member states like French Indochina and Pakistan have dissolved or left. I would stress that NATO ( and to a much lesser extent SEATO ) is the military alliance since shortly after WW2, while the EU grew out of economic ( strictly ) European alliances that were formed during the 50s, and which C DeGaulle tried desperately to keep the UK out of ( until the 70s IIR ). It is NATO that has contributed to the peace; an attack on any member state is an attack on all of them. You don't think it was the EU that stopped Russian expansion of the Warsaw Pact ( more accurately Warsaw Occupied Possessions ) westward, do you ? The UK, as an independent state, will continue its downward spiral to irrelevance ( along with the other former European Great Powers ) in the face of competition from other resource rich states, like Russia, China, India, Brazil, and the North America block. A United Europe, though, has clout, power, and can't be pushed around by anyone. The UK could have remained a part of SOMETHING, instead you guys voted to become irrelevant, and go begging to others for trade deals. I can't wait until Prometheus has an opportunity to vote on re-joining the EU; hopefully the rest of you come to your senses in sooner than 20 years.

I was actually drinking with a cognitive science professor friend of mine tonight who explained it like this: "They can't articulate it but what they mean by "bullshit" is the democratic process - having to explain and argue your position to ideological opponent. The "bullshit" is a lack of authoritarianism. If they can simply dictate a worldview - "shut up snowflake this is how it is" into law and policy the Trump base has achieved its goals. While I think the choice between sexually harassing, mentally declining grandpas is unpalatable, especially given the field of dynamic and inspiring presidential contenders, I do think it is coming down to a choice between authoritarian populism and democracy, and I am genuinely scared at the proportion of US citizens who want an authoritarian leader, and don't understand what the actual implications of that are.

I was wondering if I could use these forums again as I will be getting back into teaching myself some STEM subjects and would like to use these forums every time I have a question that is important to ask. Totally up to the staff of this site and hopefully you guys give me a chance, just know that life has taught me lots of stuff while I was away from forums such as this and hope to apply it whilst in the internet world. Hope you all have a great day reading this :)

I expect complex engineering projects are not even possible, let alone done better by individual engineers. Teams are essential. Selection and management of that team will be crucial. As an aside I think the gratuitous derision of camels, as being a "badly designed horse" makes for a good joke - for horse lovers. Meanwhile camels are superior (better "designed") to horses - for wild survival and as a beast of burden - in many circumstances.

It will also depend on the complexity of the task at hand and the requirement for specialist knowledge. A single person, regardless of ability, can only go so far.

My understanding is that the chicken stopped in the middle of the road. Why? It was a Rhode Island Red. That's not a joke. That's perceptive political commentary.

On a related note, the fact that he is several hundred millions in debt coming due, which would be a security risk if it was anyone else.

It's possible there are state-level sealed indictments, and folks are waiting until the moment he isn't president anymore, so they can arrest him.

I have read an observation that what Trump reported to the IRS (losing money) may be markedly different than what he reported to banks (business is great, lots of assets) in order to get loans. If so, he could be in big trouble for fraud.

Even more simply, the biggest political wedge these days (whether it be on covid and mask wearing, healthcare for others, programs to feed kids in poverty, addressing climate change, etc.) is not left versus right or authoritarian versus democratic, but is instead "what's best for ME" versus "what's best for US." It's the selfish versus the community focused... All that said, this rapid march to authoritarianism and fascism is disturbing. It's being amplified by state actors and platform algorithms, and the Jews of 1930s Germany have been replaced by "the left" and the "the libs" as monolithic scapegoats in modern day discourse. Now... as for his taxes (or lack thereof)...

Do you mean the observer who is at the same place as the blinking light? Yes indeed, for him the interval is simply whatever he reads on his clock. It would seem to me that Y will be spatially removed, i.e. up in orbit above the tower...? Perhaps I misunderstood. I can't give you a straight answer to this without having done the numbers, since this scenario mixes relative motion with a curved space-time background, so calculating the geometric lengths of their respective world lines isn't trivial. Z isn't a geodesic, because he is launched up, so he undergoes acceleration. Yes, indeed. The maths here aren't overly complicated, but they are definitely tedious. I am not sure I follow you. Are you essentially saying that, if you somehow introduce a gravitational source into a scenario that was hitherto flat spacetime, then the spacetime interval will be affected by this? If so, then you are correct. Both is correct The interval is usually written as a line element, which is an infinitesimally small section of a world line: \[ds^2=g_{\mu \nu}dx^{\mu}dx^{\nu}\] This is a local measure, and it is covariant under appropriate changes in coordinate system. The obtain the geometric length of some extended world line C in spacetime, you integrate this: \[\tau =\int _{C} ds=\int _{C}\sqrt{g_{\mu \nu } dx^{\mu } dx^{\nu }}\] This is a standard line integral, and it can be shown that it is also a covariant measure. Hence, all observers agree both on the line element, as well as on the total length of some given world line. There are always infinitely many possible world lines between any two given events, in any spacetime. Generally speaking though, only one of them will be a geodesic (unless the spacetime in question has a non-trivial topology). Yes, it is a function of the metric, see expression above. I think I lost you here, I am not sure what you are meaning to ask...? In SR, there will be one unique geodesic connecting two given events (that's an inertial observer travelling between the events), and then there are infinitely many world lines that are not geodesics (corresponding to observers who perform some form of accelerated motion between the events). Yes. When performing coordinate transformations, the components of a tensor can change, but the relationships between the components do not, meaning the overall tensor remains the same. I see what you are saying, and whether or not this is a mathematically rigorous deduction is a good question. This is probably better posed to a mathematician. I am hesitant to commit myself here, because I can think of other quantities where this is not true - for example, energy-momentum (in curved spacetime) is conserved everywhere locally, but not globally across larger regions. The geometry of spacetime near a binary system is not stationary, and the overall spacetime isn't asymptotically flat either, because of the presence of gravitational radiation. The geometry will be slightly different each time the binary stars complete a revolution. There really isn't any way to define a consistent (!) notion of 'gravitational potential' that all possible observers could agree on.

The element hidden in several of the replies is creativity, or the lack thereof. In my experience, collaborative teams where several members are very creative, especially if they have different skill sets, produce amazing results (because they tend to build on each other's inspirations). But-- one good engineer, if sufficiently creative, can outperform a group that lacks creativity.

Thanks, I was not aware of "Poe's law"; again thanks for introducing me to this concept