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I think folks that want to invoke the slippery slope should provide some historic data to substantiate such claims. Too often it just a single data point extrapolation. The whole current situation looks like a repeat of the 1918 pandemic (or measles or smallpox etc.), but in colour.

Except where such measures are clinically justifiable in certain circumstances, like immune deficiency and operating theatres, trying to separate oneself from the universe of 'everyday' ubiquitous microorganisms is a fool's errand, I think. Why try to remove, beyond a cosmetic level, stuff that we have evolved to live with. I blame advertising, propagating anxiety to maintain hygiene-related markets.

Today I've learned about the phenomenon of chatoyance or chatoyancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatoyancy and a beautiful sea snail called Voluta musica that displays this effect. It is an optical effect consisting in certain 2D patterns being perceived as 3D --if I understood it correctly. Thanks to @Genady and @StringJunky. 👍

I think it is still very much open. GR is an accurate and very valid description of gravity (within its domain of applicability), but it isn’t an explanation, because it has nothing to say about the underlying mechanism. We simply don’t know yet how and why macroscopic spacetime with its observed degrees of freedom comes about; we can only describe its dynamics. This is why research into quantum gravity is so important.

But that is part of the definition of a distance function (the Mathematical term for a metric) Without zero you have no metric. But that is not the only use of zero in Mathematics. You probably know the four colour theorem, and the two colour theorem. Can you draw a map with zero colours ? Or perhaps you would like this poem I have highlighted the use of zero bend (curvature or the reciprocal of radius) to indicate a straight line. You also need zero in projective geometry for the ratio theorem to indicate the 'missing' ratio.

Contextualists miss nothing. Onus is on you to be clearer in your communication. I've asked you to clarify multiple times. Can you link me to the literature that is currently inspiring you. I want to understand, however if you will do me the courtesy of reading back some of your own writing from a different perspective, you will find that you have contradicted yourself a few times and that there are a few terms you use that need to be better defined. I agree with the sentiment of this, however there is a diversity of modal qualities to every value expressed and clear conflicts of prioritization between values. Security/Freedom is one such conflict. There is also a diversity of thought in meta-ethical dialogical positions and reducing them to something simpler than that, eliminates the subtle but profound impacts of the differences in nuance has on the modal quality of values. That's the problem we have been addressing. Your reductionism isn't helping. If we cannot discuss diversity and how it relates to equality and equity, then we cannot have the discussion at all. This is about barriers to education. Now, you can express your view, but if you cannot recognize the influence concepts or social constructs and how others view and use them, have on the barriers to equal opportunity in education, then you are ignoring the majority of the problem. A few facts to keep this all on track. F1. Not everyone shares your view on how things are, or how they ought to be. F2. Bigots exist. F3. Bad faith decisions made by biased individuals on who does or does not get into a certain school, happen. F4. There are a few different degrees and types of discrimination, direct and indirect, conscious and subconsciously. F5. Some people believe diversity exists and has value in a number of different areas. F6. Public discourse does not take these concepts lightly. Conclusion: It is not pragmatic to take the fringe belief that diversity is the antithesis of equality and claims like that require proof. Especially since the concepts 'Equality and 'Diversity have uses in a multitude of different situations. Here, we are discussing equality of opportunity. Believing in the values of equality and diversity are not mutually exclusive. There is even a way to be pro-life and pro-choice based on pragmatic modalities of the underlying values involved.

The GAIA mission encountered more micrometeoroids than expected. “the spacecraft is being peppered by far more micrometeoroids – tiny specks of space dust – than had been anticipated” https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25925-galaxy-mappers-first-discovery-surprise-space-debris/

MAGGA! Make Ambient Germs Great Again!

China's navy is a poor rival to the US pacific fleet, if the US went into all out war mode China would lose it's navy quite fast, it's aircraft carrier is a joke even to china and so are the planes that fly from it being called some like a flopping fish in Chinese because of their tendency to take off from the carrier and dive into the water. Of course that wouldn't necessarily keep china from doing it's best to fight the US but my bet is that china would resort to nuclear weapons if the US actually landed on Chinese soil. Russia is a wild card, Putin is an autocrat whose grip on power is based on his image as much as anything. He might do something crazy just to maintain his shirtless horse riding.

That's pure 'slippery slope' fallacy.

Hello, Riba and welcome. Maths on your own huh ? That's both ambitious and admirable. So is asking questions so remember to come here and ask if you get stuck. Quadratic equations and basic trig ? So you are in junior high then. You haven't said which country you are in, but in the UK you will be doing some algebra (those pesky equations), some geometry, which goes with the trig, some modern maths such as sets and logic. There will also be lots of practice applications questions (both in maths symbols and in words). This is all good stuff that leads into later material, normally encountered in senior high. This is where you will encounter calculus first and perhaps a taste of differential equations. But you will also encounter coordinate geometry and other topics. There is no one order to 'do' the different topics in. This is because Maths hangs together so you need a bit of one branch to be able to work in another branch. With that under you belt you can use your new knowledge to expand both branches and perhaps a third, fourth etc. One word of warning since your ambition is (astro)physics. Any course whether at school, college or online will be designed for the questions asked to be solvable using the material taught. But no course teaches it all so they leave out the exceptions and difficult pieces, and never ask questions about them. So it is easy for a student to be lulled into a sense of false security, thinking they know enough. But in real Physics it is often the exception that you need. Go well in your studies, I look forward to periodic questions from you.

Well the target would depend on what you are actually taxing (say, unprotected sex). But there would be a lot to unpack here, especially as sodomy laws were actually on the books, but for entirely different reasons. Also, with regard to HIV there are actually protective laws in place and in many countries, where it is required to disclose HIV positivity to potential sexual partners. IOW, there are laws in place targeted at curbing transmissions. I will also say that this discussion is not new. Smallpox vaccinations in the early 20th century was made mandatory in many countries. In the fines for non-compliance went to the supreme court and was upheld. In fact, it is part of a much longer discussion regarding how much a society should compel individuals to minimize risk to themselves and others and it is not an easy either/or situation. But it is also not a simple slippery slope situation, either. Looking back we had have many, many of those regulations, some based on moral considerations, others based on immediate emergencies and so on. Some of those have been eventually removed as society changed their attitudes, others still persist. But what has not happened is that our society has been increasingly constrained by ever-expanding regulations or governmental control. Things have come and gone, depending on the attitudes of a given generation and if anything, the world now appears more complex due to the availability of more information and higher interconnectivity. Finding the right approach appears more difficult than ever, but in part it is because we realized that things we did actually do not work.

I read once that the push for cleanliness in the home (at least in the US) came shortly after the invention of time saving machines such as washing machines, dryers, dish washers, vacuums, etc. Because women no longer had to spend endless hours cleaning high level dirt in the home, manufacturers saw an opportunity to give them something else to do to fill their days (Not a paying job of course!). Thus the focus on germs! Especially those nasty bathroom germs that will crawl to the baby food if you are not vigilant!

Yesterday I took a nice hike in a local nature reserve. About half way through I stopped and peeled a couple of tangerines, then accidentally dropped them on the ground. As a cursory inspection revealed no attached sand I proceeded to eat them. Delicious! And as of today I am still alive. 😃

Ditto. We can only attempt at an explanation when we have a theory (a law), plus its domain of applicability. We can take Newton's law of gravity, or GR, and try to explain planetary motion, or why the Moon is slowly sidling away from us by tidal interactions. To summarise, we can explain relatively complex phenomena in terms of simple laws by means of a mechanism spelled out in terms of that simple law. But fundamental physical laws have no mechanism. Richard Feynman The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol. II

No. The geometry is curved; gravity exists even with no body to experience it.

Yes, I did. It has a beautiful and appropriate name, Voluta musica. Here is Wikipedia article about it. BTW, this article doesn't list "my" island in their distribution. Also, it appears that my specimen was especially large, and at a more shallow depth. Voluta musica - Wikipedia (att. @StringJunky)

That's called 'chatoyance'. You see it also in certain types of wood that has been finished to a high polish.

I hope you appreciate this ... I had to sift through about 27 pages of AJB's content to find it. halfway down page ten, we have this exchange ... All classical field theories are geometric. The usual way of understanding the gravitational field is as a metric on space-time; but there are other ways of understanding this.

In both real life and Internet dealings, I often hear people say things like "We humans are so insignificant in the grander scheme of things," or "How important could humanity possibly be? We're sooo arrogant, and yet the universe is soooo big!" It's almost become a cliché at this point, really -- and while it sounds good, or at least gives people philosophy points in social circles, it really isn't anything more complicated than a self-deprecating platitude. Here's a thought: What if our worth, our significance, depends upon something far less trivial than physical mass? I guess I don't get it; what does being relatively small have to do with the significance of the human species? Furthermore, given that we don't know how far down and up the scale reality extends, we could ultimately be relatively voluminous; after all, quarks are incomprehensibly tiny compared to a single human individual. And let's not forget that human bodies are not set physical objects, but continuously changing subroutines utilizing all of the universe in their procedures; abstracting a chunk of the suffering entity that we call the universe is tempting, given our evolved sense organs and their scale of operation, but it's not a very legitimate way of seeing things. However, for the sake of argument, let's temporarily assume that this isn't the case, and that humans really are on the smaller end of the scale. Let's assume that, if you were to take all of our sensory abstractions of the matter, energy, time, and space in the universe and order it all in a straight line according to mass, humans would be in, maybe, the bottom one percent. Why would it matter? The Grand Canyon is far larger than I, but if there's an avalanche nearby, is anyone obligated out of practical responsibility to rush the entire Grand Canyon to the hospital? No, but when a human being -- a vulnerable, sensitive creature subject to the intense chemical administrations of its own irrational cognitive processor -- gets trapped under the rocks, then anyone nearby is obligated to at least do something to help. We're not insignificant; in fact, until we have proof that super-intelligent extraterrestrials exist, we're the most significant thing in the universe. Not only do we suffer as a consequence of chemical syntheses irrationally acting to stop their corresponding systems from breaking down, we also can deliberate upon our suffering for hours, days, years both before and after it occurs, creating even more suffering and compounding the void that is sentience. Oh, and on top of that, we're the only living organisms capable of doing something about it. That makes us pretty significant to me. So why not worship ourselves, then? Well, that's simple: In addition to being the most significant thing that we're aware of, each of us is also imbued with an incredible potential for algorithmic decision-making and model-building. The problem is that almost none of us is taking advantage of this, leading to the most tragic waste of energy in the history of reality as we've come to know it thus far.

Probably billions of important things, which makes this list worthless. Whoa there, cart before the horse. You need to establish the latter before claiming the former. You should start a thread on why you think the human value system needs reformation first. What's the value of producing a "quick composite" list of things people care about? It's unending and ever-changing. And your list focuses on a predominately negative perspective on what people care about, so your biases further erode any worth.

They designed the JWST to be capable of being refueled robotically, just in case anyone gets around to financing such a mission in 10 or 15 years. If the JWST performs outstanding, maybe that performance will change some minds, and they would extend its' life thru a refueling mission. "...modest efforts being made to make JWST “serviceable” like Hubble, according to Scott Willoughby, JWST’s program manager at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California. The aerospace firm is NASA’s prime contractor to develop and integrate JWST, and has been tasked with provisioning for a “launch vehicle interface ring” on the telescope that could be “grasped by something,” whether astronaut or remotely operated robot, Willoughby says. If a spacecraft were sent out to L2 to dock with JWST, it could then attempt repairs—or, if the observatory is well-functioning, simply top off its fuel tank to extend its life." refueling - Is it possible to refuel the James Webb Space Telescope? - Space Exploration Stack Exchange

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids In fact it's cold as hell...

I read somewhere that certain elements, like the power unit, are replaceable, in the event that such technology may be available in a few decades. I think it's planned service life is 40 years iirc.

Actually, military spending in the US continues to increase, not get cut. This is also not the topic of this thread. The question is how we might wind up using that spending which has already been approved and allocated and debited. I tend to agree, but the Ukraine thread is more proximal. Ukraine is also a key area in protecting the NATO alliance and keeping oil flowing throughout Europe. Biden and Putin speak today. My hope is much of this troop movement from Russia to Ukraine is little more than a shrewd negotiating tactic from Putin, but that seems hopelessly optimistic and a bit like fairy dust thinking to me.

Exactly. This plus the increasing rise of authoritarian tendencies and simple minded support for narrow populist messages across the planet has me wondering what happens next and what a weakened US could even achieve. Another challenge is that people (John Q. Public) are so distracted and occupied by catnip social issues like anti mask and anti vax and abortion and inflation and related topics that they never even bother to engage with the actual big deal issues like hundreds of thousands of troops preparing to invade sovereign countries.

Citizens being asked not to spread contagion is a centuries old practice that has been done in almost every culture. We expect poor citizens to drive with headlights on, and fine them the same as the affluent. Some laws are about critical matters of public safety and nothing new ideologically. Would you have preferred raising your children in a society where polio vax shots were optional? Think about this carefully. To the recent downvoter: Please tell me the nature of your disagreement, instead of downvoting anonymously. I will accord you the same respect. Regards, Paul

If you recall our past conversations, CharonY, you'll recall that I have also argued for stricter vaccination rules, and possible penalties for the willful unvaccinated. But it is always helpful, even necessary, to investigate both sides of an argument, so as to arrive at an equitable solution. ( no matter what Stringy thinks )

It's starting to happen in Canada. Not content with educating people ( or evidently, doing a really bad job at it ), Canadian Governments are vilifying unvaccinated people. This is especially true of the Quebec provincial government Chris Selley: Quebec's anti-vax tax could lead us to some very dark places (msn.com) and the federal Liberal government of J Trudeau Tasha Kheiriddin: The unvaccinated must be deterred from harming others (msn.com) I would assume the next group of people that will be taxed for 'stressing' the universal ( ? ) health care system, will be smokers, drinkers, overweight people, drug users, malnourished people, etc. Exactly the people who are disadvantaged/uneducated, and immigrants or indigenous. The same people who can least afford the extra taxation. I have always said ideologies are a dangerous thing.