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The difference between competitive sports and politics is that in competitive sports there’s a clear, objective measure of “better”. Tiger Woods has won because he did better on the golf course. There is no single objective “better” when it comes to the judiciary. There is no “best judge” that can be objectively determined, merely a pool of judges with better qualifications, among whom the President picks. So by picking a black woman from that pool, the President isn’t deliberately choosing a worse candidate - merely a particular one from among a pool of similarly qualified candidates.

On the topic of trolling: Just registering my concern that some of the smartest minds on this site are currently wasting their cognitive skills on the infinite Escher staircase that is the Ketanji Brown Jackson thread. You have a couple members who just are Not. Ever. Going. To. Concede. Any. Point. No matter how well argued and factually supported. It's Spring in the northern hemisphere! Go outside!

It's challenging but interesting as well. Along the lines of removing "oriental" from your lexicon, I found out a few weeks ago that I've been abusing the Hindi greeting "Namaste" ever since I first heard it. Apparently some Americans went to India to learn yoga from the masters there, and brought the word back but used it poorly. It's supposed to be reserved for addressing the yogis, an honorific term, one that shouldn't be used for just anyone. People from India cringe when they hear us say it along the lines of "Have a nice day". I feel a bit silly now, like I've been mistakenly calling you "Your Majesty", and thinking you'd appreciate it.

Don't be a fossil, and seek to endeavour to understand what's changing. This has happened since the beginning of civilisation, and it is we, as aging people, that are stuck in a culture and manners that is passing by to become history... and so it will be for those who are making the waves now.

Should this excuse you from pronouncing my name right, or learning any of my other preferences? If you were purposely offensive, we'd be having a completely different conversation. You gave strawman-worthy examples so you could show how easy "political correctness" can go too far. What we're talking about here, in this tangent to the Jackson SCOTUS appointment, is the disrespect shown to people when you mispronounce their name, or refer to their heritage by some offensive colonial term they've been forced to live with for decades. We're living in a time when our human capabilities for communication and cooperation are at their highest point. We're being exposed to many new ideas, peoples, traditions, behaviors, and processes. People are asking you to care about more than yourself, and part of that is simple respect for their ways. As more diverse people gain seats of power, it should be important to us that all can find representation and dignity.

This is completely wrong. White light from a black body, such as the sun or a filament light bulb, is not composed of a mixture of yellow, cyan etc. There is continuous emission across the whole range of visible wavelengths. So there is light of all the colours detectable by the human eye, from red through to violet and including all the colours in between. Furthermore, shorter wavelength light is deflected through a bigger angle by passing into an optically denser medium, so the dispersion of the incident white light into its constituent wavelengths begins from the moment the light ray first encounters the glass. I haven't bothered with the rest, as since you get so much wrong at the start there seems little point.

And that's because you don't realize how offensive you can be to others, and instead of learning, you keep going on and on and on. Sure, it's a bunch of little things, but it's not that hard. You might want to start by realizing that it's relationship correctness, and has NOTHING to do with politics, unless you object to others asking for something different than what you asked for. Don't be like the asshats in right-wing leadership here in the US, who have whole staffs full of people who brief them on everything under the sun, yet still seem to have blatant trouble pronouncing any name that isn't white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in origin. Those dumbfucks can learn enough respect to get someone's name right, but they play to their dumbfuck bases and when right-minded people object, they claim to be victims of political correctness. Most of the Republicans questioning Ketanji Brown Jackson made no attempt to get her name right. People not fit to shine her shoes disrespected her that way. Correctness is much more respectful.

It doesn’t. All that matters is that people like you and me who otherwise agree and align on 97% or more of what matters in our day-to-day lives keep fussing and arguing with each other over silly petty nonsense instead of focusing our energies on coming together and solving actual problems that affect our actual lives and actual families and collective futures.

Indeed, it's the difference between being covered in shit and being covered in fertiliser. 🙏

What's the point of a God that can't protect you or seek revenge on your behalf?

No one is arguing his choice, in fact we all applaud it. We are questioning the merits of the pre announcement, whether it was it was a good idea or not. Personally I don't see why it was necessary and as a result see how it could be perceived negatively. Whether or not it makes a difference, I don't know the answer to, and to be fair it makes no odds to me so I won't be losing any sleep over it. I just find it interesting reading other perspectives and then discussing and trying to understand why they differ from mine. Its all educational after all. 😉

Oh so it says 28% of whites does it? Then why does it say non-white American? I'm assuming an honest typo. Correct? It also clearly says the polls sample was was not large enough to break out results for black people. Just a very unspecific "non-white Americans". Essentially it just breaks it down into 2 categories, white Americans and everyone else, completely othered. Let's see how the math works out. - Census.gov So 28% of non white Americans said they only want Biden to consider black women, in keeping with his campaign promise. 61.6% of the country are white. So that's roughly 61 in 100 are white. (Yall don't mind if I round to a whole number? I'd rather not cut anyone in half.) 14.2% of the population are either black or black and mixed with another ethnicity so 14 in 100. If 61 in 100 leaves 39, then we'll say 39 in 100 are non white. 28% of 3C, is 10.92. So theoretically, the 28% of non whites who desired that Biden select only from black woman, could have been a supermajority of black people/mixed race black. Some here may think it safe to assume that most of that 28% is the black community. Without a better round of polling though, I don't like to assume. High probability it is, but not complete certainty for me. What keywords did you use by the way? Not asking to criticise, just trying to figure out what went wrong with my own searches. I've been trying to find this sort of thing online for the past week and have been coming up empty. Thank you for sharing. In conclusion, hopefully there will be a larger sample for the next poll. For now, we are both left to only be able to speculate on the demographic makeup of that 28%. 😕 stalemate for now it seems. Disclaimer: Feel free to correct my math where and if it needs correcting. It's not my aoe. Let's assume you're correct, how do you measure it? As an aside, and in the interest of trying to be more respectful, I apologize for offense caused to everyone in this discussion. Intentional or not. I'd prefer that we all be able cool this discussion down. I've felt myself slipping on my temper and I can tell I'm not the only one either. I suggest we all (myself included) lighten the fuck up, remember we are all just observers to this and unlike the politicians etc that we are discussing; are dedicated to science and the truth. Biden ruffled some people's feathers, sure. Not me, but for those that did feel that way, that sucks and I wish it could have happened differently, but only so that it made less of the people here feel shitty or sore about it. I'm not as emotionally invested in this discussion as you might think, for that to be a possibility. Debating here is less stressful than changing and cleaning up after my daughter has a blow out diaper tbh. I'm also just tired of anger in general.

No animals synthesize lysine. They all get in their diet, from various plant sources, but the enzyme activity is similar in all species. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1165958/ I don't see why. It's a question of farming style. Industrial-scale farming methods require vast acreage and flat land. Vertical, container, indoor, forest, terraced and other kinds of farming arrangements produce more food in less space, and incidentally require less transporting of food. One example is a food forest.

I am of the opinion that he got more 'push back' on his choice than he would have otherwise gotten had he not made the pre-announcement of the selection criteria. You seem to think he would have gotten the same, from the usual suspects. I guess we'll never know which of us is rght, because he can't take back the pre-announcement. The biggest strawman going on here is that, although a few of us have said there is no problem with the selection of KBJ, but there could be a problem with the announcing that he would "pick a black woman', as that gives the imopression of discrimination based on skin color and gender, some others are still arguing that we think the selection is discriminatory. Some have gone as far as throwing out the 'walks like a duck' line to insinuate we might be racist. For pointing out what could be considered racism ! Then he goes on to claim that my ( and JC's ) argument is simplistic and esy to understand. Meanwhile we cannot possibly understand his argument because it is complex and nuanced ( and we are after all, just racist simpletons, who need to have prejudicial discrimination explaine with an out-of-context dictionary definition ) We now have white, blacks and a latino on the SC, but orientals are catching up fast with 7 % of US population. Based on some of the justifications presented in defence of Biden's pre-announcement, should we expect an announcement for his next pick of a 'gay oriental' ? I, myself, don't think skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. should ever be a criteria for selection. But according to some people, that makes me a racist. That person, and he knows who he is, needs to give his head a shake. ( unless he can't because it is firmly wedged up his ass ) Rant completed; carry on.

Do you know what the greatest hoax in the history of science is? In my view, it is this picture: It is taken from the Pink Floyd’s album “The dark side of the moon”. The members of one of the greatest bands of all times have also fallen for this hoax, taking this drawing as an idol of worship on their legendary album. The same drawing can be found in billions of textbooks throughout the world. Why is this drawing a hoax? Because it has nothing, absolutely NOTHING to do with the truth. The phenomenon doesn’t look like that at all. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has already given the right picture two hundred years ago: There are numerous flaws in the first drawing: 1) At the emerging surface of the prism there are practically no colors, only white light; 2) The colors don’t diverge, so to say, parallel to each other as shown in the first drawing, but they combine; 3) There is no green color near the emerging surface. It appears later as a result of the mixing between the yellow and the cyan. The wider the incident beam is, the farther the green color appears; 4) All the colors in the first drawing have equal width. There’s no such thing. The yellow is actually much wider than the red. The same applies to the violet and cyan. The width of the yellow is the same as the width of the violet. The width of the red is the same as the width of the cyan; 5) There is no separate orange color in the refracted beam; 6) There are also no seven colors in the so-called spectrum (as it is usually said). On the plus-side there are only yellow and red; on the minus-side there are only violet and cyan. Together with the green there are overall five colors. Another hoax in relation to the previous one is the following drawing: It appears in the textbooks when the so-called chromatic aberration is discussed. The true picture of the phenomenon looks like this: A collimated beam of light goes through a chromatic convex lens. It converges in a point and then diverges. Before the focal point the beam is rounded by a yellow-red wreath (figure a below) and by a violet-cyan wreath after the focal point (figure b). The yellow color turns into violet, the red color turns into cyan. Have you ever heard of the very simple experiment just mentioned? I doubt you have. Do you know why? Because the science of the last centuries tends to cheat. It sweeps under the carpet the experiments which are not in accordance with its fake theories. If it describes such experiments, then the contradictions become obvious. It should then admit that its theory is wrong and that it doesn’t have a true explanation of the phenomena. But this science would rather cheat than to admit its cluelessness about such simple experiments. The members of the academic community would lose their authority and also their reputation as the smartest people of the society. I CALL YOU TO REMEMBER THIS EXPERIMENT VERY WELL because it disproves several hoaxes of the contemporary science: 1) the light is not composed of colors; 2) there is no such thing as frequencies of colors; then, how on Earth would the frequencies suddenly change into other on their linear path of propagation in a point far from refraction surface?!! ; 3) there is also no such thing as wavelengths of colors; 4) light and colors are not electromagnetic waves. I want to elaborate something regarding the hoax below: Something similar to this can be obtained with a convex lens in a very specific way. Let me explain. Let’s say that on the incident surface of the lens we glue two opaque papers: an opaque ring on the outer edge of the lens and an opaque circle in the middle as presented in the figure (b) below: A collimated beam goes through the lens of the figure (b). If we hold a white sheet of paper before the focal point, then we will get the image presented in the figure (c). A YELLOW-red ring appears at the outer edge, while a VIOLET-cyan ring at the inner edge of the light ring. Between them it is white. Now, let us narrow the white ring of the figure (b) above, so that we get a lens like the one presented in the figure (b) below. In this case the yellow color from the outer edge will meet the cyan color from the inner edge resulting in a green ring in the middle (figure c). Only in this way we can get something similar to the hoax image. I believe that the images in the second to last series of figures could serve as a basis for explanation of the optical phenomenon Halo which appears in the very cold polar regions. In some photographs of Halo the yellow-red ring appears at the outer edge, while the violet-cyan ring at the inner edge: But in other photographs it is reversed: just like the figure (c) and (d) in the mentioned series of figures. Maybe the frozen water drops in the atmosphere make somehow a huge lens. Part 2 An explanation of the extraordinary experiments presented in the video below: This video exposes very obviously the whole emptiness of the Newton’s theory of colors. Please watch it carefully (especially its later part) before reading this post. The key for an explanation of the prismatic colors and the extraordinary experiments presented in this video is the “principle of the arrow”. I call you to remember this phrase very well because it will certainly be the milestone of the future science. What is the principle of the arrow? Although I have elaborated it many times in my older answers and posts, still I will repeat the main points here for those who haven’t read them (I will also cite some articles of mine at the end of this post). When a body moves through space filled with air, then higher pressure is created in front of it, while lower pressure behind it. The higher pressure is Plus, the lower pressure is Minus. I use to call it the ‘principle of the arrow’ (− >—> +). The greater the velocity of the body is, the stronger is the plus in front of it as well as the minus behind it. And look now: this very principle can be found wherever the light produces colors. The archetype of this pattern is the flame of a candle or a cigarette lighter. A violet/cyan minus appears at the back and a yellow/red plus at the front of this fiery arrow: The left picture is a real photograph of an opalite stone illuminated from below with a white LED lamp. ( Opalites are very cheap stones and easy to find. I urge everyone who is really interested in light and colors to find these stones. ) Let’s find the same principle in the phenomenon of refraction colors, that is, the colors which appear on a triangular prism. The light undergoes two refractions on the prism: one on entering the prism and another on emerging from it. For the birth of the refraction colors there is no need of a double, but only of a single refraction. In the following video it is visible how the colors appear only with one refraction (from 0:48 to 0:57): Let me jump for a moment to something else, to the question of the so-called Bernoulli’s principle (footnote 1). Please look at the picture below: The water flows through a wider pipe and then through a narrower pipe. The velocity of the water increases in the narrower pipe. As a result, the water column over it is lower than over the wider pipe. Why is that so? The water columns over the pipes could be imagined as many tails of the water-body. Since the velocity of the water is greater in the narrower pipe, a stronger MINUS occurs in its tail than in the tail of the wider pipe, thus the air-pressure from above lowers the water column over the narrower pipe more. At the same time a stronger PLUS arises at the front part of the narrower pipe. Everyone knows that the water-jet which comes out of a pipe reaches farther if we narrow the pipe. That happens because higher pressure occurs in the front part. So, HIGHER PRESSURE within the plus-side of the water-body, while LOWER PRESSURE within its minus-side. But could the water-body with the higher pressure in its plus-side and the lower-pressure in its minus-side exist without a material environment, that is, without the surrounding air? No, it could not. The surrounding air is an inevitable actor in the whole story. I want here to stress that in the case of the moving solid body, the higher and the lower pressure arise in the surrounding air, while in the case of the moving liquid body, they arise within it. Let us get back to the light. When the light propagates through the void space, then there is nothing around it to strike its body in, so it propagates freely. But when there is more or less transparent matter on its way of propagation, then it experiences resistance, so that higher light-pressure arises in the front of its body, while lower light-pressure in the back. The higher light-pressure manifests itself as yellow-red, the lower pressure as violet-cyan. When a beam of light propagates through space, its frontal surface is at right angle to the direction of propagation. We can call it a frontal propagation of light. But when the beam is refracted, then it propagates sideways, meaning that its frontal surface is no longer perpendicular to the direction of propagation. We can call it a sideways propagation of light. These two ways of propagation can be imagined as follows: imagine two threads stretched across a room, one horizontally, the other diagonally. On each of the threads is hanging a pierced sheet of paper. We are moving the two sheets along the threads so that they are always in a vertical position. In the figure (a) below is represented the frontal propagation, while in the figure (b) the sideways propagation. The sheet in the figure (b) does not have to be necessarily vertical. It only must not be at right angle to the direction of the thread. Please look at the diagram below: A beam of light is refracted. After the refraction, besides the normal component, the beam gets an additional component in the direction marked with the black arrows. Higher light-pressure arises at the front of this component (i.e. plus-colors), while lower light-pressure (i.e. minus-colors) at its back. But these different light-pressures can occur due to the surrounding air, similarly to the cases of the solid and the liquid body. In other words, if we place a prism or a diffraction grating in a very high vacuum, then I claim that the refracted or diffracted white light will remain white after passing through them. Now, please look at this screenshot from the video: A beam of light has passed through the prism, but the colored boundaries are covered with black papers. Let’s say that the source of light and the prism are placed in a black box and you see only the beam presented in the screenshot. Then someone asks you: He: What do you see? You: A beam of white light. He: Is it a normal light? You: What kind of question is that? Of course it is a normal white light! He: No, it is not a normal light. Watch now! And then he places an object in the middle of the beam (screenshot below). He: Does a normal light throw a shadow like this?! You: No, it doesn’t … then, what kind of light is this? He: It’s not a normal, but a slanted light. Let us now move to the experiments when only one colored ray of the so-called Goethe’s spectrum passes through a narrow slit (screenshot below): There are actually three cases: 1) the cyan ray passes through the slit; after that we see a green ray and a blue ray bound together; 2) the magenta ray (the author of the video calls it purple; Goethe called it also purple) passes through the slit; after that we see a red ray and a blue ray separated from each other; 3) the yellow ray passes through the slit; after that we see a green ray and a blue ray bound together. In the screenshot above only the second case is presented for the sake of shortness. The magenta arrow is added by me to stress that is, the ray has still its own color in the close vicinity of the slit. The same applies for the cyan ray and the yellow ray when they exit the slit. Before I explain what is going on here, let me tell you something else. Please look at the figure below: The magnetic field of the magnet is weaker at a greater distance from the magnet’s pole (figure a). At a greater distance than d, we could say that the strength of the magnetic field is practically zero. The weakening of the strength is symbolically represented by the different shades of gray. The weakening is also symbolically represented by the red and the blue triangle in the figure (b). If the two identical magnets are brought at the distance ‘d’ (or less than ‘d’) without allowing them to come together, then in the interspace between them there is a uniform magnetic field because the two fields complement each other. This means that the strength of the magnetic field is the same in every point of the interspace (figure c). The magnetic field is uniform in terms of strength, but it is not homogeneous in terms of polarity. The Plus and the Minus retain their character just as before the bringing of the magnets close to each other. Something similar to the things just discussed we have with light. Look please at the screenshot below: The light above the plate’s shadow and the light below it can be imagined as two separate beams of light. Since these beams are far from each other, there is no interaction between them. It corresponds in a way to the two magnets which are far from each other. Look now at this screenshot: The shadow is now narrow so that an interaction between the beams can occur. The Plus from below meets the Minus from above, that is, the red color meets the blue-violet. Their overlapping bears magenta. This is not the same case as when we mix chemical colors. If we mix acrylic red and acrylic blue-violet, we do get magenta, but we cannot bring the process back, that is, we cannot separate it into two colors. With the light it is possible. On the right of the last image, the corresponding situation with two magnets is presented. When the magnets are close to each other, then their fields interact, but, as I said before, the Plus and the Minus retain their character. In relation to this, please read (link at the end of this passage) about another hoax of the contemporary science, the so-called Fleming’s left hand rule. This rule states that if a current-carrying conductor is placed in a uniform magnetic field, then it will experience a force which is perpendicular to the magnetic lines of force. This is true only in the case when the conductor is placed exactly in the middle between the magnets, where the strength of the Plus and the Minus are equal. In every other case it is not true that the force acts perpendicularly to the magnetic lines of force. (see these articles Is the Fleming’s left hand rule valid? The plane which is exactly between the magnets corresponds in a sense to the magenta color of the Goethe’s spectrum. Now, let’s get back to this screenshot: What is actually going on here? The magenta ray enters an environment of low light-pressure, i.e. the pressure around the ray suddenly drops. Therefore, it is a suitable environment for it to dissolve in the original Plus and Minus components. Please note a very interesting detail in this process. Before the slit in the last screenshot, the magenta ray comes about through mixing of the red ray from below with the blue-violet from above. After the slit the ray splits into a red ray above, while the blue-violet one is below, that is, the rays have exchanged the places. What does this tell? It tells that this ray behaves as the original refracted light (marked with the added three-colored arrow) although it is born from rays of reverse order. But we can say also otherwise: the red and the blue-violet ray retain their own directions just as if they were not mixed before the slit. Look now at this screenshot: In this case the magenta ray doesn’t split into two. Why? Because it enters an environment of high light-pressure. The forces around it are so strong that it cannot fall apart. I leave the other variations of the experiments to the reader to try to explain them on his/her own. Here are some important articles of mine related to this post: Why is the sky blue? How does light make colors appear? Is the designation "positive" and "negative" in electricity arbitrary? P.S. The author of the video succeeded to split also the green ray in its constituent parts, yellow and cyan, but it is not presented in the video. It is presented on his website. Here is the link where you can find this photo: Inverted spectra of monochromatic rays

No, you won't see me in November in Stockholm. But I will tell you this: My work is more worth than all the others together which have received that physics prize. In 50-100 years, the students will learn that what you read above. You can count on that. P.S. If you don't have arguments against my assertions, then get lost from my threads. You just waste the server's memory.