mistermack

Well, our media must be pretty hopeless then, because I don't recognise the massive problem you are attempting to portray. I don't live in those cities, so I can only go on what's in the media, and I they seem pretty silent on the problem, so I still think you're exaggerating. Individual problems happen, and always will, and your camps won't stop that. But I think you're taking a sledgehammer to crack a sesame seed. 55 years ago, I hitched around North America, six months on the road. There was addiction and violence around then, I wouldn't say it's got hugely worse. I hitched from a roundabout in New York back up to Canada, after visiting my aunt in the Bronx. She was in a panic for a while, because someone was reported murdered on the same roundabout a couple of hours later. From what I've heard, New York is safer now than it was then. And that's without rounding people up and putting them in special camps.

It's you who call it a fearful approach. That doesn't make it a fact. Other people have a different approach, and think that your approach is a pipe dream and out of touch.

To me, you are massively overstating the problem. By all means, if homeless junkies become a menace, something needs to happen. But if the problem is slight, then it's just overbearing nanny state to do what you're proposing. My own proposal is to do nothing, if you can. They don't bother me, and if they did, there are lots of ways to complain. I might be homeless one day. Just because you are lucky yourself doesn't make it right to treat others with contempt.

See the post I was replying to, and quoted. If people don't agree with your approach, they are fearful? No, they disagree, and might be right. It can happen.

Sorry, I can't tell, was that sarcasm, or baloney? I genuinely can't tell.

I think Albert Einstein didn't want to be known as an atheist, in a country that despised the label. And with his Jewish heritage, he didn't want to upset that apple cart either. I'm pretty sure his comments on religion were just a tactic of keeping his head down, out of the firing line. And it worked very well for him. Anyway, what would it matter if he believed in a Jehova with a white beard? It wouldn't affect the value of his work in the slightest. People can compartmentalise their beliefs and keep them seperate from their scientific work. If they try to combine the two, they open themselves up to ridicule.

Making the drugs cheap and legal and on the high street makes it easier for kids to get them, and for addicts to get more and more of them. Cheap housing would be nice, but who pays? Housing costs money to build and maintain. Someone has to pay for it. I think modern governments work on the principle that expensive housing makes people work harder, so they deliberately keep costs high using the levers of administration. It's an unspoken policy, they would never admit it, but judging them by their actions, that's what they are doing. In the UK, if you gave homes to the homeless without restriction, there would be a stampede for them. Why would you work long hours in a boring job, for poor money, when you can just declare yourself homeless and drink, smoke and do drugs all day? I don't know Finland, but I do know plenty of poor people in the UK, and I know how a lot of them think.

That's not exactly surprising. If you give the homeless homes, you won't get much homelessness. But I doubt if that could be replicated everywhere. Both politically and financially, it's likely to be a non-starter. A lot of people quote other countries, with the unsaid inference that it would work elsewhere, but countries are so different that it's not a valid conclusion. And that's why you can't extrapolate from it. You get the same thing in prisons. Some genius comes in with a project to reform prisoners, and it's self fulfilling, when it's only the people willing to take part who are included. It's a form of selection, which means you can't apply it's results to a non-selective group. Firstly, you don't criminalize people. They do that themselves. Secondly, costing prisons 'per inmate' is a false depiction. You have to have prisons, and staff. There is a huge standing charge that is unavoidable, so it's totally misleading to include that in the cost of locking someone up. A more honest approach would be to calculate how much it costs to lock up one extra prisoner. You would get a vastly smaller figure.

I haven't read all the posts, so sorry if I'm repeating earlier posts. I don't think that extravagant schemes ever do much lasting good, and the problem is different from place to place. There have always been homeless people and probably always will, unless you go down the Nazi route, of total intolerance 'for the benefit' of the majority. If they don't impinge too much on the public, it's not worth hassling them. If needles etc become a problem, then you could bring in specific laws to control it. A special offence of discarding unprotected needles would be fair. After all, dangerous behaviour is legislated against in most other fields. Maybe technology could help with that. Make needles that retract automatically, like a ballpoint but without the 'stay out' position. And legislate that only those needles can be sold to the public. What would it cost? A few pence on a syringe. As far as other behaviour is concerned, it's not worth taking action if it's not a problem. There are lots of laws covering public behaviour, that can be used when problems pop up.

Truly laughable ! Wikpedia says of csis : "Since its founding, CSIS "has been dedicated to finding ways to sustain American prominence and prosperity as a force for good in the world", according to its website" . Got any Fox New quotes? Might be a bit lighter in propaganda.

Citation please.

Yes, I'm also imagining the rate of inflation in America if that happened. And I'm imagining America going bust, if China stopped buying their debt.

They're doing a great job.

The real danger of a WW3 is if the USA govornments continue to believe their own pompous bullshit. The arrogance is unbelievable. We can supply Ukraine with whatever we like, tanks, missiles, ammunition. But China or Iran can't supply Russia, their long-term allies. That's because 'we' are always right, and 'they' are always wrong. It's the sort of black and white shite that is all the US public can get their heads round. Actually, the White House lecturing of China is almost certainly counter-productive. The Chinese thoroughly dislike that bossy attitude, and are generally inclined to take instructions from nobody. They usually like to avoid rocking the boat, without backing down an inch. That's because they know that time is very much on their side, in the world power stakes. The US might or might not be slow-walking towards WW3, but they are definitely gliding inexorably towards being the worlds second most powerful superpower.

Good luck.

Well, either the observer accelerates, or a free falling object accelerates. But to decide which is happening, I'm looking at which is experiencing a force. In general relativity, gravity is not a force. But the observer IS experiencing a force through his feet. So from a GR point of view, the observer is the one that is accelerating, and hence the surface that he's standing on is likewise accelerating. So the OP is pointing out that the surface of the Earth is accelerating upwards, away from the centre, all over the world. So here in the UK, the surface is accelerating upwards, and on the opposite side, in New Zealand it's also accelerating upwards but in the opposite direction because the Earth is a ball. In the thread that I linked, I was trying to argue the notion that this happens because space (or the element of space that determines the position and motion of inertial frames) is constantly falling into massive bodies, whether they are a black hole, or a planet like the Earth.

Of course there is. It's exactly the same way you skip the first five miles of a journey. You're welcome !

And therefore, relative to the same outside observer, the locally inertial reference frame accelerates.

In general relativity, the object is not considered to accelerate, but to simply float free in curved spact-time.

If the space there is stationary, how can a stationary object begin to move towards the massive body, without accelerating?

You lost me there, (not your fault, mine) My reasoning is that if space is always stationary over time, how can you say that space-time can be curved? If the shape of anything is different after an elapsed time, then something has to move.

It does in the river model. In fact, if you say that space-time is curved, than that is equvalent to saying that space moves. If it didn't, space-time could never be curved. Oh yes, I see that could be read both ways. 🙂

No, I posted it, I was picturing something akin the the 'river model' which is tied to general relativity. Yes, but that's not the compression of space.

There was a previous thread on this subject some time ago that got a lot of posts, so it might be worth a look. https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/110805-gravity-please-knock-this-down/#comments

One thing I think is important to bear in mind, is that the Relgions are not just one simple invention. Most are doctrines that have been studied, pored over and shaped by some very clever, even brilliant people, with the intention of giving them maximum appeal. What people found hard to swallow has been very quickly discarded, and that which people are attracted to has been copied and adopted from thousands of other tales. So what we have now is as appealing as a chocolate cake, filled with sweet cream, drizzled in honey and topped with chopped wallnuts. It's designed for maximum appeal.