tar

dimreepr, How much of the world do you figure I am responsible for? And if the rich should do more, the question remains, how could they do anything for anybody if they were not rich? Wealth and value are not automatic, you have to work for it, build it, construct the means of production. All things being equal, the guy in Africa is as responsible for me, as I am for him. It is disrespectful of the guy to suggest that he is my ward. I argue for personal responsibility and for taking care of each other, and the system that protects us all. But the system is not just a cow that we can suckle, without protecting it and feeding it. It is a two way street, and most of us are partners with each other to get the thing done. I don't see a third of the population as my enemy, as those like Hilary, who hate Republicans, do. So tell me, where the things I say and the things I do, show intolerance, or hatred. I just don't think you are reading me right. Regards, TAR I help my neighbors, when they are in trouble. My mother was a bag lady for the last part of her life. She chose to be such. She gave to the hungry even when she had little. I am not as good as she was, but I am neither the cause of poverty, nor against charity. But I do feel that we live in a very good, very fair, very caring society, that offers opportunity to all. Free education, life support for people in need, safety and security, and a decent infrastructure to move around in. Poverty should not exist in a rich country, but neither should it be encouraged, expected, enabled or considered to be an automatic acceptable condition . First responsible party in being not hungry, is the individual, who should work toward a condition under which food will be on the table. This is not a right or a privilege, it is a fact of nature that you get hungry and die if you don't eat, and it is your responsibility to do something to prevent your own death, and ensure your own survival. I was not suggesting I would eat the cake in front of a starving man, I was suggesting it would be unfair if my sister, who had eaten her cake after dinner, ate mine, for a midnight snack. Regards, TAR

dimreepr, well yes, I eat regardless of the fact that somebody is starving in an African drought. So do you. Regards, TAR

dimreeper, I fail to understand what part of my stances indicates to you that I have forgotten to be tolerant. I think it important to be understanding and tolerant of the boss and the money lender and the guy on the big boat and the businessman and the salesman and the factory owner and the university donor and the rich guy that wills his wealth to the hospital, and the project planner and the guy running the particle collider, because we are not poor because of them. I reject the notion, that getting rid of republicans would solve all our problems. John Lennon's imagine is a good idea, but once we are all standing naked in the field loving each other, we for sure are going to get hungry for lunch, and if nobody prepared a picnic basket, there is going to be an issue. Regards, TAR

Mr. Rayon, I am a layman, so take what I have to say, with a grain of salt, but let me give an example of larger brain size, and what additional capabilities that might carry with it, that does not require one animal being "smarter" than another. Neanderthals had larger brains than modern humans. 1600 cubic centimeters compared to 1250-1400 for the modern human. They also had larger eyes and a bigger nose, suggesting that perhaps they had better eyesight and a better sense of smell than modern humans. This made them "smarter" in terms of being able to internalize and model their environment. Whether that makes them better at problem solving in general, it's hard to say, as seeing and smelling your prey certainly solves the problem of finding them. So ingeneral I would imagine a larger animal, with more muscle to command and control and more surface area to have nerves to attach to and perhaps larger eyes and tongue and nasal areas and ear drums or whatever, would require a larger nerve center to receive the sense signals and house the predictive motor simulator and put out the motor control signals to accomplish coordinated purposeful motion. Does not mean though that an elephant would be better at puzzles than a mouse. Baby Neanderthals have the same size brains as baby modern humans. As the Neanderthal grew to maturity their brain size increased. Indicating perhaps that as their model of the world grew so did the cells and synapses that held it. Or perhaps there is a certain way they had of growing the brain, as they used it, like a muscle might grow. In any case, intelligence is a matter of some discussion, as functional intelligence is something being considered in education today. Different people might be creative, or analytical or practical, and each has the potential to be helpful, and thus the person is "smart" in that way. I would think a larger brain would indicate that the creature needed such to be a smart, that kind of creature. Does not really say which areas of its brain are the most developed or capable. Might be an excellent flyer, but lousy at speech. Regards, TAR

Strange, I thought so, I just did not want to contradict Hawking. Regards, TAR

oh, so the bones where just the remainders from the worker's lunch? So that does not help my hypothesis. However, there remains the question of why would they build the place. Is it a home? It does not appear so. Could it be a temple? Yes, but the question remains as to why people would gather together in the first plalce. This motivation, this gathering prior agriculture and domestication of animals seems to need a reason. Protection from something, or for the attainment of food, or, something having to do with a common need. Perhaps other humans at the time felt a connection to both the stars and each other, and worked together to share the connection and help the passage of the consciousness into the heavens after death...not unlike the human to wish for continued belonging. But it seems there still needs to be a driver to bring families and tribes together. A technology, where alone it could not be built, but together the power of man could overcome the other creatures. Ambush was a good plan in the woods, but not so helpful on the plains. The deer could outrun the hunter, you had to surround and fight, and there was risk of hoof or tooth or tusk when encountering wild boar. A plan to drive and corner was in order. Enclosures of brush and sticks could be broken out of, and you still had to be there on the ground to kill the prey. But build the enclosure from stone, and built solid platforms from rock and you have a place where human is superior. Takes some time and effort to build, but the payoff is a successful drive and slaughter, and large groups could eat from the capture of a herd. I do not know the salting and retention of meat for time technology, but the bones and skins and stuff could be used regardless and tribes could disperse and live separately for a while and return for the next hunt. And it is not impossible, with the knock out with rocks from above technique that the prey could be bound and taken alive, for consumption later. Leading to the domestication of sheep and pigs documented in the area. Regards, TAR And I just thought, that once built, as a communal tool, the different tribes could still operate separately, using the place when they ran out of supplies, driving some individual animals up the valley into the trap where a couple throwers were stationed with their rocks, kill the prey safely, and carry it off back to their families. Then the place was still available for use for the next group. Like a deer blind, or a tennis court.

Memammal, I thought somebody recently decided that gravity "travels" or is exchanged at the speed of light. Hawking's analysis seems to require that the Sun just magically evaporates in which case any "effect that it has on reality would magically evaporate with it. If however one would be interested in seeing if gravity is instantaneous one, I would think could construct two devices, one with an arrow that would point toward light, and one that would point toward masses other than the Earth and Moon, and see if the arrows are pointing in the same direction...hum, I just outthought myself, and am now all bogged down in the turning of the Earth and wondering if our eye is "running into"' and angle of incidence that was already established in the position in space that the Earth in it's revolution, and the surface in it's rotation is moving into...so forget the experiment, I don't have a good grasp of which way the arrow should point in either the case that gravity is instantaneous, or in the case that it is gravitons exchanging at the speed of light. Disarray, I think your first mention of a camera watching the progression of the strike from discharge to eye is the mental assumption that complicates the lightning strike analogy used by Einstein in the observer on the train, and observer on the platform example. The assumption is, that there is a Godlike POV that can "see" the situation from close up and far away at the same time. But of course the camera does not work, because it has to wait for the light to get to it. It would only work if the camera started at the discharge and moved along toward the observer at the speed of light, riding along with the photon or the wave in the magnetic and electric field. So, the mere thought of stating something is instantaneous, assumes that a universal now, exists and there is a moment in time that is the same moment over here, as over there. it takes 23 milliseconds for light to get from me to you, I can subtract this time, or add this time and imagine you over there, existing at the same moment as me, all the time, continually. Same with the Mars rover. We can see it, and know it did the thing we see it doing 14 minutes ago, still we know it never left our now, and is existing, for real in that universal now it started in, when we launched it. Time is progressing in lockstep with the universe for both the rover and TAR. It returns to Earth, and it is still in lock step with the universe, as it never left the universe. It is, in my estimation a true statement to say that we experience the same now. If you are in a room with others you are experiencing the same now as they are. Nobody can claim they are in the room by themselves in their personal now, that does not carry the rest of the universe with it. But, if this is the case, which I think we are perfectly validated in assuming, there is the lag time between our common now, and the rover to account for and to recognize as two different nows. That is, there is the actual now that the rover is existing in, which is the same universal now that the entire universe is existing in, and there is the arrival of the radio message holding the picture of what the rover was doing 14 minutes ago. We are milliseconds from each other, 8 minutes from the Sun, 14 minutes from the rover, 3 years from the Star, a million years from the galaxy, 5 billion from the quasar, but when we look, we see everything here now, moving along in lockstep with us. But although there are places for a zillion observers and a zillion planck moments to choose from to consider their view, there are really only two views. The view from here and now, and the God's eye view of everything, everywhere, being 13.8 billion years old, right now. The rest, the other views, are imaginary views, where we put ourselves in the shoes of an imaginary viewer, at a particular place at a particular time in the past, present or future. But we have to follow the laws of physics when changing modes, we can never use a camera to take the god's eye view, because the camera is constrained by the same constraints our eye and brain are constrained by...the speed of light, the camera has to wait for the photons to get to it, same as our eye does. Regards, TAR

Phi, So if you are against a thing based on reason, then the people who feel differently are worthy of your pity, but if you are against a thing based on emotion then the people who think differently are worthy of your anger and hatred? I use the words "feel differently" when talking about reason, and the words "think differently" when talking about emotional stances, because I want to emphasize the fact that people basing their actions on reason are putting their emotions aside, where people basing their actions on emotions are putting their reason aside. I would argue that we all have a component of reason and a component of emotion underlying our stances, and decisions, desires and actions, and it is possible to have a stance that differs from somebody else's. And hating the hater has to do with getting emotional about the unreasonable, or ugly stance of the other. Regards, TAR

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/06/the-mystery-of-gobekli-tepe/ suggests that 100,000 bits of animal bones were found at the site, and the herds of wild sheep, wild boar and deer were wandering around the area add to that the fact that the first domesticated sheep and domesticated pigs were traced to within miles of the place, my hypothesis aboaut the site having a utilitarian purpose related to the capture and/or killing of game animals is not far fetched at all.\

Phi, So you feel toward me how you feel toward terrorists, but you don't hate me? Regards, TAR for instance hatred against the manufacturers of AR-15s translates into hatred against greedy corporations, including corporations that are not greedy, and the NRA, including anybody who owns a gun and belongs to the NRA, and hatred for the tea party translates into hatred for republicans whether they hate Palin or love her, etc. etc. It is perfectly OK to hate Republicans if you are a progressive. You have labeled me conservative and anything I do or say is prejudged as evil or stupid or both, with no redeeming social value. Yet I am the hater in your equation. Interesting. I think I understand hate a little better now.

the inscribed knife was an analogy meant to show an item could have an artistic value, a symbolic value and a utilitarian value at the same time, indicating that we don't have to assume the site only had one purpose. Like modern day arenas for instance they might host a car show one night and a hockey game the next. For instance teenagers might use it at night to make out and watch the stars.

Memammal, Why nevermind. The reality of the situation is that a star both shines in our sky, and will shine in our sky in three years. How you define the event has everything to do with when and where the event is occurring, If for instance the rules of quantum physics say that a particle could be over here or there and there is a very small chance that it could be in Kansas and a smaller still chance that it could be on mars, I would wonder how the scientist figures it can get to Mars during the microsecond under study. Regards, TAR

and there is a difference between paying for the health care of a wounded vet and paying for your neighbor's Aspirin charonY, Of course I would, and already have. In taxes and charity and contribution of time and money to Citizens Against Drug Abuse in my town and such. But paying disability to unemployed able bodied folk in W. Va. that winds up paying for Meth or Oxycodone is not my idea of putting money down to improve public health. Have we not been concerned with lowing crime and impoving public health forever? There are lots of police and jails and hospitals and reaearch facilities in Universities. I already support all that. Are you asking for more? In what form? Regards, TAR But forget the Bernie arguments, that is not the point for this thread, The point is why do you hate me for wanting to eat my midnight snack. When did I become responsible for everybody else/s happiness at my expense, and how does that situation and feeling on my part earn your scorn? And how does that situation make me a hater?

I don't mind paying for collective stuff, or for paying for my own upkeep. I mind paying for someone else's personal upkeep. And social security does not count, because the individual pays soc securtity insurance all their life and gets back according to what she paid in. There is a difference between paying for a highway or paying for a war or construction bond, or pension and paying for somebody else's food, clothing, shelter, transportation, school, and medical care as Phi wishes to do. and he doesn't even want to pay for it with his own money, he wants to rob from the rich and give to the poor and the problem with the communist model is that you can survive without giving a darn thing to the collective, and you can work your butt off and get exactly the same subsistence existence as everybody else lets just hypothetically take all the money from the rich and give it to the poor...where do you get your survival funds from, next month, when there is nobody left with stored value? I was raised with the Protestant work ethic where delayed gratification was employed. What sense does it make to delay your own gratification, save up money, invest money, loan out money for other peoples use, just so Phi can look at what you did for yourself take it and gratify somebody else instantly with what you waited to use. its like saving your dessert so you can have a midnight snack and then at midnight somebody else eats your piece of cake

mermammal, but the difference between the lightning strike and the thunder is easily seen/heard, but one assumes they saw the lightning when it happened, where even those photons that announced the flash took some time to get from the electron discharge to your eye and the strike itself was not a point source, as the electrons left one cloud and leapt to the other, or went from ground to sky or sky to ground The delay is not illusory, it actually takes time for the electrons to jump and for the photons to travel from event to eye. If you are to claim the lightning happened when it hit your eye, then you are on my side of this argument. The event occurs when you see it. And imaginarily you know it actually had to have occurred earlier since the location was remote. Regards, TAR extend this thought to very close and quick things, that are STILL remote part of the uncertainty principle is about not being able to in truth fix both the position and momentum of a particle...but if one takes a place where the particle must have been and another place it must have been at some later time and interpolate an imagine the trip between the two points, and one knows when the particle was at position A and when it was at position B, then one could imaginarily guess that during the time between the particle was in transit, while in transit, halfway between you can figure both its position and its momentum...or so I would think, as long as you don't claim to figure it leaves A at the same time as it arrives at B

robittybob1, I need to correct my coordinates. It seems the area I was looking at on google earth was about 3 miles West of the actual site. The proper coordinates of pot belly hill are 37.223 237N 38.922546E Also there seems to be plenty of study lining the stones up with the solstices and Deneb and Sirius and such that would indicate it was more likely purposed for the match to the stars, more than for killing trapped animals. I have not given up the thought, as it is certainly possible the site could have utilitarian and symbolic purposes, like one could carve a symbol or a constellation on the handle of a knife. Not impossible, if a hunting tool, that the best time for the hunt was a particular time of the year that could be determined from the position of the stars....for instance. But there does seem to be symbols related to removed heads and death and such, where it is also possible that the site was used to present the dead to the universe for reabsorbtion, so to speak. Regards, TAR

Strange, I thank you for the many hours you have spent in conversation, debate and instruction related to my issue. I have just lost three different posts explaining the insight that started me on this way of mine of viewing the surrounding universe in a consistent way. I will try again here. Years ago while on Guardian Talk I had this thought while discussing far away events, that an event is not over once it happens but continues outward. Consider a supernova 3000 lys away. Pretend it is spewing material out at half the speed of light. We see the flash today and then in another 3000 years we are hit by the material. The supernova "happened" 3000 years ago, in order for the photons to reach here today, but is the event truly over? I thought at the time, that the event truly was happening when the photons hit the Earth. Real photons, actually hitting our eyeballs and instrument. The event is not a past event. The photons were released 3000 years ago, but they have been on their way in an ever expanding spherical shell ever since, and once this flash passes the Earth, it will continue to expand outward and will reach a galaxy to the left of ours and a galaxy to the right of ours at the same time. That is an observer 1 million lys that way, and another observer a million lyrs the other way will see the flash at the same time 1 million years after the photons were released, meantime when we look at that spot we see only the expanding gas cloud left by the explosion. This idea sets up a consistent worldview, where each location in space has events passing through it, from all directions and all distances, but there are actual photons and particles involved so the events are not "over", they are actually happening where the photons and particles from the event are striking other atoms or human eye or recording equipment. Regards, TAR

Lets say for instance you are blessed with the ability to imaginarily travel faster than light, toward a galaxy we see now as it was when it was 12 billion years old. As you approach it, it will be incrediblly blue shifted in appearance and will appear to be burning and evolving in fast motion, because when you arrive at the star it will be as it looks to exist in the 13.8 billion year old universe, as there is only one instance of that star, and everything in the universe is 13.8 billion years old, or less. So our future is on its way here, but when it arrives it will be our present and look like a past event. There is nothing that has not happened yet that has already happened.

disarray, No, the clip doesn't work for me. I get the different angle slice thing, but it is only helpful in understanding the effect of position and motion on the order of events, it has nothing to say about what happens to right of the present. That is, you can slice the cake different ways but the whole cake is to the left and everybody is on the right edge of the cake together, at the moment from a gods eye view. Or to put it another way, I figure there must be a universal now happening to provide the past events we will be seeing later. The clip starts with there is no universal now, and states the future has already happened which is absolutely not required to explain seeing events in a different order depending on your position and movement. And there is no explanation for why it is required that the future already exists. It is not required to explain relativity, and makes no sense, and has no reason to be the case, so why is it a premise in the block universe idea? Makes more sense to consider that the entire place is currently the icing on the right end of the cake, and all slices of time are made through the events that are 13.8 billion years old and younger. Regards, TAR

disarray, So, thank you for your continued thoughtful and helpful responses. It has been hard for me on this board to ever feel like my questions are being answered, or even understood, and you seem to take things as I mean them, more than is usual and I appreciate that. My comments are mostly opinion with insights and an attempt at a consistent world view, so, as you say I usually am not saying anything new. Where I have figured it right, it is just obviously true stuff I have to say, where I have figured it wrong I just talk nonsense...but I keep repeating the same situation about something far away being unknown because there is this duality to the truth that is not always qualified and stated in a way where I know which way a talker is meaning a thing. Perhaps you can help answer this constant query of mine, and perhaps the answer in some way can help clarify the vague start in this thread. Let's take a star 3 lys from here, and say a true thing about it. Well actually let's say two true things about it, that contradict each other, which is against the rules of logic, but completely in character with the universe. That star is shining in our sky tonight. That star's current shining will not be noticeable in our sky for 3 years. Which is true? If both are true, why do we not qualify which aspect we are considering true when we talk about what the star is currently doing? Regards, TAR the answer to this question has direct implication to the understanding of such statements as "the universe is currently accelerating its expansion" and therefore related to such questions as "is there currently intelligent life on other planets, and can change the point of view from which one is asking the question about other universes. That is, if two things can be said, that are true of one thing, that are contradictory, can "another" universe just be this one, from another point of view? that is, if this universe is a square, from one angle, and a circle from another would you count that as one or two universes?

and there is that headless figure with the penis, and some burial sites found with no heads, and some burials were dug up and the heads kept around the house in some sort of ancestor worship type of way, so I am not sure the fossil record is going to be pristine

disarray, Yes, but...the discussion of far away places in a scientific sense, should be accompanied by a qualifier, of from what perspective one is speaking...and the purpose of the hypothesis in terms of how it relates to us, and when that connection will be made. If there is no way to verify the truth of the contention within our lifetimes then the contention itself is not a scientific one, but instead a philosophic one, or perhaps just a flight of fancy or an exercise in thought experimentation, or perhaps an effort to establish a gods eye objective view of reality superior to that available to a human. My efforts are to ground the scientist in the data available, not to derail the conversation. If it is guesswork, my guesses are equally valid to Lawrence's and I am as free to notice the implications of a measurement as any highly trained and highly skilled scientist. A scientist is not free to tell me what is happening on the other side of the Milky Way, because he is not privy to any special information about it. What he sees in his telescope is what the other side of the galaxy was doing 100,000 years ago. How can anyone around here know what it is doing today? My repeated reference to this inability is pertinent to the topic, in that if we cannot know what is going on on the other side of our own galaxy, why would we trust our knowledge of what is going on on the other end of our universe...and what does this mean to anything we could possible say about what is going on in another universe, that we don't even have anything to say about to even run a thought experiment? Regards. TAR Disarray, So you want the discussion to be a numerical one that could model the evolution of life based on first principles, basic laws and forces and guided only by random chance, and once the model works, test it against other universes, that have different factors and see if life could still develop under the other parameter. And simultaneously you want to establish that the model is so likely to produce life, that it would be unlikely that it has not run its course and produced life all over the galaxy an probably therefore all over the universe, simply because the universe is set up to produce life, so that is what it will do. On its own. By accident. Regards, TAR

how about, for historical support, the fact that tithing was the rule in the Old Testament and the Koran. Followed by half the population of the world. And in terms of a system working, or not working, we have the system we have, and are the wealthiest country on Earth with a large percentage of the population not starving, and with plenty of stuff and opportunity and freedom for everybody. The poorest of the next 10 people you see today, if you live in the United States, will be better off than most of the people in the poorest country on the planet. That is to say, our system obviously works better than the system in place in the poorest country on Earth, and in any case our system is more workable than yours, because your system works only in your imagination and has not yet been tested here. Phi, Our's is still a country people desire to come to. To be Americans, to have freedom and choice and protection from oppression, and the opportunity. They don't come for free stuff. Regards, TAR Unless perhaps they will come for free stuff if you offer it.

but phi, the constitution asks one to pledge their honor and their wealth to the nation Americans that have already pledged their honor and wealth have given already something fully valuable They receive the protection of the rest of us for this pledge. There was never a bargain that stated, you live and rest of us will feed and cloth you, pay for your education, and your house and your medical care...that is everything. You are suggesting one gets everything just for being alive? No You have to make the pledge, and in return you get life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The steak sandwich, and the apartment, and the car and the Aspirin tablet you will have to earn on your own. I have road grit in the right of way next to my lawn. The road sweeper has not come yet to clean it up. I usually sweep it up myself but did not do it this year because I had a knee replacement and am not yet good with a heavy wheelbarrow load. If I want that grit taken up, my choices are to pay more taxes for more road sweeping machines and drivers, pay somebody to pick it up, or pick it up myself.

anybody's fair share, under any system would be a 10th of their income what one does with the other 90 percent is not your business if some consume and some save, and at the end of the day I have a dollar and you a dime, you don't deserve another dime from me and me a penny from you