Sisyphus

"Intuitive" is not an absolute. Most people's intuitive understanding of physics starts out mostly in agreement with Aristotle. "How far it goes depends on how hard I throw it." "Rocks want to go down, fire wants to go up." But then classical, Newtonian physics, once learned, often becomes so intuitive that it becomes very difficult to grasp things like the uncertainty principle or relativity. Economics, I imagine, is probably similar. The initial intuitive understanding is almost instinctive - the sort outlook one might have living in a tribe of hunter-gatherers. Stuff like, "If I work hard and somebody still has many times my wealth, their wealth must be stolen somehow." Then, the principles of the free market are like classical physics. Self-contained, simple, elegant rules that can always give you an answer, which become intuitive and "obvious." The only problem being that sometimes reality refuses to cooperate!

You should move to Lake Woebegone

I'd say the more applicable analogy is not a cue ball, which is interacting with the surface of the table, but a curve ball in baseball, which utilizes the Magnus effect to intentionally destabilize the flight path. It's a result a spinning object moving through a fluid (like air) where the axis of spin is not parallel to the motion (as it normally would be with a bullet). It creates uneven pressure on different sides, which deflects the path of the object. I'm not sure whether it could theoretically be made to work with a bullet. (Practically it definitely couldn't, but I assume we're talking about some superhuman ability here.) It would mean somehow giving it a lateral spin as it leaves the gun, and I'm not sure how that would work. I'm thinking it wouldn't, but I'm not positive.

Putting aside for a moment how black holes work, if you were to go to a place where time moved slower than outside, and then left, you'd be farther in the future than you would be normally, not in the past. For example, say in the year 2000 on Earth you go into Slowtime Land, where time moves at 1/100th the speed it does on Earth. You live there for 10 years. But since time on Earth has been passing 100 times as fast as in Slowtime Land, when you leave again and come back to Earth, it's the year 3000, even though for you only 10 years have passed. And so you can see, it doesn't matter when Slowtime Land was formed for the effect it has on you, and time moving at different speeds in different places doesn't ever give you a way to travel to the past. Now, that's not really how black holes work, but does it answer your question?

Well, that was the IQ test. Your response corresponds to an IQ of 71.

"Destroying it?"

Crazy!

Clarification: distance from the center of the Earth.

On what are you basing that assertion?

I'm sure that's the case. Anyone who's actually had to deal with health insurance in a serious way can see how ridiculously broken our system is. Horror stories seem to be the rule, not the exception. Basically, even if you are insured and paying hefty bills every month, you can expect them to try to bankrupt you anyway if anything serious happens to you. I don't know if we need to have universal healthcare as a starting premise, but I do think we at least need to accept from the beginning that we are going to demolish the status quo. If I worked in the health insurance industry, I'd be trying to get the hell out while I still could.

For the first one, just weigh 3 vs. 3. This will narrow it down to 3 choices (whichever side is lighter, or the 3 you didn’t weigh if it comes out even). Then of those 3, weigh 1 vs. 1. Again, whichever is lighter, or the remaining one if they’re even. For the second, arrange them so that each side has a different number of coins for each stack. So, put the first stack 10 on the left and 0 on the right, the next 9 on the left and 1 on the right, etc. Then, when you weigh them, which side is heavier and by how much will tell you the distribution of the lighter coins. For example if the left side is 1 gram heavier, you know it was the first stack. If 0.8 grams heavier, you know it was the second. Etc. Bam! Easy.

There are actually many of Zeno's paradoxes, not just one, and they were intended to demonstrate a particular philosophical view of the world. There's not really anything to "solve," as such, but there have been various explanatory accounts of them. Most notably, Aristotle (about a hundred years later) gives a pretty good explanations of the most famous of them in his Physics. More or less, just because something is divisible doesn't mean it is in fact divided, and so there is no problem. Yes, you can infinitely divide the distance into an unlimited number of steps, but so too can you divide the time - the finite time - needed to get there into as small moments as necessary. He basically makes the distinction between "potential infinities" and "actual infinities." And, naturally, nowadays you'd most likely talk about them in terms of calculus, in which we deal with those pesky infinitesimals all the time...

Well, I don't think there are widespread conspiracies or attempts to suppress anything, even in the form of deliberately "not trying hard enough." I just suspect that the avenues of research pursued, as directed by those using research as a financial investment towards a specific end, is not going to be towards mitigation of problems rather than solutions, simply because it's usually a far better investment, financially speaking. Now, competition in the market is going to drive continual improvement in that mitigation, which is certainly good for the consumer, but still not a permanent solution, if only because any direct economic competitors are going to have the same incentives and disincentives as you do. But again, of course, that's not the entirety of what drives research, as obviously you know as well as anyone.

You’ll have to excuse me if I continue to push the “balloon hypothesis.” I’ll accept that I had to be there, which is kind of the point I was trying to make in my first post. But just based on your descriptions here, I still wouldn’t rule out some kind of balloon. A glow is simple enough; it just needs an internal light source. (I’ve actually seen weather balloons with lightbulbs inside for the effect. They glowed brightly and eerily.) And horizontal flight is just what something of neutral or near-neutral buoyancy would appear to exhibit. It would move smoothly and steadily in a reasonably steady wind, as long as there were no large obstructions nearby.

Almost...

I didn't mean to imply that you were lying or delusional. Are you sure it couldn't be a balloon of some kind? Horizontal, steady flight wouldn't be impossible. It would just mean it wasn't very buoyant, and there was a fairly steady wind (there wouldn't even have to have been noticeable wind at ground level). Or even if it was actively propelled and piloted in some way, it pretty much had to have been lighter than air (i.e. a balloon of some kind) anyway, right?

But they’re Bob Dylan’s words. Except apparently they aren’t. I assume we were initially intentionally led to believe that the old Earth was our Earth, and the song was a resurfacing memory of that or something. But our Earth is in the future. So where did they come from originally? “God?” Does Ron Moore really love the song that much? And why do shades of it appear in the Book of Isaiah 150k odd years later, only to be accurately reproduced a couple thousand years after that by an injured beat folk singer in the Mojave Desert? Writers’ answers: “Hey, look at the dancing robots!” Ok, but that sure seemed like a huge amount of significance given to that prescience over the course of the whole series, and it all led up to… what? An awkwardly inserted, totally unnecessary moment that was only significant to the characters involved because it mirrored their dreams. Oh, and what have the centurians been up to for the last 150 thousand years?

Oh, and is Bob Dylan a Cylon, or what?

Well, I just finished the series last night, and boy did that finale annoy me, for several reasons. My grievances: 1) It's clear they've just been making up some mysteries as they go along without an actual answer in mind, and apparently they're not clever enough to disguise that by coming up with satisfying solutions. Oh, the whole thing with shared recurring dreams about the opera house was just so they could find their way through a ship they've been living on for several years? Thanks, mysterious deity! 2) Decision to intentionally destroy what's left of civilization and live like hunter-gatherers? So incredibly stupid. I don't even want to talk about it. 3) Why was Hera so special, again? Because she was the key to a solution they never pursued? Or so she could somehow be the common ancestor to everyone (desirable why?), despite there being tens of thousands of survivors on the new Earth? 4) So, the moral of the story is that our AIBOs are going to kill us if we're not nice to them? And we'll deserve it? What should we be doing differently?

That's why specific gravity (which would be the same as g/cm^3) is useful, because the weight of water is something that everyone is familiar with. So, say, a gallon of that material would have the weight of 13.1 gallons of water, or about 109 pounds. Or, since humans are very close to the density of water, a life size statue of you made of that material would weigh about 13 times what you weigh.

1^4 = 1 -1^4 = 1 i^4 = 1 -i^4 = 1 They're all equally fourth roots of one. Similarly, 1^2 = 1 -1^2 = 1 and i^2 = -1 -i^2 = -1

The idea isn't that that nobody is working on those things or that or that cures would be promptly forthcoming if everyone was, though, just that some sectors are not. And, perhaps, if those sectors are the dominant directors of research in a field, that that explains certain technological trends.

No, it's either 1, -1, i, or -i.

No. D H said what you did wrong in your calculation, which is why you got a clearly wrong answer. To start with, there is more than one root. 3^2 is 9, but the square root of 9 is either 3 or -3. Etc.

I'm not really picturing what you're describing, but it sounds like you must be misusing at least one of those terms (reaction, moment, precession). Does your simulation even include gravity?