Sisyphus

That would be exponential growth.

By "jump, not fly," I assume it is meant that it has to propelled by physically pushing off the ground only. (If not, you could just have a leaky helium balloon. It will go very high relative to its weight before it comes down again...) Hence, any kind of maglev thing would be cheating, since you're applying continuous force in the air. More importantly, though, it wouldn't even work, because you'd have to be repelling from magnets on the ground, which means the whole contraption wouldn't be jumping.

What about Exponentially Expanding Eel?

The moon will rise and set within about 5% of where the sun rises and sets, because that's how much the plane of the Moon's orbit around the Earth is inclined to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. And yes, of course it rises and sets, for the same reason the Sun rises and sets: the Earth is spinning. It will make a complete circuit in approximately 24 hours, 50 minutes. (That is where tides come from.) The lunar "day" is longer than the solar day because the rotation of the Earth has to "catch up" with the moon, which is orbiting the Earth in the same direction the Earth is rotating.

"Flat" just means that matter is more or less evenly distributed throughout the universe if you look at it on a big enough scale, and that space does not have an "overall" curve in any direction. There is no "down."

Haha. Please nobody go to this site and give this guy traffic.

Well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor

Shouldn't this be moved to pseudoscience? Shouldn't the sock puppeteer be banned?

It is a mathematics forum, yes, and it's also an English-language forum. Obviously we have different perspectives on this. Your training is (I assume) in mathematics or some subject that utilizes mathematics; mine is in the history and philosophy of mathematics. I'm not as interested in whatever the current minutiae of conventions are, because I know they're recent, non-universal, and soon to change. It's being understood that matters. I can afford this broader perspective because no bridges are going to collapse if I speak ambiguously to get across an unconventional idea...

It's possible but unlikely. Yes, a lion and an antelope share a common ancestor, but 95% of the animals that lived alongside that common ancestor have since had their lines extinguished. That's the more likely scenario.

"The [first syllable of last name]-meister"

No, but it is if I ask you where you walked your dog this morning, and you have no idea what I'm talking about because you actually jogged. Or it is if somebody asks a coherent question in perfectly understandable English, but you feign ignorance because one of the words he uses you've learned can mean other things in different contexts. Which, sadly, is not what the OP question was about. What does analogous mean? You don't know what an analogy is?

BTW, why do you think this is getting no attention? It was on the front page of the New York Times. How much more attention do you want?

You guys are getting way too caught up with semantics here. It doesn't matter what definitions for "equivalence" are currently being tossed around English-speaking math departments. And, there's more than one way to define circles and spheres. the tree gave the best answer, IMO: The simplest way in which circles and spheres are equivalent (or analogous, or whatever) in their respective dimensionalities is that they are both simply the locus of points equidistant from one point. A circle is that locus limited to a Euclidian plane, a sphere is this locus limited to a Euclidian volume. The way hypercube was using "equivalent" in the OP was a little different, i.e. just "adding depth" uniformly to a plane figure to make a solid. A sphere doesn't have any 2d "equivalent" in this sense, obviously, but then, only prisms would.

There were really two issues before, the surveillance without a warrant, and the overstepping of executive power. Both were and are Constitutionally questionable. The Democrats are now hypocrites with regards to the first but not with regards to the second (after all, it's legislative now!). Perhaps there's actually less hypocrisy if you look at individual records and public statements instead of treating "the Democrats" as one entity, but I don't know.

Maybe I'm just unfamiliar with the blogosphere (ok, not maybe) and missing some important connection here, but I'm not sure how showing up at a blog convention is equated to "wooing the anti-war crowd." Was it a convention of pacifist blogs or something?

Seriously, what the hell are you talking about. You can edit it, with the "edit" button. But don't, because it's correct. That is current the IAU definition of a planet. It mentions exoplanets, which, by the IAU definition, are something different (so far). Moron...

Doesn't take an admin to prevent that. If somebody messed with an article as important as "planet" it would be reverted in less than a minute.

That guy makes me shudder, but he hasn't committed any crime and there's no reason to think he will. Is there anyone who doesn't have things they would like to do, but wouldn't consider actually doing because of the laws against them? There's no way this won't be overturned.

Is it really prejudice if you hate them because of their jackass opinions? "Bigotry" and "hate" are not synonyms.

This is such a weird debate. The science is not completely conclusive, but the best information we have points to man as the current primary engine of climate change, and it is becoming more certain all the time. So why are people so skeptical? You get people claiming that "science can't really predict these things," then spouting their own personal theories on how it can't be true, sometimes in the same sentence! You get mountains of obfuscation in the form of true but irrelevant information ("Man accounts for less than 1% of CO2!" "...so?"). You get every ad hominem attack out there. You get attempts at censorship by elected officials. You get conspiracy theories, for god's sake ("GW is a myth devised by... scientists... to redistribute wealth! Yeah, that's it!"). What is going on here?

Ok, do you mean which is worse for a society, or which is a more deeply flawed argument? And why are these particular things being compared?

I don't really understand the comparison...

Just another example of free-market zealotry ignoring reality, IMO. I mean, look. A relatively free market system has been very good to us, and that's wonderful. The danger, of course, is stuff like this, when people take that success to mean that deregulating is always the best move, no matter what. Obviously, that's not the case. "Free market = good" is a common mantra, but it really misses the point, because it doesn't bother to explain why. Free markets are preferable by default because a) they tend to result in a stronger economy, and b) they usually allow for more personal liberty. Neither is always the case. Any serious economist from Adam Smith on could tell you that, but there will always be strong, partisan factions to furiously deny it, as if there was no middle ground, and any admission otherwise would be a victory for communism. For example, in this case, the first reason, that deregulation is good for the economy, has clearly proved not to be the case. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, then, we're looking at a serious error. What's left, then, is to decide whether a weaker economy is worth it for idealogical reasons, i.e., the principle of "letting people make their own mistakes" and whatnot. I believe that in this case it is not, and I can tell you why. That principle, of letting people make their own mistakes, is based on the underlying liberty of a free society, i.e., the principle that what doesn't harm another person should never be restricted. I agree with this principle, but I believe it is very often applied wrongly, this situation included. Why? Because it does harm me. My property is worth less because of someone else's bad decisions. If my next door neighbor piled corpses on his front lawn, spreading vermin and disease and the stench of death onto my property, you wouldn't say, "Treat him like an adult! We don't need nanny government coming in telling us where we can and cannot pile corpses!" (Or maybe you would, but I should think that the gene for that sort of stubbornness was mostly eradicated during the Black Plague.) But this could all be prevented with a law restricting behavior, specifically the structures of loans. Is that so offensive? Is it really different from any other law, which by definition restricts personal behavior for the common good? Even behavior of "adults?" Are we really trying to claim that there are no good laws? There are people who do claim that, and such people are so removed from the reality that I see that there's really no basis for discussion, but those people are rare. Most opponents of this kind of regulation, I find, just have strong but mostly unexamined faith in free-market capitalism instead of an appreciation for why that market exists and what it gives us.

I don't think an animal would have to be "sentient" according to whatever definition you're using (that little something extra from the stars?) in order to be factored in. A dog can at least think enough to solve simple problems, remember complex routines, and can experience a variety of emotions, playfulness, contentment, fear, anger, etc. THAT is not in debate. The question is whether such things are experienced in the same way as humans experience them, i.e. how well the analogous human and dog emotions correspond. Just remember that there really is nothing biologically unique about human beings that could justify the statement, "Sentience as far as we know today is a strictly human attribute." We are sentient and not fundamentally different from, at least, other higher mammals, so, pending other information, the logical assumption would be that these animals are sentient, or at least have some degree of sentience, as on a continuous spectrum or something. All that really has to be sorted out before one can answer the only really relevant question you ask, "is it capable of feeling assaulted if they indeed had decided not to partake in sexual activity against their will?" I don't think we can really answer that satisfactorily, so I'd say we should keep on the safe side and not rape our dogs, no?