Sisyphus

I'm not sure what you mean by this, given the evidence mentioned in this thread.

Is that the same as making it a crime under state law?

Is Osama bin Laden still technically a Saudi citizen?

But Arizona has a state immigration law. The issue isn't just with state agencies helping to enforce federal law. That doesn't mean it isn't just a play to the base like you suggest, but it doesn't seem like any of those are direct precedents.

I think the view most reinforced by Jon Stewart's confirmation bias is "politicians are ridiculous."

Once I read about confirmation bias, I started seeing it everywhere.

The travelers do not perceive themselves moving faster than light. In the travelers' rest frame, the distance of the journey is shorter than it is in Earth's rest frame. You only get FTL results if you mix reference frames - time elapsed in travelers' rest frame, distance traveled in Earth's rest frame.

That's the inertia of the chain. Objects at uniform velocity (like flying in a straight line at constant speed) remain so unless a force acts on them. In order to make it spin in a circle, you have to constantly accelerate it towards the center (the pen). This requires you to exert a force. In return, the chain exerts an equal and opposite force on you. That's what you're feeling.

There is a lot of information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star Particularly the "structure" section. They haven't turned into black holes because their gravity is not strong enough. A black hole is an object whose gravity is so strong that no other force can prevent it from collapsing into itself. In a neutron star, the forces that prevent neutrons from occupying the same location are still stronger than the gravity compressing it, so it can't collapse completely.

If you read the article, he's not really criticizing strategy. He's criticizing people.

I don't think it's about criticizing policy. In fact, the impression I get is that Obama had been pretty much giving McChrystal whatever he asked for, and McChrystal played a big part in shaping policy. It's not like he wasn't allowed to speak his mind, or like he was ignored when he did. That said, I really don't know what this is about. Reading the Rolling Stone article in question, it doesn't seem like anything worthy of a resignation. The candor was unprofessional, probably (I can't see that article written about Petraeus), but it wasn't even openly critical of Administration policy. Just disrespectful towards certain civilians, especially Karzai. Basically, I really wonder what happened in that meeting before Obama accepted his resignation. To what degree was he "fired," and why? I'll add that politically, this strikes me as a bad move for Obama. It will be way, way too easy to spin into a emperor's new clothes type narrative.

Not a silly question. A straightforward one. The answer is no. I'm having some trouble with a black hole "in reverse," though. (I guess because a black hole itself doesn't make any sense with just classical physics.)

Well, the plural is cattle. It is kind of absurd that there isn't a singular form.

Also, the universe being finite would not mean that it has a center or edges. It has neither. This won't make sense unless you abandon the image of the universe as an ordinary 3D object. Are you familiar with the "balloon analogy?"

Yes. The directions that things are moving in is more or less random, and over large distances motion is a small effect compared with expansion. Best I can do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang Yes.

Yes. I was saying that the relativistic redshift from objects moving faster than light is nonsensical. For objects moving towards you, the blueshift (and hence the energy of the photons) approaches infinity as the relative velocity of the object approaches infinity. For an object moving away, the redshift approaches infinity, and the energy of the photons approaches zero. For FTL objects, the results are simply imaginary. Spyman's last post explains why this is incorrect. We do not directly observe galaxies moving away from us at FTL velocities. We observe redshift. This redshift interpreted as relativistic doppler effects yields velocities slower than C. However, calculated taking into account cosmic expansion, you can get FTL results. If you deny cosmic expansion, then there's no way to interpret what you are seeing as FTL.

All of the workable models involve cosmic expansion. Are there alternative explanations that work just as well? Perhaps, but nobody has come up with any yet. An explosion-like expanding sphere of moving matter, however, is demonstrably false.

The Bear's Key is right. The universe does expand by moving. Distant galaxies get farther and farther away from us, but not because we are moving away from one another. They are receding because the amount of space in between us is increasing. This is a difficult distinction to grasp, but it is extremely important. Nothing can move faster than C (the speed of light) relative to anything else. That is true. It is also true that there are objects getting farther away from us at a rate faster than the speed of light, and there always have been. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged No object has a velocity greater than C relative to any other object. Stop right there. The expansion of the universe is not "outward." It's not like an explosion, and it does not involve actual motion. There is no central point that everything is expanding away from, and no outer edge. Distances are increasing. That's all.

Nobody is going to watch a 2 hour video if you don't even say what it's about. Based on the comments on youtube, it seems to be about a world-domination conspiracy involving European royalty, "the Jews," and Obama. And I guess a new German empire, if "the fourth reich" is accurate. Is that about right?

Thirds.

Those aren't three answers to the same question. Determinism and randomness are possible descriptions of objective reality. Free will is a subjective experience. "Free will" is meaningless as a supposed alternative to determinism or randomness.

I'm made of three thirds of me.

Who believes that?

We hold people responsible for their actions because holding them responsible affects their actions. There's no point in punishing a mindless object, because that wouldn't change anything. Punishment for rational beings, however, is a factor for rational beings to consider when making decisions, as long as rationality enters into it. (e.g., there's no point in making it illegal for a delusional person to believe their delusions, as that won't change anything.) If anything, that's dependent on determinism (or at least statistical determinism of reasonable confidence), as determinism is just another way of saying that it happens the way it does for a reason. The alternative is that it doesn't happen for any particular reason, i.e. it is random. "Free will," however you choose to define it, need not be a physical phenomenon. It is a subjective, metaphysical phenomenon that emerges from the physical, whether that be deterministic or random. Humans can weigh options and make decisions based on many outside factors. That's what counts. Whether that's a strictly deterministic process or not isn't especially relevant.

In the real world, though, going to court is often worse than paying a fine, even if you win. It generally takes an entire weekday, which for a lot of people means missing a day's pay. They also set up speed traps on interstates in order to get people who live far away, so disputing the ticket is not worth traveling back to that municipality, for even more time and expense. It's not so much "lazy" as "less than extremely stubborn." I once got a $150 ticket where I was quite sure I was in the right, but I calculated disputing it would have cost me $300 and taken an entire day. So I payed the fine, and bitched. This is all off-topic, though.