Sisyphus

We elect representatives, and they make the laws. Run for office, or vote for someone who shares your views. That's what "representative democracy" means. I don't know who the "they" is in this sentence. And with anarchy, peace exists only to the extent that I like you, or that you personally can defend yourself. Of course, if I'm stronger than you, I can kill you and take your stuff without consequence. No, if there is law, that's not anarchy. That's government. You mean.... "Immigration, not out of free choice, but simply to escape someone who is ruling over your life and go to another person/group with the same power?" And what if people are harmed? The rule is enforced by force, correct? THAT'S GOVERNMENT. And why only if people are harmed? What if people want laws that make victimless crimes? What you're describing is a small democracy, not anarchy. And ironically, you're ruling it with an iron fist, by only letting people make certain kinds of laws.

Not really, no. They can sell their services to a higher bidder. Or simply take what they want from their employer or set themselves up as their leaders, since they're the ones who are armed. And even when they don't, they're still rarely effective except against much weaker opponents, since their only motivation is money. You can't collect a paycheck if you're dead, so they're never going to put themselves in serious danger.

I don't know what you mean by "developed" as opposed to "produced."

Well, first of all, you're not describing anarchy. You're describing a small state without its own military, but instead reliant on mercenaries. States that rely heavily on mercenaries always, always fail, usually quite quickly. They don't fight well, they aren't loyal, and they often turn on their employers.This is a big part of what destroyed the Roman Empire, in fact, but that's hardly the only instance. Machievelli talks about this extensively in The Prince.

No. It's always doing work as it loses potential energy by moving to a lower position, it's just a matter of useful (to us) work vs. non-useful work.

Revolve without rotating? I'm not sure what you mean, but I don't think so. The "gravity" would always be directed away from the counterweight. Hence as the two revolve around one another, its direction is constantly changing. It's the same idea as the spinning wheel, just using only two opposite points, and only occupying one of them.

I think you're imagining a much more idyllic and much more "anarchic" existence in those places than actually took place. Is a tribal society "anarchy?" Just because you've got competing local warlords of varying viciousness keeping one another in check and thus no "major civil wars," doesn't mean it isn't rule of the strong. In anarchy there is no recourse except individual violence, and so the strongest necessarily are in charge, no matter the degree to which they choose to exercise it. You say, "you can't get people to fight for you," but clearly you can. The first group to ally themselves with the purpose of subjugating everyone else can and have done so, thousands of times over. Think of Europe, post collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

It is not too off to think of gravitational potential energy as "fuel" for kinetic energy, no. The gravitational potential energy is proportional to the weight of the water and to the height which it can fall. With water, it is reasonable to measure it from sea level, since that's the lowest you can practically get it to fall to. (It's not absolute quantity, though. You can measure it to the center of the Earth, the center of the Sun, etc.) A lake, then, is a store of potential energy, since it can flow downhill to the ocean. Its motion is kinetic energy, and is defined as 0.5mv^2. Waves would be kinetic energy, but they aren't really relevant to this example. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged The potential energy has decreased, because it's lower. Basically, the sun gives the water its potential energy by lifting it out of the water and up into the clouds, where it has its maximum. As it falls, first as rain, then over land as a river, it is steadily giving up potential energy.

Small groups of like-minded people choosing to live together without formal rules within a larger state is one thing, doing away with that larger state entirely is quite another. State-level anarchy is historically the least stabile of all possible arrangements. What it means, practically speaking, is arbitrary-despotism-by-best-armed. See Somalia or Afghanistan.* Anarchists often respond to this by saying that it's always the case, that "the government" is always just the best armed guys, with "a monopoly on violence." True. It is always the case. There's no such thing as a situation where somebody doesn't have the most guns, so the best solution is to make that somebody the collective "us," answerable to everyone and agreed-upon non-arbitrary rules. In other words, a representative government with laws that nobody is above. *I know there are arguable exceptions, like Hong Kong. The point is there's nothing to prevent the more common case.

From what I understand, magnetic fields would work as radiation shields, too. I agree lead is not likely, though I'm pretty sure there are other, lighter materials that are effective. As for gravity, you don't actually need a spinning wheel. You can just have your habitat tethered to a counterweight, and have the two revolve around one another. That would have the same effect.

If you increase a 100 foot dam to a 1000 foot dam and usefully extract energy from the entire drop, then you're just making use of kinetic energy that you weren't before, namely that 900 foot drop of the water falling from the height of the top of the new dam to the top of the height of the old dam. Presumably this previously would have been over the course of the river upstream, or as falling rainwater, depending on the situation.

I understand all that. Believe me, I know that basically any wage can be explained in terms of supply and demand, and in terms of the employer's calculations of worth to themselves (which, incidentally, are often irrational). The Yankees believe A-Rod is worth more to them than they're paying him, and they might even be right. That's all very straightforward stuff. But it's also only one way of looking at it, and that's easy to lose perspective on. Does he "deserve" (scare quotes very much intended) all that money? Does he work as hard, do as much "good" (again...) as a thousand first year teachers? Collectively and unconsciously, we apparently value being at the extreme ends of various physiological bell curves a great deal, but do we individually, philosophically?

I think iNow said it was sad that they get paid that much, not that "we shouldn't, because it's not fair." I can understand why movie stars and professional athletes make so much money, not think anything unethical is going on or that there oughta be a law, and still find it depressing and think they don't deserve it based on subjective standards. That's not contradictory.

If you don't think he should be making all that money, why were you in a theater, which you presumably paid to get in, knowing that some of that ticket price is going to him, whether directly or indirectly by justifying some obscene salary for his next movie? You're complaining about a "problem" which a)doesn't affect you, and b)is directly your own fault. Do I think he really deserves all that money? Not really, but then again, I'm not the one paying him. Oh, and of all the problems you might have with him, you pick on his hairline? Do I think that actors should be able to have receding hairlines and nevertheless be allowed to be in movies and get paid for them? Yes, yes I do.

They (the narrator, or whatever) don't have to state something directly contrafactual. Instead, they just treat utterly ridiculous subjects with complete seriousness, with the implication that it's something to worry about. They have on "experts" on prophecies and UFOs and stuff and let them talk without further comment, and they're treated in exactly the same way they treat actual historians. I haven't watched the History Channel in a long time, but what I have seen was very annoying.

It's amazing how often people don't think that way, isn't it? When something doesn't immediately make sense, it must be wrong in some simple way that somehow everyone else missed.

So basically: no. None of it is true. There have always been and there always will be people who think the end of the world is right around the corner. Recently a lot of it centers around 2012, because that's when the most recent era of the Mayan calendar ends, which has been co-opted by New Age nonsense, conspiracy theories, etc. The astronomical stuff has no basis in fact whatsoever. The History Channel people really ought to be ashamed of themselves. I mean, I understand they need ratings, and there isn't a wide audience for actual history, but come on.

I don't think it's totally meaningless, but it's certainly very abstract. Some people talk about it like it's some metaphysical substance that minds possess in greater or lesser absolute quantities, and that just seems ridiculous. I think of it as an "overall rating," with various already abstract qualities taken into account, like something roughly analogous to "quality of life" ratings for countries.

Example?

It's been said above, but their religious views were obviously not uniform. They were a diverse group. Furthermore, at least some of them probably did not have unchanged beliefs over the course of their own lives. Why would they? Among them were very intellectually curious men, and I'd be very surprised if their opinions did not evolve over time. And finally, there was clearly a very big public/private divide over how they talked about religion, for obvious reasons. They were upper class, highly educated men infected with the ideas of the Enlightenment. Many were Freemasons. These were not the sort of ideas that politicians would talk about in public, because they belonged almost entirely to the liberal, educated elites alone. Secret societies, you know. All of this muddies the water. Anyway, despite all that, it's clear that Jefferson, Paine, etc. could almost certainly be accurately described as Deists, as could most upper class, highly educated, liberal men of the Enlightenment. Some were probably more traditionally Christian to varying degrees. Of course, none of this really matters to the question of a separation between church and state. The idea predates Enlightenment ideals, deism, etc. Arguably you could say that Jesus Christ himself advocated it. ("Give unto Caesar" etc.) And the tradition in America goes back to very religious men. What apparently most people on both sides of the current debate don't seem to understand is that the separation of church and state was for the purpose of protecting BOTH church AND state. Mixing them corrupts them both. Do modern-day would-be theocrats think so little of their faith and/or so much of government that they'd want each meddling in the other?

Not at all surprising, if true. Bamboo is ridiculously useful for all sorts of things, including making very hard and sharp tools and weapons (that I'm guessing wouldn't leave much in the way of archeological evidence). Not as hard or sharp as stone or metal, but so easy to work with that it wouldn't surprise me if societies that had figured out how to make use of it wouldn't be motivated to develop, say, metalworking, for a long time.

Why would an elephant-sized rodent be any more frightening than an elephant?

As CaptainPanic says, you can't just slingshot off from the surface. (If you could, stuff at the equator would be flying off into space). Of course, the higher you go, the less the escape velocity. ( The shape of your path doesn't matter.) At the top end of a space elevator, beyond geostationary orbit, it would indeed be a "slingshot" as the end is dragged along by the Earth. Indeed, that's the whole idea, and the reason why it can stand up in the first place. The counterweight, experiencing a centrifugal effect, pulls on the lower portions and supports their weight. As for the shape of it, that's going to be determined by orbital mechanics. You can't specify a particular shape, because it wouldn't be rigid in the first place. It's just an extremely long, extremely strong rope. And it would be curved, not straight up and down, AFAIK.

No, the distance between the Earth and the star is 2.23LY, and his ship is 4.45LY long. Length contraction is reciprocal. Yes, he does. Earth-star is contracted in space-twin's rest frame. Yes, he does. Earth-star's clocks run slower in space-twin's rest frame.

Unless you're an integral tree. Anyone?