Sayonara

This is basically a symptom of what I mentioned in the other thread. You have primed yourself to expect certain objections and as such you overlook more fundamental problems with your approach. Then you have the nerve to question the methodology of the actual physicists. Don't you think it's about time that you tried something new? I mean, after the first few massive failures most people realise that they are making some kind of procedural mistake and change their method based on what failure taught them. I don't remember the last time I saw a living thinking human fail to learn from the same mistake hundreds of times in a row.

No. No it's not.

Well Duration has written about more physical stuff in this thread than you have so I don't think you are even a real person.

Are you taking the Twin Paradox to be representative of relativity, or attempting to consider that one scenario in isolation?

I mean, quite simply, does there need to be an objective present time?

Do you mean it doesn't seem outrageous, or do you mean it doesn't seem unlikely?

Because people will generally believe anything that is presented in a manner which is commensurate with their expectations.

Then isn't a better question whether or not an objective present time is a necessity?

Define "presentism".

In interviews I often have to explain legislation to people with limited vocabularies and I think I am developing quite a flair for it. One day I will be at court giving evidence and it will accidentally squirt out.

You mean, apart from the law saying "YOU CAN'T CALL YOUR MARRIAGE A MARRIAGE BECAUSE YOU'RE HOMOS AND LEZZERS"? Pull the other one. Irrelevant. Gay marriages and straight marriages are not different kinds of fish. You are making the classical logical fallacy of highlighting imaginary differences between "kinds" of human being by comparing their arcane but legally protected partnering rituals with the anthropogenic arbitrary labelling scheme of harvested fish. I think we can safely say if you have to go to a fish market to draw inspiration for the basis of your legal argument then you should just not bother going to court. No. On one side the stakes are represented by equality, on the other by pride. It's so hopelessly one-sided that nobody in their right mind would bet back-of-the-sofa change on gay marriage being illegal for more than another generation. I don't see that it is, no. It's pretty clear that while you are certainly enthusiastic about pulling this thread off-topic to discuss your opinions, you don't have much to actually talk about short of "I don't believe in gay marriage or transfish". This thread gets back on topic now. The topic is in the OP for those who have forgotten it.

You appear to be confused. All you have done is give a very rounded figure for the distance travelled by light in one second and called it a "duration". This is such a fundamental error that most schoolchildren from the age of 14 up would be able to correct it. You simply cannot conflate units of distance and units of time.

No, I mean that they would be second-class citizens. We've been there before (and I mean in societal terms and in terms of this discussion.) It's not a case of pride versus pride just because you say it is. Actually it points out that the only emotional argument which has been put on the table as a front-line assault comes from the largest population of objectors. You don't have an inherent claim to any argument which uses the concept of emotional subjectivity.

I don't know what the norm is in the USA, but here in the UK it is already common for people to refer to same sex couples in a civil union as "married". It's just the pragmatic and most parsimonious use of language. Calling them "civil unioned" or "domestically legally partnered" has never really caught on.

You're a fine one to be talking about not answering questions. "Gays". Separate but equal is not equal. We have been over this many times both in this thread and the myriad others on the same topic. Nobody, save for the pride of certain people who choose to subscribe to a definition of a word which differs from the relevant and applicable legal term. In the courts, as you yourself pointed out about half an hour ago. Legal arguments tend to have a rational basis. And yet you keep tacking these little comments onto your posts which target emotional processes in the people reading the thread.

Are you conflating your own opinion with "reality"? You have two concepts at work here. First you say that in your opinion, a same sex partnership is not a marriage because of your definition of the term. I don't think anyone would have a serious problem with that because it is your opinion which you are entitled to hold. But when you say that you are "against calling them marriages" then you are extending your opinion - and ONLY your opinion - into the realm of trying to affect the behaviour of other people. I think you are sufficiently smart to understand why this is the less popular move. This thread is about legal rights and as such arguments which are solely based on an individual opinion will tend to be behind the starting blocks each and every time.

So essentially gays do not "deserve to be considered married". Is that a correct reading of this comment? One of the ongoing issues in this thread is that prior to DOMA and Prop. 8, there was no legal exclusion to the concept of a gay marriage. Showing otherwise falls into the domain of your position. There has been significant moderator attention to this thread and much of it has pointed out that comments like the above are not welcome. I strongly recommend that you comply. I think you just answered your own question there. Well, there's the concept of inequality being a form of quantifiable harm, which has been mentioned "once or twice" in this thread already. So no, it's not a matter of opinion at all. Evidence your (plural) claims in such a way as to show that your opinion has a more sound basis. Isn't a further legal challenge contingent on whether or not a more pertinent legal argument exists, as opposed to how brash some arbitrarily chosen internet forum user is?

10 minutes after that there will be a picture of Tom Cruise causing gravity.

Coberst, one of the defining qualities of morals is that they are person- and situation-dependent. They are essentially subjective. Are you perhaps talking about ethics?

Now that it comes up, I am actually not sure. I thought that the sheer gravitational mass of a black hole was what caused that mass to collapse in on itself, and that in turn caused the spacial distortion. I am thinking of it like a vacuum cleaner - the tubes and bag are the spacial distortions, and the pressure differential is gravity. Turn the vac off (i.e. magically suspend gravity) and stuff nearby and in the tubes is no longer attracted to the dust bag. That could be profound ignorance of the mechanics of black holes on my part though.

If the singularity is massless, would it not be an extreme "pinch point" in spacetime but without the gravity well associated with a black hole? I don't see how it would suck anything in - things would have to intersect with it due to their own movement into that region of space, surely? And they would not be gravitationally prevented from leaving again. Right?

Don't you think that the efficiency benefits of regular geometry might be a simpler explanation? That's not the reason at all. The area under the line has mathematical significance. You use the most rational expression of that area because its dimensionality determines how easily that significance can be interpreted.

Why?

Daniel was an ad hoc resolution to a continuity error inserted after the writers accidentally messed up their numbering system for the Cylon models. However it is rumoured that he will be involved in the plot of Caprica somehow. Death for the Cylons maybe? There wasn't one beyond New Caprica. The Cylon "plan" in the titles was originally there as a hook when they thought they would only get renewed once by the network. Season three painted the plan as an attempt by the Cylons to show the humans how they could co-exist with better management (and we all know how that ended).

I suspect that since virtually every moment of a course is spent preparing you for writing a dissertation that what will actually become of the work of anyone stupid enough to fall for this, is that it will be duplicated and sold. We do not support plagiarism. If this is a genuine request for help then your best bet at this late stage in the academic year is to swallow your pride and speak to your course tutor/s.