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Are you afraid? Any of your friends afraid to fly because they think the plane may be blown out of the sky? Are people talking about it at work or school everyday? Do you avoid crowded areas like malls or ball parks? I don't know where you live but I cannot name one single person I know who is afraid of a terrorist attack. I don't know what media you follow, but I find no media obsession with terrorists. I think the reason Americans allow their civil liberties to be eroded is because they felt it was the right thing to do at the time, and because the pain of reduced civil liberties is very low. Again, I don't know anyone who even knows anyone who has been killed by presidential order, detained indefinitely at Gitmo, or been waterboarded. Shoot, I don't even know anyone who has been groped by TSA.

I don't see the fear and terror you talk about. Not in individuals I know, not in the media, and not in the politicians. It may have been true closer to 9/11 but not now. I believe one of the reasons people are not irrationally fearful is due to the successes of the war on terror. No one is blowing up their underware or the Brooklyn Bridge, so people feel safer. It may have been more cost effective to offer each terrorist $1 million to go away, and I agree that their biggest success so far has been to get us to waste resources. But I just don't see the fear.

Just a guess...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble's_law

In the movie 'Contact', the aliens who contacted earth used a mechanism to travel through wormholes. When asked how they did it, they stated that the mechanism existed long before they came along, had been in use for millions of years, but no one knew who created it in the first place.

Well princess, I didn't have any word in mind. I just asked how he knew it was created rather than it having always existed.

Depends on how you define Christian. For you it seems to be that you have to support everything in the bible to consider yourself Christian. For me not so much. Do you support all the rules, laws, culture, etc. of Canada? Do you still consider yourself Canadian? If so, why is it different when defining Christians?

Just curious why you find this funny...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-year

What I meant to say was that as an object moves through space, it seems as if it is constantly changing the curvature of space-time around it. For example, the curvature of space-time midway between two stars is relatively small as compared to the curvature close to a large body. If a rogue planet was travelling between the stars, the closer it got to the midpoint, the more space-time would curve there. Meaning that any small bit of debris at the midpoint would be affected by the rogue planet while the rogue planet was still some distance away. That is what I meant when I said that the curvature of space-time is still "action at a distance". Thanks for the other feedback. I need to do a bit of reading to make sure I understand what you are saying.

I was under the impression that what you describe as a concrete answer to "what is gravity", is nothing more than a model that describes how objects behave in gravity's presence. Is it possible to measure the curvature of space-time, or are we simply measuring/predicting/describing how an object behaves when it is a given distance from a mass? If a better theory comes along that does not include space-time, I would assume that we would no longer talk in terms of space-time, but in the terms described in the new model. As far as 'action at a distance', what else would you call the actions of space-time being curved at a distance 'x' from an object as that object moves through space?

I believe the tablet held by the Statue of Liberty symbolizes the concept of law, not literacy.

Perhaps. Or perhaps you are just an ignorant bigot. Two billion of them. One of you. Which scenario do you think is more likely?

Don't know if this is related but we sometimes make 'bombs' out of sparklers. Group five sparklers or so with the top of the center sparkler sticking up about an inch higher than the others. Wrap tightly with multiple layers of duct tape leaving the one inch of the center sparkler exposed. Light the center sparkler and run like hell. Shockingly loud explosion. Edit: Just thought of another fun 'bomb'. Take an empty plastic liter bottle, drop in a piece of dry ice and a small amount of water, screw the cap on tight and again run like hell. Sometimes takes a minute or so to explode so don't approach it. Also shockingly loud.

Not all Christians are opposed to gay marriage. I recently attended a lesbian marriage held in a church. You also don't need to be an american to understand. Do you belong to any groups? Do you support every position they hold? Are they any laws of your country that you do not support? Any by-laws of your school or fraternity you are opposed to? Did you not like the rules you mom and dad enforced? The only group I am a part of that I support 100% is the group that consists exclusively of me.

ENOUGH ALREADY!!! This isn't ancient Greece, pre-WWI Germany or Prussia. This is not the seat of democracy being defiled by those who do not know where morals come from. The mods aren't tyrants, King James, or uneducated technoids. There is no conspiracy between the mods and the vast majority of participants to squelch your rights. People who disagree with you are not attacking you. And you are not always right. This is just a little corner of the internet where people gather to talk and learn, with a minimum of control by a group of volunteers who are doing their best to keep things running smoothly using the least amount of interference. The rules are simple and you agreed to follow them. If you spent half as much effort trying to force feed everyone your view of what democracy "is all about" as you spend complaining, we'd all be converts by now. Please give it a rest.

Thanks everyone. Nice answers!

Yeah, sorry. I should have found the other thread in which to post my reply.

These aren't presuppositions. This is the result of science investigating the opposing side of mainstream belief, debunking the 9/11 conspiracy theorists for the past decade, then having some johnny-come-lately yelling CONSPIRACY 10 years later and calling into question the integrity of thousands, all based on the most rudimentary data. The only presupposition is yours. It is amazing that in you we have found the one person who know that claims need to be investigated. Clearly none of the scientists, engineers, military, family and politicians felt the need to try to determine exactly what happened that day. They all just said "ah, we're probably right about what happened here, and since its just a little thing let's just drop it." Try Googling 'debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories'. There are 270,000 examples of science doing its job. Your comment is simply insulting.

I don't know that I would call the creeping domination of English a problem. I believe having a common language is beneficial, and while many languages would suffice, circumstances are simply right at this time for it to be English. I once worked on a project that involved contracts between companies in Japan and Thailand. The two groups involved always did their contracts in English. Language terms: Ability to communicate in multiple languages - Multilingual Ability to communicate in two languages - Bilingual Ability to communicate in only one language - American

No disagreement. Nice argument. The criticism was how you had previously diparaged religion without making much of a case. Had you made this argument the first time I would have had no issue, and I suspect Villian wouldn't have made the comment he did.

Oh come on. You disparaged all of organized religion because there is a difference of opinion regarding interpretation of one passage. I could just as easily dismiss all of science since in every theory you can find people who have differences of opinion regarding interpretation of data. Of course had I dismissed science with such a flimsy reason I would have received negative rep points, not positive. I found the criticism of your post to be reasonable.

Ah, the irony. That's some special cat there. And yet people still wonder why there are those who are wary of science!

I don't think I'm making myself clear, or I missed it in your links. Velocity time dilation as a spacecraft approaches c - Observer on earth sees clock in spacraft slow down, but sees spacecraft accelerating. Velocity time dilation as a spacecraft approaches a black hole - Observer on earth sees clock in spacecraft slow down, and also sees spacecraft decelerating. Why the two different results?