Cap'n Refsmmat

Suppose we have a group of psychics. Suppose psychic powers don't exist, but the psychics are right 51% of the time because they apply a bit of common sense along with chance. Poll enough psychics and your results will be just as good as an expert's opinion. But that's a preference. There is no logical reason to believe that an expert's past ability to predict events will have any relevance to future events, just like there is no logical reason to believe that physical laws will continue to hold in the future at all. And as lemur already said: Theology gives different benefits than expertise, and the benefits apply even if it gives you terrible decisions.

Large-scale astronomical observations would seem to rule this out. No. The number of peaks varies depending on the source wavelength and frequency. Consider a stationary source and observer; longer wavelengths will have fewer wave peaks between the two. And the source frequency is dependent upon which frame you measure it from.

Geodesic paths in what? Geodesics are heavily used in general relativity. Yes they do. Length contraction. Wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency. You could count wave peaks as they go past you, yes, and the number of peaks you count would be the same as the number of peaks sent by the light source. They would take a different amount of time to pass you and would pass at a different frequency. The frequency shift will tell you the light source's velocity relative to you.

It's an educated guess because you cannot know the outcome with certainty. As Hume pointed out, there's no logical reason that what we've observed to happen before should continue to happen in the future. Presumably, yes. I don't think he intended for them to be equally desirable choices.

Well, but going to war isn't socialist. You are committing an ad hominem tu quoque fallacy in your argument. Perhaps you'd like to restate it. Again, do you have any evidence to support this conclusion? You may well argue that the intervention is unreasonable, but a conclusion that it is an oil war is not justified unless you have evidence to specifically support the claim. I can think of a perfectly plausible alternate hypothesis that also fits the data, for example. America has a bad record in the Middle East, making diplomacy difficult and giving terrorists easy recruiting. By manufacturing a crisis and then gathering international support for an intervention to "save lives," America boosts its image in the region, granting it better diplomatic access to nations, leverage for future trade (and even oil!), and denying terrorists potential recruits. However, my alternate hypothesis also has absolutely no evidence to support it. What do you have?

I suppose. However, that can't be used as an absolute reference point, since you can't know the original frequency of the waves when sent by the light source. (If you tried to measure them with your clock, you'd get a difference answer than the sender.) This is quickly getting out of my depth, however.

Right, so you can tell the relative velocity of any light source by determining the redshift of its light. I don't think this is the right way to phrase your idea. Everything moves at the same velocity relative to light. However, redshift and blueshift can measure the relative velocity between two objects. It does not measure any sort of absolute velocity.

Could you clarify this? I'm having difficulty understanding your reasoning here.

Doesn't option (e) constitute an educated guess (option b), given that the factors which determine whether a child is ultimately in your best interest are largely unknowable? (e.g. whether the child will decide to murder you at age 17, whether you will enjoy the companionship of your child, etc.) Right, and divine revelation comes from a higher authority with greater predictive and explanatory power than your own. Presumably. Likewise, we could defer our judgments to some designated expert in the relevant field, but God is an expert in everything. I don't know if this is a question of which is better, or a question of what reasoning theists use to justify their system, regardless of its final effectiveness. I think lemur is just presenting the reasoning, rather than seeking to prove it effective.

Because no matter how fast you are moving, you will measure the speed of photons to be exactly c relative to you. If I compare my motion to photons, I will always get exactly the same answer. However, I suggest you open a new thread if you want to discuss these issues further, or I can split things off starting at post 5.

Well, if you accept GR's version of gravity, orbits are just a straight-line (geodesic) path through curved space. Hence orbits can be inertial frames.

Apparently the government is working to figure out just who the rebels are and whether they should be supported: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/world/africa/31intel.html?hp

I don't think that works, because photons move at c relative to everyone. All objects move relative to all other objects, and velocity can only be measured in reference to some agreed-upon reference frame; using light as a reference frame would not make sense.

At the moment I don't know if there's enough data to form a conclusion either way. There are allegations of Al-Qaeda involvement, but there are also news reports that native Libyans are taking up arms at their own behest. The rebellion is simply too disorganized right now. Until the situation is clearer, directly supporting the rebels seems a bit silly.

Do you have sources for the Hitler claim? It's not one I've heard before.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/video-gadhafi-leaves-landmines-behind-for-rebels/ I believe several of the countries you listed already get foreign aid or military intervention, such as Somalia.

How would that list be adjusted if one accounted in "civil war and assaults on cities" into the calculations for Libya?

I have a few questions that still have not been answered: What evidence is there to suggest this is an oil venture, rather than some other evil move against Libya? (Or even, say, a Western move for a better image in the Middle East after Iraq, by trying to support a popular "revolution." The Western nations might do this to get more support in fighting terrorism, or to discourage future terrorists by making the West the good guys.) How would the West benefit from Libya's oil when it is already sold on the open market? Why did the Arab League and the UN support an imperialistic venture to get oil? To me, these are the obvious objections to any hypothesis that we're in this for the oil.

Maybe try this: http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/overview.html

This is hardly difficult to demonstrate when Gaddafi stated that http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110222/local/gaddafi-in-fighting-speech-i-will-not-give-up http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8342543/Libya-more-than-1000-dead.html There are also many documented incidents of dissidents being tortured or arrested. Incidentally, he rejects your argument explicitly by arguing that he is not a sovereign head of state. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12544648

Because any chunk ejected from the sun will not be able to enter an orbit. It will eventually collide with the sun again, unless it has rocket engines to correct its orbit. Consider a cannon on the Earth's surface. If you fire the cannon straight up, the cannonball will fall back to Earth. Fire it at a 45-degree angle to the ground with immense power, and it will reach high altitudes, but gravity will bring it back to Earth's surface. Fire it with ludicrous power and the cannonball simply will never come back. To achieve orbit around Earth, the cannonball needs its own rocket motor, so that it can adjust its trajectory when it's at high altitude. This can be mathematically proven. How, then, will something ejected from the Sun end up in orbit around it?

I do not see how any of your prior reasoning supports this conclusion. How can you demonstrate the West's true intentions here? What is your evidence?

Ah, I see. And since [math]\sqrt{N}[/math] increases more slowly than [math]N[/math], the relative error decreases with the number of samples. Thanks.

I performed an experiment in my physics lab course recently involving the use of a scintillator to count the number of radioactive decays that occur over a certain period. For example, I placed radioactive sodium-22 in front of the scintillators and observed a certain number of gamma decays in ten seconds. In my analysis, I need to estimate the uncertainty of this measurement. Now, I know radioactive decay is a random process, so in ten seconds I may observe 107 decays, or 95, or 111. As I take larger samples over longer intervals, the random variance becomes less significant compared to the total count. My question is: how do I estimate the random variance in the gamma ray count? Surely it's 97±n, where n is some number dependent on the time and decay rate, but I don't know how to calculate it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_dispersion_force Sounds familiar.