D H

That's Robert Heinlein, not Larry Niven.

I assumed that was the case, since you are blatantly libertarian and are fully aware that TANSTAAFL.

The joke would have been better if you had quoted the post immediately preceding Pangloss'. Or are you impugning that Pangloss is the idiot for thinking health care in Europe is not free?

There is an even bigger problem than low turnout during general elections, and that is extremely low turnout in primary and local elections. The turnout rate for these elections hovers around 10% in my state. Ideologues on both sides of the political spectrum do take advantage of their right to vote. They vote in general elections and in the primaries that lead up to the general elections. The 10% who do vote in primaries and local elections do not reflect the public at large. The skewed primary turnout is the driving reason that makes candidates from both parties kowtow to their extreme elements early on. The 10% who do vote in primaries choose candidates who do reflect their views and desires rather than the views and desires of the public at large. The 10% who do vote in primaries remember the promises made leading up to the primaries and expect the politicians to keep those promises once elected to office. I am not blaming the 10% who do vote in primaries. The fault lies solely with the 90% who do not.

Are you asking how to compute the projection of a point in R3 onto a plane embedded in R3?

Yes. A real number does not approach infinity. A real number has a fixed location on the number line. That makes no sense. You appear to have heard of the Hilbert hotel paradox, but your interpretation is not quite right.

Farsight got this right. He is quoting the ISO directly. A second used to be defined as 1/86,400th of a day. Two problems existed with this definition. First, what exactly is a "day"? Once people came to grips with this, they found that a "day" is a lousy standard. It is not constant. So now we define a second based on the atomic clock, define a day to be exactly 86,400 seconds, and intermittently add leap seconds to Corrected Universal Time (UTC) to keep our everyday clocks in sync with solar time. Farsight once again has the definition correct. We switched from the Earth-based definition to the meter prototype because the Earth does not have a constant shape. We switched from the meter prototype to a light-second basis because the meter prototype has problems as well. The kilogram is the sole remaining standard based on a prototype. Interestingly, the standard kilogram appears to be losing mass. We use these constants for time and length because they are incredibly accurate, incredibly constant, and internally consistent. Farsight, do you really think you are seeing a circularity that has been missed by some of the best minds in the world? There is no circularity. This essential flaw in your paper starts on page one and propagates throughout. This is absolutely correct.

Keeping an open mind is a good thing, as all we have to go on is the instructor's claim that he was fired for the cited cause. The real reasons for his firing must remain a closed record unless he sues the school. The school would risk a lawsuit with good grounds should they publicize why he was fired. Such is the modern world. I agree most with Pangloss in this thread. Bascule and RevPrez are equally cogent -- and I mean wrt each other, not Pangloss. Anyone who has worked with kids (and college students often act more like kids than adults) knows that one of an instructor's principal challenges is to keep the class on course. Kids will do things to intentionally steer the discussion off topic. This instructor lost control.

Last time I looked, geometry was still considered math.

This is not a scientific paper. Except for the excessive length, it has the look and feel of a for-the-masses, non-scientific paper as published in Scientific American. Farsight, you still rely too much on your pretty pictures. Its not as bad as in your previous writeups, but this is supposedly a "scientific paper". One big problem with those pictures: To use them in a paper, you need to get written approval from the owner of each and every one of these images. The charge of vagueness still stands. A paper on physics without any substantial math does not qualify as a scientific paper. In the physics world, the math comes first. The for-the-masses, non-scientific physics articles are published only after the math has been fully hashed out. Learn the math. Change the title. The use of relativity in all caps screams CRACKPOT. If you don't want to be viewed as a crackpot, take a few steps to lower your score on Baez' crackpot index.

Exactly. How pretty you make the paper look doesn't count. It is the content that matters.

Its also more confusing because while linear momentum and linear velocity are always coaligned, the same is not the case for rotational behavior. Mass is a scalar while the inertia tensor is rank 2 tensor. This rank 2 tensor is constant in the rotating body frame for a rotating solid body. Another source of complexity: The inertia tensor is a time-varying quantity in the inertial frame. There are two ways to address this problem: Express the rotational equations of motion in the rotating body frame, which requires the addition of fictitious torques to the equations of motion. Express the rotational equations of motion in the inertial frame, which requires expressing the inertia tensor in the inertial frame (yech) and computing the derivative of the inertia tensor as seen by an inertial observer (YECH!). The latter approach is nontenable. The 'natural' frame in which to express rotational behavior is the rotating body frame. Physics students are not exposed to the real wonders of rotational behavior until they hit their junior year or higher. Even Euler's equations are a simplified form of the body frame rotational equations of motion.

Neither of these is quite correct. The first reply, "spin", is talking about angular velocity, not angular momentum. The second, "curved path", concept is not quite correct either. A wheel rotating on a fixed axis is not moving, but it is spinning. The analogy in the second post is good: Angular momentum is to angular velocity as linear momentum is to linear velocity. Just as force changes a body's linear momentum, torque changes a body's angular momentum. The reason you are confused is because rotational behavior is a lot more confusing that linear behavior.

I suspect he would have put you in the same category as Limbaugh and Franken, but at least they are both famous and funny.

The source says differently. It does not! Do you read the links or post or just post a link and it interpret it whatever way you want? The word "gravity" is used twice in your .edu link, http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/relativity.html. Here is the second usage: Note that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is a separate theory about a very different topic -- the effects of gravity. Pleasem stick to biology. You appear to be quite competent in that arena.

Here's your f*ck up: You cited a 2001 report from the Department of Energy. The Heritage Foundation used 2005 data from the Census Bureau. The distinction between 2001 and 2005 is obvious. How about the different sources? The Census Bureau and the Department of Health and Human Services use different definitions of poverty. The DOE report appears to be based on the HHS definition. From The Census Bureau's description of how the Census Bureau Measures Poverty: The official measure of poverty was established by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in Statistical Policy Directive 14. Government aid programs do not have to use the official poverty measure as eligibility criteria. Many government aid programs use a different poverty measure, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) poverty guidelines, or variants thereof. Each aid program may define eligibility differently. This is f*cked up, but then again, they're from the government. My taxes are quite high. Can I opt out of paying taxes for welfare? I would love to cut my income taxes by more than 50%. If I can't opt out (and I can't), some of it is my money.

Infinity minus infinity is not zero, or anything else. It is undefined. It has no meaning. [math]\aleph_0[/math] is, by definition, the cardinality of the integers. [math]\aleph_1[/math] is, by definition, the first infinity larger than aleph-null. The cardinality of the reals may or may not be [math]\aleph_1[/math]. The continuum hypothesis says that this is the case. Have you heard of Godel's undecidability theorems? Some statements in mathematics can neither be proved or disproved. This was deemed a curiosity for some time until Paul Cohen showed that the continuum hypothesis itself is undecidable. He won the Field's Medal (mathematicians equivalent of the Nobel Prize) for this work. There are indeed an uncountably infinite number of infinities. The set of all subsets of the integers maps to the reals. The same arguments (Cantor diagonalization) that show that this set is "bigger" than the integers also show that the set of all subsets of the reals is "bigger" than the reals. This process of forming the set of all subsets of an infinite set continues infinitely -- and uncountably so.

That does not mean these functions generate different infinities. It just means they approach the point at infinity at different rates.

You're post addressed limits, not different infinities. These are examples of different sizes of infinities: The number of integers, the number of reals, the number of functions that map a real to a real, and so on. There are an uncountable number of different sizes of infinities.

Are any of these surprising? I disagree with the stem cell research vetos, but I am neither surprised nor do I hold him in contempt for these vetos. This bill, a 140% increase, should surprise no one. After all, he did promise to veto it a while ago. He should have wielded the veto pen a lot more, including against Republican spending bills. A financial slap on the cheek might have helped the Republicans out of the morass they find themselves in now.

That 7 billion represents a 140% increase in the size of the program. Bush agreed he would sign a 20% increase, which is still quite substantial. The program as proposed would make families earning $60,000 fully covered by the program - over half of the population. This is tantamount to nationalized health care. Finally, using a cigarette tax to fund this? Smoking is inversely correlated with income. This would have amounted to funding a program for the not-so-poor with a very regressive tax. A less biased article from the Washington Post (not the Washington Times): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/03/AR2007100301528_2.html.

You are comitting two faults here: Confusing speed and velocity, and computing the average speed by averaging the speeds. I'm sure you know the difference between speed and velocity. Its any easy trap to get caught in because colloquially these two terms mean the same thing. You can average speeds to get the average speed, but you have to use a time-weighted average. You were right in that the average speed for the second trip was 6000km / 12 hr = 500 km/hr. Thus another way to solve this problem is to compute the average speed as a time-weighted average and equate this result to the known 500 km/hr average speed. Doing this, the time-weighted average speed is [math]\bar s = \frac{s_1t_1 + s_2t_2}{t_1+t_2}[/math] where the suffixes 1 and 2 refer to the outbound and return flights respectively. The outbound speed is v-w while the return speed is v+w. Note that the products [math]s_1t_1[/math] and [math]s_2t_2[/math] are the distance flown during each leg: 3000 km in both cases. Denoting this as d, the time-weighted average speed becomes [math]\bar s = \frac{2d}{d/(v-w)+d/(v+w)}[/math] Simplifying and solving for w, [math]w = \sqrt{v(v-\bar s)}[/math] which is the same result that obtains from post #14.

The problem with blatant lies is that the spread and are percieved as true. This is particularly so nice little compact lies such as a compelling photograph, a simple graph, or a one-liner statistic. The photocropping or numerical fudging aren't included with the picture or graph or statistic. Now that you see the flim-flam for yourself, do you still believe this junk? BTW, I know that conservatives are also quite adept at lieing. Slightly different techniques, same end goal. I bring a clothes pin with me to the voting booth to hold my nose shut because all choices stink.

Where did you see this chart? If you saw it at warresisters.org that is who you should have cited as a source. If you read the Washington Post you linked you (do you read your own sources?), you would have seen that the big pie chart with the incredibly fudged numbers was nowhere in sight. The Washington Post article you cited is indeed the source of the first pie chart. That chart is honest. The second chart is nothing short of a lie, and a stupid lie. They blatantly deleted all Social Security spending because none of it goes to the military. They blatantly attributed 80% of debt payments to the military because they weren't happy with the first inflated set of numbers. Even that wasn't good enough, so they double-counted Homeland Security. For good measure, they threw in half NASA's budget and a quarter of USAID's budget. For a short period of time I actually thought about returning to my more liberal ways. Warresisters and Move-on have shown me why I left their camp in the first place.

The problem with you approach is that you are doing something that is inherently invalid. Suppose the wind is blowing at 400 km/hr. The outbound trip takes 15 hours since the plane's ground speed is a paltry 200 km/hr. The return flight takes a mere 3 hours since the plane's ground speed is 1000 km/hr. The average of the two speeds is 600 km/hr. The average speed, on the other hand, is 266.7 km/hr.