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Exactly. That is why I said in post #9 that opponents would tie up a reparations law in the courts. It is a stupid idea. Not only is reparations stupid, it, like slavery, is reprehensible. Slavery starts as indentured servitude. The next step is to let the supposed debt build up over time. Slavery starts when the indebtedness is inherited. That debt cannot be inherited is one key impediment to slavery. Reparations would be a form of inherited debt. Adding insult to injury, my ancestors came to the US in the early 1900s and immediately became four of millions of dirt poor immigrants. What, exactly, did they do to inherit the supposed debt of rich white slave owners earned more than 40 years before they first stepped on American soil?

Regarding whether we would be able to detect a planet orbiting exactly opposite the Earth: That assumes that a planet can orbit there. It can't, at least not for long. That is the Sun-Earth L3 Lagrange point, and that point is unstable. If a planet was at that point, one of three things would happen: Case 1: The planet is much less massive than the Earth. If the planet is not perfectly at the L3 point, in position and velocity, right down to the last decimal point, those deviations would grow with time. The L1 point is not stable. Even if it was exactly at that point, perturbations from other planets would induce some small deviation and the same result would arise. Case 2: The planet is much more massive than the Earth. This is the same as case 1, but in this case it is the Earth whose orbit is destabilized. Case 3: The planets are of comparable mass. Now both planets' orbits will be destabilized. Bottom line: A planet cannot exist there. Asking whether we could detect such a planet doesn't make sense. Regarding the cost of getting a satellite to the L3 point: This is cheap. Very cheap. Here's how: Give the vehicle a velocity that just puts in on an escape trajectory in either a prograde or retrograde direction. The vehicle will escape the Earth's vicinity and independently orbit the Sun. A prograde burn will make the vehicle's orbit period about the Sun take a bit longer than one year while a retrograde burn will put the vehicle into an orbit slightly less than one year in duration. In either case the phase angle between the Earth and satellite will gradually increase over time without any additional maneuvering. When the phase angle is 180 degrees, perform another maneuver to put it into a pseudo orbit about the Sun-Earth L3 point.

Why made you raise this topic, Marat? There is no meaningful reparations movement afoot. There was such a movement a few years, but even in its heyday it never did gain much backing outside the fringe left. It had pretty much died even before Obama announced during his candidacy that he was not in favor of reparations. From searching on the web it appears that reparations has now shifted from being a stupid idea proposed by the fringe left to being a boogieman used by the kook right.

Like every other request made of cypress, cypress will almost certainly dodge this particular request.

Who, exactly, has suggested this recently? The only ones I can see are a few kooks on the left, quite a few more kooks on the right who are afraid that those kooks on the left have any influence, and quite a few more disreputable types who see those kooks on the left and right as useful idiots. Reparations is a stupid idea. If it somehow did get passed as law, opponents would tied it up in the courts on constitutional issues before one single dime could be disbursed. The ensuing voter backlash would ensure a Republican supermajority in Congress and a Republican presidency for a long, long time. While Democrats might be dumb (what politician isn't?), they are not stupid and they are not wont to commit political suicide. Reparations is a non-issue.

What, exactly, makes you think that Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and people like them are orthodox thinkers? They are anything but that. They are, however, practical. Free thinkers who don't care whether their ideas violate the laws of physics can make lots of money making movies or writing novels, but they cannot make those ideas real. Free thinkers who aren't concerned that their ideas require materials far in excess of any material known to mankind, require monetary expenditures in excess of the entire world's economy, or energy levels in excess of the entire world's energy output can similarly make movies. They might even hoodwink some investors. That won't help their ideas come to fruition. Making advances in space technology requires very creative but also rather hard-nosed scientists, engineers, bean counters, and policy wonks. And money. Want a space program that does more? Convince your elected representatives that dedicating a paltry one half of one percent of the federal budget to space program makes for a space program that is but a joke.

Science fiction is fun, but you two do need to remember that that is exactly what you are writing about. Things like a space elevator, a launch loop, fusion propulsion: Science fiction. They are in the realm of the possible, but they still are science fiction and will be science fiction for a long time. Our space programs may look pathetic compared to Star Trek or Star Wars, but our space programs do have one big thing over the movies: It is real.

This very forum depends on proprietary formats. That doesn't stop web crawlers from crawling in. At this very moment, this site is infested with spiders from Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves , ...

Yes, but there are Earth tides. As the Earth's k2 Love Number is about 0.3, these Earth tides are a bit less than 1/3 the size of the ocean tides. However, since the Earth tides involve all of the Earth rather than a thin shell of water that covers 78% of the Earth's surface, the impact on the orbits of satellites is about 10 times those of the ocean tides. Yes, there are also atmospheric tides, and the Moon does contribute to these tides. However, unlike the ocean tides and Earth tides where the dominant feature is the ~12.4 hour long lunar semidiurnal, the dominant feature in the atmospheric tides is the diurnal bulge caused by the Sun.

Treating the Earth and Moon as spherical bodies and ignoring tiny relativistic effects, the acceleration of the Earth as a whole toward the Moon in some inertial frame is given by Newton's law of gravitation [math]\vec a_e = \frac{GM_m}{||\vec r_{e\to m}||^3} \vec r_{e\to m}[/math] where [math]\vec r_{e\to m}[/math] is the vector from the Earth's center of mass to the Moon's center of mass. The acceleration at some point on the Earth's surface is similarly given by [math]\vec a_p = \frac{GM_m}{||\vec r_{p\to m}||^3} \vec r_{p\to m}[/math] where [math]\vec r_{p\to m}[/math] is the vector from the point in question to the Moon's center of mass. The tides result from the difference between these accelerations: [math]\vec a_{p,\text{rel}} = \vec a_p - \vec a_e= GM_m\left(\frac {\vec r_{p\to m}}{||\vec r_{p\to m}||^3} - \frac {\vec r_{e\to m}}{||\vec r_{e\to m}||^3}\right)[/math] For the point p1 on the surface of the Earth directly between the Earth's and Moon's centers of mass, this becomes [math]a_{p_1,\text{rel}} = GM_m\left(\frac {1}{(R_m-r_e)^2} - \frac{1}{R_m^2}\right)\hat m\approx \frac{2GM_mr_e}{R_m^3}\hat m = \frac{2GM_mr_e}{R_m^3}\hat p_1[/math] where [math]R_m[/math] is the distance between the Earth and the Moon, [math]r_e[/math] is the radius of the Earth, [math]\hat m[/math] is the unit vector from the center of the Earth toward the Moon, and [math]\hat p_1[/math] is the unit vector from the center of the Earth toward the point p1. Note that [math]\hat p_1=\hat m[/math]. Now consider the point p2 on the surface of the Earth that is diametrically opposed to p1. Note that the unit vector from the center of the Earth toward p2, [math]\hat p_2[/math], is directed away from the Moon (the Moon is underfoot). For this point, the relative acceleration becomes [math]a_{p_2,\text{rel}} = GM_m\left(\frac {1}{(R_m+r_e)^2} - \frac{1}{R_m^2}\right)\hat m\approx \frac{-2GM_mr_e}{R_m^3}\hat m = \frac{2GM_mr_e}{R_m^3}\hat p_2[/math] So once again the acceleration is directed outward. Edits 16 Dec 2010: Fixed a LaTeX error: The forward slash in [math]/hat m[/math] should have been a backslash, resulting in [math]\hat m[/math].

Oh please. That isn't logic; it is a logical fallacy. Specifically, it is an association fallacy.

If the standard model is correct the LHC should find the Higgs boson. The nature of the Higgs field is one of the things the LHC is being used to investigate. The LHC almost certainly is not going to find a graviton for the simple reason that it is not looking for signs of a graviton. How can it? Physicists don't even know what to look for -- yet. There are several reasons to think that the graviton, or some thing(s) like it, does(do) exist. General relativity admits singularities, something most physicists view as indicative of a shortcoming in the theory. Another reason is that while general relativity does a very good job of matching reality, physically it is not that deep. Physicists like to ask "what makes that happen?" The answer from GR is "because the math says so." Poking deeper can't occur because poking deeper runs smack dab into the axioms. Finally, there is a problem with mixing the classical nature of general relativity with the quantum nature of the rest of physics. For example, see Steve Carlip's paper on this topic, http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.3456.

DIdn't you just post this nonsense elsewhere? Other than the minor problem that your proof is essentially unreadable, the real problem is here: Bzzzt, wrong. Dividing a2n by an yields an, not a2.

You don't need experiments to tell what the maximum possible effect might be. This is calculable -- and it is incredibly small.

I could have said "Is there any value in knowing the boiling point of tin other than the obsessive-compulsive academic interest of filling in an unknown number on a table?". That was too long, so I said "who cares?" instead. Scientists know the triple point of gallium to about 9 digits because knowing that value to a high degree of precision apparently has a lot of monetary value. That science only knows the boiling point of gallium to one or two digits is a good test of how much anyone cares about knowing that value. I suspect those chemical tables are chock full of imprecise values. Would improving those be worthy of a thesis? Probably not. Who cares?

Wrong on two accounts: A single photon has zero mass, and nobody knows whether gravitons exist. Photons gravitate because they have energy and thus play a role in the stress-energy tensor.

That, plus a who cares? factor. All atomic elements have some boiling point, so for completion's sake a value is included in all of these chemical properties tables even if nobody cares. If the boiling point of tin or gallium had some financial interest there would be a push to reconcile those wildly varying values. That you do see wildly varying values is a sign that the value is of very little interest and limited value.

My CRC handbook of chemistry and physics says 2270°C for tin, 2403°C for gallium. A lot of MSDSs specify a value of 2507°C for tin (yet another value), and 2400°C or 2403°C for gallium. Books and websites are not perfect. Errors propagate like the childhood game of telephone. In the case of tin, wikipedia does not cite the source of their physical data. Who knows where that number came from?

Think twice about that. More than twice. The debt -- certainly not. The obligation to pay the debt is right there in the constitution. How about the rest of the mandatory spending? Have you ever been to a developing or underdeveloped nation? One big difference between those countries and the developed world is a lack of stability in the developing/underdeveloped nations. We are seeing just the slightest hint of that instability in our country right now. Many companies are stockpiling money rather than building products. One problem is they haven't the foggiest idea what the future has in store for them. Magnify that by multiple orders of magnitude and voila! you have the third world. The standard solution to this instability problem in third world nations is a military coup. The mandatory spending represents hard-fought efforts on the part of Congress and the people. If anything, more of our spending should be mandatory. Making multi-year R&D efforts the annual whim of the current Congress doesn't make much sense. Besides, Congress does have a simple way to address the issue of mandatory spending: Grow a pair and modify the laws that mandate that spending. You're right. I should have said all y'all rather than just y'all. Nothing wrong with y'all. There is a big gaping hole in the English language that y'all fills exactly. Unlike most languages, English has no widely accepted second person plural. Instead it has a boatload of regional variants. Most languages have a second person plural because, simply put, there is a need for a second person plural. English is just about the only Germanic or Latin language that does not have a second person plural.

OS X 10.6.4, Safari 5.0.2, clicked the edit button. This kind of ugliness happens quite often. The new software inserts/deletes a random newline, I click on edit to fix it, I get garbage. Except I use words a tad shorter than garbage, typically words with the same number of letters as 'ugly' and 'mess' to describe the result.

<br>Colonial Massachusetts is anything but a shining example of separation of church and state. The Pilgrims and Puritans didn't come to America to escape religious persecution. They came here so they could perform religious persecution (something mother England didn't particularly like). Early colonial Massachusetts was a full-blown theocracy up until the late 1600s, and remained a theocracy to a lesser extent until 1833.<div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> <br><div>Beat me to it.<br><br>While courts can declare some law unconstitutional, they cannot remove said law from the books. Removing a law from the books is the sole purview of the legislature that created the law.<br><br>Now suppose you are a state legislator in Arkansas. Are you going to propose an act to revoke the law that precludes atheists from holding public office, working as civil servants, or testifying in court, or are you going to hold your nose and just let that law slide into unenforceable oblivion? If you do the former you have just given up any chance of being reelected. You might not know this, but every other legislator does; your proposal will never go anywhere.<br><br>States and the federal government have an untold number of ancient laws on the books that can no longer be enforced because the Supreme Court has found those laws to be unconstitutional. </div> </div> =============================== OK! What is the deal with this utterly atrocious formatting nonsense that this new forum software sometimes creates?

You can streamline those agencies all you want and you will not make a dent in the deficit problem. Look at your own charts, mississippichem. The part of the discretionary budget that is not related to social programs, homeland security, or defense is a rather tiny part of the overall budget. Maybe 10%. Maybe less. To be blunt, what y'all in Mississippi need to do with regard to public school expenditures is to ramp those spending numbers up, big time. TO be very blunt, your state is pathetic when it comes to K-12 public education.

I agree with that basic sentiment. What's left is only 12% of the budget. Let's take that to an extreme: Let's completely eliminate all discretionary spending that is not related to social welfare, military or homeland security (significantly less than 12% of the budget). No FBI, no Department of Justice for that matter. Department of Education: Partly gone (we'll leave the social welfare intact, but all children will be left behind). NASA, national parks, NSF: Gone. Department of Transportation: Almost gone (a tiny amount of its budget is mandatory). Commerce: Gone. No weather service, no hurricane warnings, no new patents, no new standards (NIST). The multiplier has to be larger than one to be useful. It apparently is not: http://mercatus.org/publication/does-government-spending-stimulate-economies-0. I suspect that the only parts of the government that might have a multiplier greater than one are the very areas most likely to be cut: Infrastructure spending and unclassified R&D spending.

Not one? Military spending is part of the discretionary budget. The total discretionary budget is 38.5% or 385‰ of the federal budget. Until our politicians go after the 615‰ mandatory spending gorilla they are fooling themselves and fooling us with regard to being serious about attacking the deficit problem. Only a small part of the mandatory side of the budget is truly mandatory. The government must, per the Constitution, make good on its debts. The rest of the mandatory side of the budget is only mandatory because Congress has previously passed laws that require those spendings to occur. Laws can be changed. All it takes is an act of Congress and a Presidential signature (or a Congressional override). Are you telling us that you can't see even the smallest part of that 615‰ mandatory spending gorilla as being subject to review?

Military spending is discretionary. Several social programs are also a part of the discretionary budget: HHS, HUD, Education, Food Stamps. The tiny amount spent on the non-defense, non-security, non-social discretionary spending is what generates our future spending through R&D (maybe), maintains our infrastructure (hah), keeps us sane and literate through spending on arts, culture, and parks (hah, hah). Oh yes, those $200 million/day foreign extravaganzas are also discretionary (hah, hah, hah). And that is what they'll cut and say Mission Accomplished.