lemur

Supposedly, she was just tired and didn't feel like walking all the way to the back of the bus. When you call doing the right thing rebellion against corruption, it construes your action as using fire against fire. Evil feeds on itself this way. The only way out of the "burning ring of fire" (to use Johnny Cash's words) is to choose good actions and do them pro-actively without getting seduced into fighting against provocation, imo. Provoking people into fighting against evil is an evil tactic to bring people down to your level; didn't you see the Empire Strikes Back? Thanks, I'll have to keep notes on what we agree on since we usually disagree a lot on religious matters.

First, I've lived in various places but I don't appreciate the view that you can undermine what someone has to say on the basis of where they have or haven't lived. It's a cheap substitute for specifically describing whatever cultural assumption you think someone is lacking in their misunderstanding of your view. Don't automatically blame it on ethnicity, location, or anything else about the person. This is a form of ad hom reasoning, imo, though I often get criticized for using that term too broadly. You seem to be referring to the idea that has been popularized in US and other culture that people should take whatever job they can get to make money. Personally, I think this deviates from the ideals of the republic, which were/are that work is supposed to be freely chosen on the basis of reasoning about its direct value. So when you cut a tree, wire a building, or anything else you do it because you value the economic results of your labor. When people go to a fast food drive through because they can't find any other way to avoid being homeless, that's not a free choice rooted in reason and the will to create something economically valuable. It's just serving other people's desires. That's servitude, not republican freedom. Tree removal is hard and requires heavy machinery unless you're prepared to climb around and drop branches one by one. Depending on the diameter of the branches and the trunk, a good chainsaw may not be enough. If there's no risk of damage if it falls, you might want to just leave it to its own fate. If it could fall on your house or something, and you can't get help, you could trim the branches as much as possible and keep looking for someone to cut the trunk and grind the stump. The other thing I believe people used to do was to make a fire in the trunk and burn it down that way, but you would obviously have to let it dry some to do that - or use a lot of fuel maybe.

How do the electrons collide into the protons to combine with them? Does the full energy of the electrostatic attraction from r=n to r=0 get translated into momentum of the newly formed neutron/neutrinos? This process seems like conversion of atomic volume into energy, in contrast to converting atomic mass into energy. Would that be an accurate description?

Practically all of Matthew 10 is like this too. E.g. But it's not so much that he's advocating rebellion, I think, as it is he's saying that people who deny truth in favor of keeping the peace with deniers of truth are themselves doomed. This is sort of a general concept that's upheld in science as the idea that bias and social-political interests cause people to seek results that favor their interests instead of "inconvenient truths." Is the pursuit of truth, even when it is inconvenient to some social-political interest(s) the same thing as rebellion?

Doesn't it seem logical that electrons can't fall into the nucleus because doing so would cancel out their electrostatic charge and that would violate some conservation law? I know people hate the Bohr model and thus presumably every detail of it, but it makes sense that if an electron was orbiting the nucleus, it would accelerate the closer it came to that nucleus. This acceleration would result in greater momentum, which would function as more repellant force between electrons of different molecules when they collide. If the electron would continue to accelerating into the nucleus, it would build up momentum that couldn't be expressed as volume anymore, so it would have to be expressed as linear motion of the nucleus itself, no?

Although I'm not sure about the directness of interpretation behind it, I understand what he means when he says that satan rules over this world. There is a Jehovah's witness pamphlet that expresses that idea, for one. I also find it logical since there's a quote somewhere in the bible (revelations?) where it talks about the kings of the Earth as all being servants of satan or evil or something like that. This is logical considering that worldly kings and other authorities are in competition with divine authority when they claim their authority to be absolute. So, likewise, if "ruler" is interpreted to mean one who dominates others in an absolute way, then God would never be described as a "rule" because God recognizes the freedom to choose between evil and good. This, in turn, makes it logically evil to suggest that people do not have a choice because they must obey the rule of worldly authority. This is also evil, logically, in that it involves denial of the creativity presumed to be given by God "in His image." This is also presumably symbolized in God's anger at Adam and Eve when they cover up their naked bodies in the garden, i.e. because they were hiding what was given to them by God to be (pro)creative. So things like sexuality, free will, creativity, etc. are sinful to be ashamed of or otherwise deny, I think, according to the biblical logic.

Ok, so what you're saying is that as you get older you need people to help you with things that you could do yourself at a younger age. That makes sense. Then what you're saying is that people with day jobs aren't reliable to help you because they're already covered in terms of having their income needs met. So what you want to see is people who are unemployed and thus in need of helping people like you because they need the income? There is some legitimacy in that idea, I think, but it would also open up the possibility for a lot of people to get exploited for money. On the other hand, what I was talking about is the fact that people who are unemployed are needed for worse jobs than tree-removal, such as food service, cleaning, etc. These are jobs that few people want to do but many people want to consume (more). So, for example, when so many people are complaining about the economy being bad, it's not that they're not getting by but that they want to enjoy life more by taking vacations and staying in hotels/motels. That basically equals eating more meals in restaurants and sleeping more in hotels; both of which require more food service and cleaning service jobs. So when people want the economy to grow so they have more money to do things that require people to go to work doing unwanted jobs, that is exploitative. Tree removal is not such a big deal. It would just take you a few hours with the right equipment. Maybe the fact that you're having such a hard time finding people to help is a sign that the tree isn't as sick as you think. You'll be sorry you lost the shade when it's gone.

Look at the content of the jobs available and ask yourself if you would want to do them. I think economic culture needs to be re-worked so that there won't be a sizable amount of jobs/work that some people just get stuck with because they need money and there's no other way to get it. This creates the means of economic exploitation.

What about when he destroyed the church?

I was referring to the fundamental uncertainty regarding electron speed and position. My point was that there are interaction effects in the variables.

Your level of detail is useful, as far as I'm concerned. I guess my question boils down to whether the power fed into the grid from a household solar panel gets conserved if it goes back through the transformer or whatever it is that intermediates power lines and household supply lines. I see what you mean that excess solar power could be sold to a direct neighbor without the energy having to go back onto the main grid, but I wonder if that's not its only possibility. It is interesting to picture entire grids consisting of solar-generating buildings where the excess power gets sent to a central storage-center, such as a water tower, but I wonder if it's even possible to get solar power from a grid to power a pump to pump water into the tower(s) during daylight hours.

I don't think organisms can intentionally mutate in a way that makes them "fitter" but maybe you could say that everything organisms do is in the interest of their survival, so any mutation-causing factors they would become exposed to would be a consequence of that. Is that too much of a stretch?

What about fundamental uncertainty in quantum physics? What about complex decision-making situations that involve multiple factors, like deciding when to go to the bathroom during a meeting and how to organize what you say to tactfully escape to the bathroom without shirking your responsibility to say something pertinent? Is what you say not influenced by your need to go to the bathroom? Is your tolerance for your discomfort not increased by your need to say what you have to say and leave at the right moment?

Is this posted for discussion or just to garner political support? edit: I thought of an issue to discuss here. If the EU would allow the use of cheap, generic pesticides - wouldn't that lower the amount of farm revenue spent on pesticide and thus reduce GDP and job creation? Also, how would new pesticides be developed if the market was dominated by a more traditional one?

My understanding of quantum physics is that electrons are limited to fixed levels about the nucleus and that the lowest level is a "ground state" that can't further degenerate into collapse with the nucleus. I believe the bohr model of the atom as a planetary-like system was discredited for the reason that electrons would collapse into the nucleus as they radiated their kinetic energy away as light. So I think it might have been Planck who found that they changed levels in fixed amounts or "quanta" and that they could only emit energy by dropping to a lower level or absorb energy by moving to a higher level.

My question with this is always if you had two objects and nothing else in the universe - if one object moved away from the other at escape velocity or greater, would it continue increasing its distance from the other object to infinity, or would it curve into a spiral whose expansion approached zero? If the spiraling would occur, you could say that gravity doesn't just have an effective range but that its range is determinant of spacetime expansiveness, no?

If the wobbling of the Earth put its center of gravity closer to the sun at certain moments in its rotation, wouldn't that cause its gravitation attraction with the sun to increase at those moments? Still, I'm wondering even if that would happen, wouldn't the equal and opposite reaction of the wobble mean that for every moment of increased gravitation and thus acceleration, there would be a corresponding moment of decreased gravitation and deceleration?

Maybe you could look at it as every person you come in contact with is a version of yourself with a different life course.

This is a really interesting interpretation of theology. I think there is some validity in it, though I would say that the defining factor is not so much rebellion as it is expression of (creative) power. Rebellion is a specific case of the exercise of creative power, because it implies power AGAINST something else, a 'status quo." This is where I think rebellion differs slightly from truly original creative power in that it's a reaction against something else. Since everything is attributed to God's original creation of creative power itself, all reactions against anything else are really a form of opposition against God, and thus satanic in the sense that "satan" means "opposer." You might wonder how it could be bad to oppose satan if satan opposes God, but I think this has to do with the basic philosophical/psychological logic of constructive vs. destructive orientation. I.e. an oppositional approach to doing good puts you in a negative orientation toward something else. Another way to look at it is that tempting good into fighting evil to destroy it is one way that evil can expand its territory. This is why wars seem to be growing fires of destructive reactions, imo, where each reaction to a provocation works to provoke new reactions. So rebellion is divine in a way, because it involves a liberation of creative/formative power from submission to authority. But it can also promote oppositional reactionism, which always ultimately has a deleterious/destructive effect, I think. When it leads to the opening of new possibilities for democratic discourse, it is good - but when it leads to an oppressive compulsion to side against whatever is defined as status-quo, it stifles democracy. You could see the same distinction between satan and Jesus. Satan rebells against God to compete with Him, which basically means that satan is trying to replace light with darkness, creation with destruction, goodness/love with beauty/pride, etc. Jesus, on the other hand, rebels against secular and religious authority because he sees them as having become corrupted and perverted away from God's will. But you may note that Jesus didn't go around raising an army to destroy Rome and Judaism. Instead he went around teaching the good word and ended up forgiving his persecutors in his last moments. Basically, Jesus only preached faith in Holy Spirit, which can involve rebellion against a status quo, so to speak, but it really just means divine inspiration to do good whether that involves deference to worldly authority or transcendence of it. In a way I think you could say that Holy Spirit transcends the whole dichotomy between obedience and rebellion because a person truly inspired by Holy Spirit acts independently in the interest of pure goodness regardless of what any authority has to say about it. So a truly inspired "rebel" would not get caught up in going against authority but instead be focussed on what they want to achieve and how to achieve it, whether that involves rebellion, reform, or collusion with authorities. I think too many rebels get seduced by the image of being revolutionary. They want to see their face on a T-shirt with Che Guevara or see their name in a history book. This is basically the ego-temptation that marks lucifer's shift from being top angel to opposer of God, i.e. he "fell" in love with his own beauty and desired to rule to be worshipped as God instead of wanting to use his power to achieve goodness for all (i.e. do God's will). So I think rebellion is a slight overstep of the liberation of creative power that is divinity, because it brings power down to the level of ego and opposition instead of it remained focussed on the achievement of goodness.

I'm not sure exactly which rich kids you're generalizing about now. I do know that a lot of wealth goes into maintaining property-price differences that are basically nothing more than a club-membership fee for displaying a socioeconomic status. So there are some houses that cost $300k-$600k a mile away from other houses that cost $50k-$150k. I mean, think about it. If you would buy a $150K house instead of a $300K house, you would have $150K to spend on cars or whatever else you wanted. Some people invest(ed) in property because they though it would be a good way to save and grow their wealth. The problem is that in the process, certain properties were made into "black sheep" to avoid, which drove down the property prices in those areas. Then, the surplus income this results in for the people paying lower prices gets spent and thus drives the rat-race to make more money to afford hyper-appreciating properties in the 'good areas.' That would seem to be one possible economic explanation of why you might be seeing some people with seemingly high levels of disposable income while other people seem to have less while actually probably having higher net worth.

I'm not sure how to definitively establish the answer to this. Either way, the pistons would cause more wear on the various bearings involved, I would think.

why no responses? Is this a silly topic or just boring?

I think this is one of those rare instances where we agree to some extent. I just don't agree with that little part where you say that the parents having a job or not makes it any better or worse for the kids to waste money like that. You imply that rich kids are causing less problems by setting the bar of consumerism high than when poor kids do it. They both stimulate an unnecessarily high level of consumer demand based on status-concerns that drives GDP to unsustainable levels.

There's no energy conserved by having the drive train all in continuous motion instead of oscillating? Doesn't it consume energy to stop and change direction numerous times per second at high speed?

I was just being cynical that every time there is a scientific crisis in the news, people expect it to result in horrifying sickness. I think you should read up on threads about radioactive materials and radiation before you make the usual assumptions about radioactivity. People tend to panic when confronted with powerful problems that they have little understanding and therefore control over. I'm not sure what the problem is other than the level of alert being raised to "7." That's why I asked you what specifically the problem is that you would like to do more to resolve.