ParanoiA

You mean they have to eat out? I don't understand the point in that. There's no one forcing them to go to McDonalds. I can feed my family on half of what you would spend at a fast food joint by going to the grocery store and it would have 10% of the crap Micky is selling you. Don't think I don't have sympathy. Even poor folk deserve some greasy food ever now and then, but that's a personal choice and there is no lack of alternative by any stretch of the imagination. On the contrary, eating out can present more of a lack of variety and price structure than the grocery store.

I know but his argument was: Those things I mentioned are bad for you, costly for 0 reason, can be replaced with minimal loss and their banning would represent a minor sacrifice for objective gain. Just imagine how narrow your choices would be if I could go through every restaraunt and use that mentality to "clean up" their menus. And why restaraunts anyway? Why is the labeling of ingredients good enough for the grocery store but not good enough for restaraunts? Typically restaraunt food is worse for you than home cooked meals. We know that. That's why it tastes so good. Most people don't go out to eat to adhere to their diet, but rather to splurge a little. Just like anything else in life, if you abuse it you get bad results. Drinking, eating, drugs...but you're not supposed to punish those of us who are responsible about it.

I'm having quite a time trying to interpret the graph in the "unaccelerated twin paradox" (the link within the link you provided above). I'm not sure why there are 3 observers rather than 2. One of them is moving -0.8660 lightspeed relative to O1 which isn't making any sense to me and I'm guessing O1 would be the equivalent of a stationary observer on earth since there is no spatial direction (assuming we're supposed to suspend the idea of earth's motion). O2 is the only one making sense to me since it's traveling through time and space, which seems to fit with the time dilation factor of 2 - I'm assuming means for every one hour experienced by O2 is two hours experienced by O1. I'm going to keep looking at this, but it sure would be nice to have an instructor with a chaulk board.

That makes sense, actually. 5614 tried to explain that to me and it sailed right past me. Funny how two people can say basically the same thing, but only one manages to get through. Although, it should still be testable through experiment of some kind. In reading about the airplane test with Keating, it seems more of a time dilation in reference to speed rather than in reference to gravity. But Swansont mentioned adjusting atomic clocks to account for distance from the earth - that, to me, sounds like the proof I was inquiring about. That's absolutely fascinating. It's almost like mass is "squeezed" into spacetime.

Interesting how that contradicts the very next statement... And I couldn't agree more. Too bad we can't figure out which statement trumps the other. Trans-fats are clearly the line in the sand huh? Because we need all the fat in the 70% ground beef don't we? And we need the fat drenched bacon served by IHOP don't we? And we need the fatty cream and sugar and whole milk dumped in our coffee don't we? I'm sure glad we have our priorities straight. And thanks for choosing what sacrifices I am to make. I would have never realized that I should be lumped in the same category as the rest of the gluttonous idiots that kill themselves with too much food...

Mokele - How's the view from the top of that soap-box? This is a debate forum is it not? There is value and insight to be gained by challenging the root of philisophical views - such as why the state should cast any judgement about marriage. At the voting polls, your fascination with pink and shitting valuable goods will not have much merit. Just like here, ignoring half of the debate doesn't make such an interesting discussion. I wouldn't normally have that opinion, because we could just well ruin every discussion by re-inventing the wheel so to speak, but in this case the whole hetero vs homo thing just doesn't offer much depth.

They keep saying this, but I wonder how many really were "duped" into it. We signed an ARM because it's fixed for 3 years at 5%, then jumps to whatever, but we plan on selling our house this spring. We weren't duped into anything, rather we made a business decision. I'm sure most of these are folks that are going to get burned, but I also wonder how many of these loans were done with the intent of getting out of the home before the ARM jumps. They may intend to refinance, but considering the closing costs they most certainly will suffer a net loss.

Bascule, are you familiar with Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer? That is the same technique used to clone Dolly the sheep. It is proposed in this Amendment 2 bill, close to the bottom where you didn't read. Read my post #25, or look it up on wikipedia or something and you'll see why they keep saying it doesn't ban human cloning - rather it protects it. However, you should also note that neither side (except for Rush Limbaugh...ahem) has pointed this out - directly! One side says it bans it. The other side says it doesn't. Neither one addresses what the other is saying. Except for Rush Limbaugh, which has said over and over again that it's the SCNT that is the cloning part. I haven't heard anyone else point that out - no one. Rush is the only one being honest about the debate and putting it all on the table. I disagree with him, but at least he's not hiding the truth or worthlessly repeating himself over and over again.

Yes, and because Claire McCaskill's support of Amendment 2 means absolutely nothing since it's a ballot initiative. So, that makes this worthless parade disingenuous on top of disturbing and shameful - more on Claire's part than Fox's. At this point I think he's being used and suckered into believing Talent wants to make an attempt at criminalizing it now, but if you vote for Claire, she'll make sure that doesn't happen. I don't see why the republicans don't do it too. They should produce a commercial parading deformed children, crack babies, burn victims, cancer patients and vegetables and show Jim Talent all teary eyed, looking to the heavens when the narrator says "elect someone who cares...elect Jim Talent". That would be effective and say absolutely nothing about what Talent has to do with those poor victims, just like the Fox ad. Either way, my give a damn busted...I'm voting yes for farming little humans and robbing their stem cells and I'm voting for Frank Gilmour for Senate.

From a literary point of view it sounds like a cool explanation of everything. Is this the backdrop of a fiction piece?

This is an interesting way of describing what's going on. I clicked on the link you provided too and glanced over it. I'm going to study all of this tomorrow and see if I can get my head around it. Before I continue, is it correct to equate a change of direction to acceleration?

You're trying to box up the argument. The point he brings up is why you feel the state should grant special priveledges to people to have sex together and pledge to do that forever. Instead of just questioning the hetero / homo dynamic, how about questioning this whole idea of moral judgements cast by the state?

I guess that's what I need to focus on is reference frame. The point Greene is trying to make is that Slim will see Jim's clock running slow, while Jim will see Slim's clock running slow. So, it sounds like you have to carefully think out all of the forces involved to establish if you have force-free motion. At that point, both observers have an equal claim on being stationary and the other's clock is running slow. Otherwise, one is accelerating which establishes who is in motion. So, how does acceleration really change anything, in terms of clocks running slow or fast? What if Slim were to slowly accelerate throughout his run from point A to point B, from 120 mph to 200 mph? Wouldn't they both still see each other's clocks running slower?

Ok, now that part I understand. Einstein's general relativity was validated by that event. What I'm talking about though is the time part. How do we know spacetime warps and not just space? I mean, is it just the math, or is there a way to validate that through experiment?

I understand, to an extent, that the timespace warpage is gravity. Or rather gravity is the medium we feel timespace warpage (I'm not sure how we "feel" time, but anyway...). What I don't understand is how we know about time warpage. I'm sure an experiment of some kind has proven this. The example used in the book is the rigidly rotating disk. I can see how an observer's clock on the edge of the rotating disk would run slower than the observer's clock in the center of the disk due to the speed and etc. And I can see how that is time warpage. But that's using acceleration to produce the gravity effect. How about real gravity? How do we know that time literally warps around large masses?

Yeah, and for the record I do not think MJF was acting. And I do think Rush was out of line suggesting it. Everything else is fair though. I believe that is the apology offered by Rush as well.

This is true. I'm curious though how he would handle a pro-marijuana caller now. Previously he would shut down any attempts to compare it to alcohol. That's always pissed me off, because alcohol is the only comparable precedent to use for advocating marijuana legalization. I think he knows that, and he knows it's much safer than alchohol and obviously safer and less addictive than pain killers...

Good point...carry on. I made the mistake of assuming you were advocating being better than him in your last post. I realize now, that you see the sense in his views.

There you go. Take the easy way out. With cheap shots like that, you should consider running for office.

I'm still trying to figure out how gay marriage somehow affects hetero marriage...

Excellent post Rhino. Here's another quote from that transcript that I believe is worthy of note and is a direct example of what I was talking about in my previous post to Sisyphus. This is one of those things that always struck me wrong, even though it seems to be well accepted and repeated. When Rush says stuff like this I say "Hell yeah! That's what I've always thought" as opposed to indoctrinating me with the conservative rhetoric. This is Rush on 10/24/06 -

Actually, the majority of Rush faithful are people who felt cut-off by liberal minded idiots that found their voice in Rush's program. For me, I didn't know how to articulate what I thought and felt about the message I was being brainwashed with throughout my early adult life. The first time I heard Rush I found myself saying over and over again "Hey, that's what I've always thought!" - I just didn't know how to say it. And I didn't have the background to support any of it. It's not the conservative message that has taken the country. It's the country that has taken the conservative message. That's why the liberals spend all of their time tearing down republicans rather than building themselves up, because the majority of the country doesn't want what they're building. It doesn't really mean anything though, because it will swing back before too long. The country will start yearning for the liberal message, and any liberals delivering that message will be heard, embraced and empowered. Then conservatives will be whining that liberals have duped the public into following them. And the only message they'll have is tearing democrats down. Both ideologies claim they stand for real freedom, while both of them attempt to legislate behavior and restrict freedom of choice. I just wish there was a liberal talk show personality that had an ounce of logic and substance to their views and spent all 3 hours pounding away at it - and could do it without government funding - like Rush. They've tried and they've failed...numerous times. And don't say it's because conservatives made too big of a footprint on radio, because it's been reported that almost half of Rush listeners are liberal. I don't know if I can find the source on that or not, it's been a few years, but I'll see if I can find it. Anyway, I've got stop it with these long freaking posts....

"All stem cell research is legal today in Missouri," Limbaugh countered. "Jim Talent does not seek to criminalize it, as Michael J. Fox asserts in his television commercial. The truth is, Amendment 2 would put human cloning in the Missouri Constitution. Michael J. Fox is participating in this disinformation campaign" He's exactly right. But like I said earlier, it's all semantics. This is why both sides of this thing pisses me off. Republicans want to act like cloning blastocysts via somatic nuclear cell transfer is equivalent to cloning a human being - it's not. And the democrats want to pretend there's no cloning going on at all. They should be up front about it. Most people actually support abortion. If they're going to support abortion, I would think they would support cloning, stem cell harvesting and killing the farmed embroyo. I know that's really apples and oranges, but I think it's in the same vein however. There's a damn good reason for the minimal cloning going on. So, why doesn't the Yes Vote crowd address that rather than repeating themselves over and over again? I want this stem cell initiative to pass. I'm all for it. But I don't think being disingenuous about the facts is the way to go about it. Because I couldn't possibly think of these things on my own now could I? CNN hasn't done anything to deserve being aligned with terrorism now have they? And where in the hell did I use the word "conspiracy"? You're as bad as Bascule with your hate blinding your wisdom. You're making the same mistake everybody makes who doesn't listen to Rush. They think we're all brainwashed drones that don't think for ourselves. They also think that a dittohead is someone who agrees with everything he says. We laugh when you do that. I listen to conservative radio talk show hosts because that's the only place in the media I can get the meat and potatoes of ideological beliefs. I've tried the liberal versions...Yawn...they don't have any substance, they're slow, too much air. I can listen for hours and if I'm still awake I still have no idea why they believe what they believe. But, I can listen to Rush for 15 minutes and learn why he believes something - something that either pisses me off or gives me relief. It's busy, it's moving, it doesn't put me to sleep. It would be in your best interest to respect your adversary and use it to your advantage. Rush is responsible for my interest in politics as well as my descent from conservative ideology. Without Rush and other conservative talk show hosts, I would never know how or why they believe what they believe in order to know I don't agree with it. Whether you like it or not, Rush is a very smart man. I listen to his show about a half hour during lunch most days of the week and I listen for callers that believe what I believe and then listen to Rush counter them. Through various callers I get to vicariously argue with Rush, and thereby test what I believe. Isn't that what most of us are doing in this forum? He's a worthy opponent, if nothing else, so if my ideas can survive Rush's criticism, then I feel confident in what I believe. I'm more like southpark's creator Trey Parker - I can't stand conservatives, but I f*cking hate liberals. I mean that more figuratively, I don't literally hate them as people - rather their silly ideas and smug elitist attitudes. And I believed that before I ever heard of Rush Limbaugh.