MigL

I believe Phi can speak for himself, if he was offended. ( and if he was, I apologize, that was not my intent ) Is that where this forum is headed ? opposing views are not tolerated because they may offend ? Kind of takes the fun out of discussion, does it not ? Get off your high horse, INow. My right to an opinion supersedes, and trumps, your right not to be offended. ( are you the science Forums thought police ? )

Don't go getting all upset. ( note that I don't call your opinions 'crap', but I did think your first line was a group of laws) I simply pointed out that 'proposing' a law means specifying the repercussions of breaking that law. Yours was just a convenient example, but others, in this thread, have already proposed other 'laws'; all without specifying the consequences of non-abidance. Laws are supposed to make society more civil and equitable. What will enforcing that law do ?

And what if someone decided not to abide by these laws you propose, Phi ? Would you cast them out of your society ? Equivalent to immigration laws targeting those who don't share your values. ( are you one of D Trump's advisors ? ) Would you fine them ? In which case you re-introduce the financial hardships which cause the 'resort to criminal activities to feed their families'. ( also, a very simplistic analysis for criminal activity; there are many other causes ) Would you imprison them ? I've read your railings against the American prison system enough times to know you don't favor this approach. Would you subject them to endless 'forced' lecturing in an attempt to educate them ? As these laws have 'clear and specific benefits' already, this is equivalent to brainwashing to your point of view. Have I missed any other options ?

You're going to the Mediterranean for two weeks and you're gonna read ??? Greece isn't it ? I can think of much better things to do. ( grilled octopus, Ouzo, and seeing all the little islands by boat and scooter )

Intelligent machines depend on the 'bags of protoplasm' having achieved an intelligence level facilitating their construction. As such, they would be even more scarce ( being equivalent to a subset ). Not all intelligent life will develop intelligent machines. Not all will develop space travel. Not all will be able to communicate with EMR. Imagine if we had evolved underwater like dolphins/whales. Or on a gaseous giant planet and floated in the upper atmosphere. Or silicon based life, on a hot planet. What kind of challenges would we have developing the technology we take for granted ?

So I've gotta live with and depend on murderers, child molesters, rapists, indiscriminate suicide bombers and Nazis for a month ? Seems like an unusually harsh punishment. I might even be forced to live with and depend on people who post silly ideas on internet forums ? ( you change people's attitudes with education, not laws )

Time to go to bed and get some sleep, Mordred. ( you have a choice, I'm working till 7 am ) The above post is obviously meant for the 'Resistance leads to mass and time in 3 dimensions' thread.

Inertial mass-energy is common to all frames, as is space-time curvature. I assume you mean whether the kinetic energy gained through motion ( equivalent to relativistic mass ) is responsible for any 'additional' curvature ? Speed, and energy are both frame dependent, so you can always have a frame where there is no speed ( at rest ), and therefore no additional energy. So, no, there is no 'additional' space-time curvature.

Can't get to the papers from your links. Only thing I know about E T Whittaker is that, although he had a distinguished career in Mathematical Physics and Analysis, he indulged in a bit of revisionist history by attributing Special Relativity to H Lorentz and H Poincare, instead of A Einstein, who he claimed, only did a little tiding up after the fact.

I don't understand the significance of the J Goebbels quote, Dimreepr. I may be trying to kickstart this discussion again by presenting alternate viewpoints, but going straight to J Goebbels is a little much. If I posted a quote from M Gandhi expressing a nationalistic wish for Indian independence, would you classify that as 'right wing' ? My apologies INow, I was in a hurry when I attributed the link to CharonY.

Read the link that you were kind enough to provide, CharonY… https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html and without an explanation, that graphic is quite misleading. The data actually presented compares the Republican party to other Conservative parties of Europe and Canada. So, of course, the Republican party places to the right of THAT group. On the other side of the 'median', the Democratic party is compared to European Liberal parties. And, of course, it falls on the right of THAT group. I say 'median' because it is not really a median between Democrats and Republicans, but just shows where they fall in their groups. The data could have been presented as two separate graphics, each in their own group, and is not representative of where the American population feels the parties fall in the Political spectrum. Then there is the metric for placement... Not policies, but the number of right wing or left wing trigger words used in describing their policies. I wonder who gets to decide if a word like "nationalism' is a right wing word ? And for that matter, isn't every government populist by definition ?Governments are elected as representatives of the people, not to dictate agendas that the people don't want. So when did 'populist' become a right wing word ?

Thank you for popping in every once in a while and keeping us 'honest', Mordred. glad to have you back.

Nice. Thanks.

Despite being aesthetically pleasing, I don't find it thought provoking, or inspirational. IOW I don't get it. Then again, I'm a simple kind of guy

Asking people how they feel about issues, and how they vote are two different things. The data I'm looking at shows that less than 3 yrs ago, of 138 million Americans who voted, approximately 67.5 million voted conservative and 70.5 million voted democrat. That's pretty damn close to even. Are you implying that the rest of the eligible voters ( roughly 42 % would have voted overwhelmingly Democrat ? And if that is the case, then it is their fault that they couldn't be bothered to get out to vote, and we have to deal with a dysfunctional President ?

Absolutely true INow. But the French and Brits of Western Europe, and Canada, are not voting in your election. For better or for worse, American society has shifted to the right, so that the median of the American population can still be said to be centered between the two Parties; Irrespective of where the median is in other countries. While some of the Democratic contender positions seem perfectly sensible to us Canadians ( yes, even JC ), and our British friends on the forum, to the typical American, they are far out in left field; and that typical American IS going to be casting a vote.

"(And the president of the USA does not "rule the world", much as some of them would like to believe they do.)" Should that not be (And the president of the USA does not "rule the world", much as HE would like to believe HE does.)

Oh its even worse than that regarding K Harris. After reading that, I had a look at her Wiki page. Apparently she also spent some of her formative years, after her parents divorced and she moved away with her mother, in Montreal. Oh the horror ! She must be a separatist. Seriously though, 'race' is a two sided door. If you open the door to let your opinion out, you'll be letting in a whole lot of other's opinions; some not so nice. And I still think the posting was funny. It makes fun of the way politicians try to 'connect' with regular folks, when they are usually far removed. Like speaking Spanish to relate to Latinos; that you have little dealings with. Or relating your 'black' experience when your family was very affluent. And I'm sure we've all heard of the Republicans against gay rights, who are secretly 'experimenting'. Or ones claiming to be religious, who are ruthless businessmen, or are OK with gun violence. edit: If you don't find humor in this sort of thing, you're liable to snap, get a gun, and try to assassinate the President.

There is a difference between a 'mirror universe' and mirror particles which would exist in our universe. Mirror particles have their left/right symmetry switched ( as does a mirror ).

Read this posting on another forum I belong to ( Airliners.net ), that I thought was hilarious. "My liver hurts, haha...* Cory Booker's Spanish sucks. Robert Francis O'Rourke's isn't all that good either. But the pandering was in full bloom and it was hilarious. I was disappointed there was no Yiddish. Just a friendly reminder that Beto eats tacos with a fork, which is a deportable offense in Texas.* Pete Buttigieg is going to hurt himself if he falls off that high horse. Anyone else get the irony in him defending "all" religions (which would include Islam) even though he'd be fucking thrown off a roof in an Islamic country for being gay?* Marianne Williamsonoma is all kind of cuckoo. She made a few good points though, before going total batshit cray cray.* Kamala Harris is a fraud. Even beyond Willie Brown, she has no merit, talks a great game. She's not even "African-American" she's freaking Jamaican and Indian. And her family were slaveowners. GTFO with that. * Biden looks like he should just cash his chips and go to the titty bar. * Warren dominates the stage with her faux emotion. It was the best comedy I've seen in ages. SNL should hire her as a writer. * All 10 last night promised free health care for illegals. And Santa Claus is clearly on the ballot once again. Bottom line: we're probably fucked. By Slider Keep in mind I didn't actually see the debates, just some highlights, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the above descriptions, but even if true, they are all head and shoulders above the current occupant of the White House.

Wiki article on Branes... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane

A 'dimension' is the domain of "degrees of freedom'. As such, they help formulate the mathematical model of reality. And since mathematical models have been known to have predictive abilities, there is a chance that they may be real. They would either be 'rolled-up', but extremely small ( so far undetectable ) dimensions, and have properties of Calabi-Yau manifolds. Or they could be large scale, in which, lower dimensional 'branes' reside.

You would have to drain the system and 'winterize' it when temperatures get to below freezing, or you'll be testing the waterproofing of your roof shingles. We don't seem to get much Spring and Fall anymore ( when such a system would be effective ); just freezing Winters that go directly to scorching Summers.

The 'rifling' imparts the spin to the bullet in the barrel. That's where the bullet gains all its momentum ( linear and angular ). The spinning bullet's angular momentum resists changes to momentum along other axis. This gyroscopic effect will keep it from tumbling end over end ( the other axis ), due to destabilizing forces, and keep its nose pointing forward. These destabilizing forces are more prevalent in air, but even in space, rockets are subject to external forces, or imbalances in the thrust line caused by CG shifts ( a spinning unbalanced rocket will experience precession of its thrust line instead of larger and larger deviation ).

The spin imparts directional stability. Same reason a spinning top stays upright and doesn't fall over. It has nothing to do with air, and would give a space-going rocket more problems than it would alleviate.