MigL

Of course I do, John. But do you also accept that there's no logical route from 'deluded or lying nut-job on FOX News' to 'all Conservatives are insane' ?

Well some Frenchmen would argue that Napoleon WAS same, why would it make him insane to claim so ? ( was that a bad joke, if so, my apologies )

Now you're gonna bring race into this, Ten oz ? Middle class is middle class, no matter what the race. The point was, John, that it only seems like the middle class is a lot worse off because we are addicted to unnecessary luxuries that our parents made do without in the 50s. To them it was more important to raise kids provide them homes and education, to us it seems the 'luxuries' are more important and then we complain we can't afford the necessities. But this has nothing to do with stratospheric CEO salaries.

No I never implied a 'greater good". I mean that if the family on the other side can never interact or influence my life ( other than by throwing the bomb over the wall ), are they really there ? Are they not just an 'idea' or 'concept' as compared to my 'real' family ?

Neither delusional or dishonest is in any definition of insane. Neither does he represent ALL who label themselves 'conservative'.

Come-on are you guys really comparing the lifestyles of the 50s to today ? Sure you could afford to live on one job and raise two kids and buy a house and car. But what un-needed luxuries did you have ? How many large ( 50 "+ ) flat screen TVs are in your household ? How many cell phones and plans are in your household ? How much is your internet/cable/satellite/movie network ?How many times a week do you and your family go out for dinner ? How many cars do you own ? How much un-needed food/snacks do Americans buy ( obesity levels ) ? Etc. If you're going to compare incomes and costs of the 50s to today, you have to consider the excesses of today in costs also.

What difference does it make ? No-one wants to die. But to make it interesting leave out the paper note. The bomb is the only thing going over the wall. Even if you know there is another family on the other side, you will never be able to meet or communicate with them, and they have no influence on your life other than a guilty conscience. Would you kill every inhabitant of the planet orbiting a star 10000 LY away to save all life on Earth ? Of course.

Agree with you Ten oz. But as I stated in a previous post, no murderer who has received the death penalty has ever killed anyone else. Is there a case to be made for the death penalty as prevention when rehabilitation is impossible and the risk to re-offend is high ? And what would be needed as guidelines for this use of the DP ? how could you guarantee the 'proper and just' ( if even possible ) application ? Here in Canada, there is no DP, but you can be incarcerated indefinitely, for certain classes of crimes, if there is high risk to re-offend or no hope for re-habilitation, everything else is subject to parole. Could a case be made for substitution with the DP ? Or is this a separate topic ?

Not a fan of the death penalty for various reasons, but some ideas presented so far beg for an argument... The death penalty is not about prevention, but revenge? Number of people killed by convicted murderers released from jail ? Too many ! ( did not look it up as its not needed for the argument ) Number of people killed by convicted murderers who were given the death penalty ? ZERO !

I would take issue with one of the things mentioned by other members. Gravity itself is not necessarily geometric. The best model we currently have, GR, is geometric.

You seem to have the expression "survival of the fittest" confused with evolution. At the very least, you do not understand the context of 'fittest'. Your housefly 'experiment' from a couple of posts back indicates that you have a general grasp of how the environment favors those best adapted to it. So would it simplify things for you if the new slogan for evolution was " survival of those best adapted to their environment" ? ( Note that this isn't strictly true either. ) The meaning of 'fittest' is not necessarily stronger, faster, more reproductive, more intelligent, more dexterous, etc, but it could be.

Oh my. Someone is upset because they chose the easy ( but wrong ) way, without doing the foundational work needed for understanding, and got called on it. I'd suggest learning at lest some of what's 'in the box', before making any forays outside. until then, suck it up, buttercup.

WOW !! I just realized what terrible teachers we would all make. This is a 14-15 yr old kid who, at least for the first two pages, showed more maturity than most of us members. Come-on, cut him some slack. He has asked for help. There are numerous schools that have debates on whether Hitler was good for Germany or not. We all know the answer but it 'broadens' the mind to have to consider the other side; i.e. it helps you LEARN ! About 15 yrs ago I had surgery on my eyes for glaucoma. The eyes are nothing but a personal petrie dish. Before and after the surgery I had to instill anti-biotics into my eyes daily. The prescription is only good for 2 weeks and must be changed after that. Also the same anti-biotic is never re-prescribed. There is a very simple reason for this. In any population there are a certain number that are better suited to their environment. In my eyes, with anti-biotic A instilled, 95% ( say ) of the bacterial population was killed, but 5% of the population was resistant to anti-biotic A, and so survived. They passed on the genetic information which made them resistant, and two weeks later, the whole bacterial population is now resistant to anti-biotic A. They have 'evolved' to a new strain and to control this new strain, we have to introduce a new 'forcing' into their environment ( my eyes ). This modification to their environment is in the form of anti-biotic B. This again goes through the same two week process, resulting in a new bacterial strain that is now resistant to Anti-biotics A and B, and so on, and so on. Now you could argue that this is intelligent design, as we, an intelligence, are 'breeding' or designing these new bacterial strains, but we'd be fooling ourselves. It is merely a population surviving various environmental hardships by leveraging random mutations and passing those mutations from one generation to the next. Is that not evolution ?

4001 now ! Keep it up. Considering an idea or someone 'foolish' is an opinion Phi, everyone does it, including you. Sometimes it is a shared or common opinion as is often demonstrated on this forum. Would it have been more appropriate to have written ' who doesn't suffer what I also consider to be fools, gladly' ? And I meant 'opinionated' in that he had an opinion on everything, not an aversion to new viewpoints. It seems to me that we already have rules in place for dealing with religious 'preaching'. Everything that is presented, as fact or opinion, on this forum needs to be backed with the relevant thinking behind it or source. The bible cannot be used as the source, because it has been scientifically demonstrated to be mostly fiction or allegory at best. A slightly tighter application of existing forum rules, along with totally ignoring the OP once deemed in violation of said rules, would quickly cut down the never-ending preaching that sometimes happens. Some of the other ideas, like the 'thinking' which gives rise and supports religious beliefs are to me, and quite a few others, it seems, quite interesting, and I would hate for those babies to be 'thrown out with the bathwater'. ( sorry Phi, I happen to like these little sayings, that's all they really are, I' not trying to stifle discussion )

I would weigh in that maybe we are looking at the wrong metrics. Are the 'middle class' really worse off today than in the 50s ? First, 'middle class' is fluid and loosely defined, but look at the amount of disposable income available today, in North America and Europe. We spoil ourselves with every new gadget that comes on the market ( iPhones ? ), buy a new car every 3 yrs where in the 50-60s it would have lasted 10 to 15 yrs, buy so much food ( and waste so much of it ) that we are are killing ourselves with diabetis and heart disease. We want all this new useless crap, but then say we can't survive on minimum wage. But that isn't really about wealth inequality, is it ? As for taxation levels, 0 and 100% are obviously non-starters. Someone HAS to take care of those who are disadvantaged and basic common needs ( defense, immigration, infrastructure upkeep, etc. ) and since the government is monopolistic, there are bound to be inefficiencies ( but competition leads to its own problems so we put up with it ). Giving it all to the government to do as it sees fit, however, is a lot like Communism, and can only possibly work in idealized conditions. It tends to breed the 'lowest common denominator'. If you cannot get any farther ahead than someone else, why bother to try harder ? So the happy medium is somewhere between 0 and 100% taxation, but where exactly is an opinion that's different to different people, depending on their individual priorities, and the reason we have elections, John. But that isn't really about wealth inequality either, is it ? The truth is I don't have an answer for reasons or solutions to the great disparity in wealth in our countries. I consider myself middle class, and it seems like the middle class is the majority of people and holding steady. Sure it could be improved, but comparing a 'wealthy' nation like China, where there are more billionaires than anywhere else, a relatively small middle class, and about 1 billion people living at or below what a poorer nation like Canada would consider poverty levels, I don't think we are doing that badly. As for the top 1%, or at least the CEOs with 'obscene' salaries ( even when the companies they run are tanking ) maybe it is time the government got involved. But keep in mind that a lot of these politicians see CEO positions as 'parachutes' for when they leave office, and are reluctant to regulate them.

There are examples of other galaxies in the process of colliding, or having already collided. The two core SMBH will more than likely. fall into orbits about each other, and will keep rotating happily everafter. Or at least, far longer than any of us should care.

By definition, the event horizon forms at the radius where the orbital speed becomes greater than c. This is of course for a simple non-rotating ( ie non-existent ), non-charged black hole. If the universal speed limit was 15000 mi/hr, there would be an event horizon about the earth, RobbityBob, and no stable orbits below a certain height, just like a black hole. There are of course, other ways to describe what happens at the event horizon, such as space-time curvature and light cone tipping that Strange was alluding to.

Completely understand, swansont. It was meant more as a joke ( why does no-one get my sense of humor ? ). I just like poking fun at Sean Connery. Like Will Farrel in the 'Jeopardy' skit on SNL.

So then we ARE all in agreement ? There are causes other than religion, and holy book teachings which are responsible for Islamic radicalism. That was Vexen's original premise, was it not ?

The original disagreement stems from Robbitybob's post #27 where he asks about a free falling light clock, a beam of light bouncing back and forth, from side to side, say in a free-falling elevator. He wants to know whether the light beam will show a deflection from the horizontal or not . To which xyzt replied that since they follow different trajectories, yes, there will be a deflection from the horizontal. That, is what I had a problem with. And I would imagine its now time to move on.

How many people were killed by an UNARMED person last year ?

I understand the math just fine xyzt, just don't do LaTex. You don't seem to understand English and seem to have a bad disposition. You are right in your remark to Theoretical that photons cannot accelerate though.

Looks evil to me.

It is the 'communication' between masses that you refer to in post #78, JohnSSM, which Einstein detested. In Newtonian gravity, what tells a test mass that it is in the influence of the gravitational field of another mass ? Einstein did not like this 'action at a distance' ( even in later years when dealing with the EPR paradox and entanglement ), so GR takes away that need for 'communication' between the gravitating mass and the test mass. The test mass is not being told what to do by the gravitating mass, but is simply following geodesic paths in space-time. Now, you being fairly perceptive, have noticed that this is simply a moving of the goalposts. There is no longer a need for 'communication' between the masses as the test mass is just following space-time curvature. But how is the gravitating mass 'communicating' with local space-time to 'tell' it how to curve ? We understand the causes, the magnitudes and propagation speed of space-time curvature ( gravity ), but unfortunately, not the mechanism. Maybe a quantum field theory of gravity will give some insight into a mechanism for the 'bending' of space-time. P.S. Its been refreshing discussing this with you. A lot of people who post in Speculations don't take too well to criticism of their pet theory. Hope you stick around, learn, teach, and make some friends.

What do you mean this isn't a democracy, swansont ? I just painted a little Hitler mustache on your picture of Sean Connery !