Severian

One could certainly ague that the "war on terror" has sent Pakistan in the wrong direction. In the name of 'security' they have delayed and delayed democratic elections. It seems that the west no longer regards democracies as the best choice form of government for its allies.

thanks

Orissa. I visited Bhubaneshwar.

I visited India in January and I must admit my overwhelming reaction was shock at the poverty.

I have just started watching this, but I missed the mini-series and the first 3 episodes of series 1. Could someone give me a quick summary of the important things that happened?

I meant there is a historical precedent in the region for the use of terrorism. I of course think attacking civilians in any form is atrocious. However, I do think that Israel is creating its own problems. If Hezbollah and Hamas were to attack only Israeli military targets I think they would get a lot more support from Europe.

The Standard Model has no such symmetry, so in the Satandard Model you eithe have to claim that there is no new physics (i.e. abandon quantum gravity altogether) or you the natural Higgs mass is 1019 GeV (which won't float). There are two ways you can get around this: 1. Introduce a new symmetry. The symmetry which is most used is supersymmetry but it could be a new gauge theory that is broken at some higher scale so we haven't seen yet. 2. Think up some reason why the Planck scale (the characteristic scale of gravity) should be at 1TeV or so (which makes the natural Higgs mass also 1 TeV or so). The most popular way of doing this is using extra dimensions, so gravity is not weak because of the high Planck scale, but is weak because it is leaking into the extra dimensions.

For me [math]\vec{\nabla}[/math] (or I suppose [math]\nabla_i, \, i=1...3[/math] to be consistant with the component notation I will use for the others) is an ordinary three-derivative, while [math]\partial_\mu, \, \mu=0...3[/math] is a four-derivative, and finally [math]{\cal D}_\mu,\, \mu=0...3[/math] is a covariant derivative.

Terrorism worked for Israel. Why wouldn't it work for Lebanon and Palestine?

That hardly constitutes determinism being "up in the air". Everyone agrees that Quantum Mechanics is non-deterministic (even Stephen Hawking), and QM (or rather QFT) has been very well tested. Non-determinism has, in my opinion, been proven by the Bell inequality. I think Stevie is just trying to sell books with that sort of comment.

I agree entirely. No provocation excuses violence.

You have something against Bell's Theorem?

To be perfectly honest I have never been a big fan of Wikis. Since anyone can post on them they are quite often rather inaccurate, or hold rather biased views. That is fine in itself, but people have a tendancy to attribute them with more authority than they should really have and that is a bit dangerous.

You mean things like [math]F_{\mu \nu || \rho ||}[/math]? I have never seen that notation before.

You need \{ giving [math] \{F_{uv\vline\gamma}\}=0[/math] That one is easy' date=' it is just ||, eg. [math']||A||[/math] for a norm. I am a bit confused by why you would use it for a coviant derivative though (maybe this is not what you meant?). I would write a covaraient derivative as [math] {\cal D}_\mu[/math]. This is a bit more complicated because you need to use \left and \right e.g. [math]\left. F \right|_{x=0} = 0[/math]

It is this equality where the error is: It should read [math]-\sqrt{-1} = -\sqrt{(-1)^{2} \times -1} [/math] (In other words [math]-1 \neq \sqrt{(-1)^2}[/math])

There is a big debate going on in physics at the moment about the concept of what makes a theory "natural". Clearly there are certain properties which make a theory attractive, such as its ability to describe experimental observations, it simplicity and its predictivity (i.e. how well it contrains possible realities). Naturalness is slightly more of an aesthetic concept which is why it often so controversial, but it has been used in the past and is still being used to prefer certain theories over others. Its most 'scientific' manifestation is in what is known as 'fine-tuning'. The analogy often used is of a radio station transmitting on a very narrow frequency band. In order to pick up the signal you will have to wiggle the tuner about in very small amounts to find just the right frequency. If you go to far to the right or left you miss the signal. Using a radio with a very wide band over which you can track you will find it difficult to find a narrow band transmission. This is a bit like some physics theories. Let's assume that the theoretical model contains a parameter [math]\lambda[/math] just like the wavelength of a signal that a radio picks up. However, for most values of [math]\lambda[/math] you find that the theory makes very physically unrealistic predictions (e.g. an unstable vacuum), and in order to get good physical predictions you need to have a very very specific value of [math]\lambda[/math]. (In the anaology you need to tune the radio very carefully to pick up the signal.) This is called a 'fine-tuned' theory, and it has always been generally regarded as a very negative property for a theory to have. The most famous example in my field is the mass of the Higgs boson in the Standard Model. There is a parameter in the theory which has to be fine tuned to approximately one part in 1030 in order to give a Higgs boson mass which is physically reasonable. Many people believe that this tells us that the Standard Model is wrong and must be replaced or extended. However, this is really an aesthetic problem. In reality each parameter must have one value, so why should one value be regarded as any less likely than any other. I am curious as to what non-physicists' views of fine-tuning would be - do you think it is a problem?

I think you are thinking of human females.

Well, the current actions of the Israeli givernment are not doing much to promote peace: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5171148.stm

That is interesting, particularly for me since I have an older brother who is not genetically related (he was adopted). Presumably the next thing to test would be to see if homosexual men's mothers had a higher number of miscariages than normal (before their birth). In other words, do the babies have to be brought to term to have an effect?

It must be true to some extent, although the curve will be a bit skewed. If you collect 0% taxes then your tax revenue is 0. So the point at the extreme left of the plot is correct. If you collect 100% taxes then no-one will bother going to work and society will collapse, so the point to the right of the plot is correct. In between, the tax revenue will always be positive, so there must be some point between 0% and 100% where the tax revenue is maximal. It is just a case of figuring out where that maximum is. If the decrease in tax rate leads to a decrease in revenue (as the Economist suggests) then we must still be to the left of the maximum.

You are jumping to conclusions.

Why? What was said?