Cadmus

Interesting. This is one of the things that I dislike most about him. He is quite willing to use his influence to force his bizarre set of poorly thought out moral "values" down our throats. In his state of the uniion address, he talked about spreading freedom around the world, all the while doing his best to reduce freedoms here.

I realize that you are one for calling a spade a spade, but I do disagree with your wording in this case. You talk about whether or not it is right to kill her. I consider this only partially valid. She is already dead. All that remains is a shell around a dead person. If she were not already dead, in the minds of many people, then this entire fight would take a different shift. I don't really think that she has a life to prolong, at least in the sense that life is defined legally or in my mind.

Yes, we are smarter. Our species is evolving, slowly, and this evolution improves smarts. 2,000 years is pproximately 50 generations. That is not a lot of evolution in the context of the totality of our species, but it is not zero either. However, for a valid response, it wouldn't hurt to explain what you mean by smarter.

Your suggestion that language contains useless words of any sort is not well thought our. The word the is useful. It does not appear in all langauges, such as Russian. The word the indicates to the reader/listener that he is familar with the noun in question. For example, give me an apple and give me the apple. Give me an apple is non-specific, and the listener can expect that the speaker does not necessarily have a specific one in mind. Give me the apple makes it clear that a specific apple is desired, and the listener is expected to know which one it is. Such a concept is obviously not useless. It is not mandatory in language, and many langauges do not use definite articles. Indo-European languages do, however.

The purpose of school is to teach the wisdom of others. Without repeating their research, how can we but parrot what they say? We should not take what we learn at school as fact, but we should still try to use it without full acceptance.

Let me give some advice. I recommend that you never, ever accept anything in science as absolute fact. Now, wasn't that easy? Science is not about fact, and it is always open to analysis and revsion. While you do not accept it as absolute fact, which is a good thing, surely you must be aware that there is no chance that relativity could ever answer all questions, and for you to understand all of the questions that it attemps to answer is also not realsitc. Are you suggesting that you will ignore the theory unless and until you find it to be perfect?

Yes, but time is not what a clock measures. I disagree. Clocks measure their own passgage through time. They do not demonstrate any relationship to how other objects pass through time, except in an objective sense, which is the least useful sense from the perspective of relativity.

I think that it must be you who is using a non-standard use of relativity. Time is the same nowhere, certainly not everywhere on earth. You must be speaking in terms of measuring time using an objective, third-party device, rather than in terms of the objects whose time is being considered.

I think that you are being somewhat limiting in the way that you frame this. In the sense of relativity, clock time is irrelevant to how fast time passes. When one year of clock time passes, that does not mean that the exact same amount of time has passed for every person on earth, except in a non-relativistic, objective manner of thinking.

Is that all you can see in my example? Perhaps you were ripped off at school. Here is your chance to rectify that. Don't waste it.

How can you say that? It has everything to do with physics.

This "all" has tremendous implications. When you age, is it not physiological? There are always a physiological component to the aging of organisms. OK. I recommend that you now reconsider your belief in a new light.

You are welcome. I find it odd that you are attempting to be so picky here, yet you appreciate and attempt to justify the sloppy grammar in question that lead to the requirement to guess at the meaing involved.

The object is question is always in your time. The difference is its rate of motion through its time. Have you ever watched a friend age quickly after a negative traumatic experience? You and your friend were in the same time, but your rate of motion through time was not the same.

The point is the linear dimension did not exist before the big bang, and did exist after the big bang. Therefore, it is possbile to consider that it, and other dimensions, came into existence with the big bang. This statement is contrary to your statement. My point is that I think that your statement in the earlier post is not necessary.

I recommend that you tell him that god made it that way, and that ours is not to reason why. If he has no interest in your explanations, then spend your intellectual time with someone with intellectual interests, not with someone who closes his eyes and demands that you make him see.

I see that you are one of those who encourages sloppiness in language. Yes, let us be sloppy, so that we do not have to take responsibility for our words, and if others do not recognize what our sloppiness means we can always blame it on them. So intent are you on making this point that you do not care that the example that you cite is particularly egregious. I do not need to tell you that sloppy langauge reflects sloppy thinking, and that yo should attempt to sharpen up your language skills. I am sure that you already know that. If you prefer "sloppy as your friends" over clarity, feel free. You call it quaint that I ask that people select grammar for the purpose expressing what they mean rather than to be hip and sloppy. Ha ha.

In mathematics, the concept of proof is very important. In physics, it is an obstacle. You should not think in terms of proof. The notion that the universe is a flux of space-time, both of which vary in motion is extremely useful, in light of available evidence. No single piece of evidence, or even all of it together, either proves or is designed to prove anything. The purpose of theories in physics is to provide a useful context for framing understanding. It is certainly possible to develop alternate theories based on the evidence, and many people do so. Are you asking why many people here seem to accept the basic tenets of relativity? I am not sure of the purpose of your question.

Space at the time of the Big Bang can be conceptualized as a point. Upon the bang, space expanded linearly, etc., etc. Linear motion of space upon the bang constitutes a dimension, does it not?

How do you know this?

In the context of languages, the word ancient refers to 2,000 - 10,000 years ago. Perhaps you mean proto Grunt-and-Point.

I am afraid that I don't follow how it cannot be infinite in size because it is expanding from the big bang.

I think that you are working under an arbitrary assumption, which discounts the popular idea of inflation. For you to make this statement, I believe that you must accept the idea of the Big Bang, 15 billion years ago. However, if the universe is only 15 billion years old, then how could it already be infinite in size and filled completely with stars?