Sisyphus

I think the social categories of race - white, black, etc. - tend to confuse the issue more. Yes, there are genetic markers that vary widely in prevalence between populations. However, where one draws a line between "races" is very much a social artifact. For example, there is more genetic diversity in sub-Saharan Africa than the rest of the world combined. Yet we all lump all the (dark-skinned) people who live there together as "black," along with the descendents of African slaves living in America, most of whom are also descended from northern Europeans. And so on. So: is race biologically real, or is it a social construct? Both. Kind of. People who need things to be in simple categories will be frustrated.

It's entirely speculative, obviously, but I would guess so, just because it's true on smaller scales. Something like 95% of murders are committed by men. Women just seem much less prone to use violence. (That's not to say that women get along more harmoniously, just that physical violence is a much less used "weapon" when they don't.) You could argue that wars aren't started for the same reasons that individuals murder each other, but perhaps more fundamentally they pretty much are.

Cool. So if the sun orbits the Milky Way center @ 485,000 miles an hour and we orbit the sun @ about 67,000 miles an hour and the moon orbits earth at about 2,288 miles an hour hen how fast does are the orbitals of an atom? Wouldn't it all be relative to size?

No, it's not relative to size. The orbitals of an atom don't really have a speed in the same sense that the Earth has a speed going around the sun. "Orbitals," despite the name, are very different from orbits.

Some publications say its the sheer mass pulling in on itself, others say its due to the orbit and spin?

Planets are spherical because they are pulled that way by their own gravity. Spin has nothing to do with that, but it can make the sphere bulge around the equator. The Earth, like most planets, is a slightly flattened sphere called an oblate spheroid. Molecules are not spherical, generally, but if and when they are it is not because of the same forces. Only very massive objects get pulled into spheres by gravity.

And also can the Milky Way be compared to a hurricane? What is in the eye? We are one of many solar systems and other debris flying around at what speed? Do we know that?

The Milky Way and a hurricane are formed by very different forces and have very different structures, and there's no particular reason to compare them. There is no "eye" in the Milky Way - in fact it is densest at the center. Different stars orbit the center at different speeds. Our solar system is currently orbiting the center at about 780,000 km/h (485,000 mph)

By the principle of Newton's cannon, point 3 where

But note there that the origin point is already above the Earth's atmosphere. That ellipse of the orbit will intercept the origin point (the cannon on the mountaintop), as it must, unless some secondary force is applied to it while it's already in flight. There is no way to fire a cannonball from the Earth's surface such that it will neither escape Earth's gravity entirely nor intersect the surface again.

I think I'm right.

Why?

At what rate are animals disappearing because of global warming?

 

I heard that the extinction rate is phenomenal and is as high as it has ever been. But how high is it exactly?

 

Does anybody know?

It's difficult to get precise figures on rates of extinction in the past and present, but yes, most estimates put the current extinction rate at much higher than background rates - perhaps even thousands of times higher. While global warming might contribute to that, it's much less of a factor (so far) than things like habitat loss, introduction of invasive species, and overhunting causing ripple effects through whole ecosystems. This has been going on for thousands of years, and continues to accelerate. Basically, you've got one species, humans, suddenly (in geological timespan) exploding in population, occupying every ecosystem on Earth, and modifying its environment to an extreme degree. Of course there is going to be tremendous disruption and mass extinction.

The rebels have broad popular support throughout the Arab world. Are they all plants of Western governments? What about in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, etc.?

I think you have a very unrealistic notion of how "happy, fed, and satisfied" the average Libyan is.

No, there's no credibility whatsoever. If you want to talk about the reasons for anti-semitic paranoia, that might be interesting, but I'm not sure it really belongs in Politics.

 

 

So it makes me wonder why it is that so many others such as yourself are always running into Catholics/Christians who are "offended" by non-Christians, who have a problem with non-Christian holidays, who feel non-Christians are heretics, who don't want to admit others are non-Christian, who don't want non-Christians to have a good holiday, who feel non-Christians are hell-bound, who are intolerant, and above all, who are apparently expressing these beliefs to anyone within earshot, else how could you and others know that they feel this way.

I don't know. But I do have several friends whose entire families are like that, and I see those views expressed incessantly on conservative talk shows every holiday season, with calls to boycott stores that say "happy holidays." I also know a lot of liberal Christians who don't care at all. My maternal grandparents were very liberal and very devout Catholics, for example. It's just puzzling to me that you apparently don't know any conservatives.

In fact, I see more intolerance on this site toward Christians, than I've ever seen anywhere exhibited by Christians.

Well that I find impossible to believe.

Yeah. What kind of person asks rhetorical questions, anyway?

Someone trying to make a rhetorical point. Who doesn't know that?

People used to say 'Merry Christmas' and have Christmas parties at work every year. Then it became politically incorrect to say 'Merry Christmas' and Christmas parties became 'holiday parties' due to the fact that some non-Christians might be offended. I think the people who get in a tizzy over 'happy holidays' object that such an important celebration in their religion is something that should be hidden or is somehow offensive to others. It is not the non-Christians saying 'happy holidays' that is so objectionable to Christians, it is the Christians who say 'happy holidays' due to political correctness, instead of openly acknowledging the holiday that celebrates the birth of Christ.

Christmas is a holiday, no? "Happy holidays" obviously includes "merry Christmas." The only difference is that it also includes non-Christians holidays, so clearly that's what they have a problem with. That not everyone is a Christian is offensive. Or, according to you, what's offensive is that other Christians are willing to admit that not everyone is a Christian. Or at least, that other Christians want non-Christians to have a good holiday, despite their heretical beliefs, or something. (Though it's more than that, since a lot of the "outrage" is at stuff like corporate stores having signs that say "happy holidays.")

While I understand that a Christian might object to implying some equivalency between the "true faith" and false, hellbound ones, that's not a concern that I am at all sympathetic to, and more importantly it's simply not feasible to be so intolerant in a diverse society, even if you are in the majority.

And I also get that a lot of people are annoyed by what they perceive as "political correctness." They're told they're supposed to do something different than how they've always done it without being given a satisfactory explanation why, and that's annoying. However, if they thought about it at all on their own, they would see there's no actual reason to be upset.

Government funded?

People’s sense of entertainment can become perverted. Think back to ancient Greece where people were forced to fight one another in colosseums for other people’s entertainment.

You're thinking of Rome, and in that case it's pretty clear that the people forced to fight to the death are victims. Since I don't think anyone here is defending sex slavery, how is that related?

Remember:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Irish philosopher

What's at issue is whether it's evil in the first place.

EDIT: Also, why is this in the religion forum?

The answers to all of those questions depend on what sort of god we're talking about. This:

the famous one, the omnipotent, omnipresent one etc

doesn't mean much to me. What do we know about this god that has been proven to exist?

I was hoping you'd notice the irony in your post, and my response to your post without me having to put an emoticon. Sorry if you took it seriously.

Yes, I knew you were making a joke. I thought that was clear. Damn you, forum medium!

It's because you're stupid.

Random abuse, of course, remains robust.

The two anecdotes cancel. Pppl don't change.

But last time, the anecdotes didn't cancel.

I have not personally noticed any uptick in malevolence.

Welcome aboard, Zjar. Glad you like the forum.

You did not observe your own conception, therefore it was impossible, therefore you don't exist.

"But surely you can infer..."

Sorry, can't hear you if you don't exist.

Sorry science is wrong.A type of a creator exists that started by making microorganisms and continued by building more complex structures.

For someone who claims to have "lost faith to evolution," you seem to have found something else very specific to be faithful to very quickly, for no apparent reason.

Instead of doing that, why don't you learn more about evolution? All of your objections to it seem to be based on misunderstandings of what evolution is and how it occurs.

This explains why microorganisms remained microorganisms, Mollusks remained mollusks etc etc.

No, it doesn't. Evolution, on the other hand, does. If you don't understand why, then you really have no business declaring that "science is wrong." (And if you have no interest in learning, then please leave this forum.)

Microorgansims of all sorts are extremely successful at reproducing, and that's the only thing that evolution favors. It does not make things "better" according to some human definition or preference. So yes, of course there are still microorganisms. Why shouldn't there be?

Yes, it's a valid question. I'm saying it's not a different question than how do they attract one one another.

Well that was not very clever from LightHeavyW8 to think that an object traveling at 0,7c will go faster than c. I hope I am not that bad... I am not arguing in favor of superluminal velocity, quite the contrary.

Nice work from Janus, indeed.*

What you're arguing is almost identical, just inverted. He was arguing that because the closing speed was 1.4C (true), that the speed limit isn't C (false). You are arguing that since the speed limit is C (true), the closing speed isn't 1.4C (false)! You're both operating on the same flawed premise that the two things are mutually exclusive. You just picked a different statement as "true."

Still thinking, that Iggy showed the speed of the reduction of a distance which was part of the definition of the speed.

Surely that's the entire definition.

If there were 60 objects placed radialy around the observer, all rushing to him, what is the physical meaning of the sum of 60 distances and the rate they diminish (that can be many times the speed of light, if the 'objects' are light rays)?

You wouldn't sum 60 distances. You would sum at most 2, depending on what you're looking for. And since no velocity can be greater than C, the sum is at most 2C.

What i wanted to say previously, but Iggy's post cut my enthusiasm, is that the formula of relativity for compositions of velocities can always replace the Newtonian (Galilean) one. Relativity is more precise, it is never wrong.

 

Now I have to think about it again. Maybe Newton wins...

It's not a matter of winning, because there is no conflict. The relativistic velocity additions are for translating between reference frames.

Well, ok then. I don't think what you quoted is making a good distinction. "How" seems to be what is happening on the large scale, and "why" what is happening on the small scale. This makes sense intuitively since we generally use them on a large scale, and the large scale is a cumulative effect of small scale stuff, but ultimately the distinction is arbitrary and not fundamental.

That's kind of what I was getting at. "Why" and "how" are different ways of framing a question, but if you keep going deep enough you realize they're all just "what" questions.

Maths agree with me.

 

I am at point B

An object A approaches me from the left at 0,9c

Another object C approaches from the right at 0,9c

 

Then the 2 objects approaches at ...1,8c?

True. In your rest frame, the relative velocity between them is 1.8C. In their rest frames, it is less than C.

But:

Me, at point B don't observe anything moving at speed 1,8c

Object A don't observe anything moving at speed 1,8c

Object C don't observe anything moving at speed 1,8c

True, true, and true.

No object, no wave, nothing propagates at 1,8c. Nothing from nowhere moves at 1,8c. Nothing is observed at 1,8c.

True, true, and true.

The result 1,8c is a physical nonsense.

The result 1,8c is wrong.

False. It would be nonsense to have anything moving at 1.8C, but nothing is.

If you want to add 2 velocities, you must use the relativistic formula. Only then the result will have a physical meaning.

False.

Sorry the start is everything but irrelevant.No Abiogenesis has ever been observed therefore the emergance of Life without a creator is pure religion and i dont want religion to be promoted as science.You seperate Abiogenesis and evolution to hide the fact that Abiogenesis is impossible therefore evolution is also impossible

No, they're separated because they're different things. Evolution is something that happens to life that already exists. We don't know how life began in the first place, although we do have some ideas. We do know that evolution occurs.

Sorry science claims that our great ancestors were apes, lemurs etc etc.Fossils show that Lemurs, for example, remained lemurs for 60 million years.

Why shouldnt i hypothesize that a lemur will remain a lemur and they will never evolve to a new specie?

Lemurs might remain similar for 60 million years, but they don't stay exactly the same. And most things don't remain that static. And before lemurs were lemurs, they weren't. So your question is a bit like saying, "It's been raining here for 3 days, why shouldn't I hypothesize that it will never stop raining?" Well, because it eventually always does, and because everything we know about the weather predicts that it will.

So, sure, if lemurs' environment doesn't change much, most likely they will continue to evolve slowly. If their environment changes a lot, most likely they will evolve quickly.

So can you explain to me how could an eye evolve?What evolved first?The eyeball, the vusal cortex or the optic nerve?

See, now this is an example of an argument from ignorance. It's not necessary to be able to explain how every single aspect of everything happened in order for the general concepts to be considered well-supported. But, if you really are interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye

Since convergent evolution is accepted by science why shouldnt we hypothesize that other traits like the eyes or the ears are a result of convergent evolution?Also regarding what a creator would like to do its just a speculation

I don't understand the question. Convergent evolution means that different organisms evolve similar solutions to similar problems.

I dont know if it is an argument from ignorance.I do know though that its tough to explain how something sophisticated like snake poison could evolve.You must have imagination to explain this or other unique traits organisms have

Yes, it is tough to explain. The concepts of evolution are fairly simple, but the actual process is very complicated.