swansont

Because, like much of the way physics is done, it is approximately correct. And there's a lot you can do with an approximately correct model. The trick is in knowing the conditions under which it breaks down.

Newton's laws are the basis for the study of dynamics and statics.

Good summary of the evidence recently at S.W.A.B. http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/09/geocentrism_was_galileo_wrong.php

Mea culpa. I did not read the whole thing carefully; I was focusing in on 3&26 wondering who had mentioned the ladder paradox, so I shouldn't have quoted the whole statement without pointing out that there were errors. You are quite correct: each will think the other has been shortened by length contraction and that is the source of the "paradox," as it involves the doors shutting and opening. From the barn frame the ladder is shortened and quite easily fits inside, so the front door can shut before the back door is opened. But from the ladder perspective the barn is contracted and the ladder will not fit inside, so the back door must open before the front door shuts. Thus there is a straightforward example of the order of events changing depending on the frame of reference, which is driven by simultaneity being relative.

You may not have meant to target anyone, but that's what ended up happening. It became personal when you quoted my posts and told me, erroneously, what I was saying or doing, and what my objective was in doing so. I don't like being misrepresented.

There's a lot here, but I will comment on this for the moment: The government has been doing this, and government civilian employee compensation comprises about 7% of the total budget, so it's not like many companies, where compensation is a large fraction of the budget.

For your scenario, the answer is probably easy: use data from 2 years ago for the 2 LY object and 3 years ago for the 1 LY object. At such distances the speeds are small, and the objects will not have moved much. The more distant object still moves faster. For the broader picture, and more distant objects, the distances used are the distances now, not the distances when the light was emitted. http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html#DN

I posted it, and like most of these so-called paradoxes, they really aren't — it's a paradox only if one assumes simultaneity is absolute. The reason I mentioned it was to rebut the notion that the order of events couldn't differ in different frames. The ladder "paradox" is a classic example of that very thing; the order of the events, i.e. the ladder entering the barn and the doors shutting and opening, depends on which frame the observer is in. No forces need be involved, though. You can look at the situation after the ladder is moving relative to the barn, and there are no accelerations to worry about.

Yes, or in this case, not raising price in order to not lose market share. If you have an additional cost in the form of taxes, and you want to raise prices to compensate (which was your contention, a few posts back), you may suffer a loss of sales if your competitors do not, even if demand is inelastic. We were talking about the effect of taxes. Unrelated costs are irrelevant to the discussion. I agree, saying our taxes are insufficiently high because others are higher is silly. Our taxes are insufficiently high because we spend more than we take in, and nobody is willing or able to cut spending. But, it still remains a fact that the most recent balancing of the budget came with higher taxes, and the economy was doing OK in that era.

My issue isn't that you drew attention to the logic. It's that you did it by repeatedly accusing the wrong target of using that logic.

When you say "You are arguing X to imply Y" you are making an accusation (post #1). "You are trying to compare" is an accusation (post #10). When you say "one was claiming X was true" you are making an accusation (post #17). Not once in that span was the word "infer" used. The only time "imply" was used was as part of the accusation in post 1. Pointing out an inconsistency in an argument in no way implies that the rest of the argument is assumed to be true. And what made matters much worse is that I told you I wasn't endorsing that argument, and I had to do it more than once.

A match under the water is going to heat by mainly by convection — the energy released makes the air molecules move faster and collide more often, and these higher-energy molecules will strike the container and transfer energy to it. Radiation will be a small part of the process. Heat and infrared radiation are not interchangeable terms.

Mass is the source of the energy, which is not an arbitrary term. The reaction cycle releases >25 MeV. That all eventually ends up as photons. Via the processes already mentioned.

No, I'm pretty sure I was assuming elastic demand when I said that some people won't buy something if the price goes up. Inelastic demand is when you will buy it regardless of price. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/inelastic.asp And that part about worrying about whether competitors raise their prices — that's competition.

Typical spin. If you want to make it seem big, use the number, and if you want it to seem small, cite the percentage. Works in reverse, too. If two people died this year from some exotic circumstance while last year only one did, tell us that the death rate doubled in just one year if you want to call attention to the issue.

If the product is paid for with discretionary income, there will always be some consumers who choose not to buy it if the price goes up. The producer has to determine whether the price increase will actually result in recovery of the income, and consider the extent to which their competitors are raising prices. That was a theme that's been fairly common in the recent economy — companies not raising prices despite increased costs, in an attempt to not lose business when customers might have less money to spend. So I don't think the financial burden of higher taxes would be completely transferred. And we already know that the economy can do just fine under these tax conditions, since this is just a return to tax levels similar to those under Clinton, and even those are low compared to the pre-Reagan era. People have to stop pretending that this is an unprecedented level of taxation, either historically for the US or in comparison to other developed nations.

My alternative for performance pay? I don't understand where you're going with this. I was simply pointing out that not all compensation is salary, so "non-salary income" in the statistics you cited can be a form of compensation — it's not all from investment of prior income. I also mentioned why stock options have been such a popular form of compensation the last couple of decades, but that's not crucial to the main point.

It's possible. Bubbles are going to be weakly stuck via adhesion to the surface of the pipe. If the angle of the coil is shallow enough, the buoyancy force might not be enough to make it rise, and I suspect that a large enough bubble could prevent convection from starting. Banging on the pipes might reduce the adhesion and let the bubble move to the top, if there is no flow to oppose it.

And yet, when Janus provided the same answer to that same problem, you declared him to be right.

Thank you. I was having trouble coming up with a reasonable-sounding counterexample.

We measure it in terms of visible photons, too, and some UV, and some RF, etc. The sun is a pretty good blackbody source, and gives off a blackbody spectrum. Blackbody radiation is a process separate from nuclear physics, so it's not going to be included in the fusion reactions. All it "cares" about is that the source has a temperature. The sun is hot. All of those nuclei bouncing around after the energy conversion means they have a lot of kinetic energy. Blackbody radiation. I've mentioned it before. That's the source of many of the photons. Go look it up already, and stop complaining that you haven't been given the answer.

Being challenged and criticized for something I said is one thing, but for something I didn't say? That's is quite different. Sorry to go Godwin here, but … I haven't denounced Hitler lately. Does that make me a Nazi? How can I be asked to defend a position I never took? I pointed out that someone contradicted their own statistical claim, in order to point out how untenable the position was; I was not validating it. I never said I agreed with the position (nor did I say I disagreed, for that matter. The conversation never got that far). I can't help it if someone else misconstrues what I say, other than to give clarification when asked. And yet, that request never came. Instead, I was told that I was arguing in order to reach a particular goal, which was news to me. You're right. I posted that in haste, which was an overreaction to this affair and for that I apologize; I did not add you to my ignore list. But really, I'm tired of having to point out that I didn't say any of these things; it's all inference based on assumptions. And those assumptions are wrong.

I questioned his numbers. That is the only point I addressed. Damn. Made it to 14,500 posts before I had to add someone to my "ignore" list.

I think one can draw the conclusion that in such non-secular countries where fundamentalists (Muslims, in this case) hold significant power, the kind of democracy practiced by the US and other western countries just isn't going to work — they aren't ready for it. You can't truly have a right to free speech when asserting that right routinely puts people under a threat of violence.

Yes, all true and all completely beside the point.