swansont

Medicine straddles the line. There are plenty of non-science-based treatments considered medicine (by some). Acupuncture, herbal treatments, homeopathy, magnetic bracelets, reikei, various "cleansing" routines, etc. The list is really long. Pharmaceutical testing, though, is science. You have a specific reaction that has been isolated and the substance is tested for efficacy and side-effects, using a double-blind procedure. The very fact that detailed testing gets (potential) products thrown out is a point in the scientific column. Do economic models do that? Can you isolate the effect and see if it, and only it, has the desired outcome? Can you test a small population and see if the model works with just them? How is one supposed to take the claim "climate models are not tested" seriously?

That's more or less how a laser diode works. In order for there to be amplification, you have to excite the atoms into a state where they can emit a photon of the right energy. What's available is something called a "tapered amplifier" which gives single-pass gain. It's tapered because the beam tends to expand, and that's actually a good thing, as it reduces the power density. You can a factor of 10 or so in amplification, for outputs up to around a half a watt. The ones we have for 852 nm are around x14. (~35 mW in, 450-500 mW out) Something that's clear isn't absorbing the photons, though. As for multi-photon emission, it's true that de-excitation can take multiple steps and give multiple photons, but these would be of different energies. An incoming photon would induce a transition of the same wavelength, but typically not for the others AFAIK. It would be interesting, though, to see if you could lase at 2 different wavelengths at the same time (and maybe someone's already done it). Not if you don't have mirrors on it. You'd have spontaneous emission and some gain, but in all directions. If the surfaces had anti-reflection coatings on it you wouldn't get above the lasing threshold (as YT has already said)

It is much more difficult to test the individual components of an economic model. OTOH, solar radiation, the absorption spectrum of water and CO2, etc. can be independently tested. The bottom line is that economics is not science. D H was right in terming this an association fallacy.

de Broglie's Nobel was "for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons" (and it was 1929) I think the "horrible way" refers to saying the photon has mass.

Moved to General Discussion.

Length depends on the frame in which you measure, similar to time. Moving objects length-contract. You can't use a simple x-y-z coordinate system to measure things, and have that mean anything in another frame, because the transformation from one system to another isn't linear (Galilean).

I think I've done more interviews than Palin since she was picked. Anyway … Just another thing to file under "This passes for journalism?"

Ah, OK. Mirror matter would only interact with normal matter via the weak force and gravity.

Indeed. The first hint of delving into an actual discussion of religion, or the wisdom of believing it, will bring a lock to the thread. They aren't really compatible. There are few questions where it would be appropriate to draw upon both for an answer.

Not really. In quantum mechanics is usually dangerous to assume a classical behavior explanation. An superposition of two states in one basis does not mean there is motion.

I got a visit from someone canvassing and then two days later, a call asking the same damn questions.

How would it do that, exactly? Parity is violated in weak interactions. How would some other matter make this not so?

The coordinate system you use to measure length depends on speed. Space isn't Cartesian. Length isn't an absolute.

I did consider the vanishing credits. It's still an intellectually dishonest argument, based on the idea that someone with, say a 30% marginal tax rate about to tick up to 35% would refuse a raise or not work harder, because they would be paying an extra 5% in taxes on the increase in income. They even admit "For that matter, it’s hard to know how much phase-outs actually discourage people from earning additional income." You always end up with more in your pocket if you have a higher income. Until they can show that the marginal rates are actually having an effect, the whole argument is specious. And since the marginal rates already have dramatic changes, they should be able to back this up. Are people currently earning ~$46k refusing raises, because of the 15% jump in the marginal rate on the new income? If they aren't, the whole argument falls apart. (And I've been there — I certainly welcomed "graduating" into the 28% tax bracket from the 15% bracket, years ago) And if there's a spike in the marginal tax rate at $X, it doesn't really matter to you if the tax curves are smooth or spiky if you are making more than $X — what matters is the total tax paid.

I'm guessing no. It would hurt the argument and foil the misdirection.

Tsadi has been banned for being a sockpuppet of a previously banned user. (Graviphoton)

The graph doesn't show what's happening below $25k, so you can't really see what's going on. The article seems to be a whopping load of sleight-of-hand, but doesn't actually give enough information to check. Neither does the original article by Brill and Viard http://www.american.com/archive/2008/august-08-08/the-folly-of-obama2019s-tax-plan — they focus on the marginal tax rate instead of total tax burden. And guess what: it's possible for your marginal tax rate to be higher at some income levels and yet have a lower tax liability. From what little facts are provided, it seems that this is liars-using-statistics taken to an art form. ——— example: Let's say the marginal tax rate out to $25k was 10%, and above that it was 15% out to $100k. Let's say the new marginal tax rate is dropped to zero up to $25k. But the marginal tax rate above that is raised to 17%. You earn $100k. The old plan taxes you at $13750. The new plan is $12750, so you save $1000. In fact, there is no income in that range where you would pay more in taxes. But the analysis of this article would focus on the new, higher marginal tax rate, and deem this a tax increase. Which it isn't.

The democrats in waitforu's link call them taxes.

And yet we do use it, and we don't do physics in Euclidean space except as an approximation (which is usually valid). So there would seem to be a contradiction here. Care to elaborate?

The second is most definitely man-made. As is the meter, the Coulomb, the Kelvin, the gram and a whole host of other units. Defining a standard of time, the second, is not the same as explaining the nature of time. "Analogy" is, I think, a completely incorrect description of the situation — the former is physics/metrology and the latter is metaphysics. Hameroff is a physicist? Wikipedia list him as an anesthesiologist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff Once consciousness enters the discussion, I think you have left the field of physics. I think physics teaches no such thing. On the contrary, in physics we learn not to depend on our perception, since we want objective measurement.

Saying you saw something unusual is different from saying you saw a flying saucer. Trained observer or not, it is easy to trick the eye.

Observers in different inertial frames and/or gravitational potentials will measure time passing at different rates.

That's how light behaves; it's called the principle of least time or Fermat's principle. (Wikipedia link) Calculus is part of the model that we use to describe the behavior, but is a construct of human intellect. Light does not do calculus as it transits a medium any more than a rock does calculus when it is dropped, and the distance fallen is the double integral of the acceleration.

traveler has been suspended for one week for trolling.

I'm locking this thread pending review. You can't just make up definitions, like you're Humpty Dumpty. Centripetal acceleration. It's in physics textbooks. ——— I gave you the benefit of the doubt earlier, and from the looks of things, it seems you've tossed that out the window, stomped on it and set it afire. I see no reason to reopen this thread.