swansont

IOW, how easy is it to determine the antinode, as compared to the node?

rhetoric (noun): -the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, esp. the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques -language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but is often regarded as lacking sincerity or meaningful content. (from whatever dictionary is on my computer) Science is not the same as the legal system; the standards and terminology are different (and it's reasonable doubt or preponderance of evidence, depending on whether it's criminal or civil, in the US). This is the same tactic that people like Phillip Johnson try and exploit with creationism. It's equivocation. And "we" aren't talking about jail time, you are. Several of us are assuming it was rhetoric. Someone saying, "There oughta be a law" isn't necessarily proposing actual legislation. Despite the pejorative nature of "some degree of guesswork" it doesn't mean that any conclusion at all can be drawn. You can and do quantify the uncertainties, and you can exclude some results. All of science is like this; GW isn't some special case. Name some, that point out the political aspect of this, rather than the statistical nature of medical trials. Perhaps you should define what you mean by "political."

I believe that discussion occurred in an admin thread on GW moderation (started on 12-28). But the original statement ("you and Swansont insisted that contrary opinions be removed from a "science" global warming thread") mischaracterizes the situation. It's not that contrary opinion was removed, it was all opinion. Nobody's opinion matters in a science discussion. Whether CO2 levels are rising is not a matter of opinion. Whether temperatures are rising is not a matter of opinion. The insulating effect of CO2 is not a matter of opinion. These are all verifiable facts that can be ascertained through the process of scientific inquiry, as are the many other elements of the topic at hand. If you make a claim, you had better be able to back it up with data. That's scientific debate/discussion. edit to add: if people who disagree with some science go to the popular media to make their case, you can be pretty sure that the scientific part has ended. The media doesn't uncover new data. At that point it's a sales job. You go to the popular press because you can't come up with credible science, and the press is a sucker for "equal time."

The force is perpendicular to the motion, so how exactly is the speed a result of the gravitational force? And what does this have to do with perpetual motion?

Please cite your sources when using someone else's words. Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas), Lou Singer and Hy Zaret, 1959 http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/whysunshine.htm

How would this differ from just measuring the elapsed time, which we know would be dilated?

Ummmm, not really. Relativity deals with the fact that what you measure depends on your frame of reference, i.e. whether two observers are stationary with respect to each other or moving with respect to each other. If you observe two events (say, explosions, 1 and 2) as happening at exactly the same time, another observer (call her Alice) who is moving would not see them as simultaneous. Alice sees 1 happening before 2. Yet another observer (Bob), traveling in a different direction at a different speed might see 2 happening before 1. You all disagree on the order, and yet none of you are wrong, because what you observed depends on your frame of reference. That's (part of) relativity.

The observers either won't agree on whatever measurement you use to try and find who is at rest and who is moving or the measurement will be the same in both reference frames.

OK, yeah, you're right. You convinced me. There is no rhetoric used in the political arena. When Mitt Romney bowed out of the election, he meant that a democrat candidate would literally sign surrender papers to terrorists if elected president. It would really nice if you could present actual evidence to back this up. It's difficult to have a reasonable conversation on the matter when you feel free to just make stuff up.

The investigation that disagrees with his point of view is not honest, though. It's contrived. The people that disagree aren't publishing findings in scientific journals, and most of them aren't even trained in a relevant field. Politicians don't do research, so how can this be a chilling effect on that?

We will always get c if we measure our speed against the speed of light (in an inertial frame). All we can do is measure our speed relative to other objects in the universe. We have no dilation, since we can always say that we are at rest.

Figuring out the agency, etc. is a government responsibility. If people aren't acting like it's a problem it's not for a lack of science. That's been around for decades. It's because theose opposed to the idea have adopted the tactic of arguing the issue in the mainstream media, and fabricating a scientific controversy. A history of the science and denialism by Naomi Oreskes can be seen here, but it's an hour-long talk http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/02/oreskes_on_the_american_denial.php

A short one: it's phonetic for my username. My blog.

It's a QED correction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_moment (if course, this link is contained in the one Klaynos gave)

We call that property "mass."

Depends on your reference point for the measurement. YT is correct if you measure on each side of the break point. If you pick an arbitrary point after the batteries and measure at the top and then the in the middle, without changing the low point, you'll get half.

Depends on the type of night vision. The detectors that sense in the near-IR are probably silicon, and that cuts off at ~1.1 microns, which is fine for the CCTV's that use that. But if it's a system that senses thermal emissions, those are out at ~10 microns, and you won't pick those up.

Probably too much current draw — by doing this in series all of the current was passing through all of the batteries, and perhaps you overheated them. If it's for electrolysis, a single 9V battery is plenty. If you put them in parallel, then the current gets divided between them.

"every conceivable danger known to man" is where you jump the tracks, and why this is a strawman. We have government agencies in place to protect us from significant dangers, and ones that we can't deal with individually. I can't assess the safety of chemical additives in food or of drugs. I can't stop other individuals or corporations from dumping pollution and poison into the ecosystem. And someone has spiced up their call to action with a rhetorical device. Stop the presses! (No, not really, it's just an expression.)

AFAIK the oath of office doesn't contain any language about representing only the people that elected the official. The US Constitution isn't simply majority rule. A bad analogy is a strawman, though, or at least it is in this case. The government does take action (at a local level) to try and mitigate the damage of fire, and another reason the analogy isn't apt is that it isn't in the context of other peoples' actions affecting you. If a forest fire threatened many homes and the government did nothing to try and save them, mightn't you refer to their inaction as criminal? (even if no crime were technically committed?) Can people refer to e.g. Mike Brown and FEMA's inaction concerning Katrina as being criminal? (they have, so are folks going to jump on them for doing so?)

Yes, but that's still not really the same as saying all motion is perpetual — that's not the context of the law. It affirms that motion stopping (or increasing) is due to external influences, and is not an intrinsic property.

Planck's constant is one of the terms in the Planck length, but they aren't the same thing. The different units tell you that some other terms must be involved, and in the case of the Planck length G is involved (which is small), and so is c (in the denominator, cubed) which makes the terms smaller still.

No, but it's a conditional statement. IF there is no external force. But there always is.

Not with an analogy as flawed as yours. Perhaps you should start with getting my assertion right. Stubbing your toe and blaming the government as an example misses the point.

I have no idea how you connect this with the ongoing discussion.