swansont

From what I'm reading (Mooney's book and elsewhere), this really hasn't been the case. Supplements, for example, aren't subject to the FDA in the same way that drugs are. You don't have to demonstrate effectiveness, you just have to be careful not to claim too much. (e.g. don't claim that Ginkgo-Biloba will improve cognitive functions, just have a testimonial that "I take it and now I'm more alert and my memory has improved!"). Look at what happened with ephedra. In cases where some effect has been found to be harmful, it's a lot easier to strike down the rules regulating the substance than it used to be. Read up on the Data Quality Act. It makes it much easier to question the science on which policy is based; all you need is a study or two (who cared if they're funded by the affected industry?) that contradict the other studies upon which the policy was based.

It's an analogy, not a definition. Just a way to visualize it.

The two blades need not be connected. As such, there is no causal relationship between the position of two, so there is no limit to how fast the contact point (or apparent contact point) can move. It's similar to a light beam from a source rotating at [math]\omega[/math]. The speed of the projected beam is [math]\omega r[/math], so if you are far enough away, this can exceed c. But there is no information contained there, and the photons do not have a causal relationship. It is always possible for two (or a series of) unrelated events to be temporally separated by less than t = d/c

The irony of Milloy having a column (and book) about Junk Science is that Milloy is a shill, and presents science within an ideological framework. So "junk" science becomes science where he doesn't like the answer. The larger problem of not trusting studies is related. If ideology has already dictated what the results have to be, you can't trust it. Sadly, this has infiltrated government-sponsored work, which is supposed to be free from such interference. It has become increasingly perverted by politics in what conclusions are allowed to be drawn, and especially so in the recent past. You get decisions like not approving (or delaying) medical treatments or not dispensing medical advice (or dispensing wrong information) because of political and ideological stances; IOW you'd rather kill people than help them, because you disapprove of their ideals or behavior, or because helping business is worth a few lives. Recent legislation has turned the system backwards with regard to burden-of-proof, or requiring kinds of proof/evidence that science cannot provide. I'm in the middle of reading "The Republican War on Science" by Chris Mooney. It's good, but scary.

You're thinking of a parallel plate capacitor, right? As Atheist stated, it's not true in general. The ideal parallel place capacitor always looks the same, no matter where you are, since it is infinite in extent, or approximately so for the length of a side >> separation distance. When you get closer to one plate, more of the charges give you a lateral force, which cancels out, and this balances the fact that you are closer to them. Fewer charges give you a large force in the direction of the field. It all balances to give you a constant field.

Gravitational fields do slow time; near earth this is by g/c2, which about a part in 1016 per meter of height change.

If they are conducting, they have no charge. The effect can, IIRC, be explained by the mirroring of vacuum fluctuations in QFT.

It's been asked before (a poll, even, so you can track results) Ain't the search function a useful tool?

No, because you can't transmit the information you've obtained faster than the speed of light. The collapse of the wave function doesn't transmit this information, because the wave function contains the information about both particles.

Motion and time are related to each other, but they are not the same thing.

If you look at a two-state system, you can, at most, put half of a sample in an excited state via an interaction with EM radiation. The reason is that the radiation will also stimulate emission into the lower state as well. Population inversions correspond to negative temperatures; you can't get there in an equilibrium condition.

I'm not saying the prejudice is OK, rather that it's not racism.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see that it's discrimination specifically based on age, it's discrimination based on the ear's response. It's no more discrimination than my previous example of playing certain types of music that cater to a particular age group. I find rap music generally annoying. I would tend not to shop in a store that played that music, nor loiter in the area. The store, presumably, plays that music because it fits in with the kind of customer to whom they are attempting to cater. I simply don't see that I've been discriminated against. And does that legislation pertain to hiring people, or having them in/around your place of business? Is it age discrimination to pay young people less than older people, or are you paying them different amounts because they have differing amounts of experience?

I'm trying to get you to explain it. Which has more potential energy, the particles by themselves, or the atom after it has formed?

Gee, and there are no people who do things specifically because their parents dislike or forbid it? I don't see how "annoying" is against the law. Can I have someone who smells offensive to me arrested for not bathing? If the sound exceeds a safety threshold, then go after them. (However, the OSHA levels for 16 kHz is 92 dB for 8-hour exposure, and the "mosquito" listed at 80 dB in one article, so I don't think that will pan out. I imagine other countries' safety levels are similar). Otherwise vote with your feet: never shop at a store with such a device, even when you're old enough to not hear it anymore.

So a dance club that plays music that the older generation tends to find annoying — that should be opposed as well, eh?

An aside: I TA'd for a prof who once told me "Wolfgang Pauli was my electrodynamic professor. He was a real bastard." (It sounded even better in a German/Austrian accent.)

Except that the same order-of-magnitude measurement is made twice more in the quote. So it's not a simple typo, though it could still be a math mistake.

And, as you had stated/linked, (part of) the reason for the 9-11 compensation was to eliminate or reduce lawsuits, since it would seem that security, run by the airlines/airports at the time, should have detected metal weapons, amongst other things. So there was some culpability there. My objection was to the Trubune columnist/reporter's assessment that the WTC was "less intimate," as I feel that it was just a matter of someone using convenient, but easily misinterpreted statistics.