lemur

Well, if the magnetic field contained light emissions, first causing the (flat) Earth to appear curved, then spherical, it would appear to completely disappear by the time you actually escaped it. This could be confused with achieving a very large distance, if you assumed that the spherism was caused by Earth's actual shape instead of the magnetic bending of the light at increasing altitude. If (flat) Earth had multiple magnetic fields, you could get stuck retracing the same routes around on section of it using a compass, while other people in other sections/regions could have their own magnetic field causing them to traverse the same routes around their "sphere." The question would be how to find a route between two distinct magnetic regions.

It's true. If sound energy is classified as a specific type of energy, then so should ocean waves, electricity, and earthquakes, no?

What is the minimum speed to avoid orbital decay at Earth's distance from the sun, then? How do you calculate that, btw?

If a bank lends out your savings as mortgages and the mortgages default, you lose your savings. You can maybe take the property in lieu of your money, but your money is gone. The previous owner of the house got it when they sold it to the person who borrowed the money from you(r bank). Now, let's assume the banks wouldn't have gotten bailed out and they went bankrupt. Your savings deposits would be gone. The only reason they're not is because the government backed them up. Now, let's say the bank bankruptcies had occurred and stimulated a chain reaction of credit-defaults to every employer. Then everyone's wages would have gotten frozen, causing further defaults on bill-payments, discretionary-spending, etc. So the fact that the government intervened basically provided the economy with the money to avoid chain-reaction bankruptcy. I.e. without the government spending, you would be bankrupt at this moment. So how is your money yours? Reading this makes me wish the government had done nothing. That way people would see exactly what they would have following total collapse. The good thing about the bailouts was that it prevented people from exploiting the instability to get rich quick at others' expense. If banks would have sold foreclosed properties for pennies on the dollar, people would have bought up loads of properties and behaved like medieval kings (provided they could afford the tax bill). The point is that things would have gone much differently without the government intervention, so it's really inappropriate for people to claim the right to keep what they earned as if it was earned in a totally free market. What needs to be done is to figure out a set of rules to ensure the free market stays free by, for example, ensuring that everyone is able to keep a homestead that they can't lose due to taxes or foreclosure. In other words, if the government bails out the rich/middle-class then it should also fix the game to give the poor freedom of choice in whether to play into economic exploitation or not. In fact, everyone should have the choice because freedom means not being compelled against your will to participate in someone else's enterprise.

Why should it be hard to get to Venus, Mercury, or the sun? It's downhill. If you escape Earth orbit in the opposite direction so that your speed is slightly less than that of Earth, shouldn't you begin to fall toward the sun the same way a satellite that loses speed begins falling toward Earth?

Couldn't the object escape Earth's gravity by entering into solar orbit in the opposite direction as Earth? In that case, wouldn't it fall into the sun from there (unless Venus or Mercury got in the way, of course)? edit: if so, I wonder how long it would take to fall into the sun, assuming it didn't burn up first which it would.

I agree that sound energy is KE, as well as what you said about heat consisting of radiation and particle KE (vibration), and yes I wonder if radiation is part of the vibrational-process. I'm also tempted to add that radiation (light energy) is a form of KE, since it is displaced electron momentum, which seems to get teleported somehow from point of emission to point of absorption, but I suppose this could qualify it as its own form of energy. Still, I also think it makes sense to see the electron-level as a state of potential energy that increases prior to radiation emission and decreases as a consequence of emission. This makes it seem sensible to view the radiation itself as displaced KE of the electron in question, since it must lose some momentum as it drops to the lower level/orbit or gain it when it absorbs energy. Nuclear and chemical energy could both be viewed as both KE and PE, imo, since the sub-particles seem to store energy within the configuration of their (orbital) motion relative to one another. I would say the same thing about planets or moons in orbit, that they are in motion and therefore expressing KE but because the motion is recursive (looped), they are also storing potential energy that could be expressed in a collision, through friction, or other change in gravitational relations with other bodies. What is "electromagnetic energy" that is different from "light energy" or vice versa?

So you don't believe that a body or particle in motion can remain in motion by its own inertia along a recursive (i.e. looped) path? Aristotle, I think, believed that objects in motion required constant addition of energy to remain in motion, but that was probably because he was dealing with wagons with very high rolling friction. Newton, I think, came up with inertia as the tendency of objects in motion to remain in motion unless acted upon by an external force - but do you reject this? This is interesting to me because I have been wondering if EM radiation can express gravitation. If so, I think this could contribute to understanding the relationship between energy and matter, since the gravitational behaviors of each could maybe give clues about how matter is configured from energy. According to your thinking, then, where would you find relatively lower or higher concentrations of radiation except in correlation with the locations of stars? Are you basically saying that spacetime would be more curved around a highly radiant star than around a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole? Or are you saying just the opposite, that radiation straightens spacetime from the curvature due to its gravitation?

You're taking for granted the institutions of the developed world that work against people in the developing world, such as a social security card, border-control, or the capitalist market system for distributing building materials. I'm looking at it from a simple perspective of someone who goes out in search of resources to improve their daily life. If they are content living in a shanty town, they might just be searching around for building materials to improve their makeshift structure, or a shovel to dig a better ditch for drainage. It's really up to them how far they want to go to improve their situation. Think of it like settling into a campground and having to build up a sustainable life from there. Then the question is what kinds of barriers you run into. Of course these barriers are deep-seated for the people they benefit - otherwise they wouldn't be effective barriers! When you say "the more fundamental issue is low productivity and low opportunity in the parent country," it reeks of nationalist assumptions that everyone in the world is responsible to a national "country" which is in turn responsible to them and only them. People forget that the nationalist model of regional solidarity is a relative cultural institution, not a fact of nature. Why shouldn't people be able to freely roam the Earth in search of resources? If people want to police those resources against exploitation, that is fine but why do humans have to be kept in national regions and prevented from seeking better opportunities elsewhere? When Europeans were in search of more land and resources, they roamed the Earth and harvested what they could. Why should non-Europeans be denied the same privilege?

I'm sorry but while I'm sincerely happy for you, your story exemplifies the flaws in the ideology of meritocracy. I too, like you, "climbed the ladder of success" from a poor youth to prestigious academic achievement, etc. Only at some point I began to apply the things I was learning to analyze the economic logic of meritocracy in the first place. It's basically a system of artificial rewards for compliant participation in systematic economic structuring whose intent is to disempower individuals by making them specialists dependent on an elaborate division of labor. This system is very sad, imo, because the people who do not get validated as "meriting" "a delightful income bracket" (as you put it) don't have any real means of supporting themselves except by appeasing the gate-keepers of the meritocratic system of income distribution. Access to arable land and the means to utilize it effectively are restricted by a pricing system that requires people to work for money before being able to invest in their own independence. Personally, I don't see why it should be necessary to provide labor to someone else before going to work for yourself. You would probably want to if you had the chance, just to be able to learn skills and techniques of an experienced veteran; but should people really have to indenture themselves for many years to "earn/merit" freedom? What's more, how many people emerge from indenturement (i.e. working for money) to independent homesteading? Most people have gotten so indoctrinated into consumerism that they just put in their 30 years or whatever it comes out to so that they will be able to retire and continue being dependent on the consumer-system, only now without having to put in any labor hours anymore. This system is fine, even good, when you're on the winning end. It's when you get stuck in a dead-end job to pay bills, or even become unemployable, that people should have the option of working for themselves instead of a manager and/or paying clients, imo.

If people could actually work their way back up after falling into poverty, that WOULD be fair. It's the fact that once you're poor, you basically have little choice but to take a low-wage job and barely cover your costs month-to-month that prevents most people from going from rags to riches. Yes, you could get lucky and find a niche that pays handsomely and escape poverty that way, but can everyone do this? I believe the answer is no because for everyone to have this kind of social-economic mobility would require it to be equally dangerous for wealth to be lost and I don't think it is that easy to lose if you manage it well. Basically, economy is organized in such a way that prevents people from getting rich (or poor) quick, if at all. Actually, I think many people who experienced poverty and escaped it avoid contemplating the thought of having to return to such a life. Many would lie, cheat, steal, etc. to maintain their position to avoid going back to what they fear from experience. It would be nice if poverty was regulated in some way that made it manageable so that people would avoid and escape it out of fear and desperation. There's really nothing wrong with living meagerly if you have access to basic means of shelter, warmth, decent nutrition, clean water, hygiene, social-contact, leisure, etc.

Well, first you should reflect on where you developed the ideology of planting your flag on top of a hill and telling me I have to fight uphill to defend my idea against yours. I could just as easily say that you have to first establish "class interests, ideological indoctrinations, or other broader historical forces" over the empiricism of individuals and inter-individual cultural interactions. Really, you're right that "class interests, ideological indoctrinations, and other broader historical forces" can all influence ideological discourse at the individual level. It's just that you can't simply assume that these macro events occur at a macro level independent of the micro level of individuals. Individuals are simply not determined by macro patterns when you observe how they work at the individual psychological level. So to have a reasonable discussion about this, we would really have to take a specific concrete empirical example and analyze it at the level of empirical details. It is tedious to do, but it is the only way to get at the actual ways in which ideological culture is exchanged and negotiated in practice.

If it was no longer being created, wouldn't that mean it was finite?

Look, I don't really think the Earth is flat. What I do with an idea like this is to "see how far I can get with it," as I mentioned in my earlier post. I'm perfectly aware that there are a million valid science-based reasons that can disprove that the Earth is flat, so when you guys jump in trying to prove me wrong I can't understand that. OBVIOUSLY you can prove me wrong if I claim the Earth is flat, so why do it? Having said that, how would you know that magnetism doesn't affect light in this way if all the tests performed were done within the magnetic field that causes curved lines to appear straight?

By that logic, if a person is arrested for theft and they are identified as racially similar to other thieves, it is supportive of a theory that criminality is a characteristic of that race; but if the person's racial identity is different from other thieves, it does not indicate anything about the thief's race more generally? So basically you are biased in favor of pattern-supporting evidence and you discount evidence that doesn't support observed patterns until there is sufficient data to indicate a new pattern? Doesn't that seem like weak science to you in any way?

So basically you're saying that if I make, say, houses then I should build a house and sell it and then give the money to someone else so they can pay me to build a house for them, so that I can give that money to somebody else so I can build another house for them, etc.? Why can't they just build their own houses? Why keep redistributing money to pay other people to do things for you when you could distribute the knowledge and resource-access for people to do things for themselves? I'm sorry to say, but as pro-republic as I am, I disagree with the party-republican perspective that the money they make is theirs when the entire economy is running on bailouts, stimulus, and other government subsidies. If republicans want to come up with methods for privatizing ownership and economic rights, I am interested in those. But don't pretend like the money that's currently circulating is anything except fake money printed to prevent rich and middle-class people and businesses from having to declare bankruptcy. It's easy to complain about stimulus and bailout money after you're in the clear financially, but if it hadn't been there would you have been able to even keep your shirt? As I say, I'm against permanently indenturing people to the government for bailing them out, but I think that if you want to give freedom back to the people, you should at least make sure that everyone gets de-indentured from everyone else. This should be the goal of republican governance, not allowing some people to keep indenturing others.

the subconscious will to conformity?

If it was the coldest year on record, would that point to anthropogenic climate cooling?

related question: what if you travelled 25,010mph and all nearby gravity-wells were moving away at x>10mph? Would you really continue indefinitely away from Earth or would spacetime eventually curve in such a way that you would end up in an Earth-bound trajectory? To answer your immediate question, however, I think that if you could continue ascending at 10mph, you would eventually reach an altitude where escape-velocity was 10mph and you would escape gravity that way. The problem is that I don't know if you could maintain a clear anti-gravity direction since you could basically fall into orbit in any direction without necessarily noticing a change in altitude, I think.

Like which barriers? Lack of building materials? Lack of social security number to apply at McDonalds in developed economies?

I have done my best to go as far as I can with the idea of a flat Earth. The best I can get is that light bends in a way that causes the Earth to appear spherical from high altitudes. It may also be the case that due to the magnetic field, explorers tend to trace the same routes and miss new routes into unexplored regions. This could be due to the magnetic field giving the illusion of a sphere while the actual Earth is flat. The spherical appearance of Earth from high altitude would resonate with the magnetic sphericism because light and magnetism are related. There may be a special path through antarctica or the Himalayas or somewhere else that leads to undiscovered land that extends infinitely. Sphericism may be ridiculed one day in the not-so-distant future!

Enough to necessitate the energy-density of UV frequency? Or could sufficient energy be supplied by the visible spectrum?

You basically get at the problem with Marxian macrosocial-cultural analysis, which is that what counts as the false consciousness of the workers depends on who is defined as the dominant class. I try to avoid this problem of attributing ideology to classes by assuming that ideology is essentially free-floating and people basically interact with ideological messages according to personal genealogies of experience and/or discourse. So while some people might be promoting environmentalism as a diversion from social-equity issues, other people might be focussing on social-equity issues to preserve their position of privilege by representing themselves as progressive. I think it was while reading Rian Malan's book about apartheid that I realized that the elite chooses socialism/communism as a political agenda because it offers them hope of protection from the wrath of the oppressed. This doesn't mean that everyone in a position of privilege chooses egalitarian politics for this reason, just that it makes sense when they do. Anyway, I'm not so much interested in explaining the class-determination of political ideologies as I am in seeing the mechanics of ideology in-and-of-itself outside of social-group attribution. If the "status quo" is a by-product that results from the identification of "change," it would be quite a reversal from the common-sense assumption that "change' is a reaction to "the status quo," which is presumed to exist prior to any departure from it.

The cause of poverty depends on how you define poverty and what you consider a viable route to prosperity. If someone kidnapped you and dropped you in a shanty-town somewhere, what would you do? Would you try to build a slum house, establish plumbing, seek water, food, etc. or would you start walking to seek better conditions? Probably because of your citizenship, you would start walking but when people in shanty towns in developing economies attempt this, they get stopped by police. So, assume you got stopped by police and had to walk back to the shanty town, what would you do to improve your condition? This is essentially how these people have to approach alleviating their poverty. They can petition people with resources to help, but they don't have the power to force them to provide needed resources, so what then?

Maybe photosynthesis doesn't benefit but the plant could benefit for some other reason. It could help with water-transport, for example. I wonder about the UV, though, since energy-density increases rapidly with frequency-increase. Does plant growth consume a lot of energy or not much?