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I think clark's comments have been grossly misinterpreted. I agree with him. But he's quite capable of defending himself, if he sees fit.

Anyway...

The whole adult/child question hinges on what you define an adult to be. If we think that an adult is someone who understands the consequences of his own actions, then do we have to make everyone undergo an enquiry every year to test whether we think they're ready to be an adult? By this criteria, you could easily end up with 40 year olds who are legally children, and 10 year olds who are legally adults.

Instead, we come to some sort of collective judgement about an appropriate age at which we expect someone to be an adult. Maybe a specific individual is ready sooner, maybe not 'til later. But whatever, he knows in advance that this date is coming, so he'd better get ready for it.

The specific age we choose is arbitrary, but it's a 'bounded' arbitraryness. 5 is clearly too young, 35 is clearly too old. Different societies and cultures at various times have used different definitions for this age. It's far from a perfect system; it's grossly unfair to both early and late maturers. But it beats the crap out of any other system I can think of which leaves the judgement of an individual's adulthood in the hands of 'authorities'.

You been reading Ayn Rand lately?  :laugh:

You know, it's always a little scary when someone on a forum says something like this! 

I haven't replied before now 'cos a whole batch of Preacher comics arrived from Amazon and, well, some books just need readin'. 

(Oh, I managed to sneak into a politics thread somewhere and dump a sarcy comment into the broth. Doesn't count as real interaction; was just letting off steam between books.)

I've read the article, and I have heard of the guy before. It's an interesting controversy.

My take on the whole thing is this:

As far as I know, General Relativity is fine as it is. It's based on a sound principle (that gravity and acceleration are, deep down, the same kinda thing). That gives the whole equivalence between gravitational and inertial mass a "logical basis" (for want of a better phrase). Otherwise it'd be hard to see why they should be the same.

On the other hand, there really is no fundamental reason why GR must be right. There are interesting cracks beginning to appear in the theory. The fact that it even allows the possibility of reverse time-travel gives cause for concern; yes, it may be that no time machine can actually be used (because noise and positive feedback will shut it down as soon as you switch it on). But still, the fact that such solutions of the equations exist is "odd", to say the least.

And it's proving desperately hard to kludge it into a good theory with Quantum Mechanics. QM is pretty much the best scientific theory ever produced. It just works so damn well, everywhere you try it. Yet we need two theories to describe the universe, not just one. How strange!

So I don't think anyone is unprepared for the fact that one or more theories are going to have to at least give a little at some point. Historically, that's always turned out to be the point at which the most fascinating revolution is about to happen; you've almost got it all worked out, but you just need to clear up these pesky details...

As to the "ether" theory...

Well, I can't answer that. Special Relativity works; it gives the right answers. Some people say that it's 'absurd' to imagine that electromagnetic waves can propagate without having a medium to "do the waving". I really can't go that far. How can we tell what is absurd for the universe at the fundamental level? What reason do we have to think that deep down it must behave in a way that is analogous to the things we see at our macro level?

When you push a stone with a stick, you get a kind of image in your mind of what is going on. But when you analyse what is actually happening, it starts to get difficult to say what is really going on at the tiniest level between the stick and the stone. The atoms are hitting each other. Well, not really the atoms, the outer electron shells. Well, they're not really pushing each other, more sort-of excluding other electrons by a combination of quantum effects and electric repulsion. And that's mediated by virtual photons being exchanged. And these photons aren't literally pushing the electrons (for otherwise how would electric attraction work?).

It's so tempting to try to find something deep down which works just like an everyday thing we're familiar with. Like throwing a ball, or pushing with a stick... or a wave on water. But truthfully, it just ain't like that. We don't have the faintest idea what this stuff really is, or what makes it do it. Every so often we get another theory which explains how things work in terms of something at a more fundamental level. This just pushes the same mystery down further, but it's still there. It's beginning to look like we may be reaching the end of these detailed explanations, at least as far as particles are concerned. Or maybe not; watch string theory for exciting developments.

So while we can't analogise fundamental physics to everyday life, we can do the next best thing: we can describe it in exacting detail, using the most phenomenal language ever developed by mankind: mathematics.

Now, math doesn't even attempt to tell you what a thing is, or what it means. It just tells you what it does, or describes its attributes.

Why the universe appears to follow mathematical laws, I have no idea. But I'm convinced that somewhere in it all, something that makes the universe run resembles in some way whatever it is that the math is describing.

Which isn't to say that the universe is mathematical; I once heard a lovely quote to describe this position:

"Just because the Bible can be written in English, it doesn't mean God is an Englishman."

Yup, that's right.

So this is basically my long-winded way of saying that I don't know, and furthermore, I'm not sure we can ever really know, and we have no way of telling what is 'absurd' (unless it generates a bona-fide logical-implosion-type contradiction with reality).

But it's sure as hell fun getting more and more details, learning bit by bit how all the pieces fit together, how we can manipulate them to make them do what we want.

Beer good. Get yourself a copy of A Man, A Can, A Plan. Some great beer recipes in there. 

I think step 2 is causing the problem.

"What's a field?" "A region in which a force exerts its influence."

Yes, but that's not the pertinent attribute of a field to this argument. A field is an array of potentials, in this case electric and magnetic.

The self-sustaining wave known as a photon depends on the electric and magnetic components continually generating each other. AFAIK, there's nothing to suggest that this 'internal' physics of the photon has to be mediated by another photon. It's just a wave in the field, not the potential at one part of the field being transmitted remotely to another part via a photon.

Of course, it might be that virtual photons are required to make this work, but I'm just pointing out that it doesn't have to be that way, so there's not necessarily a contradiction (or endless regression).

[Even if there is an infinite regression, that's not necessarily a problem. If each photon requires 'smaller' photons to sustain it (and I'm deliberately not defining 'smaller'), then you've got an infinite sum; but as 'every schoolboy knows', an infinite sum can result in a finite value. (And I've deliberately not defined what I'm summing.)]

Crazy li'l ol' universe, huh? 

The idea of a 'technocracy' scares the living bejeezus outa me.

Especially as I know exactly what rational logical scientific principles should be applied to society. I know for absolute certain that I am right...

... and I also know that I have believed this in the past and then realised I was utterly wrong.

As to the suggestion for universal participatory democracy (i.e. everyone votes on governmental decisions), from what I've read about places this has been tried, in practise the votes are dominated by those groups which have a strong dogma e.g. commies. They will be motivated to put the effort into each vote to achieve their ends, whereas the "comfortable neighbor" types, who subscribe to a wooly pragmatism, don't have the will or interest to devote time to researching each and every subject in the level of detail required to exercise their franchise.

Compelling people to vote doesn't solve the problem, as they are then voting either with superficial 'gut' feeling or randomly.

Hey, what's with all the Brit bashing today?  :;):

Heh... I doubt that many Brits under 40 would even recognise the word 'gaol' any more. They'd probably think it meant "strong wind".

Another one that amuses me is that Americans refer to the "British billion", meaning a million million. But we haven't used that for ages. Since before I was born, a billion here has been a thousand million, just like in the USA.

And "faggots" here are a kind of meatball. I recall once eating lunch in a pub, and the girl was bringing out the food for a nearby table. "Faggots?" she called out, and a table full of Americans looked utterly stunned! Maybe they thought she was identifying the customers by their sexual orientation. :laugh:

Ah, but it's not really an 'f' though. More of an elongated 's', a bit like the integral calculus symbol.

Anyway, I'll have a chance to observe some American nuances when I am back in the USA next week. Woo-Hoo!!!

From the BBC article linked above. (We didn't just make up all this nonsense ourselves! :;): )

WHAT??? Heretic! Don't ya know this is a Mars Society board?

No theoretical reason why not. But the engineering would be pretty nasty, principally because antimatter is such a damn dangerous thing to handle. You need some really clever storage tanks to ensure it doesn't touch any normal matter. I think at present most people are considering some form of electromagnetic container; the worry with that is that the ship goes to hell in a radiation basket if the power fails for even a tiny fraction of a second.

Having said that, some bright spark will probably come up with an idea for storage that is fiendishly simple, and will leave everyone 200 years hence scratching their heads wondering "How on earth did the early 21st century folk not think of that?"

The other big problem is generation of antimatter. At present, it's still hideously expensive to produce (in energy and cost terms).

Something for the Phobos Research Company to investigate maybe. 

Hey Cindy, how ya doing?

Yeah, been a bit too busy for a while to post. I've been browsing now and then whenever I could grab a moment.

You remember correctly, I was indeed in New York (and the WTC) the day before 9/11. That awful day is always in my thoughts, but you know, NYC is still a beautiful city. Crazy and smelly, sure, but beautiful nonetheless.

I don't really have any favorite 'types' of music. Just particular tracks (or bands that tend to produce good tracks).

And it also varies tremendously with mood.

Still, on the whole I prefer modern music to old stuff (pre-1990s). At the moment I enjoy songs by Avril Lavigne and Linkin Park, among many others.

I like a few more obscure groups, such as God Speed You Black Emperor.

And I also enjoy some old stuff, like Mozart's Requiem (this is my all-time favorite album, though a lot of Mozart's other stuff is bit sickly for my taste). Wagner's Tannha?ser is pretty stirring.

For background music while tidying or whatever, I listen to Country (Gruene with Envy on Live365 satisfies this nicely).

I'm reading the Honor Harrington novels by David Weber. Right now, I'm about halfway through Ashes of Victory.

Very enjoyable military sci-fi in the style of Horatio Hornblower.

I'm also reading:

Cheap Shots by Marc Animal MacYoung (my favorite personal defense author)

Saddam's Bombmaker by Khidir Hamza

the Penguin History of the World

Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (I'm proofreading the electronic version)

Hacking Exposed

Object Oriented Software Construction

Upgrading and Repairing PCs.

And I'm also squeezing in the Harry Potter novels which I didn't get time to read when they came out.

I dunno where you learned about capitalism, but your description bears no resemblance at all to the concept I associate with that term.

The name 'capitalism' is given to a system in which property is privately owned ('ownership' meaning that you may use and dispose of your property as you see fit).

It says nothing at all about what you are 'supposed' to do. You may assume any ideals you want, anything from total ascetism to lusting after untold riches. All these are compatible with capitalism.

Be concerned with other people if you want. Don't give a crap if you don't want. That decision is one that you make independent of the existence of capitalism.

Uhh... more to the point, you're not allowed to kill anyone, regardless of whether they work for you or not! (Self-defense excepted, of course.)

No; in a capitalist system, you are allowed to use your property as you see fit. The corollary to this is that you are not allowed to use other people's property (including their bodies) unless you obtain their agreement. (This follows because if you were allowed to use their property against their will, then they would not be able to exercise their own property right.)

There's no restraint of anything involved here. Just a consistent application of the principle. Killing someone or stealing their property is inherently anti-capitalist.

These 'restrictions' on certain actions (killing, theft) are not 'tacked-on' to capitalism. They're not regulations that must be added in order to rein in the 'capitalist excesses'.

They are part and parcel of the consistent application of property rights. You simply cannot simultaneously advocate the principle of private property and permit killing and theft. That would require the ability to sustain a contradiction, and the last time I checked, the universe still won't permit that.

As to the 'warlordism' and 'tyranny' claim, that's a bit outside the scope of a short analysis. In brief, I think that it's a lot easier for people in a capitalist system to stave off these threats than in any other system I've ever heard of.