General comment: "liberal == left-wing" may be mostly correct in a U.S. context, but not in European politics. A lot of left-wing parties in Europe favor government control, which is not exactly "liberal".
Odd. you say Europeans tend to be more liberal...
No. More left-wing, not necessarily liberal. See general comment.
In the US, these things have improved and organized racist groups have become virtually onnexistent.
Really? I actually got junk mail from the KKK some years ago, asking for funds to kick out the legal immigrants (boy, did they have the wrong guy...).
Anyhow, I'll concede that racism is probably less of a problem in the US right now than it is in Europe. Although I don't see how that has anything to do with what I was saying.
And back to teh original point: removing freedom or asserting govt power over individual freedom is a right wing trait.
Is that right? So the Soviet Union, China, North Korea etc. had/have right-wing regimes? The political right has no monopoly on oppression.
Obviously the US is more liberal in terms of freedom of speech.
I agree. But not more "left-wing".
Political groups notwithstanding, it's a right wing move.
Again, that may be true for the US, but not necessarily for the rest of the world.
Um... yeah, not officially. Instead you guys kill yoru children over religious disputes and land claims. That's so much more evolved.
No, it's not evolved, it's barbaric. I assume you're referring to former Yugoslavia. There is no excuse for what happened there, and I'll admit that I'm deeply ashamed of the cowardly attitude of the rest of Europe with regard to that conflict. However, I don't think it's a fair comparison. A civilized nation should not be executing minors or retarded people. Period.
Err, quite the contrary, me thinks. The Osbournes is quite tame for European standards.
Let me bring up two points: in the '80s there was a show in Britain (and aired in many other countries) called "Spittin' Image". This was a satire show that had puppets resembling the British Royal Family, British and American politicians. The sketches were quite close to the borderline of what most people would consider to be bad taste. In other words, I thought it was hilarious. At the time I was living in Dublin, Ireland with a guy from Finland and a guy from Canada. The Canadian guy was honestly shocked when he saw the show for the first time. Quote: "Oh, my God, they would never air this in Canada or the USA."
Which brings me to the following point. Although there is no "official" censorship by the U.S. government, I think there is a form of "commercial" censorship. Basically, if someone like, take for example Bill Maher, has the courage to voice an opinion that is widely considered as "unpatriotic", his show gets canceled. Can't blame the government for that, but it does make you wonder about the extent of freedom of speech there is in reality.
Okay, let's test your filter. I hate you. How does that make you feel? Do you really care? Does it offend you in some way? Isn't this at all interesting to you that we're talking about hate? This would, presumably, be filtered out automatically so you'd never have to see it again right?
No. You have the right to hate me as much as you like. That would not be filtered out. It's more things like "Ethnic group XXX are a bunch of lazy bastards, and they are only here to profit from the hard work of real YYY citizens. Let's all go to refugee center ZZZ next week and set fire to it."
If this story were about the U.S., the discussions would be rife with how right-wing and repressive Americans and American society is. (I couldn't help notice that posts are already turning toward the U.S.)
Actually, compared to Europe, America is far more right-wing. Your 'pinko-commie' left-wing liberals would be on the right-wing side of the political spectrum in most European countries.
However, since it's not the U.S., I see subtle defenses of what amounts to censorship and attempted mind control.
No, it's not about mind-control (maybe it is about censorship).
Despite Europe's history, racism and hate of ethnic groups has been growing strongly in the past few decades. Especially when the economy is bad, people tend to blame immigrants for their personal misery. The ban on hate speech is a (well-intended, but misguided) attempt to limit this common phenomenon.
This is a very right-wing move for Europeans who frequently love to argue that they are so much more liberal than the U.S. and are far more evolved in terms of human rights.
1. Ironically, I think you'll see more left-wing than right-wing parties supporting this.
2. Yes, Europe is more evolved in terms of human rights. We don't execute children or mentally handicapped people.
Pure fact is very often a hard thing to come by. Sure, there are some things that are generally accepted, like 1+1=2. But how about Darwinism? The evidence is overwhelming, however political forces in the US are often succesful at denying Darwinism as fact. If free speach is not absolute, wouldn't the presentation of Darwinism be in danger from these forces?
The parent's post is a bit confusing. The meaning is probably that denying known facts is not protected. It reads like there is no protection for expressing known facts.
Anyhow, I think advocating Darwinism would be fine. If it is not accepted as fact, it's an opinion, which is protected. Of course, as ludicrous as it is in my opinion, creationism would also be protected. And that's fine too.
No speech should ever be censored, only modded down.
Ho hum. Although I think this is a noble principle, how about:
- shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater? - a guide for pedophiles on how to abduct children? - instructions for making a nuclear weapon? - posting names, addresses, SSNs of police officers on the Internet? - publishing names and addresses of abortion doctors?
All these have nothing to do with expressing ideas. So maybe that should be the measuring stick? But who is going to do the measuring? The government? As you can probably tell, I don't have the answer either...
No. Read the article. Note that there already is a nice mechanism in the U.S. that basically allows big corporations to suppress negative publicity for them. Basically they can sue anyone until their money for legal fees runs out.
This is exactly the kind of crap that other countries do to their citizens that makes people come to the U.S. legally or otherwise.
Ahh, I don't think so. Most immigrants come to the U.S. because they are being persecuted (limiting hate speech does not qualify as such), or for economic reasons. I doubt if you'll see a stream of European refugees as a result of this, most Europeans are just as ignorant and indifferent when it comes to civil liberties as Americans ("It does not affect me directly, why should I care?").
It may sound like I hate illegal immigrants from this statement.
As a (legal) immigrant, I can assure you I did not get that message from your statement.
As a European, let me add a little to this. Freedom of the press is not absolute in all European countries. Where I come from, you can't buy a certain book written by a certain A. Hitler. Some computer games (e.g. Castle Wolfenstein) were banned in Germany. Some countries have laws against racist political parties. The only result of that is that racist political parties dress their spokesmen up in suits, and instruct them to express the racist views in a (barely) acceptable way.
Anyway, although I think there are forms of speech that should be illegal, I don't think the broad definition by the Council of Europe is a good idea. If someone wants to question the Holocaust or whatever, let them. Suppressing this kind of sentiment on the Internet doesn't make it go away, it'll only manifest itself in a different way. Democracies should be strong enough to withstand this kind of nonsense. If they're not, it's time to move somewhere else...
Ok, I'll bite. If I remember correctly, the entire Apollo program cost something like $20 billion. Even in '60s dollars, that is not a lot of money (really). The International Space Station costs something like $60 billion. Again, that is not a lot of money. Most countries could easily afford this kind of stuff, if only they had the political will. If you think I'm smoking something illegal, just look up the GDP and defense budgets of the U.S. and European countries.
Besides, as creationist science has clearly proven, the moon is covered in hundreds of feet of dust, so they could never have landed there. Oh, wait, I have my hoaxes mixed up now...
Its funny, but in your sarcasm you are actually right, there is indeed no evidence that points to Columbus or any of his three vessels landing on the north american continent.
Correct (mostly). Columbus mostly visited Hispaniola (what is now Haiti/Dominican Republic). On his fourth and last voyage he actually landed in what is now Mexico, so depending on how much nitpicking you want to do, you can argue that he did or didn't land on the North American continent. What is clear is that he did not discover the North American continent in 1492.
If I remember correctly, a few years ago Scientific American had a description in the Amateur Scientist section on how to build a very sensitive gravity meter yourself. One of the claims in the article was that the thing could detect the moon passing overhead.
If I had to guess, it's probably because he's running a Dutch version of Windows (he's Dutch, remember). This is something that used to drive me crazy. I think it is because the software is loading the dialog from some Windows DLL, which happens to be a Dutch language one in this case. So, standard dialogs like Yes/No typically suffer from this. It's probably not entirely fair to blame the burner software for this... Just guessing, of course...
Ok, so now I'm completely and utterly confused about whether a "pound" is a unit of mass or a unit of force. This link convincingly points out that we should abolish this bizarro Imperial system. Use the metric system when discussing physics, please...
I was taught that weight is "force exerted on a supporting surface". So, that makes the weight zero in this case. Maybe I was taught wrong...
For instance, an astronaut is weightless relative to the shuttle or ISS, but still weighs 200lb or so relative to the Earth.
Nope. Weight relative to earth is zero (earth is far away). Mass is still 200 lbs, though... If I jump off a chair, my weight is zero for a short period of time.
Another misconception is that object are easy to move around in "zero-g". Not so,...
Correct! Mass is fundamentally different from weight. Not to mention 'inertial mass' and 'gravitational mass'...
Doesn't matter. If you jump up in a rotating spaceship, you are temporarily weightless. Same thing as jumping up on earth. At least according to Einstein and friends.
The centripetal force needed to keep the ISS in a circular orbit is given by:
Fc = (m.v^2)/r
Where:
Fc is the centripetal force in Newtons
m is the mass of the ISS in kilograms
v is the orbital velocity in meters/second
r is the radius of the orbit in meters
Gravity supplies this centripetal force. The force of gravity on the ISS is given by:
Fg = (gamma.M.m)/(r^2)
Where:
Fg is the gravitational force in Newtons gamma is the gravitational constant (6.672 * 10^-11 (N m^2)/(kg^2)) M is the mass of the earth (~ 6.0 * 10^24 kg) m is the mass of the ISS in kg r is the distance to the center of the earth, i.e., the radius of the orbit (6439 km).
Fc = Fg,
so,
(m.v^2)/r = (gamma.M.m)/(r^2),
or:
v^2 = gamma.M/r,
or:
v = sqrt(gamma.M/r)
so,
v = sqrt(6.672*10^-11 * 6.0*10^24/6.439*10^6)
= 7.874 km/s,
or 17,617 mph.
Anything slower, and it will fall to earth, anything faster and it will assume an elliptical orbit or even escape the earth's gravitational field.
lbs (pounds) are a measure of weight. kgs are a measure of mass, although we use them as a measure of weight for convenience.
Mass is a measurement of the amount of matter something contains, while Weight is the measurement of the pull of gravity on an object.
Is that right? If I remember correctly, weight is a force, and should be measured in Newtons, or pound-force. I think there is a dimensionless conversion factor between pounds and kilograms (1 pound is roughly 454 grams, I think), so that suggests that both pounds and kilograms are units of mass, not weight.
We typically measure the mass of an object by actually measuring the weight of an object, and then deducing what its mass is, using a known value for the acceleration of gravity (~9.8 m/s^2, give or take a little bit, depending where you are on earth).
Therefore, you cannot measure the weight of the ISS in pounds, since the force of gravity exerted upon it is miniscule..
No, the force of gravity exerted upon it obeys the Newtonian laws (rougly 89% of what it would be on Earth). However, the weight of the ISS is effectively zero. Just as my weight is zero when I jump off a chair. The ISS has the right velocity to keep on falling 'around' the earth indefinitely (if we neglect the minuscule friction that causes its orbit to decay gradually -- they compensate for that).
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General comment: "liberal == left-wing" may be mostly correct in a U.S. context, but not in European politics. A lot of left-wing parties in Europe favor government control, which is not exactly "liberal".
Odd. you say Europeans tend to be more liberal...
No. More left-wing, not necessarily liberal. See general comment.
In the US, these things have improved and organized racist groups have become virtually onnexistent.
Really? I actually got junk mail from the KKK some years ago, asking for funds to kick out the legal immigrants (boy, did they have the wrong guy...).
Anyhow, I'll concede that racism is probably less of a problem in the US right now than it is in Europe. Although I don't see how that has anything to do with what I was saying.
And back to teh original point: removing freedom or asserting govt power over individual freedom is a right wing trait.
Is that right? So the Soviet Union, China, North Korea etc. had/have right-wing regimes? The political right has no monopoly on oppression.
Obviously the US is more liberal in terms of freedom of speech.
I agree. But not more "left-wing".
Political groups notwithstanding, it's a right wing move.
Again, that may be true for the US, but not necessarily for the rest of the world.
Um... yeah, not officially. Instead you guys kill yoru children over religious disputes and land claims. That's so much more evolved.
No, it's not evolved, it's barbaric. I assume you're referring to former Yugoslavia. There is no excuse for what happened there, and I'll admit that I'm deeply ashamed of the cowardly attitude of the rest of Europe with regard to that conflict.
However, I don't think it's a fair comparison. A civilized nation should not be executing minors or retarded people. Period.
Err, quite the contrary, me thinks. The Osbournes is quite tame for European standards.
Let me bring up two points: in the '80s there was a show in Britain (and aired in many other countries) called "Spittin' Image". This was a satire show that had puppets resembling the British Royal Family, British and American politicians. The sketches were quite close to the borderline of what most people would consider to be bad taste. In other words, I thought it was hilarious. At the time I was living in Dublin, Ireland with a guy from Finland and a guy from Canada. The Canadian guy was honestly shocked when he saw the show for the first time. Quote: "Oh, my God, they would never air this in Canada or the USA."
Which brings me to the following point.
Although there is no "official" censorship by the U.S. government, I think there is a form of "commercial" censorship. Basically, if someone like, take for example Bill Maher, has the courage to voice an opinion that is widely considered as "unpatriotic", his show gets canceled. Can't blame the government for that, but it does make you wonder about the extent of freedom of speech there is in reality.
Okay, let's test your filter. I hate you. How does that make you feel? Do you really care? Does it offend you in some way? Isn't this at all interesting to you that we're talking about hate? This would, presumably, be filtered out automatically so you'd never have to see it again right?
No. You have the right to hate me as much as you like. That would not be filtered out. It's more things like "Ethnic group XXX are a bunch of lazy bastards, and they are only here to profit from the hard work of real YYY citizens. Let's all go to refugee center ZZZ next week and set fire to it."
If this story were about the U.S., the discussions would be rife with how right-wing and repressive Americans and American society is. (I couldn't help notice that posts are already turning toward the U.S.)
Actually, compared to Europe, America is far more right-wing. Your 'pinko-commie' left-wing liberals would be on the right-wing side of the political spectrum in most European countries.
However, since it's not the U.S., I see subtle defenses of what amounts to censorship and attempted mind control.
No, it's not about mind-control (maybe it is about censorship).
Despite Europe's history, racism and hate of ethnic groups has been growing strongly in the past few decades. Especially when the economy is bad, people tend to blame immigrants for their personal misery. The ban on hate speech is a (well-intended, but misguided) attempt to limit this common phenomenon.
This is a very right-wing move for Europeans who frequently love to argue that they are so much more liberal than the U.S. and are far more evolved in terms of human rights.
1. Ironically, I think you'll see more left-wing than right-wing parties supporting this.
2. Yes, Europe is more evolved in terms of human rights. We don't execute children or mentally handicapped people.
Pure fact is very often a hard thing to come by. Sure, there are some things that are generally accepted, like 1+1=2. But how about Darwinism? The evidence is overwhelming, however political forces in the US are often succesful at denying Darwinism as fact. If free speach is not absolute, wouldn't the presentation of Darwinism be in danger from these forces?
The parent's post is a bit confusing. The meaning is probably that denying known facts is not protected. It reads like there is no protection for expressing known facts.
Anyhow, I think advocating Darwinism would be fine. If it is not accepted as fact, it's an opinion, which is protected. Of course, as ludicrous as it is in my opinion, creationism would also be protected. And that's fine too.
No speech should ever be censored, only modded down.
Ho hum. Although I think this is a noble principle, how about:
- shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater?
- a guide for pedophiles on how to abduct children?
- instructions for making a nuclear weapon?
- posting names, addresses, SSNs of police officers on the Internet?
- publishing names and addresses of abortion doctors?
All these have nothing to do with expressing ideas. So maybe that should be the measuring stick? But who is going to do the measuring? The government? As you can probably tell, I don't have the answer either...
Does hating Micro$oft count?
What about Computer Associates?
Novell?
No. Read the article. Note that there already is a nice mechanism in the U.S. that basically allows big corporations to suppress negative publicity for them. Basically they can sue anyone until their money for legal fees runs out.
This is exactly the kind of crap that other countries do to their citizens that makes people come to the U.S. legally or otherwise.
Ahh, I don't think so. Most immigrants come to the U.S. because they are being persecuted (limiting hate speech does not qualify as such), or for economic reasons. I doubt if you'll see a stream of European refugees as a result of this, most Europeans are just as ignorant and indifferent when it comes to civil liberties as Americans ("It does not affect me directly, why should I care?").
It may sound like I hate illegal immigrants from this statement.
As a (legal) immigrant, I can assure you I did not get that message from your statement.
Quite a few European countries will most certainly not ratify it as is for the same reasons as why it wouldn't be accepted in the US.
Really? Can you name a few that you think won't ratify it? I'm not trolling, I'm honestly curious, since I can't think of any.
Very insightful (I'm not being sarcastic :-)
As a European, let me add a little to this. Freedom of the press is not absolute in all European countries. Where I come from, you can't buy a certain book written by a certain A. Hitler. Some computer games (e.g. Castle Wolfenstein) were banned in Germany. Some countries have laws against racist political parties. The only result of that is that racist political parties dress their spokesmen up in suits, and instruct them to express the racist views in a (barely) acceptable way.
Anyway, although I think there are forms of speech that should be illegal, I don't think the broad definition by the Council of Europe is a good idea. If someone wants to question the Holocaust or whatever, let them. Suppressing this kind of sentiment on the Internet doesn't make it go away, it'll only manifest itself in a different way. Democracies should be strong enough to withstand this kind of nonsense. If they're not, it's time to move somewhere else...
Anyone else care to speculate/correct my estimations?
Since you asked...
The moon is about 384,000 km (239,000 miles) from earth.
On top of all this to know God does not exist requires a great deal of knowledge.
Whereas to know that God does exist requires no knowledge at all. Only faith.
Ok, I'll bite. If I remember correctly, the entire Apollo program cost something like $20 billion. Even in '60s dollars, that is not a lot of money (really). The International Space Station costs something like $60 billion. Again, that is not a lot of money. Most countries could easily afford this kind of stuff, if only they had the political will.
If you think I'm smoking something illegal, just look up the GDP and defense budgets of the U.S. and European countries.
Put it in perspective- a frickin' space shuttle ash tray costs about the same.
No smoking on the Space Shuttle. The astronauts have to step outside for a smoke.
NASA can't afford to pay the parking fee for the Lunar Rover they left there ~30 years ago.
Besides, as creationist science has clearly proven, the moon is covered in hundreds of feet of dust, so they could never have landed there. Oh, wait, I have my hoaxes mixed up now...
Its funny, but in your sarcasm you are actually right, there is indeed no evidence that points to Columbus or any of his three vessels landing on the north american continent.
Correct (mostly). Columbus mostly visited Hispaniola (what is now Haiti/Dominican Republic). On his fourth and last voyage he actually landed in what is now Mexico, so depending on how much nitpicking you want to do, you can argue that he did or didn't land on the North American continent. What is clear is that he did not discover the North American continent in 1492.
See this link.
If I remember correctly, a few years ago Scientific American had a description in the Amateur Scientist section on how to build a very sensitive gravity meter yourself. One of the claims in the article was that the thing could detect the moon passing overhead.
It's english with Dutch (Ja,Nee).
If I had to guess, it's probably because he's running a Dutch version of Windows (he's Dutch, remember). This is something that used to drive me crazy. I think it is because the software is loading the dialog from some Windows DLL, which happens to be a Dutch language one in this case. So, standard dialogs like Yes/No typically suffer from this. It's probably not entirely fair to blame the burner software for this...
Just guessing, of course...
Ok, so now I'm completely and utterly confused about whether a "pound" is a unit of mass or a unit of force. This link convincingly points out that we should abolish this bizarro Imperial system. Use the metric system when discussing physics, please...
Weight (force due to gravity)...
I was taught that weight is "force exerted on a supporting surface". So, that makes the weight zero in this case. Maybe I was taught wrong...
For instance, an astronaut is weightless relative to the shuttle or ISS, but still weighs 200lb or so relative to the Earth.
Nope. Weight relative to earth is zero (earth is far away). Mass is still 200 lbs, though...
If I jump off a chair, my weight is zero for a short period of time.
Another misconception is that object are easy to move around in "zero-g". Not so,...
Correct! Mass is fundamentally different from weight. Not to mention 'inertial mass' and 'gravitational mass'...
Why do so many people not diferentiate between socialism and communism? :/
Ignorance...
Doesn't matter. If you jump up in a rotating spaceship, you are temporarily weightless. Same thing as jumping up on earth. At least according to Einstein and friends.
Basic Physics:
The centripetal force needed to keep the ISS in a circular orbit is given by:
Fc = (m.v^2)/r
Where:
Fc is the centripetal force in Newtons
m is the mass of the ISS in kilograms
v is the orbital velocity in meters/second
r is the radius of the orbit in meters
Gravity supplies this centripetal force.
The force of gravity on the ISS is given by:
Fg = (gamma.M.m)/(r^2)
Where:
Fg is the gravitational force in Newtons
gamma is the gravitational constant (6.672 * 10^-11 (N m^2)/(kg^2))
M is the mass of the earth (~ 6.0 * 10^24 kg)
m is the mass of the ISS in kg
r is the distance to the center of the earth, i.e., the radius of the orbit (6439 km).
Fc = Fg,
so,
(m.v^2)/r = (gamma.M.m)/(r^2),
or:
v^2 = gamma.M/r,
or:
v = sqrt(gamma.M/r)
so,
v = sqrt(6.672*10^-11 * 6.0*10^24/6.439*10^6)
= 7.874 km/s,
or 17,617 mph.
Anything slower, and it will fall to earth, anything faster and it will assume an elliptical orbit or even escape the earth's gravitational field.
lbs (pounds) are a measure of weight. kgs are a measure of mass, although we use them as a measure of weight for convenience.
Mass is a measurement of the amount of matter something contains, while Weight is the measurement of the pull of gravity on an object.
Is that right? If I remember correctly, weight is a force, and should be measured in Newtons, or pound-force. I think there is a dimensionless conversion factor between pounds and kilograms (1 pound is roughly 454 grams, I think), so that suggests that both pounds and kilograms are units of mass, not weight.
We typically measure the mass of an object by actually measuring the weight of an object, and then deducing what its mass is, using a known value for the acceleration of gravity (~9.8 m/s^2, give or take a little bit, depending where you are on earth).
Therefore, you cannot measure the weight of the ISS in pounds, since the force of gravity exerted upon it is miniscule..
No, the force of gravity exerted upon it obeys the Newtonian laws (rougly 89% of what it would be on Earth). However, the weight of the ISS is effectively zero. Just as my weight is zero when I jump off a chair. The ISS has the right velocity to keep on falling 'around' the earth indefinitely (if we neglect the minuscule friction that causes its orbit to decay gradually -- they compensate for that).