I just read Richard Nixon's proposal for health care reform. It's not at all conservative and I don't see how you can use it as a marker for the division between conservative and liberal.
But if the trend continues, the parties are all left leaning today because in the future the center will be further right. Isn't it kind of meaningless to judge parties based on the past and future?
It's completely free. You don't get punished, you just pay more taxes. This seems perfectly reasonable.
That's not reasonable at all. Why would you have to pay more taxes for getting fewer services? You might as well have a 100% regressive tax system. If you don't contribute much, you should pay a higher percentage to make up for it. Seems like the same kind of reasoning.
How do you think more parties would help? When I read about politics in other countries with more parties, if anything it seems even more broken. Oh I voted for this communist party, but they just formed an alliance with this corporate party and abandoned their entire platform, sweet. Since a majority is usually required to form a "government" as they call it, it ends up being the same as a two-party system with one big difference -- you elect a bunch of radical kooks, or people who pretend to be radical kooks, who get taken into the fold through alliances. At least here major politicians are fairly centrist (for our own sphere.. I don't believe in averaging in the far left and far right of other countries in determining our own spectrum).
And finally: I support the concept of a safety net, like Welfare, but it should only be used when the citizen runs out of money. It should be a Last Ditch Resort, not an entitlement to pay every little expense, like my annual physicals. Let the citizens pay their own bills, until they are (almost) out of money, and then Welfare/medicare will "catch" them in the safety net, and pay the bills.
I think people with a moderate amount of wealth should not need to lose all of that wealth before being helped. In fact it seems morally wrong that a poor person who is laid off gets immediate help, whereas the slightly richer person who pays taxes and is more productive economically gets no help. For long-term support you may be right, but for short-term I think aid should be available to all.
The Colonialism-Interference-Isolationism spectrum
That can be divided up into economic and cultural aspects as well.
Punishment vs. rehabilitation
I just took the test at politicalcompass.org and saw some questions related to that. I think the type of crime has to be taken into account. Where would people who believe punishment is a means to rehabilitation fit in?
Keep in mind that the parent in this thread stated that they would not board a plane if they saw "Muslims" also boarding. So the issue of hijacking itself is rather central to the conversation.
I suppose interjecting costumes in to the conversation is my fault. In my defense, I made the assumption someone would identify a Muslim by their strict adherence to Islamic dress.
Yes, you're right. My entrance into the thread was more limited, just talking about your comment on fear, and when we went back to talking about hijacking I assumed you were talking about the Juan Williams comments, not the anonymous guy you had responded to. Very unclear, my fault.
That's also how costumes got interjected into this conversation, I believe. I wouldn't say it's your fault, or a fault at all, I certainly thought that's what we were talking about.
So in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, maintaining irrational beliefs that stereotype a group based on the actions of an infinitesimally small subset of members of that group is not the dictionary definition of bigotry.
Where did that come from? That has nothing to do with my "not a scientific test" comment.
So, being muslim is the same as being a member of a militant black power group.
Oh yes, just like being black is the same as being a member of a militant black power group.
So, being critical of American policies is the same thing as fearing individual muslims.
You seem more interested in twisting my question than really answering. Let me make it more contrained -- are Muslims throughout the world who feel anger or fear when confronted with groups of Americans bigots?
So, it's right to be a bigot in your heart as long as you don't act on it.
A bigot "in your heart" -- is that like thought crime? Juan Williams rightly recognizes that events condition us to react a certain way. You can be conditioned to fear men, women, disfigured people, people of different races.. there's nothing you can do about your immediate reaction. But you can control what actions you take based on that feeling.
So, it's logical to point out a technically true fact when it is in no way a legitimate basis for judging all muslims.
If you watch again you'll see that Juan Williams never said all Muslims are at war with us. He basically said it's ridiculous to claim that all Muslims are NOT at war with us when we have testimony of many self-identified Muslims saying they are at war with us. He's talking about political correctness preventing you from being able to talk about reality.
Its pretty clear you approach this discussion from the ingrained belief that any muslims is a potential threat. Pretty much every argument you make has that assumption as its basis. So I doubt that this will ever be productive.
I'm not sure what you mean precisely. First of all, we're talking about Muslims in the US who purposely go to airports in "traditional Muslim garb." We're not talking about all Muslims, or even all US Muslims.
But I don't fear or hate individual Muslims. I just agree with Juan Williams that modern liberal culture is unable to even discuss problems with Islam. Every problem is imagined away as affecting such a tiny proportion of Muslims that it's not actually a problem, and even if it were, it's not actually anything to do with Islam or Muslims. Look at your arguments. You start off with stuff like 1000000:1 Muslims are harmless, a statistic that is completely ridiculous for ANY large group of people. It's like you live in a fantasy world where Islam is this idyllic religion and Muslims are all perfect, rather than reality where Islam has caused huge conflicts throughout the world for 1000 years.
How many acts of terrorism against an airline have been committed by terrorists dressed in traditional Islamic garb? The mugshots and video footage I've seen recently all show western style clothes.
I don't know, and when restricted to the moment of hijacking itself you may be right. Terrorists clearly know not to stick out when they're making an attack. The mere fact that they recognize that their ostentatious garb would draw attention and identify them as potential terrorists seems like a point in my favor though.
When you look at the terrorists' broader lives, it's quite common to see an embrace of Islam and increasing strictness in adherence to Islam in the time leading up to the attack, including dress. At least in recent cases, anyway, it happened with the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber, and the Ft. Hood shooter. They all became very Islamic, including changing how they dress. Faisal Shahzad's wife also transitioned from normal Western clothing to "traditional Islamic" garb.
After all, people who are "first and foremost" black can't be honest americans.
There are black groups, like black power groups, that are definitely not good or honest Americans. I'm not sure if that's what you meant by "first and foremost" black but it would definitely qualify.
Which has nothing to do with them being a threat. The 9-11 attackers blended in. So did Richard Reid and Abdulmutallab.
So what? This isn't about establishing a scientific test for who will be the next Muslim hijacker. We're talking about whether fearing someone for how they dress is an indicator of bigotry or craziness.
No - both groups support "fighting back" without thinking through the consequences.
Read the poll question! It specifically says "suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets." How can you claim they are not thinking through the consequences?
I agree that you can't dismiss civilian casualties from the war, but that harms your point more than it helps. You're drawing an equivalence between the American war effort and deliberate suicide bombing of civilians, which I think is a faulty equivalence, but let's accept it. Are you willing to call every Muslim who expresses anti-American sentiment a bigot?
Even further, it's a small percentage of soldiers who have actually killed any Muslim civilians by their own hand. As you pointed out, 9/10 of soldiers are probably support staff anyway and have no role in direct fighting. So is any Muslim who expresses anti-US-army sentiment a bigot? I mean really, maybe one pilot dropped a bomb on a house full of children. Let's say it was deliberate. So what? 99.9% of soldiers didn't do that.
No, that is unequivocally NOT what he said.
He said it was right to feel that way. He went on to say that because the times square bomber said muslims are at war with america that it is true.
He certainly did say (roughly) what I said. I just watched the clip on youtube. And if he said it's right to feel that way, he also said it's not right to act on those feelings.
Also I think your logic is faulty at the end. If a Muslim says he and some other Muslims are at war with America, then it IS true that Muslims are at war with America. I don't know what you could mean by implying that's not true. Note he didn't say all Muslims are at war with America.
In the Earth's case you can solve that by adding a dimension. Can the universe case be solved by adding a dimension as well, so that a fixed center can be found?
Yeah I saw that movie. It was awesome. It avoided most of these problems by having a beginning point and an end point anchored by the machine. Whatever path you took while inside the machine was irrelevant, it was like a wormhole or something that went back and forth between those endpoints.
And few of them are actual risks. Just like the US army has something like 10 support personnel for every actual soldier.
I think it's naive to assume that 90% of the Taliban, al Qaeda, and al Shabaab are harmless, but whatever.
But really, so what if I am wrong by an order of magnitude or even two? Its still just a drop of water in a bucket that is absolutely pointless to make any risk evaluations on. Even just 100 false positives for every true positive would be considered an abject failure of practicality for any actual testing system.
I think it makes a difference because of another thing that comes into play. Since we're talking about Juan Williams's comment regarding people in Muslim garb at the airport, the population in question is not "all Muslims" but rather "Muslims who ostentatiously display their religion in a host culture and a particular setting like an airport where it is likely to arouse discomfort."
When you look at the population of Muslims in America, most do not go about in very traditional Muslim dress. So if you accepted that 1/1000 or 1/10000 Muslims was radical, and some other 1/X proportion of American Muslims dress in a fundamentalist style, you have to determine the intersection of those sets. I don't think that the variables are disconnected.
Who knows what the real numbers are, but it's common sense that people who purposely stick out and flash their Muslim identity, despite living in a non-Muslim society, and being in a setting where radical Muslims have committed terrorist attacks, may be more likely than a randomly selected Muslim to be radical.
Certainly common sense enough that feeling nervous around such a group is understandable. Nobody's suggesting these people should be stoned to death for dressing a certain way.
And how many americans supported the use of military force against countries like iraq?
Maybe you should read the poll questions again. It's asking specifically about attacking civilians, not collateral damage. Are you suggesting that maybe 40% of Americans support deliberate bombings of innocent civilians?
Anyway, say you're right. Then wouldn't Muslims have a rational point about fearing Americans? Remember we're talking about a guy who made a comment saying "Yes I feel nervous when I see certain people on a plane." Do you think it's far that if 40% of Americans want to bomb Muslims, AND there's a group of 10 Americans dressed as US soldiers with gas masks on so they can't be identified, AND they are walking down a dark alley in Baghdad... would it be fair or unfair for a Muslim walking through the same alley to either fear that group or be angry at them?
You've got all the same components, ostentatious dress that rejects local culture, history of problems, a far-away country that supports attacking your civilians, etc.
It seems like if gravity affects the time traveler, so should all the other forces. Isn't the end result of what you're saying that the time traveler doesn't travel through time, but merely has a change of consciousness? His body would decay, all the normal changes over time would happen, it would just seem faster, like he had slept through life?
Otherwise, if his physical body is somehow immune to everything, and doesn't age as he travels, why does gravity affect it? If a chair is moved into his gravity-path as he travels, does he bump it? Does the chair's gravity affect him?
Your post (and many people's intuition) assumes that you suddenly change velocity in all dimensions, so that you move in time but stay at a fixed position in space. The problem is, the concept of a "fixed point in space" is a figment of human imagination; there's no such thing. A fixed point in space implies a prefered frame of reference, and there simply is no such thing.
What would happen if the time traveler's starting position was recorded from every possible frame of reference, then updated over time with the assumption that no forces (including gravity) could interact with him? Would the ending position differ for various frames of reference? I know there are some weird ones like rotational frames of reference, but I'm not sure how they work. Seems like for all non-rotational frames the ending position would agree.
So what spacial trajectory does the time machine follow? Well, why would it not continue moving at 88mph deviation from the straight-line path through curved spacetime that it's already following - that being the same line being followed by the Earth?
That's interesting, but doesn't the curved space-time idea require gravity to affect the body following the path? If we say "by definition, particle A is unaffected by gravity" then it would not follow any curves in space-time, otherwise gravity would be affecting it.
I'd say there is, but with time travel aren't you essentially disconnecting yourself from that inertia? Why would it remain attached to the space half of it and not the time half?
Why would it be instant death though? Clearly teleportation has the ability to swap or at least shove out of the way the matter you're teleporting into, otherwise even if you just teleport into empty air, well, having a bunch of air bubbles in your veins leads to heart attacks iirc.
Is the center of mass of the universe constant, or does energy/matter conversion affect it? If it's constant that would be a good frame of reference.
Why would gravity be able to "lock on" to you as you're traveling back through time though? I could only believe that if the time traveler were actually physically present and visible during the whole trip backwards. Otherwise, if it's fair for the time traveler to pop out in one instant and pop in at another, I don't see how wherever you popped off to is affected by the gravity of reality.
I don't find it particularly odd that someone would experience fear seeing people in traditional middle-eastern garb boarding an aircraft.
Minor point but Islamic garb is more specific than traditional Middle Eastern garb, which would include things like belly dancing outfits. Even I would say a fear of belly dancers is irrational.
We've been bombarded by imagery of violent people in the Middle East and Muslims in particular.
You're really downplaying it. It's not just imagery, it's reality. The Middle East is a very violent place, as are other places with high Muslim concentrations. Places like Nigeria, Sudan, and Pakistan are not really Middle Eastern but have a lot of violent conflict due to Islam.
However, that only represents a small subset of a much larger population.
It's a subset but small is really subjective. But more importantly, you are mixing up populations here. How many Muslims in the world wear traditional Muslim garb? Maybe a high percentage, at least among women. (Muslim men have much more freedom to dress how they please than Muslim women.) Now look back at American Muslims, which is the population of interest in this story. Out of all the Muslims in America, how many consciously wear traditional Muslim garb? It's really a small subset itself. Most Muslim men that I know or am acquainted with wear "Western" clothes. Basically indistinguishable. Most Muslim women I know wear at most a headscarf, and actually most that I know (mostly doctors and stuff) don't wear any Muslim clothing or accessories.
So now when you see a group of Muslims who are all wearing traditional Muslim clothing, you are talking about a small subset of Muslims in America. You are then left free to wonder how that small subset intersects with other small subsets, like the subset of radical Muslims (large overlap) and the subset of Muslim terrorists (I won't speculate). I read that Major Nidal Hasan (the Ft. Hood shooting guy) adopted traditional Muslim garb (salwar kameez etc) on his route to extremism and terrorism. I believe Faisal Shahzad did too.
The point is that the small subset of Muslims in America who choose to ostentatiously wear non-Western clothing have a different agenda than Muslims who assimilate in terms of visibility. Whatever statistics you care to quote about Muslims and terrorism probably don't separate out that small subset for analysis, unfortunately. At least I'm not aware of any. But at the same time, any statistics about Muslims and terrorism which don't make the separation would be weakened when applied to such a visibly distinct subset.
I looked over the FBI report and was really shocked at the number of "environmental terrorism" cases they covered. But it ties in really well with our disagreement over what you called irrelevant. If I worked at a Gillette animal testing center, I would be more concerned with animal rights terrorists than I am. All of the Latino terrorist attacks I saw in the FBI report took place in Puerto Rico. Again, more concerning if I lived in Puerto Rico.
Anyway, your 1000000:1 estimate is incorrect. If there are 2 billion Muslims in the world, that's only 2000 Muslim terrorists. I don't know, maybe you don't consider the Taliban to be a terrorist organization, but it's got way more than 2000 soldiers by itself. Al Shabaab has 3000-7000 members and Al Qaeda has 500-1000 members, both according to Wikipedia. Those are big organized groups that are much in the news. There are a ton of smaller Muslim groups with weird names that you don't hear much about in mainstream American news. Of course, not all Islamic terrorist organizations target the US, and not all that do have the capability of carrying anything out. But let's not pretend that only 1/1000000 Muslims are terrorists.
Aside from the scale of the problem, the other big distinguishing factor against Muslim terrorists is the degree of state support they enjoy. Tell me what environmental terrorists have CIA contacts, funding from foreign intelligence agencies, government sponsored sanctuaries where they can train for attacks, and so on. Which country would you say is the equivalent of Pakistan in terms of, say, Latino terrorism? Which country is the Saudi Arabia of funding for extremist environmentalist radicals?
Okay then we have popular support. How many environmentalists support environmental terrorism involving suicide bombing? How many Christians support abortion clinic bombings that result in death? I don't know, it's actually hard to find a poll about those topics. Please share if you have some. It's pretty easy with Muslims though. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1338/declining-muslim-support-for-bin-laden-suicide-bombing
The conventional (I guess) time travel idea is that you're winding a tape backwards, so gravity isn't actually repelling you, its effects are just being undone one frame at a time. Then you're inserted into the final frame. But if there's a time/gravity link the whole time, the link would have to either ignore the direction of time, or it would be reversed and you'd be pushed away from the ground.
Also, if you travel backwards through time in the way you're talking about, wouldn't the time traveler be seen/detectable at each point? In a sense just moving backwards, but otherwise visible? (Or, if physical processes reverse like I'm suggesting with gravity, become sort of black hole like with respect to visibility?)
Depends on where you mark as "poor". If you set your "poor" marker low enough, then the answer is "because they need food, shelter, clean water, clothing and other basic needs and have very little left to really take."
True, but if they make such little money then it's fair to say they don't work full time. In that case, if they don't have enough money to pay taxes, they can do community service or some type of government sponsored work. Not too much, just enough so that the connection between "the government does stuff for me" and "but it costs me money/time" is established.
That "1% on all banking transactions" thing seems more and more like a good idea the more I think about it
Hm, how many banking transactions are involved with your paycheck? I know customers have to deposit money into their accounts (1), then transfer it to my company (2), then my company transfers it to me (3), then I transfer it to pay my bills (4) and I have very little left over. Then the people I pay have to pay additional transfer taxes so they raise their prices. It seems it could become a very high tax indirectly, and it would affect regular working people maybe more than you think.
Okay I didn't realize it was unsubstantiated. The principle that these sorts of consequences stifle free speech stands though.
I totally disagree. If we can't refuse to associate with someone because they are an ass, then there is no point to freedom of speech in the first place.
Freedom of association is great but it's already dead. You can't refuse to associate with some group you hate if it's a protected group. I'd rather not lose freedom of speech too.
But that has more to do with the oil and gas royalties that the Canadian and provincial governments collect, not some feel-good socialism that just happens to make them more competitive.
In other words, if they had to charge all businesses equally for health care services, suddenly it wouldn't be a competitive advantage.
Slashdot Mirror
I just read Richard Nixon's proposal for health care reform. It's not at all conservative and I don't see how you can use it as a marker for the division between conservative and liberal.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/September/03/nixon-proposal.aspx
But if the trend continues, the parties are all left leaning today because in the future the center will be further right. Isn't it kind of meaningless to judge parties based on the past and future?
It's completely free. You don't get punished, you just pay more taxes. This seems perfectly reasonable.
That's not reasonable at all. Why would you have to pay more taxes for getting fewer services? You might as well have a 100% regressive tax system. If you don't contribute much, you should pay a higher percentage to make up for it. Seems like the same kind of reasoning.
How do you think more parties would help? When I read about politics in other countries with more parties, if anything it seems even more broken. Oh I voted for this communist party, but they just formed an alliance with this corporate party and abandoned their entire platform, sweet. Since a majority is usually required to form a "government" as they call it, it ends up being the same as a two-party system with one big difference -- you elect a bunch of radical kooks, or people who pretend to be radical kooks, who get taken into the fold through alliances. At least here major politicians are fairly centrist (for our own sphere.. I don't believe in averaging in the far left and far right of other countries in determining our own spectrum).
And finally: I support the concept of a safety net, like Welfare, but it should only be used when the citizen runs out of money. It should be a Last Ditch Resort, not an entitlement to pay every little expense, like my annual physicals. Let the citizens pay their own bills, until they are (almost) out of money, and then Welfare/medicare will "catch" them in the safety net, and pay the bills.
I think people with a moderate amount of wealth should not need to lose all of that wealth before being helped. In fact it seems morally wrong that a poor person who is laid off gets immediate help, whereas the slightly richer person who pays taxes and is more productive economically gets no help. For long-term support you may be right, but for short-term I think aid should be available to all.
The Colonialism-Interference-Isolationism spectrum
That can be divided up into economic and cultural aspects as well.
Punishment vs. rehabilitation
I just took the test at politicalcompass.org and saw some questions related to that. I think the type of crime has to be taken into account. Where would people who believe punishment is a means to rehabilitation fit in?
Keep in mind that the parent in this thread stated that they would not board a plane if they saw "Muslims" also boarding. So the issue of hijacking itself is rather central to the conversation.
I suppose interjecting costumes in to the conversation is my fault. In my defense, I made the assumption someone would identify a Muslim by their strict adherence to Islamic dress.
Yes, you're right. My entrance into the thread was more limited, just talking about your comment on fear, and when we went back to talking about hijacking I assumed you were talking about the Juan Williams comments, not the anonymous guy you had responded to. Very unclear, my fault.
That's also how costumes got interjected into this conversation, I believe. I wouldn't say it's your fault, or a fault at all, I certainly thought that's what we were talking about.
So in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, maintaining irrational beliefs that stereotype a group based on the actions of an infinitesimally small subset of members of that group is not the dictionary definition of bigotry.
Where did that come from? That has nothing to do with my "not a scientific test" comment.
So, being muslim is the same as being a member of a militant black power group.
Oh yes, just like being black is the same as being a member of a militant black power group.
So, being critical of American policies is the same thing as fearing individual muslims.
You seem more interested in twisting my question than really answering. Let me make it more contrained -- are Muslims throughout the world who feel anger or fear when confronted with groups of Americans bigots?
So, it's right to be a bigot in your heart as long as you don't act on it.
A bigot "in your heart" -- is that like thought crime? Juan Williams rightly recognizes that events condition us to react a certain way. You can be conditioned to fear men, women, disfigured people, people of different races.. there's nothing you can do about your immediate reaction. But you can control what actions you take based on that feeling.
So, it's logical to point out a technically true fact when it is in no way a legitimate basis for judging all muslims.
If you watch again you'll see that Juan Williams never said all Muslims are at war with us. He basically said it's ridiculous to claim that all Muslims are NOT at war with us when we have testimony of many self-identified Muslims saying they are at war with us. He's talking about political correctness preventing you from being able to talk about reality.
Its pretty clear you approach this discussion from the ingrained belief that any muslims is a potential threat. Pretty much every argument you make has that assumption as its basis. So I doubt that this will ever be productive.
I'm not sure what you mean precisely. First of all, we're talking about Muslims in the US who purposely go to airports in "traditional Muslim garb." We're not talking about all Muslims, or even all US Muslims.
But I don't fear or hate individual Muslims. I just agree with Juan Williams that modern liberal culture is unable to even discuss problems with Islam. Every problem is imagined away as affecting such a tiny proportion of Muslims that it's not actually a problem, and even if it were, it's not actually anything to do with Islam or Muslims. Look at your arguments. You start off with stuff like 1000000:1 Muslims are harmless, a statistic that is completely ridiculous for ANY large group of people. It's like you live in a fantasy world where Islam is this idyllic religion and Muslims are all perfect, rather than reality where Islam has caused huge conflicts throughout the world for 1000 years.
How many acts of terrorism against an airline have been committed by terrorists dressed in traditional Islamic garb? The mugshots and video footage I've seen recently all show western style clothes.
I don't know, and when restricted to the moment of hijacking itself you may be right. Terrorists clearly know not to stick out when they're making an attack. The mere fact that they recognize that their ostentatious garb would draw attention and identify them as potential terrorists seems like a point in my favor though.
When you look at the terrorists' broader lives, it's quite common to see an embrace of Islam and increasing strictness in adherence to Islam in the time leading up to the attack, including dress. At least in recent cases, anyway, it happened with the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber, and the Ft. Hood shooter. They all became very Islamic, including changing how they dress. Faisal Shahzad's wife also transitioned from normal Western clothing to "traditional Islamic" garb.
After all, people who are "first and foremost" black can't be honest americans.
There are black groups, like black power groups, that are definitely not good or honest Americans. I'm not sure if that's what you meant by "first and foremost" black but it would definitely qualify.
Which has nothing to do with them being a threat. The 9-11 attackers blended in. So did Richard Reid and Abdulmutallab.
So what? This isn't about establishing a scientific test for who will be the next Muslim hijacker. We're talking about whether fearing someone for how they dress is an indicator of bigotry or craziness.
No - both groups support "fighting back" without thinking through the consequences.
Read the poll question! It specifically says "suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets." How can you claim they are not thinking through the consequences?
I agree that you can't dismiss civilian casualties from the war, but that harms your point more than it helps. You're drawing an equivalence between the American war effort and deliberate suicide bombing of civilians, which I think is a faulty equivalence, but let's accept it. Are you willing to call every Muslim who expresses anti-American sentiment a bigot?
Even further, it's a small percentage of soldiers who have actually killed any Muslim civilians by their own hand. As you pointed out, 9/10 of soldiers are probably support staff anyway and have no role in direct fighting. So is any Muslim who expresses anti-US-army sentiment a bigot? I mean really, maybe one pilot dropped a bomb on a house full of children. Let's say it was deliberate. So what? 99.9% of soldiers didn't do that.
No, that is unequivocally NOT what he said.
He said it was right to feel that way. He went on to say that because the times square bomber said muslims are at war with america that it is true.
He certainly did say (roughly) what I said. I just watched the clip on youtube. And if he said it's right to feel that way, he also said it's not right to act on those feelings.
Also I think your logic is faulty at the end. If a Muslim says he and some other Muslims are at war with America, then it IS true that Muslims are at war with America. I don't know what you could mean by implying that's not true. Note he didn't say all Muslims are at war with America.
In the Earth's case you can solve that by adding a dimension. Can the universe case be solved by adding a dimension as well, so that a fixed center can be found?
Yeah I saw that movie. It was awesome. It avoided most of these problems by having a beginning point and an end point anchored by the machine. Whatever path you took while inside the machine was irrelevant, it was like a wormhole or something that went back and forth between those endpoints.
And few of them are actual risks. Just like the US army has something like 10 support personnel for every actual soldier.
I think it's naive to assume that 90% of the Taliban, al Qaeda, and al Shabaab are harmless, but whatever.
But really, so what if I am wrong by an order of magnitude or even two? Its still just a drop of water in a bucket that is absolutely pointless to make any risk evaluations on. Even just 100 false positives for every true positive would be considered an abject failure of practicality for any actual testing system.
I think it makes a difference because of another thing that comes into play. Since we're talking about Juan Williams's comment regarding people in Muslim garb at the airport, the population in question is not "all Muslims" but rather "Muslims who ostentatiously display their religion in a host culture and a particular setting like an airport where it is likely to arouse discomfort."
When you look at the population of Muslims in America, most do not go about in very traditional Muslim dress. So if you accepted that 1/1000 or 1/10000 Muslims was radical, and some other 1/X proportion of American Muslims dress in a fundamentalist style, you have to determine the intersection of those sets. I don't think that the variables are disconnected.
Who knows what the real numbers are, but it's common sense that people who purposely stick out and flash their Muslim identity, despite living in a non-Muslim society, and being in a setting where radical Muslims have committed terrorist attacks, may be more likely than a randomly selected Muslim to be radical.
Certainly common sense enough that feeling nervous around such a group is understandable. Nobody's suggesting these people should be stoned to death for dressing a certain way.
And how many americans supported the use of military force against countries like iraq?
Maybe you should read the poll questions again. It's asking specifically about attacking civilians, not collateral damage. Are you suggesting that maybe 40% of Americans support deliberate bombings of innocent civilians?
Anyway, say you're right. Then wouldn't Muslims have a rational point about fearing Americans? Remember we're talking about a guy who made a comment saying "Yes I feel nervous when I see certain people on a plane." Do you think it's far that if 40% of Americans want to bomb Muslims, AND there's a group of 10 Americans dressed as US soldiers with gas masks on so they can't be identified, AND they are walking down a dark alley in Baghdad... would it be fair or unfair for a Muslim walking through the same alley to either fear that group or be angry at them?
You've got all the same components, ostentatious dress that rejects local culture, history of problems, a far-away country that supports attacking your civilians, etc.
It seems like if gravity affects the time traveler, so should all the other forces. Isn't the end result of what you're saying that the time traveler doesn't travel through time, but merely has a change of consciousness? His body would decay, all the normal changes over time would happen, it would just seem faster, like he had slept through life?
Otherwise, if his physical body is somehow immune to everything, and doesn't age as he travels, why does gravity affect it? If a chair is moved into his gravity-path as he travels, does he bump it? Does the chair's gravity affect him?
Your post (and many people's intuition) assumes that you suddenly change velocity in all dimensions, so that you move in time but stay at a fixed position in space. The problem is, the concept of a "fixed point in space" is a figment of human imagination; there's no such thing. A fixed point in space implies a prefered frame of reference, and there simply is no such thing.
What would happen if the time traveler's starting position was recorded from every possible frame of reference, then updated over time with the assumption that no forces (including gravity) could interact with him? Would the ending position differ for various frames of reference? I know there are some weird ones like rotational frames of reference, but I'm not sure how they work. Seems like for all non-rotational frames the ending position would agree.
So what spacial trajectory does the time machine follow? Well, why would it not continue moving at 88mph deviation from the straight-line path through curved spacetime that it's already following - that being the same line being followed by the Earth?
That's interesting, but doesn't the curved space-time idea require gravity to affect the body following the path? If we say "by definition, particle A is unaffected by gravity" then it would not follow any curves in space-time, otherwise gravity would be affecting it.
I'd say there is, but with time travel aren't you essentially disconnecting yourself from that inertia? Why would it remain attached to the space half of it and not the time half?
Why would it be instant death though? Clearly teleportation has the ability to swap or at least shove out of the way the matter you're teleporting into, otherwise even if you just teleport into empty air, well, having a bunch of air bubbles in your veins leads to heart attacks iirc.
Is the center of mass of the universe constant, or does energy/matter conversion affect it? If it's constant that would be a good frame of reference.
Why would gravity be able to "lock on" to you as you're traveling back through time though? I could only believe that if the time traveler were actually physically present and visible during the whole trip backwards. Otherwise, if it's fair for the time traveler to pop out in one instant and pop in at another, I don't see how wherever you popped off to is affected by the gravity of reality.
I don't find it particularly odd that someone would experience fear seeing people in traditional middle-eastern garb boarding an aircraft.
Minor point but Islamic garb is more specific than traditional Middle Eastern garb, which would include things like belly dancing outfits. Even I would say a fear of belly dancers is irrational.
We've been bombarded by imagery of violent people in the Middle East and Muslims in particular.
You're really downplaying it. It's not just imagery, it's reality. The Middle East is a very violent place, as are other places with high Muslim concentrations. Places like Nigeria, Sudan, and Pakistan are not really Middle Eastern but have a lot of violent conflict due to Islam.
However, that only represents a small subset of a much larger population.
It's a subset but small is really subjective. But more importantly, you are mixing up populations here. How many Muslims in the world wear traditional Muslim garb? Maybe a high percentage, at least among women. (Muslim men have much more freedom to dress how they please than Muslim women.) Now look back at American Muslims, which is the population of interest in this story. Out of all the Muslims in America, how many consciously wear traditional Muslim garb? It's really a small subset itself. Most Muslim men that I know or am acquainted with wear "Western" clothes. Basically indistinguishable. Most Muslim women I know wear at most a headscarf, and actually most that I know (mostly doctors and stuff) don't wear any Muslim clothing or accessories.
So now when you see a group of Muslims who are all wearing traditional Muslim clothing, you are talking about a small subset of Muslims in America. You are then left free to wonder how that small subset intersects with other small subsets, like the subset of radical Muslims (large overlap) and the subset of Muslim terrorists (I won't speculate). I read that Major Nidal Hasan (the Ft. Hood shooting guy) adopted traditional Muslim garb (salwar kameez etc) on his route to extremism and terrorism. I believe Faisal Shahzad did too.
The point is that the small subset of Muslims in America who choose to ostentatiously wear non-Western clothing have a different agenda than Muslims who assimilate in terms of visibility. Whatever statistics you care to quote about Muslims and terrorism probably don't separate out that small subset for analysis, unfortunately. At least I'm not aware of any. But at the same time, any statistics about Muslims and terrorism which don't make the separation would be weakened when applied to such a visibly distinct subset.
I looked over the FBI report and was really shocked at the number of "environmental terrorism" cases they covered. But it ties in really well with our disagreement over what you called irrelevant. If I worked at a Gillette animal testing center, I would be more concerned with animal rights terrorists than I am. All of the Latino terrorist attacks I saw in the FBI report took place in Puerto Rico. Again, more concerning if I lived in Puerto Rico.
Anyway, your 1000000:1 estimate is incorrect. If there are 2 billion Muslims in the world, that's only 2000 Muslim terrorists. I don't know, maybe you don't consider the Taliban to be a terrorist organization, but it's got way more than 2000 soldiers by itself. Al Shabaab has 3000-7000 members and Al Qaeda has 500-1000 members, both according to Wikipedia. Those are big organized groups that are much in the news. There are a ton of smaller Muslim groups with weird names that you don't hear much about in mainstream American news. Of course, not all Islamic terrorist organizations target the US, and not all that do have the capability of carrying anything out. But let's not pretend that only 1/1000000 Muslims are terrorists.
Aside from the scale of the problem, the other big distinguishing factor against Muslim terrorists is the degree of state support they enjoy. Tell me what environmental terrorists have CIA contacts, funding from foreign intelligence agencies, government sponsored sanctuaries where they can train for attacks, and so on. Which country would you say is the equivalent of Pakistan in terms of, say, Latino terrorism? Which country is the Saudi Arabia of funding for extremist environmentalist radicals?
Okay then we have popular support. How many environmentalists support environmental terrorism involving suicide bombing? How many Christians support abortion clinic bombings that result in death? I don't know, it's actually hard to find a poll about those topics. Please share if you have some. It's pretty easy with Muslims though. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1338/declining-muslim-support-for-bin-laden-suicide-bombing
I find the numbers extremely alarming.
The conventional (I guess) time travel idea is that you're winding a tape backwards, so gravity isn't actually repelling you, its effects are just being undone one frame at a time. Then you're inserted into the final frame. But if there's a time/gravity link the whole time, the link would have to either ignore the direction of time, or it would be reversed and you'd be pushed away from the ground.
Also, if you travel backwards through time in the way you're talking about, wouldn't the time traveler be seen/detectable at each point? In a sense just moving backwards, but otherwise visible? (Or, if physical processes reverse like I'm suggesting with gravity, become sort of black hole like with respect to visibility?)
Depends on where you mark as "poor". If you set your "poor" marker low enough, then the answer is "because they need food, shelter, clean water, clothing and other basic needs and have very little left to really take."
True, but if they make such little money then it's fair to say they don't work full time. In that case, if they don't have enough money to pay taxes, they can do community service or some type of government sponsored work. Not too much, just enough so that the connection between "the government does stuff for me" and "but it costs me money/time" is established.
That "1% on all banking transactions" thing seems more and more like a good idea the more I think about it
Hm, how many banking transactions are involved with your paycheck? I know customers have to deposit money into their accounts (1), then transfer it to my company (2), then my company transfers it to me (3), then I transfer it to pay my bills (4) and I have very little left over. Then the people I pay have to pay additional transfer taxes so they raise their prices. It seems it could become a very high tax indirectly, and it would affect regular working people maybe more than you think.
All you have is his word for that.
Okay I didn't realize it was unsubstantiated. The principle that these sorts of consequences stifle free speech stands though.
I totally disagree. If we can't refuse to associate with someone because they are an ass, then there is no point to freedom of speech in the first place.
Freedom of association is great but it's already dead. You can't refuse to associate with some group you hate if it's a protected group. I'd rather not lose freedom of speech too.
But if jobs move to Texas, buying power will increase. Kind of like China over the past 20-30 years.
But that has more to do with the oil and gas royalties that the Canadian and provincial governments collect, not some feel-good socialism that just happens to make them more competitive.
In other words, if they had to charge all businesses equally for health care services, suddenly it wouldn't be a competitive advantage.