Plenty of research shows that high education level and liberal political positions are well correlated. As far as what causative relationships might be responsible for this correlation, we can only speculate.
Out of curiosity, how much time have you actually spent with Harvard undergrads? The ones I knew, particularly the rich-prick types, tended toward libertarianism - they expected to be at the top of the economic pile and liked philosophies that said they deserved it. The scolarship types, who got there by being smart and hard working, understood that they also got there thanks to the help of the society of which they were a part, and tended toward liberalism.
"I'm sorry. Where do we have a right to copy others' work?"
I'm sorry, where do you have a right to say I can't? We tend to assume authors deserve some lasting control over their works even after they publish them, but that's a fairly recent and arguably weird idea. I'll be among the first to argue it's a good idea and useful to society, but that's different than some inherent, inalienable right.
"If I had spent 2-3 years creating a novel, I certainly don't want somebody taking my labor without pay"
Then don't publish without pay.
Your desire to direct the use of your ideas after they have left your control is perhaps understandable. Your expectation that others should make sure it works may be unreasonable.
It's been "lost through time"? We have multiple recorded interviews with Rosa Parks herself where she specifically says what happened. She was an active part of the civil rights movement, so it seems entirely in keeping with her character to have done it on purpose. Certainly she would have known that not moving was not going to be a good solution if she was just tired.
So, on the one hand, we have a widely respected civil rights legend, who appears to have been consistently forthright in other matters, giving a perfectly plausible first-hand account of her own actions and motivations.
On the other hand, we have you, with no possible knowledge or evidence, calling her a liar. Gee, who to believe? Let me think about this one...
The misleading terminology "invest in clean coal technology" was introduced in the campaign for pandering political reasons. Nobody could very well oppose it, even though "clean coal" is not in any sense a "technology" we can currently invest in.
So now the administration is claiming to be fulfilling that campaign commitment by interpreting it to mean something close that actually makes sense:
Regardless of what we might like, any realistic assessment will conclude that coal will be a significant part of our energy supply for quite some time, and that is, and probably always will be, problematically 'dirty'. So spending some money to research ways to try to make it as much cleaner as we can certainly makes sense.
Every method of energy production has downsides. Clearly, they are all equivalent, and there is no point in trying to asses whether any are better or worse.
"Wind farms kill birds." Not significant numbers of them.
Because you have done neither the experiment nor the math.
"Because such a cart would accelerate endlessly as the wind relative to the cart would only increase as it moves upwind."
Well, mine didn't. I speculate that this is because I don't inhabit a frictionless world. It could also be because not all infinite series diverge. In this case I've done the experiment, but not the math, so I can't say which.
Please note that your objection applies equally to sailboats on upwind tacks, so you don't need to rely solely on my report of experimental results.
For that matter, why can't something accelerate endlessly (under newtonian mechanics)? My cart hit the grill on the front of the fan we had pointed at it, and was not exactly going like gang-busters, being a duct-tape-coat-hanger sort of affair. But if a theoretical cart on an infinite plain with endless wind accelerated forever, what of it?
Except that it's a giant clock designed to run for thousands of years, only needing someone to add energy to it once a century, while the Antikythera Mechanism is small, of unclear purpose, but certainly not a clock, and didn't involve any stored energy.
You capture much more energy than is pushing your windmill blades backward; most of the energy you capture is spinning your blades around in a circle.
You can certainly move forward using the energy that is pushing your working surface sideways. A sailboat on a tack moves upwind, because the sail is pushed downwind (which is counterproductive), but it is pushed even harder sideways across the wind. Windmill blades move sideways across the wind at all times; think of the blades as seperate sails, on an eternal upwind tack.
Designing a windmill-driving-a-turbine contraption to make headway upwind poses no impossible hurdle. Whether enough efficiency can be obtained in practice is a different matter. Carts with windmill powered wheels that move directly upwind have been constructed by countless physics students, including me.
The question is not whether anyone pays 70% of their income for a car, but whether it is appropriate to describe such a buying decision as "atrocious", which I still feel that it is.
But actually, I haven't driven past anywhere lately: I sold my car several years ago. It was worth ~3% of my yearly income, an amount I can report buys a really quite fabulous bicycle.
Irrelevant. The 21st amendment is operative despite directly contradicting the earlier language. It is not, and cannot be, unconstitutional. The 16th amendment is operative despite directly contradicting the earlier language. It is not, and cannot be, unconstitutional. The fact that you like some amendments better than others has no legal bearing. Properly ratified amendments are operative whether they are good ideas or not, and regardless of who thinks so. Your claim that a particular amendment is 'unconstitutional' is plainly ridiculous. It is not possible for an amendment to be unconstitutional.
"And I never said they weren't valid, just some are unconstitutional."
By 'valid' I meant, 'enforceable parts of the constitution'. Amendments modify the constitution such that it says what they say. They might violate the will of the founders, but they cannot be unconstitutional. They are the Constitution. The founders intended the Constitution to be modifiable. They enacted specific provisions for doing so. Amendments generally modify the Constitution so it says something different than what the founders wanted. That doesn't mean SCOTUS (or anyone) can reject them. Contradicting the will of the founders is not a flaw in an amendment, it is a feature; it is the point. It is what the founders themselves expected and provided for in article 5.
According to my dictionary, the only thing 'republic' means that 'democracy' doesn't is that our head of state is not a monarch. Your theory that having state legislatures appoint senators would eliminate the politics of the process I find particularly amusing. But that's all irrelevant to the question of whether Constitutional Amendments can possibly be unconstitutional. Because Constitutional Amendments (the name is a clue!) amend the Constitution. They are parts of the Constitution that change what it says. I don't see what is complicated here.
Got it. You don't understand the difference between amendments and laws. Laws must be consistent with the constitution, if they disagree, the constitution wins. Amendments change the constitution. If they disagree with the constitution as it previously existed, the amendment wins. That's what amendments are for. That's why amendments are harder to ratify than laws are to pass.
Your example makes it clear: if the 33rd amendment reversed the 10th, the 10th would be reversed. SCOTUS would have nothing to say about it. Much like (most obviously) the 21st reversed the 18th. It can happen, does happen, has happened.
I don't know where you get your theory of amendments not being valid if they violate your idea what's good. The actual process for amendment is specified in Article 5. If that process is followed, the amendment counts. Even if you don't like it. For pete's sake, article 5 even makes a specific special rule for exactly the clause you're talking about: "...no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article."
which sure does seem to imply you could affect that fourth clause after 1808, doesn't it? I mean they could have said you can't amend it ever, but they didn't. 1813 is after 1808, in case that's the part you're having trouble with.
"I also have problems with the 17th, fwiw." Sorry to hear that, but I'm not sure how it's relevant. My copy of Article 5 seems to be missing the clause that says "Unless jamstar7 has a problem with it." I don't recall seeing that on the original last time I visited the Smithsonian either.
Amendments are real. They amend the Constitution. If you don't believe this, there's not much point arguing. You are incorrect.
"Some people doubt the constitutionality of the 16th. I'm one of them..."
You think that part of the constitution is unconstitutional? How would that work? I mean, the point of an amendment is to amend. If an ammendment conflicts with a previously adopted part of the constitution, it's not a problem; it's the point. I'm not sure where you get this idea that SCOTUS might have the power to review the constitutionality of the constitution. Hell, I can't even make it sound reasonable semantically, forget legally.
Never mind the 16th, how could any amendment ever be unconstitutional, no matter what it said? I must be missing something, the idea makes no sense.
The part you quoted was a direct response to your claim that many people "still" think income taxes are unconstitutional. It is my belief that 1913 is in the past. Thus, I conclude that the 16th amendment, having been ratified in the past, would be in force today. So anyone claiming income taxes were still unconstitutional would have to be claiming they were not constitutional even after ratification of the 16th amendment. So the fact that the 16th amendment explicitly authorizes income taxes would seem at least somewhat relevant, don't ya think?
The constitutionality of income taxes before 1913 is an interesting, if purely academic, question. The suggestion that income taxes are "still" unconstitutional today is not interesting, it's idiocy.
"What part of 'ammendment' are you having difficulties understanding?" Besides the extra 'm', I'm having difficulty understanding the part where amendments mysteriously don't count. Maybe you can help me out with that, because I'm pretty sure they do count.
70% of your income for a car? Really? I know most people spend more on a car than I do, but I don't see how a household making 50K can spend 35K on a car without the word "atrocious" being appropriate.
Oh for gods sake, it's not unreasonable populism to ask that rich people who can afford nicer stuff actually do so.
If you've got the money to buy a $50K car: Go for it. Enjoy yourself.
If you want the government to spend a bunch of money propping up the car company and hence bringing the price down to $50K; if you want the rest of the country to subsidize the car 90% of them can't afford even then? People are going to tell you to go to hell, and it's not because they blindly hate the successful, it's because you're an ass.
Trying to support the nascent electric car industry even though it can only currently produce overly expensive early-adopter models is a reasonable idea. You might get some people on board with that.
The summaries suggestion that these aren't just playthings for the rich, they're the cheap $50K (after subsidies) model... that's not such a great argument.
And as an aside, "race to the bottom" typically has a specific meaning in economic discussions, and this isn't it. I'm not sure how the phrase makes any sense in this context.
"At the foundation of the United States, taxation == property taxes. Income taxes were never envisioned,"
Of course, it's not clear if the founders preferred property taxes out of any sort of principle, or because in their day, income taxes were not remotely enforceable.
"when they were passed after the Civil War to pay for reconstruction of the South, many commentators thought they were unconstitutional."
They thought income taxes were a "direct" tax, and would need to be apportioned between the states according to the census, as specified in the Constitution. There was never any doubt that taxing income was in general constitutional.
"Many people still think they are unconstitutional."
Then they are idiots. "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived..." isn't exactly vauge.
People who throw that out are making the point that the money to run the paper comes from advertising. Which is true. Subscription money is generally irrelevant to newspaper revenue, and serves mostly to assure advertisers that people read the thing.
Despite your dismissal, a newspaper that continually looses revenue will go out of business, no matter how many eyeballs it retains.
This is particularly relevant in the current discussion, which revolves around the fact that the newspapers are generating the eyeballs, and the aggregators are getting the advertising. To the extent this is true, it may be an unsustainable model.
"The home delivery subscriber is *not* the customer. The advertiser is."...is basically an obvious truth. Whether it is a useful or insightful distinction is certainly debatable, but if you call it false, you're just wrong. The customer is the one who pays.
They have a way to easily deny Google their content.
They say they want payment for their content. Google says no. They choose to still have their content on Google. They say they want payment for their content. WTF?
A typical IR led forward voltage is 1.5 volts, times 8 LEDs in series is 12V... You could slap a 1 ohm resistor in there if you're picky, but realistically, the way they did it is going to be totally fine.
As it happens, I live in Colorado, and sold my car years ago. As an aside, I would recommend spiked tires and fixed gear. I do track stands on ice, because it is fun, and because I'll slip and hurt myself if I put a foot down.
In any case, the differences you observe are not due to gyroscopic forces from the more massive wheels. They are due to the different frame geometries. As I described previously, it is the frame geometry that makes a bike stable at all. Slight changes in the geometry determine how stable. Mountain bikes have a less-vertical head tubes (i.e. steering axis) and more trail (distance from steering axis to tire contact patch) than road bikes specifically to make the steering more stable. Going down a bumpy bit of dirt track, you want more help maintaining your line than on a smooth road, and you have more leverage to overcome it with wide mountain bars. Cruiser bikes will be even more stable than mountain bikes, track bikes are even less stable than road bikes. But all of these differences are intentional choices by the frame designer, not inadvertent effects of gyroscopic forces, which, again, are insignificant.
"Gyroscopic forces are insignificant" is not my intuitive opinion. It is the mathematical result of well understood physics.
If your purchase agreement included a commitment from them to host your purchased files forever, you have cause for complaint. If it did not, grow up and take responsibility for your own backups.
"Scarce? I was mistaken. 3.0 and 3.5 are GONE. Every local gaming store, every local used book store, every online store in Canada, and everywhere else I checked were out of old editions."
Took me 30 seconds to find copies at eBay, which has all the books in both editions widely available.
Don't get that get in the way of deciding to pirate stuff because of the implausible grand conspiracy you've imagined though... For that matter, I'm dubious about sticking it to Wizards by pirating and thus not giving them money instead of buying used books they no longer print and thus not giving them money.
"...is not the same thing as to say that the conservation of angular momentum does not play a role in keeping a normal bicycle upright."
The conservation of angular momentum does not play a role in keeping a normal bicycle upright.
Yes, gyroscopic effects exist. They affect keeping your bike upright the same way finding change on the street affects your income: Not enough to be mentioned in a reasonable discussion.
I'm trying to avoid sounding like an ass, and probably not doing a very good job, sorry. Incredibly persistent erroneous memes like this get under my skin.
Slashdot Mirror
Plenty of research shows that high education level and liberal political positions are well correlated. As far as what causative relationships might be responsible for this correlation, we can only speculate.
Out of curiosity, how much time have you actually spent with Harvard undergrads? The ones I knew, particularly the rich-prick types, tended toward libertarianism - they expected to be at the top of the economic pile and liked philosophies that said they deserved it. The scolarship types, who got there by being smart and hard working, understood that they also got there thanks to the help of the society of which they were a part, and tended toward liberalism.
"I'm sorry. Where do we have a right to copy others' work?"
I'm sorry, where do you have a right to say I can't? We tend to assume authors deserve some lasting control over their works even after they publish them, but that's a fairly recent and arguably weird idea. I'll be among the first to argue it's a good idea and useful to society, but that's different than some inherent, inalienable right.
"If I had spent 2-3 years creating a novel, I certainly don't want somebody taking my labor without pay"
Then don't publish without pay.
Your desire to direct the use of your ideas after they have left your control is perhaps understandable. Your expectation that others should make sure it works may be unreasonable.
It's been "lost through time"? We have multiple recorded interviews with Rosa Parks herself where she specifically says what happened. She was an active part of the civil rights movement, so it seems entirely in keeping with her character to have done it on purpose. Certainly she would have known that not moving was not going to be a good solution if she was just tired.
So, on the one hand, we have a widely respected civil rights legend, who appears to have been consistently forthright in other matters, giving a perfectly plausible first-hand account of her own actions and motivations.
On the other hand, we have you, with no possible knowledge or evidence, calling her a liar. Gee, who to believe? Let me think about this one...
The misleading terminology "invest in clean coal technology" was introduced in the campaign for pandering political reasons. Nobody could very well oppose it, even though "clean coal" is not in any sense a "technology" we can currently invest in.
So now the administration is claiming to be fulfilling that campaign commitment by interpreting it to mean something close that actually makes sense:
Regardless of what we might like, any realistic assessment will conclude that coal will be a significant part of our energy supply for quite some time, and that is, and probably always will be, problematically 'dirty'. So spending some money to research ways to try to make it as much cleaner as we can certainly makes sense.
Every method of energy production has downsides. Clearly, they are all equivalent, and there is no point in trying to asses whether any are better or worse.
"Wind farms kill birds."
Not significant numbers of them.
I don't understand what point you are arguing with. My point was that calling this a "modern version of the Antikythera Mechanism" is not reasonable.
"I call BS. Why?"
Because you have done neither the experiment nor the math.
"Because such a cart would accelerate endlessly as the wind relative to the cart would only increase as it moves upwind."
Well, mine didn't. I speculate that this is because I don't inhabit a frictionless world. It could also be because not all infinite series diverge. In this case I've done the experiment, but not the math, so I can't say which.
Please note that your objection applies equally to sailboats on upwind tacks, so you don't need to rely solely on my report of experimental results.
For that matter, why can't something accelerate endlessly (under newtonian mechanics)? My cart hit the grill on the front of the fan we had pointed at it, and was not exactly going like gang-busters, being a duct-tape-coat-hanger sort of affair. But if a theoretical cart on an infinite plain with endless wind accelerated forever, what of it?
Except that it's a giant clock designed to run for thousands of years, only needing someone to add energy to it once a century, while the Antikythera Mechanism is small, of unclear purpose, but certainly not a clock, and didn't involve any stored energy.
They both involve gears. Beyond that, what?
You capture much more energy than is pushing your windmill blades backward; most of the energy you capture is spinning your blades around in a circle.
You can certainly move forward using the energy that is pushing your working surface sideways. A sailboat on a tack moves upwind, because the sail is pushed downwind (which is counterproductive), but it is pushed even harder sideways across the wind. Windmill blades move sideways across the wind at all times; think of the blades as seperate sails, on an eternal upwind tack.
Designing a windmill-driving-a-turbine contraption to make headway upwind poses no impossible hurdle. Whether enough efficiency can be obtained in practice is a different matter. Carts with windmill powered wheels that move directly upwind have been constructed by countless physics students, including me.
The question is not whether anyone pays 70% of their income for a car, but whether it is appropriate to describe such a buying decision as "atrocious", which I still feel that it is.
But actually, I haven't driven past anywhere lately: I sold my car several years ago. It was worth ~3% of my yearly income, an amount I can report buys a really quite fabulous bicycle.
"They had a helluva time enforcing Prohibition."
Irrelevant. The 21st amendment is operative despite directly contradicting the earlier language. It is not, and cannot be, unconstitutional. The 16th amendment is operative despite directly contradicting the earlier language. It is not, and cannot be, unconstitutional. The fact that you like some amendments better than others has no legal bearing. Properly ratified amendments are operative whether they are good ideas or not, and regardless of who thinks so. Your claim that a particular amendment is 'unconstitutional' is plainly ridiculous. It is not possible for an amendment to be unconstitutional.
"And I never said they weren't valid, just some are unconstitutional."
By 'valid' I meant, 'enforceable parts of the constitution'. Amendments modify the constitution such that it says what they say. They might violate the will of the founders, but they cannot be unconstitutional. They are the Constitution. The founders intended the Constitution to be modifiable. They enacted specific provisions for doing so. Amendments generally modify the Constitution so it says something different than what the founders wanted. That doesn't mean SCOTUS (or anyone) can reject them. Contradicting the will of the founders is not a flaw in an amendment, it is a feature; it is the point. It is what the founders themselves expected and provided for in article 5.
According to my dictionary, the only thing 'republic' means that 'democracy' doesn't is that our head of state is not a monarch. Your theory that having state legislatures appoint senators would eliminate the politics of the process I find particularly amusing. But that's all irrelevant to the question of whether
Constitutional Amendments can possibly be unconstitutional. Because Constitutional Amendments (the name is a clue!) amend the Constitution. They are parts of the Constitution that change what it says. I don't see what is complicated here.
Got it. You don't understand the difference between amendments and laws. Laws must be consistent with the constitution, if they disagree, the constitution wins. Amendments change the constitution. If they disagree with the constitution as it previously existed, the amendment wins. That's what amendments are for. That's why amendments are harder to ratify than laws are to pass.
Your example makes it clear: if the 33rd amendment reversed the 10th, the 10th would be reversed. SCOTUS would have nothing to say about it. Much like (most obviously) the 21st reversed the 18th. It can happen, does happen, has happened.
I don't know where you get your theory of amendments not being valid if they violate your idea what's good. The actual process for amendment is specified in Article 5. If that process is followed, the amendment counts. Even if you don't like it. For pete's sake, article 5 even makes a specific special rule for exactly the clause you're talking about:
"...no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article."
which sure does seem to imply you could affect that fourth clause after 1808, doesn't it? I mean they could have said you can't amend it ever, but they didn't. 1813 is after 1808, in case that's the part you're having trouble with.
"I also have problems with the 17th, fwiw."
Sorry to hear that, but I'm not sure how it's relevant. My copy of Article 5 seems to be missing the clause that says "Unless jamstar7 has a problem with it." I don't recall seeing that on the original last time I visited the Smithsonian either.
Amendments are real. They amend the Constitution. If you don't believe this, there's not much point arguing. You are incorrect.
"Some people doubt the constitutionality of the 16th. I'm one of them..."
You think that part of the constitution is unconstitutional? How would that work? I mean, the point of an amendment is to amend. If an ammendment conflicts with a previously adopted part of the constitution, it's not a problem; it's the point. I'm not sure where you get this idea that SCOTUS might have the power to review the constitutionality of the constitution. Hell, I can't even make it sound reasonable semantically, forget legally.
Never mind the 16th, how could any amendment ever be unconstitutional, no matter what it said? I must be missing something, the idea makes no sense.
The part you quoted was a direct response to your claim that many people "still" think income taxes are unconstitutional. It is my belief that 1913 is in the past. Thus, I conclude that the 16th amendment, having been ratified in the past, would be in force today. So anyone claiming income taxes were still unconstitutional would have to be claiming they were not constitutional even after ratification of the 16th amendment. So the fact that the 16th amendment explicitly authorizes income taxes would seem at least somewhat relevant, don't ya think?
The constitutionality of income taxes before 1913 is an interesting, if purely academic, question. The suggestion that income taxes are "still" unconstitutional today is not interesting, it's idiocy.
"What part of 'ammendment' are you having difficulties understanding?"
Besides the extra 'm', I'm having difficulty understanding the part where amendments mysteriously don't count. Maybe you can help me out with that, because I'm pretty sure they do count.
70% of your income for a car? Really? I know most people spend more on a car than I do, but I don't see how a household making 50K can spend 35K on a car without the word "atrocious" being appropriate.
Oh for gods sake, it's not unreasonable populism to ask that rich people who can afford nicer stuff actually do so.
If you've got the money to buy a $50K car: Go for it. Enjoy yourself.
If you want the government to spend a bunch of money propping up the car company and hence bringing the price down to $50K; if you want the rest of the country to subsidize the car 90% of them can't afford even then? People are going to tell you to go to hell, and it's not because they blindly hate the successful, it's because you're an ass.
Trying to support the nascent electric car industry even though it can only currently produce overly expensive early-adopter models is a reasonable idea. You might get some people on board with that.
The summaries suggestion that these aren't just playthings for the rich, they're the cheap $50K (after subsidies) model... that's not such a great argument.
And as an aside, "race to the bottom" typically has a specific meaning in economic discussions, and this isn't it. I'm not sure how the phrase makes any sense in this context.
"At the foundation of the United States, taxation == property taxes. Income taxes were never envisioned,"
Of course, it's not clear if the founders preferred property taxes out of any sort of principle, or because in their day, income taxes were not remotely enforceable.
"when they were passed after the Civil War to pay for reconstruction of the South, many commentators thought they were unconstitutional."
They thought income taxes were a "direct" tax, and would need to be apportioned between the states according to the census, as specified in the Constitution. There was never any doubt that taxing income was in general constitutional.
"Many people still think they are unconstitutional."
Then they are idiots. "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived..." isn't exactly vauge.
People who throw that out are making the point that the money to run the paper comes from advertising. Which is true. Subscription money is generally irrelevant to newspaper revenue, and serves mostly to assure advertisers that people read the thing.
...is basically an obvious truth. Whether it is a useful or insightful distinction is certainly debatable, but if you call it false, you're just wrong. The customer is the one who pays.
Despite your dismissal, a newspaper that continually looses revenue will go out of business, no matter how many eyeballs it retains.
This is particularly relevant in the current discussion, which revolves around the fact that the newspapers are generating the eyeballs, and the aggregators are getting the advertising. To the extent this is true, it may be an unsustainable model.
"The home delivery subscriber is *not* the customer. The advertiser is."
They have a way to easily deny Google their content.
They say they want payment for their content.
Google says no.
They choose to still have their content on Google.
They say they want payment for their content.
WTF?
A typical IR led forward voltage is 1.5 volts, times 8 LEDs in series is 12V... You could slap a 1 ohm resistor in there if you're picky, but realistically, the way they did it is going to be totally fine.
"However, try riding a bike on ice sometime."
As it happens, I live in Colorado, and sold my car years ago. As an aside, I would recommend spiked tires and fixed gear. I do track stands on ice, because it is fun, and because I'll slip and hurt myself if I put a foot down.
In any case, the differences you observe are not due to gyroscopic forces from the more massive wheels. They are due to the different frame geometries. As I described previously, it is the frame geometry that makes a bike stable at all. Slight changes in the geometry determine how stable. Mountain bikes have a less-vertical head tubes (i.e. steering axis) and more trail (distance from steering axis to tire contact patch) than road bikes specifically to make the steering more stable. Going down a bumpy bit of dirt track, you want more help maintaining your line than on a smooth road, and you have more leverage to overcome it with wide mountain bars. Cruiser bikes will be even more stable than mountain bikes, track bikes are even less stable than road bikes. But all of these differences are intentional choices by the frame designer, not inadvertent effects of gyroscopic forces, which, again, are insignificant.
"Gyroscopic forces are insignificant" is not my intuitive opinion. It is the mathematical result of well understood physics.
If your purchase agreement included a commitment from them to host your purchased files forever, you have cause for complaint. If it did not, grow up and take responsibility for your own backups.
"Scarce? I was mistaken. 3.0 and 3.5 are GONE. Every local gaming store, every local used book store, every online store in Canada, and everywhere else I checked were out of old editions."
Took me 30 seconds to find copies at eBay, which has all the books in both editions widely available.
Don't get that get in the way of deciding to pirate stuff because of the implausible grand conspiracy you've imagined though... For that matter, I'm dubious about sticking it to Wizards by pirating and thus not giving them money instead of buying used books they no longer print and thus not giving them money.
"...is not the same thing as to say that the conservation of angular momentum does not play a role in keeping a normal bicycle upright."
The conservation of angular momentum does not play a role in keeping a normal bicycle upright.
Yes, gyroscopic effects exist. They affect keeping your bike upright the same way finding change on the street affects your income: Not enough to be mentioned in a reasonable discussion.
I'm trying to avoid sounding like an ass, and probably not doing a very good job, sorry. Incredibly persistent erroneous memes like this get under my skin.