Remember this is the president that has implied that we are all guilty as terrorists until proven innocent.
Proven innocent? Who's going to do that? If you're accused of being a terrorist you'll go and rot indefinitely in the Cuban gulag. There's no prospect of being proven innocent, because the President says that we know you're Bad People.
How much data is that? Can someone point to some known tech that can handle that....ALL that data? I'm not asking for "secret-I-bet-they-have-cold-fusion-computers" BS tech that someone *thinks* the NSA has.
My guess is that NSA probably do it the same way Google do it. No magic voodoo hardware, but clever software running on a huge cluster of regular commodity boxes. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Googles, and you're probably not far off.
Which is exactly why we need a state crackdown, and to spy on our own civilians! Who knows what the Enemy Within might be plotting? It would be disastrous if one of these people, with no respect for the rights and traditions of Western civilisation, were to infiltrate the corridors of power - imagine the damage that could be done!
Next, the Internet finally ceases its false-slumber, and fully awakens as the sentient, computerized overlord of the planet. It promptly begins use of some "new form of fusion" it has discovered
That would be using the Potara earrings, I suppose, rather than the dance?
* now has a mental image of the Kakatrix, or possibly Matrotto, or even Smithokuu, taking over the world with electronic voodoo and implausible martial arts techniques... *
I would also add infinite jail time. Yeah, I am evil.
They'd get off then, on the cruel-and-unusual thing. Infinite jail time isn't fair play.
I'd go for 'one minute per unsolicited mail'. Not per mailing, you understand: per mail. It's hardly draconian, is it? Can't say fairer than a mere minute per mail. But it adds up;-)
the very colours of the 360 seem calculated to annoy japanese - americans might think the "alien green" is cool and x-treme but the japanese just think it's ugly and tacky
They're not the only ones. Loathsome ugly bloody thing that it is...
How did a change occur in a timeless, static, total void?
What do you mean by 'change'?
What I understand by 'change' is that at time T, condition A holds, and that at time T + t, condition B holds.
In the case of the Big Bang, at time T = 0, the Universe exists, and at all subsequent times T + t, the Universe still exists. You cannot say that something changed at T = 0 without implicitly assuming that there exist values of T 0.
People also need to realize that using energy is not necessarily bad, it's the pollution that is bad. If those SUVs get terrible mileage, it's not necessarily bad if they don't pollute. Your little 4-banger from the early 80's may get great mileage but it pollutes a lot worse than a modern SUV.
The pollution in question is carbon dioxide. One litre of petrol will produce the same amount of carbon dioxide when burned, regardless of the engine in which the burning takes place. Hence, as far as global warming is concerned, the fuel-efficiency of your vehicle is all-important.
Of course, there are other pollutants in car exhausts, against which measures the new-but-inefficient car may perform better, but that's a separate issue.
A barrier followed by some kind of unplace? What's beyond the North Pole?
As I said in another post, North of the North Pole is meaningless only if you are planet-bound. (And if you are not, North is an ambiguous term anyway.)
Yes, I believe I replied to that one already... at the risk of repeating myself, I would say that once you leave the planet you stop speaking in terms of north / south and switch to a description in terms of a quite different set of parameters. Similarly, I doubt that any hypothetical multiverse, or other reality beyond the spacetime Universe, could be meaningfully described in terms of before / after. Even in our own Universe these concepts are only well defined for some pairs of events, those separated by a timelike rather than a spacelike interval.
To summarize: In our universe, time began at the big bang. This does make 'What happened before the big bang' a meaningless question, it merely forces you to re-consider your frames of reference.
At best, then, 'What happened before the Big Bang' is a badly posed question. It's the word before that's objectionable, because it implies the before / after frame of reference, which is only well-defined within the universe, just as north / south are only well-defined on a planet's surface.
You will be compelled to stop because your frame of reference is the planet surface. For anyone with interplanetary or interstellar transport, North would be quite relative (of course, such a being would also not use ambiguous terms like 'North'). Similarly, I'm quite willing to concede that time 'started' at the big bang[1] -- for the three-dimensional universe we observe. However, to say that this makes the concept of 'before the big bang' meaningless is quite silly. Beyond comprehension? yes. Meaningless? no.
No, I think it remains meaningless. As you mention, though, our definition of 'time' is probably too limiting.
If we do go on to deal with multiple universes, the braneworld, or whatever multiverse system turns out to be most realistic, then I doubt we'll be talking about it in terms of 'time'. Using 'time' beyond the universe would indeed be meaningless, as time is inextricably linked to space and mass and motion; going back to the North Pole analogy, it would be like mapping things out in terms of North and West, and then trying to determine in those terms how to get to Mars.
I'd guess you'd use a more abstract parameter to describe such relationships; 'space' and 'time' are only useful within a universe, not between them.
The fact that physics cannot define time without a universe, has no meaning for a normal person who experiences time as a given, a priori, absolute.
That's just too bad for the normal person. Time doesn't work like you think, that's just a plain fact. Read up on your relativity. Time really does vary in just the way Einstein described. Time is not a given, a priori, absolute, it's just one more feature of the universe.
All other arguments, such as "what is north of the north pole", are not related to this problem. They describe other definition problems.
They describe definition problems that are quite closely analogous to the one at question. Someone with a naive idea of a flat, x-y Cartesian coordinate system would be confused by the idea that there is no 'north of the North Pole': is there a wall there? A barrier followed by some kind of unplace? What's beyond the North Pole?
Similarly, someone with a pre-Einsteinian notion of how time works has a problem. They think - as your 'normal person' does - that time just is. But that doesn't make it so. In the geometry of the classical Big Bang, the zero point - the singularity - really is very similar to that of the North Pole.
However, all this is somewhat academic, since quantum effects come into play before we get to that point. Instead of the smooth curvature of spacetime Einstein gives us, we have a boiling froth; quite what that does to causality near the zero point is not well understood at all.
Actually, it is impossible for any nails to be placed in the coffin of creationism
... because it's coated in a thick layer of iron armour, which - when examined closely - turns out to be made of thousands and thousands of nails, accumulated over the course of 150-odd years, hammered in so hard that they've fused together into a single mass of metal.
This is what creationists are referring to when they say they have an 'iron-clad case'.
I don't think it gives me the right to go out trying to tear down people's beliefs.
No, it does not. I believe the right to go out trying to tear down people's beliefs comes under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America (and similar provisions in the basic laws of most modern democracies.) The duty to go out trying to tear down people's beliefs, on the other hand, comes from being an intelligent life form with opinions of your own.
Time was created during the Big Bang so "before" is meaningless. There is no "before" or "after" or "cause" and "effect" if there is no Time.
So you're saying that because your belief system cannot conceive of anything before time t, therefore all times before t are meaningless?
No. Others have used the 'north pole' analogy. 'Before the Big Bang' is akin to 'north of the north pole': it's simply an empty statement. Not part of the coordinate system. Undefined.
Here's another puzzle for you: what part of England is a thousand miles from the sea? What do you mean, there's no such place? You mean that just because your belief system can't conceive of places in England further from the sea than distance d, therefore such places are meaningless?
Same goes with "external." The whole universe was contained in this ball of energy so there is no "internal" or "external." So the whole question is absurd and moot.
The moment you posit a ball you also have to admit a bounding surface (to wit, a 3-sphere). And when you admit a bounding surface, shying away from what is on the other side of that boundary is intellectual cowardice.
A 3-sphere? No, no, no. Nothing of the sort. A 4-sphere, possibly, in which case the 3-surface would be the space of our universe and the radial directions would correspond to the forward and backward time directions (btw, another analogy for you, what's below the centre of the earth? You mean that because your belief system can't imagine locations > r kilometres down, means all depths below r are meaningless?). An infinite flat expanse of 4-space, also quite plausible. And there are other interesting geometries proposed based on quirks of the microwave background; it's still an open problem in cosmology.
The trouble with these discussions is that it's rather hard to speak meaningfully about these things without using general relativity. Thus you get these rather woolly analogies, translating the clear and precise equations into ambiguous and inaccurate English.
First off, evolution actually fits better with Christian theology than young-earth creation
I had some thoughts along these lines a while back: that by insisting on Biblical inerrancy, the fundamentalists are guilty of idolatry, and that by ignoring evolution they're missing one of God's finest works.
It's a tragedy, because assuming for the sake of argument that there is a God, then they're missing some of his best tricks. Evolution is a brilliant hack - a system that you can set up and just let run, and all the work is done for you. It must give God some of the same kind of kick we hackers get when we replace a thousand lines of brutal code with a single concise iterative function... And as for nucleosynthesis, the means by which the heavy elements that constitute much of the Earth were made, if God came up with that then he has a sense of style that I really like. Seeding the universe with metals from supernovae - amazing.
One of the things he did was attach an ultrasonic distance sensor to the nerve in his arm. After a short time of getting used to the sensation, he closed his eyes and had his coworkers experiment by moving things slowly closer to him.
One of them waved a piece of card very quickly towards his face and he described instinctively recoiling. So his brain adapted remarkably quickly.
I'm not quite convinced by that. The face is very, very sensitive; the air pressure of an object approaching at high speed could well be sufficient to trigger a dodge reflex. The sensor need not have had anything to do with that.
I got a demo of that on a cover CD, way back in about '96 or so. It was bloody amazing. If there's a Japanese version to be had, count me the hell in, because even that demo really helped me get started with high-school German way back when...
Not to defend either side of this argument, but what negative effects would you expect from learning English from the Simpsons and Family Guy?
Homer, for one, frequently mauls the English language horribly. Of course that's the joke - the guy's a buffoon - but if you're learning English from Homer you're not going to know that. You're going to end up with an embiggened vocabulary full of perfectly cromulent words.
Slashdot Mirror
Scroll down a bit, and a bit more, and a bit more... and then a bit more... and then some more... and some more...
Proven innocent? Who's going to do that? If you're accused of being a terrorist you'll go and rot indefinitely in the Cuban gulag. There's no prospect of being proven innocent, because the President says that we know you're Bad People.
My guess is that NSA probably do it the same way Google do it. No magic voodoo hardware, but clever software running on a huge cluster of regular commodity boxes. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Googles, and you're probably not far off.
Which is exactly why we need a state crackdown, and to spy on our own civilians! Who knows what the Enemy Within might be plotting? It would be disastrous if one of these people, with no respect for the rights and traditions of Western civilisation, were to infiltrate the corridors of power - imagine the damage that could be done!
That would be using the Potara earrings, I suppose, rather than the dance?
* now has a mental image of the Kakatrix, or possibly Matrotto, or even Smithokuu, taking over the world with electronic voodoo and implausible martial arts techniques... *
They'd get off then, on the cruel-and-unusual thing. Infinite jail time isn't fair play.
I'd go for 'one minute per unsolicited mail'. Not per mailing, you understand: per mail. It's hardly draconian, is it? Can't say fairer than a mere minute per mail. But it adds up ;-)
They're not the only ones. Loathsome ugly bloody thing that it is...
I think that's quite a good idea, personally.
"without implicitly assuming that there exist values of T 0"
should of course have read
"without implicitly assuming that there exist values of T < 0."
What do you mean by 'change'?
What I understand by 'change' is that at time T, condition A holds, and that at time T + t, condition B holds.
In the case of the Big Bang, at time T = 0, the Universe exists, and at all subsequent times T + t, the Universe still exists. You cannot say that something changed at T = 0 without implicitly assuming that there exist values of T 0.
The pollution in question is carbon dioxide. One litre of petrol will produce the same amount of carbon dioxide when burned, regardless of the engine in which the burning takes place. Hence, as far as global warming is concerned, the fuel-efficiency of your vehicle is all-important.
Of course, there are other pollutants in car exhausts, against which measures the new-but-inefficient car may perform better, but that's a separate issue.
I must use PREVIEW. I must use PREVIEW. I must use PREVIEW. I must use PREVIEW. I must use PREVIEW. I must use PREVIEW...
As I said in another post, North of the North Pole is meaningless only if you are planet-bound. (And if you are not, North is an ambiguous term anyway.)
Yes, I believe I replied to that one already... at the risk of repeating myself, I would say that once you leave the planet you stop speaking in terms of north / south and switch to a description in terms of a quite different set of parameters. Similarly, I doubt that any hypothetical multiverse, or other reality beyond the spacetime Universe, could be meaningfully described in terms of before / after. Even in our own Universe these concepts are only well defined for some pairs of events, those separated by a timelike rather than a spacelike interval. To summarize: In our universe, time began at the big bang. This does make 'What happened before the big bang' a meaningless question, it merely forces you to re-consider your frames of reference.
At best, then, 'What happened before the Big Bang' is a badly posed question. It's the word before that's objectionable, because it implies the before / after frame of reference, which is only well-defined within the universe, just as north / south are only well-defined on a planet's surface.
No, I think it remains meaningless. As you mention, though, our definition of 'time' is probably too limiting.
If we do go on to deal with multiple universes, the braneworld, or whatever multiverse system turns out to be most realistic, then I doubt we'll be talking about it in terms of 'time'. Using 'time' beyond the universe would indeed be meaningless, as time is inextricably linked to space and mass and motion; going back to the North Pole analogy, it would be like mapping things out in terms of North and West, and then trying to determine in those terms how to get to Mars.
I'd guess you'd use a more abstract parameter to describe such relationships; 'space' and 'time' are only useful within a universe, not between them.
Ah. Well, my point was that it doesn't have to give you the right. You already have that right, and, to my mind, you also have the duty.
That's just too bad for the normal person. Time doesn't work like you think, that's just a plain fact. Read up on your relativity. Time really does vary in just the way Einstein described. Time is not a given, a priori, absolute, it's just one more feature of the universe. All other arguments, such as "what is north of the north pole", are not related to this problem. They describe other definition problems.
They describe definition problems that are quite closely analogous to the one at question. Someone with a naive idea of a flat, x-y Cartesian coordinate system would be confused by the idea that there is no 'north of the North Pole': is there a wall there? A barrier followed by some kind of unplace? What's beyond the North Pole?
Similarly, someone with a pre-Einsteinian notion of how time works has a problem. They think - as your 'normal person' does - that time just is. But that doesn't make it so. In the geometry of the classical Big Bang, the zero point - the singularity - really is very similar to that of the North Pole.
However, all this is somewhat academic, since quantum effects come into play before we get to that point. Instead of the smooth curvature of spacetime Einstein gives us, we have a boiling froth; quite what that does to causality near the zero point is not well understood at all.
... because it's coated in a thick layer of iron armour, which - when examined closely - turns out to be made of thousands and thousands of nails, accumulated over the course of 150-odd years, hammered in so hard that they've fused together into a single mass of metal.
This is what creationists are referring to when they say they have an 'iron-clad case'.
No, it does not. I believe the right to go out trying to tear down people's beliefs comes under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America (and similar provisions in the basic laws of most modern democracies.) The duty to go out trying to tear down people's beliefs, on the other hand, comes from being an intelligent life form with opinions of your own.
So you're saying that because your belief system cannot conceive of anything before time t, therefore all times before t are meaningless?
No. Others have used the 'north pole' analogy. 'Before the Big Bang' is akin to 'north of the north pole': it's simply an empty statement. Not part of the coordinate system. Undefined.
Here's another puzzle for you: what part of England is a thousand miles from the sea? What do you mean, there's no such place? You mean that just because your belief system can't conceive of places in England further from the sea than distance d, therefore such places are meaningless? Same goes with "external." The whole universe was contained in this ball of energy so there is no "internal" or "external." So the whole question is absurd and moot.
The moment you posit a ball you also have to admit a bounding surface (to wit, a 3-sphere). And when you admit a bounding surface, shying away from what is on the other side of that boundary is intellectual cowardice.
A 3-sphere? No, no, no. Nothing of the sort. A 4-sphere, possibly, in which case the 3-surface would be the space of our universe and the radial directions would correspond to the forward and backward time directions (btw, another analogy for you, what's below the centre of the earth? You mean that because your belief system can't imagine locations > r kilometres down, means all depths below r are meaningless?). An infinite flat expanse of 4-space, also quite plausible. And there are other interesting geometries proposed based on quirks of the microwave background; it's still an open problem in cosmology.
The trouble with these discussions is that it's rather hard to speak meaningfully about these things without using general relativity. Thus you get these rather woolly analogies, translating the clear and precise equations into ambiguous and inaccurate English.
Or any more meaningful. Or in any way relevant to the topic at hand, which is evolution, not cosmology.
I had some thoughts along these lines a while back: that by insisting on Biblical inerrancy, the fundamentalists are guilty of idolatry, and that by ignoring evolution they're missing one of God's finest works.
Ah, here it is:
Well, if that ever happens, I think what I'll do is I'll pretend I'm one of those deaf-mutes...
One of them waved a piece of card very quickly towards his face and he described instinctively recoiling. So his brain adapted remarkably quickly.
I'm not quite convinced by that. The face is very, very sensitive; the air pressure of an object approaching at high speed could well be sufficient to trigger a dodge reflex. The sensor need not have had anything to do with that.
I got a demo of that on a cover CD, way back in about '96 or so. It was bloody amazing. If there's a Japanese version to be had, count me the hell in, because even that demo really helped me get started with high-school German way back when...
Homer, for one, frequently mauls the English language horribly. Of course that's the joke - the guy's a buffoon - but if you're learning English from Homer you're not going to know that. You're going to end up with an embiggened vocabulary full of perfectly cromulent words.