I'm with @newtboy. Do you actually read the responses or just cherry pick the parts that suit your agenda? Christ, even in the part you quoted I said "the first step". The paragraph before that explicitly outlined how that there were huge challenges to overcome.

And you're posting links from an organisation that

worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question serious cancer risks to secondhand smoke, and to lobby against government public-health reforms... and is known "for its persistent questioning of climate science, for its promotion of 'experts' who have done little, if any, peer-reviewed climate research, and for its sponsorship of a conference in New York City in 2008 alleging that the scientific community's work on global warming is fake."

I am guessing that I was one of the first pastors, if not the first, in my community not in opposition to gay marriage. I don't say this with any sense of accomplishment of having wrestled through some sort of epic moral struggle, because I never have opposed gay marriage as sanctioned by the State. I don't believe there is any Constitutional basis for opposing it. . I also see no issue with a business serving the gay community. By default, our family business has happily done so for decades. One of my favorite mottoes is, 'live and let live.' I am confident that people around me, including those gays that call me 'friend' know this about me already. Although I am a part of the Christian community where I live, not one of my gay friends has exited our relationship due to that, nor have I ever been considered a homophobe. My views on marriage are exactly that: conclusions I have come to with the resources at my command. And whether or not I disagree with you, I believe that I have no right whatsoever to impose my view of marriage on anyone. In the same breath, after considering my own failings, I have no right to judge how someone else chooses to live their life. I have concluded that whatever path they choose was never between me and them, but between them and God anyway.

The solutions to this common struggle today (the question of religious conscience living side by side with gender liberty) cannot be solved by enacting more law. Americans are, as always, legislating the soupe du jour. The trouble is, in a society where that kind of 'might makes right,' the pendulum can and does swing the other way to deleterious effect. I think that our common issue can be solved by a simple but powerful idea: a stronger community. Like it or not, we are in this together and only together can overcome the vitriol on either side.

I remember an incident many years ago when my Muslim ex-Uncle showed up at my grandparent's house for dinner. On the menu: pork. In one of the most despicable acts of imposition that I can remember happening in our family, my Grandfather decided that serving pork that day would give him some kind of twisted self satisfaction; a victory, of sorts. He decided that he would attempt to get our Uncle to violate his religious conscience and, if that not be possible, at the very least, offend my Uncle as much as possible within his power. I don't think anyone would argue that it wasn't within my Grandfather's rights to serve whatever meal he wanted in his own home. But was it morally right? If he had loved my Uncle, he would have put aside his own rights and made a way to foster community. That is what living together is about.

In the same vein, I don't believe any one of my gay friends would ever ask me to perform their wedding. Even given that right legally, they wouldn't ask because they love me and they would not attempt to get me to violate both my conscience and my own understanding of marriage. While we agree to disagree, we remain friends out of love. Love is what binds. The law divides. The law is a foreigner to community, the enemy of community, when it says, 'we can live together only when you do as I want you to do in order to satisfy me or my sense of offense for another." While laws are necessary in society, they are superfluous when love will do. But we don't want to work that hard. So we make rules. We call people names. We stereotype. We divide, condescend, and foment bitterness toward our neighbors, gay and straight alike.

I had a friend confess to me once, "My whole family is racist. I was racist. But I'm not racist any more." That didn't happen because of legislation. It happened because he got to know some black people and found out that he had some love in his heart for them. Wouldn't you have liked to have been there when he shook a black man's hand for the first time in his life? Yeah, me too.

Just once, I'd like to see someone brew some iced tea, walk across the street to that gay neighbor or that Christian neighbor and sit down and find some commonality. I read above (can't remember who wrote it) that the Bible's morality is trumped by today's morality. I say that the epitome of morality exists in the words of Jesus when he says, "Love your enemies." That, to me, is the fulfillment of what it means to be human.

In related thoughts, I think the Church needs to tell the State, 'Goodbye. We are not going to act as your agent any longer in arena of legal marriage. We will not sign your documents. You have the legal authority over marriage in our society but the Church has the spiritual authority as the Church sees fit." That leaves room for some congregations to perform gay weddings and others to not as they see fit. It leaves room for live and let live. It leaves room for love.

How can that not be 80% of the film plot? Then they have a crisis, then they overcome it in the last 20 minutes leaving us feeling satisfied and a bit hungry.

It was a movie about a woman who needs to overcome her fear and choose to live even if it means without a harness to something (something like 'loss'). Even in the face of complete isolation, human will needs to choose life as an act of rebellion against fear and sadness. Its beautiful. It is a film and doesn't need to be completely realistic.

I love CK but sorry Gravity was awesome.

(Sir Richard Attenborough voice:) "The Derpa-Derp spider uses her goofy, unassuming markings to soften her prey which are soon overcome with a sensation of overwhelming silliness. Hidden behind this derper-death mask are deadly fangs which spring-forth to subdue her chortling prey."

Jeez...1; they didn't "find" Titanic. Its whereabouts were always known, it was an issue of the depth that had to be overcome.
And 2; Noah's ark, really???
Seriously, where do they get these people, the "Monty Python" school of broadcasters?

Historical Rift? Anyways this is somewhat true, I know two guys who are Africans who moved to America and they do have some problems with some African Americans. I've seen one get really mad at them since he's a substitute teacher as well.

BTW I don't like the term African Americans, it seems to me that people who have come from Africa recently and have become American citizens should be considered African Americans. Those who's families have been here longer than most everyone, from the original formation of our nation in my opinion would be called Black Americans. They are not Africans and they have nothing to do with Africa, but there is such thing as a black culture and a black America which some might identify with quite strongly. Also more to the point who the fuck is African? You ask someone from the Continent of Africa where he's from he says Kenya, or South Africa, or Liberia. They don't say, OH just somewhere on that GIANT FUCKING CONTINENT!

In a better society we'd simply call them Goddamn Americans and be done with it. However in our society there are some definable lines that should be respected and recognized. And hopefully and eventually overcome completely.

Chomsky has a poor understanding of economics with reference to things like economic calculation, for example. He does not see/understand the mechanisms of a free market that would make anarchism possible and thus keep it from turning into chaos. Maybe from a metaphysical perspective, as in karma, we get what [government] we deserve, but we should nonetheless strive to overcome our bad karma, and do good deeds such as getting rid of the need to impose on others through the state apparatus.

In most modern countries, having kids is the relatively easy part. Being a responsible parent, on the other hand....

But then again, overcoming the challenges (sleep deprivation included) are part of what make being a parent so rewarding. At least in my case, having kids made me a stronger and better person--I learned to be more patient and more compassionate, and I learned how to push beyond my supposed limits (I used to think I couldn't survive without 8 hours a night of sleep--HAH!).

No doubt it can be a struggle at times. My grandfather used to have a T-shirt that read, "Insanity is heredity: you inherit it from your kids."

But it also has those intense moments like your daughter singing the ABC song all by herself for the first time, or always belly laughing at the fart sound you make with your palms, or telling you she loves right before she goes to sleep that make all of the hassle completely worthwhile.

Actually I'm about as English as they come but crucially I spent my advanced academic career studying Philosophy and rhetoric (lamentably only to Hons. due to laziness) and consequently have an ingrained habit of arguing around a problem rather than relying on established parameters (not always entirely helpful when discussing more day to day matters as I'm sure you've by now gathered but it is essential to working with advanced epistemological problems and so serves me well none the less). I'm also prone to poor punctuation and odd patterns of grammar when I'm not going back over everything I write with a fine tooth comb which has likely not helped. (A consequence of learning to describe tangent after tangent when trying to thoroughly encapsulate some conceptual problems with language alone)

That said, while I may have gone around the houses so to speak I think my conclusion is entirely compatible with what I now understand your own to be.

I didn't want to describe my original counter-point by simply working with the idea that weight is lower on the moon relative to the earth (though I did not try to refute this either) because that would not illustrate why a 2-300kg man in a space suit still takes some shifting (relatively speaking) even if there were no gravity at all. (Would have been faster to just crunch some numbers but that's not what I specialise in)

Sure you could move anything with any force in 0G (which I do understand is technically relative as every object in the universe with mass exerts gravitational forces proportionately (and inversely proportional to the distance between)) but the resulting velocity is directly proportional to mass vs force applied. Weight here then, can be seen as another competing force in the equation rather than the whole thing which it can be convenient to treat it as for a simple calculation (which is what I think you are doing).

To put that another way I was applying a different/deeper linguistic/descriptive paradigm to the same objective facts because that's what we philosophers do. Single paradigm approaches to any subject have a dangerous habit of making one believe one possess such a thing as truly objective facts rather than interpretations only (which are all that truly exist).


In other terms weight alone isn't the whole story (as I assume you well know). Overcoming inertia due to mass scales up all by itself, then gravity comes along and complicates matters. This is why rocket scientists measure potential thrust in DeltaV rather than Watts, Joules etc. right? The mass of the object dictates how much velocity a given input/output of energy would equal.

Gravity and thus the force in newtons it induces (weight) in these terms is an additional force which depending upon the direction in which it is acting multiplies the required DeltaV to achieve the same effect. Moreover when concerning a force of inconstant nature (such as pushing up/jumping or a brief burn of an engine) brings duration into play also. (the foundations of why rocket science gets its fearsome reputation for complexity in its calculations)


Man on the moon lies on the ground and pushes off to try and stand back up.
This push must impart enough DeltaV to his body to produce a sufficient velocity and duration to travel the 2 meters or so needed to get upright so he can then balance the downward gravitational force with his legs&back and successfully convert the chemical/kinetic energy from his arms into potential energy as weight (the energy he uses to stand up is the same energy that would drag him down again right?).

One could practically speaking reduce this to a simple calculation of weight and thrust if all one wanted was a number. Weight would be the only number we need here as it incorporates the mass in it's own calculation (weight = mass x gravity)

But where's the fun in that? My way let's one go round all the houses see how the other bits of the paradigm that support this basic isolated equation function and inter-relate.

Plus (and probably more accurately) I've been playing loads of Kerbal Space Programme lately and have ended up conditioning myself to think in terms of rocketry and thus massively overcomplicated everything here for basically my own amusement/fascination.


Basically few things are more verbose and self indulgent than a bored Philosopher, sorry .


Re: Your challenge. (And I'm just guessing here) something to do with your leg muscles not being able to deliver the energy fast/efficiently enough? (as your feet would leave the ground faster/at a lower level of force?). This is the only thing I can think of as it's easier to push away from things underwater and it certainly looks difficult to push away hard from things when people are floating in 0g.

So lower resistance from gravity = less force to push against the floor with?

Warm? Even in the Ballpark? (Regardless I'm really pleased to discover you weren't the nut I originally thought you to be! (though I imagine you now have some idea what a nut I am))


If I got any of that wrong I'd be happy for you to explain to me why and where (assuming you can keep up with my slightly mad approach to syntax in the 1st place). I'm an armchair physicist (not that I haven't studied it in my time but I'm far from PHD) I'm always happy to learn and improve.

That's not what I was saying at all though perhaps I explained poorly.

So imagine you are in a 0 gravity environment. You have 2 balls (lol) one has a mass of 1 kg the other a mass of 100kg. You throw both equally hard. What happens?

One ball travels away from you at 100x less the velocity of the other. This is intertia, it is an effect of mass not gravity. Gravity is an additional force but it's absence would not change the fact that a big heavy space suit requires a significant force to move at a usefully velocity in the 1st place.

It was perhaps misleading to use the example of a fulcrum (lever) but in this context it's quite illustrative. If it was 0 gravity you could apply a tiny force to a massive object and just wait however long it takes to get it where you want (like an infinitely long lever). When gravity becomes a factor duration becomes more and more of a concern (like the fulcrum of the lever gets shorter and shorter).

Concequence: the lower the gravity the easier (less work/deltaV) it is to move an object. However a massive object still requires a proportional large force to move in a useful way (in this case fast enough to overcome 0.16g for long enough to get upright).

I'm not saying gravity has no effect (quite the opposite) I'm saying big heavy thing requires big heavy force to shift even in reduced gravity environments.


As for bases on the moon, mars, stargates, ueo's, void whales, phobos being hollow (phobos is some crazy shit), hexagon on Saturn etc. Etc. I'm not outright dismissive, but to treat it as anything but food for thought/entertainment is a little worrying to say the least. What do you have to go on there other than the testimony of other people who claim to have been involved or whatever?

There's no hard data avaliable to the likes of you and I on such things. Many of these ideas cannot be entirely refuted, but nor can they be confirmed either. That puts us squarely in the realm of superstition and religion.

I'm a part time discordian/khaos magus/git wizard so I do have more time than most for superstition and flights of fantasy but I steer well clear of treating any of that kind of think as objective fact.

The realms of materialism and idealism should stay entirely separate except when they converge and compliment each other e.g. If I can imagine a black swan and then go out and find one (after performing the necessary experiments to disprove any other possible explanations for why it might seem black) then I can tell others that black swans are definitely a real thing. The same cannot be said for say the flying spaghetti monster or the chocolate tea pot orbiting the sun even though believing in such things makes my life more interesting under certain circumstances (and such liberated thought processes can eventually lead to as yet undiscovered ideas which may indeed prove to be "true" or helpful).

"Given all theories of the universe are absurd, it is better to speak in the language of one which Is patently absurd so as to mortify the metaphysical man." -Alaistair Crowley

Translation: if your going to indulge stuff like this don't take it or yourself too seriously or you will go mental!

Praise be to pope Bob!
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So you're saying on Jupiter or any other super-giant planet, we should have no problem walking about, lifting the usual things such as hammers, etc with no problem because the mass is the same as Earth?
Hmm, didn't think gravity worked like that. I always read in text books that on the moon, you should be able to jump higher because gravity was less than earth... but you say no.
Damn scientists always trying to confuse us...
(Pssst... weight and mass are different things. Weight measures gravitational force... the force that you have to overcome to lift something... less gravity = less force to overcome)

As for the conspiracy thing... you do know we already have bases on the dark side of the moon and Mars right? Look up Alternative 3...

Were you not paying attention in physics class the day they explained the difference between mass and weight? As @Payback pointed out the energy required to overcome inertia is the same no matter what the gravity, low gravity simply allows you to "spread the duration" of the force like a fulcrum.

I.e. it would be easier than on earth but you still have to apply enough force to move 2-300kg of mass, you just have the option of doing so less rapidly (making it easier but not easy).

Even if this were not the case your argument still makes no sense. If it was indeed faked then surely they were on wires anyway? How else are you proposing they replicated the effects of low gravity?

The fact your comment got 3 likes is rather depressing. As someone who makes researching conspiracy theories a borderline obsessive hobby I can say with some confidence that the whole faked moon landing thing is about the most debunk-able one ever conceived. It is an insult to the very term "conspiracy theory" and helps give the rest of us a bad name .

Radiation belt? = 7 mins of expertly calculated exposure, there is a 1000ish page NASA manual on how they did this.

Cameras? = they had about 20 DIFFERENT cameras & much like anyone else would the crappy poorly framed or exposed shots weren't used for publicity

Multiple light sources? = The surface of the moon is both highly reflective and uneven. (mythbusters did the shit out of that one)

Most complicated machine ever built? = Actually launched, several times, to the freaking moon and back!

Waving flag? = Funny how every single shot of the flag waving is when someone is holding/touching it eh? (& what kind of retard leaves evidence of wind in the most expensive coverup of all time?)

The Russian space programme? = They just turned a blind eye to their arch rivals lauding it over them? They were in on it? You have to get really paranoid before that one starts to make any sense whatsoever.

etc. etc. etc.

I have a lot of time for conspiracy theories and I'm happy to speculate with the best of them but I've yet to find a single good argument for the landing not happening. I can maybe work with the possibility that some things were omitted/covered up (Monoliths etc.) because this could not be conclusively refuted by empirical facts. Suggesting that it never happened however is so easy to disprove it blows my mind that people still have time for the idea.

For your own sake try looking into the opposing arguments. There are plenty people with PHD's and direct experience who are happy to take you through the counters to all this stuff. And they back it up with actual evidence and experiments rather than conjecture and selective information. Your mind will thank you for it

An interesting response.

I hadn't realized that the life of black people in the South isn't universally known. It is such a stain on our history, such a cruel example of the Honors English theme of "man's inhumanity to man."

For me, that article wasn't about class warfare and voting rights. It was a portrait of fear overcome, and taught me some details about what it meant to be black in the deep South (you have to walk in A LINE when you meet a white person on the sidewalk???!!!)

Whenever I begin to think about this article, I start to tear up.

Which is interesting to me -- that that wasn't your take-away. Which means to me our shame isn't as internationally known as I thought. I think. Or maybe not. Whatever

I'm a father, and this rings all too true. Already with my son in middle school, I see many of the boys withdrawing from genuine bonding into carefully crafted fronts and defensive posturing. It's alarming as a dad, but sadly not a surprise. I remember this transition all too well - not much has changed on this topic since I was a kid in the '70s and '80s.

But we can teach emotional sensitivity to our boys - and still demonstrate real masculinity (and strength). Like most dads, I've taught my son that strength of character often means facing fear head-on. Yes, being strong.

But does that mean to just "man up" and act tough? No. Everyday, the single greatest thing most men are afraid of is sharing their true feelings (and not just irritation or rage). For a lot of men, it gets to the point where they themselves don't know what they're feeling anymore - let alone have the ability to tell anyone else.

I've taught my son that real bravery is facing that fear. Express your feelings to someone you trust regularly. Share them with friends, and (especially) reach out for help when you're feeling sad/down. Overcome the fear that buries your inner world, and you're on your way to becoming a real man - the kind of man that's not afraid of the very thing most men cower and retreat from.