Air is friction, same as the spinning surface. I think you mean air friction versus friction from the spinning surface.

Assuming so, consider that without a surface, that top could slow down until it was at rest, but with a surface, the moment it gets below a certain speed, it wobbles and hits the surface and the surface contributes significantly to the slowing down. To truly compare the friction of the surface with the friction of the air, you'd have to factor out the force of the surface stopping the top.

This means, either eliminating the possibility of the top falling in the zero-air method, or only measuring the time until the top falls below the wobble speed threshold. The latter seems easier.

Ahhhh, those good old pre-social media days. Had the pleasure of bringing a fat Motorola brick cellphone to my SATs. I remember calling home on this HUGE cellphone, feeling all cool -- people were impressed, man. And I mean, important people like chicks. Yesss, growing up during the transition period from "Internet is for dorks" to "Internet is for everybody" was cool, because my parents were techies and I got to be like, "I used Encarta 95 to do my school report."

And that meant debating teachers over its use as a legitimate source, versus the library. Which lead to me being that kid who won against the teacher. Thus chicks. Nerds win sometimes. Oh yes, they win.

How much energy is wasted on the charger versus what is being fed into the actual phone?

I don't necessarily disagree with you. My opinions, while oft contrarian, are really just open ended processes without judgement or declaration. They are hardly even opinions, as I almost always simultaneously believe and hold dear multiple conflicting ideas about particular subjects. An enlightened doublethink as it were. Everything is a theory worth pondering. Thanks Socrates. Thanks for making me not know anything.

Now while tenure certainly holds clout, it can also blind us to the moments in time which were shorter but sweeter than any of the fine tuned complexities of empire. The Internet as we know it, with youtube and Facebook, for example, may be the fixture but I'll always think kindly upon those early 90s, when it was the awkward but mysterious world wide web.

So, cool, yay for fixtures, but I'm a founders man, not a member of the club after its maturity. The Thomas Paine -- Cool, the revolution is over, now fuck yo couch. Where's the next one?

Other examples where the fixture isn't necessarily the only method to decide value by: Van Halen's prolific career versus that first, highly exceptional, fast and heavy album. Or the short but sweet years Ronnie James Dio or Glenn Huges sang for Black Sabbath -- Ozzy is the fixture, but those short moments of time where something strange and magical was created with other diverse geniuses, prior to or after the bread winners, those are the moments of fascination.

I love Jon Stewart but this ain't no thang. My interest was already piqued and held years ago, before him. He's great though and far better than a single television show.

I used to be a pretty strong "doubter", if not a denier. I made a gradual shift away from that, but one strong instance of shift was when Neil Degrasse Tyson presented it as a (relatively) simple physics problem in his new Cosmos series. Before we started burning fossil fuels, x% of the sun's energy was reflected back into space. Now, with a higher concentration of CO2, x is a smaller number. That energy has to go somewhere, and at least some of that is going to be heat energy.

Still, I don't think that anything on the level of "average individual citizen/household of an industrial country" is really where anything needs to happen. Yes, collectively, normal people in their daily lives contribute to Climate Change. But the vast majority of us, even as a collective single unit, contribute less than industrial / government / infrastructure sources.

Fossil fuels have been a great source of energy that has massively contributed to global advances in the past century. BUT, although we didn't know it in the beginning, they have this associated cost/downside. Fossil fuels also have a weakness in that they are not by any means inexhaustible, and costs rise as that becomes more and more obvious. In turn, that tends to favor the status quo in terms of the hierarchy of industrial nations versus developing or 3rd world countries -- we've already got the money and infrastructure in place to use fossil fuels, developing countries can't afford the costs.

All of this makes me think that 2 things need to happen:
A) Governments need to encourage the development of energy sources etc. that move us away from using fossil fuels. Tax breaks to Tesla Motors, tax incentives to buyers of solar cells for their homes, etc. etc.
B) If scientists/pundits/whoever really want people to stop using fossil fuels (or just cut down), they need to develop realistic alternatives. I'll bring up Tesla Motors again for deserving huge kudos in this area. Americans (and in general citizens of developed countries) have certain expectations about how a car should perform. Electric cars have traditionally been greatly inferior to a car burning fossil fuels in terms of living up to those expectations, but Tesla threw all that out the window and made a car that car people actually like to drive. It isn't just "vaguely functional if you really want to brag about how green you are", it is actually competitive with or superior to a gas-engine car for most users/consumers (some caveats for people who need to drive long distances in a single day).

We need to get more companies / inventors / whoever developing superior, functional alternatives to fossil fuel technologies. We need governments to encourage and enable those developments, NOT to cave to lobbyist pressure from big oil etc. and do the opposite. Prices will start high (like Tesla), but if you really are making a superior product, economy of scale will eventually kick in and normalize that out.

Outside of the consumer level, the same thing goes for actual power production. Even if we did nothing (which I would certainly not advocate), eventually scarcity and increased difficulty in obtaining fossil fuels (kinda sad that the past 2 decades of pointless wars 95% driven by oil haven't taught us this lesson yet, but there it is) will make the more "green" alternatives (solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, whatever) more economically practical. That tipping point will be when we see the real change begin.

What are the criteria you are looking at that to tell you the Universe is not designed? What kind of Universe would you expect if it were designed versus the one we live in?

The real problem is that even once thing become so obvious that climate change is real, and the predictions are real, they'll still deny it was humans had anything to do with the acceleration of climate change, or at least they'll deny it had as much as science proves it does. They'll just point to it being more signs of the end times, which is all the more reason to vote against fundies, as they are prone to letting stuff go, or trying to encourage things to happen that they see as end time predictions just because they think if all the signs are there that means the return of Jesus is soon, of course they discount that there is an appointed time which might still be 50,000 years from now and if we muck things up now, that's 50,000 years of end times in full force that could have been avoided. And I base this on personal experience with deniers who are already willing to pass it off as just signs of the end of times...

Another problem is that they think that scientist are saying 100% of all climate change is caused by human activity, or at least that's how the right wing media sells that is what is being said. They don't understand that what is being talked here is the acceleration from the norm. They just point to the Earth goes through warming/cooling periods all the time and ignore the acceleration, and if they do acknowledge it, they pass it off as debatable, because the far right doesn't understand science (I should know I used to be one). Once the changes become so drastic, they'll just point to God letting go, or causing it for it being the end times, and point to the Bible versus that show such things will happen.

@billpayer

i dont really understand your attack tactics.
what does it serve?
@A10anis may be many things,but stupid and ignorant are not one of them.
he/she just has a different perspective on things.which @dannym3141 addressed quite succinctly,and respectfully.

i actually agree with many of your posts and i happen to like and respect russell brand for having the balls to stand up for the little guy,but i cannot respect when you presume to know someones political philosophy based on so little.

are you aware that you are using the very same tactics that rabid,rightwing nutters use?
it is so easy to dismiss someone when you can demonize them.
we all become so much easier to manipulate and control when we all buy into the over-simplifed tropes of :conservative/liberal,which are both viewed as dirty words and insults and is a massive success for the propaganda state.

the argument is never conservative versus liberal,those are just labels used to beat us over the head with and paint a divisive line in the sand.where people can take sides and throw poop at each other.it serves nothing and no one besides those who wish to dominate and control.

no,the argument is always power vs powerlessness.

but nothing will ever be gained if we stick to the narrative being fed to us by the very same power structure that wishes us to remain compliant and subservient to a system that no longer serves the population.

so attacking @A10anis 's point of view and opinion,presuming his level of knowledge based on almost nothing,will gain you nothing but perpetuate the very power system that holds us all down.

have to give respect to receive respect.

I think having a conversation about evolution versus creation can be fruitful. As a former lifelong agnostic who has experienced it, I can testify of the brainwashing that goes on the other side of the fence. It starts out early in childhood books and cartoons, then through public education, television, science fiction and movies. You're raised all of your life to believe the secular creation narrative, and your friends and family who believe as you do reinforce this belief. You are self-deceived into thinking your information filter is very large and sophisticated when it is very small and full of personal bias.

That can be why people have an adverse reaction when evolution is called into question. To them it is reality and if you were to remove that cornerstone their idea of the way the world is would come tumbling down with it. If someone doesn't understand their need for Jesus, it is a hard thing to consider accepting.

i had already forgotten how awesome the V10's sound versus the turbos from this year...

I find it disgusting that people allow the government to have excuses and second chances but disallow the same for private sector. Neither should have excuses! It's not like there weren't inherent risks involved that could've been avoided. For example, NASA was fully aware of issues with Apollo I and was even warned by the astronauts themselves. They went ahead with it anyway and it resulted in a fire that killed all 3 astronauts. It wasn't a "sacrifice that needed to be made for science." It was negligence, pure and simple.
One thing I admit is that there was an artificial drive to get the moon -- which resulted in wasted dollars and lives because of negligence and the absence of pricing mechanisms -- that probably wouldn't have occurred in the private sector. So, how does that affect our everyday lives? How does that improve our lives? That's what the private sector works on. Not government. I think it could've been done better by the private sector as proven by parallel public versus private sectors in other markets. But really, there would have to be a desire and an efficient business plan. I don't honestly see what the problem is for not wanting to go to the moon right now.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2014/03/27/are-we-entering-a-golden-era-of-private-science-funding/

Well at least now I'm starting to understand how your brain works. And it's fascinating.

Me: "80% of Muslims believe women should have no rights, homosexuals should be murdered, and any Muslim who speaks to the contrary should also be murdered. Something should be done to turn that around."
You: "You're racist."

So the rationale is: "Muslims should be left alone to keep oppressing and killing one another because to suggest it should stop is racist." Got it. Crystal clear. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming it would not be racist if a Muslim person were to say that [before getting stoned to death].)

The debate is not over a matter of "your religion is worse." They aren't making a comparison of Islam to any other religion. They're discussing the archaic practices of a religion that objectively are considered primeval and flat out wrong by the majority of modern civilization.

If there's any comparison being made it's between most Muslims versus most civilized human beings.

Not a 1:1 comparison, but it makes me think of North Korea and the horrible torture the government has put its people through for generations, oppressing, starving, and torturing so many. If someone were to say something should be done to help the victims of that regime, would that be a racist notion because it'd be comparing Koreans to Americans? Or does that not count because the oppression is not being performed within the confines of a religion?


Really is truly fascinating stuff.

I feel like the problem isn't necessarily religion, but rather dogma. It just so happens that religion is full of dogma. The fact that Islam contains an attempt to immunize itself against reform serves to make it more dogmatic, as reformists can be shown, in black and white, to not be observing the religion as it was intended.

Dogma creates incredibly extreme behaviour. Once people believe they hold an absolute truth, almost anything becomes justifiable. It isn't limited to religion, as evidenced by the 20th century's forays into communism, but it is clearly present in religion, and particularly in Islam.

Comparing Canadian Muslims with Saudi Muslims is a false comparison, as I expect everyone can see. There really is a difference between living in a country as an extreme minority, versus living in a country as a member of the extreme majority. Nevermind living in a theocracy based on the religion. It's a completely different environment, and if people didn't behave differently, they wouldn't be tolerated very long.

The EDL (represented here by the driver) certainly seem to be pretty horrible shits.

However my own liberal live-and-let-live inclinations definitely face a problem when confronted with radical Islam and other toxic memes.

How does such a liberal philosophy deal with an opposing philosophy which will fundamentally not live-and-let-live?

It's the pacifist versus the warrior, and moral victories are a bit useless when they are posthumous.

Of course none of this is helped by the moneyfuckers led by the United States and Great Britain, who are more than happy with this fire while they are selling fuel and firefighting equipment.


Oh look a honking cat! Heeheehee!

The point being that the tow truck drivers are essentially running a scam. They can only tow a car (in the UK) if the car is obstructing traffic(and the owner isn't there to move it). Since it's their word versus the owner's, and because the cops get paid whenever someone wants their car out of impound, the cops tend to believe the tow truck drivers.