That's pretty much my favourite physics fact right there. From the point of view of a photon, travel is instantaneous. From the sun, from the next nearest star, from the big bang... It seemed to the photon that it was emitted and absorbed instantaneously.

We also had a brilliant bunch of lectures by Don Kurtz who told us about a book called Mr Tompkins in wonderland, in which the narrative was written by a guy who was a bicyclist in a world where the speed of light, c = 10 metres per second or so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Tompkins

We then did a bunch of questions about what that man experienced, what colour traffic lights were, what length his bike and roads were, and what time it said on the clock tower. Just great, that's what makes me want to lecture one day.

I'm right there with you on almost every point.
I can't blame Bob for being misled. All I can do it point out to him that he knows that partisan '24-7 news' organizations don't tell the truth, and he should not listen to them...any of them, but particularly Faux, (pronounced 'fox', but still meaning fake) which is by far the worst of them.
I do understand the reason they, and others, have been so successful. I think that's all the more reason to point out at any opportunity what they are (propaganda machines) and what they aren't (news) to remind anyone listening that if they MUST watch, remember it's only entertainment, not information.
It's a sad thing that one must do their own research on nearly any topic they wish to be informed on. Faux is not the only culprit by far, nor the only side that does it, but it is the face of the industry, so they get targeted the most (at least by me).
I will give the benefit of a doubt that that's why he's here, but it could just be because he enjoys 'debate' and knows he can always find someone to argue against his ideas here, not that that's a problem for me. It's a large part of why I enjoy the site (not the only reason by far), and why I certainly don't want those who I disagree with to leave. I have to hope they take my discussions in the spirit they are intended and not as personally insulting, which I understand is how they often could be interpreted.
Absolutely, people are different, and come to different conclusions and solutions to the same problems. If we can't discuss ALL these ideas (at least the reasonable ones based in reality) we don't evolve (or stunt ourselves) socially. I also agree the biggest issue is the actual facts and data being misrepresented by those with agendas, any agenda.
Yes, I do remember the birth of the teabaggers (indicated by the fact that I still call them teabaggers, their original 'clever' name until they learned what it means), but it was so quickly taken over by those with 'keep youre government hands off my medicare' and 'Obama is a Kenyan Nazi' signs and tri-cornered hats it's hard to recall that tiny time period I might have been with them.
I'm always saddened how easily groups of people end up being misled. The teabaggers had it right to start, even with their name. Their intent was to make the major parties 'suck our balls' and clean up, so.... ;-)
I also hope Bob will continue 'debating' with me. I was actually upset when Chingalera went off the rails. On those occasions when he was respectful we got along great and had an amazing amount in common (although rarely agreed, never on politics). Unfortunately he did not act respectfully often.

Damn it, now you got me lecturing right back! Lecture over.
Professor Newt will only be in his office from approximately 3:00-4:00 ;-)

@newtboy
i agree with you but consider a few things:
1.for the first time bob is actually engaging and revealing where his perspective originates.(which came as no shock,to anyone).now we can disagree on his position but understanding how he got to that position gives an opportunity to disseminate the particulars.

this is a good thing.

2.while bob's breakdown of the political spectrum is extremely,overly simplified and his understanding of socialism vs corporatism is staggeringly..wrong..it begs the question ..why does bob have it so wrong?

which he answers by where he gets the majority of his information.i dont necessarily blame bob for this but rather the institutions and media outlets he gives authority.

bob is not the exception but rather the rule.people tend to congregate and gravitate towards those who speak in the language they,themselves,can relate to.this is why FOX is so successful and why every other 24 hr news channel has tried to copy their success.

FOX appeals to the emotional rather than the rational.they pound a message for entire news cycles with little or no actual analysis of very complicated issues.there IS actual news hidden in there but it gets drowned out by the screaming apologists who just seek to perpetuate their own agenda and/or popularity.the hyper-partisanship alone is reason enough to never watch FOX.

most americans do not have the time to do a research paper every night,and the majority never made it past 9th grade civics.so they tune in to 5 minute soundbites that appeal to their own emotionally triggered prejudices.presented by vapid pretty people who are the exact opposite of a journalist.

they ALL do it.every 24hr news channel does it,FOX just does it better.

3.the fact that bob frequents a predominantly secular-left site should be an indicator that he is not as partisan as he appears in many of his comments.he comes here to see what the "lefties" find important and their take on current events.

the problem always arises when people assume that if given all the information,everybody will all come to same conclusion.

which is untrue.

but to come to a rational and reasonable conclusion we must have the information ...all of it...we may still disagree in the end but at least the discussion is founded on even ground and not polluted by propaganda and politics.

the hyper partisanship has got to stop.it only serves those who wish to divide and conquer.

4.the tea party in the beginning was pretty amazing and,ironically,had a very similar message that occupy wall street had.remember what was going on when the tea partiers first exploded on the scene?

the wall street bailout.

now they were eventually co-opted by the very power structure that they originally protested against..ironical..but if you look at the history of mass movements the powered elite were using an old playbook in that regard.

ugh..you got me writing a damn lecture newt!

let me just conclude that i am glad bob is engaging on much more personal level and i hope he continues.
will bob and i still disagree? most likely

@Barbar
i think we agree more than we disagree my friend.

i started writing a very long history prior to the inquisition and the politics behind it and the consequent reformation and how that was able to transpire and i realized i was writing a lecture as if you were a student in my class.

lol...i figured i would save you the boredom.

you used a very apt word:justification.
and on that we agree.

I couldn't bring myself to read some of the longer comments above. But has anyone mentioned the dimples above her butt? Spiderman's butt dimples don't show -- he is clothed, she is essentially naked.

Plus what @SDGundamX said. He sees why some folks are upset and articulates it beautifully.

I'm quite tired of being told that my reactions are wrong. Especially when someone who presumably hasn't lived in my gender's skin can so easily see why someone of my gender would be upset.

If certain men would stop arguing so much and try to understand, even a little bit, maybe we could get past this topic. But as long as women get lectured as to how they are wrong wrong wrong, we are going to be stuck here forever.

@A-Winston @lantern53

Here is another fantastic wikipedia article that i highly recommend you read closely.

Note that not a single scientific institution is in any doubt about the points made on that page about climate change. The last group that rejected any of the points (the American Association of Petroleum Geologists no less; one of the most biased-looking on the page and in clear opposition to the consensus) had to, in 2007, accept that the evidence was making them look foolish, and took a "non-committal" stance... whatever that means. A very unscientific conclusion to make - the conclusion should state what the results stated and most importantly be free of opinion. For example you'd get roasted alive for writing "95% probability, so it's quite likely!" in a university science report - italicised bit is clearly an opinion, and is scientifically meaningless.

Read the bit about consensus. Read the bit about peer reviewed research being conducted by lecturers and students at universities around the world.

I'm genuinely trying to help you understand how scientific consensus works, please give this a look. If you're worried about wikipedia you can check the citations, i've given it a look and the sources look reliable, and you can let me know if you've got any doubts about any and i'll take a look for you and discuss it with you in private if you like. Genuinely want to help if i can.

@A-Winston @lantern53

Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

I'll simplify it for you - those who are not well educated in a subject greatly overestimate their ability at the subject, because they don't know all of the things that they don't know.

Those who are better educated in a subject greatly underestimate their ability at the subject, because they know how complicated it is.

Now you two don't know about science, and that's ok - that's not an insult and i don't want any of this to be insulting. But it is meant to be a reminder that you are talking about one of if not the most technical and complicated abstract subjects that we as a species pursue. If you don't even understand the "scientific method" (a distinct term) and how the "scientific community" (another distinct term) works and comes to consensus, how can you possibly hope to decipher fact (science) from fiction (propaganda)?

I keep having to post this, but i'll do it again. The scientific community is made up of all kinds of people such as university lecturers and students (yes, your kids might be part of the community), amateur scientists, people at research institutions.... anyone who cares enough to approach things methodically and systematically, anyone interested in finding out as much as we possibly can about everything we can. Real science does not get paid based on results - the funding is provided for the research and the research finds whatever it finds. You can't lie about science, because other anal bastards (far worse than me) are just waiting to find something wrong with it and pillory it. That's how the scientific community works, it's like internet comments only worse. You can't get away with doing bad science for long.

Most people in scientific research do not have a lot of money, do you understand that? I can tell you right now - i contribute to scientific papers and such, so that makes me part of the scientific community. I'm just a post-grad student living on a student loan and doing something that i enjoy. My lecturers make a living, but they are not well-off by any means. We also suffer tax when politicians take our evidence and twist it in front of our faces. And we're left standing here, exasperated, wondering why you'd listen to non-experts over experts. If your doctor said you had diabetes, you wouldn't ask a politician to confirm it? If you want a scientific opinion, consult the scientific community.

I would love you to ask yourself the following question; "What do i really know about the scientific community and the scientific method?" Because if you took half an hour one day to go to an accredited university and ask the science department about how science works, how consensus is formed, and what makes good scientific practice, you'd be able to rid yourselves of these myths that somehow all scientists (i.e. average people, doing scientific research for the sake of science) are in some kind of club or gang or being paid to say that humans are causing climate devastation. The reason the majority of people say that is because the science speaks for itself and is not open to interpretation. The facts are facts.

Are you really thinking this through?

I want to show you one final thing, and it comes from the wikipedia page on Scientific method (which i recommend you read to avail yourself about which you speak, please don't speak from ignorance).

"The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false."

The science speaks for itself, and i recommend you start listening to real scientists. Why prefer the opinion of a few individuals who are either flawed in their scientific reasoning or flat out being paid to lie? The scientific community is in full agreement.

Edit: Sorry for the long post, but you're talking about something you don't understand and it exasperates me. You wouldn't come here and talk about the details of internal medicine, but you're quite happy to tell a scientist, to his face, that he doesn't know science.

@Trancecoach - they respond in literature all the time. A scientist's response is to prove it, scientifically. They do, and are, all the time. But most people do not understand science and those that do still find scientific papers daunting and difficult to follow. People like the two i mentioned above, they don't have a hope in hell of understanding the source of the information, and they sadly look to the wrong people to explain it to them.

*science. Part of the problem was that she was holding the ball herself, and thus had to lean back to stay in balance - when she dropped it she leaned back forward to a more natural position.
And yes, I too blame the lecturer.

When done properly


On a side note. He has a whole series of physics lectures here for free.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002/video-lectures/

The scientific community *knows* that climate change is real. The scientific community is made up of individual researchers at universities all over the world, anyone who practices good science and adheres to the scientific method is in no doubt about what the research points to. You can't buy the global scientific community, there are too many of "us" (i guess) that are all absolutely anal about good scientific practice. You could buy one or two, you could buy a small group, but the only thing that changes the opinion of the global scientific community is hard scientific reasoning.

I can't speak for where you live, but if you were to walk into my university's physics department tomorrow and ask any lecturer or professor about climate change, they'd tell you that, and the same goes for just about any university in the UK, holland and france i imagine, if not more like germany and so on. Anyone who has spent any amount of time comparing graphs and looking for statistical anomalies will tell you that there is a god damn big and unwieldy peak sticking up on the temperature/time graph right about where we started mass producing greenhouse gases, and the only new influence into the equation was us, because the old peaks are flat compared to this one. This is happening on a HUMAN timescale, not on a geological one.

We're seeing ocean floor methane bubbling up to the surface that we haven't seen before due to the heating of the ocean, and only this week the scientist who studied it tweeted flat out that if even a fraction of that methane is released into the atmosphere... "we're fucked."

It's pretty damn serious, but i'm not telling you that you need to pay huge taxes or fees to green companies or anything, and no scientist ever will. The agendas that politicians take up in the name of science should not stop you from accepting the science, and there are simple, good common sense things you can do to make a small difference that would cumulate to something big if we all did them. The only reason governments haven't been investing more into green energy is because they are relentlessly lobbied by the hugely wealthy and powerful and corrupt energy firms.

What is more likely?

My question is, if Canada or Mexico were being controlled by terrorists and were firing rockets into our country and killing people, how long do you think it would take for the national outrage to develop and a ground campaign sent out to utterly destroy the capability of the enemy to hurt us any longer? I don't see us putting up with it, or any other country for that matter. Yet, for some reason there is a double standard with Israel that people think they should put up with it.

That said, I would agree that Israel has a lot to answer for as far as civilian deaths; there is a lot of racism and insensitivity and brutality. America isn't any better.. We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to destroy their war machine and killed over 250k people. Iraq probably had quite a few more, yet we are lecturing to Israel to stop trying to remove the terrorists who live in their back yard. We would never stand for it so why are we telling Israel that they should. I am against war and I think Israel has crossed the line many times but I still recognize that countries are asking them to do something they themselves would never do.

Am I the feminist you had a bad exchange with?

I am happy to meet you in the lounge and talk about it. I think others will vouch for me that I am not like this angry woman. I promise you a respectful conversation. (Not a lecture from me, a conversation between the two of us.)

I think she was arrested because she probably interacted with the cops in a way that they didn't like. They also probably wanted to get her away from that situation for her own good.

Very disturbing video that shows the lack of common courtesy in discourse when there is a difference of opinion.

Meet me in the lounge? PM me?

..I can claim to know far more than you seem to because I went to college and graduated with a degree in science, have a NASA geologist uncle,..

What area of science do you have a degree in? Does having a scientific degree make you an expert in geology? I have a few uncles who are millionaires but that doesn't mean I am good with money or know anything about business.

...Uniformitarianism as described is NOT the cornerstone of geology, that's ridiculous. Geologic forces are not uniform...

Uniformitarianism is the belief that the geological forces at work in present time are the same as those which happened in the past. This is what is meant by the phrase "the present is the key to the past". It is not a belief that all geologic forces are uniform. Again, this theory is the cornerstone of modern geology and also many other sciences. Geologists mix in some catastrophism with their uniformitarianism so they don't really call it uniformitarianism anymore but that is the foundation of geology today.

..and as an anti-science guy..

I am not anti-science; I am a firm believer in the scientific method. What you're calling science cannot be tested with the scientific method, and it is therefore not scientific and requires faith to believe it. I don't have the kind of faith to believe what you believe.

..I would guess you believe the earth is about 6000 years old, right?..

Give or take a few thousand years. I believe we live on a young Earth in a young Universe.

..There is NO evidence of a world wide flood. NONE WHATSOEVER. Either show exactly where the (as yet undiscovered) layer of homogeneous sediment is in the strata world wide or stop lying. You can't, because it didn't happen..

Do you realize there aren't two sets of evidence, one for creation and the other for naturalism? We are looking at the same evidence and coming to different conclusions. There is volumes of evidence for a worldwide flood, in fact the evidence is irrefutable, but if you come to the data with uniformitarian assumptions you will misinterpret it.

A secular geologist looks at the grand canyon and sees millions of years because of his uniformitarian assumptions about the processes that formed it, and his belief in deep time. Because of the assumptions he is bringing to the table, he fails to see how it could have been rapidly formed and deposited, and the evidence in this video proves that it could have been.

You can find the same sediment (from the same place) deposited the same way, all over the world. The explanation that it was a process that took hundreds of millions of years or longer doesn't match the data. There are plenty of lectures which explain what this looks like, and as a scientist you should be able to understand exactly what they're talking about:

@Trancecoach

Then we have a similar heritage. I study under Gaku Homma sensei, who was at Iwama very close to the same time that Bob Frager was there.

Also interesting, Frager is a friend of Stanley Pranin who came and gave a private lecture at my dojo last year, about the early history of Ōsensei. So if we're playing "Six Degrees of Morihei Ueshiba", I think we're 2 degrees twice over.