punk

This puts me to mind of the episode of the Simpson in which Homer tours with "Hullabalooza". There is a line in there to the effect: "Everyone knows that rock & roll reached perfection in 1975, it's a scientific fact." I think when one starts wondering "what happened to popular music?", one should wonder if perhaps they haven't started taking steps into geezer-dom.

I think English should go with the Spanish system of starting the sentence with upside down question marks and exclamation points.

American defense contractors do their version of this by trying to spread projects over as many congressional districts as possible in order to ensure that no congressperson really wants to cancel a project. The result being overbudgeted projects which are difficult to cancel even if it isn't clear what need they are meeting (cf. the Crusader mobile howitzer, or the Seawolf submarine), and quite possibly deployed systems to the military that don't work to expectations. I don't believe American defense contractors have managed a failure on this scale yet though.

The short answer: There is no such thing as a massless particle and you have misunderstood what physicists are saying. Never in nature will you ever encounter a massless particle. You will (however) encounter particles with zero REST MASS. Rest mass is different from mass. All zero rest mass requires is that the theory state that you are never able to encounter the particle at rest. That is to say the zero rest mass particle will always be in motion relative to any observer. A zero rest mass particle will always be observed to have mass, since it will always be observed in motion. So take a photon (zero rest mass) which has frequency f, so that the energy of the photon is given by: E = hf Then its observed mass is: mc^2 = hf Or: m = hf/c^2 This is all satisfied by requiring that a particle with zero rest mass move at the speed of light, which is the same as saying it will move at the speed of light relative to any observer (since observers can never go the speed of light).

***Spoilers*** The line that goes with "The Fountainhead" goes something like: He wanted to be found with a copy of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" as proof that he was a superman misunderstood by the masses. If you don't see the dig in that....

I'd say one of the important characteristics of WWI and WWII was that they were wars among coallitions of great powers. I'm not seeing Islamist terrorism as constituting a great power.

If it follows the book, then the bit with "The Fountainhead" is meant as a dig at Ayn Rand and Objectivism. "The Fountainhead" is specifically mentioned once in the PKD novel, and this looks to be a close following of that scene. I wont give any specifics though.

While I will admit the artist is very talented, I have to admit that fantasy art of this sort has always struck me as bordering on softcore porn. This form basically derives from art put on the covers of pulp fiction, which strives to titillate enough to get the person to pick up the book. I suppose that might be my bias where I don't see art that seems to be intended to generate sexual arousal as being at the same time an artistic celebration of the human form (or more concisely - porn isn't art).

I never said *anything* about protecting aggressor-wannabes from Japan. The "sort of thing" I had in mind was preemptive strikes. The US wanted Japan unable to undertake any sort of offensive military action against *anyone* (the clause would allow Japan to attack N. Korea if attacked by N. Korea).

The US wrote the Japanese Constitution after WWII. The clause mentioned above was specifically included by the US to prevent this sort of thing. The Japanese interpretation is correct. They'd need to change their Constitution before they could engage in a preemptive strike.

Yes a society should be judged by how free the worst-off individual is *under the law*. Anything else is intellectually dishonest.

I suspect the slaves would have differed with the view of 18th and early 19th century America being that free. Post-bellum Jim Crow laws tend to discourage one from viewing the pre-Civil Rights US as being free. I'd be inclined to argue that for the individual the US today is the freest it has ever been.

The issue is structural. The structure is intact, so someone else will just take his place in the structure. Let's take an unrealistic hypothetical, suppose we know X is a hitman. Now X is a pretty good hitman and he's only getting mafiosi, and he avoids getting bystanders, nevertheless he *is* murdering people. Maybe society ought to arrest him, but then maybe his boss hires a new hitman Y who maybe goes beyond mafiosi and maybe kills bystanders for kicks. Society might have been better off leaving X in place so long as he restricted himself the way I indicated. Basically in my analogy above the choice is either to take out the whole mafia system that employs X as well as X himself, or just leave X in place as the least of many evils. The US obviously isn't trying to win the War in Iraq, so it has to make sure the opposition is something that it can deal with politically, and killing off leaders doesn't promote that.

Is the devil you don't know better than the devil you know? It's not going to make a bit of difference, someone else just like him will just take his place.

I think Chomsky should be given some credit for the end of BF Skinner and Behaviorism. Whether his particular theory works is neither here nor there. The way the scientific method works means that most every theory is built on the few good bits and pieces of older otherwise failed theories. One particular good that comes out of Chomsky's approach is that words actually *mean* something, and language communicates something, whereas with Skinner we just learned to grunt based on positive feedback, and words don't really mean anything beyond getting that sort of feedback.

As I reflect on this, it makes me wonder if the Huns aren't given enough credit for being a major cause for the cultural stagnation of Europe during the "Dark Ages" (c. 500 - 1200 CE). Maybe people ought to be making a case for higher culture being more fragile and vulnerable to the incursions of barbaric peoples than we often give credit for. After all higher culture only flourishes with a sufficent socio-economic base. A base which takes time to construct and which the barbarians typically pillage and ruin.

I think not just the fall of Baghdad, but the entire Mongol invasions played a very large part in the stagnation of the Muslim world. The cultural centers of the Muslim world were Persia and Mesopotamia (both of which suffered under the Mongols), and then Spain (which fell to the Christians, and then was ruined by Christian fanaticism). Bear in mind that the portions of Christendom which also fell under the Mongols (Russia and Eastern Europe) were relatively stagnant as well. The destruction caused by the Mongols probably outdoes the destruction caused by Hitler, Stalin, or Mao (individually, maybe not by all combined).

This whole thing is pointless The same laws and court rulings that have prevented the EPA from making measurements so it can act per its official capacity will prevent anyone from monitoring to make sure a company is only emitting within its emission rights.

I believe it is called "pandering". All they are doing is putting something in a bill and expecting it to fail. Then they can go back to their constituents and say "see we tried, vote for us again and we'll try harder".

I agree with the above, but I would add this: If you look at most religions. You will find there is some set of texts, a body of doctrines, and interpretations of these. Most interpretations amount to someone explaining away the text and body of doctrine so that they no longer mean what they plainly say, but rather mean what the interpreter wants (often almost the opposite). Sticking to the texts and the body of doctrines is a red herring. Almost no one in the religion follows either of these. The real religion is what the "believers" actually do.

I suppose to answer the question you'd have decide whether you are genuinely interested in communicating something to someone else or not. If you aren't interested in actually communicating something, then why are you talking to them? If you are interested in actually communicating then you need to keep you audience in mind. But if you're just about having an ego-trip, then why are you wasting everyone's time?

Well since the Treaty of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years War it has been a principle of international law that states are *sovereign* within their own borders, and thus government can act freely within those borders. Governments do not have that same freedom to act within someone else's borders. An analogy might be that while I have the freedom to arrange my household however I want to, I do not have the same freedom to go into your house and arrange it however I want to. Now let's not get side-tracked here. The point is whether the left is acting consistently in condemning the US invasion of Iraq and ignoring Bolivia nationalizing its own resources. The fact of the matter is that it *is* acting consistently. Whether you agree with the background philosophy is another matter entirely. Anyway, the left rather favors the old Westphalian order, a stance which is consistent with anti-globalism, which is perceived as resulting in outside forces undermining the authority if sovereign "westphalian" states. The left's opposition to much of US foreign policy is also consistent with this as the policies are perceived to undermine the sovereignty of foreign states. In the case of Bolivia, the perception is that this is a case of the state reasserting its sovereignty against foreign encroachment, whereas the US invasion of Iraq is a clear violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

Just to point out the obvious: There is rather a large difference between a government taking over the oil resources in its *own* country and a government taking over the oil resources in a *foreign* country. While the left has a problem with the US government taking over oil resources in Iraq, I doubt the left would have much trouble with the US government nationalizing oil resources in the US.

"Weird" typically means little more than "counterintuitive". Our intuitions are based on our everyday experiences. The problem is that the intuitions based on these experiences don't really generalize much beyond the realm our everyday experiences occur in. Besides...as a word "weird" is a zillion times more fun than "counterintuitive".

All our measurements are absolutely consistent...within a given frame of reference. This is to say a measurement must be defined to include the motion of the measurer relative to the rest of the universe. There is no meaning to just a raw measurement. Meaning only accrues to a measurement made within a specified frame of reference (that is a specified motion of the measurer). The complaint here is that the results very *between* two distinct frames of reference. If two people make the perform the same measurement process within the same frame of reference they will get the same result. If two people perform the same measurement process within different frames of reference they will likely get different results. Why do results very between frames of reference? -> the universe is weird.