Given all the serious news today, I thought it was time to clean out my backblog of amusing entertainment videos. Justice, as Plato argued, is balance, and where would a self-respecting political blog be if we didn’t also make room for entertainment. Thus, first up, some mashup commentary on “Surge Season:”
And second, a patriotic, relativistic defense of Miss Teen South Carolina: she may not have done so well, but her ignorance pales before that of 56% of a French television audience:
Please share widely!
and I'll attack them through Belgium.
…your comment made no sense whatsoever. I have made it clear that I am on a slow link here in Germany, and I am not going to access the videos.
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If your comment had something to do with the videos, describe the context.
The content of the second videos is French Who wants to be a millionaire. The question is what revolves around the Earth. He's wracking his brain over whether its the sun or the moon. He polls the audience, and 56% say its the sun. He almost takes a 50/50 but goes with the Sun. His wife or girlfriend is pissed and says its the moon. He goes the sun final answer and the host is like “and what revolves around the earth? nope, it was the moon. sorry.”
…it was a stupid question. Relativisticly considered, the sun actually does revolve around the earth. So does the moon.
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Thanks for the context, though.
That's completley incorrect. Relativistically speaking the moon revolves around the sun, because it revolves around the earth which revolves around the sun. But the sun revolving around the earth? No matter how you frame it, it's wrong.Maybe this failure to grasp Heliocentrism is a European thing. I mean, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium has only been around for like…oh…450 sum odd years…so I can see how it hasn't made everyone's book list yet.
…It is obvious that you know nothing about either center of mass coordinates or relativity, or,for that matter, the “n-body” problem in celestial mechanics.
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It really would be helpful if you would actually take a physics course.
because then you would know that 2 objects can't be in orbit with one another. The closest you get to such an instance is 2 elliptic orbits rotating around a barycenter like you'd find with binary stars. However, to say “actually the sun revolves around the earth” is foolishness. First of all, Keplers first law of planetary motion states that planets have elliptical orbits. If the sun revolved around the earth in any respect, this would not be true. Secondly, the only relativity that supports your claim is “if im standing on Earth, it appears the Sun is revolving relative to me.” Welcome to the 1300s!
If someone told me that we’d spend a significant amount of time discussing whether the earth revolves around the sun, or not, when we started BMG I would never have believed them!
that this would be a bigger topic on Red Mass Group, no?
…relativity is all about reference frames. From the reference frame of the sun, the Earth revolves around it. From the reference frame of the Earth, the sun revolves around it. From the reference frame of the center of mass (earth & sun) both revolve around the center of mass.
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To a significant degree. Einstein’s theory of general relativity provides a slight correction to Newton’s theory of gravitation from which the above is derived, but it is a minor correction (3d order in the differential equations).
You don't have to be American to be stupid. Mind you, it doesn't seem to hurt your chances.
The translation on YouTube was
The Earth rotates on it's axis; it revolves around the sun. So… the answer “Earth” would have been most correct; using Raj's thoughts all four choices [moon, sun, Mars, Venus] would have been equally correct. Using JoeTS's philosophy, none would be correct.
I presume the YouTube translation is an error and the show actually used the French word for revolve, not rotate. But I don't speak French, so I have no idea.
The host used the word graviter which means to revolve. To rotate is tourner.
Once and for all, as The Economist recently suggested.
keep producing kick-ass beers I don't care what they call themselves.
Belgian federalism was the subject of my honours thesis (and yes, we used the “u” in Montreal), and I spent a coupla weeks there doing interviews. It's the most screwed up system I've ever seen, with 7 parliaments going at the same time. It is misleading to say anything significant that Flemish only voted for Flanders-based parties: it is impossible for a Flemish resident to vote for a Walloon party. Every major political party in Belgium is incoprorated separately in the three regions of the country. So as a French-speaker, I can't vote for die Lieberalen, only for les Liberaux. Only Flemish parties run in Flanders — the French-speakers aren't on the ballot. Mind you, the two halves act in concert in a lock-stepped coalition.
Much worse, of course, is the word that “Belgium” is an intergalactic profanity.
…the Flemish and the Walloons should consider the Czechoslovakia solution: an amicable divorce.
The “Velvet Divorce” was an odd case … the elite wanted it, not the people. The elite brought the people over.
The Flemish pay massive amounts to the Walloons through transfers. That keeps the Walloons on board. As for the Flemish, the Dutch have no irredentist impulse, and Flemish nationalism — like that in Northern Italy — is stainedwith far-right associations.
Plus, there's the status of Bruxelles…
Louis XIV used to declare war for no reason other than “The glory of France”. Say whatever you want about why Bush went to war…but no reason can go against that.
And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of Belgium
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Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg are very much referred to as the BeNeLux (capitalization for emphasis).
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As a humourous aside, someone a few decades ago quipped that the EU (and its predecessors) was headquartered in Brussels because Brussells was neither in France nor in Germany (and Switzerland wasn’t an option because it wasn’t, and still isn’t a member).
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We went to Brussells once. Not impressed. Brugge (sp?), yes, we were impressed.
Like [this guy http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2007/09/18/someone_tries_to_sell_belgium_on_ebay/]
Never got through to France huh?
On another note, I think they were all confused because obviously everything rotates around France.
Of course, Copernicus was Polish, Galileo was Italian, and Descartes did much of his writing in Holland, so maybe it was just nationalist chauvinism that cut them off from that whole heliocentric business.
Tycho Brahe was Danish, and Johannes Kepler was German. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Newton and Maxwell (both British) in there somewhere.
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The two most important theories in physics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were developed by (relativity) the French, Austrians and Swiss, and (quantum theory) Germans.
Positively pre-Copernican!
How were all those people able to find the studio?
More Miss Teen SC goodness:
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By the book from the John Madden school of discussion.