June 28, 2009
A little quote for you...
All of a sudden... well, not quite all of a sudden, but recently...I have noticed my liberal friends (except for the most extreme and knee-jerk) are not very interested in discussing man-made global warming. The subject rarely comes up and, when it does, it is passed over quickly, given only a nod. It's as if that was last year's — or last decade's — fad, at the very moment the House of Representatives has been browbeaten by LaPelosita into voting for a cap-and-trade bill no known person has read, let alone understood....
It often happens that ideas are defended most furiously just before they collapse. My guess is that AGW is pretty close to the point where a loud noise can start the avalanche.
But what interests me, as always, is the larger question of whether people can or will re-think. My guess is that most leftish types will be able to flip effortlessly to supporting the Kyoto Global-Cooling Treaty, without a moment of self-doubt. They don't dare think or probe.
(Tangentially, I was bothered as a child when my Dad told me that if you throw a ball up, and then it falls down, there is a brief moment when it is stationary. I still find that hard to swallow. I think it's either going up, or going down.)
Posted by John Weidner at June 28, 2009 04:30 PMJohn,
You exert a force against the ball by throwing it upward, at the same time that a counter force is acting to draw it downward(while you were holding the ball you were exerting a force to prevent the ball from falling). Once the energy that you imparted to the ball in the upward throw is diminished enough and balanced by the force pulling it back down, the ball will stop in flight, however momentarily, and then reverse direction. It must come to a zero point of velocity (with no further addition of force), otherwise the function describing the velocity would be discontinuous, which is not a proper description in a classical situation.
Posted by: kevinS at June 28, 2009 06:35 PMOf course there must be a point of zero velocity, but it seems to me like that point should be of an infinitely small duration....that the more accurately you can examine it, the shorter the "moment" will be, until it's gone. There's up, then there's down, but why should there be a "moment" when the ball is hovering without doing anything?
Actually I'm kind of kidding. My "feeling" for the problem ignores the fact that on the quantum level everything is discontinuous in some way. And also the elasticity of the ball means that there's probably a very small period of time when the up and down forces are just distorting the ball, without moving it.
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