How liberals shamelessly protect their own

What is the "kill ratio" of either aircraft against either the F-15 or the F-16?

Stick to something you know something about ---- like how to avoid paying your utility bill.

Would that be the kill ratio achieved at Jever during the Tactical Air Meet and at Nellis during Red Flag?

Craven:

I knew you were an expert at the meandering metaphor but gee are you a scientist as well?

Now that wasn't necessary, was it?

Not arrogant -- just correct.


Good for him. He obviously knows a great deal about airplanes. On the other hand, he doesn't know diddly about Heisenberg or Gödel.


Apparently it is extremely difficult. It certainly has stymied you.

Science together with art.
I actually think that the passage about thermodynamics and Godel's incompleteness theorem and what that says about how we should approach life is kind of interesting. Much better than most of the jibberish claiming to show how this or that theory shows that in ordinary life people should behave a particular way. I must confess, though, that the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle has anything to do with what he is saying eludes me.

As for Godel's incompleteness theorem, what that suggests is that a goal-oriented approach to math (or to its sister, science) is undesirable because in any reasonable mathematical theory there are questions that can't be answered because they are neither provable or disprovable, the mathematical equivalent of Melville's Crinkum-crankum whales ("them is whales that can't be cotched"). Better to be continually open to ideas you might have wherever they might be and just sort of stumble on discoveries as a result of understanding.

As for what the laws of thermodynamics say on an artistic level, I'd say that to me they say something rather different from what they say to the author. Most external interaction is hurried and requiring of one to do things in inefficient ways--so you end up losing energy that could effectively be used to decrease your entropy. Or it's akin to heating up the reservoir an engine is transferring heat to--you'll get less efficiency. One needs a background of cold darkness to think well, on some level. Look at it this way. People as a whole are a system just like you as an individual are a system. Thermodynamics should apply (artistically) the same way to each. And low entropy as a result of having consumed much energy is not the equal of low entropy as a result of a process being more reversible and efficient as it were. Better in the way of improving your brain to tinker with it patiently to make your thoughts more reversible, efficient, and easy than to consume energy in some sort of hurried experiential gallollop (invented word). Godel's theorem isn't quite so pessimistic as the general tone of the essay makes it out to be. It is trivial that with sufficient time you can prove anything that is provable. There are trivial algorithms for writing out all possible proofs. So long as you are willing to take the proofs as they come, abandoning the aim-and-shoot approach, Godel's incompleteness theorem says nothing pessimistic at all.

One opinion I have that has changed in me is that counterexamples are important. I used to think that one should be so careful in thinking that mistakes are rarely or never made. I now feel that the right way to think involves making mistakes, where counterexamples can be helpful. The reason, I think, that thinking people tend to be too sloppy is not that they try too hard to not make errors, but that they go on to new areas too quickly before they have developed what they are thinking about sufficiently abstractly. It comes from viewing questions as problems to be solved. Ignorance is not a boogeyman to be fought like a boogeyman.

I have no problem with people using scientific lingo when considering non-scientific more artistic questions. Lots of that sort of thing is total nonsense, though--just would be religious cultists trying to impress people, perhaps, because in a way science is the new religion.

Apparently it is extremely difficult. It certainly has stymied you.[/quote]

Huh? How do you think I came up with this line of thought to begin with?

You really surprise me----a man with your obvious talent doesn't need to use Al Franken's tactics

I'll give you the last word for fear of the ad nauseum thing.

I just wonder what pseudo-theoretical physics has to do with the fact that the extreme left and right both go out of their way to avoid admitting mistakes? On the far right, look at the Bush camp still valiantly proclaiming that the lack of evidence of WMDs vindicates their earlier claim of an imminent threat. On the far left, you have the hairy armpitted vegan crowd lashing themselves to trees. Its all rather sad, really.

No---it really wasn't-----I should have ignored him

step314:

A really "cool" common sense analysis there mixed with just enough education in math to be convincing.

Welcome to A2K step. I used to live in Maryland as well , sometimes I miss it! Glad you survived the Hurricane. Take little notice of some of the comments you will recieve on this thread. Most of us are friendly (or at least civil ( some are often sybil, but that's another story! ) and the ones that are not are mostly harmless.

I really have no idea. If you, in fact, found this on the web, I would have expected that you'd have no problem posting a link. Since you've passed up several opportunities to do so, I can only conclude that you either did not get it on the web or else you did but have some odd, unexplained reason for refusing to post the link.


You're right. I am very talented.


Very well. The last word shall be:

zymurgy.

Re: Science together with art.

Whim-wham.

--Groucho Marx (1930)

I am very sorry to tell you this, Perception, but you are in error. Don't you know that attorneys like Joe From Chicago are never wrong?even though he did not graduate from a top law school. He just thinks he did.

See, perception, even gato thinks you're wrong.

Perception- Your analysis is quite correct, however, I am sure that you know that when you are checkmated by Joe from Chicago, you are finished.

Never mind that the substance of Joe from Chicago's posts are not buttressed by links.

Never mind that he indulges in ad-hominem attacks.

He is Joe From Chicago. He doesn't have to give links.

Joe from Chicago apparently doesn't know that the last word is not Zymurgy but rather Zyrian.

Get with it, Joe.

See, perception, even gato thinks you should just give up.


I addressed a quotation posted by perception. There was no need to link to anything.


Well, that's typical of you, gato (geez, I love that joke).


Can you provide a link for that claim?

Joe

This is unfair.

You are in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

Don't you have any sense of decency and fair play?

Jeez guys --- you must have missed the 4th meaning of triple agent Italgato's double whammy :wink: