As far as Cheney goes, yes, I'd say evil. I think he was the architect of things like the US adoption and defense of torture, indefinite detention without counsel, etc. He permanently stained the country as far as I'm concerned, and I'd like to see him extradited to the Hague. I'm not fond of people who are only courageous with other people's lives (Cheney is a good example of this also, but Bush's "bring it on" nonsense also qualifies)

Having two wars going at once (one of which was arguably necessary) and making no effort to pay for them was also stupid. Math is non-partisan; you have to pay for scattering circuit boards and explosives throughout the desert.

Your experience with people on the right may be different from mine; come down to the South for a visit and see how many hard-line conservatives are particularly well-read. Also, members of which end of the spectrum are more likely to 1)believe in evolution 2) recognize global warming 3) realize that vaccines don't cause retardation 4) appreciate that the pointy-headed intellectuals are the reason for our high standard of living.

I believe Bush was incurious because it seems to me he is an earlier version of Palin. There is no deep thinking or insight; if it sounds good, it must be true. It's hard to argue with empty statements like "let's cut government waste" until you realize that we don't have a Department of Waste to cut. You have to actually identify it first. And "getting government out of the way of business" sounds good until you realize that government is the reason there's a limit on the amount of rat droppings in your hot dogs. I guess it boils down to the willingness to question your position and analyze your own beliefs. I think Bush had none.

Don't know how long until they lock this discussion, but in case it's soon, I've also enjoyed it.

I don't think I ever claimed people who disagreed with me must be stupid or evil. I brought up Cheney because it seemed you had implied I thought people who disagreed with me were stupid. Cheney isn't. Probably the smartest guy I ever met is on the conservative end of the spectrum, and he seemed like a nice guy to me. All that notwithstanding, it is clear to me that there is one end of the liberal/conservative spectrum that is rabidly anti-intellectual, and one that isn't. Bush did his best to impersonate a "just plain folks" kind of everyman for his entire public life. I believe part of it was political theater (nobody needs to clear that much brush) and the other part was the fact that (IMHO again) he was and is completely incurious. His success never depended on brainpower, so he never did much with what he had. Maybe he could have been another Einstein, but he didn't need to develop whatever grey matter he has, much as I might be a helluva mammoth hunter, but I've never had to find out.

Well, I probably had a more pronounced accent than Bush (and not one of the ones people tend to associate with intelligence), so I'm not bashing him on that. As to the second point, listen to the actors when they're being interviewed (i.e., when they don't have a script). Significant difference for some, not for others. Draw your own conclusions. I assume the final point is that good old homespun nonsense about how Obama is just "book smart" as opposed to the inherently superior smarts possessed by those without a degree ("real world" is my favorite bullshit adjective for that). In my experience, that doesn't hold water. Trying to denigrate academics by referring to them as being in an "ivory tower" does nothing to elevate the people outside the tower. You can chalk it all up to political differences if you like, but the decisions Bush made (or, IMHO, received from Cheney - I'd rate him genuinely smart but condensed evil) and his manner in general suggested lizard-brain fear-based thinking rather than deep analysis.

Really?? Not trying to flame/troll, and I'm almost tired of calling Bush an idiot myself, but holy crap! I never felt like he was any kind of deep thinker, on any level. In my opinion, you can learn a lot about a person's intellect by listening to that person speak. No, it's not a perfect litmus test, but rarely are well-spoken people idiots and rarely do brain surgeons have a hard time putting together a 10-word answer to a simple question. I'd put more money on a well-educated person (who didn't get to college by virtue of his dad's influence) with a purely artistic background than a Bush type "consumer" of technology. Honestly, I can't imagine a scenario where I'd bet on Bush beating Obama where brain function was involved.

It may be - I read the blog post and then, at the bottom, "How smart are you? Test yourself with some National Assessment of Education Progress questions." Apparently, that test isn't the same as the one the guy took. They didn't have the NAEP when I was in school, so I didn't know if that was a 4th/8th/10th grade test. Of course, the bigger issue to me is the guy's general attitude that he don't need no stinking math. I'm not sure what's on the 10th grade test, but I bet it's not tensor calculus. The guy claimed he never used that math, so why should kids know it? Squid don't use computers and fire, but that doesn't mean we should abandon them, either.

If I had mod points, you'd be at +5! This is about 99.75% of the problem.

Absolutely! I had essentially the same thing happen with FedEx Ground. Claimed to have attempted delivery, webcam revealed that to be BS. They suck. Of course, I've got a friend who refers to UPS Ground as UPS Ground To Dust. I've had the boxes with boot prints, tire tracks, everything except tank treads. Regular Fed Ex is OK, IME.

Yes, I'm familiar with eddy currents. And a stationary magnetic field is still not going to lift change out of your pocket.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ferromagnetic_materials Mostly nickel, iron, cobalt. Copper & zinc - not much.

The frequency dependence is actually dispersion, not refraction. Although the post you're replying to has more than its share of errors, thinking of time dilation causing light to bend as being *similar* to refraction is not the worst one. In each case you can think of the bending as being due to a slowing of light (although there's also the spacetime curvature effect for the gravitational case).

I don't think they make a magnet strong enough to lift change (US change, at least) out of your pocket. It's not ferrous. But yeah, this is crap. Wouldn't take much banging around with a hammer to remove whatever remnant of magnetization is left on a steel beam anyway.

You're mixing Newtonian KE (p^2/2m) and relativistic energy. It's actually E^2 = m^2c^4 + p^2c^2.