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TPMCafe Troll-a-thon Day Four: Obama Nation
Day Three of the Troll-a-thon, though the least well-recommended, was by far the greatest experiment in trolling so far this year. In case you missed it, trolls were asked to weigh in on the 1908 general election competition between William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan. Our competitors' contributions were all excellent and high class. In fact, I was just about to declare an equal victory for everyone who participated when I realized that a late entry blew all others out of the water. Sorry, folks: Day Three goes to TPM Newbie VerdaStelo.
But now, on the second-to-last day of our Troll-a-thon, we turn to the Wonderful World of Science. (I apologize for misleading you with the title of this post: today's topic has nothing to do with Obama, but I needed to do something to up the Recommends.)
Topic Four: Across the Universe
Einstein was for the cosmological constant before he was against it. Concerned that his general theory of relativity suggested that the universe was expanding, Einstein inserted a variable into his equations to keep the size of the universe static. But when Edwin Hubble observed the cosmological red shift, it became apparent that the universe was expanding, just like Einstein predicted. Einstein called the cosmological constant his biggest blunder.
But recent studies have shown that the universe is expanding at too fast a rate--and that, ironically, Einstein's cosmological constant, unvarying throughout space and time, would actually account for the unstable rate of expansion. Other physicists believe that the increasingly-expanding universe is caused by quintessense, which is a scalar field of varying density throughout space and time. It is thought that quintessense exerts an attractive force in areas of space-time with a higher ratio of radiation to matter, and becomes a repulsive force where matter exceeds radiation. Thus, as the universe has cooled, the repulsive forces of quintessense have grown, causing the universe to expand at an increasing rate.
So was Einstein's great blunder the answer to life, the universe and everything? Or is a dynamic, anisotropic force the explanation?
Discuss.
Comments (26)
Sir, I roundly reject and denounce this round of troll-a-thoning due to your obtuse representation of metric spatial expansion. Sir, I said good day!
April 17, 2008 12:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cue Eric Idle - The meaning of life
The Galaxy Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44DlSj6bnn4
April 17, 2008 1:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
4? Will it never end? This reminds me of the 2008 Democratic primary.
(I can't believe that you criticized DDN 1-3. It's like Hillary "Screw Them" Clinton criticizing Obama for elitism.)
April 17, 2008 12:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
But mine are funny.
April 17, 2008 12:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
The concept of "quintessence" is so much mystical Obama-babble. Those physicists really drinking the Koolaid.
I say Isaac Newton had it right. The stars and planets are moved by the pressure of an elastic aetherial fluid.
April 17, 2008 12:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
And how does this "Einstein" explain the deferent and epicycle and the eccentric deferent! I'm sure next he'll simply throw the Ptolemaic equant under the bus, like Obama's racist grandmother. Way to go, Einstein.! (By the way, when I'm saying "Einstein" I'm actually doing physical air-quotes).
April 17, 2008 1:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
It shouldn't be too much longer until the Large Hadron Collider at CERN starts its major testing. So we just may go a long way to understanding "the universe and everything". Einstein overturned Newton. LHC may overturn Einstein. He never embraced string theory - "God does not roll dice."
Or we may just be sucked into a supermassive black hole created by the accelerator. If that is the case, this whole point is moot.
April 17, 2008 12:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Or string theory might turn out to be three decades of math and not much else. Harrumph!
April 17, 2008 12:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Admit it: you've been practicing your "harrumphs" in the mirror, haven't you.
April 17, 2008 12:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are of the "old time" physicists. String theory is too elegant to be wrong. That old fart Einstein, in his younger days, made all kinds of wild predictions that proved to be true, just by thought experiment. One that was especially significant could not be proven until years later, during an eclipse no less.
Then he turns into this old fart and will not even keep an open mind about quantum theory. He uses the same arguments "prove it" that others had used against him in his younger days.
Hypocrite
April 17, 2008 12:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
The quote is just a bunch of snobby elitist bs. Did Osama "wright" that?
It's telling how the guy who wrote it fails to mention the time that Hillary Clinton, Sinbad, and Sheryl Crowe defeated Slobodon Milosevic's zombie army at 3:00 in the morning.
April 17, 2008 12:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
and discovered the Higgs Boson?
April 17, 2008 1:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Like your MOM.
April 17, 2008 12:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can't we just go back to the Taft-bashing? I don't have the heart to throw Einstein under the bus- LIKE HITLER DID!!!!!!!
April 17, 2008 12:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Godwin's? So soon?!
April 17, 2008 12:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Soon -- LIKE HITLER!!!
April 17, 2008 12:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
April 17, 2008 7:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not even Hitler said "God damn America."
You want this guy leading the country?
April 17, 2008 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ja ja, Hitler was just a shy misunderstood guy, gave the Germans universal health care and a national highway system, kind to strangers and small dogs. Usually comparing someone to Hitler stops the thread, but I think we can invoke an exception when someone tops Uncle Adolf. Though where does that leave us in "Insults for Hillary for $200"? "Hitler squared"? "Eichmann in a pants suit"? "Hitler - the Dynasty"? If only Albert were here, he could help us through this quandary. Hill = MC²? What is M? What is C? Math is tough.
April 17, 2008 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I saw the blondies and the blue eyes,
I saw the millions mouthing me,
But underneath I was really gentle,
D'ja ever see me touch a scrap of meat?
O yeah I conquered all those countries
They were weak, I was strong
A little too ambitious maybe,
But I never loved Eva Braun.
April 18, 2008 12:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
The way I see it, Someone put a specimen on a slide. They then covered it with a little piece of plastic. Then, they covered the slide with a similar slide.
(By slide, I mean a rectangular piece of glass)
Who is to say that the specimen that got smushed down onto that plate of glass was not the universe? Therefore, the expansion?
Meaning...when you hit a fly on the wall with a fly swatter, the fly tends to expand after it has been splattered.
Oh...never mind.
April 17, 2008 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why are we listening to a Jewish Internationalist define anything? Both premises reflect thinking symptomatic of a syphilitic mind and show a weakened will to be, displaying a decadent lowered level of self-awareness in the ranking of men to animals. That these worthless musings of charlatans have gained such a following here shows the spread of uncritical thinking in our age, where masses become enraptured by easy palliatives delivered by silky words from deceiving lips. Self-reflection seems out of fashion with the audience here, but when they wake up from the hypnotist's spell, they will find themselves still bound as they ever were.
The universe is the temporary result of an attack from the realm of darkness on the realm of light, and was created by the Living Spirit, an emanation of the light realm, out of the mixture of light and darkness. The equipotence of good and evil is reflected in the human body, where the soul defines the person and is incorruptible, but is under the domination of a foreign power. Evil as allied with entropy slowly fills the universe, while all signs of order and structure are local optimums only, and inevitably give way to the impending onslaught of chaos. In the darkness of the mithraea, the source of the druj fills the emptiness from which the Nefilim arose. Also sprach Zarathustra.
PS: Der Traum von Martin Luther kam zum Wirchlichkeit nur bei Papst Leo X kam. Es brauchte ein Papst um realisiert werden.
April 17, 2008 6:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Are you people dense? For all your antialiasing the race is over. The world is not flat, Obama has WON! And for all you people who say Barack is an empty-suit with big ideas and no specifics, RTFW- http://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/chuang_tzu_linguistics.html
April 17, 2008 6:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
As Hawking would say, you're clearly living in an alternate universe, one in which light cannot escape and filled with a crushing density of bitterness contained within a fragile sphere of unrealistic hope. Should you make it out of a tear in the time-space continuum you might note that this is about the same combination that has fueled the career of many a down-and-out gambler in Las Vegas, but seldom has been a winning platform for President. But should your candidate hold out against cosmic odds, we might credit him with refuting another of Einstein's famous hypotheses, "God does not play dice", proving in fact that between God and Rev. Wright they've invested us with a galactic-sized crap shoot. Your roll.
April 17, 2008 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yahtzee!
April 17, 2008 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gooooooooooooooal!
April 17, 2008 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
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