All politics is local.
It’s also relative.
Let’s take a moment and think about one of Einstein’s famous examples: the man dropping the ball on a train.
There’s a man on a train. And you’re standing outside the train, watching the train go by. And you can see through the walls of the train.
When the man drops the ball, he sees it fall straight down. But you, standing outside the train, see the ball fall in an arc. If you don’t follow that right off, think about it for a minute; draw it out, if necessary.
But the question is: which view is right?
Both. It’s relative to your motion whether the ball falls in a straight line or in an arc.
Politics is like that.
Think about Scott Brown and Mitt Romney. They’re Republicans from Massachusetts. Normally, you’d think of a Republican as conservative. And, compared to most of Massachusetts, they are.
But move Scott Brown or Mitt Romney to a more conservative place. Like Georgia or Alabama. Around here, Brown and Romney would be considered flaming liberals. In this part of the country, there are Democrats that are more conservative than either of those two Massachusetts politicians.
California is pretty much the same way. What passes for a Republican in California would get you run out parts of Alabama or Georgia with a stick. And I’d probably be the person wielding that stick.
Sometimes I just shake my head and wonder about some of the people who pass for conservatives in some places. But, I have to remember that, like the ball on the train, it’s relative to your position and movement.
So, I won’t get all worked up about what some states do, as long as some progress is being made.
Massachusetts elected a Republican instead of a Democrat as U.S. Senator. Despite Brown not being what I’d call a conservative, that’s an improvement from how things were.
And, if California elects a Republican instead of reelecting Barbara Boxer, that’ll be an improvement.
That doesn’t mean Mission Accomplished. It means Task Accomplished and the mission remains.
If the GOP picks up a boat-load of seats this November — and they should — they don’t need to get cocky. And we conservatives need to keep the pressure on. How much energy should we expend to keep pushing the GOP to run conservatives?
Well, according to Einstein, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared…
“In this part of the country, there are Democrats that are more conservative than either of those two Massachusetts politicians.”
“More conservative” maybe if you ask those Democrats, all alone, what they believe about free markets, responsibility etc.
But those same Democrats will vote with the likes of Pelosi and Reid, and even commit political suicide to pass ultra-liberal legislation. We have yet to see a principled stand by a so-called “blue dog.”
So it’s not what they say all alone that defines them, but what they do in public. Jerks like Spector and Crist are willing to flip parties; we need to see some of those “conservative Democrats” flop our way.
[Oh, I in no way meant to imply that anyone should vote for a Democrat. You’re right about voting for Democrats: don’t. They empower Reid, Pelosi, Obama, and the rest of that sorry lot. – B.]
The problem with E=MC2 is that it doesn’t really apply near black holes, and the GOP is so dense they have their own event horizon.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice but in practice there is.
Yogi Berra, American philosopher
I vote for whomever will leave me the most free. That’s never a democrat. Not always a Republican, but never a democrat.
so is the answer 7? or is it B, i get so confused with theoretical mathematics
[The answer is 42. Duh! – B.]
Let’s conduct a thought experiment. Suppose the person on the train is actually holding a billiard ball. There is a hippie standing some ten feet away (3.048 meters for Scientists!). The man throws the ball and hits the hippie in his monkey face. There is a guy outside the train who is watching this.
Now, both the guy on the train and the guy outside the train see the same thing — a hippie getting hit in the face with a billiard ball. Theory of Relativity is disproved.
[But the guy on the train gets to see the hippie suffer for a longer period of time than the guy outside the train. That diference in time proves relativity. – B.]
Where this all breaks down, however, is when the R party has the majority and makes us all look like a bunch of fools for supporting them. Then we get some coke-sniffing illegal alien elected President of the United States to show US how bad we f$&%^ed up supporting those losers. And we DESERVED that, for what we elected. So no, just getting the numbers is NOT a good thing if they then govern like the enemy; all that does is makes it OUR FAULT.
As a long-standing student of the Brady approach to politics, I believe Bobby Brady’s statement that “Mom always said don’t play ball on the train” applies here.
[You have a valid point. I’ll do anything Florence Henderson tells me. Anything. – B.]
@Burmashave:
So Basil, If the billiard ball hits the hippie in his ugly monkey face, and he falls off the train, then the man standing outside the train gets to see the hippie suffer, does that disprove relativity? Or is it just more enjoyable for the casula observer? And what happens if the hippie lands his ugly monkey face on a democrat? Does that make the democrat smellier or just uglier?
[If the hippie falls off the train, the man standing outside the train gets to enjoy seeing the hippie suffer longer does than the man on the train. Once again, the difference in time proves relativity.
If the hippie lands on a Democrat, I think we’re agreed that we’d all be relatively happy with that … again proving relativitity. – B.]
Geez, you people are way over-analyzing hitting a hippie in the face with a bowling ball.
Just be happy that somewhere, somewhen a hippie is being hit by a bowling ball.
Einstein was wrong. The guy on the train is fooled by his perspective, but Reality – which has its own perspective and will outlast us all – says differently. This applies to elections quite well, given that the goofs on trains are politicians, and Reality loves (is?) an informed electorate…
Ok, so the answer is 42… What’s the question? 😉
[It’ll take me about 10-million years to answer that. – B.]
Now this is a penguin of an entirely different color. For this, we move from relativity to quantum mechanics. The question is this: does the ball thrower laugh so hysterically that he can’t enjoy the hippie suffering, or not? For the answer, we’d have to put the hippie in a Shroedinger box with some deadly quesium-249. While the box lid is closed, he is both suffering and dead. We can’t force him to be one or the other, so we leave it closed. Meanwhile, everyone sees just a box, so relativity is disproved.
[Yes, but … while in the box, the hippie suffers for what to him seems an eternity. To us outside the box, his suffering is not nearly long enough. That time distortion proves relativity. – B.]
In your example of the man throwing a billiard ball at the hippie, I believe only velocity is different for the man watching outside the train versus the man on the train, the hippie and the billiard ball, not the time involved.
If the experiment were reversed, and a man on the train watched out his window as a man beside the tracks hit a hippie in the face (with anything heavy and hard, really, but to keep the two experiments similar, we will again use a billiard ball thrown at the same velocity as before), then the time during which the train rider was happy about the assault upon the hippie would likely equal the time (from the previous experiment) that the man outside the train was happy. And vice versa. So the relativity is not related to time, it is related to how hard the hippie gets hit in the face on the train versus on the side of the tracks. While “as hard as humanly possible” is also a relatively correct answer, we are looking for f=0.5*m*v*v, not e=mc2.
So the time difference is not relative, the times are just interchangable. The relativity refers to the actual velocity of the thrown billiard ball on the train versus the thrown billiard ball beside the train, in the two experiments. And if the man on the train throws toward the front of the train, he gets a different relative velocity (seen from outside the train) than if he throws toward the back of the train. Call it a Doppler shift in hippie face-hitting billiard ball velocity, as seen from outside the train.
I once got a D in college Physics 101, so I think I am on pretty solid ground here, like the hippie on the side of the tracks after he gets hit (as opposed to the hippie on that train).
I am hereby formally extending my personal invitation to you, and your stick, to come visit me in CA for as long as you can bear it.
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