Yes, and yes.  Americans seem to be oblivious to the fact that Americans in different parts of the empire are very different from one another.  Yet the entire history of the US is ethnic strife between regions.  Take the Civil War for example.  The North says that it was about slavery, the South says that it was about states' rights.  Both views true but superficial.  The truth is that New Englanders and Southerners don't get along and both sides wanted to expand their way of life into the western territories.

Due to our two party system, the various ethnicities have to form coalitions.  So right now New England and the Pacific regions are with the Democrats, and the Interior West and the South are with the Democrats.  The Midwest is the swing region.  These coalitions hide many of the regional differences.  For example the Republicans of Georgia and Wyoming have very little in common.

Because Americans do not acknowledge the fact that American politics are driven by ethnicity people use proxies to distinguish friend from foe.

Modern US politics is dominated by really trivial issues, that we call "wedge issues".  The US is in a very secure situation.  The idea of a military invasion is inconceivable and so US foreign policy can be capricious rather than focused on strategic concerns.  So things of no importance to the US drive the foreign policy, such as the latest in Israeli settlement activity or gay rights in Russia.  These things cannot possibly affect Americans, and yet they receive a huge amount of attention.

Other issues are just as trivial.  The more passionate people are about an issue the more likely it is to be a wedge issue.  It is really just like people's loyalties to sports teams, entirely silly.

But remember that this is all under the surface.  Many people just look at themselves and their neighbors and say "we are Americans".  They have no real awareness that by defining themselves as "Americans" only they are therefore defining the term in such a way that it doesn't fit other Americans, which is what causes the petty struggles that dominate US politics.


 
Yes.  Many resent the fact that all of our money goes to DC, NYC, their surroundings (Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey) and a few other places favored by the elite.  Sometimes you will see an absurd map floating around claiming the opposite, these maps show DC, Maryland, and NYC being the ones supporting the rest of the country.  Ha.  DC's only export is government.  NYC's main export is banking (meaning that they are pulling money from the rest of the country).  Maryland is just where DC workers live.  For example we live in Maryland because my wife works in DC.  She works in DC because DC prints the money.  We would rather live somewhere else, but other places don't have the ability to print infinite money.  If bitcoin ever replaces the dollar we will see a total collapse of DC, NYC, and a few other places.

You get up in the morning, you point your browser at bitcoinwisdom to your horror to find that over night the bitcoin god became less happy. You then spend your day thinking about how the world needs to change its behaviors in order to make the god happier, and you conspire and plot with others to make this happen. Your only solution, the give more of your hard earned dollars to the beast.

Some of you are mono-coinistic, others spread their faith across many gods of both the SHA-256 and SCRYPT religions. Prophets rise out of the sea to either spread the bitcoin gospel, or prophesy its doom, and you bow daily before the multi-headed beast in your basement that is your mining rig.

Amyn.

The point is that science carries assumptions that it cannot falsify via its own methods.

I said that numbers were an abstraction rooted in the literal in that they ultimately represent a tangible thing, even though they can still be used without needing to define 'thing'.

So, while the mathematician can run through no end of number-based processes that aren't simplistic counts of a quantity, the fact that the numbers themselves are defined as having a tangible meaning, denotes their abstraction as being from the literal. This is why math makes the most sense as being the language of the Universe because any sound or image can be used as the label that describes 'thing', 'thing and another thing', 'thing and another thing and another thing', otherwise known as 1,2,3.

This is my point about abstraction derived from the literal is a basis for reasoning, while abstraction derived solely from the figurative is not.

You cannot measure the temperature of the number 2, nor can you measure it's width, height or pretty much anything else about the number two, because it is an abstraction meant to represent *something*.

What does it represent? It represents a quantity of 'thing'. In that 1 represents a 'thing', 2 represents that 'thing' and another 'thing' and so on. We don't need to define that 'thing' unless we are actually using numbers for the simplistic task of establishing a quantity of [insert things here]. But, and this is the difference between abstraction related to math and that related to 'God', while numbers can be employed entirely without need to reference any particular 'thing', their root basis is as the abstract  representation of something literal.

Zero, is a representation of the absence of 'thing'.

'Thing' is literal without needing to be defined, therefore its use for mathematical abstraction purposes is objective and reasonable.


You cannot measure the temperature of 'God', nor can you measure it's width, height or pretty much anything else about the notion of 'God', because it is an abstraction meant to represent *something*.

What does it represent? It represents a figurative abstraction. It has no objectively definable qualities.

Its use in hypothesis renders such tainted and arbitrary. Its use in argument voids claims towards the process being one of reasoning.

Bruno K.: No way I am going to feed the trolls here. I have no doubt I would lose as anyone who reads these forums know that you are the King of Trolls =).

P.S: For fun on your posts on me (I know you spent a lot of time researching my posts to troll me so I will reply this one time).
- Black Arrow guys actually refunded 2/3rds of my money. So Kudos to them.
- Not sure what that second part is about. I can't even put it in context as I didn't write it.
- F*CK KnCMiner

Also, just to take the high road here: I sent 10 BTC over to Sean's Outpost.
https://blockchain.info/tx/ffe9742f16126262f0b7f534d6d63a9c27d7ee77ff492427b3d45a7a4195ea9e

Kraken, atlas, bitfinex, coinbase, bitcoin.de... All at the same level as Bitstamp.

Think again... perhaps other fake Chinies exchanges and of course alway the lower btc-e (traders following china) are just manipulated  

It's not the exchange that decides the price, it's the users who sell/buy. So I see no Goxing here.

X1 power consumption better?

Bitcoin's Zodiac Forecast, for Friday, 2nd May 2014

We need to think this weekend, about power and the responsibility that accompanies it. You currently have more influence than you know. You really don't have to do or say very much to tip a balance one way or another. The question is not, 'Can you?' It is, 'Are you sure you want to?' There will be consequences and repercussions. One way or another, several of these will land in your lap. The cosmos offers you an option now to be passive, to go with what's easiest and let things happen naturally. That's a good idea.

Here is another term that's very problematic in such discussions: What is the universe? Mostly it refers to our "big bang bubble" we observe. But what if there's a Multiverse? Many scientists in fact do propose that such a concept might exist, although the term makes no sense, as "universe" should already mean "all there is", but apparently doesn't. But anyway, how did that multiverse come into existence then? So the questioning just goes on. And who knows what else might exist "out there". So what the hell do we know.