Relativity speaking

You don't know how you'd act until you actually are in a particular situation. Don't forget, all those executed men had wives and children also being held as captives. Those beheaded may have come to the conclusion that it was better to "go quietly" and not antagonize their captors, then to resist and be punished by seeing their loved ones mistreated even worse than they will be already.

 

That's a great Escher cartoon.

The hollow earth theory has a lot of believers still and is much better than the turtles all the way down idea. I kind of like the sensible Hindu take on it,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Searching Wikipedia, I'm thinking the answer to my question may be in the area of Newtonian mechanics/classical mechanics rather than in a theory of relativity, but since all that is pretty much beyond my pay scale, it's just a guess. I also wonder if doing the same stuff in a vacuum would change anything. That a bowling ball and a feather would fall at the same speed in a vacuum seems to be dark magic of some sort.

 

Sam,

It's pretty basic really. Everything on earth is also rotating around the earths core at the same speed as the earth is, including the air molocules. They are also rotating around the sun at the same speed, and rotating around the galactic center.

 

I don't think they are all that hard to understand. They have figured out how to recruit by exposing and exploiting the poorly veiled hypocrisy of modern nation's governments.

Some systems of belief are more resistant to recruitment than others. Alienated and disenfranchised people are ripe for the taking. And that's precisely what we have been creating by the millions in the US since 9/11. If you are ISIL, you couldn't ask for a better "them" than the US. We have created ourselves into the perfect recruitment tool for ISIL.

“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”
― Warren W. Wiersbe

 

"He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; He suspends the earth over nothing." Job 26:7

Some folks knew there were no (regression of) turtles long ago.

 

Do you go shopping in spandex often.

 

Nope.

It is possibly a kindness to others that I don't.

I'm not sure that stuff even comes in my size (even when, in my prime, I had maybe 7% body fat and was around 270# of lean muscle and could military press more than my own weight they probably didn't).

 

If it was just Western values they were focused on, opposed to, it would be easier to understand, but these people seem more like equal-opportunity haters.

 

The news Media knows every one loves violence so they love to promote violence, great coverage for the ISIL and others.
If violence was not so popular there would be no blockbuster movies which are nothing but c... yet the producers are hailed as Hero and so the education continues all day every day we are conditioned to accept violence as part of some Culture. United Nations demands tolerance and acceptance of all Culture.

Come to new Zealand and you will be welcomed with a violent Haka and compulsory Religious ceremony.

 

I think that it is not a war of ideology for most. If someone invades you land and kills many of your family and friends, the fight is personal.

 

It's very much an ideological war. The Coptic Christians recently beheaded in Libya had lived there for centuries, maybe even before the Arab Muslims arrived. The Yazidis that the US came to rescue from ISIS in the Kurdish area also have lived there for centuries. Both are relatively small populations, and neither were a military threat to ISIS.

ISIS theology DEMANDS that all apostate Muslims be killed, which means that they are OBLIGED to kill ALL Shia Muslims. (They actually give apostate Muslims less quarter than they do members of other religions, if those other religious adherents agree to become Muslim) Their theology recognizes no international boarders, and recognizes no government other than their own. So, again. they are OBLIGED to kill all Muslim heads of state because these apostate Muslim leaders recognize non-Sharia international laws.

They also believe that they are part of a titanic struggle with worldly powers, that most of them (ISIS members) will die in that struggle, but that at the end JESUS(!?!) will come and save them. So if the West attacks them they feel that their world view is being proven accurate, and if they die in the fight they again think that their world view is accurate.

 

regarding the oringinal post -

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/swingset.png

 

When I first moved here in the '80s I spent a week trying to convince the rest of the crew that NASA's anti-gravity training device was an airplane that would go into a steep dive, climb and do it again etc. Nope, it was a special room at Cape Canaveral where they sucked out the gravity with a special pump or something, they weren't quite sure what.

I'm still trying to find out what theory applies to why we all don't "Go West, young man!", whether we want to or not.

 

Imaginary Number: what the leaders say is mostly irrelevant. Troops are often at odds with their superiors. Further, there is no such a thing as a Unified Islamic Terrorist Organization. For starters, Islam is one of the most democratic religions. It doesn't have an established cannon or rigid hierarchy. Any person that is respected by the community and shows knowledge can be accepted as an authority and interpret scripture. Also, Islam, Christianity and Judaism all have the same root and purport to worship the same God. About 1.5 million innocent civilians died in Iraq for WMDs that never existed. How do you compare that to a couple of dozen beheadings?