No, it's correct. The light actually gets slowed down in material (anything else than a vacuum.) That has nothing to do with observation, it's an actual physical effect. The speed of light in a vacuum is constant and so is the speed of light in any particular pure material (like a pure gas.) It's just that those constant speeds are different.
When light enters a material, photons are absorbed by the atoms in that material, increasing the energy of the atom. The atom will then lose energy after some tiny fraction of time, emitting a photon in the process. This photon, which is identical to the first, travels at the speed of light until it is absorbed by another atom and the process repeats. The delay between the time that the atom absorbs the photon and the excited atom releases as photon causes it to appear that light is slowing down.
"Well, actually, no, officer, I wasn't speeding. You see, while you clocked me at 90mph [c] between toll booths [atoms], once you factor in time at the booth, you'll see that I am actually driving much more slowly."
"Material" is made of smaller things, which I think the GP is getting at. The actual photons that travel from electron to electron and such don't get slowed down; they effectively travel through a vacuum that is the tiny spaces inside molecules and atoms.
Be careful who you call a dictator. While Ataturk has been President of Turkey for 15 years (until his death in 1938) he encouraged a multi-party system. However, during his lifetime several parties were formed and again self-dissolved or dissolved after an uncovered assassination attempt on Ataturk. It's only in 1945 - after Ataturk's death - that the multi-party system in Turkey took off for real.
From what I can tell Ataturk was mostly a benevolent dictator.
(And like a good wine, he gets better with every passing year since his dead. When I was in Ankarka in 2008, they had pictures / flags of him on the high rise buildings covering five storeys.)
What does this matter? They'll both revoke our liberties and not improve security. All that matters is that Joe Sixpack will think "oh my god, hackers will get my money".
When this happens and lulzsec or others are still continually proving that nothing has worked because the original security problems still existed, will Joe Sixpack be blind to this?
You (e.g. the government and its cronies) start screaming - we need more control for your security! They are coming for your beer! These hackers are trying to take away your refrigerator!
And Joe Sixpack will gladly turn over any liberties he has.
Just like with TSA. Joe Sixpack obviously couldn't care less. He doesn't care that it is costing him insane amounts of money, he doesn't care that security doesn't really work. He doesn't care about body scanners. Hell I bet that if TSA went and mandated that a random passengers need provide anal relief to TSA agents - JSP would not really care. Because he is a true patriot(tm).
All you need to do is to perform a Jedi mind trick: "You feel safer now."
Measures not working? It's obvious: We need more measures. LulzSec stop their antics due to some unrelated coincidence? The measures work, let's make sure nobody hacks again by instituting more measures!
How many terrorist attacks on airplanes have there been since 9/11? Are measures getting stricter or looser?
The euro is fine, the EU banking system - including UK banks - are not. Banks are too big, why can't I pay with my phone like is possible in Africa? We're gonna have to bleed one way or the other, I'd prefer to have less and much smaller banks after this ordeal is over.
Sarko and Merkel realize that banks are fighting their end game - banks 20 years from now won't be the same kind of animal anymore. They're both up for re-election and are gonna give the banks their final stroke.
This will change the fabric of the nation-state profoundly. Buckle up, we're in for a ride.
In the absence of any better way of ascertaining objective truth about the world than the scientific method, I choose to accept the fact of consensus -- that a large number of scientists have failed to falsify the theory -- as being a meaningful indication about the truth of global warming.
EDIT -- I assume with your reference to Einstein, you mean that the whole world was wrong about the motion of physical bodies, with their notions from Newtonian models, until relativity came along? If so, you may care to read this: http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
It's about the difference between a wrong theory and an incomplete one.
Just curious, how is climate change falsifiable? What we have is a lot of data and a lot of models. We don't have any way to test this data and models, no? Furthermore, we don't know if we know everything about the subject, although we would appear to know a lot.
So the only way to falsify it is if new data comes out? But for something so complicated, future data is likely a crapshoot? We can only estimate future data based on current models, which may or may not be able to model reality well, given how complex and nonlinear the entire system is?
It seems really difficult to falsify the idea of global warming.
The only way I could see it being falsified is if we got access to a new source of historical data that somehow was more accurate than all existing sources (which seems unlikely) or by waiting to see what happens and obtaining new data that way (which might give an unpleasant answer).
I'm not sure how the concept of a theory being falsifiable applies when you can't really run repeated controlled experiments.
You're right -- it's an established fact that the median temperatures have increased over a period of time. What would need to be falsified is the theory of anthropogenic global warming -- i.e., that the warming is caused by humans.
The canonical problem of health insurance is not profit making, it's that most of the people who contribute have to be excluded from receiving benefits. Not sure how a distributed model is going to do a better job at that than current models.
Bitcoin is trying to solve a mathematical problem (double spending), you're talking about a problem that in my opinion doesn't have a mathematical solution.
