Can you elaborate on that:

“One can learn that people who aren't even slightly fat are killing themselves from drug overdose, which may seem irrelevant until one recalls that many people eat for comfort. (So this is a personal/mental problem as well as a physiological one.)“

Well, people eat for comfort and pleasure, as well as for calories, and some people get addicted to food. So I think if we understood addiction and how to cure it then this might automatically solve the obesity epidemic as well as the drug problem.

I think Angela Walch on this tweet was able to capture what James Dimon regret means: https://twitter.com/angela_walch/status/950792583705497600

Price goes down? bitcoin is dead!

Price goes up? e-tulip, don't you see?

A government accepts bitcoins? Fools!

A government doesn't accept bitcoins? Of course! Why should they?

Just a counterpoint, the truth is probably in the middle.

Great visualization! And I like to keep in mind the motion of the entire solar system: http://i.imgur.com/S6oyust.gif

Although this looks cool, it's a misconception. Phil Plait of "Bad Astronomy" has written about this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/04/vortex_m...

Is this relative to the galactic core?

No. Unfortunately it's not relative to anything. Nasim Haramein, the guy behind that animation/idea, is a known physics quack. In the future I would suggest being skeptical of anything coming from his "institute": The Resonance Academy (http://resonance.is/)

It looks like it's largely correct [scale excepted] relative to a fly-by following the solar system relative to a point moving away from the sun on a perpendicular to the plane of the solar system.

Isn't one of the points of relativity that we can choose any point as an origin - in the gif are the motions relative to the sun [scale excepted] largely correct?

The main problem the sibling comment notes is that the plane _if_ it were following the orbit of the sun around the galactic centre it would be inclined by 60 degrees to motion along the orbit [they also note problems with exaggeration of the motion of the sun in its vertical motion (relative to the galactic plane) and in the precession of the plane of the solar system]. That doesn't make the gif wrong in itself, it just makes it not what people might assume it is.

Fastidious pedantry, sorry.

If we're going to be right lets be as right as we can; so please post corrections if I'm wrong at all.

All that aside I'd be really interested in seeing a simulation of the galaxy that matched observations for the precession of the solar system, movement of the planets, movement of the sun around the galactic centre. Does such a thing - that can be run at home - exist?

Relativity does tell us that there are no preferred inertial reference frames. But the comment I replied to was asking about a very specific reference frame: the galactic center.

And to one up your pedantry: relativity allows us to define our coordinate system in any inertial reference frame to compare with other inertial reference frames. The solar system orbiting the galactic center is not inertial since it is constantly accelerating.

The GIF makes it look like the planets are trailing behind the Sun, which they are not at all. They orbit, so they constantly pass in front of it as well as behind it relative to its movement in the galaxy.

From a interview with Lama Lodru Rinpoche about the challenge of three year silent retreat:

"The physical obstacles are not so difficult for people. After one week people have no problem with fewer hours of sleep. After several weeks the pain of sitting cross legged is overcome. The physical obstacles are not the problem; physical problems we can control. Mental problems are more difficult to control. It is very difficult to discipline the mind. No matter how much discipline you have, when a thought comes you have no power to stop it, unless you can employ very powerful effective techniques to cut off those thoughts.

Q: Are these techniques only available to people on 3-year retreat? LLR: People outside 3-year retreat have no time to employ these techniques. First of all you have to tame your mind, make your mind soft and gentle, and then you can utilize more active techniques. Without this taming of the mind the techniques are not useful, and could even bring lots of difficulties. It is not so much that people outside 3-year retreat cannot learn or be given these techniques it is just they have no time to apply them. They have to make a living, there are lots of distractions, and this type of distracted mind is not good for the pr ofound teachings you learn in 3-year retreat. Also during 3-year retreat the teachings are given in sequence, not all at once. When one teaching is complete another is introduced."