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Seth: They say he discovered gravity. Nonsense. He just named it.

Fact: He didn't discover gravity, and has never been accredited for doing so. The famous story of Gallileo dropping balls from the tower of Pisa to measure gravity happened in the 17'th century, so obviously the idea of gravity was around for a while before Newton. What he did do, however, was to publish the Principia Mathematica in 1687 that gives an in-depth explanation of gravity, including the famous inverse square law. In the book he theorised his three laws of motion, invented calculus and basically lay the whoole foundation for classical mechanics. This is what we remember him for, not for having named gravity.

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Seth: Everyone 'believes' in gravity. And yet, we know virtually nothing about it

fact: Seth should read up on his physics, starting with Einstein.

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seth: There are very few people doing serious gravity research

Fact: One of the major goals of modern physics is a theory of everything where the four natural forces (weak force, strong force, electromagnetic force and gravity) are combined into one. Gravity has always been the odd one out and hard to explain, thus spawning massive research into gravity. One of the reasone the LHC, the most expensive physical experiment to date, was conceived was to learn more about gravity. Oh, and there's this guy called Einstein that apparently did some work in this area too.

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Seth: There are evolution skeptics who would prefer a different story, but no gravity skeptics, even though there's a lot less science there.

Fact: Religion always tries to put down science that reaches contradictory conclusions than scripture, and gravity is no exception since it implies that the earth is not at the center of the universe. Seth doesn't seem to get this though, since the battle was lost by the church long ago. Take Gallileo who was on trial on the suspicion of heresy in 1633 because of his theories of gravity. If found guilty he would have paid with his life. The laws of gravity were much more opposed by the church than evolution is today.

Are you going to disown the guy who is doing dirty work but keeping you alive?

Corruption is not a culture, the potential for corruption is everywhere, it's in all humans. When it appears to be socially wrong, or when there is strict enforcement, then people will not be corrupt, but as soon as this changes, it comes back.

It seems almost as if corruption is the default behavior, and it has to be actively forced away, and not the other way around.

In a conversation with my Iranian ex girlfriend and her mom, it was revealed that her cousin is relatively wealthy due to being a dirty cop. They just talked about it like it was no big deal, completely expected. Several Africans I've known have similarly remarked "I got my drivers license without a bribe!"

In my American family, there are no dirty cops by definition; doing crap like that will get you disowned.

Changing the government won't change the cultural attitudes, unfortunately.

Edited to add: So I was trying for a less pithy comment when the phone rang from overseas. Sorry about that.

Anyhow. Yep, this story really did happen to me. The good news: a one line tweak to a little file I didn't touch in something like six months probably added about 50% to my sales. The bad news: in those six months, this probably had actual economic costs of several thousand dollars. Or, to put this in relative terms, the worldwide economy just freaking collapsed and I still managed to do more damage to my net worth with a freaking typo than the total massacre in my IRA.

But we don't just want to reach the audience we can reach on our own. We want to reach a much broader audience. We want to reach every entrepreneur, small business owner, or small team member. We want to take our message mainstream. We believe working with a traditional publisher will give us a much better chance to reach these people. That's why we're working with a traditional publisher and that's why we believe we can sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies of this book.

Linux kernel?

Surely there's always something wrong with premature anything, by definition of the word "premature".

The same thing can happen in the United States. Louisiana has a history of corruption mostly dating back to Huey Long but present before his term as governor (I grew up in Louisiana). Most voters accept it. It is assumed in every election that all the candidates are crooks. William Jefferson, who was caught with $90,000 dollars in bribes in his freezer, will continue to be reelected partly because voters don't expect better from other politicians. Alaska is different. It is a younger state with a less entrenched culture of corruption. Ted Stevens who was far more popular than William Jefferson lost a close race due to his convictions on corruption charges.

The biggest lesson I got from it is that oftentimes all it takes to start something big is deciding that you actually want to start it. Don't let uncertainty about how you'll become a profitable business stop you from pursuing ideas you have.