Driving to work this evening and listening to the radio, I came across some Midnight Oil and started thinking about the refrain of the song:
How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our beds are burning
i thought I would at least answer these questions.
The first is indeed a problem. How CAN you dance when the earth is turning? Depending on the nature of the surface you are dancing upon, a variety of difficulties can arise from angular momentum alone, not to mention other conservation laws. I don't know what kind of dance the song may refer to, but it is possible that some of the dance moves are circular in motion. On any rotating spherical body, motion that goes against the rotation of this sphere moves slower relative to the movement that moves with the rotation of the spherical body. This differential, if the body is spinning rapidly enough, can cause strain normal to the axis of spin in addition to the centriptal forces of the rotating body and must be taken into account for high density, rapidly rotating small volume dance surfaces. This strain will appear as a small wobble, and eventually the wobble may gyrate at the resonance frequency of the dancer and and cause catastrophic failure. At this point the angular momentum of the remaining parts of the spinning dancer will be converted to linear motion and will present a hazard to any bystanders.
The second, how do you sleep when the bed is in flames, I suppose you can just get up and crash on your couch.