>> ^JiggaJonson:

I am half tempted to downvote this because of laden lies embedded within but I'll simply not vote instead since gwiz already has the original BBC doc posted here.
Scientology is a dangerous cult and anyone who tells you otherwise is either misinformed or does not fully understand the definition of the word "cult."


I would contend that they are not dangerous. By definition a group or "cult" isn't dangerous until it has killed over 100 people. Whoever they've hurt mentally is probably just a pussy anyways.

Hopefully I fulfilled my role here today.

Put a random sampling of 100 people in that same situation and the kid's gonna get run over at least 50 times.

Actually what he "meant" wasn't without logic, what he said was. My interpretation of his meaning is that he was trying to say that rate of friendly fire casualties have increased with each successive war since WWII, but he clearly states that each war has the same rate. In fact having now done some research into the numbers it appears that the rate has decreased. Your point is well taken though regarding the apparent significance of friendly fire deaths. As the total number of casualties becomes a very small number compared to say WWII the friendly fire numbers take on a greater apparent significance. >> ^hPOD:

Actually what he/she said isn't without logic, but you failed to think about it before posting a smarmy ass reply.
His/her point (this is just a made up example to demonstrate how %'s can swing rather easily):
If 100 people died in WWII, and 10 of them were from friendly fire: 10% died from friendly fire.
If 50 people died in VietNam, and 10 of them were from friendly fire: 20% died from friendly fire.
If only 10 people died in the Gulf War and 5 of them died from friendly fire: 50% of them died from friendly fire.
The number of friendly causalities didn't change or went down in my above examples, however, the percentage shot up each time. That was his/her point. Because less Americans are dying in modern wars, friendly fire causalities have now become a more visible percentage despite fewer overall American deaths.

>> ^nanrod:
The number one casualty of that comment was logic.>> ^Tymbrwulf:
In order to compare friendly fire statistics you'd have to compare that against actual war casualties.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that each successive war after WWII had less casualties, but the same rate of friendly fire. Mathematically this would show a statistical increase in percentage friendly fire even though the actual casualties are less and less.
I wouldn't say the problem is getting any worse, but it definitely isn't getting any better (which is still a problem).

Actually what he/she said isn't without logic, but you failed to think about it before posting a smarmy ass reply.

His/her point (this is just a made up example to demonstrate how %'s can swing rather easily):

If 100 people died in WWII, and 10 of them were from friendly fire: 10% died from friendly fire.

If 50 people died in VietNam, and 10 of them were from friendly fire: 20% died from friendly fire.

If only 10 people died in the Gulf War and 5 of them died from friendly fire: 50% of them died from friendly fire.

The number of friendly causalities didn't change or went down in my above examples, however, the percentage shot up each time. That was his/her point. Because less Americans are dying in modern wars, friendly fire causalities have now become a more visible percentage despite fewer overall American deaths.


>> ^nanrod:

The number one casualty of that comment was logic.>> ^Tymbrwulf:
In order to compare friendly fire statistics you'd have to compare that against actual war casualties.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that each successive war after WWII had less casualties, but the same rate of friendly fire. Mathematically this would show a statistical increase in percentage friendly fire even though the actual casualties are less and less.
I wouldn't say the problem is getting any worse, but it definitely isn't getting any better (which is still a problem).

>> ^dannym3141:

I think i was trying to do a sendup of an armchair critic attacking something she/he didn't really understand properly. I don't REALLY care about how you spell (why should i when you don't?). I think it's a good analogy for this guy's game. You put in as much effort as you're willing to in the time you've got. You sacrifice your spelling in order to get a point across in a short amount of time - just as this guy has to sacrifice certain gameplay elements to complete his vision in 48 hours. It's as much to do with sacrifice/time management as it is to do with "how the game plays".
You know that even a game as cosmetically simple as Braid doesn't get whipped up in 2 days by one person. It boggles my mind to think how he managed to do what he did in such a short spell of time. I dare say the game could have been improved with some 3d elements, correct lighting and shading, JRPG style zero-g hair waving and other such modern miracles, but it'd take a team of 100 people half a year to do something on that scale.
20 of that team would be an art department, another 20 motion capture, another 20 probably texture/modelling designers, and the remaining 40 would be programmers to bring it all together. And they'd all be working more or less at the same time - think of the man hours! If anyone even has the skill set to DO a final fantasy game on their own, it'd probably take them a decade or two.
I would love to see some better games done from the ground up in 24 hour periods. However that wouldn't make what this guy made any less of an achievement. I think people are taking issue with just that - it's not whether you think the game is worth playing in the modern game market, it's whether you think it was an impressive feat or not!
That's about the skinny for you, hope i've cleared it up.
thanks for that , but my piont is 100% valid and you obvously understood what i wrote so evan though the spelling was shit and the punctuatoin bad it still performed its function.
I can do manny things in 48 hours , if im going to publish it on the internet im going to take the good and the bad criticisum.
Is the rule that is has to take 48 hours of work before you allow bad criticism to go unnoticed, or was that just an accident? Feel free to criticise my comprehension of your comments without consequence - it nearly took me 48 hours.


I am a games developer , i know how long and how much time it takes to make games. when saying the art and charactor movment is bad that is within the context of spending 48 hours on a game.

having a nice art asthetic + solid charactor movment are not things that necaccerly would be impacted by a 48 hour development time.

you can work with the time frame you have and do art around that , for example if this guy had gone for realy realy LOfi graphics i think it would have been less work and looked far better.

as for player movment in flash there are plenty of scripts and methadoligies for knocking out Mario typ charactor movment within 30min.

allso i was very clear thst "the mechanic of shooting the tiny dudes is good though" and thats realy the core aspect of the game , my piont was that its a shame that the art and basic charactor movment were a total detrement to something that could have been alllot better with minimal effort and some slight changes.

I think i was trying to do a sendup of an armchair critic attacking something she/he didn't really understand properly. I don't REALLY care about how you spell (why should i when you don't?). I think it's a good analogy for this guy's game. You put in as much effort as you're willing to in the time you've got. You sacrifice your spelling in order to get a point across in a short amount of time - just as this guy has to sacrifice certain gameplay elements to complete his vision in 48 hours. It's as much to do with sacrifice/time management as it is to do with "how the game plays".

You know that even a game as cosmetically simple as Braid doesn't get whipped up in 2 days by one person. It boggles my mind to think how he managed to do what he did in such a short spell of time. I dare say the game could have been improved with some 3d elements, correct lighting and shading, JRPG style zero-g hair waving and other such modern miracles, but it'd take a team of 100 people half a year to do something on that scale.

20 of that team would be an art department, another 20 motion capture, another 20 probably texture/modelling designers, and the remaining 40 would be programmers to bring it all together. And they'd all be working more or less at the same time - think of the man hours! If anyone even has the skill set to DO a final fantasy game on their own, it'd probably take them a decade or two.

I would love to see some better games done from the ground up in 24 hour periods. However that wouldn't make what this guy made any less of an achievement. I think people are taking issue with just that - it's not whether you think the game is worth playing in the modern game market, it's whether you think it was an impressive feat or not!

That's about the skinny for you, hope i've cleared it up.

thanks for that , but my piont is 100% valid and you obvously understood what i wrote so evan though the spelling was shit and the punctuatoin bad it still performed its function.

I can do manny things in 48 hours , if im going to publish it on the internet im going to take the good and the bad criticisum.

Is the rule that is has to take 48 hours of work before you allow bad criticism to go unnoticed, or was that just an accident? Feel free to criticise my comprehension of your comments without consequence - it nearly took me 48 hours.

Too bad this video didn't show all that economic turn around I've been hearing about. Where every other day if not every day we hear about how the unemployment rate is dropping by whole percentage points and businesses are hiring more now than ever. And then they forget to mention if they count all of the people who ran out of benefits in may/june of 2010 and may no longer be counted as unemployed if at all due to no longer being able to fill out their weekly claims.

I just found it odd that when all these people were losing access to unemployment due to congress not passing bills to extend it past the 99 weeks that our job outlook was turning around by whole percentage points on a month to month basis. I've read that there's another statistics which is usually 8 to 10% higher than the common one used that better counts underemployed and long term unemployed, but they only use the familiar statistic which right now is hovering around 10% because it's a more definite stat. And if 10% represents 23 million, then the other should represent around 50 million.

Of course 23 million, 50 million, 1 billion, or just plain old 100 doesn't really matter if the elected officials only give mouth service to the idea of helping these people out. Eventually the problem will work itself out as these people will slowly go onto other welfare and disability services and very likely remain there..... I mean whose going to hire someone who hasn't worked in an industry that requires current skills and the guy hasn't worked in 2+ years. And if someone can manage to stay mentally stable through 2 years of losing everything they own after it was decided they no longer were worthy of unemployment.....what other problems is this guy going to have when he can't get assistance from other government programs because they are so overburdened by the people who've been on it for years and the massive influx of people seeking it.

I went to a "Job Center" in Ohio for the first time last week. Showed up at 8 AM and there was already a line out the door and down the side of the building with probably 100 people there. When I left around 11 AM, there was still a line there (new people of course) but still 100 or so standing there in 90+ degrees. I still have no idea what they were there for because people inside didn't know or didn't care to answer. I went to meet for WIA (Workforce Investment Act I believe) funds to take a training course to try to open up some job possibilities, and have since been told that there are no funds available and will be no funds at least a month out from now and there's a waiting list they work their way down first. Brother just lost his marbles due to all of the stress this recession/depression is causing, and the government in their profound cost cutting wisdom has shutdown a slew of the mental health facilities in the area. So my brother was stuck in jail to keep him from killing himself where they have a major bed bug problem, so that didn't help his situation. And after a week or two of that a spot opened up in a mental health facility for evaluation which he is now undergoing.........and his caseworker went on vacation and his doctor is on vacation. So he's at the facility to be evaluated for a certain period of time, and he's already behind at least a week due to people overseeing him taking vacation. And the people act like this is a pretty common thing to happen....and all of these people end up back on the streets untreated if they don't show significant symptoms during their evaluation periods. So now my mentally ill brother has probably ran up a 20+ grand bill in tax payer money in about a month partially because they wouldn't extend unemployment to him past 99 weeks which is about 10-15 grand a year. And if they don't treat him properly (which it doesn't look like it's going to happen at this point), he'll be released and either kill himself or be back in there again and there isn't shit anyone in the family can do for him because we're all broke. And since he's an adult, no one can force him to get treatment unless he breaks the law in some way or acts up in front of the cops. It's a wonderfully *sarcasm*STRESS FREE*sarcasm* situation for all involved which will probably lead up to someone else losing their marbles in the process.

This situation is like the same situation you experience when you first enter the job market in a field that typically requires a college degree. All the companies want experience even if hiring at entry level positions with entry level wages. There's this nebulous step where people go from not having enough experience to being employed even though everything else stays the same. No one can ever seem to define what happened to overcome the experience part. Same thing with being unemployed in an employers market, you are unemployable according to anywhere you apply (underqualified, less qualified than others, not enough experience, not enough current experience, not the right degree) and one day that changes. I have always felt the employment process is more about who is the better bullshitter, if you can submit a resume with enough bullshit to get an interview and then bullshit your way through that without being caught...you stand a chance of being employed. Meanwhile if you just present the facts on your resume and don't bullshit them up, you look like a less qualified candidate compared to someone who is barely your equal and definitely not your better.

>> ^kronosposeidon:

^I'm not so sure about that, buddy. I mean I'd like to believe that, but Obama did push for the "surge" in Afghanistan. He didn't have to, but he did. Yet he voted against Bush's troop surge in Iraq in 2007. It begs the question, WTF?
I know, I know: Two different countries. But in both countries most of the people want us out. Not unlike Vietnam. Eventually we'll have to pull out of both countries. We'll see how stable they'll be after we're gone. Don't get me wrong: I hope to God they both have stability, with democracies that establish equality and respect human rights. But I'm not optimistic.


Well, when Obama was really talking up the war, the Afghanistan war was still popular. A lot of people felt (and do still feel) that to the degree that we needed to go to war against anyone for the attacks of 9/11, it was one against the Al Qaeda in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region, and the people who harbored and supported them.

Afghanistan being unpopular was something that happened when Obama de-emphasized Iraq, and made Afghanistan America's central front against terrorism (which it probably always should have been). All of a sudden people started noticing that the war was, as Zakaria says, totally out of proportion.

The question is, in a world where there were no Republicans in the media or government, would Obama have ever supported the Afghanistan war? I guess it depends on when we are pretending the Republicans disappeared. If there weren't Republicans around anymore starting tomorrow, do you think Obama would stand up to an electorate made up of liberals and moderates who spoke out in nearly unanimous opposition to the war?

I don't.

I think if you removed the political pressure of the right on Obama to stay and fight no matter what, he'd stop trying to split the difference, and just get us out, or at least make the whole thing proportional to the size of the threat (i.e. just something aimed at finding 50-100 people).

@Stormsinger

There are roughly 2.5 million people serving in the US military, so almost 1 in 100 people. I think most people have at least a few people in their lives who are either active duty or veterans. I can't think of anyone in my family, but I do know a few people over there and have at least one guy I see on a regular basis that is an Iraq war veteran. I have never said anything to him, but I have spent about 6 hours trying to convince one of my friends not to go into the Navy SEALs. If one of my close friends tried to enlist, I would definitely try to talk them out if it - and if my young nephew, who will be 18 in a few years thought of enlisting I would definitely do whatever I could to get him out of it. I think the most reasonable thing you could do at this point with your nephew is make sure he doesn't re-enlist after his 1st term is up.

I think it is more important to condemn the overall philosophy rather than individual people - unfortunately for this guy, when you are in a video being spread akin to a news report, you sort of become the embodiment of the philosophy outside of your individual self.

I think the line in the sand needs to be drawn somewhere, because our current culture practically worships soldiers. People would gasp, if not lynch you, if you said such things in certain groups. If there was a paradigm shift, I don't people would be so quick to enlist - especially those that are young and impressionable.

This video has been declared a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by thegrimsleeper.

*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/100-people-drum-in-order-of-age

>> ^Croccydile:
Surprised this was not on the sift before
(un)fortunately, it is

http://www.videosift.com/video/100-people-drum-in-order-of-age

I guess I'm a genius then. At last, confirmation!
>> ^imstellar28:
I read something about IQs that I hadn't really thought of before. If you look at a distribution of IQs:
http://i45.tinypic.com/dyumad.gif
You see that:
68 out of 100 people have an IQ between 85 and 115
2 out of 100 people have an IQ above 130
2 out of 100 people have an IQ below 70
And if you note what an IQ score represents:
70- Mentally Disabled
80 Borderline
90 Low Average
100 Average
110 High Average
120 Gifted
130+ Genius / Very Superior

130 is "Very Superior." I think most define genius as being above 140

In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by imstellar28:
I read something about IQs that I hadn't really thought of before. If you look at a distribution of IQs:

http://i45.tinypic.com/dyumad.gif

You see that:
68 out of 100 people have an IQ between 85 and 115
2 out of 100 people have an IQ above 130
2 out of 100 people have an IQ below 70

And if you note what an IQ score represents:
70- Mentally Disabled
80 Borderline
90 Low Average
100 Average
110 High Average
120 Gifted
130+ Genius / Very Superior

You find that the average person, at an IQ of around 100, has something in common with roughly 68-95% of their peers. Someone in this group can, at least on some level, identify with the vast majority of people around them. To them, the world is more or less homogeneous, consisting for the most part, of people just like themselves. From their perspective, it is only a few people that stick out: the mentally disabled and the geniuses. People you hear about but rarely meet.

However, if you look at the distribution of IQs you find that the difference between average and mentally disabled is only about 25 points - 75 to 100. Incidentally, the difference between average and genius, or very superior, is also 25 points - 100 to 125.

Thus, the life of someone with an IQ of 130 or greater is much different. They can only identify, at least on some level, with less than 2-14% of their peers. To them, the world is also homogeneous, but they are the ones on the outside looking in. An individual with an IQ greater than 130 perceives life very much like an average person would if they were in a room with 100 people, and almost all of them...85%...were either borderline or mentally disabled.


is this correct?
130+ is genius?
well would ya look at that...hmmmm..interesting.

In reply to this comment by imstellar28:
I read something about IQs that I hadn't really thought of before. If you look at a distribution of IQs:

http://i45.tinypic.com/dyumad.gif

You see that:
68 out of 100 people have an IQ between 85 and 115
2 out of 100 people have an IQ above 130
2 out of 100 people have an IQ below 70

And if you note what an IQ score represents:
70- Mentally Disabled
80 Borderline
90 Low Average
100 Average
110 High Average
120 Gifted
130+ Genius / Very Superior

You find that the average person, at an IQ of around 100, has something in common with roughly 68-95% of their peers. Someone in this group can, at least on some level, identify with the vast majority of people around them. To them, the world is more or less homogeneous, consisting for the most part, of people just like themselves. From their perspective, it is only a few people that stick out: the mentally disabled and the geniuses. People you hear about but rarely meet.

However, if you look at the distribution of IQs you find that the difference between average and mentally disabled is only about 25 points - 75 to 100. Incidentally, the difference between average and genius, or very superior, is also 25 points - 100 to 125.

Thus, the life of someone with an IQ of 130 or greater is much different. They can only identify, at least on some level, with less than 2-14% of their peers. To them, the world is also homogeneous, but they are the ones on the outside looking in. An individual with an IQ greater than 130 perceives life very much like an average person would if they were in a room with 100 people, and almost all of them...85%...were either borderline or mentally disabled.


is this correct?
130+ is genius?
well would ya look at that...hmmmm..interesting.