It sounds silly y'all, 35-50 somethings but, 30-days of Yoga will make you feel like you're twenty again...oh and fellas???...Try some Kundalini if ya wanna reclaim yer weenie!

You have been gifted a 30 day charter membership by an admiring fan.

Enjoy!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Hey there O, you've been gifted a 30 day charter membership from an admiring Sifter. That should get you through 'till the coming end of the world.

Actually, it would accomplish something.

Just like meditation does. Slows things down, puts things in perspective. Changes the mind -- from anger at losing the Presidency to some sort of acceptance.

Morgan Spurlock did a series on TV, where people would agree to go live for 30 days with folks who they hated without knowing. There was one episode where a Southern Christian man who hated Muslims agreed to spend 30 days with a young Muslim family who observed the praying five times a day thing. Terms of the deal was he had to pray, too.

What struck me most was how that praying changed this Christian fellow. They would get into heated debates, getting wound up, but then it would have to stop for the praying. And the tension would get diffused. Because a moment of calm was enforced.

And that is what I hear here. Romney is telling folks -- stop ranting and raving and hating, and take a moment for positive thoughts.

If everyone did that -- on both sides -- much much would be accomplished.

It's not about "god." It's about literally good intentions.

We need more good intentions.


>> ^Fred_Chopin:

Why is it so important to pray for Obama? What's that gonna accomplish?

@bareboards2

I'm also glad that we can discuss these issues like reasonable people. I apologize if I've come off as unreasonable in the past. The truth is that I'm always willing to talk things out.

I've heard the rhetoric about death panels from both sides; I just haven't put in the effort to separate fact from fiction. Now that I've looked into it, this is what I've found. What you're describing (end of life consultations) is not the same thing as what are now being called death panels in Obamacare. Yes, it is true that the provision you are speaking about was demonized by republicans and ultimately removed from Medicare. I'm actually not sure how I feel about it, because it is a form of assisted suicide, and it could be abused. Some seniors may feel pressured into forgoing care, just as you hear of some people receiving substandard care because they are organ donors.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/dad-rescues-brain-dead-son-from-doctors-wishing-to-harvest-his-organs-boy-r

In any case, the conversation has evolved, and we are no longer talking about these end of life consultations when we are talking about death panels. The death panel in Obamacare is an unelected board of 15 "health care experts" (the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB) who will make critical decisions on what services within Medicare are financially viable, and which aren't. Here is a quote from President Obama in the first debate acknowledging this:

"It — when Gov. Romney talks about this board, for example, unelected board that we’ve created, what this is, is a group of health care experts, doctors, et cetera, to figure out, how can we reduce the cost of care in the system overall?” Obama said.

“Now, so what this board does is basically identifies best practices and says, let’s use the purchasing power of Medicare and Medicaid to help to institutionalize all these good things that we do,” Obama added.

This is also acknowledged by a senior adviser to Obama:

"WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/opinion/health-care-reform-beyond-obamacare.html?_r=2

So call it death panels, or rationing, the principle is still the same. The recommendations this board makes will become law unless it is overridden by a 2/3's majority vote in congress. Here is a good example of how this type of legislative oversight is making health care "better" (penalizing hospitals for readmitting patients within 30 days):

"Beginning Monday, the hospitals will receive lower reimbursements on Medicare claims filed with the government for each admitted patient. Over the year, the total amount of those reductions will vary from $1.2 million for MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Northwest Washington, the region’s largest private hospital, to about $12,000 for Reston Hospital Center in Virginia. Of 16 hospitals in the District and Northern Virginia, all but three will get paid less."

"Some of the hardest-hit facilities are inner-city hospitals that tend to treat sicker, poorer patients. These patients sometimes end up being readmitted because they have a harder time getting medication and follow-up doctors’ appointments, often because they lack transportation, hospital officials said.

“Not only do we have the very sick patients, they also have very significant social needs,” said Kamaljit Sethi, who heads quality and safety at Providence Hospital in Northeast, where officials estimate they will lose about $320,000 in the coming year."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/hospitals-in-dc-va-to-lose-millions-from-medicare/2012/09/30/2fe0f96c-08ca-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83b
f_story.html

What this means is that patients with the greatest needs will lose the most services, because the hospitals will no longer be able to serve them because of this penalty. This outcome could turn out to be deadly for thousands of people, ultimately, all in the name of efficiency. This is a perfect illustration as to why Government should have as little power over your health care as possible. Here is testimony from the front lines:

" Today while working my shift in the emergency room, an old lady was brought in very sick and in fact near death. I did my usual workup and evaluation and attempted to administer life saving treatment. It was my plan to admit this woman to the hospital. I found out a little later that this same woman had been a patient here just slightly more than 2 weeks ago with a DIFFERENT DIAGNOSIS. I was told that if this woman was admitted, the hospital would not be paid.

The new Medicare rule now is that if the same Medicare patient is re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days, the hospital will not be paid. When they first started this nonsense they said this only applied to patients with the same diagnosis. Now they have "expanded" the rule to include re-admissions for any reason. So if you're in the hospital for pneumonia, and 3 weeks later, you break your leg.......too bad. Medicare will not pay the hospital to fix your leg."

http://grouchatrighttruth.blogspot.com/2012/10/death-panels-are-here.html

This is completely outrageous, I think you will be forced to agree. Personally, I think we need to have a national conversation about this issue, and both sides need to come together to hammer out this issue. Obamacare is clearly not ready for primetime, and as it stands it is going to hurt people.

As far as your other comments, I'm not limiting myself to any particular news source. I am a political independent and I will share with you that I won't be voting for either candidate this year. I will still participate in the local elections but I cannot vote for either candidate in good conscience. While I am socially and fiscally conservative on many issues, I am liberal on others, such as helping the poor, the environment (within reason), and immigration. I don't fit into a polical cookie cutter and I don't automatically support a candidate because they give God lip service.

>> ^legacy0100:

SHIT. SOMEONE PROMOTE THIS NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


*pronote !

I think they can suspend you now too but that sort of defeats the purpose if you ask me doesn't it? But the rules have changed a lot since I went to school here is Texas and that was only 13 years ago.
>> ^MilkmanDan:

>> ^Auger8:
Public schools aren't allowed to expel someone for truancy, they can fail you but not expel you. Not on that fact alone and I say as long as she was turning her work in who cares if she was there or not. When I went to school I regularly missed 20-30 days a year due to a chronic illness but I always did my work my parents would pick up my make up work I completed it and I never failed a single grade and had honors classes in junior high and high school.
I didn't know that schools can't expel you for truancy -- good to know. Can they suspend you?
I think there are times when actually attending class is pretty important to providing a valid assessment/grade for a student, and teachers/schools do need to be able to fail a student that isn't showing up. Lab classes and other situations where you can't just do an assignment on your own time and have it graded equivalently to a student who is actually there, for example. Most of the time that probably isn't something that they should do, but in general I think that the teacher's and school's discretion is important.
I definitely agree that if she is turning in her work and measuring up to the standards of her teachers and the general school guidelines, I don't care how many days she misses. Still, I think that it is reasonable for her to have to "lobby her case" to her teachers and administration. Just not a judge. School handing out whatever punishment they feel is necessary or called for (quite possibly none) -- fine. Night in jail -- ridiculous.

>> ^Auger8:

Public schools aren't allowed to expel someone for truancy, they can fail you but not expel you. Not on that fact alone and I say as long as she was turning her work in who cares if she was there or not. When I went to school I regularly missed 20-30 days a year due to a chronic illness but I always did my work my parents would pick up my make up work I completed it and I never failed a single grade and had honors classes in junior high and high school.

I didn't know that schools can't expel you for truancy -- good to know. Can they suspend you?

I think there are times when actually attending class is pretty important to providing a valid assessment/grade for a student, and teachers/schools do need to be able to fail a student that isn't showing up. Lab classes and other situations where you can't just do an assignment on your own time and have it graded equivalently to a student who is actually there, for example. Most of the time that probably isn't something that they should do, but in general I think that the teacher's and school's discretion is important.

I definitely agree that if she is turning in her work and measuring up to the standards of her teachers and the general school guidelines, I don't care how many days she misses. Still, I think that it is reasonable for her to have to "lobby her case" to her teachers and administration. Just not a judge. School handing out whatever punishment they feel is necessary or called for (quite possibly none) -- fine. Night in jail -- ridiculous.

Public schools aren't allowed to expel someone for truancy, they can fail you but not expel you. Not on that fact alone and I say as long as she was turning her work in who cares if she was there or not. When I went to school I regularly missed 20-30 days a year due to a chronic illness but I always did my work my parents would pick up my make up work I completed it and I never failed a single grade and had honors classes in junior high and high school.

>> ^MilkmanDan:

I don't see how this is a criminal / court issue at all.
If the school wants to kick her out, that would be their decision (it'd be a dick thing to do, but up to them). She is old enough to drop out, so the idea that the government can get entangled with "excessive truancy" is completely ridiculous.
If she isn't completing schoolwork, tell her that she may fail courses and therefore fail to graduate. But from the side that we're hearing here, it sounds like she is keeping up just fine.
Whatever the whole story is, it seems to be that it should be an issue between the school and the student. Judge needs to stop power-tripping.

Photo radar has absolutely nothing to do with speed enforcement. It is like swatting your dog on the nose 2 weeks after he pooped in the house. There is no corrective action when the event occurs. Where there is an actual manned speed trap there is usually a measurable drop is speeding and collisions. But they decided it was too expensive to have actual cops do the work, so they switched to random covert surveillance by automation with 30 day notification.

I usually get 1 photo radar ticket a year. Each time I get one, I cannot figure out where it happened or what was going on when it happened. Did I learn anything from it? Nope. I certainly wasn't intending to speed when it happened.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

You make some good points. I've thought about it quite a bit too. The first thing we should stipulate is that *a lot* of Google searches are about sex. The other point is that most of the time when people do search for sexy stuff on Google - they don't realise that Google Safe Search is enabled by default.

VideoSift doesn't have adult content so it falls in the realm of the Safe Search "Safe" sites. What people are really looking for are the search results that come up when Safe Search is disabled. The set of pages returned with sexual keywords that are "safe" is a much smaller set, so we rise to the top of the list. That's whay I think is going on.

>> ^Sagemind:

Hmm, I'm shocked that those are the top search words that bring people here.
BUT I want to know why. What is it about our search results in Google that makes us the destination for those searches?
People search for all kinds of crap, and I know šë× is one of them. But there must be something in the site that makes us a target for those search results.
I think some search strategies are needed here. Of all the videos people search for, I know those are not the only video searches. So why are those specific ones, the ones that result in VideoSift? Has anyone looked into this? Seven of the top 10 search words were rape related. No one is looking for other stuff? That seems strange to me.
Rape and Hunger Games. Really?
Something is broken - look closer at Google, don't blame the audience. Why are those searches not being led to sites that include that sort of content (does that exist?) - why are they being routed here?
The Google search is broken if it's sending those requests here to this site - that doesn't have that content.
>> ^dag:
Top 10 Google search terms that lead people to VideoSift. Here we go, for the past 30 days in descending order of popularity:
rape videos
rape video
hunger games trailer
rape scene
rape
irreversible
irreversible rape scene
rape scenes
inside vagina
There's our non-logged-in audience and it's kind of depressing. Google is 45% of our traffic. Fuck them.

Hmm, I'm shocked that those are the top search words that bring people here.
BUT I want to know why. What is it about our search results in Google that makes us the destination for those searches?
People search for all kinds of crap, and I know šë× is one of them. But there must be something in the site that makes us a target for those search results.

I think some search strategies are needed here. Of all the videos people search for, I know those are not the only video searches. So why are those specific ones, the ones that result in VideoSift? Has anyone looked into this? Seven of the top 10 search words were rape related. No one is looking for other stuff? That seems strange to me.

Rape and Hunger Games. Really?
Something is broken - look closer at Google, don't blame the audience. Why are those searches not being led to sites that include that sort of content (does that exist?) - why are they being routed here?

The Google search is broken if it's sending those requests here to this site - that doesn't have that content.

>> ^dag:

Top 10 Google search terms that lead people to VideoSift. Here we go, for the past 30 days in descending order of popularity:
rape videos
rape video
hunger games trailer
rape scene
rape
irreversible
irreversible rape scene
rape scenes
inside vagina
There's our non-logged-in audience and it's kind of depressing. Google is 45% of our traffic. Fuck them.

What really stands out there is the Hunger Games trailer. That movie was just terrible.
>> ^dag:
Here we go, for the past 30 days in descending order of popularity:
rape videos
rape video
hunger games trailer
rape scene
rape
irreversible
irreversible rape scene
rape scenes
inside vagina
There's our non-logged-in audience and it's kind of depressing. Google is 45% of our traffic. Fuck them. I'm a little happier about things that go nuts on Facebook for no apparent reason. Log out and look at the facebook comments on this moderately upvoted page. http://videosift.com/video/How-Belly-Dancers-Flip-Coins

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

It's true - it does kind of look like ass with all of the ads splooged all over the page. After six years though - I've come to a conclusion: There's us, and there's them. There are the people we love who are the Sifters that find their way here - and there are the holipoli that rummage through our droppings as we forge a trail into the future.

That's a terrible way to think about site visitors - I know. Maybe it will be our eventual downfall - but have you seen the top 10 Google search terms that lead people to VideoSift? Here we go, for the past 30 days in descending order of popularity:


rape videos
rape video
hunger games trailer
rape scene
rape
irreversible
irreversible rape scene
rape scenes
inside vagina

There's our non-logged-in audience and it's kind of depressing. Google is 45% of our traffic. Fuck them. I'm a little happier about things that go nuts on Facebook for no apparent reason. Log out and look at the facebook comments on this moderately upvoted page. http://videosift.com/video/How-Belly-Dancers-Flip-Coins

So VideoSift is two worlds, the beautiful community where we live and make content and the other VideoSift that actually supports the site and pays the server bills.

There's an adage going around the Internet that if you aren't paying for a product or service ... you are the product or service. See Gmail for a good example of that. You are the product that's being offered to advertisers when you use Gmail. I hope that we have sidestepped that a little bit. It's true, that the content that we all create here does become a product that we offer to advertisers ... at least there is the option of Charter membership and at least we try and keep the ad saturation cordoned off to the non-logged in area.

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Thank you. May you have a wonderful day!