The idea of homeschooling has always interested me. I have conflicting views about it. As my mom is a professional school teacher that went to a 4 year college and got a masters, part of me wants to question the idea that anybody can be qualified to teach their own child. Maybe I don't know enough about it. I mean are there ways that the government makes sure each home schooled child is learning the right things? That's what I'd be afraid of, teaching my kids the wrong things. I'm also afraid of crazies out there brainwashing their children.

Also, I had this preconceived notion that some home schooled children are not socially adapted. However, since I met this 15 year old in a Calc III course (which is incredible in its own right) I've realized that he's as normal as they come for a 15 year old. He's even a bit more adapted then most 15 year olds...and he's smart to boot. So I don't really put that stigma on homeschooling anymore although I'm sure those cases do exist.

^ I think we're on the same page, and ultimately I think you just said you agree with my overall point -- the statement "government can't create wealth" is false.

The question you raise is "can labor in the hands of the government create greater wealth than labor in the hands of individuals?" which is fair and valid, and I'd agree that most of the time, government cannot do it better. I just don't agree with people who assert that it never can spend money that results in benefit greater than the sum of dollars spent, whether that's wealth or something more abstract.

I'm always interested in other perspectives, and while I most certainly have an existing viewpoint, I'm open to changing my mind on things if someone gives me a good reason to do so. I figure it's good to invite people to make good-natured attempts to tear down what I believe, just to make sure it stands up to scrutiny.

However, I find that holding the average Republican talking point up to the light pretty much always makes them shrivel into worthless nonsense. There's a difference between "Government should not try to do X because we think Y would be better" and "Government is incapable of doing X". The former is the statement of a viewpoint, the second is a false declaration that, if true, would vindicate their unstated viewpoint.

Same goes with Michael Steele's asserting that government can't create jobs (and worse, says never in the history of mankind has it ever done so) -- what I think he wants to say is that government can't create permanent private sector demand for employment through temporary government spending. That would be the start of a valid debate, but it's not what he's actually saying.

My main concern is that there seem to be people who don't know any better who think these misleading statements are directly true; they think government can't create wealth, and government can't create jobs.

I don't think that's being honest, and I hope you would agree with me.

Hitchens is always interesting to listen to.

>> ^BisH0p69:
>>
We can however observe that the worldwide quality of spelling, grammar and punctuation seems to be on a downward spiral.


Always interesting to watch the assumptions that go on in this world.

Name of the game is assumptions, not questions. Welcome to non-observational, assumption-filled world.

hey asynchronice,
thanks for your input on this, its always interesting to hear more background on something especially on a subject such as this. I also noticed that the roundtable dicussion at the end was fairly biased as well but I figured I would let the video stand for it self and see if anyone had any input on it. I didnt mean for this to be flamebait in any way either, I find religion of all kinds very interesting... even if I want no part of it As for other videos I'm not sure, I actually just stumbled upon this while searching for a different video completely unrelated to religion. I checked the youtube account that this came from and the person seems to be fairly biased against mormons but it might be worth browsing through his movies.
As for the golden bathtub...well I think I'm gonna leave that one alone
>> ^asynchronice:
Being raised Mormon and having since realized how retarded ALL of them are and now comfortably atheist, I think I can speak fairly about this:
It's called Kolob, and the only reason I know is because it's in one of the super-freaky hymns that was in the back of the hymn book:
"If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye"
I would imagine 90% of Mormons have no idea what this is. It's mentioned only briefly in the Mormon scripture, and (like many Biblical passages), was only intended to be understood metaphorically. However I would fault the author (Mr. Smith) with coining a sci-fi sounding name which obscures the point. But beyond that, the video has some very interesting slightly subliminal techniques. The emphasis on multiple gods, the 'Mormon' Jesus; there is a very concerted effort to demarcate where the creators Christianity begins and Mormonism begins. The 'facts' presented here are all very obscure passages, painstakingly juxtapositioned together to create a very loose narrative that is just crazy enough to fit together, but not really make a lot of sense.
And this is clearly not a 'real' documentary as the interview session at the end is laughably biased.
This piece could be done to any Judeo-Christian faith (maybe Eastern as well, but that's out of my area), as it focuses on only the mystical and obscure facts and spends all of it's time elaborating on them. It would be like a documentary on Catholicism and spending all your time on Revelations. You couldn't deny it was true (or at least according to the Vatican), but you miss the point. Entertaining, maybe; educational, not so much.
This reminds me of an old friend of mine who went to a private Christian school, and one day in mandatory 'bible' class (lolz) they showed a video on Mormonism. Based on our conversation, I'm guessing this is what he saw. He laughed it off and said they had little videos on all the 'other' religions, that focus specifically on how to demean them, which most of them picked up on and ignored.
That said, I'd like to see those other videos too

As an American it's always interesting to see that there are actually videos for all of my favorite club anthems. With MTV all we ever get is crap like Jay-Z, Kanye West, 50 Cent and whatever insipid, scripted, faux-reality, nonsensical, this-is-the-fucking-end-of-civilization bullshit "The Hills" is supposed to be.

Timelapse/stop motion/etc of art are always fascinating to me. :#1: And inspiring ( because it looks so easy, as you mentioned ).

In reply to this comment by MrConrads:
Yeah! DEF! Its always interesting to me to see art work like this which takes so much time, effort and planning summed up in 5 minutes or less. Makes it look waaay too easy. Keep these vids comin!

Yeah! DEF! Its always interesting to me to see art work like this which takes so much time, effort and planning summed up in 5 minutes or less. Makes it look waaay too easy. Keep these vids comin!

In reply to this comment by karkarlee:
Thanks! Glad you could enjoy it.

In reply to this comment by MrConrads:
Amazing work, love it! Great sift.

I was about to post this, but ended with this one first http://www.videosift.com/video/Shark-Attack-cringeworthy

Always interesting to see sharks in action.

Wow, a thousand star points. Congrats, O Glorious One! Your videos are always interesting finds and your commentary is both informed and informative, whether it's foreign politics, the economy, or the inner workings of the Sift.

Good stuff, when I used to subscribe to Newsweek it was always interesting to read Zakaria's articles. He had some very worldy views from a US perspective.

However CNNi is really not what it used to be, it pales in comparison to Al Jazeera's investigative journalism.

In reply to this comment by winkler1:
good news - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/26/fareed-zakarias-cnn-show_n_103560.html

Always interesting to see two children fight like that.

>> ^MINK:
I get the feeling that not many people look at unsifted vids, because things like my recent bill bailey sit around with 3 votes for ages, and then after some requeue love they escape the queue and get 50 votes.

I've noticed this myself...a lot of videos in the queues either get really low views, really low votes, or most often both. People look a lot more at the published videos.

IMPROVING TAGGING. yes you can put "jon stewart" in the title AND the tags please, because the title is not the tags, and "jon stewart" is not clickable in the title.

I disagree with this. If you're too lazy to type "jon stewart" into search, that sounds more like a personal problem. It only needs to be in either the tags or the title/description to show up when you search for it, so I think it's better to skip tagging something that's already in the title. Maybe that's just me.

DITCHING COMMENT VOTING. this would attract more people to the site who aren't kneejerk polarising comment nannies. anti commentvote people tend to be deeper people and sift better stuff that i can't find for myself on the liveleak homepage. (ready, flame.... NOW!)

I don't even need to flame this, it's irrelevant bullshit.

ADDING LINKS TO FAVOURITE SIFTERS. no, not "friends" but a quick way to browse my favourite sifters' queues without RSS and all that rubbish.

This (heck, even a Friends feature) is a great idea. There are some people whose videos I like about 90 percent of the time, so I'm always interested to see what they have queued, but you can't even search for a member! There needs to be some way to find members via a search function, and a favorite sifters idea is great.

I haven't seen any other non-air videos of her speaking to compare with, but this didn't seem like anything more than first night jitters. She didn't say anything particularly offensive, really.

Always interesting to see the person behind the mask though.

Always thought-provoking, always interesting - congrats Patriot!

(folks - don't call him CP - that has another, much less pleasant connotation!)