I am not a defender of all unions. There are many unions out there and I can't have the facts on all of them.

I have been in the workforce since I was a teenager in high school. I've worked a lot of jobs. All of them non-union. Not once did I have a wage that kept me above poverty. And these jobs were considered decent jobs. I never had a paycheck more than $12-13/h and Never did I have a job where I felt secure in my future.

My current job is the first job I've ever had that was unionized. I make about $22/h. Not an amazing paycheck for my line of work, definitely lower than in the public sector, but my job feels secure and I have a decent benefits package so I know my job will take care of my family.

I come from a northern town where forestry is the main industry. Mill jobs are all Union and it's a decent living. Most young people who start at the mill never leave because they just can't get that kind of pay anywhere else. To do so is to take a drastic cut in pay. I'm not talking a rich man's paycheck. I'm saying they can buy a house, feed their kids, buy a quad and go camping and fishing in the summer. Not extravagant but nothing to complain about.

Now, those mills like to restructure and cut and skimp and save money left, right and center. They run three shifts a day and they NEVER shut down. (OK, they shut down once a year at run-off but that's when the equipment gets serviced).

These mills make profits in the millions/billions for their shareholders. Don't you think for one second that without the unions, the Mills would cut salaries, skimp on safety and eliminate job security while slashing benefits. Everyone working those mills benefit from the presence of the union. They all pay dues, NO ONE complains and it's never been an issue. Ever.

If you don't want to be a union worker, you get a job in town at 1/3-1/2 the pay and no job security. No one holds a gun to your head and tells you where to work. But if you want to get a job with a pay check you can raise kids on, then let the union stand behind you and defend you.

@bareboards2

Well if we've come to the end then that's it. I want to make just one more point, as a black and white thinker who does believe in absolute right and wrong.

We don't live in a sexist society; we live in a society where there are some sexists. No difference? It's the same as saying we live in a criminal society because there are some criminals, or a christian society because there are some christians. It's a dangerously inaccurate generalisation, as well as extravagantly unfair to the non-sexists, non-criminals, non-christians.

Feminists are anchored to the idea of an eternal, pervasive sexism that they want to keep fighting forever instead of letting our culture move beyond entirely.

I usually celebrate my birthday with a few friends, some good food and doing something enjoyable. Either cooking something a bit extravagant, or going out partying.

I'm turning 30 in a few weeks, and I'm having a party with a bunch of friends on the Saturday before my birthday, because it lines up with a party that we'll go to after a few hours of trashing my place.
And then, on my birthday, I've invited my closest friends to a dinner here at my place, just to mark the occasion and have some good company. And finally, on the request of my mom, I've invited the family over on the Sunday after.
They also "make" whoever has birthday at work wear a "crown". ( http://imgur.com/3hUkf don't I look pretty? )

I think birthday's are pretty commonly celebrated in Norway, especially for kids. They get less and less complex of course, but when you turn 18, 20, 25 or 30 people usually celebrate. And presents are a big part of birthdays here. I still buy my parents, siblings, and closest friends presents for their birthdays. Ranging from $40 - $100 depending on who it is, and what age they turned.

So yeah. That's birthdays for me.

@ChaosEngine

Oh sweet irony, I'm being called wilfully ignorant by a young-earther.

I'm not going to refute you. I don't need to; @BicycleRepairMan has already done an excellent job of it.

An excellent refutation? He cherry picked one sentence out of my reply, a reply where I had demonstrated the fallacy of his argument from incredulity by proving his assumption of the constancy of radioactive decay rates was nothing more than the conventional wisdom of our times. Is this what passes for logical argumentation in your mind? He posited a fallacious argument. I exposed the fallacy. He ignored the refutation and cherry picked his reply. You seem to be showing that in your eagerness to agree with everything which is contrary to my position that you have a weak filter on information which supports your preconceived ideas. Why is it that a skeptic is always pathologically skeptical of everything except his own positions, I wonder?

@BicycleRepairMan

...and to see an exampe of such a racket, check the flood "geology" link.

Seriously, you cant see the blinding irony in your own words? So, things like radiometric dating, fossils, geology, astronomy, chemistry, biology are all just parts of a self-perpetuating racket confirming each others conclusions in a big old circlejerking conspiracy of astronomical proportions.. well, lets assume then that it is. So they are basically chasing the foregone conclusion that the universe is over 13 billion years old and that life on this planet emerged some 3,6 billion years ago and has evolved ever since. But where did these wild conclusions come from? Who established the dogma that scientists seems to mindlessly work to confirm, and why? And why 13,72 billion years then? Why not 100 billion years, or 345 million years?

The thing is, what you have here is an alleged "crime" with no incentives, no motivation.. Why on earth would all the worlds scientists, depentently and independently and over many generations converge to promote a falsehood of no significance to anyone? it might make some kind of sense if someones doctrine was threatened unless the world was exactly 13.72 billion years old. Or if someone believed they were going to hell unless they believed trilobites died out 250 million years ago.. The thing is, nobody believes that.

The truth is pretty much staring you in the face right here. The conclusions of science on things like the age of the earth emerged gradually; Darwin, and even earlier naturalists had no idea of the exact age of the earth, or even a good approximation, but they did figure this much: It must be very, very old. So old that it challenged their prior beliefs and assumptions about a god-created world as described in their holy book. And thats were nearly all scientists come from: They grew up and lived in societies that looked to holy books , scripture and religion for the answers, and everybody assumed they had proper answers until the science was done.If scientists were corrupt conspirators working to preserve dogma, they be like Kent Hovind or Ken Ham. Ignoring vast mountains of facts and evidence, and focus on a few distorted out-of-context quotations to confirm what they already "know".

Not only was your prior argument fallacious, but I refuted it. Now you're ignoring that and cherry picking your replies here. Seems pretty intellectually dishonest to me? In any case, I'll reply to what you've said here. I was going to get into the technical issues concerning why scientists believe the Universe is so old, and the history of the theory, but so far you have given me no reason to believe that any of it will be carefully considered.

Instead I'll answer with a portion of an article I found, which was printed in "The Ledger" on Feb 17th 2000. It's interview of a molecular biologist who wanted to remain anonymous

Caylor: "Do you believe that the information evolved?"

MB: "George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was engineered by genius beyond genius, and such information could not have been written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book! Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise."

Caylor: "Have you ever stated that in a public lecture, or in any public writings?"

MB: "No, I just say it evolved. To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold onto two insanities at all times:
One, it would be insane to believe in evolution when you can see the truth for yourself.
Two, it would be insane to say you don't believe evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big college lectures -- everything would stop. I'd be out of a job, or relegated to the outer fringes where I couldn't earn a decent living.”

Caylor: “I hate to say it, but that sounds intellectually dishonest.”

MB: “The work I do in genetic research is honorable. We will find the cures to many of mankind's worst diseases. But in the meantime, we have to live with the elephant in the living room.”

Caylor: “What elephant?”

MB: “Creation design. It's like an elephant in the living room. It moves around, takes up space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And yet we have to swear it isn't there!”

Here are some selected quotes:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Richard Lewontin

"In China its O.K. to criticize Darwin but not the government, while in the United States its O.K. to criticize the government, but not Darwin."

Dr. J.Y. Chen,

Chinese Paleontologist

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."

S. C. Todd,
Correspondence to Nature 410(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999

"Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it."

Steven Pinker,
Professor of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA., "How the Mind Works," [1997]

"Biologists are simply naive when they talk about experiments designed to test the theory of evolution. It is not testable. They may happen to stumble across facts which would seem to conflict with its predictions. These facts will invariably be ignored and their discoverers will undoubtedly be deprived of continuing research grants."

Professor Whitten,
Professor of Genetics, University of Melbourne, Australia, 1980 Assembly Week address.

"Science is not so much concerned with truth as it is with consensus. What counts as truth is what scientists can agree to count as truth at any particular moment in time. [Scientists] are not really receptive or not really open-minded to any sorts of criticisms or any sorts of claims that actually are attacking some of the established parts of the research (traditional) paradigm, in this case neo-Darwinism. So it is very difficult for people who are pushing claims that contradict that paradigm to get a hearing. They find it hard to [get] research grants; they find it hard to get their research published; they find it very hard."

Prof. Evelleen Richards,
Historian of Science at the University of NSW, Australia

Speaks for itself, I think..

no doubt... spouses are truly horrific.
>> ^gorillaman:

If they had more useful jobs to do I could tolerate them. As it stands I don't know why anyone would want to infest their home with such disgusting unhygenic retards. In terms of their societal costs as pets, they're unjustifiably extravagant and really ought to be illegal.

If they had more useful jobs to do I could tolerate them. As it stands I don't know why anyone would want to infest their home with such disgusting unhygenic retards. In terms of their societal costs as pets, they're unjustifiably extravagant and really ought to be illegal.

But it's only their people who can worship there. How can tax deductions for religious be justified in the first place? Who even came up with that idea? Stupid.>> ^Mikus_Aurelius:

>> ^SDGundamX:
Making sure that art is available to all people and not the exclusive domain of the privileged few who can afford it is a worthy goal in my book.

I guess in some other people's books, building beautiful buildings where people can worship is a worthy goal. I wouldn't expect everyone to agree with your interpretation of what is a good use of money and what isn't.
Personally, I'm a big fan of the arts too, and certainly benefit from those who support it extravagantly. The question is whether those supporters need their donations subsidized by the government (who in turn takes money from the food/shelter/college budget of middle class families).

>> ^SDGundamX:

Making sure that art is available to all people and not the exclusive domain of the privileged few who can afford it is a worthy goal in my book.


I guess in some other people's books, building beautiful buildings where people can worship is a worthy goal. I wouldn't expect everyone to agree with your interpretation of what is a good use of money and what isn't.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the arts too, and certainly benefit from those who support it extravagantly. The question is whether those supporters need their donations subsidized by the government (who in turn takes money from the food/shelter/college budget of middle class families).

This crime has nothing to do with race. Put a black man in the same situation, and the same would happen.

1. He wasn't targeted because he was white. He was targeted because he was drunk, alone and unable to defend himself. The same thing would have happened to a black dude in an equivalent situation, except then you wouldn't care.

2. As I pointed out in a similar video, that's Baltimore. Black people are robbed, beaten, and killed in that violent city every fucking day. There are enough of these disgusting videos online to show that these thugs will attack anyone of any demographic.

3. Apparently you don't realize that white people commit crimes too. Every day. Sometimes in groups (called "gangs"). And some of those crimes target black people. The instances where a gang or a group of drunk, rowdy white boys attack a black victim are not all national news. >> ^chilaxe:

If a black person was targeted by not a lone white criminal but an entire white mob for this because of their ethnicity, it'd be national news.
Videosift always supports that because racism, and in particular group hate crimes, are seen as representing larger cultural and practical realities.
There'd be no comments that it should be downplayed by the media and restricted to sites like WorldStarHipHop.
>> ^longde:
Of course not. Why would I say that a bunch of white thugs robbing Urkel represented white culture? Also, I have encountered enough criminals of all colors to know that a mugging -even an extravagant one- isn't a political statement. >> ^chilaxe:
>> ^longde:
I don't necessarily have anything against the video; frankly though it fits better on WorldStarHipHop than videosift. I downvoted for your tags, which imply that criminals somehow comprise the culture of some group, which shall remain nameless. And your description, which attempts to make a criminal act political.
If the cultural groups in this video were reversed, wouldn't you take the opposite position on those points?

If a black person was targeted by not a lone white criminal but an entire white mob for this because of their ethnicity, it'd be national news.

Videosift always supports that because racism, and in particular group hate crimes, are seen as representing larger cultural and practical realities.

There'd be no comments that it should be downplayed by the media and restricted to sites like WorldStarHipHop.

>> ^longde:

Of course not. Why would I say that a bunch of white thugs robbing Urkel represented white culture? Also, I have encountered enough criminals of all colors to know that a mugging -even an extravagant one- isn't a political statement. >> ^chilaxe:
>> ^longde:
I don't necessarily have anything against the video; frankly though it fits better on WorldStarHipHop than videosift. I downvoted for your tags, which imply that criminals somehow comprise the culture of some group, which shall remain nameless. And your description, which attempts to make a criminal act political.
If the cultural groups in this video were reversed, wouldn't you take the opposite position on those points?

Of course not. Why would I say that a bunch of white thugs robbing Urkel represented white culture? Also, I have encountered enough criminals of all colors to know that a mugging -even an extravagant one- isn't a political statement. >> ^chilaxe:

>> ^longde:
I don't necessarily have anything against the video; frankly though it fits better on WorldStarHipHop than videosift. I downvoted for your tags, which imply that criminals somehow comprise the culture of some group, which shall remain nameless. And your description, which attempts to make a criminal act political.
If the cultural groups in this video were reversed, wouldn't you take the opposite position on those points?

I just spent new years week in China, and the fireworks across the city (Beijing) were fantastic. Everyone tries to get the most extravagant, loudest, most powerful fireworks, and enough to set off all week late into the night. The cleanup outside my flat every morning is insane. Red paper everywhere.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son.

I like that blood vials were the extravagance that tipped the scales of outrage. Gosh, they must be $0.10 each.

I live in Japan. There are a couple of explanations for the huge price.

First, this happened close to New Year's, which like Christmas in the U.S., gets a little extravagant. In particular the first market of the New Year in Tsukiji people tend to overbid--it's kind of a tradition.

Second, with sushi eaten around the world and blue fin tuna supplies dwindling, they are getting harder to catch. Furthermore, there are restrictions in place about the size and number of fish that can be caught to prevent overfishing. But demand is higher than ever, so basic economics is also in effect and pushing the prices up.

Third, the size of this tuna is extreme--the businesses who bought it (it was a combined bid by a Hong Kong and a Japanese sushi restaurant business) are going to be able to turn it into a ton of sushi and probably make a decent profit off of it.

I will mention that quality sushi here is amazing and well worth the price. I've eaten at some of the restaurants in Tsukiji--the sushi you get was brought in that very morning and is usually the quality cuts. When prepared by an experienced chef, it's absolutely a completely different experience and taste from anything you can get anywhere else in the world. Well worth the coin you will drop, but it may (as it did for me) make sushi anywhere else taste like crap.

>> ^conan:

to be fair: he rants about an average income of over 300k for the 39.000 Goldman employees, "even office supplies". it is an average after all. it does obiously not mean that the guy who pushes the mail cart makes six digit figures. averages are never a good way to judge. i really like TYT, but this one is flat out propaganda.


You're right about it being an average spread over the whole company.
You're wrong about it being the average "income."
He's talking about the Bonuses being paid--that's on top of the extravagant base pay that the bosses already take.