Tags for this video have been changed from 'top 10 list, coolest guy in school' to 'top 10 list, coolest guy in school, napoleon dynamite, david letterman' - edited by bareboards2

>> ^bareboards2:

dead


Fixed and thanks. I hope I remember the right video to replace.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Right, cause you and I make policy decisions all the time.
Get with reality RetNunner.
You have about as much control over government.. as you do over what McDonalds puts on its menu.
None to very little.


My point was that there's no "other" involved in our government. It's all human beings. No aliens, no gods, just us.

Our government, or even McDonald's isn't being inflicted on us by outsiders, they've both arisen naturally as a result of people just "governing themselves."

Basically, the truth of it is that people who just want to abolish government are ultimately just arguing that we should hit the reset button on human civilization.

If the police just went away, permanently, it wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows. Petty thugs who use violence to take what they want would be empowered. Monomaniacal thugs would race to get their hands on as much military hardware as they could, and grab as much land and resources with it as they could. Those determine the new borders for the new monarchies, led by whoever it was that organized that military conquest. After all, they're the only ones with the military might to enforce law, and therefore they get to make the law.

Now maybe people will rebel against that, maybe even successfully. Maybe the general at the top of the army will be some sort of Cincinnatus figure, and refuse the crown, or a George Washington type and insist some sort of democratic republic. Or maybe he'll be a Napoleon or Hitler type. Who knows.

All I know is that the fundamental reasons why we built governments haven't changed. We still need laws, we still need law enforcement, and we still need some way for deciding what the laws will be.

Grown people don't just naturally come to a consensus. It seems like that should be obvious given the divided and antagonistic state of our civilization.

>> ^carneval:

This feels like a viral for Napoleon Dynamite 2, if anything.


If they are selling something I will take 10

This feels like a viral for Napoleon Dynamite 2, if anything.

>> ^G-bar:

I can't even count the amount of WTFs here... is it the Grandma with the sunglasses on the side? is it the Obviously friendless brother that can wield a butterfly knife? is it the choreography?! It's amazing and WTF at the same time.
bravo for the find!


This is an independent nerdy film in the vein of Napoleon Dynamite waiting to happen. I already have back stories and a few scenes for every character in my head...it's amazing!

>> ^holymackerel013:

This song always reminds me of the end of Napoleon Dynamite. Napoleon's girlfriend plays tetherball with him as the credits begin to roll with this song is playing. It's actually a very nice scene.


Thanks for sharing. Never saw Napoleon. I'll add it to the NetFlix queue.

I went to a Foot Locker shoe store to buy some running stuff, and the entire staff was engrossed in that movie. I said to myself "It must be good."

This song always reminds me of the end of Napoleon Dynamite. Napoleon's girlfriend plays tetherball with him as the credits begin to roll with this song is playing. It's actually a very nice scene.

He's conflating a lot of stuff by the end of this.

Knowing "where the pickle barrel is" has not "always been the harder problem". In the fleet battles of the 18th century, they often had a very good idea where there opponents were for weeks or months. They knew where enemy shipyards were, just like the Allies in WWII knew where that chemical plant was - they just couldn't strike them effectively. Modern weaponry would have insta-won lots of historic conflicts as there would have been no problem finding stuff to blow up. It's not like Norden was trying to solve the wrong problem, he just didn't have the right solution.

Sometimes stuff doesn't work in the field - sometimes it does. There's interesting lessons there, but they're unrelated to the next thing he talks about, which is:

Sometimes you can't use your great tech effectively. They can hide the SCUDs. The Taliban is not going to all get together like a Napoleonic army or try to make a big Hannibal pincer. They make themselves harder to be found.

But that doesn't mean the weapon is ineffective - it's very effective, it limits your opponents possible tactics. And those limited tactics are one reason why direct American casualties are so low in modern wars - the enemy can't ever really show in force, and thus only has a limited set of tactics available.

Sometimes your equipment or strategy is going to directly work, sometimes it's going to work less directly. Every action you take could provide a reaction, and sometimes those could be very bad. Hunting with drones might create a terror attack across the world. There's interesting ideas there, but again you can't just conflate it all together as "technology and war... something something... Norden bombsight".

And it certainly doesn't reason into: War is often a bad idea. Obviously that's true, but it doesn't follow from the story. Sure, sometimes having good tech can make war seem more attractive than it would if we had less tech. You get the illusion of clean war.

Interesting. But the fact that the above is true - that Americans can kill thousands of dirty foreigners while suffering few casualties - is kind of the opposite lesson from the Norden bombsight. If the Americans had a bunch of "Norden bombsight" style ineffective weapons, they wouldn't have nearly the success they do in slaughtering people who were born in the wrong place and maybe the US would end up in less wars.

So maybe that's the lesson? It's better to have complex, works-in-the-lab-only tech, because otherwise it'll be too easy to kill people? Or something?

Anyways, the base story is interesting - his attempts to supply the moral at the end are much less so.

The interaction between tech and war goes lots of different ways, and I'd say sometimes the "Norden"s of the world are right and their war technology does reduce aggregate suffering. For example, I think it's at least arguable that the tech race prevented the Cold War from ending in a total war scenario that would have killed millions. (Note: if you plan on telling me that I'm crazy and the Cold War was all some kind of fraud or illusion or power consolidation for the elite or that Russia was never a threat or whatever, don't feel bad if I don't bother to answer - it's probably because I'm intimidated by the great arguments you made.)

As a partial answer to myself, I found this showing that indeed, Iraq did, at least to this point, cost more than the Stan. I guess that does make since as there was an actual army that needed killing there and an entire urban warfare scene that got out of control. In my reading, though, it does talk about logistics being a MAJOR problem in the Stan. For every dollar you want to spend there, you have to spend even more dollars to get that money on the ground...more so than Iraq which is just a drive up the road from Kuwait. Which means that out of that 400 billion spent on the Stan, much less of that money was spent on actually fighting than in Iraq, the Stan is a very ineffective war in comparison. Like Napoleon invading Russia, or the Soviet Union in.... Afghanistan (sigh), this is a great war to spend lots of money doing very little. On a positive note, I guess, this is the last spinning war plate. Well, that is until we decide to hurl missiles at some other person we don't like, in the name of freedom of course.

>> ^oritteropo:

So now we know who gets to play dag in the videosift movie?>> ^shuac:
I figured out who you look like, Dag, or at least what the photo on your profile looks like. You resemble actor Jon Gries (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0340973/) who's famous for playing Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius and Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite.
Just thought you should know.



Definitely Dave Grohl

So now we know who gets to play dag in the videosift movie?>> ^shuac:

I figured out who you look like, Dag, or at least what the photo on your profile looks like. You resemble actor Jon Gries (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0340973/) who's famous for playing Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius and Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite.
Just thought you should know.

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

I've got one of those faces ... have to admit that I haven't heard Jon Gries before.

In reply to this comment by shuac:
I figured out who you look like, Dag, or at least what the photo on your profile looks like. You resemble actor Jon Gries (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0340973/) who's famous for playing Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius and Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite.

Just thought you should know.

I figured out who you look like, Dag, or at least what the photo on your profile looks like. You resemble actor Jon Gries (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0340973/) who's famous for playing Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius and Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite.

Just thought you should know.

fun video. if memory serves, it was directed by Napoleon Dynamite/Nacho Libre director.