You guys are being overly defensive. My observation was simply how odd it struck me that the officers ignored the cameras while being extremely aggressive and violent to the equally aggressive and violent protesters, whereas in the US they went after any media personnel because they wanted to cover up how poorly they treat US citizens.

In favor of keeping things realistic, Russia just had a very obviously fraudulent election for a president that has an uncountable number of law violations in too many categories to name. While I think the US is a pathetic embarrassment of hypocrisy, it still doesn't have such outwardly violent civil displays like the video above, or remotely as nefarious elections as the one we just witnessed in Russia. Realistically, Russia's situation is much worse on too many levels to go into, when compared to the United States.

To conclude, stop picking fights with people who are more than likely of the same mind as you.

>> ^Boise_Lib:

Ah, shit--you mean they drown in the end?

IN 3D!!!!


edit-

I have to add...that these trailers are killing me. I'm fairly certain I've disconnected my esophagus from it's muscle connections to the interior and exterior walls of the chest cavity, as I'm in great pain due to my laughing. I'm certain that my vocal chords are also on the verge of spilling outward--inside out, as it were, and falling into my stomach where they will be digested as I writhe in pain; hopefully as I'm still watching more of these trailers at the moment of this horrendous, but part and parcel event that must be paid when it comes to true comedy--yet still as the just previous moment had occurred the climatic conclusion is yet to be finished--so as the video and sound trickle into my helpless mind the brute humiliating force of my laughing will be unattaching my retinas and blood vessels will begin to pop as I finally reach what comedians and entertainers aspire to instill in their audience the near opium maxim, that says that I may have a stroke at any second and die: the oxygen deprivation moment of laughing Zen. I love them, I love their trailers. So does my doctor and the hospital's chief surgeon.

P.S.- I just had to add something over the top... Sorry for the two upvotes if you hate my cavalcade of craziness edit .

@Kofi 's definition is a good and meaningful one, but of the type I already said was too narrow to be useful to anyone but historians.

Stripping away historical context, which is ultimately trivia; the negations, which define what fascism was reacting against rather than what it actually is; mere observations about the behaviour of fascist states in practice - suppression of dissent is inevitable in any authoritarian and particularly collectivist society, and not unique to fascism or in any way one of its core ideals; its arbitrary and debatable place on the political spectrum; and assuming that it is in fact useful to use the term fascist outside the very limited area of italian political history - you're left with a definition very like mine:

Fascism is a radical political ideal defined by its emphasis on social unity, nationalism and authoritarian leadership.

This is almost exactly the method I used to arrive at my definition in the first place. So; Nationalism, Collectivism, Authoritarianism (inward aggression). To that I've added Militarism (outward aggression) and Stupidity (we could say anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism, but we're avoiding negation and Stupidity is anyway genuinely more relevant - fascists are proudly and unapologetically stupid).

Do we like this definition? I say it applies to Obama, his two predecessors, and all of their contemporary peers.

Just because the universe might be eternal, does not mean that God is the automatic solution, nor the simplest explanation. That's just the one that makes sense to you. I would say that an eternal universe filled with rocks and gas is a little less complicated than an eternal, thinking, feeling, all-powerful being. But again, that's just my opinion. Those are large concepts, and the rules of physics, or even the seemingly bizarre rules of quantum mechanics do nothing to help explain them.

To me it is simply a probability argument. If you say that everything is equally unlikely, then if you strip away all other concerns, you just have the question..was the Universe deliberately created? The answer is either yes or no. You have evidence that perhaps there is design, which implies an intelligent (and powerful) creator. You have evidence that perhaps it could have happened by chance, by naturalistic processes. From there, you have to figure out what explanation best matches reality. You could ask, does something as wonderful as life and as amazing as the Universe just happen by itself? You could ask, am I just a bunch of atoms moving through space or is there something more to me than that?

Is an eternal God hard to grasp? Yes, but easier I think than something from nothing. If it is something from nothing we will always be ignorant of the initial conditions. If God created it, He will (presumably) educate us about the mystery of His existence. He promised this:

1 Corinthians 13:12

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

It is basically saying that God promises full disclosure when His Kingdom is established on Earth..

Occam's razor is simply a pragmatic way to find a solution, it does not prove anything, but just suggest what a likely answer might be. People use that argument about the complexity of universal laws all the time, but the fact of the matter is, we still don't understand 99.99999999% of the universe or how it works. We can see that if we "tweaked the dials", it would probably look much different than the universe we know, but there isn't a scientist out there in this world that could tell you with any certainty what would happen. Only that on a large scale, things might fall inward or burst outward faster, or that water might not congeal the same way.

Well, just in the initial conditions of the Universe, you have several values which just defy any naturalistic explanation. Even atheist scientists have to admit that a straight forward explanation indicates a designer:

Fred Hoyle, Astronomer said

"A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

This has major implications for scientific theories, because it isn't simply a matter of it being incredibly unlikely, it is also matter of contradicting the predictions of standard models. I think you'll enjoy this article:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0208/0208013v3.pdf

Speaking of complexity, here's an exercise for your brain: Think about a mountain, on part of that mountain, pressure builds up, and a rock slide starts to fall. When it finally settles, the rocks, all the little pebbles and large boulders and particles of dust are arranged in just a certain way. Even though it's just a pile of rocks, it contains within it an inconceivable amount of complexity. Nowhere else in the entire universe, will there ever be a pile of rocks that have the exact specifications of this one. And even if it did, it wouldn't be composed of the same stone, And even if was, the elements that make up the stone wouldn't be arranged the same way. Nor would it be the exact same temperature, unless it was in the exact same relative position in the universe with an identical sun, with all the particles of gas and dust in between them arranged in exactly the same way.

In a way, the pile of rocks, when you think about it, is an impossibility. And yet it exists. There is no simple solution to explain it. An eternal creator, or the laws of physics? Either way, the true meaning is something that neither of us can comprehend. And to say that either one is "simpler" than the other is merely a statement of faith. Not fact.

Sure, taken by itself, such a thing is astonishing to behold. Divorced from its circumstances, it is perplexing to say the least. Yet, either explanation for the origin of this impossibility leads to a definitive conclusion. If it was naturalism, there is no meaning to it. It just happened that way and at best you can invent a meaning for it and decide to believe it. If it was created, however, it was created for a purpose. It has meaning because of that purpose; it is invested with meaning. In naturalism, you are practically looking at something alien. It is cold, dead, inexplicable, and doesn't care about you. Under creation, you are at the least staring this quote from Einstein dead in the face:

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

I go a step further because I believe God has revealed a bit about his Dewey Decimal System, but essentially, I am in staring at this in awe and wonder. I think those rocks are amazing and startling, but I also praise God for making them that way.

>> ^Ryjkyj:
We love you too. (but it's a rough, heathen love)
Just because the universe might be eternal, does not mean that God is the automatic solution, nor the simplest explanation. That's just the one that makes sense to you. I would say that an eternal universe filled with rocks and gas is a little less complicated than an eternal, thinking, feeling, all-powerful being. But again, that's just my opinion. Those are large concepts, and the rules of physics, or even the seemingly bizarre rules of quantum mechanics do nothing to help explain them.
Occam's razor is simply a pragmatic way to find a solution, it does not prove anything, but just suggest what a likely answer might be. People use that argument about the complexity of universal laws all the time, but the fact of the matter is, we still don't understand 99.99999999% of the universe or how it works. We can see that if we "tweaked the dials", it would probably look much different than the universe we know, but there isn't a scientist out there in this world that could tell you with any certainty what would happen. Only that on a large scale, things might fall inward or burst outward faster, or that water might not congeal the same way.
Point being, just because we can tell that the universe would be different, doesn't mean that it was designed. It just means that it is this way.
Speaking of complexity, here's an exercise for your brain: Think about a mountain, on part of that mountain, pressure builds up, and a rock slide starts to fall. When it finally settles, the rocks, all the little pebbles and large boulders and particles of dust are arranged in just a certain way. Even though it's just a pile of rocks, it contains within it an inconceivable amount of complexity. Nowhere else in the entire universe, will there ever be a pile of rocks that have the exact specifications of this one. And even if it did, it wouldn't be composed of the same stone, And even if was, the elements that make up the stone wouldn't be arranged the same way. Nor would it be the exact same temperature, unless it was in the exact same relative position in the universe with an identical sun, with all the particles of gas and dust in between them arranged in exactly the same way.
In a way, the pile of rocks, when you think about it, is an impossibility. And yet it exists. There is no simple solution to explain it. An eternal creator, or the laws of physics? Either way, the true meaning is something that neither of us can comprehend. And to say that either one is "simpler" than the other is merely a statement of faith. Not fact.

We love you too. (but it's a rough, heathen love)

Just because the universe might be eternal, does not mean that God is the automatic solution, nor the simplest explanation. That's just the one that makes sense to you. I would say that an eternal universe filled with rocks and gas is a little less complicated than an eternal, thinking, feeling, all-powerful being. But again, that's just my opinion. Those are large concepts, and the rules of physics, or even the seemingly bizarre rules of quantum mechanics do nothing to help explain them.

Occam's razor is simply a pragmatic way to find a solution, it does not prove anything, but just suggest what a likely answer might be. People use that argument about the complexity of universal laws all the time, but the fact of the matter is, we still don't understand 99.99999999% of the universe or how it works. We can see that if we "tweaked the dials", it would probably look much different than the universe we know, but there isn't a scientist out there in this world that could tell you with any certainty what would happen. Only that on a large scale, things might fall inward or burst outward faster, or that water might not congeal the same way.

Point being, just because we can tell that the universe would be different, doesn't mean that it was designed. It just means that it is this way.

Speaking of complexity, here's an exercise for your brain: Think about a mountain, on part of that mountain, pressure builds up, and a rock slide starts to fall. When it finally settles, the rocks, all the little pebbles and large boulders and particles of dust are arranged in just a certain way. Even though it's just a pile of rocks, it contains within it an inconceivable amount of complexity. Nowhere else in the entire universe, will there ever be a pile of rocks that have the exact specifications of this one. And even if it did, it wouldn't be composed of the same stone, And even if was, the elements that make up the stone wouldn't be arranged the same way. Nor would it be the exact same temperature, unless it was in the exact same relative position in the universe with an identical sun, with all the particles of gas and dust in between them arranged in exactly the same way.

In a way, the pile of rocks, when you think about it, is an impossibility. And yet it exists. There is no simple solution to explain it. An eternal creator, or the laws of physics? Either way, the true meaning is something that neither of us can comprehend. And to say that either one is "simpler" than the other is merely a statement of faith. Not fact.

What a joke for conservatives to believe they're the only ones with guns. The entire gun control mess is nothing more than a fabricated issue meant to polarize voters between the two parties. I know plenty of people who've jumped on the conservative bandwagon because their single issue is "gun ownership" and then they just join the conservative group-think echo chamber on every other issue.

But whatever...let's be clear; I have guns and I'm a liberal. The three people I went pidgeon hunting with this weekend are liberals and 3/4 of us are war veterans. If you're a gun toting conservative, don't feel too smug believing you're patriotically sheep dogging American society. Figuratively speaking, there are just as many scopes pointed in your direction as there are pointed outward from your camp.
Don't bother soothing your ruffled political feathers with Breibart's little macho fantasy...if the right-wing, armed, yahoos tried asserting themselves violently...well, it wouldn't go down quite the way you and Breitbart day-dreamed it would.

At first it seems counter-intuitive that the bubbles would migrate to the center, but after a moment of thought it seems obvious: the non-bubbled water is more dense, and centripetal force pushes it outward. The less dense bubbles have nowhere else to go.

Personally I find it hard to reconcile what I know about physics with the existence of consciousness to begin with. Perhaps a better thought question would be something along the lines of Chalmers' zombie world arguments. That is, could a person appear outwardly to perceive and act in the world normally and not be conscious? That is, could they just be some sort of robot, or cascade of known biochemical processes? Alan Turing, in his own way, was interested in the same question.

Therein lies the problem. If there is no satisfactory physical test for consciousness, how can we be so sure about how consciousness is anchored to matter? Frankly, I see little hope of unifying an understanding of consciousness with an understanding of physics without invoking quantum mechanics. Even that just feels like punting to the physics equivalent of magic.

Personally I'm on the lunatic fringe with consciousness. I can't derive consciousness, but I'm overwhelmingly convinced of its existence. So, instead of dealing with all the paradoxes I just assume consciousness is present in all matter. There are varying experiences, or "degrees" of consciousness however. The nice entropy reducing capabilities of our nervous system make our particular conscious experience substantially richer than that of, for example, a rock. So I guess my thought is that the experience sort of fades towards the experience the matter would have without the metabolic energy necessary to support neuronal conduction. Honestly, I don't think it would be possible to obtain data on it, but I imagine it to be somewhat like fading to gray. I suppose it would be equally likely to be like fading into chaos.

>> ^Grimm:

Does not happen to my when I use pause....not sure why that is.>> ^Boise_Lib:
Great video Grimm.
<rant>Fucking piece of shit Media Matters embed jumps to their fucking site every time I hit the fucking pause.</rant>



Maybe because I use Firefox?
I'm still going to blame Media Matters because I need to focus my anger outward--even if it's not their fault

Same logic: What are we then?

I was gonna say that Crocs haven't really changed much since the Cretaceous, but that would actually be a little bit of a lie. They are quite complex really, its just that their outward appearence is much the same, well, because water hasn't changed much. They adapted to be an amphibious ambush predator, the design worked 80ish million years ago, it still works.

Maher has a lifestyle that he doesn't want to be judged for. Much like most of the people here on the sift. The people with the biggest mouths about God are the ones with the most to hide.


I'm glad you mention this as it's important. A lot of people think religion works through fear or love or something - but this, this here is it: shame is the fuel that powers religion. If someone can convince you that they know the truth, but that you are limited by your secret sins - even your thought crimes - then they have power over you forever. You, yourself, will always know exactly how unworthy you are, while you can't know their sins in nearly the same way.

Religion failing you? Your fault. God failing you? Your fault. Doubts? Your fault. Your reason? Always suspect. Leader? Always right, because he has the clear channel.

There's a reason every religion moves towards shame. It works. The ancient Jews had trouble because their rules were almost all outward. People could actually comply with them nearly completely. So they had to expand the rules out again and again, hedging and hedging until everyone was brought back in non-compliance (as that's the space where religion works best).

Christianity solved this problem by focusing on thought crime, and crimes of attitude. Were you really giving that gift in the proper spirit? Did your thoughts stray morally for a moment? These are brilliant - the perfect, impossible to comply with rules. Each person is thus locked in a tidy prison where they believe that everyone else is more righteous (and thus "gets it", because they don't have secret sins like you do), and thus those people (or their text) should be trusted over reason. If you wanted to refute their ideas, your first step would have to be to live perfectly (impossible, and also requires tremendous further investment in the religion to attempt). And you don't have to pound it in directly: the best way to make someone feel shame is to praise the congregation; furthering the implication that everyone is in on the secret but you. If you can, get testimonials.

Again, you want everyone to put up a front that they're "in on it", that they see the emperor's clothes. It's the "everyone else" that keeps everyone going. Nobody wants to break first.

But if you want to see this technique refined to its most pure, and it's most directed, look at Scientology. Watch videos where Scientology leaders are questioned. Their response is often "What's your crime?", with the implication being that it's your secret crimes that prevent you from understanding Scientology (or, especially, make you hate it). And, in Scientology's case, they have an extra twist of the knife: if you're a member, they likely know your "secret crimes" because you told them in some session. The Catholics had something similar going with confession, but they didn't have the same panache.

So, sb, I wonder what your response would be to a Scientologist - maybe one who said your religious experiences are the result of impious Thetans trying to deceive you (maybe you got some wacky Jesus Thetans actually talking to you, who knows)? Really, you'd understand if you went through a few sessions. And all your misunderstandings - the reasons you think Scientology is wrong - are a result of your pride in your own position, the extent to which Christianity faintly mirrors the real truth of Scientology, and how all your secret crimes (which we can all agree you have - it's guaranteed by the Bible, and most other books of religion) distort your thinking. Oh, and how all the psychologists have tried to stop Scientology and hurt its members. PS: don't go to a psychologist for help. Or your family.

That should all sound familiar. Most religions work about the same way. And how do you counter that? You can't directly - because the well is completely poisoned.

And it's the same from idealogues of every stripe and sort. According to someone who loves "Agile Programming", a failed Agile Programming project is the result of not being Agile enough. The opposite idealogue believes the project failed because the spec going in lacked details. Christianity not working for you? Doesn't make sense? You're not Christian enough, or else Jesus would be talking to you (or not, depending on denomination).

Why are you doubting? Because your doubt has pushed out faith. Cant' have faith if you doubt, can't get revelation without faith. You gotta get rid of that doubt man.

End result: you're wrong, we're right, shut up. And tell your friends.

But I suppose all this means I have a secret crime. You tell me, I wonder, is my secret crime a Christian secret crime, a Scientology secret crime, or a crime against Islam? So many things I'll never understand without changing my life first to be able to understand...

To me, the funny part is that she doesn't know the passage or understand what it means. What Jesus is getting at (according to a mainstream interpretation of this scripture) is that we won't be able to predict who will be saved based on the work they do, their associates, or likely anything else outward. If she actually knew the passage well, and knew its historical context (ie. why men would have slept in the same bed in that time), she could have answered him calmly and he would have looked silly if he tried to press the issue.

Knowing the historical context, there's no reason to think two men in a bed was significant - and if she'd stayed calm here it would have been easy to make this point. The genders were the same in service of the point that "among these two outwardly similar people, there are internal differences we can't see". But because she can't calmly refute his points, she just shinyblurries it up, spazzes out on him, and generally makes him look like the victor (even though, obviously, he was just having fun with her).

And, honestly, the passage could be taken as a rebuke to those who assume no gay men will be saved. Part of the point is that it won't work to guess whether a person will be saved based on what you can see. At the time, the likely distinction would be "Jews vs Gentiles" (and that was partly the message here: don't assume you're saved because you have the right lineage and hang with the right crowd) but thinking of it now as "gays vs straights" isn't a crazy extrapolation. In general, one of Jesus's big themes was tolerance - there's lots of what he says that could be taken as supportive of inclusiveness and acceptance of gay people, so it shouldn't surprise her to hear a passage that goes against their tactics.

But you can tell right from the start that she doesn't know her Bible - she doesn't even know what he's going to read and she's already (incorrectly!) gainsaying his attempt to provide context. She also straight up fails when she suggests that the men are in different beds (despite having just heard him read it). But I suppose if she had any sense or reason, she wouldn't be where she is.

I think you MAY be thinking of the mayfly, Retro. Me so punny.

At first glance I was inclined to agree with xxovercastxx, considering the positioning of the wings (something to consider though, they do not always have the appearance of being near-perfectly parallel to the body, sometimes sticking out at acute angles away from the point of attachment/thorax, which sorta looks like the one in the vid and may be easy to confuse with the dragon fly's wing arrangement when viewed from certain angles), BUT there are a couple of very un-dragonfly-like features here as well.

Most species of dragon flies have their compound eyes touching/fused at the top of the head, looking like one cohesive structure, while mayflies' eyes are placed more on the sides of the head and protrude outwards more, with a noticeable gap of forehead space in between them. Also, the base of the bottom pair of wings seems too skinny to be a dragon fly, where usually the bottom wings remain much broader for much longer, compared to the top pair as you get closer to thorax before finally tapering down to the connection point, though there may be exceptions in morphology from species to species.

I'm no entomologist though, just someone who enjoys watching these buggers go about their business (they're surprisingly tolerant of people and seem quite intelligent for insects, I'd say jumping spiders, Phidippus Audax specifically, are the only creepy crawlies around here that appear to be any smarter, more charming, gregarious than dragon/damsel flies).

I'm too torn either way to definitively call it. I did enjoy speculating about it quite needlessly though. Yay insomnia and Videosift!!

>> ^Asmo:

Just a complete stab in the dark here, but I'm guessing as the molecule chains are pulled taut, they provide outward pressure as they contract around the spindle, forcing other molecule chains up/down the spindle. As the base of the spindle is immersed in the liquid, there is already force pressing in from below as material is removed up the spindle, so the liquid goes the only way it can, up.


I'll have to make a batch to see what it's doing, but it sounds like it's "like" liquids that solidify with kinetic impacts (or as you said it more or less).

Just a complete stab in the dark here, but I'm guessing as the molecule chains are pulled taut, they provide outward pressure as they contract around the spindle, forcing other molecule chains up/down the spindle. As the base of the spindle is immersed in the liquid, there is already force pressing in from below as material is removed up the spindle, so the liquid goes the only way it can, up.