@Gratefulmom

People who disagree with science generally don't come out so well in the end--see anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, etc. I'd change my mind about these kindergartens if there were solid science behind them.

And if you look into it, you'll see there is very little good science to support this style of kindergarten (i.e. the sample sizes are small, no case studies or longitudinal studies, studies rely heavily on self-reporting of either parents and children, etc.) whereas there is a lot of well done research that shows the lifelong benefits of "traditional" pre-schooling (i.e. longitudinal studies that show demonstrable effects even after controlling for external factors).

I would love to see a well thought out longitudinal study that compares how the outdoor kindergarteners fair against those from traditional classrooms but unfortunately the only research I could find compared the outdoor kids to kids who had never been to kindergarten at all.

And of course comparing kids who went to any sort of kindergarten to kids who haven't is going to favor the kindergarten kids if you're looking at things like social skills, ability to take direction from adults, etc. (which is exactly what the studies done on the outdoor kindergartens do).

So it's not about disagreeing with you so much as it is not finding any evidence that this style of pre-school is better than going to a traditional preschool that includes a healthy amount of outdoor playtime (at least 1 to 2 hours a day if not more).

If anyone is interested, the bear sound effects you've been talking about come from the Series 6000 sound effects collection.

I've recognized common sound effects going back as far as the 80's, so in the early 2000's I got determined to hunt a few of them down and find out why they were so pervasive.
Those of you recognizing the bear here would be equally familiar with the screeching falcon and "dragon" roar (griffins/dragons from WC2, along with every other dragon/hawk sfx in most games everywhere), the sci-fi power-door, and the magic/fireball explosion (doom, pretty much all of doom came from this effects CD).

I am really, really tempted to make a Series6000 tribute video. I own the Series 6000 collection myself (You can get it for ~$1000 online now a days), and use it in nearly every project.

For now, I've sifted the original sample video the company uses for their promotional stuff, but I don't know if qualifies as *Related=http://videosift.com/video/All-Hail-The-General-Sound-Effects-Library-Series-6000

I believe that you are correct, and Carr was not actually fined or otherwise legally penalized for his remarks.

However, it *was* a possibility that he would be, according to the first line in the article I linked to in my first post in this thread:
"Jimmy Carr could face sanctions for making a joke about dwarves during an appearance on BBC1’s The One Show."

I believe that I read other news articles that suggested that was a possibility at the time it happened, but I can't find anything with a real quick search now.

Going outside of the scope of that single incident, I definitely have seen quite a few reports of things that I would consider to be fairly trivial incidents like this being looked at by the UK government as "hate speech" and therefore potentially subject to "fines, imprisonment, or both" (according to that wikipedia article).

Samples from a quick search include a politician being arrested for quoting a passage about Islam from a book by Winston Churchill, a young man who was jailed for 12 weeks because of "some offensive Facebook posts making derogatory comments about a missing child" (it doesn't say what the posts were exactly; I am not saying I would defend his posts but I don't think anyone should go to jail for being an idiot and running their mouth on the internet), and another young man who was fined for saying that "all soldiers should die and go to hell". Plenty more incidents beyond those as well, it seems.

So while Jimmy Carr didn't end up actually facing any legal repercussions for his joke, I think it is not far fetched at all to suggest that he might have (and there seems to be some evidence that legal repercussions enacted by the government were being considered in that particular incident).

That is what seems crazy / wrong to me. That is NOT freedom of speech; it is freedom of benign speech, with an increasingly narrow view of what speech is benign.

I'm 100% OK with their being "consequences" for Jimmy Carr for his joke. But the government shouldn't be involved in that (and again, to be fair they DID end up staying out of it in that case). The consequences that I think are fine include:

* Ofcom or the BBC passing on some/all of any fines that the government levels against them on to Carr (ie., IF they get fined for breaking broadcast decency standards, make Carr foot the some or all of the bill for that).

* Ofcom or the BBC electing not to invite Carr to appear on any more programs if they are concerned about preventing fines / protecting their image / whatever. They are a business, they gotta look out for themselves.

* Individual people who were offended by Carr's joke boycotting programs that he appears on, refusing to pay to attend his live performances, etc. Obviously. If you don't like what he has to say, you are are of course not obliged to continue to listen to him.

Anything beyond those consequences is going too far in a society that claims it is democratic and free, in my opinion.

The bit about pop culture portraying New Yorkers as criminals, with the "stigma" leading some to intentionally lose their accents, that was pretty lame for an otherwise intelligent video. It gets presented as a researched fact when it sounds more like a ridiculous theory.

From my experience, current generations weaned on those movies shown in the clip would be more inclined to adopt that accent as just another affectation, tattoo, piercing, meme, avatar, email signature, sampling, bumper sticker.

And the bit about the accent losing favor after WWII, "as Americans were focused on their own identity, rather than maintaining ties to England". Sounds like something a college freshman would write at the last minute to fill out a 1000 word essay.

Ya, I never understood why, if they won't eat meat, why they work so hard to make it look, taste, and smell like meat.

A store was serving non-meat CRAB samples. boasting "that there was no meat in the crab" -- and I declined the offered samples saying, "Then what's the point?"

Isn't there some saying... like "don't use your own stash", or "dealers don't sample from their own supply", or something? Well, I can't remember it and obviously neither could these two!

Some of those aren't actually samples.

Just reusing a melody or lyric isn't necessarily a sample.

Didn't watch the video, but did skim the comments... Christ...

First off, moving to Canada and any other decent first world nation be it New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Iceland, Netherlands, Canada etc... not as easy as just packing up and moving. You need a very narrow set of skills to move to those countries. We looked into all this countries, and all of their entry requirements exceeded what we had to offer them. People always say if you don't like it leave, but that ignores several facts. It isn't we don't like it, we just think it can be improved, change isn't bad. Humanity isn't bad. Caring for those less fortunate isn't bad. Guaranteeing everyone a minimum level of affordable health care isn't bad. Working to insure that all workers get a living wage (the way we used to have before the employers/owners started getting greedy and redistributing more wealth to themselves), isn't a bad goal, in fact it's a very good thing. The famed clip from the Newsroom's first episode when he goes on about how America isn't great anymore but it used to be...

Of course the whole concept of American exceptionalism, or any nation exceptionalism is flawed. We are all humans on this planet. Being American doesn't make you superior to somebody born in China or Mexico, Ethiopia, Syria or anywhere else. Location of birth is an accident of timing... and if it is divine intervention by God that placed you here instead of Ethiopia where you may have starved to death with an inflated malnourished belly despite all your prayers, then God is an ass and not worth serving. So if he's not an ass, then it is pure accident that you are here and not there. To think oneself superior and better than somebody in another nation because of their location of birth, and the religion that comes with that location, is insanity. And I draw that all ways. The Muslims who despise Christianity for not being the true faith, and Christians who despise Islam for not being the true faith. You are your faith by accident of birth, be it location and/or parentage etc... all of which is getting away from the point. Which is simply that to say that Chinese worker doesn't deserve a job manufacturing something that you think you should be building is asinine and not respectful of their humanity and a complete lack of any sort of empathy. Christ, I have Aspergers and I have more empathy in my farts than the entire Tea Party Christian Right.

Yes we need to respect the individual, but "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"... and that quote is in context and not just a cherry pick sample. If it benefits just one and damages the many, then it is not a good thing. Most every faith in the world has some variation of the Golden Rule, to treat others the way you want others (not that specific person, but people as a general whole) to treat you. Christianity's Christ went further and said the greatest commandment was love, to show love to one another. Greed and selfishness is not love. Collectivism has many faults as well, but it isn't tyranny, and is certainly better for society as a whole in the long run than unrestrained greed motivated individualism. Like Pink Floyd's song, On the Turning Away, says, we are all "just a world we all must share". We can't turn away from the coldness inside towards others. We need to lift all of humanity up. Perhaps showing the Muslims love instead of hate and bigotry would convince them that perhaps Christianity isn't the enemy, that perhaps it is the answer, but showing them hate, and bigotry... and denying refugees trying to flee a horrible civil war is bigotry and hatred, and the fact that a rather disturbingly large percentage of the right can't see that isn't bigotry and hatred is scary beyond measure. I again find it amazing that people could lack that much empathy without a neurological disorder.

To invade others, tell them how to live their lives, to force democracy on them if they aren't ready, to insult them and belittle their faith, and all that isn't world building. It isn't reaching out with empathy. It's hate. It's bigotry and as noted by artician, it's what helps drive people to fly into buildings. They know that they know that their faith is the right one, and the lack of empathy to see that people of the Muslim faith have just as much faith in their religion as Christians have in theirs, that they have the same amount of knowledge and comfort from god that they are the correct faith, is what drives extremism.

And oh my god the guns. Guns would have saved the Jews. American mainland can't be invaded because too many people own guns... ask the Branch Davidians how well having not only military grade weapons but also training on how to use them worked for them against a slightly militarized police force, let alone an actual military. Yes, it would be incredibly hard, and resistance would probably eventually wear any invading force down the way the Taliban wore the Soviets down, or the Viet Cong did against the US Military might. So perhaps that can be counted as a victory, but would be long fought. Look, I support gun ownership. All I really call for is 1) allowing the CDC get back to it's job of collecting the data and finding out what's really going on with gun violence, and 2) closing the gun show loophole unless the CDC's investigation shows that it has zero effect, 3) you have to have a legal ID to own a gun and can't be on the no fly list, 4) the existing background checks kept the same, but also add a drug test, the right wants drug tests for welfare, then we should be testing for gun owenrship too. (I see little reason for "assault weapons" but aside from perhaps having perhaps a slightly better background check, I don't know if a ban yet needs to be called for, but I'm in the middle here.) Once we have have better data points from the CDC then we can really tackle the issue of gun violence. Yes, it will take years to get those answers, but I find it insane that the Republicans refuse to allow the investigation to go on, which says to me that they are afraid of what the data will show.

Unless you are nearly a pure Native American, then you are a refugee to the US.

The primary problem here and around the world is poverty and lack of proper education. This drives people to crime and extremism in religion which makes them susceptible to acting out terrorist acts, be it in the name of Allah (as is the public perceived norm) or Christ (ala the Planed Parenthood terrorist attack, the 2011 Norway attacks, etc). We need to address the growing income and wealth gaps. The way to doing that isn't by giving those at the top even more tax breaks and losing regulations (which is funny thing to complain about, too many regulations here in the US, meanwhile the same people complain about the low quality Chinese goods that aren't safe due to low regulations and poor labor conditions etc). We need to push education, and proper STEM programs, not deflated science trying to force Creationism in via so called "Intelligent Design" or "teaching the controversy" stick to the actual science. Don't object to the "new math" if it's teaching better fundamentals of understanding what the numbers are actually doing even if it doesn't teach the shortcuts we were taught... and lots of the stuff people complain about is just the fact we don't skip right to the shortcut that works. Yes, it works, but it helps if they better understand the underlying fundamentals of the numbers and the actual math. Again, change isn't a bad thing, to object just because you don't understand or don't like it compared to the simplified shortcut we all learned doesn't make it bad. Reading also needs pushed, and understanding of logical fallacies and logical and faulty thinking.

I believe that a post scarcity world is impossible due to the nature of humanity. There are far too many greedy people that will never want the world to get to that point. However, that should be the noble goal. Post scarcity society has many issues, but perhaps by the time we actually got there we'd be able to solve them.

TLDR: Basically it all comes down to empathy. To view everything as the others view it. I get the fear and panic and all that the right has, and not just because I once upon a time was a right wing evangelical Christian who called those who received food stamps lazy bums, who said that Democrats and the liberals just wanted to keep the poor trapped so they would always need help. Yes, I was there and that helps, but I can still empathize with them without that past. I've never been a Muslim raised in a nation dominated by Islam, but I can still empathize with the way they see what the US is doing to them, the way they have to see people like Donald Trump and the scary amount of Americans that support him. It's easy to see why some are driven to extremism. I can empathize with that Mexican who just wants a better life and knows that Mexico can't give it to him so he has to risk it all to try and immigrate to the US. I can empathize with the Chinese worker who has been given an opportunity to build something, to escape the poverty... for while perhaps still poverty, less poverty than before, and I'm thankful that I got that opportunity, and I'm sorry that somebody in the US doesn't get to do it, but I'm a human too. Empathy. Learn it. It can be learned, neurological disorder or not.

The Undisputed Truth's version of this song is fucking intense. If you're familiar with UNKLE's "Eye for an Eye", that's where the "Run, run, run, but you still can't hide" sample in the song comes from.

Obviously different industry, but I have to occasionally do "art tests" in my field when I'm starting work for a new client or studio. These usually involve about a weekend-ish worth of unpaid work to produce a sample of art that's in the style and level of quality they need.
Architects have similar hoops, where they scramble, unpaid, to beat out competition for the lowest bid of work, so that scenario doesn't exactly belong here. I watched the whole thing because it was mildly interesting to see what the point was, but I didn't get anything out of it when it was over. (Other than "wtf is zulu alpha kilo?")

So...I go to John Lewis if I'm an old man who wants to look at little girls through a telescope?


The Man in the Moon had silver shoon
And his beard was of silver thread;
He was girt with pure gold and inaureoled
With gold about his head.
Clad in silken robe in his great white globe
He opened an ivory door
With a crystal key, and in secrecy
He stole o'er a shadowy floor;

Down a filigree stair of spidery hair
He slipped in gleaming haste,
And laughing with glee to be merry and free
He swiftly earthward raced.
He was tired of his pearls and diamond twirls;
Of his pallid minaret
Dizzy and white at its lunar height
In a world of silver set;

And adventured this peril for ruby and beryl
And emerald and sapphire,
And all lustrous gems for new diadems,
Or to blazon his pale attire.
He was lonely too with nothing to do
But to stare at the golden world,
Or to strain at the hum that would distantly come
As it gaily past him whirled;

And at plenilune in his argent moon
He had wearily longed for Fire-
Not the limpid lights of wan selenites,
But a red terrestrial pyre
With impurpurate glows of crimson and rose
And leaping orange tongue;
For great seas of blues and the passionate hues
When a dancing dawn is young;

For the meadowy ways like chrysophrase
By winding Yare and Nen.
How he longed for the mirth of the populous Earth
And the sanguine blood of men;
And coveted song and laughter long
And viands hot and wine,
Eating pearly cakes of light snowflakes
And drinking thin moonshine.

He twinkled his feet as he thought of the meat,
Of the punch and the peppery brew,
Till he tripped unaware on his slanting stair,
And fell like meteors do;
As the whickering sparks in splashing arcs
Of stars blown down like rain
From his laddery path took a foaming bath
In the ocean of Almain;

And began to think, lest he melt and stink,
What in the moon to do,
When a Yarmouth boat found him far afloat,
To the mazement of the crew
Caught in their net all shimmering wet
In a phosphorescent sheen
Of bluey whites and opal lights
And delicate liquid green

With the morning fish — 'twas his regal wish —
They packed him to Norwich town,
To get warm on gin in a Norfolk inn,
And dry his watery gown.
Though St. Peter's knell waked many a bell
In the city's ringing towers
To shout the news of his lunatic cruise
In the early morning hours,

No hearths were laid, not a breakfast made,
And no one would sell him gems;
He found ashes for fire, and his gay desire
For choruses and brave anthems
Met snores instead with all Norfolk abed,
And his round heart nearly broke,
More empty and cold than above of old,
Till he bartered his fairy cloak

With a half waked cook for a kitchen nook,
And his belt of gold for a smile,
And a priceless jewel for a bowl of gruel,
A sample cold and vile
Of the proud plum porridge of Anglian Norwich —
He arrived much too soon
For unusual guests on adventurous quests
From the Mountains of the Moon.

Well, I like all the classics like early Megaman, Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda, Hitoshi Sakimoto, anything from Falcom (Y's, Xanadu, etc).
There are some truly oddball compositions out there that are dear to me, like a lot of the work of Zuntata, which was an in-house band for Taito in the 90's. Similarly, a lot of the weird, sample-based music from the Amiga-era, from people like Chris Huelsbeck, Dave Wittaker and Rob Hubbard.
In recent years, from Japan I've really gotten into anything that Yoko Shimomura has done, and Michiru Yamane upended/revitalized some of the later Castlevania's music in the best way possible.
I will always go to Koichi Sugiyama's Dragon Quest music whenever I want to turn someone on to truly beautiful game compositions (chills), or just relax. Also Matt Uelmen's music for Diablo 2 and Torchlight games also veers toward more contemporary genre's, but is atmospheric, masterful and provides a really well-done alternative sound for what we usually get in interactive media.
Some super strange stuff that just sticks out as not belonging anywhere else: Katamari Damacy's OST, the VibRibbon soundtrack, the Neverhood soundtrack by Terry Taylor, the hidden gem that is the "Moon: Remix RPG Adventure" soundtrack (seriously a great one; check it out).
I have a lot of game music and it's my primary soundtrack while I work.

i'll sample it and create a mash-up with a Police album - "Reggatta de Bleu"

this needs a remix, perfect sample... I'll get to work

That could become an awesome sample for a song.