http://lyrics.wikia.com/Sage_Francis:The_Best_Of_Times

It's been a long and lonely trip but I'm glad that I took it because it was well worth it.
I got to read a couple books and do some research before I reached my verdict.
Never thought that I was perfect. Always thought that I had a purpose.
Used to wonder if I'd live to see my first kiss.

The most difficult thing I ever did was recite my own words at a service
Realizing the person I was addressing probably wasn't looking down from heaven.
Or cooking up something in hell's kitchen, trying to listen in or eaves drop from some another dimension.
It was self serving just like this is.

Conveniently religious on Easter Sunday and on Christmas.
The television went from being a babysitter to a mistress.
Technology made it easy for us to stay in touch while keeping a distance,
'til we just stayed distant and never touched. Now all we do is text too much.

I don't remember much from my youth. Maybe my memory is repressed.
Or I just spent too much time wondering if I'd live to have sex.
Fell in love for the first time in 4th grade but I didn't have the courage to talk to her.
In 8th grade I wrote her the note but I slipped it in someone else's locker.

Considered killing myself 'cause of that.
It was a big deal. It was a blown cover.
It was over for me. My goose was cooked.
Stick a fork in me. The jig is up.
I blew my chances, the rest is history, our future was torn asunder.
It became abundantly clear that I was only brought here to suffer.

At least I didn't include my name.
Thankfully I wrote the whole note in code
And it had 10 layers of scotch tape safety seal making it impossible to open.
Plus, it was set to self destruct.
Whoever read it probably died…laughing.
I wonder if they lived long enough to realize what happened.

A year later, I came to understand that wasn't love that I was feeling for her.
I had someone else to obsess over.
I was older. I was very mature.
I forged my time signature while practicing my parents autograph 'cause I was failing math.
Disconnected the phone when I thought the teacher would call my home.

I checked the mailbox twice a day at the end of a long dirt road.
Steamed open a couple envelopes like I was in private detective mode.
If you snoop around long enough for something in particular you're guaranteed to find it.
For better or worse that's how I learned that it's best to just keep some things private.

It was the best of times. It was the end of times.

It was the best of times. It was the end of times.
I was always on deck, I was next in line.
An only child with a pen and pad writing a list of things that I could never have.
The walls in my house were paper thin.
Every squabble seemed to get deafening.
If my memory serves me correctly I made it a point to void and forget some things.
Probably to keep from being embarrassed.
Never meant to upset or give grief to my parents.
Kept my secrets…hid my talents…
In my head, never under the mattress.

Therapy couldn't break me.
Never learned a word that would insure safety.
So I spoke softly and I tip toed often.
The door to my room was like a big old coffin.
The way that it creeked when I closed it shut.
Anxieties peaked when it opened up.
As if everything that I was thinking would be exposed.
I still sleep fully clothed.

It was the best of times.

It was beautiful.
It was brutal.
It was cruel.
It was business as usual.

Heaven. It was hell.
Used to wonder if I'd live to see 12.

When I did I figured that I was immortal.
Loved to dance but couldn't make it to the formal.
Couldn't bear watching my imaginary girlfriend
Bust a move with any other dudes.

Tone Loc was talking bout a "Wild Thang"
But I was still caught up in some child thangs.
Scared of a God who couldn't spare the rod.
It was clearly a brimstone and fire thang.

Pyromaniac. Kleptomaniac.
Couldn't explain my desire to steal that fire.
Now I add it to my rider.
Like "Please oh please don't throw me in that patch of brier!"

It was the best of times. It was the end of times.

The school counselor was clueless 'cause I never skipped classes.
Perfect attendance. Imperfect accent.
Speech impediment they could never really fix
And I faked bad eyesight so I could wear glasses.

Considered doing something that would cripple me.
I wanted a wheelchair. I wanted the sympathy.
I wanted straight teeth so then came braces.
4 years of head gear helped me change faces.

It was the best of times. It was the end of times.

Now I wonder if I'll live to see marriage.
Wonder if I'll live long enough to have kids.
Wonder if I'll live to see my kids have kids.
If I do I'm gonna tell 'em how it is.

"Don't listen when they tell you that these are your best years.
Don't let anybody protect your ears.
It's best that you hear what they don't want you to hear.
It's better to have pressure from peers than not have peers.
Beer won't give you chest hair. Spicy food won't make it curl.
When you think you've got it all figured out and then everything collapses…
Trust me, kid…it's not the end of the world."

No offense intended, but that's exactly where the denier label is coming from. Scientists are saying exactly what I just said, with a high degree of certainty.

I'm not actually sure which part of my compound assertion you're disagreeing with, since the two statements you concede are established lead you pretty much right to it.

I guess the final statement needed would be "Even small rises in temperature lead to significant changes in the planet's climate." But that's established science too.

As for "time to panic" I must've missed where anyone said that. My main cause for concern is that there's still a ton of BS, FUD, and misinformation out there on this topic. So much so that's starting to make me think it is "time to panic" -- not about the CO2 issue per se, but about our civilization's ability to course-correct when we discover that we're engaged in self-destructive behavior on a massive scale.

>> ^bcglorf:

As to the point:
Do you agree that man-made CO2 emissions are causing significant changes to the planet's climate?
I would not declare that, I would also argue that the basic scientific research out there doesn't show this with high certainty.
Scientific research(peer reviewed journals) DO show that mankind is emitting significant levels of CO2.
Scientific research(peer reviewed journals) DO show without question that rising CO2 will raise temperature.
The correlation of those two though does not lead straight to your conclusion, as I've gone into at length up thread. My biggest issue is simply to insist that it is not 'time to panic', it is time to look harder and for largely unrelated reasons to get off of oil and coal asap.

I'll go with Doc. Too much explaining/talking.

**this post will self destruct in 24 hours**

@xxovercastxx

His name and signature (or a facsimile of it) were on the newsletters. I've never seen RP as flustered as when he's trying to answer questions about these newsletters. Oh, and he's a conspiracy nut, too. The messiah has fallen, which now leaves exactly as many viable Republican candidates as there were before all of this newsletter business... zero.

Watching the Republican candidates self-destruct and eat their own is like watching D-listers go at it on Survivor: DC. You tune in for the entertainment value. You may even have a favorite, but it's chaos and bloodshed you're really hoping to see.

>> ^grinter:

Taking control of the drone sounds pretty unlikely.. but I wonder if there is a kernel of truth to this. Maybe they just jammed it's guidance signal, autopilot kicked in, and when it ran out of fuel it glided to a, relatively, gentle landing?


I would take a wild guess that those things are designed to go kaboom if there is even the slightest hint of malfunction (malfunction meaning ANY undesired event). The interesting part was the fact that the CIA lead on that perhaps that exact sequence of events didn't quite occur correctly maybe.

Also yes, that is a fake airplane... The drones are MUCH bigger than that piece of crap, paper-mâché high school project. For example this is a bomber drone that is brand new, it's 65 to a possible 90 feet across (BTW, in the video you can see that they label it as the RQ-170, which is what I linked to)... Like I said it's a bomber, it needs to be pretty big. So unless the CIA has a stealth version that is 3/4 the size of the bomber, they are full of crap. I think what the CIA was worried about is maybe that the entirety of the drone wasn't destroyed leaving possible tidbits behind like it's stealth mesh and other composites to be reverse engineered--I think TDS had a bit on this a few days ago.

-Second Part
I did look around some more and there are some US officials taking this very seriously, so maybe they do in fact have their 45~ft drone. If you read at the bottom of the RQ-170 on Wikipedia (I linked it above), it has been updated with much more current information. So it may indeed be a small coup for the Iranian Military indirectly, as it seems to be a navigational flight error. Which asks the question: where the hell is it's self-destruction switch; are they really that stupid?

>> ^NetRunner:

To anyone who got in my face for implying that liberals are less susceptible to groupthink than conservatives, here's exactly what I was talking about, in spades.
First you have the obviously fractious nature of the movement itself that Jon's playing off of. That happens all too often in liberal political activism, just look at how divided and nasty liberals got over health care.
But the deeper problem is that this is what Jon did with it -- make disharmony and fractiousness look like some sort of giant, soul-rending hypocrisy. To have a liberal like Jon Stewart going out and trumpeting the idea that the Occupy movement is both disorganized and deeply hypocritical is the kind of thing only the left does to itself. You don't see anyone on the right going out and doing a hit job like this on the Tea Party, ever.
I'm especially mad that this is essentially all he had to say in response to the huge police action that went down at OWS just the other day -- great shame the movement got cut short by jackbooted thugs, but don't worry, it was meaningless and not going anywhere anyways.
I love you Jon, but for fuck's sake, can't you find some way to dial the self-destructive BS back a bit?


Even worse--just before this bit he declared that the Occupy Movement is over. I've been watching Jon's reporting on Occupy closely because I suspected he didn't support the movement. He's all for change--but this inconvenienced him and some of his rich friends. First the Rally to Restore Complacency--now this.

It's not over Jon. He's on my shit list now. He's been dismissive since day one. Colbert is a supporter--Jon is not.

To anyone who got in my face for implying that liberals are less susceptible to groupthink than conservatives, here's exactly what I was talking about, in spades.

First you have the obviously fractious nature of the movement itself that Jon's playing off of. That happens all too often in liberal political activism, just look at how divided and nasty liberals got over health care.

But the deeper problem is that this is what Jon did with it -- make disharmony and fractiousness look like some sort of giant, soul-rending hypocrisy. To have a liberal like Jon Stewart going out and trumpeting the idea that the Occupy movement is both disorganized and deeply hypocritical is the kind of thing only the left does to itself. You don't see anyone on the right going out and doing a hit job like this on the Tea Party, ever.

I'm especially mad that this is essentially all he had to say in response to the huge police action that went down at OWS just the other day -- great shame the movement got cut short by jackbooted thugs, but don't worry, it was meaningless and not going anywhere anyways.

I love you Jon, but for fuck's sake, can't you find some way to dial the self-destructive BS back a bit?

Just a heads-up, but if you quote someone they get an email telling them what you wrote instantly. So if you go back and edit your comment (as you did in this case) I still get to read your original remarks. Something to consider before hitting the submit button next time, if you didn't realize that. I'll respond to your original post:

Yeah, you used your sad little line once already. I know you think it makes you sound smart, but it just makes you seem like a tool. Care to actually engage in a debate with facts and opinions?

Yes, I would very much like to engage in a debate with facts and...opinions (can you have a debate without opinions)?

Regardless, I would also like to engage in a debate where people avoid logical fallacies rather than zealously pursuing them (for instance, that pesky ad hominem that so many people on the Sift have a hard time avoiding). And unfortunately I've learned that kind of debate just doesn't happen here often enough, which is why (as I said in my original post) I've moved on to debating on other forums where people are more interested in reasonable discussion than comment upvotes or making themselves feel clever by insulting others.

By the way, just in case you still don't understand the point of my original post, I suggest you read my answer to hpqp in which I spell it out clearly.

Or you can keep insulting me and continue proving my point.

Also, since you asked so nicely, here are some facts for you:

-- Hitchens in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule" (Vanity Fair, March issue)
-- In the same article, he mentions that some people need alcohol to avoid self-destructing even more quickly... self-referential? Who knows.
-- According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans moderate drinking is defined as no more than two drinks a day. Yet according to his own auto-biography Hitchens was drinking far in excess of that, including half a bottle of red wine (no less) at lunch alone in addition to his other drinks throughout the day.
-- As per hpqp's quote, he knew it was bad for him but continued to drink anyways... right up until the cancer. In fact I could find no information stating that he has given up drinking despite the cancer.

Of course, Hitchens denies that he's an alcoholic... but so do most alcoholics so I don't give that much credence.

In the end, though, whether or not he is an alcoholic is actually a moot point. The excessive drinking (if you prefer that term) has contributed to his cancer and an early grave. Thus it strikes me (and Shinyblurry) as peculiar to honor him with a toast. You disagree and that is your right. But instead of stating your case, you (and to be fair, a lot of others) came out flaming those who disagreed with you. And that is how we ended up having this conversation.

(P.S. I am indeed a tool. But I am a tool who carefully considers what his opponents say and can argue his point without having to insult the opposing side.)

In reply to this comment by ChaosEngine:
Wow, what an original and clever response.

In reply to this comment by SDGundamX:
Upvoted for both missing the point and proving it at the very same time.

In reply to this comment by ChaosEngine:
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/SDGundamX" title="member since March 2nd, 2007" class="profilelink">SDGundamX, Hitchens was not an alcoholic. It is possible to enjoy a few drinks without being an alcoholic.

As for your response to @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://fletch.videosift.com" title="member since August 9th, 2006" class="profilelink"><strong style="color:#FF4500">Fletch, I fail to see how he either missed or proved your point. All I can see is that he refuted your bullshit with facts and logic. But I guess those aren't really popular with your ilk.

@Yogi and you're someone who's so caught up in their own self-righteous superiority they don't even listen to what people they're talking to are actually saying.

I bump heads with people here because I find it to be a great way to expand my horizons, and get my views challenged. I really appreciate it when people can show me a flaw in my thinking.

You're not doing that. You're taking an anti-equivalency argument from me, and pretending it's an assertion that Democrats can do no wrong. You're not understanding me if that's what you think I'm saying.

You're taking my statement that there are substantive differences between the parties, which is largely based on economic policy differences, and insisting I answer your every criticism about Democratic foreign policy. You seem to think the burden of proof is on me, and not you.

And I'm obviously making you angry by refusing to just accept your assertion that Clinton = W. Bush because he didn't fight to undo the economic sanctions put in place during H.W Bush's presidency, and that W. Bush's decision to engage us in direct warfare in Iraq is also equivalent to Clinton's economic sanctions. Hell, you're even calling me names over it, rather than just making a case for why I shouldn't be skeptical about such claims of moral equivalency.

I don't really have any personal beef with you. I have a beef with people going around and trying to equate Democrats and Republicans, because it's trivially, obviously not true. It's a really, really self-destructive little meme, too. If someone were to convince me that was actually true, and that we have absolutely zero say in things, I'd be willing to get behind some rather radical solutions to the problem, including armed revolution!

I admit, I was the first one between us to be disrespectful, but that's just because I've spent the last week having this exact same argument with several other people here, and I'm sorta fed up with it. I apologize for that, but seriously, you've gotta admit that you can't prove the two parties are indistinguishable, at least not without engaging in a lot of intellectual dishonesty!

>> ^chilaxe:

"In other words, life isn't fair."
Right, that's what I'm arguing. But if Herman Cain was trained to think along the lines of your comment, he'd still be like all the kids he played with growing up: poor, uneducated, and blaming other people and refusing to adopt basic success strategies.

This is also why I'm saying "learn more about liberalism" -- you're doubling down on the idea that baked into my entire spiel above was some sort of resentment-induced self-destructive behavior.

Conservatives fall prey to that pretty easily, IMO. Most lash out at liberals in a pretty accusatory tone, saying their entire lives are being destroyed by taxes, regulation, the national debt and the Fed printing money. They like to talk about how rich they'd be, if only it weren't for taxes, or how it's just not worth it for them to work any harder, because taxes are higher on rich people. They say that any day now they might just "go Galt" and withhold their productivity to punish the creeping socialism that's invading their lives. They say unions are killing factories, immigrants are stealing their jobs, and the minimum wage is why people can't find work. It's not that they're not as creative as that liberal arts major, it's not that they're not as industrious as that Mexican immigrant, it's not that they should've paid more attention in class, it's liberals, immigrants, and government are to blame for all my problems in life.

What you're talking about isn't liberal, it's human nature. People generally wanna blame someone or something else for their problems, whether they're right or not.

What I mean by "life isn't fair" is that people are not always wrong when they feel that way. Some people are right to feel that way.

Just not the people whose biggest concern in life is a millionaire's surtax.

>> ^chilaxe:
Give poor disadvantaged people a break... encourage them to become success-oriented. The first step would be sincerely reading many business books.

Giving poor and disadvantaged people a break is the liberal position. Do what we can to equalize income, and improve the quality and pay of jobs at the bottom of the payscale.

Also, a free quality education, that teaches them not just facts and figures, but teaches them why what they're learning is important.

>> ^chilaxe:
On genes, I'm confused... is liberalism arguing that genetics substantially influence diversity in economic outcomes even to the point of diversity in the evolutionary history of ethnic groups, or is liberalism arguing what most liberal academics argue: we don't care if it's true and we'll break your faith in academia and liberal intellectualism by calling you the worst names in the language.

What, nigger? Oh, you must mean racist.

Let me try and explain. I'm saying liberals think life isn't fair. The real next step to being a liberal is to say "but it should be made as fair as humanly possible."

You believe racism still exists, right? Specifically, racial prejudice, conscious or unconscious, subtle and gross -- we still have that, right? And you also agree that that prejudice against your ethnicity will negatively impact the quality and number of opportunities made to you, right? You also agree that ethnicity isn't something you choose, or can change if you want to, right?

In a fair society, race shouldn't factor into the type and quality of opportunities people have in life. So for fairness's sake, we should try to discourage people from holding racial prejudice, because it's not fair to deny people an opportunity on the basis of their skin color.

In a market-driven society like ours, this means you should be hiring people based solely on their ability to do the job, not some unrelated characteristic (white, black, man, woman, gay, straight, etc.).

So the problem here is that while it's possible to make some sort of scientific observations about a link between ethnicity and intellectual capability, it's not really a question we should be terribly interested in as a society. And if someone does come up with some sort of empirical analysis validating one of those prejudices we're fighting against, it's morally wrong to then hand that kind of loaded gun over to the people who want to use that to justify denying opportunities to people on the basis of race.

In other words, that kind of study is rightfully controversial. The problem isn't the study itself, per se, it's how the wider world will use it. Racists will latch onto it as justification for their prejudices, just like they might cling to quotes from Bill Cosby.

None of that is a concern about the study of human genetics itself, it's a concern about the ways in which society might use that information.

Sorry to bust your bubble, but infinite growth is simply not possible, nor is it desirable. For economic growth you need demographic growth (just look at how EU keeps sucking in immigrants to counterbalance the non-renewing fertility rate... it's definitely not out of kindness of heart). More people = more mouths to feed, but also exchanging cultivated land for inhabited land. Moreover, even if we manage to have 100% renewable power, much of the material we use (metals, gases, etc) are of a finite nature and rapidly depleting. Recycling is great, but can never be 100% effective, and even if it could, there are elements (think helium) that once they're gone they're gone, basta.

In the long run, we can only have a sustainable society if the growth imperative is scratched out of our mentality.

>> ^artician:

>> ^hpqp:
As long as our society is built around the imperative of growth (economic, demographic), we will continue to irretrievably destroy ourselves. The equation is simple: infinite possibility for growth - finite resources = self-destruction.

The thing is, renewable resources = infinite resources. I really believe infinite possibility for growth can be sustained, but what we have here is irresponsible growth. It's not growth as much as a viral consumption.
I think the next step is to start getting some names. Company names, shareholder names, CEO names. Find the people responsible for making these decisions, and education or kill them. Wait... what?
Anyway, this will never stop unless you confront individuals directly. It's very rare that indirect opposition (pacifist movements, ghandi/king jr. civil rights) works. So rare that I've given up on it for such dire circumstances.
Dear America: still feeling all that white guilt from the complete genocide of several hundred thousand indigenous natives on the norther continent? Well it's still happening right now. Now's your chance to make up for it.

>> ^hpqp:

As long as our society is built around the imperative of growth (economic, demographic), we will continue to irretrievably destroy ourselves. The equation is simple: infinite possibility for growth - finite resources = self-destruction.


The thing is, renewable resources = infinite resources. I really believe infinite possibility for growth can be sustained, but what we have here is irresponsible growth. It's not growth as much as a viral consumption.

I think the next step is to start getting some names. Company names, shareholder names, CEO names. Find the people responsible for making these decisions, and education or kill them. Wait... what?
Anyway, this will never stop unless you confront individuals directly. It's very rare that indirect opposition (pacifist movements, ghandi/king jr. civil rights) works. So rare that I've given up on it for such dire circumstances.

Dear America: still feeling all that white guilt from the complete genocide of several hundred thousand indigenous natives on the norther continent? Well it's still happening right now. Now's your chance to make up for it.

As long as our society is built around the imperative of growth (economic, demographic), we will continue to irretrievably destroy ourselves. The equation is simple: infinite possibility for growth - finite resources = self-destruction.

How many false arguments can one put in a post?

Protecting individual sovereignty is always the best solution and like I previously eluded to, sacrificing individual sovereignty to exist as a society is not only delusional thinking, but self-destructive.