"Alot of people work really really hard for their dreams. But it's not meant for everybody.."

Yeah..

Says the abnormally famous and wealthy 20-year old..

>> ^Deano:

Does anyone stop to think why the hell are we staring at flags like they're amazingly important and significant. I'm beginning to feel abnormal seeing the number of wide-eyed flag-waving Brits on the tv. They really buy into this nationalistic crap.
Makes a change from all the wide-eyed flag-waving nationalistic Americans that saturate the media the rest of the time.

>> ^Deano:

Does anyone stop to think why the hell are we staring at flags like they're amazingly important and significant. I'm beginning to feel abnormal seeing the number of wide-eyed flag-waving Brits on the tv. They really buy into this nationalistic crap.


The reason to wave a flag is to support your "team" at the olympics, and perhaps for the home country to show the athletes how welcoming and encouraging we are towards their efforts. We're there, we're making noise, we're helping people get to events. Foreign friends are telling me "You're welcoming and friendly even if you don't know the answer." This is the most british i've seen britain in years and i'm loving it.

We're a small country and we're 3rd in the tables and top based on relative size. That's something to be pleased about and we've not had much to be pleased about recently. We also come from independant countries, and that makes us even smaller and more divided so when we wave a british flag, sometimes it's to show that we've come together and we're there to support each other.

I see people chatting to each other about the olympics in the street, and why's that a bad thing? Anything that brings us closer together has got to be good. I want people to take pride in this country because i want it to stop being a shit hole.

>> ^Deano:

Does anyone stop to think why the hell are we staring at flags like they're amazingly important and significant. I'm beginning to feel abnormal seeing the number of wide-eyed flag-waving Brits on the tv. They really buy into this nationalistic crap.


So, in your opinion there should be no national boundaries and no national teams? We should be just a huge dispassionate group, representing nothing but ourselves? Your comment makes you sound as if you have no loyalty, affinity, or pride for the country where you were raised. Very sad

>> ^legacy0100:

He gives several different examples, one including about the chimpanzees in tight confined space. I find his claims very hard to believe. Chimps get very frustrated and show abnormal, anti-social behavior when they are in a tight confined space for a long period of time. Their hairs fall out, they bite their own knuckles or even each other. They show aggression to inexperienced moms and to their babies. It could be that Dr. de Waal may be omitting some factors in here. The chimps he is referring to may be from a zoo where they are put in small confined space when it's time to goto sleep, but then are let out to a bigger enclosure where they can run and play. This may be a bad example, but we don't really know because he doesn't reveal the source of his data. Perhaps his research did confine the chimps to a tight space all throughout the experiment. If so, then the duration of dwelling in tight enclosure is a big factor, but he didn't cite anything about that either.
Dude, the guy is a primatologist. He studies primates for a living. I think he knows more about primates than you do.


Also, he's talking about "crowded spaces", not solitary confinement.

>> ^Deano:

Does anyone stop to think why the hell are we staring at flags like they're amazingly important and significant. I'm beginning to feel abnormal seeing the number of wide-eyed flag-waving Brits on the tv. They really buy into this nationalistic crap.


Look, you can go the pessimistic route and say that the games are just the Colosseum all over again, placating the masses by entertaining them with a grand spectacle.

OR, you could enjoy it and see it as encouraging some pride in achievement, hopefully showing some good sportsmanship (almost every games there's some great example of someone being a great sport over winning), and getting kids excited about sport. Considering obesity these days, anything that gets kids excited about participating in sports is a good thing.

My kids have been running race after race after race around our house during these games as the eldest is obsessed with Usain Bolt. There's also a lot of basketball being played as the Australian basketball teams are doing well. And the kids are also going extra hard in their swimming lessons the last two weeks.

So lighten up a bit, let yourself get carried away with the moment. I for one have been getting almost tearing over OTHER country's victories, and our competitors close victories moreso than wins by my country (maybe because Australia has had ONE gold only so far... amazing!)...

You can bemoan how much money goes into training these athletes, but I'd take money being spent having people compete in games and at peak physical fitness any day over it being spent on military spending.

Does anyone stop to think why the hell are we staring at flags like they're amazingly important and significant. I'm beginning to feel abnormal seeing the number of wide-eyed flag-waving Brits on the tv. They really buy into this nationalistic crap.

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

Very interesting, *quality video and discussion. I would say there is probably some under-reported aggression and violence in Japan- but in general a whole hell of a lot less than anywhere else I have lived. In 3.5 years there- never saw a fight, never saw any violence that I remember - there was one crazy guy who was running around yelling at people - but that's it. Violence by Yakuza does happen, but it seems aggrandised from films. I think Yakuza are mainly loan sharks, brothel owners and black marketeers.

For whatever reason, violence is baked into the US culture - tied in maybe with a rugged frontier individualist spirit. Americans love their guns. My family too. My dad always carried a nickel-plated '38 under his car seat, which he called his "merging assistance device".

>> ^legacy0100:

I would have to partly disagree on this one. I believe high density does attribute to more aggression. Dr. Frans de Waal points out that high density alone does not always lead to aggression, and that there are other factors that attribute to reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. This much I agree with. However, this should not be used to throw away the immense impact over population has on human aggression.
He gives several different examples, one including about the chimpanzees in tight confined space. I find his claims very hard to believe. Chimps get very frustrated and show abnormal, anti-social behavior when they are in a tight confined space for a long period of time. Their hairs fall out, they bite their own knuckles or even each other. They show aggression to inexperienced moms and to their babies. It could be that Dr. de Waal may be omitting some factors in here. The chimps he is referring to may be from a zoo where they are put in small confined space when it's time to goto sleep, but then are let out to a bigger enclosure where they can run and play. This may be a bad example, but we don't really know because he doesn't reveal the source of his data. Perhaps his research did confine the chimps to a tight space all throughout the experiment. If so, then the duration of dwelling in tight enclosure is a big factor, but he didn't cite anything about that either.
I also would like to point out that there's generally a lot less food intake and physical activity in urban Japanese society. Your typical Japanese sushi portions can testify for that, as well as various hikikomori symptoms people suffer in overly populated Japanese cities.
Dr. de Waal says there's less crime in Japan, but this simply isn't true. He is overly reliant on only the statistics reported by the government, and he isn't are of the deep rooted cultural practices that mask these aggressions to the outside world. Dr. De Waal never mentions about the various odd symptoms and personal sacrifice everyone must make in order to maintain the order there. Violence is everyday life in Japanese society, including the fairly well known presence of Yakuza. Japanese people often get bullied by the Yakuza, but they do not report these events because for one, they are afraid of retaliation, and two, Yakuza has deep rooted connections with the government. Yakuza usually do not engage anyone foreign simply because it would get the embassies involved, and they do cannot exert any influence in foreign lands. So they only stick to bullying Japanese people, and stay clear of foreigners. Even in high school physical violence is rampant. Students fight or bully each other all the time, but it is not seen as a crime, but merely 'part of growing up'. Nobody reports anything, so the crime data remains low.
Compare this with cities in Netherlands. It is highly populated, but enjoys abundance of resources thanks to laxed attitude toward drugs and sex, which are themselves ways to alleviate aggression. People in Netherlands are also very mobile because of their well developed transportation infrastructure including extensive bike lanes, roads and trains. They are also in close proximity to larger open areas in Germany or France where they regularly escape to thanks to their abundance in resource, while in Japan people are very much confined to their own living quarters and their workplace, who usually cannot afford to take frequent vacations due to high expectation from bosses as well as fierce competition towards promotion. Imagine regular US/UK office space antics times ten.
Overall I find Dr. de Waal's argument only partially credible and would like to look into his experiments and his citations before acknowledging this as fact.
I remember Dag and his wife saying they used to live in Japan. I would like to hear their opinion about this issue and Japanese society being used as proof to this theory.

I would have to partly disagree on this one. I believe high density does attribute to more aggression. Dr. Frans de Waal points out that high density alone does not always lead to aggression, and that there are other factors that attribute to reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. This much I agree with. However, this should not be used to throw away the immense impact over population has on human aggression.

He gives several different examples, one including about the chimpanzees in tight confined space. I find his claims very hard to believe. Chimps get very frustrated and show abnormal, anti-social behavior when they are in a tight confined space for a long period of time. Their hairs fall out, they bite their own knuckles or even each other. They show aggression to inexperienced moms and to their babies. It could be that Dr. de Waal may be omitting some factors in here. The chimps he is referring to may be from a zoo where they are put in small confined space when it's time to goto sleep, but then are let out to a bigger enclosure where they can run and play. This may be a bad example, but we don't really know because he doesn't reveal the source of his data. Perhaps his research did confine the chimps to a tight space all throughout the experiment. If so, then the duration of dwelling in tight enclosure is a big factor, but he didn't cite anything about that either.

I also would like to point out that there's generally a lot less food intake and physical activity in urban Japanese society. Your typical Japanese sushi portions can testify for that, as well as various hikikomori symptoms people suffer in overly populated Japanese cities.

Dr. de Waal says there's less crime in Japan, but this simply isn't true. He is overly reliant on only the statistics reported by the government, and he isn't are of the deep rooted cultural practices that mask these aggressions to the outside world. Dr. De Waal never mentions about the various odd symptoms and personal sacrifice everyone must make in order to maintain the order there. Violence is everyday life in Japanese society, including the fairly well known presence of Yakuza. Japanese people often get bullied by the Yakuza, but they do not report these events because for one, they are afraid of retaliation, and two, Yakuza has deep rooted connections with the government. Yakuza usually do not engage anyone foreign simply because it would get the embassies involved, and they do cannot exert any influence in foreign lands. So they only stick to bullying Japanese people, and stay clear of foreigners. Even in high school physical violence is rampant. Students fight or bully each other all the time, but it is not seen as a crime, but merely 'part of growing up'. Nobody reports anything, so the crime data remains low.

Compare this with cities in Netherlands. It is highly populated, but enjoys abundance of resources thanks to laxed attitude toward drugs and sex, which are themselves ways to alleviate aggression. People in Netherlands are also very mobile because of their well developed transportation infrastructure including extensive bike lanes, roads and trains. They are also in close proximity to larger open areas in Germany or France where they regularly escape to thanks to their abundance in resource, while in Japan people are very much confined to their own living quarters and their workplace, who usually cannot afford to take frequent vacations due to high expectation from bosses as well as fierce competition towards promotion. Imagine regular US/UK office space antics times ten.

Overall I find Dr. de Waal's argument only partially credible and would like to look into his experiments and his citations before acknowledging this as fact.

I remember Dag and his wife saying they used to live in Japan. I would like to hear their opinion about this issue and Japanese society being used as proof to this theory.

It's not even that I am 'doubting' the proxy measures. I am directly observing that the proxy measures DO NOT register the last 100 years as particularly unusual or abnormal. In fact, the more accurate and improved the proxy reconstructions have become, the more normal the last 100 years appears in those reconstructions.

The proxy reconstructions are as much 0.6 degrees cooler than instrumental records at the exact same point in time. I am objecting to a laymen like in the video coming along and saying the instrumental record's warmth is unprecedented over the last 2k years. Sure the proxy records don't show temperatures as high as the instrumental record in the last 2k years. The proxy records don't even show temperatures as high as the instrumental record in the last 10. The proxy records fail to recreate the temperatures observed in the instrumental record.

Is that making sense or clear what I am talking to?


In reply to this comment by Peroxide:
hmmm, I was aware that we only have thermometric readings of temperature for the last 100-150+ years. So basically you are doubting the ability of tree rings, pollen identification in sediments, and other methods of temperature reconstruction.

If I may reiterate my point, which I made rudely in the video post, I would say that you might be interested to know that if you go back further than 2k years, as in, more than 10k, there are temperature changes that were even greater than 1 degree, however, homo-sapiens was not around to endure them. Irregardless of previous temperature deviation, science tells us that our "freeing-up" of carbon dioxide, and creation of methane, are the culprits of the current temperature increase.

How does our ability to measure the last 2k years change that? or change the fact that we are heading for a 6 degree increase (which would not be uniform, for instance the poles have already warmed more than by 0.8 degrees, while the tropics may have warmed by less than 0.8 degrees)?

I fail to see that you have any point outside of that our estimations going back past 150+ years may be slightly off.

"It is obviously true that past climate change was caused by natural forcings. However, to argue that this means we can’t cause climate change is like arguing that humans can’t start bushfires because in the past they’ve happened naturally. Greenhouse gas increases have caused climate change many times in Earth’s history, and we are now adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere at a increasingly rapid rate." -s.s.

@nanrod I have red hair. I wouldn't call it a normal trait. I suppose I might use the word common, although with some sort of qualifier, i.e. "fairly common" or "common enough." It isn't normal though. Neither is homosexuality. If "celebrating differences" means calling every difference "normal" then that doesn't seem like much of a celebration. I don't know why you have such a hang up about the abnormal. To me that is all in your interpretation. Some of us like the freaky people. Some of us would rather not be referred to as normal. What's wrong with being a bit strange?

The use of the word "normal" in this thread is unfortunate. The word inherently has negative connotations as in if your not normal you're abnormal. By that usage any person who exhibits a trait that is not in the majority (left-handed, red hair, green eyes, homosexual) is abnormal. A more appropriate word is typical/non-typical. To say that you accept homosexuals but they're not normal implies that you are anything but rejoicing in the differences. As for me, I'm not bigoted some of my best friends are gay, black, asian, jews etc.

Ahh a NEW excuse to not mow my lawn... "I would but the sound of a running lawnmower attracts crocodiles with abnormally large teeth." Not sure if that one would work in Minnesota, but I am willing to try.

Ahh a NEW excuse to not mow my lawn... "I would but the sound of a running lawnmower attracts crocodiles with abnormally large teeth." Not sure if that one would work in Minnesota, but I am willing to try.

@Payback

The difference between discriminating against people with open bleeding wounds and people of color:

Bleeding alerts you to a potentially dangerous condition which might adversely affect your health, therefore justifying your prejudice.

Color alerts you to.. nothing, therefore your prejudice is irrational and uncalled for.

Demeanor [i.e. abnormal gestures, aggressive posture, pacing back and forth] is a much more solid reason to discriminate against a person.. who may just happen to be of color.

Racism is racism. No two ways about it.