>> ^imstellar28:
^NetRunner
I never said that in order to be open-minded you have to change your opinions. I'm just saying that most American's have the exact ideas that their parents/culture instilled in them. Changing parties says nothing about changing opinions--as you said--the parties have shifted their opinions, which is why people switched parties.

I watched the beginning of this again, and I think we're mistaking what he said for openmindedness and closemindedness. He introduced it as "openness to experience", craving novelty and variety. We don't have some strong resistance to going to see a play -- even one titled the Vagina Monologues.

Social conservatives...would be apprehensive, to say the least.

He later refers to them as open and closed minds, which is probably the source of confusion.

Still...I have yet to see any liberals in this thread--despite responding to my comments--give even a single political issue they have changed their mind on. and when I say issue...I don't mean the iraq war..I mean a fundamental issue...like war in general as opposed to the iraq war.
I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but its a really high chance that whatever beliefs you formed growing up...are the exact same beliefs you have today.
I don't deny he is a fast talking speaker with a slick presentation...it does sound good, but his ideas are just rubbish.

I'm not really understanding your point -- if you don't have to change your opinion to be open-minded, how is the fact that no one here is saying "I used to love war, then I decided maybe it's not so great" even relevant?

The video pretty much says that people are affected by their environment with regard to the accentuation of these moral values, so you're agreeing with several of the tenets of the theory...how is his idea rubbish?

A lot of the conversations have drifted into the non-social aspects of political philosophy. My take on what was discussed in the video is that he's not attempting to address economic differences of opinion, nor authoritarian/libertarian, purely a difference in moral focus between social conservatives, and social liberals.

I wish he had talked about libertarians as a sub-group specifically -- I suspect they test like liberals. The questionnaire is available online at http://www.yourmorals.org/, I'd love for blankfist or imstellar or some other libertarian to take the test and post their results. I took it, and definitely presented the expected liberal skew, with mine being slightly more skewed than the average liberal.

I say that because libertarians are socially liberal, and that is driven by a moral philosophy that accentuates caring and fairness over blind loyalty, respect for authority (something I've never seen in a libertarian), and purity (just look at blankfist).

I think economic theory is easier to explain when you dig down into the definition of "fairness" -- not everyone has the same concept of fair. To economic liberals like me, fairness is equality. If a group of people are splitting a pizza, fairness means we all get roughly the same amount of pizza. People who take extra, and force others to go without are morally wrong, even if they paid for the whole pizza.

To conservatives, fairness has more to do with opportunity. Taking the same pizza metaphor, they think people should be free to take as much pizza as they like, and if people come late and get none, well that's fair. They came late; had they come earlier, they'd have gotten some. They get angry at people like me who say "that's not fair, you shouldn't have taken the last piece", because we're unfairly placing limits on people's freedom to be a-holes.

I don't think that divide is caused by one side or the other being open or close minded, or whether they're authoritarian or loyalist, just a basic difference on what the important lessons are from the above experiences.

It's why I think economic conservatives might change their tune if they're the ones who don't get any pizza, or if all of a sudden their leveraged financial derivatives turn into dust before their eyes.

This is probably top 3 Elliott songs all time for me.

It used to make me feel happy, now it just accentuates how sad it makes me that someone has those feelings of love and hope at one point yet felt the will to not live any more.

This song just tears me up inside now. Nonetheless, it's still beautiful and probably takes on even more meaning past his death.

@NordlichReiter, you realize the video is about abortion, right? If you have a point to make about Obama's record on gun control, can't you at least dig up a token video to accentuate it, and then make your point there?

Edit: I just noticed that you have done so.

^agreed, but i can identify with what the author wanted to accentuate with that little gesture, i think. the facts are true, much has been written about this incident, however, since US was (and still is) constantly provoking Iran since the islamic revolution and nationalisation of oil resources, this affair was promptly hushed up and the culprits have been awarded honors instead of deserved punishment. that pisses me off. we can't let governments get away with murder

Hey hon, don't take heart. Some say the ears are the first to go, but I dunno. I had to enlarge your pic to see your piercing a few days ago. I'd give it a dark touch up to accentuate the ring. You are working the look though girl.

Love the red hair. You're a pretty lady.. How do you protect that skin of yours in Texas!! I'm afflicted with the freckles During summer I look like I swallowed a hundred bucks and it broke out in pennies.

Oh and beware... Texas is Choggie country

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^bamdrew:
yeah... news has it now that Obama's camp is considering holding a series of public town-hall talks with McCain on the issues, an idea McCain's side proposed... which would really be throwing McCain a bone... because if its down to who can give the best speech and who comes out the best after 3 debates, Obama has it in the bag.

They've been talking about 10 of these town-hall debates, I presume that's in addition to the already scheduled 3 official presidential debates in the fall.
I'd love to see it happen, and I can't fathom the rationale behind it at the McCain campaign. The worst thing they could do is give people a chance to compare Obama and McCain side by side.
It'll be YouTube vs. Feeding Tube.


McCain simply may have no other choice. He's crippled by public financing and the media limelight has effectively eluded him during the over-extended Democratic primary season. This may be his only way to take center stage again. But yeah I agree, it's a fool's errand, Obama is unanimously the superior speaker and orator, he was arguably a weaker debater to Clinton but just reminiscing back to the Republican debates, McCain hardly stood out either. If nothing else, this will give Obama a chance to highlight his utter hypocrisy embodying his image as a 'maverick' and accentuate his recent about-turns on countless social and economic issues. Not to mention, for a party heavily reliant on 'values' voters, rational and meticulous policy issues are hardly going to galvanise support.

LOL I'm pretty sure that Jordan guy is over accentuating himself for the show.

Took me a moment to get it but yeah - it appears to be a series of interviews with "real" (self-professed) scientologists with the scat guy edited in to accentuate the already ridiculous answers.

Pretty funny...

Achievements work best when they're virtually or entirely cosmetic but you do have to admit that unlockable content is a great way to add play-time and force players to try out different gameplay facets, which they may have otherwise dismissed all too quickly.

As for gritty realism over cartoony graphics, no thanks. I'm thoroughly sick of CoD4 but end up playing it because everyone else does. Realism in FPSs particularly, is a synonym for camp whoring. Nothing says squat and wait more than overly dense foliage, non-contrasting colour schemes and players taking 'real' damage. Game designers, if I wanted to play Where's Waldo I wouldn't be playing a videogame would I?

Frankly realism along with overt reward systems are just an allure for the console crowd, which developers have serendipitously realised they should be catering for. The problem is it ends up taking a backstage to gameplay and is further accentuated by gimmicky gratuitous rewards. Look, if my score of 60 for a CoD4 map is composed of 20 gun kills, 15 grenade kills, 15 air strike kills and 10 helicopter kills, there is something wrong.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
holyhugenose
But she has a really nice voice though.


She's the voice of obama girl(check out who else is sitting on the couch), and she also did box in a box. The black and white camera work really accentuated her noise, I presume that was intentional.

Love the music. It draws parallels to the old Tom & Jerry cartoons where the musical cues help accentuate the story.

One a different note, that's cool that those cats took to that tower the way they did. I've bought numerous cat "playgrounds" over the years for my two and they never adapted and took advantage of them.

^ vsbm

> Propaganda.
nowadays, what isn't?

> By no means do I advocate ethnocentrism.
i don't doubt it. and i don't find many at this site, or even in general really, who do advocate it.

> ... human societies are sorely lacking is tolerance towards one another.
right. and i'll be the first to want to accentuate de positive. even got some playlists for just that.
if you're aware of that need for tolerance already, then you're not who 'needs' to watch this, to know it's a problem, for everyone.
so, instead, you can check out a really funny (ahem) Perrrrsian standup comic, named Maz Jobrani.
http://www.videosift.com/video/Maz-Jobrani-on-The-Late-Late-Show

Strong +ve and strong -ve are both likely to indicate comments that attract attention and pique curiosity, possibly accentuating and attracting more voting. Not necessarily a bad thing, as i doubt any of us will chose to gain our opinion of a comment from the comment vote number, rather than the comment content. We aren't that sheep like...

The high comment side list is good for attracting attention to both interesting comments and active discussion threads. This is a good thing. A negative ranking might too.

I'm sure you know what you're talking about when it comes to historical accuracy MycroftHomlz. But like I stated before, you're missing the whole point of the speech because of these details (give it minor or major).

Yea, he's oversimplifying the whole struggle of the Jews A LOT. And I know that there had been many outcries among Jewish communities in Germany, and the Nazi regime just took that up and used it for their own means, propagandizing as to how violent and uncivilized these Jews were, trying to assassinate the fuhrer and resolving to violence in the streets etc etc. And somehow Jews felt like they were digging a deeper hole for themselves everytime they try to speak against it.

But Badnarik's point isn't to blame the faults on Jews. He's purposely exaggerating and oversimplifying the position the Jews were in, in order to point out that when you're the minority and you don't speak out, you will get bullied around. He's trying to prove this point by excessive exaggeration of Jews being 'bullied'.

Personally I understand why he has to exaggerate in order to get to his crowd. Some of you don't believe he should be stating overly exaggerated facts, and it is just as bad is flat out lying. Well, that's too bad. Because I think that's part of the art of public speaking and knowing when to accentuate certain facts.

Now if you think oversimplifying the struggles of Jews is a abhorrent sin (because of personal/religious reasons you happen believe in), well then I'm sure you're pissed to see this video. But I don't see why it shouldn't be used as an overly exaggerated example to wake some people up.