and you've already heard of the company most responsible
for the price-fixing conspiracy he mentions.

*DeBeers *DeBunked

that cartel makes the mexican drug cartel look like amateurs.

Funny enough, I have a lot of friends who do amateur hours, and a lot of comics keep the sets their developing on their phones. It's not uncommon to see a comic with their phone out, reading off jokes or scenarios.

They don't do it on main stage performances, but when they're working on bits, or timing, you see it a lot.

Amateur videos on you tube by guys who clearly haven't read or understood the scientific journal articles on the subject are part of the problem and confusion.

The point of recycling is to reduce energy use and transportation in manufacturing materials... So yeah, it's part of the solution and not to be thrown away.

Yes, the plant is warming, and scientists are agreed on that.
Yes, humans are adding significant CO2 to the atmosphere which contributes to warming.
What is the severity of the warming over the next 100 years, and what difference do our actions today make, and what cost do those actions have?

See the first 2 points are agreed and help understand some of the problem. The trick though is that the severity is still known with less certainty, read the details in the latest IPCC AR5 report if you doubt me. The error bars within the scenarios(different carbon emissions we reduce or increase to) span multiple degrees of temperature. The error bars are only as accurate as the current days models, which still are uncertain of the sign to attribute to water vapor as a feedback. The water vapor that contributes more to the greenhouse effect than all other GHG's combined. How great is the economic cost of reducing our emissions to meet each scenario? That's no in the IPCC report. What is the alternative cost of adapting to the temperature ranges if we just continue emitting? Again not there.

The trouble is there DOES still exist uncertainty on a great many aspects of the problem. Random amateurs proclaiming otherwise on youtube doesn't change that. Until we've got a good grasp on the cost/benefit differences between reducing emissions and adapting to changes, we can't make any claims on action X is obvious because of climate change.

Now, I'm not advocating we do nothing. Electric cars are a huge opportunity, and the technology is finally hitting the threshold of being cheaper than gas. Adopting that technology makes economic sense. A fringe benefit is that it reduces emissions from transportation drastically too.

There are solutions other than redistribution of wealth through naive/blind carbon taxes.

She has a channel of practicing singing, she's just an amateur. Recently her video went viral as it was posted to Facebook only, it got 4 million views and featured on TV. They told her to post it on YouTube as well.

This time she normally practices around midnight. Her baby was sleepless and crying so she sang to her while doing her normal routine of practicing. But she noticed baby seeming to love it, she turned on webcam for a cute memory and posted to Facebook only.

She wasn't looking for fane as she never uploaded to YouTube just her family. But her family shared on Facebook and those shares were shared and on and on until 4 million views later and a news interview...the video finally got added to YouTube.

I thought it was cute, sweet, and great voice and even though the Facebook vid got 4 million views it hadn't been added here. So I added it

Next time bring a bolt cutter.
Nothing says amateur more than a thief without the right tools.

Reminds me of http://videosift.com/video/Amateur-Lasse-Gjertsen-Brilliant-Editing

I get what you're saying, I just think the title reads as "homemade-drone video" whereas you obviously meant it as "amateur drone-video".

I just got a GoPro myself and I cannot tell you how tempted I am to buy one of these Apparently you can even get them to follow you down a track or mountain. Awesome bit of kit

@A-Winston @lantern53

Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

I'll simplify it for you - those who are not well educated in a subject greatly overestimate their ability at the subject, because they don't know all of the things that they don't know.

Those who are better educated in a subject greatly underestimate their ability at the subject, because they know how complicated it is.

Now you two don't know about science, and that's ok - that's not an insult and i don't want any of this to be insulting. But it is meant to be a reminder that you are talking about one of if not the most technical and complicated abstract subjects that we as a species pursue. If you don't even understand the "scientific method" (a distinct term) and how the "scientific community" (another distinct term) works and comes to consensus, how can you possibly hope to decipher fact (science) from fiction (propaganda)?

I keep having to post this, but i'll do it again. The scientific community is made up of all kinds of people such as university lecturers and students (yes, your kids might be part of the community), amateur scientists, people at research institutions.... anyone who cares enough to approach things methodically and systematically, anyone interested in finding out as much as we possibly can about everything we can. Real science does not get paid based on results - the funding is provided for the research and the research finds whatever it finds. You can't lie about science, because other anal bastards (far worse than me) are just waiting to find something wrong with it and pillory it. That's how the scientific community works, it's like internet comments only worse. You can't get away with doing bad science for long.

Most people in scientific research do not have a lot of money, do you understand that? I can tell you right now - i contribute to scientific papers and such, so that makes me part of the scientific community. I'm just a post-grad student living on a student loan and doing something that i enjoy. My lecturers make a living, but they are not well-off by any means. We also suffer tax when politicians take our evidence and twist it in front of our faces. And we're left standing here, exasperated, wondering why you'd listen to non-experts over experts. If your doctor said you had diabetes, you wouldn't ask a politician to confirm it? If you want a scientific opinion, consult the scientific community.

I would love you to ask yourself the following question; "What do i really know about the scientific community and the scientific method?" Because if you took half an hour one day to go to an accredited university and ask the science department about how science works, how consensus is formed, and what makes good scientific practice, you'd be able to rid yourselves of these myths that somehow all scientists (i.e. average people, doing scientific research for the sake of science) are in some kind of club or gang or being paid to say that humans are causing climate devastation. The reason the majority of people say that is because the science speaks for itself and is not open to interpretation. The facts are facts.

Are you really thinking this through?

I want to show you one final thing, and it comes from the wikipedia page on Scientific method (which i recommend you read to avail yourself about which you speak, please don't speak from ignorance).

"The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false."

The science speaks for itself, and i recommend you start listening to real scientists. Why prefer the opinion of a few individuals who are either flawed in their scientific reasoning or flat out being paid to lie? The scientific community is in full agreement.

Edit: Sorry for the long post, but you're talking about something you don't understand and it exasperates me. You wouldn't come here and talk about the details of internal medicine, but you're quite happy to tell a scientist, to his face, that he doesn't know science.

@Trancecoach - they respond in literature all the time. A scientist's response is to prove it, scientifically. They do, and are, all the time. But most people do not understand science and those that do still find scientific papers daunting and difficult to follow. People like the two i mentioned above, they don't have a hope in hell of understanding the source of the information, and they sadly look to the wrong people to explain it to them.

Dutch journalist Jeroen Akkermans keeps uploading scores of pictures taken at the MH17 crash site to his Flickr account. No corpses, just debris -- no warning neccessary.

A few interesting pictures, if you don't mind amateur forensics:
- left wing, top side: damaged by debris coming from the fuselage at an outward trajectory
- window panel, aft-most cockpit window, port side: shredded by shrapnel, downward trajectory?
- second door from the front, port side: no damage from shrapnel or debris
- port-side hatch of the forward landing gear: no damage

So, explosion in the foward-left quadrant, above the cockpit?

I know, I know -- wild speculation, utterly without a point. But it's infinitly less depressing than looking at the latest pictures from Gaza. Bad days to be a news junkie...

Edit: rear door, starboard side -- no damage

There's a difference between amateurs and fools.

Most amateurs can at least barbecue reasonably safely.

One common thing in all these videos...

...no friggin' fire extinguisher to be seen.

Amateurs.

He just stood there and took it. Better reflexes would be good if you're going to stand on an outside corner at a race...especially an amateur or powder puff race where you expect bad driving.

Ha. Something I really liked about this video is that it's not edited to gloss over the issues experienced by an amateur (even an experienced one). I also enjoyed watching them deal with mistakes that would have caused me to swear a bunch and then quit for the day.

As I understand it, the function copyright serves in a society is to protect and encourage creativity. It's hard to think that it's serving it's purpose when teens who create their own music video for a popular song get it DMCA'd.

Software piracy is theft, but what if, as an amateur programmer, I was to re-purpose some of your code? Do we protect the work you did so that creators are properly reimbursed for their efforts, or do we allow a large degree of "remixing" that would allow me to build on your work without restriction, and then for others to build on mine? How do we balance the approach, and who decides how to balance it?