@0:32s - I swear you can see him blink the tears of laughter away right at the start, and during the whole clip he seems like he's holding back something. This is probably the only take they could get of him describing the situation without him crumbling into hysterics on camera.

And its all those questions that made me enjoy it. I'm pretty sure this is what the video creators were going for. A big wtf. Also the video is from ClickHole (http://www.clickhole.com/video/watch-comedian-perfectly-shut-down-heckler-3891). ClickHole is a satirical website from The Onion (wiki).

watch it here for a better resolution. https://vimeo.com/153944874 I was quite focussed on the audience (specificly a pattern in blinking) and was wondering if this was all edited. Looping the footage and adding in finger lengthening and camera shake(to hide small movements which would expose looping) after the fact. The comedian also doesn't budge after he starts pointing (even after the crowd starts to clap at the end). Also it's possible the audience was just in on it and was asked to not move, but id put money on lots of editing to make the video.

It's amusing how cruel people can unwittingly be (on YouTube) making fun of the elderly man being sucked into the sea to die and their misplaced vitriol at the disabled person who is unable to help. It's not so much that an old guy almost died and a crippled person couldn't do anything; it's the the irony in the comments due to people not knowing the truth. Then again, maybe it could also be a skit like the disabled fat guy from Little Britain?

Certainly, it is funny, despite the cruelty in laughing at other people's misery. It could be a gag in an Adam Sandler movie, except the old guy would be Bob Barker and he'd be pulled out to sea and heard cursing as he drifts and blinks out in the sunset. *Plink!*

Everyone would laugh and then Adam Sandler would kiss a blond woman, probably Drew Barrymore, while the sun sets and we do the Looney Tunes fade out, with Porky Pig interrupting with a hand gesture, "A bi-di-a-bi-di-a-bi-di-abi-di-that's all folks!"

... and of course someone is going to say "but no, the cat blinked at 0:09, it's not dead!" Why do you think they call it CATaleptic rigidity (postmortem spasm)?

Love will abide, take things in stride
Sounds like good advice but there's no one at my side
And time washes clean love's wounds unseen
That's what someone told me but I don't know what it means.

Cause I've done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think I'm gonna love you for a long long time

Caught in my fears
Blinking back the tears
I can't say you hurt me when you never let me near
And I never drew one response from you
All the while you fell all over girls you never knew
Cause I've done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think it's gonna hurt me for a long long time

Wait for the day
You'll go away
Knowing that you warned me of the price I'd have to pay
And life's full of flaws
Who knows the cause?
Living in the memory of a love that never was
Cause I've done everything I know to try and change your mind
and I think I'm gonna miss you for a long long time
Cause I've done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think I'm gonna love you for a long long time.

Ack, I want to hear more! One of those videos that you look at and go, cool it's an entire 5 minutes of Trekkie AND civil rights goodness -- then it's over in a blink. Should have been 15 minutes. Damn.

We really need to hear more about Tack-eh's "liberal" conversations with Roddenberry... My wife is a TNG fanatic (and Asian), so this might be the selling point I've been looking for to get her to watch the OG with me, which she doesn't consider serious enough scifi.

Also, on the subject of the "South" -- my family is from Florida/SC and I remember my mom freaking out because she worked in a building (circa 1988) with a colored's only bathroom. She had no idea that there were still relics of segregation in public places. I don't know how it survived THAT long, but when you live an hour away from the nearest grocery store, yet the manatee "preserve" (they didn't look very preserved, the majority of them covered from head to tail in propeller scars...) is less than five minutes away, you're bound to find things that escaped the flow of time. Trailers on blocks of cement, just resting on top of the white sand in a hurricane fuckland... How smart my ancestors were.

Some of those could have been pretty fun and even worked if they actually did them -- I especially liked the "blink, eyes become map" and "map on the tongue".

I was impressed that the CEO didn't even blink at the shots.



...then I noticed that he didn't blink. Period. The entire time...

Reminds me of cartoon eyes blinking in the dark.

Enjoy those moments.

They grow past them in the blink of an eye.

You must have blinked. Flies at 4:15

How indeed.

Draghi's ECB has just made a move and I don't understand why. Come Feb 11th, they will no longer accept Greek bonds as collateral, effectively cutting off one of Greece's last two sources of credit. What remains is the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) provided to the Greek Central Bank, through which the entire banking system must now get most of its credit.

Why did they do it? Why now? I don't think it has something to do with the Advocate Generals opinion piece the other day, declaring the ECB's membership in the troika to be a conflict of interest and that fiscal policy is not to be used as a tool to influence poltical decision-making.

Could it be pure idiocy like the time they pulled to plug on Cyprus only to backpeddle shortly after? Or might they be trying to force a move on part of Germany and Greece? "Stop messing around and get your ducks in a row NOW." -- that sorta thing? Is it mere posturing of sorts, a shot across the bow of Greece?

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Edit #1

I really don't like this. It looks like disaster, smells like disaster and tastes like disaster. And it's entirely too close for comfort. Are they truly going to turn Greece into a failed-state over principle? The way they casually discuss the lives of nearly 11 million people, and the future of the European Union as well, is bone-chilling.
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In the meantime, Schäuble's meeting with Varoufakis went just as expected, reports indicate. Schäuble won't budge a bit. Negotiations with the troika are mandatory, and fiscal waterboarding must be resumed at once. There will be no compromise, not with him in charge. He'll push Greece off the cliff without blinking even once. Convictions worthy of a Templar, that one. Worth remembering that he admitted taking 100k in bribes from an arms dealer in '94 and still managed to become Minister of Finance. A living legend, just not the kind I'd prefer.

With regards to hyperinflation, most folks over here seem to have forgotten, or maybe they never learned, that Chancellor Brüning's austerity regime led to deflation in 1930-32, pushing unemployment to 23%. What followed was a massive influx in membership and infuence for parties at both ends of the political spectrum, similar to Greece. Except in our case, it wasn't the left (KPD) who won the elections in '32...

In the current situation, "structural reforms" is used to subsume two entirely different sets of measures.

The first is meant to remove what you previously mentioned: corruption in all the shapes and forms it takes in Greece, from a (intentionally) broken tax system formed over decades of nepotism to a bankrupt national media in the hands of oligarchs. The institutions of the Greek state are precisely what you expect when a country has been run by four families (Papandreou, Samaras, Mitsotakis, Karamanlis) for basically five decades.

This kind of structural reform is part of Syriza's program. Like you said, it'll be hard work and they might very well fail. They'll have only weeks, maybe a few months to undo significant parts of what has grown over half a century. It's not fair, but that's what it is.

The second kind of "structural reform" is meant to increase competitiveness, generally speaking, and a reduction of the public sector. In case of Greece, this included the slashing of wages, pensions, benefits, public employment. The economic and social results are part of just about every article these days, so I won't mention them again. A Great Depression, as predicted.

That's the sort of "structural reforms" Syriza wants to undo. And it's the sort that is expected of Spain, Italy and France as well, which, if done, would probably throw the entire continent into a Great Depression.

I'd go so far as to call any demand to increase competitiveness to German levels madness. Germany gained its competitiveness by 15 years of beggar-thy-neighbour economics, undercutting the agreed upon target of ~2% inflation (read: 2% growth of unit labour costs) the entire time. France played by the rules, was on target the entire time, and is now expected to suffer for it. Only Greece was significantly above target, and are now slightly below target. That's only halfway, yet already more than any democratic country can take.

They could have spread the adjustment out over 20 years, with Germany running above average ULC growth, but decided to throw Greece (and to a lesser degree Spain) off a cliff instead.


So where are we now? Debt rose, GDP crashed, debt as percentage of GDP skyrocketed. That's a fail. Social situation is miserable, health care system basically collapsed, reducing Greece to North African standards. That's a fail.

Those are not reforms to allow Greece to function independently. Those are reforms to throw the Greek population into misery, with ever increasing likeliness of radical solutions (eg Golden Dawn, who are eagerly hoping for a failure of Syriza).

So yes, almost every nation in Europe needs reforms of one sort or another. But using austerity as a rod to beat discipline into supposedly sovereign nations is just about the shortest way imaginable to blow up the Eurozone. Inflicting this amount of pain on people against their will does not work in democratic countries, and the rise of Syriza, Podemos, Sinn Féin, the SNP and the Greens as well as the surge of popularity for Front National and Golden Dawn are clear indicators that the current form of politics cannot be sustained.

Force austerity on France and Le Pen wins the election.

Meaningful reforms that are to increase Europe's "prosperity" would have the support of the people. And reforms are definatly needed, given that the Eurozone is in its fifth year of stagnation, with many countries suffering from both a recession and deflation. A European Union without increasing prosperity for the masses will not last long, I'm sure of it. And a European Union that intentionally causes Great Depressions wouldn't be worth having anyway.

Yet after everything is said and done, I believe you are still absolutely correct in saying that the pro-austerity states won't blink.

Which is what makes it interesting, really. Greece might be able to take a default. They run a primary surplus and most (90%+) of the funds went to foreign banks, the ECB and the IMF anyway, or were used to stabilize the banking system. The people got bugger all. But the Greek banking system would collapse without access to the European system.

Which raises the question: would the pro-austerity states risk a collapse of the Greek banking system and everything it entails? Spanish banks would follow in a heartbeat.

As for the morality of it (they elected those governments, they deserved it): I don't believe in collective punishment, especially not the kind that cripples an entire generation, which is what years of 50+% youth unemployment and a failing educational system does.

My own country, Germany, in particular gets no sympathy from me in this case. Parts of our system were intentionally reformed to channel funds into the market, knowing full well that there was nowhere near enough demand for credit to soak up the surplus savings, nowhere near enough reliable debtors to generate a reasonable return of investment without generating bubbles, be it real estate or financial. They were looking for debtors, and if all it took was turning a blind eye to the painfully obvious longterm problems it would create in Southern Europe, they were more than eager to play along.

/off-topic & longish

I'm not trying to belittle you or anything, so please don't misinterpret the things I'm about to talk about. Regarding your supernatural experiences (which to be perfectly honest IF they do exist, and that is a big if) there are a few problems with them or rather that type of "belief". If it really did happen to you, then it wouldn't be very hard to see why you would believe in religion or be spiritual in a very strong sense of the word (though it depends I suppose on just what you experienced, or what "they" experience).

But, if your faith can be helped along by these type of events, then it would be the type of thing that science should be exploring. I know people will clearly state that you just "can't catch these events", but to be honest, if your body is able to see, hear, smell, or sense it...any number of scientific tests could as well. But, the problem is: when do they happen, how do they happen (by what mechanism, i.e. sound, smell, sight, etc...), and to whom will it occur (and even where will it occur might be a justified question too).

Eventually this should become something, even if on the "fringe" of science or rational belief, should become a real talking point...recognized by all. Simply because, eventually scientists must experience them too, or those with no faith or belief at all...

But, this is why I ask what kind of "event" did you experience?

I suffer from Narcolepsy. With this, I suffer nightly from huge attacks (around 3-15) sleep paralysis events. These events come in ALL sorts of flavors, and since it is from Narcolepsy it doesn't necessarily have to happen at night--like ghosts, or alien abductions (I mean, is it not a good question to wonder why these things almost always happen at night--oh, and the animals don't seem to be involved too much in this stuff for some reason as well). I also (and this is the real winner right here) suffer from, more or less, permanent bouts of hypnagogic hallucinations (typically they happen just as you are about to fall asleep or as you are waking up--with me, they can occur as soon as I'm getting tired). I also have severe Sleep Apnea, just to make all of this more "grandiose"...

Sleep Paralysis is something that was reported constantly even in the Middle Ages; a great painting named "The Nightmare" depicts someone that is actually going through one of these events. This is the actual foundation for succubi, demons, and even angels that visit people in their sleep--these people will feel unbelievable things, things you simply do NOT feel in normal day life...thus many believe a supernatural event has just occurred. The first one I had was when I was just waking up, for some reason I was petrified, couldn't move (and barely breath). Then I looked around my room. It was early morning so I could see in my room, in the corner of my room sat a dark humanoid "solid" shadow. From it emanated a feeling of pure, utter evil (which is were you get a supernatural feeling to this; because for one you do not see "humanoid shadows", nor is it possible to "feel" evil). Eventually I snapped myself out of it and later woke up. It left a stark impression upon me. Later my mind figured out somehow that if I relaxed in these moments, it ended immediately--meaning that I started o become somewhat lucid during the majority of these. I remember my friends and family always saying I was weird or that I scared them sometimes, because I would sleep with my eyes opened--well, this is part of that problem (like I said, I could see my room...everything seemed for the most part, real; it's like being awake and partially asleep--in a dream--at the same time).

Onto my real problem: Hypnagogic Hallucinations. I have no doubt whatsoever that EVERYONE that believes or rather has experienced ghosts/haunting(s), alien abductions, angels, demons, people yelling outside, dogs barking, your phone ringing when it hasn't, and "you name it, because EVERYTHING can happen in this category"... I suffer from this so much that the things I experience now are just a joke to me. Things grabbing me, my body changing shape (and YES you do "feel" the change), all manner of sounds (which is the most annoying; sometimes it sounds like someone has called my name...so I have to go check, it's very frustrating). Then combine this WITH a Sleep Paralysis event (and trust me, it does happen, but it it rare), you get an epic "light show".

So, this is why I asked you what type of supernatural event did you experience. Because, you may want to remember (this is JUST some things Narcolepsy can cause; other medical issues, medications, etc... can cause the same issues if not worse, more pronounced in certain ways and even causing certain changes in behavior, sensations, and feelings) that just with Narcolepsy I run into these issues--sleeping disorders are possibly responsible for a LARGE assortment of the "supernatural" issues you see out there. Then add in the countless number of other things that also affect our bodies and it isn't far fetched to soon realize that you just may have to hold onto what science has proven--only--or you may get lost.

I cannot say that this is you. I will not either. I don't pretend to know your experiences. But, I can share mine... The first Sleep Paralysis and or Hypnagogic Hallucination (as I have been able to move in a few Sleep Paralysis events...but very rarely; if I can though I move slowly) event I had, believe it or not, was when I was around 8 or 9. I imagined that I woke up in the night, turned and looked under my bed (it was a sleepover, so I was on the floor that night) and I saw a pair of red glowing lights, shaped vaguely like eyes looking at me. I kept looking at it, trying to figure out what it was, but very quickly it "blinked" and I knew it was alive. I was scared enough that I simply turned my back from it and tried to go back to sleep. The fact that I simply just turned my back to it and went back to sleep...is proof that it simply wasn't even real.

Had that BEEN real, I would've jumped up, flipped the light on; told everyone in the room and gotten my parents in the next room... But, it felt extremely real. Even to this day, the only thing that makes me realize it was fake was HOW I handled the situation...that is it. In fact that is usually the best way to tell reality apart from a dream (or hallucinations caused by enhanced REM cycles--REM cycles that start even while you are awake). You simply do not act like yourself in a dream, period.

I'll agree with you otherwise. I was definitely smothered by religion and it "stunted" me. It didn't cause me to hate it as much as many might think, but I became extremely wary of anything to do with it.