@westy

Yes nearly every business tries to game the system that's the point of capitalism and that's why it will always fail ( im not on about simply ballencing your books and deprecaiting assets and playing that sytem , evan though that is gamed in the same way) I'm on about the system at large , surely you can see the difference between a butcher and a company that offers high interest loans to desperate people , when instead of offering the loan the ethical thing would be for them to tell them to contact citizens advice ?

I don't think capitalism (by which I mean a regulated but moderately free market) will fail as (at least so far) it's provided the best manner of funneling people's naturally selfish/nepotistic tendencies in a productive way.

Let's be clear here, generally brokers were responsible for writing subprime loans with botched (or outright false) assessments of income and capacity to pay. These brokers were essentially gaming the investment banks (like Bear Sterns) into buying fraudulent securitised loans. Bear Sterns along with Lehman Brothers didn't survive and many other banks got taken over. There was clear motivation for them to perform more due diligence and they paid for their mistakes by going bankrupt or being taken over. The credit rating agencies and the insurers who backed CDOs also had poor judgement. My point is, the people who benefited from writing these bad loans weren't the banks.

thats the piont im making , you can have companies that game the system but also privde a service but the people that have caused this economic crisis are people that are at the pinicale of gaming the system and do not care to provide a service and purely participate to game the system purely exist to make money at whatever cost to society.

They're not gaming the system if they're going bankrupt. You know as well as I do that banks borrow money from those with savings and selectively lend them out to generally good investments thus creating economic growth and jobs. Let's not get carried away with populism here.

luckily we have people that are ethical and don't just think of the profit bottom line , but in general you will see that a good proportion of those successful at business and profiting are ones that couldn't give a shit about other people or there effect on the environment.

The difference between the butcher and a large financial institution is size. If this was a national specialty chain business, you can bet that they would be lobbying their congressman and receiving favors and payouts. Don't get me wrong, I'm not for crony capitalism and I understand that banks weild considerable leverage over the economy and politicians. They should be more regulated commensurate to their significance and intractability with the economy, particularly shadow banking system (securitisation of loans and credit derivatives) should be regulated to prevent crises. This is a failure of regulation though, not a failure of banking in general. As I mentioned, every large industry/corporate body curries favors.

"Either way they are both pretty beneficial to a functioning economy"

so the bankers that turned a blind eye to the toxit assits were beneficail to the econimy ?

how about the lobiests and deregulation that made it possable ?
what about the real estate agents that knew the people they were selling the houses to could not maintain the mortgage?

What about the marketeers that designed the sales materail to obscure the mortgage rates to hide the fact that they would increase and specifcaly designed the brouchers and trained the sales teams to exploit unknowlageable people ?

No they weren't and many of their businesses went out of business. These are all issues of regulation. Corporations (as opposed to say partnerships) are by legal design geared towards maximising profit. If you come in with expectations that any corporation will not do this, you are making flawed assumptions.

"hedge funds don't gamble shares, they trade them based on discrepancies between actual price and fundamentals"

Defanitoin of Gambling from Wikipedia - "Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods."

something doesn't have to have unfavourable odds to be considered gambling for example there are many professional gamblers that make a living of horse betting , and in that exact same way there are many people that profestinaly gamble on the stock market , and I would argue that they are themselfs not providing a use to socity. I would however contrast that against sum-one that invests in a company because that company is doing good or employs many people or is developing beneficial technpligy.

the problem is in general capitalism in its current form is fucked , and i belive we need to move towards something that is what I would describe as a

"democratic socialist capitalist system" where we have as free a market as possable and that is achived through democratic regulation guided by socialist princapels. so you try to give every citizen as equal a chance as possible at having free will and succeeding in what they want to do.

the current system allows the top 10% fantastic freedom and chances but at the expense of the majorty of people.

It's not a wager of value, it's a transfer of value. Which is critically what makes it different from gambling. If you have agricultural produce and you want to hedge the risk that your harvest will go down in value when it comes to fruition, it's typically an investment bank/hedge fund/commercial bank that takes the counterparty position. Without someone taking that counterparty position, you couldn't eliminate your risk of a fall in prices. If someone buys a newly listed share of your company, they're contributing to your capacity to invest and pay wages. During the process of gambling before someone is declared the winner, there is no value being created. That's a pretty crucial difference. The main point is though that banking creates value, hopefully I've already illustrated that beforehand.

I don't disagree with what you're saying at the end, but as far as I'm concerned you should be resentful towards campaign finance rules. Instead, it's like trying to treat the symptom not the cause.

you're never going to convince enough people it's bad to justify a ban.

you can scream mutilation all you want but even if you're right, it's still too much of a victimless crime. Sure there are exceptions, but the general rule is that either people don't even miss the foreskin, or they don't even know what circumcision is until much later in life so they don't even know they were missing anything so it's an "out of sight, out of mind" situation.

Yes, I'm aware that there have been cases of doctors botching the procedure and there are life long complications, but that's an individual screwing up, not a problem inherent with the procedure itself.

Where's the outrage over mutilation due to body piercings? tattoos?

This is something that should be left up to the parents to choose. This is also where separation of church and state kick in.

If there was some worldwide epidemic of complications due to circumcision running rampant then that would be a different issue, but that isn't happening so.... In other words...where's the fire?

In a perfect world, I would agree that it probably shouldn't happen, there shouldn't be any stigma one way or the other about it. But we don't live in a perfect world and you can't work backwards on something like that. People have to choose. It's the same with abortion, it's the same with smoking, etc. If it's ok to choose to have an abortion, then it's ok to choose to have a circumcision done to your kid.

I would say the parents are materialistic for doing something like piecing their child's ears, but hey, we are speaking about Americans...

However, I would not say piecing your baby's ear is equivalent to circumcision. An adequate comparison would be removing the earlobe from a baby's ear completely. After all, who needs the extra skin? And we both know Gundam, that is definitely illegal.

Secondly, you have no idea what nerves do to the brain when functioning to trauma--even when unremembered. If a baby is beaten until they are two-ish, remember nothing of the beatings and are otherwise healthy, don't you still think his/her brain will actually form based on its experiences? I do. You read to a child, his brain actually grows differently than when you would not. You chop off his dick's skin...

Lastly, you can pull out earrings. How the fuck is my scar ring supposed to be fixed? Or for that matter, what about those with really botched, fucked up shit?

>> ^SDGundamX:

Just to echo what I wrote on the Penn and Teller Sift regarding circumcision:
I feel it's a cosmetic choice. It's not a crime to pierce your kid's ears when they are born--and that's done without anesthetic. There are people who clearly have medical benefits from having it done (see nanrod's comment at the Penn and Teller video) and if it's done at a hospital anesthetic will often be used so that it's not nearly as traumatic as the pundits are making it out to be. Even if anesthetic ISN'T used, no child ever remembers the experience. If you belong to a culture that supports male circumcision and want your kid to fit into that group then by all means, have it done. It's not going to do any permanent damage to him. And if he really, really wishes you hadn't done it, it can be undone.
I agree with DerHasisttot, legislating this is just stupid. Even if it passes, it won't be seen as anything except an anti-Semitic attack and--unless some new compelling medical research appears that shows it is harmful to have the procedure done--will likely be overturned. Educate people about the truth--that for most people it's medically unnecessary and let them decide for themselves how they want to raise their kids.

You should pick up some of the later stuff. Some of those graphic novels are awesome. I like "the gift", "all his engines", "pandemonium", and "hard time".

>> ^ponceleon:
Actually, I disagree with Budzos... I enjoyed the movie a lot more than the comic. I found the comics very hokey and disjointed in comparison, whereas the movie really encapsulated what I would LOVE religion to be. To me Catholicism is empty just because it has claims to relics, spells, and traditions which are ineffective in our world but pretend to be powerful in the way they are presented in this movie.
Religion would kick ass if it was based on a reality like this... I'm not sure how else to say it, but religion (and Catholicism specifically) is like people playing a childish game in which they are trying to imagine a world like this movie portrays.
To get more specific, I liked the explanations and backgrounds of the characters much better in the movie than in the comics. The comic has John Constantine being an ex glam-rocker who is slightly psychic/mystic and who's "damnation" doesn't come from an attempted suicide as in the movie, but rather a botched exorcism which is just kinda stupid. The whole suicide thing is really well done in the reimagining in the movie and makes a lot more sense.
Papa midnight is another character which is vastly improved in the movie. In the book, he seems more like a reject from Live and Let Die, a blaxploitation stereotype, whereas in the movie they really brought home the idea of someone that lives between two allegiances.
As for the use of "guns" and other 007ny stuff, I really thought it worked a lot better than the way they present him in the books. Frankly I'd rather have Constantine wielding a holy shotgun with blessed bullets than looking for a tape of his music video in his trashy apartment.
I'll admit that I only got through three of the graphic novels before I stopped, but I just feel that the changes made to Constantine's development improve vastly over what I saw in the books. As for making him American, I hate Keanu in most of his performances and I thought he really brought it for this one. I was pleasantly surprised and this movie remains one of my all-time favs.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/16/the-un-disappears-50-million-climate-refugees-then-botches-the-cover-up/ Thought you would get a chuckle from this

HAHAHAHAHH!! Awful! >> ^lsue:

What is that in the sky? Don't know, must be aliens. = Why is that guy getting into his car? Don't know, must be going to kill his wife.


Amen to that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

A lot of these have even been explained: botched missile launches, natural cloud phenomena, etc etc...
All this video does is say " We have absolutely no idea what these phenomena are - so it must be evidence of alien spacecraft" without taking any logical steps inbetween.

Sheeeeeeeeeit.

>> ^Ornthoron:

So this is the roast? Sorry I'm late, but it doesn't seem like I missed much. @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://wtf.videosift.com/member/thinker247" title="member since September 15th, 2007" class="profilelink">thinker247 tried to give us some material with that interview, but it seems he botched it thoroughly since nobody uses it. And MrFish didn't exactly help out with his uninspired answers. The only funny comment I've seen here was @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://troll.videosift.com" title="member since July 4th, 2007" class="profilelink"><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">blankfist's (You have no idea how much it pains me to admit that), and he had to go back as far as a siftquisition almost 3 years back to find worthwhile material.
But I'm not one to shirk from responsibility, so I'll try to wring some lemming juice out of this brothel floor cleaning rag of an interview:
"4. What is your profession?
I’m a non-traditional student. Non-traditional means older (I put Van Wilder to shame). I will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the end of the year. I plan to write good stuff somewhere, although I may go into public relations first.
I’m also a bartender, although I was laid off last month. I’ve worked in a dance club and a nice hotel.
I used to be a cook."
I've seen MrFish's type at my university. There are basically two types who pursue bachelor degrees after they've turned 30. One type is the eternal slacker, who gets too distracted by alcohol, drugs or video games to pass any courses, and the other type is the men and women with a mid-life crisis. This latter group typically choose some useless subject that "expands their horizon", like art history or philosophy.
I'm torn as to what group MrFish might belong to. His history of being laid off from low-tier jobs suggests the former, but journalism is a field that reeks of pretentiousness, so I think I have to go with the latter category. I know of no other people that overvalue there own importance as much as journalists. You really think you can do a difference in the world from Nebraska? With merely a bachelor degree? You could at least have chosen something useful for the children of tomorrow, like molecular biology or condensed matter physics. But of course, achieving even a bachelor degree in those subjects requires both hard work and intelligence.
You'll likely now try to prove you have both these qualities by using unnecessary long time to write a long and poignant retort to all the half-insults in this roast. This, you tell yourself, will show everyone how good you are with words and why you were destined from the start to become a Daily Nebraskan contributor. What you don't realize is that nobody else really cares, and that what you will come to consider the epitome of your oevre will likely only be read by yourself.

So this is the roast? Sorry I'm late, but it doesn't seem like I missed much. @thinker247 tried to give us some material with that interview, but it seems he botched it thoroughly since nobody uses it. And MrFish didn't exactly help out with his uninspired answers. The only funny comment I've seen here was @blankfist's (You have no idea how much it pains me to admit that), and he had to go back as far as a siftquisition almost 3 years back to find worthwhile material.

But I'm not one to shirk from responsibility, so I'll try to wring some lemming juice out of this brothel floor cleaning rag of an interview:

"4. What is your profession?
I’m a non-traditional student. Non-traditional means older (I put Van Wilder to shame). I will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the end of the year. I plan to write good stuff somewhere, although I may go into public relations first.
I’m also a bartender, although I was laid off last month. I’ve worked in a dance club and a nice hotel.
I used to be a cook."

I've seen MrFish's type at my university. There are basically two types who pursue bachelor degrees after they've turned 30. One type is the eternal slacker, who gets too distracted by alcohol, drugs or video games to pass any courses, and the other type is the men and women with a mid-life crisis. This latter group typically choose some useless subject that "expands their horizon", like art history or philosophy.

I'm torn as to what group MrFish might belong to. His history of being laid off from low-tier jobs suggests the former, but journalism is a field that reeks of pretentiousness, so I think I have to go with the latter category. I know of no other people that overvalue there own importance as much as journalists. You really think you can do a difference in the world from Nebraska? With merely a bachelor degree? You could at least have chosen something useful for the children of tomorrow, like molecular biology or condensed matter physics. But of course, achieving even a bachelor degree in those subjects requires both hard work and intelligence.

You'll likely now try to prove you have both these qualities by using unnecessary long time to write a long and poignant retort to all the half-insults in this roast. This, you tell yourself, will show everyone how good you are with words and why you were destined from the start to become a Daily Nebraskan contributor. What you don't realize is that nobody else really cares, and that what you will come to consider the epitome of your oevre will likely only be read by yourself.

>> ^ctrlaltbleach:

So does anyone know if there was any chance that he could have missed the landing? Also these people are way underpaid. I thought all this stuff was cgi these days.


Here are some of the biggest fall fails in the A screen cinema...there are more.


Steel (1979)

A.J. Bakunas died doubling for George Kennedy in a fall from the Kincaid Towers in Lexington, Kentucky, for the movie "Steel". Bakunas had successfully performed a fall from the ninth floor of the construction site, but when he learned that Dar Robinson had broken his record high fall for a non-movie related publicity stunt, Bakunas returned to perform the fall from the top of the 300-foot (91 m) construction site. Bakunas performed the fall expertly, but the airbag split and Bakunas was killed.

Love Serenade (1996)

During the filming of a scene on a grain silo, stuntman Collin Dragsbaek (doubling actor George Shetsov) died when he fell onto a faulty airbag.

World Wrestling Federation event

Professional wrestler Owen Hart died in May 1999's WWE/WWF PPV Over the Edge 1999 after he was scheduled to glide down from the rafters for a ring entrance. This stunt was botched and Owen fell 78 ft (24 m) to the ring below.

-wiki

I don't deny that 9/11 really happened, nor do I forsake the threat or the security measures if they actually helped to prevent terrorist attacks.

But, in all honesty, I have yet to hear about cases in which these specific measures actually prevented an attack.

Instead, they participate in episodes like this one.

Just take a look at the 20+ TSA-related videos in the VS search alone to note how the organization botches its mandate more than not.

In any case, I would have promoted the video if I had been able to find it -- I could not. Feel free to *isdupe if you can.


>> ^entr0py:

>> ^Trancecoach:
Wouldn't be surprised if this was a dupe. I posted this (again), in light of the recent changes at the TSA, and the rationale that they've given us that the violation of our civil rights is to protect us from the spooks they created.
I don't enjoy defending the TSA; and I think the body scanners and intimate massage pat-downs are outrageous. But the threat isn't imaginary; 9/11 actually happened, and the near misses since then seem credible. Indeed, if someone is going to blow up or hijack your plane, he probably belongs to a small independent group, not a large, structured, mafia-like organization. But that distinction is unlikely to make a damn bit of difference to anyone who gets exploded.
Still, it's a really interesting video, and the point made is an important one. Though if you knew it was a dupe, promote is the best way to give it attention again.

@Gallowflak, the necessary sources were posted above by Dag. That Gawker article links to other articles, and we can see all their articles on Assange here: http://gawker.com/search/assange/

For example:

But if Mr. Assange is sustained by his sense of mission, faith is fading among his fellow conspirators. His mood was caught vividly in an exchange on Sept. 20 with another senior WikiLeaks figure. In an encrypted online chat, a transcript of which was passed to The Times, Mr. Assange was dismissive of his colleagues. He described them as “a confederacy of fools,” and asked his interlocutor, “Am I dealing with a complete retard?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html?hp

And:

Sorry, Julian, but you were the one who spun your botched tryst with a couple Swedish groupies into a devious Pentagon "smear campaign." Until they produce their spy IDs or the case is closed, you're going to have to live with questions about it.

http://gawker.com/5671626/wikileaks-founder-will-walk-out-of-your-interview-if-asked-about-his-rape-case

In other words, when Assange falsely claimed the accusations were due to his professional work (i.e. the accusations originated from the Pentagon), they became a professional issue worthy of scrutiny by the press. On the other hand, if he were to admit he lied, perhaps that issue would become less worthy of scrutiny.

It doesn't seem reasonable to judge Assange as being above scrutiny without first reading the backstory. Thankfully, the journalist in this video was trying to do her job.

Thanks for sifting it. I hadn't heard this song before. Great song, I've been enjoying it. Yeah the original song is grainy. After your vid is finished being dupof'd I'll add it to the original if someone else doesn't.
*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Flobots-Handlebars
>> ^NobleOne:

Well son of a botch....i guess it is a dupe i looked around for it to make sure i didn't post a dupe...oh well i guess ill let the sift do what it will.... though the one posted is of higher quality....

Well son of a botch....i guess it is a dupe i looked around for it to make sure i didn't post a dupe...oh well i guess ill let the sift do what it will.... though the one posted is of higher quality....

>> ^CircleMaker:

You must have meant "His grammar and English are so terrible," am I right?
>> ^Unsung_Hero:
His Grammar and English is so terrible he must have dropped out of school to work on his material.




Indeed, that will teach me to proofread before hitting the submit button! Haha... Oh well. I guess my point is botched.

I used to believe in spiritual stuff. I would read things like scientists associated with the Institute of Noetic Sciences doing a joint study with mainstream scientists around 2004 in which both teams separately used the exact same equipment and procedures, but came up with results that supported their separate paradigms.

The Institute of Noetic Sciences folks thus concluded that reality literally conforms to your paradigm or something, and that we have to re-examine hundreds of years of science.

Now that I have more intellectual experience, I believe more sober-minded scientists will tell you that there are innumerable ways to unknowingly botch your study if you care about the outcome, and that's one of the reasons science is so notoriously difficult to do right.
>> ^Trancecoach:

Grad, Bernard. "Paranormal Healing and Life Energy." American Society for Psychical Research Newsletter 7 (1981).
——. "Some Biological Effects of the 'Laying on of Hands': A Review of Experiments with Animals and Plants." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 59 (1965).
——. "A Telekinetic Effect on Plant Growth." International Journal of Parapsychology 3 (1961); 5 (1963).
Grad, Bernard, Remi J. Cadoret, and G. I. Paul. "The Influence of an Unorthodox Method of Treatment on Wound Healing in Mice." International Journal of Parapsychology 3, no. 2 (1961).

>> ^hpqp:
>> ^Trancecoach:
So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).

Link to study, please?