Well, I would say the important difference is whether their decision was based on statistics and decent market analysis, or whether it was just somebody's assumption. It certainly must be tricky when you have a line of products, the different models of which are specifically intended for a particular race. Then you have to look at the demographics of each race separately. You need racially divided focus groups and so on. Obviously, I don't know their particular story, but I wouldn't be quick to judge the company. Though it would be nice, capitalism doesn't generally allow companies to be fair and just for its own sake. If they're stuck with a quarter million unsold deluxe black dolls in their warehouse after christmas, some other less just company will eat their lunch. The free market isn't going to solve racism.

This situation is a nice, simple but poignant illustration of the effects of chronic systemic racism, but I wouldn't go looking for any causes of it here.

To be fair about being fair there are a lot of assumptions in your post. One they did not arrest him on the spot. That leaves a little dignity for the World War 2 veteran. Although the State picking it up at all is a douche move. Two, he probably will not go to jail at all. They say "Up to 60 days" which really means "We just like to give round numbers that won't ever fucking happen because it's sensational."

You could in theory be sentenced to a year in county time for trespassing, but that will not happen the first 40 times or so. (I have seen people sentenced to that much time. And by people I mean "person".)

Off that subject, if law officers obsessed over every immoral law out there then in no world system would there be any law. The laws against crack rock? Extremely, blatantly racist. Pot laws? I think a bit immoral. Laws against effective protest measures, gay marriage, fuck, even public nudity. All these laws are someone else's bullshit of how things ought to be.

The next problem is that of cause and effect. We have banned child molesters from most of the city areas in an attempt to get them away from "our" children. The side effect is that we really haven't solved the issue. The chronically homeless (Not to be confused with the majority of homeless who actually get out of being homeless) are mentally ill and or on drugs. Although not particularly dangerous or volatile, this is Florida, and even our homeless are more dangerous than other parts of the county.

Lastly, there are no moral jobs out there. If you work for a hospital, business, restaurant, power company, phone company, agricultural etc you are working for an evil, evil place. This is America--money keeps us running. And the homeless have no money.

I also have narcolepsy, but out of the different "versions" you can find, I think mine may be the easiest to handle (though it may depend on person to person). I do get tired, but strangely I also suffer from extreme chronic headaches, which are powerful enough to keep me awake (bad however, as taking naps are almost always out of the question).

My issues revolve around the fact that when I go to sleep I stay in REM, or phase 2 sleep, almost all night long. I will have very vivid dreams that occur all night long (usually I'll sleep for two hours, get woken up by the dream, rinse and repeat). With this comes the more terrible aspects. I have constant bouts of sleep paralysis every night, and on top of this I suffer from hypnagogic hallucinations like crazy (even when I "think" I'm fully awake).

Very rarely the narcolepsy causes sleeping fits, but it is rare. It may be possible that cataplexy is involved, but I doubt it--it simply happens to rarely (although it does mimic it fairly closely).

Anyway, hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis are NOT for everyone (as I had a hypnagogic hallucination so strong it felt like someone was yanking me through my bed, sound familiar?). This is where the origins of succubi, demons, angels, and aliens taking you away in the night come from. So, if you do not have a healthy intellect and open mind, you may just end up being, literally, scared of sleeping (unless you are on something akin to Xyrem).

My father has it as well, his symptoms are a little more classical, much like the poster above.

I tend to agree, although you'd also expect to see a lot of "Ooh, if I found that sleeping I'd totally hit it" etc...

Strangely enough, I've seen serious posts/vids etc before dealt with incredibly well by random anons including obits for WoW players, or a community coming together like the building of a playground in EQ2 for a terminal child. We tend to remember the worst, but there's plenty of supportive people out there who's first instinct isn't to heap shit on a person.

I'm just thankful that I've been relatively healthy all my life. I can't imagine what it would be like to have this hanging over your head (or indeed, any one of a number of chronic conditions).

It sounds as though it has nothing to do with his sex organs at all. He had a back injury, one assumes that the problem stems from damage to his nervous system. I'd guess castration would lead to a similar scenario to those who suffer from chronic pain in phantom limbs. Likewise there are neurological conditions, such as tinnitus, where the symptoms are caused by essentially an aural hallucination due to a lack of stimuli. So yeah, the problem might not be over-stimulation but rather a lack of it.

Anyway, it sounds horrible. Hope they find a cure or at least a way to alleviate the symptoms.

Yeah I think his interpretation was a bit off, the study didn't test multitasking ability. Here it is :

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15583.full

The first test measured the ability to filter out irreverent distractions. The second was task-switching. Chronic multitaskers did much worse at both.

My interpretation after reading it is that there's a finite amount of working memory in your brain. Heavy multitaskers tend to keep recent tasks in working memory, because they assume they might need to go back to the task in a moment or two. Where as normal people are better able to flush out the previous task from memory, preventing the risk of confusing the current task with a previous one.

Couldn't agree more. But (there's always a 'but')... if a person convinces themself that they feel better without gluten, then the most passionate and data filled argument presented to tell them that what they feel is not justifiable scientifically, they're still going to be silly and tell the informed individual to screw off. The point is, some people have a reason that is good enough for them, and nobody is going to convince them otherwise. Are we really that dialed in to what's healthy and what nutrients we need for a healthy lifestyle? (whatever that means...). By example, consider the history of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - in the early 90's, people were feeling shitty and weak, in pain and suffering. They were labeled as fakers or diagnosed as having a psychological disorder, but certainly not a verifiable medical condition related to any consistent physiological disorder. Thousands then and now millions of people have been diagnosed with the disease that is finally recognized as a true medical ailment. The point: we know a lot but we don't know it all when it comes to physiology, nutrition and "sensitivities", and there is no one size fits all solution to guarantee we will be healthy. It's understandable that some are dismissive of this gluten thing as completely irrational based on current science, but parallel that with the irrational and mocked CFS sufferers from 30 years ago who now carry a disease that is has a clear diagnostic methodology and is to varying degrees treatable. Sometimes we don't even know what we don't even know, and for some if it makes them feel better, they're going to do it. Harmful? To each their own.

No one made a conscious decision to run him over? Okay, lets say a cop pulls a gun and his foot slips a bit, and he fires the gun accidentally straight into the pickpocket. You yourself imply that now the analogy is equal...

But even if it is not even, this is what it boils down to:
A completely incompetent driver, worse than a 90 year old blind man with chronic seizures, is out there driving. That is pretty evident and only an idiot would disagree with the video showing overwhelming proof. Therefore, this woman should NEVER, EVER drive. I would have hated that to be some seven-eight year old kid that she "did not see."

At the same time I understand @ChaosEngine, even if I somewhat disagree with him. The car could have easily crushed his head like a melon, left him a vegetable for the state to take of forever, and the funny part of that is even a rapist doesn't get that sentence. Obviously everyone here is for corporal punishment and the death penalty--if you believe this "karma" punishment is appropriate.

What?? The most egregious violators of reason in the Videosift's editorializing goon-squad has historically played the flaccid race card. 'Cry racism' is the calling-card of the chronic sophist and the knee-jerk siren's-song of the deliberately obtuse....

I would also add, that there is such a phenomenon as the chronic and forever sullied, 'man-hating bitch.' ALSO, that these bereft crones chose to pick a fight with a goddamned comedian to prove a point and called HIM to THEIR lop-sided venue with the purpose of making their point scream back at them from the mirror of their own, delusional worldview......Listen, oh ye Muslim apologists to some wisdom from a man who understands fully, the burden of the funny-man:

While I see where you're coming from, I have a few issues with what you're saying:

1. The organization you're referring to is staffed, has offices and overheads. Assuming it isn't corrupt and skimming and holding multi-million-dollar appreciation nights and galas (and we probably shouldn't assume that it isn't), the money you're giving this organization still gets portioned off quite a bit. Your point about helping on the systemic level is quite valid (provided you are channelling your concern into actually doing so), but I'd look more into local community health centres or the nonprofit down the street, and still, that money isn't guaranteed to reach the person in front of you. Much as a social worker can help him connect to essential services, advocate for fair and affordable housing, counsel him on trauma, etc, he will still need money for a lot of basic needs.

2. You are vastly oversimplifying the needs and situation of every person on the street. That person may actually depend on money from strangers to make rent (being that welfare barely puts a dent in even the lowest affordable housing costs), feed kids, buy food that isn't McDonald's or canned food, get a haircut, or a million other things that everyone needs money for.

3. Even if that person intends to spend some of your money on oxy or crack, it is not in your right to judge that. While addiction can very generally be called "bad", this person may suffer from chronic pain, trauma, mental illnesses, or some combination and short of governments finally realizing that housing and caring for the poor is cheaper than incarcerating them and treating emergency health conditions, self-medicating is the only reasonable way they can continue functioning for another day. This isn't even an unlikely scenario; think how easily someone can go from your (or my) comfy life to homeless, poor and desperate. It isn't always "bad decisions"; you could be a contractor that falls and gets a serious injury, hit by a car, stricken with a mental illness you have no control over, traumatized earlier in life, born into a high-risk environment or social strata, or anything else, and then start sliding from there. You develop an addiction, your income comes to a screeching halt, your loved ones can't or get too tired to support you, bills that were routine become suffocating, and there you are on the street, pain exploding relentlessly in your body/mind, on the other side of the decision, seeing chins turned up and eyes turned away from you and hearing people mutter "Don't give anything to him; he's just gonna use it to get high," to each other.

4. Not a single person in the video (and really, in just about every situation you see on whatever street you're on) speaks to or even looks at the guy.

While I wouldn't expect that everyone gives money to folks on the street (I myself have only done it a few times), it frustrates me to hear people insist that nobody should. "He's just going to use it for drugs/booze" is a presumptuous and ignorant statement and mindset.

One more thing: if you really care about urban poverty and those suffering from it, the biggest thing (IMO) you can do is vote for politicians/parties who openly and strongly support social services and welfare, then hold them to their promises. I don't make a ton of money, but I am happy to pay higher taxes and lose some luxuries if it means people who need help just to get by get it.

Part of a series of therapy exercises for magicians suffering from depression as the result of chronic audience indifference to sleight-of-hand.
*quality

Thanks Lilithia-I suspect that because of my recent foray with another user here suffering from chronic corn-cob syndrome, that the admins have hobbled me and this so with a predictable incivility, and have left me to figure it out on my own-I have NOT in my quest to clean the dead viddoe embeds up here,violated any rules of decorum relative to the hard-earned ability of raising the dead however, and would like to know why I am being treated like a second-class citizen of the site, if in fact, my suspicions are true....

If in fact this is the case, again: The mob rule mentality of relatively cattle-like predictability-rears again and again, an over-sized head...

If this is not in fact the case, apologies, I have no way of knowing yet as I have not had my question answered by an admin yet...

Now factor in all the people in early life going without quality healthcare/dental and the chronic conditions it might lead to later in life that will eventually bite the taxpayer in the ass...

That's the part that never breaks the surface of this debate, keeping your populace healthy (and happy) pays itself back in a more healthy mid-late age person, capable of staying in the workforce (and ergo generating tax revenue) longer, self funding retirement as opposed to "leeching" off the system, less sick day absenteeism (or alternately, sick workers showing up, working below par and infecting co-workers) etc.

That's not socialism, that's smart.

I'd be amazed if no one ever actually quantified this as a cost/benefit analysis, but it wouldn't play well so I guess the point is moot.

And yeah, the state should regulate the medical and pharmaceutical industries against ludicrous profit taking from the most vulnerable. The current state of play in the US seems more akin to a mafia extortion racket than a service dedicated to maintaining and enriching the health of it's clientele...

@6:13, *promote chronic depression-puss, may she take that frown with her to therapy!