Can you believe they spent thousands of hours with computer experts and still didn't figure out that a document scanned to be searchable will come out with layers?

Me neither. It's either another setup, or both sides are wagging the dog.>> ^HugeJerk:

They are using the same false logic as before. When you scan an image, you don't get layers. When you scan a document as an image, you don't get layers... but when you scan a document with software that turns it into a searchable PDF, it does create layers.>> ^bobknight33:
I would gather we all have downloaded this birth certificate and looked at in in illustrator and such and have suspicion of authenticity. This is just another story that has dug deeper than you and I and have come up with more conclusive clarity that is a bogus.

They are using the same false logic as before. When you scan an image, you don't get layers. When you scan a document as an image, you don't get layers... but when you scan a document with software that turns it into a searchable PDF, it does create layers.>> ^bobknight33:

I would gather we all have downloaded this birth certificate and looked at in in illustrator and such and have suspicion of authenticity. This is just another story that has dug deeper than you and I and have come up with more conclusive clarity that is a bogus.

I would gather we all have downloaded this birth certificate and looked at in in illustrator and such and have suspicion of authenticity. This is just another story that has dug deeper than you and I and have come up with more conclusive clarity that is a bogus.

With being they case then this would indeed need to come to light and a fully open investigation should take place. For if indeed this is true than Obama could resubmit a real document and be done with it. Or on the other case if he can not prove in citizenship then he would have to step down and let Biden become president

@shinyblurry
Messenger is an atheist; by definition he knows nothing about the spirit.

Bad definition, unless by "knows nothing about the spirit", you mean, "doesn't believe in the same spirit I believe in." I have my own insight into my own experiences with spirituality. So far, they have not led me to necessarily believe in anything supernatural. That makes me a "weak atheist". Would you really respect my insights into "the spirit" more if they had led me to be as fervent as you, but about Taoist Buddhism?

Further he explicitly denies that there is any such thing.

False. I have never anywhere stated that there is no creator being, or even that a God doesn't exist. I have stated that God as described in the Bible -- if words have meaning -- cannot exist as such because the set of descriptions are internally inconsistent. Because they contradict each other, they therefore preclude any such entity's existence -- again, if words have meaning. Now, it's possible that there is a God who is described in the Bible, but only if the descriptions there are somewhat inaccurate, which would cast doubt on the Bible's authenticity as God's word, but then it's possible God, for his own reasons, wanted a flawed book to be his voice.

There are two scenerios in which you could know the truth absolutely: 1. You are an omnipotent being. 2. An omnipotent being reveals the truth to you. I fall under scenerio 2.

But you don't fall under scenario 2. You just believe you fall under scenario 2. For you to be correct, you would have to know that an omnipotent being is what is revealing something to you. Nobody, not you, not us, can be certain that you are right about that. I can think of two ways you could be wrong: 1) you may suffer from a relatively common mental defect that causes people to be absolutely convinced they are communicating with a superior being; and 2) you are being contacted by a superior being, but you as a human are in no position verify that it is an omnipotent being, as any being significantly superior to you would appear omnipotent to you. In a nutshell, humans don't have perfect understanding of anything except systems they created themselves, such as mathematics and formal logic, so you can't testify that your understanding of your experience is perfect.

About 1), as I've said to you elsewhere on the Sift, I'm not suggesting it to be mean or insulting. It's a common condition, and people of all spiritual stances have suffered from it, and they all believe they're communicating with a real entity [sentence edited for clarity -- I don't mean all spiritual people]. If their accounts were consistent, then there'd appear to be something to it, but they're not. People who have these conditions don't even gravitate to the same religion, if any religion at all. For you to say you are right to the exclusion of all those other people who are equally convicted is arrogant. The same applies to your following arguments:

You think it's wrong to be certain of truth, yet absolute truth is exclusive truth. It is simply unreasonable for you to place the limitation of your uncertainty about truth upon others. If God came to you and gave you absolute and undeniable revelation, would you be wishy-washy about whether you believe it or not? Can you admit to yourself that God, if He wanted to, could give absolute revelation of the truth to anyone? If you can admit that, and you know that I believe that He has given such revelation, then you shouldn't be surprised that I claim to know what it is with certainty. That is exactly what you would expect from someone who has encountered the living God.

This part, I get, but what I say above still stands. If one had no other evidence other than an experience like yours, it would make perfect sense for one to believe they had contact with the real God, and that what they were interpreting was exactly true. But there's other evidence: other people have had very similar experiences, often associated with mental injury (falling off a horse and going blind, for the most famous example), and they have come to a wide variety of conclusions based on their own (human) interpretation of the experience. This, to a rational person, should suggest that you may not be right, and that is enough.

Good sift.
Didn't know this, probably due to never having thought about it. Your example points out the mathematical logic quicker and simpler than Vi Hart's vid, which was still enjoyed due to other things i didn't know, the clarity and the pretty pictures.

>> ^messenger:

I'm not going to argue with anyone here about this, but I will add an 10.999.th reason:
1/9 = 0.111...
2/9 = 0.222...
3/9 = 0.333...
4/9 = 0.444...
5/9 = 0.555...
6/9 = 0.666...
7/9 = 0.777...
8/9 = 0.888...
9/9 = 0.999... = 1
If there's a difference between 0.999... and 1, that implies more than 1/9 is added to 0.888... to get 1.



Seems to me the only reason this maths could be argued is 1 of 2 reasons, either the logic isn't understood or people like to argue.

In regards to solving the society problems you mention: wouldn't society stopping work to focus wholly on the latest bandwagon occurrence of 1 of the 7 billion free-thinking subjective experience driven humans having a difference of opinion/preference to 1 of the remaining 7 billion blah blah humans, be more problematic?

Think it's best if the scientists focus on their job of advancing our understanding of everything, the governments do their job of controlling their masses in reasonable ways and sifters do their job of finding great videos.. might need someone to help the cops do their job though, think some of them have missed a point somewhere along the line re 'serve and protect'.

>> ^VoodooV:

do a google search. It's been argued forever. Only thing it proves is how far we'll go to argue ridiculous things and the fucked up priorities of humanity.
we'll argue .999... for forever (or infinitely...zing!) but try and solve things like why kids like Trayvonn Martin still get senselessly shot or try and solve how we can take care all of our citizens regardless of income level. Ehh, we'll get around to it sometime.
It reveals just how truly absurd this shit is.

It's gonna be the peeping tom's favourite camera when they up the image clarity a bit.

>> ^HugeJerk:

Just to be clear... I loved Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 (until the final boss). I also loved Dragon Age Origins, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, SW:TOR, and NWN. I didn't care much for the gameplay of Jade Empire, but I still bought the following games from your company.
So if what you take away from my comments is that I'm just some schmuck who blankly doesn't like anything your company does, you are wrong. >> ^CrushBug:
Hey, fair enough. You don't like the games and you don't like the company. Got it. Moving on...



LOL, I was implying EA, not BioWare And for the record, I don't think anyone is a schmuck. In fact, half the time I want to invite people down to the pub on the main floor and talk video games with them as most forums don't allow for enough clarity or flow of conversation. Then I forget I am on the internet and you could be on the other side of the world.

We have certainly made our mistakes over the years, as a company, and we try and learn from them and make things better. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes not. But we keep trying and moving forward. Game development hasn't gotten any easier over the years, but it certainly has gotten a lot more interesting!

Maybe you will like some of our future games, and we can suck you back in at that time.

The fact that the father doesn't explicitly cite the exact nature of the previous offence is not a significant issue. Your conclusion that the punishment doesn't fit the crime is a weak correlation.

It issue hear is a lack of respect for authority and appreciation for the comforts and privileges of living at home with parents that can provide such luxuries as a personal laptop. The only thing out of proportion here was this girl's perception of slavery and entitlement. If you read the follow-up link posted above, you'd see that this tactic hasn't ruined the family by any means.

The father's actions were extreme, and the only waste involved was to his own property. Get over it already!

>> ^NetRunner:

I believe he also said that he couldn't remember any more what that "something similar" was.
To me, that was a big red flag. He could remember with clarity punishing her, and what the punishment was, but not what she'd done to deserve it.
Makes me think the punishment didn't fit the crime.
>> ^alcom:
He said he grounded her for 3 months for doing something very similar to this before, so the message needed to be made clearer.

I believe he also said that he couldn't remember any more what that "something similar" was.

To me, that was a big red flag. He could remember with clarity punishing her, and what the punishment was, but not what she'd done to deserve it.

Makes me think the punishment didn't fit the crime.

>> ^alcom:

He said he grounded her for 3 months for doing something very similar to this before, so the message needed to be made clearer.

3D is stupid anyway. You are trying to display twice as much data in the same area, which means your going to get a lower resolution image. It is effectively half scaling the clarity for this "trick". Less fidelity isn't really worth it. The only way you can solve that is to have 2 separate video signals piped directly to the eye. You could pull something like this off, instead of the normal 3d glasses, you would have a clear lens, the normal image on the screen, and the offset image beamed directly into your other eye . This way, you would get no loss of clarity. Perhaps, though, the movie version doesn't suffer this loss in clarity, I don't know the properties of different polorizations of light. But I know as far as pixels are concerned, if you have 1 million and try to do 2 things with them, you effectively only have half.

>> ^chilaxe:

@Porksandwich "Socialism works in other countries, and works quite well."

Does this apply to socialist countries outside of northern Europe?
Socialism works in Scandinavia because it's full of Scandinavians. Scandinavians in the US - regardless of whether their family has been here 100 years or 1 year - are like East Asians and Jews in the US... they contribute to society at a rate far above other cultural groups.
If the US was full of Scandinavians it would rank similarly to Scandinavia, regardless of the differences in economic systems. US outcomes in general are driven by cultural groups.


It would be a lie to say you knew every aspect of every country without living in those countries to judge whether it "works" or not. You'd have to live at every income level and in various locations within each country to really KNOW for yourself. For example the US works quite well if you are a billionaire, but not so much if you make minimum wage. Your opportunity chance is going to be a magnitude higher as a billionaire, and if you fail you won't be destitute...versus the minimum wage worker.

With that said, there is a general theme in the US that if they don't believe they came up with the idea, plan of execution and implementation without basing any of it on "other" countries then we don't want it.

The common argument during the universal healthcare debate was that while other countries offer it, it wouldn't work in the US. And that's where the explanation usually ended, they would always follow up with the US needs to come up with it's own solution. And then inevitably it would be slight changes to the current system that already doesn't work for many. Then we would ignore that something like 30-35% of the US population is already receiving Medicare/Medicaid coverage that would typically be considered a universal healthcare program if it included everyone else.

It was a really disingenuous argument when you consider that they are trying to keep corporations involved in healthcare and never considered that maybe they should throw them out of the decision making process until they've come up with a plan. Then figure out how they could allow them in that wouldn't be detrimental.

I just think they never looked at other countries implementations to see what they could use for a framework in the US and see what would be required to implement it corporations or not.

But the point of all this is that, despite the evidence that things work in other countries. The US fosters the idea that borrowing ideas from other countries and suiting them to ourselves makes us inferior, and we'd rather stew in the mess we've created until we can come up with something wholly uninfluenced by things outside the country rather than try to fix it sooner by looking abroad. This would be a fine mentality if we didn't cut funding on things that were designed to give us the edge when it comes to discoveries of new things and ideas throughout various fields. There was a time when we were openly giving many of those findings to other countries to do what they will with them, but now we in turn are too good to look at them and consider what we could gain from their methods.

Our government is there to serve and protect it's people, but it doesn't protect them from corporations through regulations or limitations of the powers they have over us. SOPA and John Doe piracy lawsuits are good examples. Mortgage crisis is better. None of those serve the people or the society the people make up. And corporations are not people, so they are part of the society but they do not create the society. Corporations should exist as long as they are beneficial to society, not a minute longer.

It may be cultural group driven, but it seems the younger people are willing to abandon cultural beliefs to attempt something else so they have a chance at a future. We as a nation are unwilling to undo what we have done...we look at our past and despite there being evidence of marching down a slowly declining path that is becoming steeper and steeper.....we continue downward. Now we have to wonder if it's so dark we can't see the huge spiked pit with the very narrow walkway for the well off to tread upon. While the rest of us walk blindly into the pit.

Wool over our eyes, blinders, cart on a lead. Tracks to the cliffs edge. Whatever analogy you want to use.

Edited for clarity and thinking ahead and using the wrong word in a couple places.

I do not often feel the urge to state my admiration for a comment, but this time, I think, I must. Nice one.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
Brothers and sisters.

As an atheist, and a fairly outspoken one at that, I don't feel like Hedges trying to mischaracterize myself or my atheism. I feel like he is trying to challenge me, to keep me from being hypocritical and to make sure that my anger is turned only towards those who do harm, regardless of faith.

I think his criticism of Harris and Hitch have more to do with American attitudes on the middle east than atheists attitudes. Most Americans, myself included, know very little about that region, and what little I/we do know is all negative - sexism, genital mutilation, death threats against cartoonists, jihad, terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, etc. I assume a more realistic picture of the middle east would more closely resemble people of any country. I assume they love their friends and family, that they wish for a better life and a better world for their kids, that they enjoy art and music, that they have skills and hobbies and struggle to make ends meet, that they laugh and joke and mock and criticize the extremists of their country the way we do in ours, that they are frustrated with politics and the power the privileged few lord over them... but portraying humanity of the people in the middle east is something that is simply not done in American media.

I believe that we atheists, who value tolerance, should be making these arguments ourselves, and not trying to brush it under the rug when one of our public figures gets called out. I'm sure if you go through my comments over the years, I've probably made countless fruitless, unproductive and spiteful things about religion. I'm going to make an effort to do and say things differently in the future.

I'm down for coexisting with good people of all walks of life. We all have a common enemy in the powerful individuals who have seized control of our country. I don't want to fight with well intentioned Christians anymore; I want to fight along side them. I want to embrace the social justice that has long been a tradition of both liberalism and Catholicism - among other religions. I want to embrace throwing the money changers out of our democratic temples. I want a society that can be judged on how it treats the least among us. I want to live in a tighter knit, more connected and stronger society; not a selfish, paranoid and weaker one.

I think Hedges sees the problems of our time with remarkable clarity. I'm not threatened by him.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

The Whitlams are playing a free concert here in Canberra on New Year's Eve. We'll be there.>> ^spoco2:

Eternal Nightcap by The Whitlams. Just a defining album from 1997. I hadn't really heard of them at all... then I saw them play at my university, and was blown away. Usually I find it a little hard to get into a live act if I've never heard the music before. But they were just awesome. I got hold of the album and played it constantly... know most of the words to the entire album I would think.

The big track off it, in Australia was No Aphrodisiac, an absolute classic:
Track 1: No Aphrodisiac

Followed by one of the three 'Charlie' songs from the album... just beautiful:
Track 2: Buy now Pay Later (Charlie No. 2)

Track 4 is one of the singles they released, a real energy packed song... great stuff:
Track 4: You sound like Louis Burdett

The whole album is one to listen to from beginning to end, it's well and truly engrained in so many Australian's minds, and evokes that year and surrounding ones with such clarity.
Awesome album

Eternal Nightcap by The Whitlams. Just a defining album from 1997. I hadn't really heard of them at all... then I saw them play at my university, and was blown away. Usually I find it a little hard to get into a live act if I've never heard the music before. But they were just awesome. I got hold of the album and played it constantly... know most of the words to the entire album I would think.


The big track off it, in Australia was No Aphrodisiac, an absolute classic:
Track 1: No Aphrodisiac


Followed by one of the three 'Charlie' songs from the album... just beautiful:
Track 2: Buy now Pay Later (Charlie No. 2)


Track 4 is one of the singles they released, a real energy packed song... great stuff:

Track 4: You sound like Louis Burdett


The whole album is one to listen to from beginning to end, it's well and truly engrained in so many Australian's minds, and evokes that year and surrounding ones with such clarity.

Awesome album

Brothers and sisters.

As an atheist, and a fairly outspoken one at that, I don't feel like Hedges trying to mischaracterize myself or my atheism. I feel like he is trying to challenge me, to keep me from being hypocritical and to make sure that my anger is turned only towards those who do harm, regardless of faith.

I think his criticism of Harris and Hitch have more to do with American attitudes on the middle east than atheists attitudes. Most Americans, myself included, know very little about that region, and what little I/we do know is all negative - sexism, genital mutilation, death threats against cartoonists, jihad, terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, etc. I assume a more realistic picture of the middle east would more closely resemble people of any country. I assume they love their friends and family, that they wish for a better life and a better world for their kids, that they enjoy art and music, that they have skills and hobbies and struggle to make ends meet, that they laugh and joke and mock and criticize the extremists of their country the way we do in ours, that they are frustrated with politics and the power the privileged few lord over them... but portraying humanity of the people in the middle east is something that is simply not done in American media.

I believe that we atheists, who value tolerance, should be making these arguments ourselves, and not trying to brush it under the rug when one of our public figures gets called out. I'm sure if you go through my comments over the years, I've probably made countless fruitless, unproductive and spiteful things about religion. I'm going to make an effort to do and say things differently in the future.

I'm down for coexisting with good people of all walks of life. We all have a common enemy in the powerful individuals who have seized control of our country. I don't want to fight with well intentioned Christians anymore; I want to fight along side them. I want to embrace the social justice that has long been a tradition of both liberalism and Catholicism - among other religions. I want to embrace throwing the money changers out of our democratic temples. I want a society that can be judged on how it treats the least among us. I want to live in a tighter knit, more connected and stronger society; not a selfish, paranoid and weaker one.

I think Hedges sees the problems of our time with remarkable clarity. I'm not threatened by him.