i wont judge you too harshly for liking koontz.
but i read him after i read the old school masters.so i recognized many of his plot lines.

but he does have a smooth style,which i call "crapper"reading.
you know,a book you keep in the loo and read a few pages while you do your business?
koontz is perfect crapper reading.

@Janus
you are not alone,many here on the sift tend to lean in your direction,however,i find this to be misplaced skepticism.

when it comes to russian internal policies,and actions abroad i tend to agree with the assertion that RT leans towards russian state "message of the day".similar to how CNN,MSNBC and FOX play that game.

but when it comes to being critical of the USA,and considering just who chris hedges is as a journalist and writer.i find the criticism un-warranted.

that is just my opinion,you are free to disagree of course.

though i would like to point out that many media outlets that have produced fantastic content,with exceptional journalists,are under siege.TeLeSUR and aljazeera english are in the crapper due to funding,and small,independent outlets are also struggling to compete with the megalithic corporate media to bring critical analysis in these dangerous times.

so while i agree that a venue such as RT should be approached with a modicum of skepticism,i also feel very strongly that we should not throw the baby out with the bath water.

chris hedges has been a extremely vocal critic of power,corruption and the devastating affects of neoliberalism.pulitzer prize winning author and journalist.

so while this may be on on RT,it is chris hedges that has credit with me.he has proven to be a man of integrity.

@artician
i hear ya man,
but tolkien set the bar where all other fantasy writers had to follow.

personally i found the "the chronicles of thomas covenant-the unbeliever" to be perhaps the best fantasy series to take what tolkien did to a much greater depth and scope and incorporating much of what C.S lewis laid down.

what a great series.the protagonist is such an anti-hero and you struggle for three books to even like him,nevermind identify with him.

but like you,i sometimes struggle when a writers influence is so blatant.

take Dean Koontz...really...take him..
i find him to be an utter hack,and while his prose is readable,his storylines and ideas are so obviously plucked from better writers and then mashed together so we wont notice.

i notice...and thats why any book of his given to me has a permanent place on my bathroom shelves.that man is pure crapper reading,since i get to play "recognize the plot" without any real exertion ....mentally.

but let us be honest.
while tolkien created a very diverse and detailed land with lore and history.painting a picture in our heads this fantastic world he created.the basic plotline is not that original.

it is your basic heroes quest with an extremely detailed backdrop.

so i will give this show a pass,just as i did brooks books.they were engaging and entertaining,and at the end of the day...what more do we wish out of our books?

ever read any of piers anthony's xanth novels?
they are puntastic and a fun ride (even if a bit cheeky),and nowhere near great literature.

but fun...and i can live with that.

Holy crappers... I'd not want to even walk down some of the stairs these guys are biking down after a couple of glasses of tipple. Are there a lot of mother-in-law plunges from the section around 1:40?

Whoops, well, for all the objectivism displayed here, it still looks to me like one side of the coin. Aside from the comments from the folks I have ignored on the sift, I don't see any criticism of the USA or very much criticism of Christianity. I don't really want to be that guy, but just remember that especially in the last decade our international reputation among countries on the receiving end of bombs has gone down the crapper. All of these "opinion polls" are trying to link Islam with anti-US sentiments and methods (eg. terrorism), when it's only demonstrating the correlation. Obviously if we bomb a predominantly Muslim country and innocents die, how do you think poll results would lean among Muslims in that country? How would your religious demographic feel if Russia bombed Manhattan and killed a dozen random citizens? What about if we had no Army, Navy, or Air Force, and these bombings happened every week?

Meanwhile, citing statistics from a website which has a clear agenda of being a hit-piece on Islam is a fucking ridiculous idea. Come on, guys. If that website lists 300 polls which emphasize their point, do you think they will include a reference to even one poll which disputes it? If they sifted through thousands of polls just to find those 300, would you still have statistical confidence in their results? I admit that the multitude of sources they pulled polls from is initially impressive, but the #1 goal of statistics is to eliminate bias, and that website is pure uncut bias.

There are cats in it, it must sift or my equation and months work are down the crapper. The 2:10 guitar is enough though.

Oh please tell me that no one actually believes that one round alone from that rifle could cause those explosions.
Possibly an incendiary round could trigger an explosion if a bomb was already in the crapper and in the truck.
But more likely they were just blown up by someone off camera.
Nice rifle and he appears to be a great marksman but it's mostly hype.

I have to completely disagree with the formation of your argument. Unfortunately, you have presented a very shallow, 1 dimensional view of violence; most would refer to it as a scarecrow. I wish to state before I go further that I wish I lived in this world you imagine. I long for a world where violence isn't an answer. Let us take on your examples one at a time, then go into the thrust of the issue.

As far as terrorism goes, it is hard to even understand what terrorism is. It isn't very rigidly defined. Is it terrorism to force people to pay taxes, or is it only when you blow them up when they aren't expecting it? Terrorism is more of a red herring word used to justify actions rather a "thing" itself. that is a dodge of the issue, but then again, so was this word all along. So lets move into some of your better examples.

Was the objective of Vietnam and Korea to stop Communism? If so, then the success rate is 50%. As far as things go in the world, those aren't terrible odds. South Korea still exists as a democracy, violence won out in that case over rivaling violence.

The world war 2 example is a curious example to use. It actually shows a different picture then I think you would like to present. In the end, Germany ended up with a ruined country, as you say. But, that is only because it met up against resistance/violence. In the end, Germany was BOMBED into submitting, not talked into it. A greater force of violence stopped the lesser source of it. It was the rule of the jungle carried out in its most prime. Countless attempts by Brittan and France to talk Germany out of taking over its neighbors had no effect, only when the grind of blood and bullets was too much for her to bear did Germany relent. Indeed, WW2 is a horrible example for you to use...probably the worst I can think of.

Instead you should of used people like Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Jr. These people were truly non-violent and changed the world. However, they are the conspicuous examples. The reason they stand out in history is because all to often, non-retaliation results in certain defeat. Look at the plight of the native Americans. While history tells the tail of all the tribes that fought, many did not. Many made deals with the White man. The history of these arrangements is grim indeed. For the White man would constantly renig the terms and send into exile the native Americans. Even the great Jefferson, the champion of democracy, sent the native Americans further and further down the trail of tears. They did not fight. The suffered...and suffered. Perhaps, if they fought, they would off been completely eradicated, so, instead, they choose exile and decimation. Which is better, I am not one to say. But surely, their non-violence did not result in one could consider a victory.

You need to remember your fathers. And I don't mean the founders of the USA. I mean 2 billion years of evolution on this planet. Humans are not some sanctimonious super being. We are composed of the same shit, sweat, and tears as everything else. The history of all animals is almost wholly violent. The lion doesn't solve his mating deputes with a rival by any other means than brutality. Your immune system doesn't win out by being less virulent than the infection it sees to mend. Your food won't survive long enough to reap if you don't stop the insects and vermin from eating it. Washing your hands is akin to mass murder of bacteria. Anti-bacterial soap is akin to genocide. But we resolve ourselves of these sins almost constantly so that we can be naive in the construction of our morality when dealing with each other. In this world, it is life for life. Nothing alive doesn't take life as well, spare most planets. Plants are only noble creation along with some fungi. Most every animal on the planet exploits unto pain through violence some other organism. herbivorous being the most foul violator eating the only noble life on the plant. Carnivores are their penitence.

This world is a cycle of pain, and its root is violence. Violence is what drives evolution forward. One of the expatiations of the Cambrian Explosion is the arrival of carnivores. And billions of years later, you stand on the top of the tradition of exploitation. And you won't be rid of it be ignoring it inside you. You might construct a society that can slowly cope and perhaps even bread out billions of years of evolution. And in perhaps 10 thousand years, you can look back and see that you reduced human violence by 20%. And that would be a great accomplishment. Only to then be wiped out by a asteroid ending all human life to be replaced by the new slug overlords. The great comedy of life is to think you can make a difference in the 80 years we have vs the billions that the history of life has been with us. Unless you are talking about complete genetic experimentation to change the face of what it means to be human, I don't see anything working. Maybe you make a government system that handles the nature of man better, but the nature of man...the 2 billion year old murder animal, is still set before you.

Like I said, I don't like this world. I would rather live in your fantasy world. A world of reason, of peace, of progress. We don't have that world. We have a world of brutal, violence. It's only true self is that of conflict and competition that is all to often violent. It the a 2 billion year old rule that we didn't make up but have had to better realize, lest make poorly designed strategy to deal with the beast that is man.

>> ^SDGundamX:

>> ^BoneRemake:
UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTEEEEEEEEEEE

"violence doesnt solve anything "
and yet we go to war, explain that mrs former cop.

By the way, you forgot to quote her whole comment, which in its entirety goes:
"My message to the young people out there is that violence does not solve anything. It can get you into more trouble than what it's going to solve. [If you are being bullied] don't suffer in silence: find a trusted a adult and let them know what's going on."
So first off, your question about wars was completely off-topic. But I'll take a shot at answering it anyway.
She didn't say people were smart. She didn't say people don't ever get violent. She instead pointed out violence doesn't solve any problems. Did we solve the terrorist threat with the Iraq and Afganistan wars? Did we stop Communism with the Vietnam and Korean wars? Part of the reason Germany went to war in World War 2 was because their economy was in the crapper after World War 1 and they owed money in reparations. Did they solve that problem by getting their country bombed to rubble?
Nations go to war for many reasons. There's the ostensible reasons like "spreading freedom" that the population is forced to buy and there are the actual reasons like securing resources or the sheer madness of the country's leadership. My question for you is, at the end of the day, can you really think of a war that "solved" a problem in a way that couldn't have been solved peacefully?

>> ^BoneRemake:

UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTEEEEEEEEEEE

"violence doesnt solve anything "
and yet we go to war, explain that mrs former cop.


By the way, you forgot to quote her whole comment, which in its entirety goes:

"My message to the young people out there is that violence does not solve anything. It can get you into more trouble than what it's going to solve. [If you are being bullied] don't suffer in silence: find a trusted a adult and let them know what's going on."

So first off, your question about wars was completely off-topic. But I'll take a shot at answering it anyway.

She didn't say people were smart. She didn't say people don't ever get violent. She instead pointed out violence doesn't solve any problems. Did we solve the terrorist threat with the Iraq and Afganistan wars? Did we stop Communism with the Vietnam and Korean wars? Part of the reason Germany went to war in World War 2 was because their economy was in the crapper after World War 1 and they owed money in reparations. Did they solve that problem by getting their country bombed to rubble?

Nations go to war for many reasons. There's the ostensible reasons like "spreading freedom" that the population is forced to buy and there are the actual reasons like securing resources or the sheer madness of the country's leadership. My question for you is, at the end of the day, can you really think of a war that "solved" a problem in a way that couldn't have been solved peacefully?

>> ^SpaceDude:

Strike!


I'm going with the term "Crapper!"™ instead, as the cat probably did.

/Needs more co-planer orientation for a real game.
//Drunk people will be playing soon!

I tried this one waaaay back when....good luck getting these folks interested in anyone maverick or renaissance who had balls, skills, and tenacity-Thors' a piece a work...i keep a copy of Kon Tiki inna stack above the crapper....(Seee ladies??!...Yer magazines and what not stay OUT of the spray one!!)

I was half expecting a turd to drop out of the crapper as he/(she?) turned the page, but alas it was not to be.

I'm still curious if that sucker of a treaty and the way Chirac and Sarkozy handled it in France will backfire violently. Looking at the escalation of protests in France during recent years - occupation of plants, threatened demolition of plants, violent riots in Paris suburbs, lately even work-related suicides -, the next step might be ugly. No idea if this treaty will be the trigger or maybe the economic crisis; but they won't take it quietly.

As for the treaty itself: if anything is as important as this, people ought to be able to understand it. If it's not written in a way that John Doe can understand it, it's a piece of shit and should be tossed straight into the dumpster. The last version I read had 292 pages of legal cockswallow, utterly incomprehensible.

So once again, my hopes rest on the Irish, even though I wouldn't blame them for a pro-EU outcome this time due to the way their economy went down the crapper.

The Worst People in the world beat his ratings three times over. Kieth should really shape up before he takes NBC down the crapper with him.