This is, uh, not really about bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is cyclical, alternating extreme highs and extreme lows. This guy is describing a kid who goes through a traumatic event and a difficult period in his life and comes out changed.

That's not a disorder; that's life.

Beautiful. The struggle and luxury of women in Hawaiian society? And cyclical to boot.

The clips at the beginning are horrific and interesting, but they seem out of place with the rest of the clips; and, sort of break the cyclical nature of the rest of the video.

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

Community participation is cyclical. I'm sure someone has written a thesis about it- but I've learned to accept that's just the way it is.

I miss these people too- and I appreciate the people who still manage to stay around over the years. There's also always a new generation of Sifters get to know, which is the upside.

Our social, economic, and polical life isn't restricted by lawful police use of tasers, and, unlike those who live in police states, we have the freedom to change any laws with which we're unhappy.

There's a cyclical history in the US and other countries of times of war prompting more restrictive laws that are later lifted. This has all happened before, it's our fault (don't vote for Nader next time), and it doesn't really affect our lives except in an abstract sense.

I am always not as thorough as I could and should be... and it's frustrating...i always forget that self-evident principles are anything but, and that sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.

i want people to have equal opportunity to... reach the same self-evident conclusions that are to be made through education and experience.

so i guess it's a moot point, i do understand what they mean... i just want to blame someone for not saving me time and actually having to think.

one day, the "news" will not be reporting how... significant... it is that kids don't have prejudices until they are taught them.

to have to be reminded of that makes me sad face when that's pretty much where the story stops.

adults seem to be the ones in need of being held by the hand and told to share and play nice.. er, i mean, become communiggers.

the world is cyclical and progressive, so no real worries; im just god damn impatient.... im constantly told my drug preference is illegal and wrong... and my sexuality is wrong... and yet... i have never told anyone they can't do anything (as long as it doesn't harm me or anyone else)

My GF and I lived in San Francisco in a house with five other people which we all collectively rented. We both worked 50+ hrs a week, and rarely got out to do anything fun. We had put about 90k away, and thought about buying a house with it. If we had done that four years ago we would have negative equity, and owe over $0.5M, instead we got out.

We moved to Pittsburgh PA, where we bought two houses for < $20k each. We rent one and live in the other, we do web work and print design when they come our way.

The cash flow about breaks even, but we have no debt, and we have everything we need, and loads of free time.

I have a cyclical habit of downsizing my life. After I dropped out of UCSB in the late '90s I went to live off the grid in Canada for a few years, the catalyst being the existential arrest caused by my job as a university IT manager.

After I resettled in SF I was sqatting, and dumpsering myself a generally punk-rock existence (minus musical preference). As tends to happen I ended up living with my GF and living a somewhat "normal" life, until we decided to buy a house, and realized we would not be able to do it in SF, and so we downsized to Pittsburgh, and became landlords (gasp squatter -> landlord in 4 years flat).

I'm kinda hoping for total economic collapse, so that I can massively simplify my life again. I'll be planting a garden this year, to make sure we can keep veggies on the table if California has trouble shipping them out in their current low-water-reserves condition, that's going to be my bad economy "side business".

Ditch those cheesy looking medals for top videos, this site looked fairly straight-forward and classy, but it'll turn into MySpace too quickly.

Bring back star points for comments, otherwise this idea will turn into every sift talk post becoming quality and everyone will cyclically pat each other on the back to make up for their otherwise worthy comments.

Giving sift talk posts less space per post on the main sift talk page will make it easier to navigate, and decreasing stickied posts' size even more will encourage posting. As of now, you can scroll like a billion lines to get past 3 stickies and someone's huge picture/epic post. Since the size of the summaries will be decreased, more people will want/need to enter into the post rather than just skim them as they do now.

As for the sift talk itself, part of the problem is that you place it between channels and blogs, two things which many people prolly don't click a lot. Maybe closer to the sifted/unsifted tabs might help as would the inclusion of the word FORUM, since lurkers who you wish to entice will be looking for easy and familiar 1n73rn375 terms.

Go check your pulse, kids, that's bipartisan contribution right there.

Re: evidence against God:
Well, obviously this is a tough one, because you can never prove a negative. The problem is you cannot prove it positively either. Or rather, no one has. We can prove that zebras exist, because there are pictures/videos, many, many people have seen zebras and the thought "makes sense" to us. While I have not seen a zebra, I take it faith, for lack of a better word, that they exist and that it is not an elaborate scheme or conspiracy. It is also relatively easy to verify the theory of a zebra at any given time. It is not all that easy to verify a proof of God, because all the "evidence" are aberrations: Jesus in a can of beans, someone being healed of some disease or being awed by nature. Do you see my point?
To be able to dispute a claim of God, I have to have a definition to go on. Many times when someone disproves a definition, people go "well, but that's not my God". If you make a hypothesis of your God, I'll do my best to disprove that hypothesis.

The Christian Creation theory is not just illogical it is blatantly false and foolish. Creation makes very definite claims, for instance young earth Creationism (earth <10.000 years old) is provably false, the claim that God made all species they way they are now with no transitions is provably false. When a religious doctrine makes such definite claims about our natural world the scientific method has crushed them every time. God seems to retreat into more muddy waters every time science proves him wrong; "God in the gaps".

Re: faith and logic
Your argument that you are able to correlate your faith and logic is more indicative of your ability to overlook some scripture and accept other parts. To make the Bible, for instance, cover the world as we see it now, we have to pick-and-choose which parts we really want to follow and which parts are just gibberish. I think this is a wrong way to go about it. There is a reason the Bible is as it is, you have to either accept it or not. Christianity as an idea is also "evolved" over time, into the many, many variations we see now. Some differences are greater than others, and some are minute. I am troubled by the pick-and-choosing, because that is not the way we learn things about the world. I view the Bible as the evidence that Christians use, and in that case you have to be able to fit everything into your theory, if it doesn't fit, you must acquit. Or make a new theory.

I respect your reverence of your parents, but they can be wrong too. Not that you should questions everything they say, but my point is that they may not really have the answer you are looking for.

The Scientific method is not well equipped to handle moral or ethical questions, because they are not (yet, anyway) a countable, measurable thing. We can't observe moral in its pure form, only the effects it has on people. It is possible to form theories about how it has originated through social sciences and anthropology, but "hard science" has trouble with it. Concerning philosophical questions, it really depends on what kind of philosophical question it is. Some are surprisingly easily bounded in biological evidence, while others are more ethereal.

If God chose to reveal himself, he would manifest in our natural world and thus the scientific method would suddenly apply to at least that avatar in our world. We could then do tests and gather evidence on this manifestation and, at least, get some ideas of how he exists. The fact that this has never happened, does seem to show a tendency.

Re: Existence of the universe
You're just throwing curve balls, aren't you?

Your third possible answer is the same as number two or one. The unmoved mover would need an origin too, and either he has his own 3 or he came from nothing or he always existed.

The problem with inserting God in that theory is that it can never explain anything. You enter into an infinite regress, that goes: "Us <-- God <-- superGod <-- supersuperGod" and so on (<-- "made by").
We have very little scientific evidence that shows the origin of the universe, but that does not mean that we should insert a prime mover into the equation, because that does not logically add up.

I will submit that the nature of the universe may be more mysterious than we think now and that the three possibilities does not adequately cover what "really" happened. Time could be cyclical, or something entirely different from a different point of view than our 3 dimensional world. I'm inclined to that the universe always existed in some form or another, but I have no scientific basis for that thought.

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^ I mostly agree. Some people think the topic is cyclical, and because this is an election year as well as the current horribly ugly financial situation, we're more interested in it and maybe that's temporary?

I'm not sure. I haven't been here long enough to know.

Uhhhh, dumbaasses-the cyclical dance is not interrupted by plastic-it is as it should be-Too bad kids don't have complete information with which to make decisions huh???....Act and react, response ineffectual....

>> ^imstellar28:How can you justify such a law, even if it had some perceived good?

Banks create money, that's the way the gov elected to do it, they give high value dollars, and allow the banks to multiply them. This practice means all of these lending institutions perform a necessary function of the government, a functions which needs to be regulated in order for money to have any value at all.

These virtual mints need to run by rules which keep the money system under control, since many regulations were repealed in our march towards laissez-faire the money system which is based on debt and real-estate, which can not expand forever, will necessarily crumble.

As for all the claims that "it's not really free market" the free market is an abstraction, like a circle, they don't, and can't exist. Moving too far towards free markets creates this sort of cyclical collapse.

Roubini has some very good ideas on how to do this right, and not be a scam:

HOME (Home Owners’ Mortgage Enterprise): A 10 Step Plan to Resolve the Financial Crisis
Nouriel Roubini | Sep 24, 2008

Even if the Treasury TARP plan is implemented fairly and efficiently the US will not avoid a severe U-shaped18-month recession and a severe financial and banking crisis: the recession train has already left the station in Q1 and the financial/banking crisis will be severe regardless of what the Treasury and the Fed do from now on. What a proper rescue plan can do is to avoid having the US experience a multi-year L-shaped recession and extreme financial crisis like the one that led to a decade long stagnation in Japan in the 1990s after the bursting of their real estate and equity bubbles.

I have also argued that, in order to resolve this financial crisis it is not enough to take the bad/toxic assets off the balance sheet of the financial institutions (a new RTC); it is also necessary and fundamental to reduce the debt overhang of millions of insolvent households via a significant debt reduction on their mortgages (an HOLC program like the one that was implement during the Great Depression); and also recapitalize undercapitalized banks with public capital in the form of preferred shares (as the RFC did with 4000 banks during the Great Depression). An RTC scheme without an HOLC and RFC component would not resolve two fundamental problems: millions of households are insolvent and unable to service their mortgages; the financial system is vastly undercapitalized and needs capital to avoid an ugly credit crunch and to foster new credit creation that is needed for future growth.

That is why I proposed the creation of a HOME (Home Owners’ Mortgage Enterprise) that would be a combination of an RTC, a HOLC and a RFC. Let me flesh out this proposal and its key elements and compare it to the Treasury TARP proposal that in its current form has many flaws.

There are 10 steps in this HOME proposal to resolve this most severe financial crisis. Here they are:

First, like in the Treasury TARP plan you need to buy illiquid/toxic assets and take them off the balance sheet of banks and financial institutions to reliquify them and allow new credit creation. The biggest problem here – as the debate between Bernanke and senators yesterday is one of the proper valuation and the proper price at which the government should buy these assets (the RTC did not have this problem as it was working out assets of failed S&Ls): if the government buys the asset at at price that is too high (too small of discount relative to face value) the fiscal cost will be huge and you massively subsidize reckless bankers and their shareholders. If you buy at a discount that is too high you minimize the fiscal cost in the short run but many banks could go bust and the eventual fiscal cost of bailing out the depositors of failed banks could be large. You can debate endlessly whether such assets should be bought at current market price or at prices closer to hold to maturity values (as Bernanke suggested). Given that these assets are impaired pricing the long run value of them is mission impossible. Thus, there is only one solution to this fundamental uncertainty: avoid the government overpaying by having the government having some of the positive benefits of an upside gain in case the banks’ values recover after the bailout. I.e. you need for the government to have some equity in the banks whose assets are purchased by the government. This leads to step 2 of the proposal.

Second, in exchange for the purchase of illiquid asset (at whatever price it is agreed) the government gets preferred shares in the financial institutions that senior to existing common and preferred shares and that are convertible into common shares to allow government to participate into any future upside.

Third, even if the government gets preferred shares as in step 2, the banks will need more capital if they are undercapitalized and they have not fully reserved/provisioned for the losses coming from writing down the asset being sold to the government. So you will need to inject further actual public capital in the form of preferred shares in the financial institutions ( this is what the RFC did during the Great Depression).

Fourth, given the risk to the government deriving from the public injection of capital in the financial system the existing shareholders of the banks need to take a first-tier loss to minimize the risks for the government share. How to do that? First, you need to suspend dividend payments on common share and possibly even existing preferred shared; you also need to force to partially match the public capital injection with new Tier 1 capital.

Fifth, public and private recapitalization of financial institutions unfairly benefits unsecured creditors (all creditors but insured depositors) of such institutions. So, you also need to convert some of this unsecured debt (the sub debt and other debt unsecured debt) into equity (a debt for equity swap). Such swap further reduce the leverage of the financial system (leading to a lower debt to equity ratio for financial institutions).

Sixth, after this crisis is resolved the banking and financial system may need lower capital than before this crisis so as to avoid new asset and credit bubbles; and if you recapitalize some banks that will be able to lend more (still with lower leverage ratios) you still need to let other insolvent banks and financial institutions to go bust and disappear. Only healthier institution should survive. So you need to a systematic triage between banks that are distressed, undercapitalized and illiquid but solvent once the private and public recapitalization occurs from those that are fundamentally insolvent and that need to be shut down. You need to destroy the bad apples to let the good ones or the sick but curable ones survive and thrive.

Seventh, as in the case of the RTC the assets of the banks that are bankrupt and are allowed to fail go to the HOME for workout (debt restructuring/reduction).

Eighth, you need an HOLC-like program for debt reduction of the household sector. Households in the US have too much debt (subprime, near prime, prime mortgages, home equity loans, credit cards, auto loans and student loans) while their assets (values of their homes and stocks) are plunging leading to a sharp fall in their net worth. And households are getting buried under this mountain of mounting debt and rising debt servicing burdens. Thus, a fraction of the household sector – as well as a fraction of the financial sector and a fraction of the corporate sector and of the local government sector – is insolvent and needs debt relief. When a country (say Russia, Ecuador or Argentina) has too much debt and is insolvent it defaults and gets debt reduction and is then able to resume fast growth; when a firm is distressed with excessive debt it goes into bankruptcy court and gets debt relief that allows it to resume investment, production and growth; when a household is financially distressed it also needs debt relief to be able to have more discretionary income to spend. So any unsustainable debt problem requires debt reduction. The lack of debt relief to the distressed households is the reason why this financial crisis is becoming more severe and the economic recession - with a sharp fall now in real consumption spending – now worsening. The fiscal actions taken so far (income relief to households via tax rebates) and bailouts of distressed financial institutions (Bear Stearns creditors’ bailout, Fannie and Freddie and AIG) do not resolve the fundamental debt problem for two reasons. First, you cannot grow yourself out of a debt problem: when debt to disposable income is too high increasing the denominator with tax rebates is ineffective and only temporary; i.e. you need to reduce the nominator (the debt). Second, rescuing distressed institutions without reducing the debt problem of the borrowers does not resolve the fundamental insolvency of the debtor that limits its ability to consume and spend and thus drags the economy into a more severe economic contraction. So of the five possible uses of fiscal policy – income relief to households (the 2008 tax rebate), rescue/bailout of financial institutions (Bears Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG), purchase of assets of failed institutions (an RTC-like institution), recapitalization of undercapitalized financial institutions (an RFC-like institution), government purchase of distressed mortgages to provide debt relief to households (an HOLC-like institution) – the last option is the most important and effective to resolve this severe financial and economic crisis. During the Great Depression the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was create to buy mortgages from bank at a discount price, reduce further the face value of such mortgages and refinance distressed homeowners into new mortgages with lower face value and lower fixed rate mortgage rates. This massive program allowed millions of households to avoid losing their homes and ending up in foreclosure. The HOLC bought mortgages for two year and managed such assets for 18 years at a relatively low fiscal cost (as the assets were bought at a discount and reducing the face value of the mortgages allowed home owners to avoid defaulting on the refinanced mortgages). A new HOLC will be the macro equivalent of creating a large “bad bank” where the bad assets of financial institutions are taken off their balance sheets and restructured/reduced.

Ninth, we need to avoid a situation where the recapitalization of the banks and the resolution of this financial crisis leads to another credit and asset bubble. Many things need to be done to avoid this risk but a rapid change of the Basel II capital adequacy ratios to reduce their the pro-cyclicality would be essential.

Tenth, start implementing rapidly a reform of the system of regulation and supervision of financial institutions in a world of financial globalization. With the collapse of most of the shadow banking system most of these shadow banks are now being folded in the traditional banks and will be regulated like banks. Indeed all institutions of large size and that are systemically important (commercial banks, investment banks, non-bank mortgage lenders, hedge funds, private equity funds, etc.) should be supervised and regulated in a similar way. To make the financial system more stable over time and avoid severe financial crises like the current one will require that both banks and former shadow banks be regulated and supervised better than they have been in the last decade. After all traditional banks have performed as poorly – and some more poorly – and have lost more money than shadow banks during this severe financial crisis. So both the poor regulation and supervision of banks (as regulators were asleep at the wheel while the laissez fair ideology and voodoo-cult of self-regulation and market discipline and internal risk management became dominant) and the lack of sensible regulation of shadow banks lies behind the current financial disaster. Thus, folding shadow banks back into the traditional banking system will make the overall financial system more stable only if the proper reform of the regulation and supervision of financial institutions in a world of financial globalization will be undertaken. This important matter is the subject of the chapter (titled “Financial Crises, Financial Stability, and Reform: Supervision and Regulation of the Financial System in a World of Financial Globalization”) that I have written for the recently published World Economic Forum’s Financial Development Report.

This chapter analyzes in detail the episodes of financial crisis in emerging market economies and advanced economy; discusses the causes and consequences of such crisis; measures the economic and fiscal costs of such crises; discusses the debate on whether monetary and credit policy should target asset prices and asset bubbles; studies the weaknesses of financial regulation and supervision in advanced economies financial systems that led to the recent crises; and finally considers eleven separate key issues in the reform of the regulation and supervision of financial institutions in a world of financial globalization that are necessary to prevent future crisis and make them less virulent. These eleven issues that are key in reforming financial regulation and supervision are: the distorted compensation system of bankers/traders and the related agency problems between financial institutions shareholders and their managers; the flaws of the originate and distribute securitization model; regulatory arbitrage and the instability of the shadow banking system given its reliance on short term liquid financing, high leverage and long term illiquid lending; the weaknesses of self-regulation and market discipline and the need of greater rules-based regulation; pro-cyclical capital requirements and other issues with the Basel II capital requirements; the distorted incentives of credit rating agencies; asset valuation and fair value accounting in a world where assets can be highly illiquid and hard to price; the lack of transparency in financial markets; the inadequate regulatory regime; the lack of international coordination of regulatory policies; and the issue of who will regulate the regulators, i.e. how to avoid the regulatory capture by the financial industry of the regulators and supervisors of financial institutions.

So now that the shadow banking system is being folded in the formal banking system it is high time to rethink how both banks and the former non-bank financial institutions should be properly regulated and supervised.

http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253739/home_home_owners_mortgage_enterprise_a_10_step_plan_to_resolve_the_financial_crisis

It has has been pointed out ad infinitum, there are certain parts of the ball that are more toxic to humans, etc. than others-cyclical is the key, and our part in all of it is as it should be-a minor fucking role-the planet can take care of herself.....we need to take care of the money-changers-Those behind the veil that cause the bulk of the bitches listed above to reach chaotic proportions, as they try to control the bitch called K A O S......and all the monkeys that continue to play their game.

-Like Carlin said, "Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that."

-There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

Carbon tax on shotgun discharges into Al Gore's hybrid won't stop the growing threat that humans pose to themselves and others(kitties and frogs, etc.)We must stop the Earth's vindictive output of toxic sulphuric acid and carbon dioxide!! We must crush the sun's death-grip on the most programmable of bipedal hominids, and cease forever the cyclical dervish whose sole purpose is to make it hard for us humans to eat, shit, sleep, fuck, and die where we want to, for however long we please!! Who's with me!!??? Who's with the monkey-lovers??!!

Whereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic
community to its drum woven past
Whereas the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to
calculate the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.
Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and
re-released at the same given moment of recorded history , yet at a
different moment in time's continuum has allowed history to catch up with
the present.

We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.
Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or
anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically
or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as
retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.

Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of
being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular
manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased
by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal
aggressors.

Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip hops standard 85 rpm when increased by a
number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at ¾ of it's
speed may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the
unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season

Our cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the
centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and
effect
Reject mediocrity!

Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given
for you to understand.
The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the
diet of an infant.
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative
symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce and crushed
pears
Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness.
The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but
with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.

Thus, in the name of:
ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN,
LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITHE, LOURDE, WHITMAN,
BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, GHANDI, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ,
SIDDHARTHA,
MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GUARDSIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER,
HOLIDAY,
DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE,
RACHMNINOV,
ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHOWAY, HENDRIX, KUTL, DICKERSON, RIPPERTON,
MARY, ISIS, THERESA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI,
LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING,
FOUR
LITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERONE, MARLEY, COSBY,
SHAKUR, THOSE STILL AFLAMED, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMED

We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter.
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full
of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down
supply the percussion factor of forever.
If you must count to keep the beat then count.
Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious.
Curve you circles counterclockwise
Use your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.
Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.
Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for
today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies
into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry,
crafts, love, and love.
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to
uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain