ChaosE - This may be a matter of semantics and definitions. Depending on how you define the terms, I agree with your point.

And, in moral philosophy, if it is not your _choice_, it is not an ethical choice. Sorry if this is philosophical bullshit, but think about it: your "not killing someone" because you don't have the motivation or means is not a virtuous choice, it is simply not NOT an unethical one. It is the lack of a negative, not the presence of a positive. Virtue is about our choices, not our defaults.

Virtue is like building a muscle. The virtue is demonstrated/evidenced in building my strength (taking the time and focus to work out and be disciplined), not in the fact that I am strong. If I stop working out, my muscle will decay.

This is like virtue. In a strange way, once we have habituated a virtuous choice to routine/automatic mode, it is no longer a virtuous choice. It was virtuous to build the habit, but it is not virtuous when it is automatic.

Again, it is philosophical quibbling/definitions, but it points to a real distinction that matters in our moment by moment experience. As moral philosophers put it, morality is about what you do in the face of difficulty and temptation, not when things are automatic. It is easy to be nice to people when life is going great for you. It is hard to be nice to others when things are stressful and falling apart. THAT is where the rubber of morality meets the road of reality/daily life. That is where virtue shows up (or doesn't).

I am married and monogamy is part of my commitment. If no other woman would deign to sleep with me, my not sleeping with them is no indication of my virtue. It is only in the face of propositions to which I say "no" that I am exercising the virtue of fidelity.

In this sense, the more we are responsible for our own choices, the more those choice CAN be virtuous and BUILD our virtuous character. In contrast, when other people make our choices for us, we neither act virtuously nor build virtuous character.

I am sure this is true in your own life. If you donate time/money/effort to a charitable cause, it impacts you personally and powerfully. When the government takes taxes from your paycheck to pay for social programs, it is impersonal and has virtually zero impact on your character.

Or, that is one way of looking at it - which the video is all about.

Being racist basically refers to being mean. I'm not being mean. I'm a humanist who cares about human rights.

What I said is true that the reason South Africa has so much more wealth than it's neighbors is because European folks built it, and now much of it has decayed.

Hello Racist

btw. Is this the poor white slum future you speak of ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C2R12xQDDE

Ah hahahahah

White slums are the SAME as black.
Guess it's was NEVER a skin color thing... just a dumb poverty thing
But you probably can't understand that

btw. Most of Russia/Europe/USA is decaying urban concrete. wtf does that have to do with anything...
Please write more, your ignorance is very very funny

oh yeah... "vote against immigration ?" So South Africa, USA AND Australia should AND KICK OUT ALL THE WHITES, since THEY are the immigrants ??? You are soo dumb and probably from Germany/Holland/Switzerland or some other Nazi country

The reason South Africa has so much more wealth than it's neighbors is because European folks built it.

After they weren't in power anymore, the skyscrapers they built fell into decay, Detroit style.


Expect to see more of that as Whites become minorities in all of their nations (except Russia) in the coming decades.

People of all ancestries should vote against immigration if they like stable societies.

I can claim to know far more than you seem to because I went to college and graduated with a degree in science, have a NASA geologist uncle, and read numerous scientific publications monthly, and because I didn't get my science training from Wikipedia, the worst place to try to learn something because it can be changed by those with an agenda and no knowledge.

Uniformitarianism as described is NOT the cornerstone of geology, that's ridiculous. Geologic forces are not uniform...erosion, for one, happens at it's own rate each time depending on uncountable factors. Differing geologic forces act in concert on differing geologic features to change the rate at which features are made/changed. That means that there is NO uniformitarianism as described...except to a quite small extent in the lab where ALL other things are equal. That's probably why they never mentioned it in any of the numerous geology classes I took, nor from my uncle, nor in Science, nat. geo., Scientific American, etc..
I imagine you know about it because you have been told it can be used as a tool to try to debunk geology, and as an anti-science guy you grabbed onto it without understanding.
Once again, there are certain processes that happen at certain rates, like the decay of radioactive materials down to their bases, usually lead. That is not the same as saying all features are created at the same rate, which you suggest uniformitarianism claims. EDIT: apparently that IS what uniformitarianism claims, and why it was discarded as a hypothesis in the early 1800's, it was wrong in it's basic assumptions.
None of it has a thing to do with a landslide, which is what the video describes. Not a whit.
I would guess you believe the earth is about 6000 years old, right?

EDIT: I hope I can be forgiven for not knowing every discredited theory from the late 1700's.

ah thank you for your kind words my friend.
much appreciated.

many here on this site of late appear to have acquired super powers and have the ability to discern my intentions.
which to my surprise are always egotistical in nature....the mind..it baffles.

the belittling,trolling and smug arrogance grates on my nerves and is so un-necessary.
all multiple forms of bullying i detest.

little kings..
in their little fiefdoms..
demanding respect while giving none.

i would chuckle if it were not so heart breaking.

but i am duty bound to stand up and point to the rot and the decay.
few ears listen and even rarer for a heart to be touched.

and even when i do that my words are ridiculed and dismissed.
corruption seeks to blind the seeker and deafen one who would listen.whispering always to the most intimate and despicable of our natures.
selfishness knows no bounds...it just wants more.

i am losing this battle.
my integrity..questioned.
my motivations...projected by those with lesser constitutions.
sacrifices ..all in vain,for naught but a harsh word and a suspicious glare.

as if i were the enemy.

where is the love?
the joy of creation and just being?
of connecting with another and rejoicing in that small moment of realization?

ah my friend,i struggle with those who choose pettiness over substance and to the absolute deafening roar of silence.the pervasive shadow of fear has infected and conquered more territory over the past year,seeping like a stain.

and the oblivious rejoice in their own ignorance.
thinking themselves clever.
doom has never before held such a beautiful and entrancing countenance.
we revel in our own stink and call it lovely.
dancing like macabre ghosts on a sterile landscape...
love and joy left long ago...
and we clap like monkeys and gleefully chatter as the noose is drawn tighter.
and the smell of death and fear grow stronger,but the allure of violence distracts us from our own emptiness.

what is it worth if there is no love?

ah..but this is why yours was/is so precious.
thank you my friend.

there is love,
and with that...
there is hope.

because i love you.

@longde
Out of politeness, I've removed the link.

But the article's chronicling of the urban decay data seems to be a useful companion to mainstream sources, which need to either spin data optimistically or not report it. That leaves behind a lot of victims who could have prevented the crimes against them.

The only mention of race in my comment was inclusive of all ancestries: "I'm speaking to the minority of people from all ancestries who are on the side of civilization."

The rest of the comment is about culture. Many people try to make them the same thing. They're not the same. That's why I included the clarification about all ancestries.

These types of considerations are far from the site you mentioned, which isn't a place I'd ever go. They'd consider me a hippy.

@RedSky

The fry argument always bugs the hell outta me. There was another of these "mold studies" done by the same guy who did the super-size me doc.

He picked up one of basically every burger and put it on a pedestal, and then picked up a container of fries and did the same, then was shocked that the burgers decayed faster than the fries.

For any study to be valid (for me) everything has to be 100% sterile for this to happen, and the bun went through at least 2 sets of hands (the person who made it, and his own when placing it down) therefore introducing god-knows-what bacteria onto it. The fries however, came out of a 350 degree fryer where absolutely ALL bacteria was decimated from them, then using a metal scoop placed into a cardboard container where the inside has likely never been touched.

Damn near anything will last incredibly long at that rate.

As an American living in Thailand, I've adjusted pretty well to metric units for most things (to the point that I'd prefer them for MOST things).

Celsius has more sensible set points (1 and 100 being freeze and boil of water), but I still prefer to think in Fahrenheit for temperatures. For some reason it is harder for me to overcome the inertia of ~25 years of using Fahrenheit than it was to get used to metric distances.

One other thing I noticed about this video is that you could easily make similar arguments about our system of time being backwards or primitive. For some reason we have days of 24 hours, which are sometimes divided into 12 AM and 12 PM hours. Each hour has an arbitrary 60 minutes. Each minute has 60 seconds. Sometimes we divide seconds into hundredths (1/100) or milliseconds (1/1000). We have 12 months, each containing somewhere between 28 and 31 days. One year has 365.242199 days, so we call it 365 and then add one more on leap years, or occasionally skip a leap year since that fraction isn't a perfect 1/4.

That is all very messy and based on local, non-universal phenomena -- just like all those silly antiquated imperial units. Maybe at some point we'll shift to metric time based on radioactive isotope decay rates or something.

He is offering as practical an answer to a serious question as can be digested or objectively considered. Deriding politicians is a universal license and you don't have to approach intelligence to decry the futility and decay of that profession. He's got bills, commitments, responsibilities and a shit-load of work chum, to stay imbedded in media as he has been doing lately.
I used to be down on Brand for his sophomoric humor until he started blithering about the nature of existence and telling the world about his personal rock-bottom-

Most of his solutions are idyllic like any artist's and in-kind, some are quite simple and universally practical. He's sharp and witty, and much more charming when he's not doing straight comedy.

When he dumped Katy Perry like a brick is when he began to appeal to myself-

Uhhhhhmm, bemoaning the inevitability of one empire's somnambulism and decay over another empire's rise built on rubbish and centuries of abuse well, sounds like a cyclical problem.
Deal with it and hunker the fuck down.

There was a reason they went with 4,5,6 first . . .

I don't mind that 1,2,3 had civilization in them. Overall that's good for the story, since it shows how decayed and frontier like the galaxy has gotten. But as others have said, I don't think these rules would have saved 1,2,3. A good story and better direction would have. The origin of Darth Vader alone could have been soooo much more epic.

Walt Disney and his Imagineers are legend.

All things being transitory, ideas decay. Most ideas from popular culture leave few traces of their existence behind, but some fossilize.

Society embraced it, creating the sediment, and then the oxygen of originality was removed. Over many, many years, the parts of it that were inspiring and innovating were replaced by money deposits.

The bloated corporate entity may appear to be alive but it is not. It doesn't create life, just consumes. Consumes your wallet. Consumes your wallet so that it can be a more preserved fossil.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Watch-Atoms-Decay-in-Real-time-in-Cloud-Chamber

Watch Atoms Decay in Real-time in Cloud Chamber has been added as a related post - related requested by deathcow.