Hypothetical reactions? You can't know how you'd react? This is ridiculous. Have you honestly not been in situations like this before?

I know I wouldn't wail like a demented banshee because that isn't how I react to disasters, and it's the same with most people I know and many people I've observed.

It's no good and it serves no purpose. People who react like this are a real liability in situations where action is necessary.

Holy shit, this coming from one of the most politically biased individuals to ever puke up worthless polarized talking points on the sift.

Ignore story about murder and injustice for minorities.
Raise hell about "startling new details" in the Obama birth certificate saga.

Riiight...

You and everyone like you are demented.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Best thing we can all do is shut the news off, ignore the media, and not listen to a single word that anyone says about this whole thing. Let the courts do what they do, and stop getting sucked into these ideological knife fights that are clearly politically motivated.

>> ^dannym3141:

...
I believe that a sane dog's temperament is dependent upon the owner, not its size or breed (within reason - i wouldn't immediately assume something like a dingo could be raised domestically).


I'm glad you qualified that. Some dogs are bat-shit demented when they first pop out and hit the ground.

>> ^cosmovitelli:

I read your stuff Yogi!
FWIW Involving the US in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan is all about money and power. Oil, minerals, rate earth shit etc etc.
In Iran they got rid of a benevolent democratically elected progressive who tried to return the oil wealth of the country to its people and replaced him with a foreign sponsored greedy foolish puppet.
When it swung back the other way the clerics took over. Doh!
They used Afghanistan as a proxy war with the soviets, training the mujahideen / aka Taliban fighters in improvised explosives, insurgency warfare and basically how to fuck up a mechanised invading army. Then they invaded. Doh!
In Iraq they supported Saddam despite his demented paranoid savagery until the Iraqi oilfields became too tasty to ignore.
Duck Cheney said it couldn't be done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I&sns=em
But they upped his end via massive Haliburton projects and installed a puppet moron to keep blaming Iraq for the Saudi attacks on 9/11.
Then they invaded, killing thousands of civilians, and dismantled the police and social services while fucking up the food and water supply. Just for good measure they disbanded the army and sent 375,000 heavily armed young men off to find food for their own families. Doh!
Never mind about panama, chile, Vietnam, Cuba, Russia, Pakistan etc etc.


I'd pretty much agree with your facts. I'm a little less sure on your point.

America helped train and support the Islamic fighter in Afghanistan to chase out the Soviets. America supported Saddam while he was using chemical weapons against Iran and even Iraqi Kurds. America propped up a strong man of their choosing in Iran which backfired and led to the current theocracy.

You needn't look far or very hard to find examples where almost any and every nation has selfishly done very bad things, or things with terrible consequences. America, Russia and China being such large nations, the examples for them are much bigger and numerous. It makes for great propaganda, and all 3 continually make heavy use of it to tarnish each other. America is characterized by the genocide of native americans and Vietnam, Russia by Stalin and China by Mao. It's great propaganda, but it's not insightful or helpful analysis.

Pretend you get be President when Bush Jr. was president. America's narrow self interests are being threatened by terrorism. Bin Laden has extremely close ties with Islamists not only in Afghanistan, but throughout nuclear armed Pakistan. AQ Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, is going around selling nuclear secrets and equipment to the highest bidder. That's an uncomfortably short path from Pakistan's nuclear arsenal to the hands of a very credible terrorist network. Do you demand Pakistan break it's ties with the Taliban, or just let it slide? Do you demand the Afghan Taliban break ties with Al Qaeda, or just let it slide? I think selfish American interest DID dictate making those two demands, and being willing to launch a war if they were refused.

I think that is a strong argument that the Afghan war was indeed a good thing from the perspective of America's narrow self-interest.

What about the Afghan people though? Their self interest depends on what the end game is, and nobody can predict that. What we DO know is that the formerly ruling Taliban hated women's rights, and we fought against them. What we DO know is that the formerly ruling Taliban burnt off more of Afghanistan's vineyards than even the Russians had, because making wine was anathema to their cult. What we DO know is that the Taliban was one of the most brutal, backwards and hateful organizations around.

I can not say that the Afghan war ensured a better future for Afghanistan's people. What I CAN say is that leaving the Taliban in power in Afghanistan ensured a dark, bleak and miserable future for Afghanistan's people. I would modestly propose that a chance at something better was a good thing.

I read your stuff Yogi!

FWIW Involving the US in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan is all about money and power. Oil, minerals, rate earth shit etc etc.

In Iran they got rid of a benevolent democratically elected progressive who tried to return the oil wealth of the country to its people and replaced him with a foreign sponsored greedy foolish puppet.
When it swung back the other way the clerics took over. Doh!

They used Afghanistan as a proxy war with the soviets, training the mujahideen / aka Taliban fighters in improvised explosives, insurgency warfare and basically how to fuck up a mechanised invading army. Then they invaded. Doh!

In Iraq they supported Saddam despite his demented paranoid savagery until the Iraqi oilfields became too tasty to ignore.

Duck Cheney said it couldn't be done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I&sns=em

But they upped his end via massive Haliburton projects and installed a puppet moron to keep blaming Iraq for the Saudi attacks on 9/11.
Then they invaded, killing thousands of civilians, and dismantled the police and social services while fucking up the food and water supply. Just for good measure they disbanded the army and sent 375,000 heavily armed young men off to find food for their own families. Doh!

Never mind about panama, chile, Vietnam, Cuba, Russia, Pakistan etc etc.

>> ^EvilDeathBee:

@coolhund
Ah, so you're a PC elitest. They're the worst at being opinionated douche bags, stuck in the past moaning about every game that comes out these days. I prefer my gaming on PC, especially shooters and despise poor ports, but I'm not a total dick about it. Next you'll be saying something like "STFU fag noob!".
I also think you do not understand my comments and instead of actually thinking about what i mean by evolution, like the definition being survival of the fittest, fittest being the games that actually sell, you just attack and start spewing your demented hate. Game design has evolved, many aspects for the better, many IMO for the worse, but denying that it is evolution is retarded.
The current industry works like this. Game development can cost 10s to sometimes 100s of millions of dollars, not including marketing, which again costs millions of dollars and is vital. These days it doesn't matter how good a game is, if it doesn't have branding or good marketing behind it, it wont sell. In some cases not even then because launch window is important too. Very rarely a game comes out of no where and surprises people and becomes a hit, but as I said, rarely. Investors/Publishers are rarely willing to release something totally different or release in a genre they know doesn't sell, and frankly who would be? Would you seriously be willing to risk losing that much money on such a risky investment? It's a business!
You'll be surprised to know I actually agree with you partly, the cause for this is the size of the industry now and the size of it's userbase. However what do you expect to happen to it? Do you expect the industry to stagnate, stay as it was 15 years ago and not grow yet still stay alive just to create your space flight sims? And yes, indie development is where all the ingenuity comes from, low risk and also low reward.
We only recall those nostalgic games we hold dear. Sometimes they live up to modern scrutiny, often they don't (a friend of mine who'd never played System Shock 2 or Deus Ex gave both ago. Loved SS2, couldn't get into Deus Ex). You never recall all the games that were shit. I can barely recall them, but i do remember there being a lot more shit games than good games.
These old classic games will always hold a place in my heart and many of them, especially the phenomenal Quake, I could always fire up (assuming I can get them running) and have a fun time, but that is nostalgia. Indie devs will be the ones to turn to, to experience old school game design. If that's enough for you, wtf are you so angry about? If you seriously expect AAA publishers to release games like that, you're in for a seriously long wait.
Now, I've had enough squabbling with a 30 year old child. Go back to your mother's basement, continue to replay your old games and by all means, don't stop complaining on the internet about how modern gaming has ruined your "life". I'll be here in the present, looking to the future and thinking fondly of the past


Why should I call you something like that? Dont put your standards on others. Well, you still havent grasped what I am trying to say. No wonder.
Yes, I know very well how the market looks right now. I know how it developed and I know whats to blame. That doesnt mean I deal with it. Dealing with it would mean I would have given in, and I never give in when things I like get destroyed. That may be futile in this case, with so many idiots like yourself who have given in and went back to mindless consume, but I dont care.

Games have not evolved. Since 2007 the graphics have not become much better, all in all they have actually gotten worse. The controls and gameplay have become much worse since 2006 or so and the genre variety and diversity has declined a lot.

You really think I grasp too much for classics? I dont care for classics, except for their memories and maybe one or two I still play from time to time. Why would I think a game (yes, a PC game) released in 2009 is the best game Ive ever played then? You know nothing about me and your assumptions are dead wrong. Each and every one. Funnily, my assumption of you being an ignorant prick just got confirmed again.

Yes I know how much marketing costs... or rather how much they make it cost. EA for example spends 2 times as much on marketing than on the game itself (prolly 3 or 4 times in case of BF3). Thats how games get so expensive. Get a clue.

Yeah, I have also wasted enough time on your ignorance and I wont be wasting more time trying to explain anything to you, not even a novel-sized text would help anyway.

@coolhund

Ah, so you're a PC elitest. They're the worst at being opinionated douche bags, stuck in the past moaning about every game that comes out these days. I prefer my gaming on PC, especially shooters and despise poor ports, but I'm not a total dick about it. Next you'll be saying something like "STFU fag noob!".
I also think you do not understand my comments and instead of actually thinking about what i mean by evolution, like the definition being survival of the fittest, fittest being the games that actually sell, you just attack and start spewing your demented hate. Game design has evolved, many aspects for the better, many IMO for the worse, but denying that it is evolution is retarded.

The current industry works like this. Game development can cost 10s to sometimes 100s of millions of dollars, not including marketing, which again costs millions of dollars and is vital. These days it doesn't matter how good a game is, if it doesn't have branding or good marketing behind it, it wont sell. In some cases not even then because launch window is important too. Very rarely a game comes out of no where and surprises people and becomes a hit, but as I said, rarely. Investors/Publishers are rarely willing to release something totally different or release in a genre they know doesn't sell, and frankly who would be? Would you seriously be willing to risk losing that much money on such a risky investment? It's a business!

You'll be surprised to know I actually agree with you partly, the cause for this is the size of the industry now and the size of it's userbase. However what do you expect to happen to it? Do you expect the industry to stagnate, stay as it was 15 years ago and not grow yet still stay alive just to create your space flight sims? And yes, indie development is where all the ingenuity comes from, low risk and also low reward.

We only recall those nostalgic games we hold dear. Sometimes they live up to modern scrutiny, often they don't (a friend of mine who'd never played System Shock 2 or Deus Ex gave both ago. Loved SS2, couldn't get into Deus Ex). You never recall all the games that were shit. I can barely recall them, but i do remember there being a lot more shit games than good games.

These old classic games will always hold a place in my heart and many of them, especially the phenomenal Quake, I could always fire up (assuming I can get them running) and have a fun time, but that is nostalgia. Indie devs will be the ones to turn to, to experience old school game design. If that's enough for you, wtf are you so angry about? If you seriously expect AAA publishers to release games like that, you're in for a seriously long wait.

Now, I've had enough squabbling with a 30 year old child. Go back to your mother's basement, continue to replay your old games and by all means, don't stop complaining on the internet about how modern gaming has ruined your "life". I'll be here in the present, looking to the future and thinking fondly of the past

The internet has demented my expectations so much that I was very surprised when this didn't end with the wind blowing the drummer's cymbal into his face.

Jesus and Robin Hood and Socrates, and any other popular figures from more than a couple of centuries ago, have their existence/non existence blurred with legends, stories and all sorts of stupid demented bullshit to the point where no one really knows what the story is. Anyone who claims to is lying.

You take the good stuff and kind of hope they were like that. Christianity is the selective filtering of some ancient stories from an uneducated diseased fearful superstitious population of people who rarely lived past 35, warped to suit the morality and power structure of a succession of morally dubious civilisations in which the ones with the big hats claiming to know more about what 'god' thinks are invariably FAR more like the self righteous fat ruling class who had Jeebs nailed up. If that actually happened. I mean , if Jeebs was real enough to drive a nail through - they certainly nailed up thousands in that time.

I mean what about the pope/nuns/monks/water into wine etc etc? That's not in the bible. People add, and remove, whatever they want to suit their purpose. They don't seem to be afraid of retribution for it, so either they have a HUGE ego (god will agree with me!) or they don't really believe in any of that shit. The pope sure as hell doesn't, or he'd clean up the Vatican bank sharpish.

Shiny may be bonkers but at least he's not wearing a silly hat in a golden city tricked from the poor and desperate, shouting at Africans that the fantasy god he has violently imposed on them will hate them for using Jonnies to stop Aids.



>> ^hpqp:

Well considering that the Jeebs is probably a fictional character altogether , it's not surprising that there is differences between the ways different authors imagined him to be.

That's your faith, but you will still stand before God regardless, and there is clearly something wrong with this world; it is entirely corrupted with sin.

>> ^cosmovitelli:
All this preoccupation with the fantasy next life is a covert acceptance that there is something wrong with this one and you got to get through it quick and clean so you can really get started having a good time..
Hence DEATH WORSHIP. He's on the money. Again.
Sorry Shiny, Morganth, this life is all you're gonna get so start enjoying it.
And it's all the rest of us are gonna get too so maybe give us a break from demented comfort stories that turn into threats of murder and hell if we don't AGREE WITH YOU COMPLETELY SO YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE SUCH CRAZY BASTARDS.

All this preoccupation with the fantasy next life is a covert acceptance that there is something wrong with this one and you got to get through it quick and clean so you can really get started having a good time..
Hence DEATH WORSHIP. He's on the money. Again.

Sorry Shiny, Morganth, this life is all you're gonna get so start enjoying it.

And it's all the rest of us are gonna get too so maybe give us a break from demented comfort stories that turn into threats of murder and hell if we don't AGREE WITH YOU COMPLETELY SO YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE SUCH CRAZY BASTARDS.

wow... I... I have several questions about this obviously demented person:

1- Why is she still allowed to "take care" of her children?
2- Why isn't she institutionalized, since she's obviously derranged?
3- She can't even walk without an electric scooter, so I doubt she works. Where does her money come from to buy ALL that food?

I just hope her kids don't end up having to take care of her, while she dies slowly.

You're wish is my command

http://videosift.com/video/Emmy-Lou-Harris-Transatlantic-Sessions
>> ^deathcow:

would like to hear some ELH from this same gathering
some youngg ELH http://videosift.com/video/Emmylou-Harris-Pancho-and-Left-1977-live

Jefferson was a gentleman, a scholar and a deep thinker.

He would be appalled by you, not me. He would be appalled at the mountain being made out of this molehill, when there are true mountains to be tackled.

Not that either of us really can speak for the man.


>> ^cosmovitelli:

So what about the uneducated British troops sent to put down the illegal colonial rebellion over, as you put it "expensive tea"? Blue collar hardworking guys right? Should have just bent over and taken it because they had badges?
It is bad luck for them, as for the British soldiers, that those whose will they have pledged to violently enforce make tyrannical and demented proclamations. But the most elementary understanding of Jefferson, and the fundamental basis for the US constitution, absolutely precludes meek subservience to tyranny.
A few more gutless masochists like you in Boston and you would be singing God save the Queen, and crowing about how great the staus Quo is. Or whatever mental contortions you had to perform to avoid growing a pair.
As for causing a disrespectful commotion at the memorial to a father of free expression, are you really blaming people silently jigging over people violently attacking others??
No offense but if you'd spouted that shit to Jefferson he'd have knocked you the fuck out.
>> ^bareboards2:
This is the very definition of dehumanization. To tell a hardworking blue collar worker that they are a tool of the state, instead of recognizing that they are understandably pissed off at a bunch of folks who aren't following specific directions?
There is a vid on the sift interviewing cannibals on how they justified eating a fellow human being.
This is the modern world equivalent of that cannibal saying the sorcerer wasn't human, so it was okay to kill and eat him.