The article linked above mentions Röpke and Eucken as champions of free market capitalism, so to speak. Ironically, Bernie Sanders is quite in line with many of Walter Eucken's core ideas. For instance, Eucken declared legal responsibility to be an absolute necessity for competition within a market economy. Meaning that under Eucken's notion of capitalism, US prisons would be filled to the brim with white collar criminals from Wall Street and just about every multinational corporation, including Volkswagen.

Ludwig Erhard, credited by many to be the main figure behind the German "Wirtschaftswunder" (nothing wonderous about it), postulated real wage growth in line with productivity and target inflation as an imperative for a working social market economy. Again, very much in line with Bernie Sanders. Maybe even to the left of Sanders. A 5% increase in productivity and a target inflation of 2% requires a wage increase of 7%, otherwise your economy will starve itself of the demand it requires to absorb its increased production. You can steal it from foreign countries, like Germany's been doing for more than a decade now, but that kind of parasitic behaviour is generally frowned upon. Minimum wage in the US according to Erhard would be what now, $25-$30? So much for Sanders' $15...

Sennholz further mentions the CDU as a counterweight to the SPD. Well, the CDU's "Ahlener Programm" in 1947 declared that both marxism and capitalism failed the German people. In fact, it put significant blame for Germany's descent into fascism at the feet of the capitalistic system and called for a complete restart with focus NOT on the pursuit of profit and power, but the well-being of the people. They called for socialism with Christian responsibility, later watered down and known as social market economy or Rhine capitalism.

As for the economic policies conducted by the occupation forces: German industry, and large corporations in particular, were shackled for the role they played during the war. If you work tens of thousands of slaves to their death, you lose your right to... well, anything. If they had stripped IG Farben, Krupp and the likes down to the very bone, nobody could have complained. No economic liberties for the suppliers behind a genocide.

Next in line, the comparison with Germany's European neighbours. Sennholz wrote that piece in '55, so you can't really blame him for it. Italy had more growth from '58 onwards, France had more growth than its devastated neighbour from '62 onwards. The third Axis power, Japan, had significantly more growth from '58 onwards.

Why did some European and Asian countries grew much more rapidly than the US? Fair Deal? Nope, Bretton-Woods. Semi-fixed exchange rates caused the Deutsche Mark and the Yen to be ridiculously undervalued compared to the Dollar, thus increasing German and Japanese competitiveness at the cost of the US. Stable trade relations created by the semi-fixed exchange rates plus the highly expansive monetary policy in the US – that's what boosted Germany's economy most of all. Sort of like China over the last two decades, except we were needed as a bulwark against the evil, evil Commies, so the US kept going full throttle.

Our glorious policians tried the same policies (Adenauer/Erhard) in East Germany after reunification, even though global conditions were vastly different, and the result is the mess we now have over there. The entire industry was burned to the ground when they set the exchange rate too high, thus completely destroying what little competitiveness remained. Two trillion DM later, still no improvement. A job well done, truly.

Anyway, if anything, Bernie Sanders' program is closer to post-war German social market economic principles than to the East-German bastard of socialism, state capitalism and planned economy imposed by an autocratic system. However, even that messed up system produced significantly less poverty, both in quality and quantity, than the current US corporatocracy. No homelessness, no starvation, proper healthcare for everyone – reality in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). And despite the fact that they were used as cheap labour for western corporations, no less. My first Ikea shelf was produced by our oppressed brothers and sisters in the East. The Wall "protected" the West from cheap labour while letting goods pass right through – splendid membrane, that one.

PS: Since that article was written in '55, I have to mention one of my city's most famous citizens: Otto Brenner. He was elected head of the IG Metal, this country's most influential trade union, in 1956 after having shared the office since 1952. The policies he fought for, and pushed through, during his 16 years in charge of the union are very much in line with what Sanders is campaigning for.

A guy I went to school with was one of the survivors of the Cave Creek tragedy in the 90's (also in NZ) which had 14 deaths. It apparently was an issue of a poorly constructed platform, and the students shaking the platform.

Four people survived the fall of about 30m, I heard one of them was able to use their partner as a 'taboggan' pretty much, which cushioned their descent, allowing them to survive. The ultimate sacrifice. Pretty horrifying stuff, you wouldn't be the same person after.

@xxovercastxx @Barbar

I'm going off the WHO's version
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CERD.aspx

"racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin"

If you read around, it becomes pretty clear that racism's definition is not completely set. It means different things to different people, and has been used in different ways historically. So really, nobodies really 'right'.

There also isn't an agreed on definition of Islamaphobia, but there are many parallels between Islamaphobia and racism, with some definitions mentioning that Islamaphobia can take the form of racism. There's also an interesting read here by the Council of Europe (COE) where they say that "Islamism is the view that Islam is not only a religion but also a social, legal and political code of conduct"
http://www.assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=17880&lang=en

Ultimately, no matter the definition, if what is happening is effectively the same thing as racism, then it should be avoided just as carefully.

11 days without sleep? from what I understand the (very) rare autosomal dominant disease Fatal Familal Insomnia eventually causes a complete inability to trigger sleep, resulting in ~3-4 months of total insomnia and a slow debilitating descent into dementia and hallucinations before an untimely death.

Hmmm. Well, I have a "low end" pc, and I've tried to play games on it, and was not impressed. Perhaps I should have done more investigation before I bought it, but I wasn't thinking 'game machine' when I did. Also, I have no controllers for it, and playing with the keyboard sucks ass! ;-)
Keep in mind, this setup on the video has over $4K in graphics cards alone, and is probably a $6-7K computer without the 3 TV's. With all that, it doesn't look better to me than last gen 3 screen games. (they should have chosen a different game IMO, I'm sure it does look way better when there's detail to display)

It's good that they're making them easier to set up, but it is still WAY more difficult than a console, which is plug and play. I still haven't gotten my PC to display properly on my TV without a cable across the room, and that's crappy.
I'm also disappointed that they tried to make the new consoles "media players" (crappy PCs). I wish they stuck with games and put it all into display features, but they didn't. I don't use the media features of my ps4 at all (except for Netflix, which my TV would do by itself if I set it up), they're a total waste.

Perhaps I'm stuck in a mid 90's mindset. That's the last time I built my own PC as a game rig. I had the full $250 thrustmaster setup, joystick and throttle with over 20 programmable buttons, and it was GREAT for descent and quake...but I recall being disappointed at how fast it was obsolete. Within 2 years I couldn't play newer games on it without stuttering....so I gave up on that. I can't afford to upgrade my memory and graphics card every 2 years, and motherboard and chip every 3.

I do recall a few games even on ps3 that could do the multiple display thing even at 1080i...I think motorstorm 1&2 (my favorite ps3 games) would do it, but you needed 3 ps3s to make it work. Today, you could probably do that for fairly cheap! What does a ps3 cost these days anyway? I must say, I didn't see anything that made 4K seem better. Motion blur looks the same at 1080 as 4K.

http://digg.com/video/man-narrates-his-own-harrowing-descent-on-a-downhill-mountainbike

The thing here is, I don't have a bias about her, I barely have an opinion. I originally commented because you claimed she cut off her comments and canceled appearances solely to silence descent from her monologue. I disagree completely on that point, especially since she didn't cancel other public events afterwards, and I provided evidence that she had repeated disgusting, specific death and rape threats, giving her a legitimate reason to stop anonymous discussions online or to not have a public appearance where guns are 100%allowed even when specific death threats have been made about the specific event. EDIT: She even went so far as to petition the police to provide security and disallow firearms in the auditorium so she could continue with the scheduled appearance, but they steadfastly refused, THEN she canceled.
...But you ignore those threats and claim it was only about 'censorship' or 'silencing debate' because of your bias, your mind is made up, you think that she's wrong no matter how much evidence I put in front of you that there were other legitimate reasons for her actions. I did admit I was wrong about the police instructing her to cancel the appearance, but I still think it was the right thing to do (and I still can't believe the police actions in that instance...insane!).

As for her being anti sex worker, I have no opinion, I don't know, that's why I want evidence if I'm to have an opinion about her feeling on that subject. It seems wrong that someone who claims to be feminist would not see sex workers as empowered women, and I need to be convinced of something so illogical before I believe it, even about someone I don't' have a good overall opinion about....to convince me I need to hear from HER that those are her feelings about those women. If that's the case, it's terrible, but she's a terrible feminist, so no big surprise....I'm just not convinced yet....either way.

Again, IF her anti-sex worker stance is true, and publicly known (especially by sex workers) then this video was just a trolling attempt by the sex workers, because they know Sarkeesian is not a supporter!

Actually, if you look closely at his rate of descent... he doesn't freefall. He's holding on to something that slows his fall, then he just falls off at the end. Maybe some netting/rope/cable?

Congratulations! Your video, slow descent into madness, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 9 Badge!

Your video, slow descent into madness, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

That is nuts! I love the Cardonra valley; know that road really well; my wife and I had our wedding reception just past where the video ends.

The climb is tough, but the descent is terrifying! That section normally takes about 30-40 minutes to drive.

*quality driving!
Although for realisms sake, they should have added in some asshole in a camper van doing 30kph and refusing to let anyone by...

Looks like 8,500 feet. Even at 9,500 to 10,000 that gives you about 9 seconds for drogue and 6 seconds after that for main for nominal "safe" descent. They did neither. But it's not the US... other countries help us balance population.

Gravity still exists, and exerts exactly the same force on you independent of whether you are standing on solid ground or falling, and whether you are falling inside an elevator or in empty space. The difference is the opposite force exerted on you by the ground vs no opposite force (except the tiny force exerted by air if you're freefalling in the open air). It is this opposite force you 'feel', while acceleration due to gravity without any opposing force feels like floating.
So a man in a free-falling elevator in an atmosphere WOULD feel a tiny bit of gravity, because the outside air would slow the elevator to less than terminal velocity, so it would slow down slightly, unlike the mans descent, making him fall/float to the floor of the elevator eventually and then feel a microgravity exactly equal to the force exerted by the air.

"Ah TOLD yew!"

EDIT: I literally gasped out loud when I realized they weren't trying to use the sandbagged lines to somehow retard the descent of the couch in a straight-down descent (which obviously would have failed).

Prejudice is not racism. It's "pre-judging" usually based on facts not in evidence. Racism is a form of prejudice.

Thinking 5 males of South American descent, in a lowered '64 Impala, dressed in similar colours -including bandannas and hoodies- listening to heavy Spanish-influenced gangsta rap, may be police officers going to a masquerade ball, but most people's prejudice would label them as probably gang-related.