I assume that she wasn't sucked through a dimensional rift or whatnot, so there will be quite a lot people who have come into contact with her during these three days. Would it be a stretch to also assume that none of them spoke up about this treatment?

Unfit to serve, the lot of 'em.

*Warning I've only gone and done yet another wall of text again! This may or may not get read by anyone on here (good god I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping it), but at the very least it's formed the backbone to a video script so it's not a complete waste of my time! (he tells himself)*

This is as much @bareboards2 as yourself, but he already made it clear he wasn't willing to engage on the issue, so you're getting it instead MWAHAHAHHAHA! *coughs*

I don't wish this to come across as over condescending (though I'm sure it will none the less as I'm in one of those moods). But pretty much every (successful) comedy premise operates on the same underlying principle of irony. i.e. there is an expectation or understanding, which is deliberately subverted, and what results is comedy.

In this case, amongst other things we have the understood premises that:
A. rape is a bad, often horrific thing.
B. that there is an established social taboo about praising such behaviour.
C. that there is a section of society inherently opposed to making light of things of which they do not approve (or in a way in which they do not approve)
D. most words and phrases have an expected association and meaning.

What Jim Jefferies (an accomplished and well respected comedies amongst his peers) has done here, is take these commonly understood premises and subverted the audiences normal expectations in order to evoke a sense of irony, from which the audience derives humour and amusement.

A simple joke might take a single such premise and perform a single inversion of our expectation. e.g. my dog has no nose, how does he smell?....terrible!

By subverting our assumed meaning (that the missing nose refers to the dogs implied lack of olfactory senses), the joke creates basic irony by substituting this expected meaning for that of the odour of the dog itself.

This is of course a terrible joke, because it is as simple as a joke could be. It has only one layer of irony and lacks any sense of novelty which, might tip such a terrible joke into working for any other than the very young or simple minded.

We could of course attempt to boost this joke by adding more levels of irony contextually. e.g. a very serious or complex comedian Like say Stuart Lee, could perhaps deliver this joke in a routine and get a laugh by being completely incongruous with his style and past material.

And herein we see the building blocks from which any sophisticated professional comedy routine is built. By layering several different strands or ironic subversion, a good comedian can begin to make a routine more complex and often more than just the sum of its parts to boot.

In this case, Jim is taking the four main premises listed above, layering them and trying to find the sweetest spot of subverted expectation for each. (something which usually takes a great deal of skill and experience at this level)

He mentions the fact that his jokes incite outrage in a certain section of society because this helps to strengthen one of the strands of irony with which he is playing. The fact that he also does so in a boastful tone is itself a subversion, it is understood by the audience that he does not/should not be proud of being merely offensive and as such we have yet another strand of irony thrown into the mix.

You know how better music tends to have more and/or more complex musical things happening at once? It is the same with comedy. The more ironic threads a comedian can juggle around coherently, the more sophisticated and adept their routines could be considered to be.

Naturally as with music there's no accounting for taste as you say. Some people simply can't get past a style or associations of a given musician or song (or painting or whatever).

But dammit Jim is really one of the greats right now. Like him or lump him, the dude is pretty (deceptively) masterful at his craft.

There are at least 4-5 major threads of irony built into this bit and countless other smaller ones besides. He dances around and weaves between them like some sort of comedy ballerina. Every beat has been finely tuned over months of gig's (and years of previous material) to strike the strongest harmonies between these strands and probe for the strongest sense of dissonance in the audience. Not to mention, tone of voice, stance, timing etc.

I think Ahmed is basically terrible too, but it is because the jokes lack much semblance of complexity or nuance. Jeff Dunham's material in general feels extremely simple and seems like it uses shock as a mere crutch, rather than something deeper and more intelligent.

Taste is taste, but I feel one can to a reasonable extent criticise things like the films of Michael Bay, or the music of Justin Beiber for being objectively shallow by breaking down their material into its constituent parts (or lack thereof).

Likewise one could take the music of Wagner and while not enjoying the sound of it, still examine the complexity of it's composition and the clear superiority of skill Wagner had over most of this peers.

I guess what all this boils down to is, Jim seems to me to be clearly very very good at what he does (as he ought after all these years). Reducing his act to mere controversy feels a lot like accusing Black Sabbath of just making noise and using satanic imagery to get attention (or insert other less out of date example here).

The jokes were never at the expense of victims, they are at the expense of our expectations. He makes his own true feelings on the matter abundantly clear towards the end of the section.

As as he says himself his job is to say funny things, not to be a social activist.

I take no issue with you not liking it, but I do take issue with the suggestion that it is somehow two dimensional, or for that matter using controversy cheaply.

Offensive initial premises are some of the most ironically rich in comedy. It's like deliberately choosing the brightest paints when trying to create a striking painting. Why would you avoid the strongest materials because some people (not in your audience) find the contrast too striking?

Eh, much love anyway. This was more an exercise in intellectual masturbation than anything else. Not that I didn't mean all of it sincerely.

I thought this was going to be terrible, but then he commented on how he draws the characters life-size when in VR, and that was an unexpected detail, so I kept watching.
Then he said "Making art in three-dimensional space is an entirely new way of thinking for any artist", and it became terrible again.

Every artist thinks in 3D space, things only get 2D when you translate to pen to paper. Drawing is just sculpting a flat surface.

I don't think i've done a very good job of explaining my point, because:
1) I do not believe in the god of the gaps in any sense, i reject the notion.
2) I didn't ask for a "reason"; this is a subtle point that i'll try to make clearer.
3) I don't hold any "supernatural" beliefs in the sense you mean - not a single one.
4) I believe firmly in things that i can prove to myself, and am uncertain about things that i cannot supply any proof or reason for.

Why are we here? When i ask that question, i am not asking for a reason for our existence; a goal that humanity collectively must achieve. I am asking why do we find ourselves and our reality as we find it? We use science to describe it and become nonplussed by these amazing things but fundamentally, what is charge? Why do opposites attract? Why does mass attract mass, etc.? Isn't it all a bit weird and wonderful?

There is no answer to that question in physics. To use the term "supernatural" to describe a discussion of why/how (which lies beyond the jurisdiction of physics) is either naive or derogatory because the term is philosophy.

You reject the notion that you could go from not existing to existing, finding yourself in a world of things you don't understand. Yet you seem to find it unremarkable that at one point you went from not existing to existing, finding yourself in a world of things you didn't understand. If i put you in a fully immersive Skyrim game, unconscious and without memory, you'd play that game and think it was real. You may even believe that, once you died, you'd cease to exist. But one day, you die in Skyrim and everything ceases to be, before you're transported to a world of things you don't understand. Yet there were no mechanisms within the Skyrim universe to allow for that! In other words, what about things that exist or take place outside of our 3 spatial and 1 temporal dimensions, or perhaps beyond even our understanding of dimensions?

"There has to be a mechanism" is idle speculation on your part, and demonstrates your closedness to anything that might exist beyond our perspective of 3 dimensional space (which might be behind the "why?" and god of the gaps misunderstanding) - for which there is evidence and on which there is active and significant research. Besides, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is not the god of the gaps, this is acknowledging our limitations and constraining our certainty accordingly.

It's odd that you quote Sagan, because he often spoke about the spiritual and the unknowable/ineffable. I think he would be more aligned with my assessment than yours, as he was an agnostic and rejected the label atheist.

Possibly we continue to exist, perhaps we don't. Perhaps 'exist' and 'not exist' are human concepts that don't mean anything in the bigger picture, and the parts of us that exist outside of 3 dimensions bathe forever in rivers of custard (or something really weird that can't be explained in english). Nobody knows and no guess is less likely or less educated, in my opinion, which is based on my lack of certainty and absolute bewilderment that we did the not-exist->exist cycle in the first place - but i welcome any argument or evidence you can provide counter to this, and my mind is open to them.

I'm actually very liberal. So much so that I consider Democrats too conservative.

When the right wingers talk about 'the civil war not being about slavery', that's part of the rhetoric that 'the south was not racist'.

I'm not making that statement.





I am saying that :

- Both the south /and/ the north were racist.

- Neither cared about the fate of black people.

- The war started over secession (to which slavery was only a contributing factor, among many much more important [to the people in authority] factors).

- After the war was on, the north used the subject of slavery to their benefit.
A) Freeing slaves in only the rebelling states, in order to incite slave revolts and use that to military advantage. (if the northern authority wins, then the emancipation becomes southern law. If the confederate authority wins, then the emancipation is meaningless. So confederate slaves were given a personal incentive to help the northern authority win)
B) Paint the south internationally as 1 dimensional caricatures of evil (war propaganda), to cut off the south's supply of foreign made arms (because they didn't make their own).

- After the war was over, most of the slave owning states had been emancipated, and the north had claimed to be champions of liberty, so in order to save face they had to emancipate slaves in the remainder of the south (plus it was no skin off of their back, so it was easy to do).

(The southern states that had been allowed to keep their slaves could not then protest their emancipation, for they were few and weak - and would get no help from the other southern states that they themselves hadn't helped during the civil war (resentment/reciprocity)).

- When writing schoolbooks at that time, the rhetoric/propaganda was repeated, and generations of people grew up repeating it, perpetuating it for future generations (like religion).

-scheherazade

To take a less emotional counterpoint :

a) Internal attacks like this, when considering the massive population of people (1/3rd of a billion), are extremely rare. Lightning strikes compete very well with these in terms of lethality. So what exactly do you do? Turn the country inside out (do things legislatively/executively that affect everyone) because there's a chance that 1 in 300 million people will once every year or two do something like this?

Also) Southern generals fought over secession. Today, the civil war is taught as being largely over slavery - but that's heavily revisionist, since at the time of the civil war the war's implications on slavery weren't even mentioned outside of black newspapers. White people were fighting over who gets to run the south, the south, or the much richer and better politically connected north.

To illustrate, the emancipation proclamation only freed slaves in the states participating in the cesession, not elsewhere. The remainder were freed after the civil war. Reason dictates that it was done primarily to cause disruption in the rebelling south, and not for any particular racial sympathy. (Here's a map for those interested. States marked in blue got to keep their slaves : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emancipation_Proclamation.PNG).

In general, throughout human history, the defeated are usually historically revised to appear as bad as possible, so there are no questions about whether the right thing was done, and no sympathies linger for the defeated. So the south being turned into a ~1~dimensional~evil~enslaving~caricature~ of history is rather normal. Although, critical thinking people should probably know better than to fall for ancient propaganda.

-scheherazade

We are a known quantity on many interstellar maps if the evolutionary paradigm is true. It wouldn't take that long for a sufficiently advanced civilization to locate every planet that has life on it, especially if they could use inter-dimensional travel. They could automate everything using robotics, or by some other means unknown to us. Perhaps they could even instantly colonize those planets using sentient robots.

The point is that we are a resource to be exploited and after an estimated 15 billion years of the Universe existing, according to the secular narrative, there should be many civilizations out there capable of doing just that. That we haven't been contacted or seen any activity at all is more than curious; it is dramatic evidence that we are in fact alone in the cosmos.

I read a really great explanation of n-dimensional space a while ago... trying to find it but the basics were:

If I have a point, that has 0 dimensions (note: not a point on a plane, just a dot).

if that point position changes, I have 1 dimension (a line)
if the line position changes, I have 2 dimensions (a square)
if the plane position changes, I have 3 dimensions (a cube)

Easy so far right? but if I take a view of time, then that cube (in fact, all of 3 dimensional space) is a dot again.

if the cube exist for 10 seconds, it has moved through time. Now we have a line in four-dimensional space.

Now here's where it gets tricky. Let's go back to the point and the line.
When we have 1 dimension, I can move the point along a line, but I cannot change the line. Think of it like a train on a single track. It can go back and forth, but the track doesn't change. If I want to change where the train goes, I need to move the track.

Same with the line. To move a line I need two dimensions.

And same with time. To change time, we need FIVE dimensions. With 4 you can only go along the time line (hell, we can only go one way). But if you want to change time, then time must be on a plane... a 5th dimension.

Comic books have been dealing with these issues for years. (There are entire teams of Avengers comprised of varied times and parallel universes.) Aside from a sentient time-dimensional traveler demigod that interferes -- it happens because there's some interconnectivity between all dimensions, time included.

yeah........
ill upvote for discussion purposes and to bring to light that climate is not a one dimensional argument.

so when i see these very targeted and one dimensional arguments using people with credentials (usually NOT in the field they are commenting on) sounding very reasonable...my alarms start going off.something is not quite right.

i call it the apathy argument,which is not really an argument at all but rather a political strategy.they dont actually have to WIN the argument,they just have to sound reasonable enough to make you think "well..maybe" and now you are a neutralized participant.

the gruber incident is now getting some serious airplay lately and everybody is sooo offended.
i am offended as well,but for different reasons.
calling the american voter "stupid" or any other human society stupid is an inaccurate term.

they are ignorant in most cases,and that is by design.

to deny that there are immensely powerful monied institutional forces attempting to muddy the argument for their own,specific interests and goals,while the fate of humanity can go fuck itself...now THAT...is stupid.

political arguments dressed up as as science really piss me off.

From my viewpoint, I have not seen a 'concerted campaign to deny your participation', but I have seen your comments disputed nearly every time. That's not the same thing by far.
As you noted, being a 'Christian voice' on a mostly 'secular' site is going to get you confrontation and disputes, some of them might be over the top. Please consider how an atheist posting anti-religious propaganda daily on a purely religious site might be treated, it would be FAR worse than you are treated here, they would likely be banned on day one. You on the other hand, are still 'welcome' here (if not by everyone) and have not been banned or hobbled that I know of.
Many find your 'preaching' insulting, which is why you get the replies you get. You know you are spreading unwanted proselytizing in a place it won't get much support, indeed in a place where it's unwanted by most. That is your right, I suppose, but because you do it knowingly, I feel little sympathy for you and the disputes you find yourself in, you put yourself there intentionally. No whining about it.

All that said, and as much as I disagree with your viewpoint, I would not like to see you banned or leave. It would be nice if you would show a less one dimensional personality and comment on non-religious topics in a non-religious way, but to each his own. I'll just say that you are incredibly unlikely to convince anyone here, especially by the methods you use, but you are free to try. We can always hit 'ignore' if we are bothered.

Are you just throwing out buzzwords to sound cool? You honestly aren't sounding very sane or rational at the moment dude. This sounds more like an emotional rant that's been boiling for months and you finally lost your cool. you keep spewing out words like hypocritical, no humanity, two dimensional yet no objective details.

just vague subjective terms and references to bodily functions.

I see you are taking up choggie's mantle of derailing sifts for your personal vendettas and nonsensical ravings, though.

@VoodooV

two dimensional thinking at its finest.

just because i point out that your commentary is tantamount to harassment does not automatically equal my condoning lantern or bobs oftentimes ridiculous commentary.

just because i am pointing out your hypocrisy does not mean i disagree with your actual comments.

if my fly was open or i had a huge booger hanging from my nose i hope you would pull me aside and point that out to me not stand from the bleachers,point and laugh.

your obsession with always being right has clouded your judgement in regards to what i am trying to point out to you.

is your ego so massive that the words of another should be so easily dismissed?each consecutive comment towards me is becoming more and more irrational and paranoid.

you mentioned calling me out on another thread.
yes you did.
which was a response to ME calling YOU out first.
and i smacked you down pretty handily.mainly due to the fact that you base your commentary towards me rife with presumption and conjecture.

which is exactly what you are doing here...again.

instead of hearing my words,you marginalize me in order to dismiss and ignore them.which is what all weak-minded people do in order to hold onto their own misconceptions.

bob does it.
lantern does it.
and so do you.

but never for a second deceive yourself into thinking i do not have the stones to say what needs to be said.your commentary reveals such an ignorance about who i am that i am literally laughing while i type this to you.

stop projecting voodoo.this persona you write about is not i,but rather you.

one last thing for your consideration (since we have totally hi-jacked this thread.sorry OP,please forgive).one of the main reasons i called you out was due to multiple private emails i received in regards to your current..and i quote one.."douchey attitude".

so the silence you hear is NOT due to agreement or consensus but rather many sifters fear confrontation.

i hold no such fear.

@VoodooV

your comment is the definition of circular logic.
ignoring the meat of my commentary to actually repeat what i said,and for what?

i was pointing out your lack of humanity.
i was pointing out that you use the very same tactics of former sifters that got banned because of their:harrassing,belittling and personally derogatory commentary directed at other sifters.

i watched you cry like a little girl and call dag out on multiple occasions when it was done to you.yet you feel it totally acceptable to do it to others you disagree with.

hypocrisy in action and you are totally oblivious to that fact.

other sifters criticize bob and lantern,myself included,for the exact same reasons i posted in my commentary (which you just regurgitated) but i dont see them following them from thread to thread to ridicule,belittle and berate, but YOU do.

i was not defending lantern.i was pointing to your hypocrisy and lack of humanity.
i was pointing to the fact that when YOU were the object of ridicule and harassment,you cried for bannation.

so how come when YOU harass it is somehow some social justice issue?
that your golden-honeyed words are really for the betterment of mankind but when its done to you..well..they are just being big meanies to you.

irony seems to be lost on you.

since your commentary reveals 2 dimensional thinking i can only assume you will take my commentary as somehow being a hateful attack against you.i assure,this is not my intent,nor does my commentary indicate an abstract support of lantern.quite the opposite.lanterns commentary was never my point to begin with friend.

i have offered multiple times for you and i to clear any grudges or disagreements in private.which were always ignored.

so i have said it before,and i will say it again:love your commentary.hate your high horse.

hypocrisy makes my eyeballs itch.
and you ARE a hypocrite voodoo.

Why this concept would be foreign to anyone is beyond me; nature has billions of years of evolution under it's belt and if there is one thing it has proven is beneficial for the vast majority it's balance relative to reality. If we can't evolve attitudes in line with reality we will render ourselves obsolete.

I'm disappointed to see this covered by a conventional partisan. If I could have one wish it would be to render the terms "conservative" and "liberal" out of our lexicon. Ideology is more complicated than a two-dimensional scale. Democracy is based on a thinking populous, and we need to revert to that ideal to survive. The separation of personal identity into "brands" is at the core of what is tearing our society apart.