A German mark had value….until it didn’t. Your opinion of “fiat money” isn’t universal by any stretch. You say it’s universally better. I wholeheartedly disagree, and point to Germany and Venezuela as proof. They aren’t outliers either, (looking at Africa).

Gold is useful and valuable. Digital footprints aren’t. Paper notes aren’t. Printed circuits, connectors, anti oxidation, actual physical money, jewelry, etc. gold has intrinsic value, a dollar bill has about 13210 joules, so its intrinsic worth is about 1 small 1 gram stick as kindling and little more….no matter if it’s a $1 or $500 bill or a check for billions. Again, see Germany, where bills were more valuable as firewood than money.

This deflation idea again. Give me 3 examples of deflation harming/ending a nation on the gold standard please, I’ve never heard of it happening. (Edit: as far as I can find, I’m no economics professor, for the most part the gold standard was abandoned worldwide in the early 1930’s and the last remnants removed in the early 70’s by Nixon)

Explain how unsecured notes guard against speculation….don’t just claim it. I don’t see it, people made a mint short selling Venezuelan (and other failed) dollars….speculating they would crash….they did. What?

GDP is the metric that imparts value to unsecured notes offered by countries.

I think you had a mini stroke, the paragraph starting USofA is a word salad with no meaning.

Name 3. I named Germany post ww1….they didn’t get to borrow or ignore their debts. What are you talking about?

So, the only ones that don’t/can’t borrow are all the ones that need to.

Pretending basing your dollar on Bitcoin is the same as basing it on gold is outrageous idiotic bullshit. Just nonsense. Utterly moronic and pure fantasy. Don’t try moving the goalposts, that’s what you said.

Yes, the fed will take gold. They don’t take Bitcoin, do they? How about shells? Pebbles?

Jesus, you just want to argue. You’re rambling, switching positions and going off on tangents.
It’s not about whether someone might accept it, it’s about whether it’s universally accepted at one value and about holding its accepted long term value. People once gladly accepted beanie babies as payment….stupid people.
Arcata Ca printed up Arcata dollars….you could get them cheap, businesses took them. Wanna put your nest egg into them? You say that’s good money, as good as dollars. I’ll sell them to you for gold, and let’s see who’s doing better in 10 years. Or I’ll sell you pebbles for gold. Any currency you want, I’ll sell you for gold. How’s that working with pebbles or shells? Can you buy currency with them?

It has everything to do with how much it’s worth. Stop jumping subjects because your point is failing to convince. An economy based on pebbles fails because their neighbors don’t value pebbles, but if their pebbles are gold, they succeed because gold is valued universally.

What are you talking about, the gold standard’s ability to keep up? Huh?! No keep up necessary, no slow down required, gold trades exactly as fast as everything else. What is this nonsense?!?

You mean you can’t overspend and go deep into debt?! And that’s bad?! In your opinion, not many economists….and what makes you think you can’t borrow against gold? Secured loans are easier and cheaper to come by. WHAT?!?

Yes, unsecured paper money can just be printed forever, you CAN “sell the universe”. (Or sell dollars who’s overall value is based on your country’s value) over and over, then print more and sell 9/10 again, print more, sell again. Eventually that money is worth less than it costs to print, and your creditors get paid off in dollars worth a tiny fraction of what they lent you. Not if it’s backed with gold.

Miracle cure?!? Quote it. I think you misread. Secured notes being better than unsecured notes is not “miracle cure” or perfection, it’s just measurably better, safer, and more stable. No system is perfect.

I'm so confused as to why cutting down a tree is worthy of a video or my time to watch it. Am I just too Canadian? Do I find this strange because I grew up in a logging town, or because I've cut down trees like this just for firewood?

Any way you look at it, it has wasted time in my life I'll never get back.

Yeah. Every Liberal I know uses only locally sourced, organic, gluten free, hand crafted, artisanal firewood.

http://videosift.com/video/Smoke-Flame-Makers-of-Artisanal-Firewood

Not at all. I hate seeing nice trees cut down as well.

I would guess they took it down because of the HUGE crack in a large branch that you can see at the start of the video.....oh...I just read the description where they explain EXACTLY why they took it down, it was dropping branches after a lightning strike, almost hitting someone. That likely means the trunk was also weakened, and it was certainly close enough to take out that house.

I can relate. I (sadly) took down a 30-40 meter Douglas Fir tree in my yard a few years back. It's still painful to think about. My tree had grown too tall, and had a weakened root system because it was growing sideways out of a small hill, and had massive gopher activity all around it. All the surrounding trees on other properties were cut well before we moved here, so it was also exposed to full wind. I was terrified that it was going to come down through my bedroom and kill the wife and myself, or through a neighbors house, so we had it cut. I've spent the nearly 3 years since then digging out the root ball (which WAS as weakened as I had thought) and turning the hole into a large pond. I still hate that we had to kill the tree, but it was a safety issue. At least I have firewood for years to come, and a pond.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Smoke-Flame-Makers-of-Artisanal-Firewood

Smoke & Flame: Makers of Artisanal Firewood has been added as a related post - related requested by Fantomas.

Awesome. It's amazing how close you can get to such a powerful wild animal.

In India and Africa the large game animals have learned to regard the vehicles in much the same way as they regard trees. they know they're there, they just don't bother with them in any way.

When we were in India on a tiger safari we had a very similar experience. The amazing thing was that people live and work in these forests. 100yds down the road from the situation in the video may be a party of women collecting firewood. Or one time we found a mahout looking for his elephant that had wandered off in the night!

Tigers are incredibly beautiful animals. they have a quality that sets them apart from lions and other big cats. They are so different in the wild to the animals you might see in zoos. If you've ever wanted to see what real natural beauty looks like then go and see the wild tigers, they're breathtaking.

Often no, for various reasons, like....
In what? Many don't have metal pots to boil in.
If (as is often the case) one household member spends >8 hours a day just carrying water for the home, when would they have time to gather large amounts of firewood daily, assuming there's wood to gather, and also time to boil it all? Water would be a 24 hour a day job.
How does one boil a stream or river where people stand as they bathe and do washing? How does one keep 100% of people from drinking directly from the streams or rivers?

I'm pretty sure they looked into what methods would work best and went with this for those reasons and/or other reasons I can't even guess at, and since it's working so well I wouldn't second guess them.

Your video, Smoke & Flame: Makers of Artisanal Firewood, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

It doubles as firewood

"It will wreck our economy"

Sound familiar? Any AGW denier ever uttered that line and when asked "how", they have no clue?

Let me introduce you the institution behind it: Freedom Partners. Check who is behind that. Follow the money, who has most to lose. Then try to think a tactic that will keep you floating in dollars the longest. Yup, it is to teach all your followers to keep repeating the same catchphrase..

When even there has been a great communal investment in better technology infrastructure, the economy has had a tremendous boost. Railroad, electric grid, internet. Renewable energy is just a another on that line. Burning something, destroying it to get energy is finite resource. Renewables are basically infinite. Person who sells firewood is not going to like your electric heater even when it means half of the village will not die next winter. Company that sells oil will not like infinite energy source they are not in control of even if it means half of us die. They and their kids won't be affected but you will.

"It will wreck our economy"

If something, it will boost your economy. Greatly. It is already in motion in most EU countries, Germany is at 33%. Norway is at 99%. Where i live, in Finland, we are at 25% even when half of the year most of our hydro-electric is not functional. Have ANY of those countries seen any negative, economy destroying effects? No? They all have actually benefited from them? No way, bloody communists propaganda.. Lies lies, lallaalaaa, i believe in Koch.

"It will wreck our economy"

The people behind that line of words has been behind every major block in the way of creating green energy. The will raise the cost so high it is impossible, they will lobby until it's too complicated to change anything. THEY are wrecking your economy. THEY are stopping innovation. THEY are wrecking our whole mfcking planet and you are worried about your electric bill or not having two hot showers per day.

"I have nothing against green energy but i'm not going to do anything for it."

That is you.

That's true for a post industrial POV.
When machines already exist, and you just need energy to get things moving.

The energetic concerns of bygone eras were :
Whale oil, and later kerosene. For lighting. (note: back then, a day's work would only buy minutes of light)
Firewood, and later coal. For heating.
Manpower was the only energy user when it came to food production.

Early machines such as the combine were horse drawn, and did not need an energy architecture in place. (ignoring "food" as an energy)

Later machines used steam power, and hence could piggy back on the already existing wood/coal energy architecture (in turn stimulating it to grow larger).

Once the machinery industry was established, and the revenue generation was in place, it was possible to invest in improvements and alternative energies - ultimately leading up to oil burning machinery being common.

In any case, historically, industrialization drove the energy industry. (As it should, why have an industry to produce a product (energy) that isn't needed?)
And industrialization depended on a conducive society. A place where an inventor could own his invention, and could sell it, allowing things that were no more than ideas or garage trinkets to transition into products - which in turn place demand on other resources such as [forms of] energy.

In the past, there was nothing, so everything was build from the ground up. Industries grew out of nothing, they weren't established up front.
Modern times are different, where you have investment capital from entities who's entire existence revolves around investing, and you can front the establishment of an industry in the calculated hope of future demand.
(Granted, lords/aristocrats had a hand in industrial investment. Just not the kind or scale that you can see today.)

What you say applies a bit later, when industrialization was already well under way. Like when Thomas Edison used investment capital to fund power plants and an electrical network, in order to power the first [practical, but not 'first'] light bulb in New York.

-scheherazade

Sure. There are some in here:
http://www.unusuallocomotion.com/pages/more-documentation/20-one-2-or-3-tracked-rigid-vehicles-light.html

... and about 7/8's of the way down this page:
http://snegohod-tuning.ru/istoriya-snegoxoda.html

We had similar units in Canada in the 60's (with , not quite as speedy as the electric jobby shown here) with I believe (not 100%) some of the early Kohler or perhaps OMC single cylinder gas engines. One could stand on a small foot board that was skidded along behind, steering with two large handles (like a roto tiller), and then behind that there was a sled with high enough walls that you could haul firewood, straw bales, sacks of whatever without them spilling out. They were geared rather high, so not a lot of speed but that's what was required to keep the torque up on these 2 strokes.

Hope this helps a bit.

I have to admit I find this pretty shocking myself. I personally don't believe that stoning is ever a justifiable action for anything, ever, period. What I find incredible is that I'm even having to take a stance AGAINST stoning in this day and age. Although of course it still goes on legally in several countries. This fact doesn't make it acceptable, it just makes it more disgusting.

Shiny, personally I'm disappointed. I was ready to give it a shot and read the bible all the way through, to give it the benefit of the doubt and try to approach it and what you said with an open mind. I saw this video and thought for sure you would dismiss it as false or something similar, but to see you essentially defending it, I just can't accept that the actions described in this verse are moral. I will never accept them as moral.

If this makes ME immoral in god's eyes than Shiny you had better get some stones ready because here's another sinner deserving of sinner's death.


>> ^SDGundamX:

>> ^shinyblurry:
The proof that you're not is that you give no regard to the sin itself. You are using a relative standard to judge his crime, whereas God uses an absolute standard. There is no such thing as a minor sin in Gods eyes. God is holy and His standard is moral perfection. Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin.
Neither was the crime itself picking up sticks. The actual crime was rebellion. It is not a minor thing to break Gods law, which the man knew full well he was doing. God punished Him not only for rebellion, but also as a public example to the rest of Israel that His laws were to be taken seriously. You have to remember that the Jews were His chosen people, and that they had entered into a covenant with God willingly. They agreed to follow His laws and adhere to His standards, and His standard was that they would be holy as He is holy. This meant that they would obey His law unceasingly with no exceptions. They also agreed with God that if they did not obey His law, they would incur the penalties He laid out.
I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent.
You say there is no way a loving God would ever do that, to which I reply, that a loving God would do everything possible, including invoking extremely harsh punishments, to prevent as much sin as possible and protect His creation from the greatest amount of harm. To not take extreme measures against sin would actually be a point against Him, and not for Him.
>> ^Asmo:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'll address it. I think stoning was used as a deterrent. He ordained an admittedly harsh punishment to keep His people from sin. While you don't see sin as a big deal, it is what caused the corruption of this entire world and all of the suffering therein. Every negative thing that has ever happened here stemmed from just one sin, and each of us have committed hundreds, if not thousands of sins. Sin is a big deal and I feel that punishment was a reflection of the seriousness of sin.
Look up stoning videos on Liveleak sometime and tell me how a supposed god of infinite love would prescribe it for collecting firewood on the sabbath... I condemn people who use stoning as monsters. By any standard, it appears that I am morally superior to your god... = P


Hi, shinyblurry.
I haven't responded to any of your posts in a while, but this time your answer made me throw up in my mouth a little so I thought I'd chime in. Let me read back to you what you just said:
"Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin."
But in the Christian tradition, the ONLY being capable of moral perfection is God himself. Humans can strive for it, but never achieve it. So what you have essentially said is that God created imperfect creatures and now punishes them repeatedly, mercilessly, and arbitrarily with death for being imperfect. That doesn't sound much like a loving (or rational) God to me.
"I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent."
Except that "deterrent" didn't work, did it? After Numbers 32-36 there are countless more examples of the people sinning in the Bible. So you're basically saying the poor guy in this passage died for nothing and that the supposedly omnipotent God who commanded the death was unable to see that this deterrence would fail. Nevermind that picking up sticks is treated as a far worse form of "rebellion" than the other various sins recounted both before and after this story in the Bible in which many of the characters are given less severe punishments or the chance to repent. So much for the Christian god being a god of mercy...
These kinds of contradictions and irrationalities are apparent to anyone who takes even a brief moment to consider them... and you wonder why the Sift isn't flocking to your evangelical banner?

>> ^VoodooV:

gee, shiny resorts to harassment? color me shocked!
I'm sorry, but ill say it again, people like shiny need to be kicked out of here. It has nothing to do with conservatism or religion, these people simply don't contribute to civil discourse. I know plenty of conservative/religious people who are capable of engaging in civil debate and discourse, Shiny or QM, and others aren't among these people
They drop their talking points and move on to the next sift. That's not debate, that's not discourse. And you certainly can't have rational discussions with someone who no matter what, thinks you need to be saved and doesn't view you as an equal human being and him and his god are always correct and you're always wrong. It's not conducive to rational discussion and quite frankly, it's simply not healthy, period.
And yes, it is trolling.
Remember that even though they seem to be an endangered species, there are actual rational right wingers out there. You may disagree with them, but they can actually debate civilly without regurgitating Fox News or Theistic propaganda.


This is such an old response and thread, but I thought I'd say it anyway as I really want it said in here.

I've met, actually, a great many people that are very set in their theistic mindset, but like you said they also don't think I'm going to burn in a pit of fire come the end of time; in fact quite a few of them would be morally outraged if such a thing occurred--as they literally know, like me, that the difference between believing in God and not, is merely a thought away (or you could say, one neuron connection/pathway away).

There are a few that believe in fire and brimstone type things, but they only--typically--reserve it for the greatest of crimes (like an Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot). Even fewer still that believe that there is a harsh judgment remaining for a lot of people, but they tend to believe that there is a way to "return" or to repent there--in the "lake of fire" and come back a new person.

BUT, the ones that think there IS a hell, absolute and horrifying in all it's glory, these are ALSO the very same people that cannot have a rational discussion with you. It's very strange. It's as though their ability to actively decide whether actions in play are moral or not are by definition an unanswerable question until they have been told by someone ELSE what that answer is: either the Bible, other religious members, or talk show hosts, and you get my picture. THESE are the dangerous people.

It reminds me of the story in the Old Testament, in Numbers 15:32-36 (for those that wish to read it). Now I know many *newer* religions, get around this stuff by saying they use the New Testament (it has it's fun stuff too, but for now, let's just do this one) due to Christ's Salvation and his, yada yada yada yada yada--I heard this for a long time myself as a Mormon and in some Catholic services I went to.

This guy collects what is essentially firewood on the Sabbath (this was back in the day when not having a fire active in your house/hut/tent/whatever at night could literally mean death--in case you've never been out camping/hiking, fires are VERY important and are a DAMNED LUXURY with our matches, steel wool, sleeping bags made to hold in heat, and other items that make a night in the wilderness go by--gently and one could say comfortably fun).

Instead of just collecting this firewood, making a meal and going to bed, this guy gets caught for working on the Sabbath and is taken to Moses and Aaron. So we all know what that little commandment this is, the one EVERYONE disobeys now (It goes by either of these two definitions and there are more versions--trust me: Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. -OR- Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee.). So God buzzes Moses on the iGodphone™ and tells Moses the bad news, or well the good news and the bad news. The bad news is that "unnamed villager" will be taken outside the encampment, with what sounds like most of the people and then stoned to death. The good news, is they get to stone someone (sorry, but back then and with the regularity of which stoning happened I really think people enjoyed it when these edicts came on down...)!

SO, I've seen this tale said many a time and I CANNOT believe the amount of heads I see move up and down while this is repeated. They LITERALLY agree with cold-blooded murder in the first-degree, for GATHERING FIREWOOD!!! In the damned ages BEFORE the Dark Ages-life SUCKED! You NEEDED FIRE!!! It wasn't a question of maybe I'll skip it tonight it was a matter of when do I start it up--every night! So you can see why people like this can be dangerous as someone from on high that they think is their leader gives them what essentially is a crime, they don't think to long about it--they act, and carry out whatever truly horrifying act it was.

This has been abused by many Cult leaders, like the "Alien Comet riders" or also known as Heaven's Gate in California or something even MORE horrifying like Jonestown (something that was horrific--there are some GREAT documentaries on this to watch,; I suggest looking for them) or something semi-recent like (straight from wiki), "The 778 deaths of members of the Ugandan group Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, on March 17, 2000, is considered to be a mass murder and suicide orchestrated by leaders of the group.", so you can see while large religions don't do these WILD events they DO slowly in fact do smaller and incrementally increase their crimes.

You might ask what crimes, but it is literally crimes that we can point to that are AGAINST the VERY FABRIC of your own teachings. Use the Golden Rule in your life and get rid of the authority driven craziness, it will only lead you to sadness, if you're a zealot--fight it within yourself.
--------

So, anyway, what I'm saying is that I very much agree that there ARE many people that are theistic believers (not just Christan ones mind you) that are GREAT to talk to and many times you don't even have to argue with them you can have laid back conversations with them--it's amazing who you run into.

BUT, for the people I mentioned they are nearly lost causes. I don't know exactly what their problem is but it does have something to do with the fact that they MUST be told a "truth" by a "high-ranking-official" for them to change a stance. They are TRUE believers, ZEALOTS to their cause and dangerous.

A little bit the same as you said @VoodooV, but I thought I'd add a few more nails into that coffin.