I had never heard of these -- I'm still a bit baffled as to how they could possibly work. I'm not colorblind myself but a good friend is red/green colorblind, I'll have to see if he knows about them.

Assuming $400 is an accurate price, it still really doesn't seem that expensive to me. I'm pretty extremely nearsighted -- roughly minus 8 -- and my glasses (with frames) already cost almost that much just because my prescription is on that far end of the bell curve. Without glasses I can't see a damn thing more than 3-4 inches in front of my face, so I basically *need* them no matter the price.

Actually, I remember having a reaction somewhat like this guy when I got glasses for the first time ("holy crap! I can see *leaves* on trees!"), and my eyes were much better then than they are now...

So the original version is everything minus the horrorshow at the end?

Seems to be about right, minus some detalis...except...

3) if you hover over the vote number, who voted and which way pops up for you now. It's a bit hidden, but it's there.

I had no idea that the additional pages were not loading for some people, they always do for me. I'm glad you've told Lucky.
EDIT: I do only see an arrow for the last page, not a number, which is odd but works.

MASSIVE LONG POST WARNING: feel free to skip this

I usually like Vsauce a lot, but I disagree with just about every assumption and every conclusion he makes in this video.

Anthropogenic vs external extinction event -
I think the likelihood of an anthropogenic extinction event is low. Even in the cold war, at the apex of "mutually assured destruction" risk, IF that destruction was triggered I think it would have been extremely unlikely to make humans go extinct. The US and USSR might have nuked each other to near-extinction, but even with fairly mobile nuclear fallout / nuclear winter, etc. I think that enough humans would have remained in other areas to remain a viable population.

Even if ONE single person had access to every single nuclear weapon in existence, and they went nuts and tried to use them ALL with the goal of killing every single human being on the planet, I still bet there would be enough pockets of survivors in remote areas to prevent humans from going utterly extinct.

Sure, an anthropogenic event could be devastating -- catastrophic even -- to human life. But I think humanity could recover even from an event with an associated human death rate of 95% or more -- and I think the likelihood of anything like that is real slim.

So that leaves natural or external extinction events. The KT extinction (end of the dinosaurs) is the most recent major event, and it happened 65 million years ago. Homo sapiens have been around 150-200,000 years, and as a species we've been through some fairly extreme climatic changes. For example, humans survived the last ice age around 10-20,000 years ago -- so even without technology, tools, buildings, etc. we managed to survive a climate shift that extreme. Mammals survived the KT extinction, quite possible that we could have too -- especially if we were to face it with access to modern technology/tools/knowledge/etc.

So I think it would probably take something even more extreme than the asteroid responsible for KT to utterly wipe us out. Events like that are temporally rare enough that I don't think we need to lose any sleep over them. And again, it would take something massive to wipe out more than 95% of the human population. We're spread out, we live in pretty high numbers on basically every landmass on earth (perhaps minus Antarctica), we're adapted to many many different environments ... pretty hard to kill us off entirely.


"Humans are too smart to go extinct" @1:17 -
I think we're too dumb to go extinct. Or at least too lazy. The biggest threats we face are anthropogenic, but even the most driven and intentionally malevolent human or group of humans would have a hard time hunting down *everybody, everywhere*.


Doomsday argument -
I must admit that I don't really understand this one. The guess of how many total humans there will be, EVER, seems extremely arbitrary. But anyway, I tend to think it might fall apart if you try to use it to make the same assertions about, say, bacterial life instead of human life. Some specific species of bacteria have been around for way way longer than humans, and in numbers that dwarf human populations. So, the 100 billionth bacteria didn't end up needing to be worried about its "birth number", nor did the 100 trillionth.


Human extinction "soon" vs. "later" -
Most plausibly likely threats "soon" are anthropogenic. The further we push into "later", the more the balance swings towards external threats, I think. But we're talking about very small probabilities (in my opinion anyway) on either side of the scale. But I don't think that "human ingenuity will always stay one step ahead of any extinction event thrown at it" (@4:54). Increased human ingenuity is directly correlated with increased likelihood of anthropogenic extinction, so that's pretty much the opposite. For external extinction events, I think it is actually fairly hard to imagine some external scenario or event that could have wiped out humans 100, 20, 5, 2, or 1 thousand years ago that wouldn't wipe us out today even with our advances and ingenuity. And anything really bad enough to wipe us out is not going to wait for us to be ready for it...


Fermi paradox -
This is the most reasonable bit of the whole video, but it doesn't present the most common / best response. Other stars, galaxies, etc. are really far away. The Milky Way galaxy is 100,000+ light years across. The nearest other galaxy (Andromeda) is 2.2 million light years away. A living being (or descendents of living beings) coming to us either of those distances would have to survive as long as the entire history of human life, all while moving at near the speed of light, and have set out headed straight for us from the get-go all those millions and millions of years ago. So lack of other visitors is not surprising at all.

Evidence of other life would be far more likely to find, but even that would have to be in a form we could understand. Human radio signals heading out into space are less than 100 years old. Anything sentient and actively looking for us, even within the cosmically *tiny* radius of 100 light years, would have to have to evolved in such a way that they also use radio; otherwise the clearest evidence of US living here on Earth would be undetectable to them. Just because that's what we're looking for, doesn't mean that other intelligent beings would take the same approach.

Add all that up, and I don't think that the Fermi paradox is much cause for alarm. Maybe there are/have been LOTS of intelligent life forms out there, but they have been sending out beacons in formats we don't recognize, or they are simply too far away for those beacons to have reached us yet.


OK, I think I'm done. Clearly I found the video interesting, to post that long of a rambling response... But I was disappointed in it compared to usual Vsauce stuff. Still, upvote for the thoughts provoked and potential discussion, even though I disagree with most of the content and conclusions.

No man, that body armour, those boots...I'd harvest the bones of a thousand murdered infants to build our bed if that's what it took. Do you think that's what she wants?

I had to go rewatch this. It's practically perfect. Not an origin story, no romance subplot, no compromise. Just a day in the life of Judge Dredd. Love it, but my favourite Dredd story was told in rhyme:

They'd been waiting there since nightfall for the Sharks to come along,
They knew they'd have to pass this stretch of street.
So they'd sharpened up their stickers and they'd brought along their bars,
And they were wearing steel-tipped stompers on their feet.

There was Big Frank Zit and Faceache, Crazy Joseph with his spear,
The Dixon Boys were there and Billy Rat.
Ike the Spike had brought his sister with her homemade ghetto blaster,
And the Ghoul had put new rivets in his bat.

Now it wasn't nothin' personal that they had against the Sharks,
Any bunch of dead-end spugs would do.
'Cos there was nothing they liked better than to mash and bash and stomp,
Same as any normal Mega-City juves.

"A-rumbling! A-rumbling! We love to go A-rumbling!
("AAAH!")
We love to lay in ambush in the night!
("AAAA!")
A-rumbling! A-rumbling! The Zits were born for rumbling!
(SMAK!)
There's nothing we like better than a fight!"
(KRAK!)

Then a headlight pierced the darkness - a rider gaunt and grim,
Daystick drawn and ready in his hand.
     The chin belonged to Dredd,
     And the voice as well, which said:
"You creeps can do your rumbling in the can!"

"It's just one judge!" cried Cindy Spike and opened with her blaster -
"I'll send him back to Central in a sack!"
(SPOING! "AAAAAAA!")
But Dredd's bike absorbed the blast and laid her on the street,
With tyre marks running right across her back.

Then the judge got down to business and his daystick rose and fell,
Striking out at every head he saw.
For though the Zits launched the attack, the Sharks were fighting back -
And self defence is no defence in law!

As the heap of bodies mounted, Big Zit could see his Waterloo,
Waiting just one station down the line.
Oh, sure, he loved to rumble - but he preferred to be on top...
"Let's scram and live to fight another time!"

("Dredd to Control! We got forty-plus juve rumblers fleeing east through Bernstein. Zits and Sharks, back-up required."
"Wilco, Dredd!"
"Med squads and meat wagons to Moreng Alley. Estimate twenty casualties, more to follow."
"Control to all units area Bernstein. YPs on the run."
VRMMMM!
"Pick 'em up!")

In the space of sixty seconds there was a judge on every street.
From watching bays others scanned the slab -
"We got two Zits runnin' fast though the Tamblin Underpass!"
"Krupke here! I got 'em in the bag!"
(THUNK! THUNK!)

They cut them off at Sondheim and they mopped them up on Wood,
On Pedway 12 they corned Crazy Joseph.
He tried to make a stand - but a spear's not worth a damn,
When it's up against a judge's high explosive.

The Ghoul surrendered quietly, he didn't have much choice -
Ike the Spike tried to scale the sector wall -
("Save your bullet, he'll never make it." "Oh no! AAAAAAAAAAAAH!" SPLATT!)
The Dixon Boys all copped it when they tried to hitch a ride,
On the 2020 Zoom to Bernstein Halt.

Big Zit thought he'd play it clever, the law was everywhere,
The safest thing for him to do was hide -
Dredd tracked him down on infrared - "Don't bother to come out!"
"The best place for trash like you is inside!"

In minutes flat they'd caught them, every Shark and every Zit.
To Dredd it fell to ladle out the years -
"Twenty years apiece for Cindy Spike, Billy Rat and Ghoul."
An extra ten left Big Frank Zit in tears.

For Faceache minus half his face, for the hapless Dixon Boys,
For Ike impaled so cruelly on his spike,
For Crazy Joe with his gaping hole, there'd be one final rumble,
Along the last conveyor belt at Resyk.

A-rumbling! A-rumbling! They loved to go A-rumbling!
But the Zits will go A-rumbling no more!
A-rumbling! A-rumbling! They loved to go A-rumbling!
But they should've known they couldn't buck the law!

I wouldn't put blame on any individual parents. And certainly everything I've read says not to stress kids out about elimination. Given where this kid seems to be, the dad is probably reacting fine (minus filming it).

It is pretty weird though that we westerners teach our babies to poop on themselves. It's by no means universal. If you give infants an cleaner way to poop, they'll generally use it. Anal control shows up naturally as soon as they start eating solid foods.

Eh, it helps to view it on a real monitor, not a smart phone. It appears there are a lot of birds congregating up there, and a bunch died. Originally looked like one bird exploded with feathers everywhere, and the other flew away. Now it looks like each "feather" is actually a bird (minus the light fixture).

Am I the only one who feels a sadness for the birds?

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Star-Wars-Minus-Williams-The-Throne-Room-Scene

EDIT 2: Problem solved, thanks to kulpims and my DH for dupeofing
---
helps if I name the videos..

http://videosift.com/video/Star-Wars-Minus-Williams-The-Throne-Room-Scene

and

http://videosift.com/video/Star-Wars-Throne-Room-Without-Music

EDIT:( No rush, somebody might do a dupeof too.. Just though I'd at least mention this, since they are both the same enbed, so obviously the promote didn't do a dupe check)

Let's see if this works..
*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Star-Wars-Minus-Williams-The-Throne-Room-Scene

Would there be any more name-calling, scripted cretins in the room returning to read a reaction unsuited to solicitation by an anonymous internet-blog-john who'd like to react rather than respond with intelligence-minus-ego-driven smugness???

Please newtboy (god that fucking handle grates), enlighten us all as to your personal hatred and dislike for someone who doesn't politely and tenderly caress your balls while choking on half-mast cock?!

Or how about this? Take your personal grudges elsewhere,or me and you into some private chat arena where we can kiss and make babies?? Hmm?? Fuck man, you and your goddamn new dysfunctional friends, the word hemorrhoid comes to mind.

Oh come now. If a car collided with it as in that animation, tipping over wouldn't be the issue; it'd be flipping over.

I hope it comes with its own jaws of life. That thing won't survive a real wreck. At least on a non-enclosed motorcycle you could be thrown clear.

It has all of the danger of an automobile coupled with all of the danger of a motorcycle minus any of the safety aspects of both.

Maybe I'm uninformed here, but are they saying they're not able to open a debit account? Surely that's a zero risk proposition for any bank (if overdraws are restricted), it's just pure interest for them on anything you keep in there (minus any interest you receive).

Or is it different in the US with your reliance on checks? Even if that's the case, surely checking could just be restricted, leaving you with either cash withdraws or paying by card, with instant electronic verification.

As to transaction fees. Over here in Oz, most transaction and saving accounts are monthly fee free. This is pretty new (as recently as several years ago you'd have a $5-10 monthly fee). Wonder if it's different in the states.

If they're not able to secure a loan, that's a different issue entirely. I don't see how an alternative banking system would help there.

Munk Debate May 2 2014 minus the first 25 minutes of the one you posted https://vimeo.com/93766263