Yep, precisely my intention. It's my considered opinion that a tongue-in-cheek Videosift comment intended to highlight the silliness of self-defeating religious impulses is the moral equivalent of anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Islamic, anti-Jewish funeral pickets.>> ^Asmo:
[...] You trying to out-douche the Westboro morons?

I sifted and promoted because, even after all I have heard from her, she still manages to surprise me with just how out of touch and ignorant she is.

Why do we slow down and look at train wrecks?

Same impulse.


>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

If she's a dumb incoherent train wreck that can barely be listened to, let alone taken seriously..
why sift or promote a video with her in it? you know, saying things

I like how we are being all buddy buddy now. It makes my face rupture with smiles galore. Often I think maybe I should save my down vote for after a video sifts, but that really requires a lot of after thought on my part. I am not great with work after the fact. I am more of an impulse voter.


In reply to this comment by JiggaJonson:
I don't sift that often any more, meh, I thought I found a diamond in the rough here.

69,327 likes, 2,215 dislikes on Youtube at the moment.

And just as it was climbing up, and had a glimmer of hope, you had to shut me down for...? Oh right. Because you "Don't come here to waste time" ಠ_ಠ

I guess not all of us can post classic non-time-wasters like Alice in Wonderland Porn: http://videosift.com/video/Alice-in-wonderland-porn-scene

In reply to this comment by berticus:
it's not bad! i'm just sure there's gotta be some better ones.. (not that i have a fucking clue where they are, so i will shutup and disappear now)

You would be amazed at how hard it has been to find a really good top-to-bottom description of basic neuron function. If you can find one, I can promise multiple promotes and qualities and endless thanks!

>> ^berticus:
jonny also sifted this.

@berticus really doesn't like that video. I'm not terribly fond of it by itself either, but it's part of a series that make sense if you watch all of them.

@jonny also sifted this.
>> ^L0cky:

Upvoted, but to be honest they could have been making all that up for all I know.
Also I'm surprised by the amount of steps and chemical reactions considering the response time between thinking and doing. Did anyone share my naive imagining of magical electricity shooting from my brain and contracting my muscles?
What I'd find interesting is learning how nerve impulses (also known as action potentials!) form, or begin. How they get from or are cued from this seemingly virtual world of my thoughts into actual things that do stuff to my body.

>> ^L0cky:

Upvoted, but to be honest they could have been making all that up for all I know.
Also I'm surprised by the amount of steps and chemical reactions considering the response time between thinking and doing. Did anyone share my naive imagining of magical electricity shooting from my brain and contracting my muscles?
What I'd find interesting is learning how nerve impulses (also known as action potentials!) form, or begin. How they get from or are cued from this seemingly virtual world of my thoughts into actual things that do stuff to my body.


Essentially you have a branching network of fibers (dendrites) that join together at the neuron (brain cell) body. If enough of these dendrites stimulate the neuron body then the neuron sends the action potential, if there is not enough stimulation, then no action potential is sent. So while a neuron can be activated in a variety of ways (e.g dendrites coming from various areas of the brain) there is only one outcome - either the action potential is sent or it isn't.

Movement is a lot more interesting than just thought - action potential - movement, however. This is because parts of our brain can store movement patterns, so many of our learned movements (e.g. dancing) just need a trigger and then some movement pattern is initiated at a sub-conscious level - the cerebellum is a part of the brain that helps with this.

>> ^L0cky:
Upvoted, but to be honest they could have been making all that up for all I know.
Also I'm surprised by the amount of steps and chemical reactions considering the response time between thinking and doing. Did anyone share my naive imagining of magical electricity shooting from my brain and contracting my muscles?
What I'd find interesting is learning how nerve impulses (also known as action potentials!) form, or begin. How they get from or are cued from this seemingly virtual world of my thoughts into actual things that do stuff to my body.


@L0cky - I was worried the jargon would be a bit too much. The video definitely assumes knowledge of certain physiology concepts. I'd be happy to explain as much of that as you like. But I'm not sure if you're asking about the basic biology, or something more metaphysical in the sense of how conscious thought is transformed into patterns of neural activation.

As for the speed of the process, keep in mind that this is at a molecular scale. This is all happening at the speed of very tightly coordinated chemical reactions.

Upvoted, but to be honest they could have been making all that up for all I know.

Also I'm surprised by the amount of steps and chemical reactions considering the response time between thinking and doing. Did anyone share my naive imagining of magical electricity shooting from my brain and contracting my muscles?

What I'd find interesting is learning how nerve impulses (also known as action potentials!) form, or begin. How they get from or are cued from this seemingly virtual world of my thoughts into actual things that do stuff to my body.

Message or no message, there's no organized atheists doing the same, so the "good news" about being a gelatinous series of impulses soon to be returned to nothingness doesn't get delivered.

@notarobot

They are all terrible - each with his or her own individual horrors to inflict upon the nation. It's as weak a field as I've ever seen. I think the best choice would be the one that is likely to get the least done - the most boring, uncharismatic and ineffectual. Sooo.... Hunstman, I guess.

It's much easier to pick a worst, and that would be Newt Gingrich. That guy is one of the shiftiest politicians I've ever seen. He seems like a complete mercenary who is only looking out for Newt. Bachman, Perry and Santorum are idiots. I liked Cain's wtf campaign and weird sense of humor, but he obviously lacked even a basic understanding of the information needed to do the job. I don't really feel like I know who Romney is. He is very slick and guarded. It looks like he is going to be the guy unless some tragedy befalls him.

@Auger8

That's nice of you to say. I'm used to being called a statist idiot. I like you too and think that if you dig Ron Paul, you should shout it from the roof tops. He is indeed not the status quo, fairly consistent and more honest than most politicians (though I do believe he intentionally misleads through omission and vagueness) I also like that he brings war, weed and the debt into the dialog.

You shouldn't need to counter any of what I've said if you truly support Ron Paul. He is a states rights guy, an anti-federalist and adherent of 'negative' liberty, which is liberty FROM democratic government, rather than liberty BY WAY of democratic government. If the things I've posted bug you, you should read up on Austrian economics, the Mises Institute, Ayn Rand, anarcho-capitalism, negative vs positive liberty and Ron Paul's homepage (though Ron is smart enough to keep things brief and vague on his own site). If these things appeal to you, then ending federal civil rights protections and letting the states decide should be something you support.

What bugs me is that many liberals are attracted to him based on hearing a few persuasive anti-war and pro-weed soundbites, without realizing that his economics are an extreme right wing form of capitalism. I want to make sure that people see this side of Ron Paul. If you support completely unfettered, unregulated markets, then Ron Paul is the guy for you. I know I probably come off as a little over-obsessive to allies and opponents alike, and I'm sorry to be that way, but that's who I am and how I feel. If I feel strongly about something, I just blurt it out. The internet is my safety release valve, because I'm much more guarded about discussing politics in my real life. Though I can be impulsively drawn to conflict in real life too. Anyway, cheers. I'm curious to know if you support Ron Paul's total package, or just the anti-war, pro-constitution stuff he talks about in the media.

Also, you can edit down my quote or remove it all together from your comment with the edit function. It's pretty darned long in and of itself without being quoted in its entirety.

(note: several edits and additions as to not take up any more comment space)

Like others, I found her to be obnoxious and her advice to be superficial and overly simplistic ("life satisfaction" equals getting what you want, you're not getting what you want because you're not acting impulsively enough, etc.)... had to really resist the urge to downvote.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Not the best TED.


That's because it's not really a TED talk. TEDx is an independently run event. She wouldn't get away with this at a real TED conference, because you aren't allowed to sell anything tangible in your talk, like a book.

People like Mel Robbins, Dr. Phil and their ilk mean well. The problem is that people rarely walk away from these self-help seminars, with anything they will able to use. You leave the talk with this fortune cookie wisdom, elevated adrenaline and a endorphin rush. However this wears off. You are then back to square one with the same problems and a wallet that is $200 lighter.

It's naive and simplistic to think that you can rid yourself of problems, with a slogan. Slogans that are ever so popular in western culture, that it's no wonder that these people have a cache of them, ready to disseminate at a seminar.

I have the impulse to down vote this video in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 .. damn I missed the 5 second rule. Sometimes practicing restraint and not acting on impulse, can be good.

Final thought: How she tried to distance herself from the other self-help charlatans (in the opening 3 minutes), was a touch of brilliance.

Because I feel the rest of the passage from the book is pertinent to the topic of politicians, here it is.

"What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is to his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends on deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off; he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."

For as long as Huntsman was here in Utah and then his actual time as governor, he was a very good middle of the road Republican. I'd be happy to take him back as governor. His Lt. governor that took over had tea party affiliations and with no one around to oppose him, he decided to act on his impulses. Of course, he has seen bad numbers in the polls so he has pulled back. I think he forgot that he replaced Jon Huntsman without a vote and he isn't a middle of the road candidate, like I said he has Tea Party ties (like our Senator Mike Lee, who's an idiot).

Just so you know Jon Huntsman is what is known by regular attending church goers as a "Jack Mormon", basically someone that doesn't go to church all the time. I can't blame him as the services are anywhere from FOUR to SIX HOURS long! Basically, your whole day is gone and used up by the time you're done. The last poll I saw showed that the majority of Mormons were in fact "Jack Mormons". So that might explain part of his appeal here in Utah (especially in Salt Lake which happens to be very democratic in its leanings), is that he isn't a holier-than-thou type of person, which Mitt Romney emanated sometimes.
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As for Ron Paul... Ron Paul lost any chance from me voting for him when I found out he had relations with the John Birch Society. It sure as hell makes sense why all of his policies are so radical.