>> ^persephone:

This is an excellent series. I saw it recently, after watching a similar doco last year,'On the Trail of Genghis Khan', by an Australian who rode from Mongolia to Hungary on a horse. Both fascinating, yet very different. The motorbike trek took 3 months, the horse trek took three years. Ewan and his friend Charlie had huge amounts of expensive equipment and a support crew. Tim had three horses, a tent, a dog and a satelite phone. Each had their own unique set of problems. All of them were pushed to new limits. Excellent stuff.


What I like about the trail of Genghis Khan comparison is the fact that Horses and Motorcycles are very much the same. Motorcycle is just a modern version of a horse, with some of the same trappings such as leather and a cowboy loner outsider sort of image attached to it.

Nemesis was an embarrassment. Primarily because whoever wrote the screenplay (I believe Brent Spiner had a lot of influence on it or even wrote it himself), they wanted to recreate the Wrath of Khan for TNG era. It was completely, obviously a failed attempt to harken back to the blockbuster day of Star Trek film, and was so amateurishly crafted that it was obviously a thinly veiled rewrite of ST2's plot in a TNG skin. You did well to avoid it.

>> ^Payback:

My top five:
Ridley Scott - Alien, Blade Runner
Kubrick - 2001, Clockwork Orange, Dr Strangelove
Christopher Nolan - View video above
The Whedon - Firefly, Buffy (TV), the Avengers
Nicholas Meyer (Wrath of Khan, Undiscovered Country)
-Interesting tidbits
-I knew Nimoy Directed The Voyage Home, but didn't know he directed 3 Men and a Baby. - hmmph.
-I don't include Lucas, as he was a (3 movie) one hit wonder. Seriously, what else has he done thats's memorable?
-JJ Abrahms has WRITTEN and PRODUCED a ton of stuff I love, but he hasn't really directed anything.
-The Buffy episode "Hush" is the best, most original, scary, stand-alone story I have ever watched on television.


Whedon is amazing that goes without saying. You're right to not include Lucas, all you have to do is watch Indian Jones trilogy to see how he shouldn't direct and Spielberg should!

My top five:

Ridley Scott - Alien, Blade Runner
Kubrick - 2001, Clockwork Orange, Dr Strangelove
Christopher Nolan - View video above
The Whedon - Firefly, Buffy (TV), the Avengers
Nicholas Meyer (Wrath of Khan, Undiscovered Country)

-Interesting tidbits
-I knew Nimoy Directed The Voyage Home, but didn't know he directed 3 Men and a Baby. - hmmph.
-I don't include Lucas, as he was a (3 movie) one hit wonder. Seriously, what else has he done thats's memorable?
-JJ Abrahms has WRITTEN and PRODUCED a ton of stuff I love, but he hasn't really directed anything.
-The Buffy episode "Hush" is the best, most original, scary, stand-alone story I have ever watched on television.

That approximation of civilian casualties alone is reason enough to question the intent of this video: objective journalism or propaganda?

Add the "almost supernatural effectiveness" or the grossly misleading "inherent right to self-defence under international law" and I'm inclined to say that this is a disgusting propaganda piece.

When he emphasized the "humane" behaviour of operators (let the children leave before pulling the trigger) and the insinuation that victims of drone attacks are actually thankful for it, well that's just icing on the cake.


What he fails to mention:

-- low rate of civilian casualties: every male of fighting age in the target area is now considered a militant, so everything you hit is a target, unless there is concrete intelligence to prove otherwise, posthumously.

-- pinpoint accuracy: UAVs hit their targets, but the targets themselves are defined as such by piss-poor intelligence or no intelligence at all.

-- guilt by proximity: if you are near a suspect or, generally speaking, in a strike-zone, your mere presence makes you a suspect yourself, as defined by the Obama administration. Now try to square this definition with previous accusations that terrorists embed themselves into the civilian population.

-- double-tap: again, your mere presence at the site of a strike, even if your intent is to provide medical assistance, turns you into a target (eg Collateral Murder). And better stay away from funerals as well, or else they send you a present.

-- US citizens Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were intentionally killed by drone strikes, without trial.

-- collateral damage: when you kill a person's family, you provide that person with a non-ideological reason to fight the US, a personal vendetta. Recent drone attacks in Yemen increased the numbers of AQAP members by killing civilians left, right and center.

-- covert killings, proxy warfare: the use of UAVs, particularly in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, reminds us of the good old days. Death from above or how I learned to love the drone.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^Boise_Lib:
Great video, but I have one quibble.
16 million people can trace their ancestry back to one person, but that person is not Genghis Khan. It is Genghis Khan's mother. His brothers (the ones he didn't kill) followed his leadership and were able to have many, many wives and concubines. Between them they have 16 million descendants.

I thought the Khan lineage was traced on the Y-chromosome. Wouldn't that require that "one person" to be male?


I thought about that after I posted.

If that's the case, change that to Genghis' father.

>> ^Boise_Lib:

Great video, but I have one quibble.
16 million people can trace their ancestry back to one person, but that person is not Genghis Khan. It is Genghis Khan's mother. His brothers (the ones he didn't kill) followed his leadership and were able to have many, many wives and concubines. Between them they have 16 million descendants.


I thought the Khan lineage was traced on the Y-chromosome. Wouldn't that require that "one person" to be male?

Great video, but I have one quibble.

16 million people can trace their ancestry back to one person, but that person is not Genghis Khan. It is Genghis Khan's mother. His brothers (the ones he didn't kill) followed his leadership and were able to have many, many wives and concubines. Between them they have 16 million descendants.

>> ^Jinx:

>> ^messenger:
I was thinking the same as you two, especially about the level, but then again, anybody who thinks they're going to understand relativity without a very strong grasp on mathematics is, well, like me, totally deluding themselves that they can ever really understand it. But still I plod on, starting with a couple hundred hours of Khan Academy videos. Hopefully there'll be some quantum physics ones up there by the time I'm through the Linear Algebra, Calculus and Physics playlists.>> ^dannym3141:
As much as i love science, i really can't appreciate this style. I watched a few bits and found that the language he used was over complicated for simple ideas, he talked very quickly over even mathematical content and in a fairly monotone style which only made it more difficult to follow, and the visuals weren't very good either because they were utterly filled with text - the whole point of visuals is to simplify.
I think anyone would get more out of even a half decent text book.

>> ^Jinx:
Yeah, this is perhaps too advanced for somebody without a very solid foundation of maths. Still nice though.


Yeah, I think you're right. Mathmatics is the language of Science. People are turned off by seeing equations with wierd triangles in them, and letters with subscript 1s and 0s when its really just shorthand for things they already understand. I think it would be possible to describe almost all the contents of this video in plain english with simple maths, but it wouldn't be nearly as concise or precise.
Basically. I watched this video because my 16yr old sister has been doing relativity in school and I thought she might find it useful. After watching for about a minute I realised she wouldn't get any of it.


I'm doing physics at a master's level right now, i understood the video because i already understood the physics, however the maths explanations were too fast and confusing for me to even relate to the maths that i already know must appear! It's only when i saw it on a huge screen of formulae that i strung it all together.

As for your sister; that's why i mentioned the text book. This is degree level stuff, and anyone understanding it either already knows it or would get far more from a textbook anyway. Tipler 6th edition for example explains this in less time (!) and better.

It's just a bad presentation, but i knew it would get 10 votes and i'm happy to see you lose your p. (to bloodscourge that is, ofc)

>> ^messenger:

I was thinking the same as you two, especially about the level, but then again, anybody who thinks they're going to understand relativity without a very strong grasp on mathematics is, well, like me, totally deluding themselves that they can ever really understand it. But still I plod on, starting with a couple hundred hours of Khan Academy videos. Hopefully there'll be some quantum physics ones up there by the time I'm through the Linear Algebra, Calculus and Physics playlists.>> ^dannym3141:
As much as i love science, i really can't appreciate this style. I watched a few bits and found that the language he used was over complicated for simple ideas, he talked very quickly over even mathematical content and in a fairly monotone style which only made it more difficult to follow, and the visuals weren't very good either because they were utterly filled with text - the whole point of visuals is to simplify.
I think anyone would get more out of even a half decent text book.

>> ^Jinx:
Yeah, this is perhaps too advanced for somebody without a very solid foundation of maths. Still nice though.


Yeah, I think you're right. Mathmatics is the language of Science. People are turned off by seeing equations with wierd triangles in them, and letters with subscript 1s and 0s when its really just shorthand for things they already understand. I think it would be possible to describe almost all the contents of this video in plain english with simple maths, but it wouldn't be nearly as concise or precise.

Basically. I watched this video because my 16yr old sister has been doing relativity in school and I thought she might find it useful. After watching for about a minute I realised she wouldn't get any of it.

I was thinking the same as you two, especially about the level, but then again, anybody who thinks they're going to understand relativity without a very strong grasp on mathematics is, well, like me, totally deluding themselves that they can ever really understand it. But still I plod on, starting with a couple hundred hours of Khan Academy videos. Hopefully there'll be some quantum physics ones up there by the time I'm through the Linear Algebra, Calculus and Physics playlists.>> ^dannym3141:

As much as i love science, i really can't appreciate this style. I watched a few bits and found that the language he used was over complicated for simple ideas, he talked very quickly over even mathematical content and in a fairly monotone style which only made it more difficult to follow, and the visuals weren't very good either because they were utterly filled with text - the whole point of visuals is to simplify.
I think anyone would get more out of even a half decent text book.


>> ^Jinx:

Yeah, this is perhaps too advanced for somebody without a very solid foundation of maths. Still nice though.

I've studied the American education system and I am a product of it — not to mention my mother is an elementary school teacher. For all these things, you'll have reason to disregard my postulation. The problem isn't republican/democrat politics. The problem is politics altogether.

Parents want what's best for their children...hell even I want the best education for the children, and I'm not even a parent. However, because education is so important to us, we're not willing to gamble on a new system. This is where the politics come in...it's easy to sell the idea of more testing to "keep track" of our education goals. This, in-and-of-itself, is not illogical thinking. Collecting data points as often and accurately as possible is the best way to perform many kinds of experiments and getting the results. There's one problem with our current model, though: we're not getting results.

In my opinion, what the Khan Academy is trying to get going seems like our best bet if we want to keep our testing model and still modify our system for success.>> ^quantumushroom:

Why are these two smirking and proud?
Liberals run the show in US government schools, and conservative politicians are complicit, though without them the socialists would have already gone further.
Read all about it in this free-to-download e-book
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

In reply to this comment by MrFisk:
*quality


Thanks for the Q! That definitely is!

small, kind, and a little trampy.


p.s. - this a good format for online classes. khan academy gets a little boring with only the blackboard

this made me want to see wrath of khan so i went over to torrents and started downloading the rifftrack version of it. it has MTSK3K style commentary