>> ^imstellar28:
^of course you don't agree a free market is viable, because you have no idea what a free market is or how it works!


I live in Indiana, and to me the United States is a community of people before its a free market. We have different levels of government to address problems in the community. Fossil fuel use has been a problem for some time now, and the way our community addresses community problems is with government involvement in some form, be it funding the private sector to build such-and-such water-treatment plant or establishing publicly financed schools or having centers for disease control.

Communities big and small have representatives who make decisions on the community's problems with the community needs in mind; the free market is a set of interconnected buyers and sellers who make decision from information pertaining to the likelihood of increasing shareholder wealth.

Now, your argument is that community decisions shouldn't influence the economy of the community if its a free market economy. My argument would be that the community comes first.

This is oversimplifying, but this is a message board for a David Letterman clip.

...

Lordy-Lou, after about a year of visits and six months of VS membership, I can finally point to a post by Choggie that I a) understand and b) agree with. Be on the lookout for men on horseback, about four of them...

@ dgandhi: Let me be clear. These folks have the right to protest. I would never dream of altering the first amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now, I'm not sure how many foot-pounds of pressure was the blow to your head that made you think tackling a cop is civil, but I assure you: it is not.

Is it possible to assemble peacefully in 2008? By that, I mean: is there no situation where all cops being called on "protest duty" wouldn't misinterpret a genuinely peaceful protest and thus...begin knocking heads? Probably not but then, I'm a cynic.

CD is not all about sitting down and taking your beating, that's just the state propaganda line attempting to convince everybody that if they don't take their beating they are being "violent".

This argument is similar to Bush apologists saying "Well, what would you have him do? Run screaming from the classroom, frightening the children?" Uhh, yeah, because that's the only other response, right? Fuckin' DUH.

I think there's something between what we see in the video and what you describe as "sitting down and taking your beating." Can you make an effort to evolve this lame argument? Preesh.

With message board posts like these, you've got to say it, point out that you said it, and then say it again before it's absorbed. So here goes.

I do not disagree with the protesters choice to fight the police. I'd like to see more footage of this particular event to be better-informed, but given the way force has been used by the police in the last 10 years, I think it's safe to say the Police cause more problems during protests than they solve.

What I disagree with is calling what happened here 'Civil Disobedience' and that is all.

I'm not anti-porn; I'm anti-porn in relationships. I agree with gorgonheap 100%. Porn is destructive to healthy relationships. I realize most of the guys on this site are porn connoisseurs and don't want to hear it. However, if you look at the research, you might be in for a surprise. From a 2004 Time article:

"[Psychologist] Mark Schwartz, director of the Masters and Johnson clinic in St. Louis, Mo., says porn not only causes men to objectify women—seeing them as an assemblage of breasts, legs and buttocks—but also leads to a dependency on visual imagery for arousal."

And I realize you [generalization] don't care for the site that thepinky references, but please just take a look at the quotes on this site. The last three are quotes from a book and from a researcher. I understand they're not what you want to hear, and you might think they're extreme cases - the second quote from a wife of a porn user certainly is. I have heard complaints similar to the ones Ana Bridges identifies. Women don't want to think their significant other is thinking about anyone but them when they're doing the deed. Use of pornography gets a lot of women second-guessing.

Dr. Phil has a message board dedicated to women whose lives and marriages have been torn apart because of porn. One woman: "...laying in bed hurt because he would rather be on the computer. Before porn I never found myself alone at bedtime." This is an excerpt from a great message from a women... I wish I could link to the individual messages.

"These days, if you're anti-porn, you're called "insecure" and "behind the times". I assure you it is because I HAVE self esteem that I'm anti-porn. These men are deluding themselves about what they're actually witnessing. It's all an ACT. It's PRETEND. And maybe that's just what they want...pretend sex. I have been through the whole porn thing with my ex...whom I was married to for over 20 years. I understand the pain of being lied to...and substitued. Porn IS a substitute...and if they don't think so, they're in denial about the whole thing. What better way for a man (or woman) to come home from a long hard day, and that night have a wonderfully emotional loving experience with the woman he professes to love?

...[hypothetical situation to another poster on the board] If he were the jealous sort, and his wife loved innocent, harmless flirting...yet it caused him considerable pain, isn't that along the same lines? HE would be asking her to stop doing something that *she* loved to do. Because it caused him PAIN. I just don't think these men understand the true amount of pain that this causes to the women. It has NOTHING to do with esteem issues."

She goes on, and I think it's a great post, but way too long to quote the entire thing.

For those of you disagreeing with the concept that porn is inherently wrong or bad, I agree to a point. Porn itself doesn't cause problems - porn in a relationship likely will.

Hello, cinevideos. It seems like you are spamming our message boards. You will be instabanned. If you want to contest this instaban, please contact the admin here http://cinema.videosift.com/contact

Thanks! And sorry.

Blankfist

Short answer - Canadian universities are WAY younger than those in the States, so we adopted the 'classic' European terminology. I mean, U of T was founded in 1827 (yeah, guess where I graduated from), and there may be some older universities in Canada (I don't know which), but probably not as old as, say, Harvard.

>> ^Sarzy:
I've got a question which is semi-related to the topic at hand: what's the deal with the terms college and university being seemingly interchangeable in the states? In Canada, college and university are two different things (college is generally a one or two year program in which you learn a trade, whereas university is a three or four year deal in which you learn something a bit more abstract (ie. political science, english, physics, etc.). Is this not the case in the U.S.?


Yeah, American terminology like that bothers me - where's the UNIVERSITY GRAD option???

Anyway, enough people were annoyed by this like us to make a small essay on the topic - the Canadian system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College#Canada

And here's the bit about Amerika
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College#The_origin_of_the_U.S._usage

The founders of the first institutions of higher education in the United States were graduates of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. The small institutions they founded would not have seemed to them like universities — they were tiny and did not offer the higher degrees in medicine and theology. Furthermore, they were not composed of several small colleges. Instead, the new institutions felt like the Oxford and Cambridge colleges they were used to — small communities, housing and feeding their students, with instruction from residential tutors (as in the United Kingdom, described above). When the first students came to be graduated, these "colleges" assumed the right to confer degrees upon them, usually with authority -- for example, the College of William and Mary has a Royal Charter from the British monarchy allowing it to confer degrees while Dartmouth College has a charter permitting it to award degrees "as are usually granted in either of the universities, or any other college in our realm of Great Britain."

Contrast this with Europe, where only universities could grant degrees. The leaders of Harvard College (which granted America's first degrees in 1642) might have thought of their college as the first of many residential colleges which would grow up into a New Cambridge university. However, over time, few new colleges were founded there, and Harvard grew and added higher faculties. Eventually, it changed its title to university, but the term "college" had stuck and "colleges" have arisen across the United States.

Eventually, several prominent colleges/universities were started to train Christian ministers. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Brown all started to train preachers in the subjects of Bible and theology. However, now these universities teach theology as a more academic than ministerial discipline.

With the rise of Christian education, renowned seminaries and Bible colleges have continued the original purpose of these universities. Criswell College and Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas; Southern Seminary in Louisville; Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois; and Wheaton College and Graduate School in Wheaton, Illinois are just a few of the institutions that have influenced higher education in Theology in Philosophy to this day.

In U.S. usage, the word "college" embodies not only a particular type of school, but has historically been used to refer to the general concept of higher education when it is not necessary to specify a school, as in "going to college" or "college savings accounts" offered by banks. "University" is sometimes used in such contexts by Americans who wish to avoid ambiguity, for example in the context of Internet message boards where the reader hail from a different English speaking country.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a opportunistic chameleon that likes to make sweeping generalizations about Arabs and Muslims. She considers all muslims to be of one generic make due to her upbringing in Somalia and time in Saudi Arabia.

Muslims are as diverse as Christians in their beliefs and how far they take them but she never really makes that distinction.

I believe much of her success depends on exactly that, shes made a good life out of attacking this particular religion attaining Dutch citizenship, and now a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute.

I recommend reading The Economist's review of her book Infidel. An excerpt relevant to this video:

However, last May a Dutch television documentary suggested that while Ms Hirsi Ali did run away from a marriage, her life was in no danger. The subsequent uproar nearly cost Ms Hirsi Ali her Dutch citizenship, which may be the reason why she is careful here to re-state how much she feared her family when she first arrived in the Netherlands.

But the facts as she tells them about the many chances she passed up to get out of the marriage? How her father and his clan disapproved of violence against women; how relatives already in the Netherlands helped her to gain asylum; and how her ex-husband peaceably agreed to a divorce? Hardly seem to bear her out.

I'm still not even sure what "social media" even means yet. I guess this is it. My first real introduction to any type of message board was when I was in a gaming clan. Before that I had never really talked to people online outside of my real life friends on IM. I quickly started to realize that these online friends were becoming real life friends, which was a great experience.

I tried MySpace for a while, but I got tired of the format pretty quick. I have also struggled with how much personal information about myself was starting to show up online and the ramification of that in the real world, like at work.

Over the last few years I have really stepped up my internet use for more then just simple diversion. Now I use it for a lot of research and continuing my education. There is just so much information out there to be taken in if you know how to "sift" thought all the crap.

Fedquip, I gotta thank you for introducing me to whole concept of internet research. I started making TayTV a daily stop. And that is what has led me hear to the sift. I've mostly speant my time as a passive observer, but I now feel like I might be able to add more by adding my two cents to the conversation.

I've been thinking for a long time about starting a blog or some kind of website where I can post my own particular interests and rants. But every time I start to do it I can't seem to focus in on something.

As for news, I keep my home page as news.google because of how many traditional media sources it incorporates. If I find a news story that interests me I try to read or skim at least three different stories to try and triangulate an approximation of the truth. However, I am starting to value the more independent non-corporate owned media.

No, you're right, jonny. I do understand there is a site owner, and he can do as he sees fit. I think Dag does a great job of staying even-keeled and unbiased when making decisions consequential to the community. And, I acknowledge we're all guests here. It is because Dag boasts such an egalitarian principle behind the site that I challenged him that one time, and also the reason I bring up the benevolent king analogy. If this was just some stupid corporate community message board, I wouldn't bother. I know there is something more to this site than just "here are the rules, fuck you and follow them." Here, we get to discuss and debate, which is why I like it so much.

oxdottir, but isn't the act of rethinking your vote based on politics bring this back to a popularity contest? That's not what this is about. It's about the content. Without it, this is just another message board.

So let's say *obscure b/c until now I hadn't heard of him (though that of course isn't the sole reason... most people in the offline world probably haven't either).

This Wiki quote is amusing - he gets big publicity from the online world... but then turns around and bites part of it. Though I guess the bittorrent crowd isn't exactly the same as the YT crowd, so perhaps this is totally understandable:

YouTube Fame and Beyond

Self-described as "just this guy from Topeka, Kansas who kind of blew up on the Internet about a week before Christmas," McKee became an online sensation after videos of his performances were posted to YouTube by his record label. The video for "Drifting" was massively upvoted by users at Digg, spreading McKee's fame even further.[3] Since then he has appeared by invitation on Woodsongs as well as Last Call with Carson Daly, and his online store completely sold out of his various guitar tablature books; due to massive demand, sheet music for nearly all of his songs is now available to purchase and download from CANdYRAT's webstore. He has also contributed to Josh Groban's 2007 Christmas album, Noël, playing guitar on the song "Little Drummer Boy" - the album went on to become the best-selling CD of 2007, hitting #1 on the U.S. Billboard 200.

[edit] Response to Filesharing
Andy McKee comments on The Pirate Bay
Andy McKee comments on The Pirate Bay

McKee has, in the past, personally commented on BitTorrent websites hosting his music, chastising downloaders for their actions. Posting to The Pirate Bay under the name "AlteredTuning" (which is the same handle he uses on his own website's message boards), McKee sarcastically echoed other commenters' thanks to the original uploader of his album:

Yeah thanks a lot for uploading! It's not like I need to make a living with my music or anything.

8,676 thieves.

If you really appreciate what I am doing, buy my CD legitimately so I can continue to compose music rather than work at K-Mart. I'm not Metallica. I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars, much less millions.

Andy McKee [1]

Wow. If you aren't down with King and Ghandi, then you most definitely have issues with race. This isn't a personal attack, but rather an observation.

I believe your earlier "racism" barb was the personal attack. By now I'm used to it. As I've said to any and all, if you want to pleasantly debate an issue in depth, stop on by!

As for King and Gandhi, I don't dispute their contributions to the world. However, while you and I are entitled to our opinions of these men, we are not entitled to our own facts. They were flawed, imperfect men...using them as billy clubs on a less knowledgable individual might have worked, but facts is facts, and as this is the internet, no one cares anyway.

I can tell by the words you use that these ideas are not your own (which is a good thing). These are regurgitated talking points from political talk radio and message boards.

In my younger years I was a liberal and then an anarchist. The libs are still spewing the same emotionally charged half-truths they were a decade ago, and decades before that. They never change their tune.

My later experience combined with new understandings led to my present belief system ("conservatarian") which includes facts and historical learnins where possible. It is a grave error to think righties have their brains switched off; we have to live with facts, including knowledge of our limitations; they are often depressing and often no fun.

The main difference between left and right? The left is forever selling impossible (and costly) solutions while the right illuminates the tradeoffs between one way of doing things and another.

You're wrong about King, who wanted all kinds of special rights.
And Ghandi hated Black people. I can't believe you admire such racists! For SHAME!

Wow. If you aren't down with King and Ghandi, then you most definitely have issues with race. This isn't a personal attack, but rather an observation.

Instead of flinging hasty retorts, why not take an embarrassing moment in a videosift thread and use it as a catalyst for positive change in your life?

I can tell by the words you use that these ideas are not your own (which is a good thing). These are regurgitated talking points from political talk radio and message boards.

Do you really want other people to do your thinking for you? I hope not.

Why not wrestle with these ideas yourself? Maybe you will come to different conclusions than those Fox News has taught you.

I know these comments are a bit forward, but they are genuine and intended to engage you, not insult you.

PS: I apologize for calling you a fucknut.

Come on, Gordon, get with the program, dude! Just kidding. I'm just starting shit.

Jeez, everyone is getting pissed about this. Let's slow our roll, shall we? It doesn't matter who agrees or disagrees with all this. We're not going to solve anything in this little video message board. I commend MaxWilder for taking the first step in doing research, and, although, I'm pretty sure his point-of-view won't be changed, at least he's trying and he's listening. That's huge.

And, to you, TomStall, I'm a bit disappointed by your comment above because you seem to be speaking in absolutes. I'm not altogether sure your comment is true when you write, "The problem with these "911 Truthiness Movement" people, is that even though every one of their claim ends up being debunked (not a single hard evidence thus far), they eventually come full circle and re-dig up some "clue" that actually got proven wrong so long ago they forgot about it". Is it true? I don't think it is. It sounds baseless. Because a lot of the claims made by people who are critical of the current 911 theories aren't based on assumptions and opinions, like you seem to think, but instead are made from real research and from experts.

I don't care enough to convince you to go dig up all the research or expert's names that oppose the conventional perspective of 911, but they're there. All you have to do is scratch the surface, and please understand you will see a lot (and I mean A LOT) of unlikely and implausible perspectives of 911 (such as the remote control birds I spoke of earlier). Those are par for the course whenever a government's theories are questioned.

One message board, I used to frequent, had the ignore feature. It was quite popular.

I didn’t use the feature because I wanted to see all the comments in a discussion – especially in a heated one.

It's your call...you can still call it Bookmark as long as "notify of new comments" is there somewhere. I suggested "Subscribe" because that is what I see used on a lot of message boards...you subscribe/unsubscribe from a message thread if you want to be notified of new comments for that thread. But whatever works...as long as it is placed next to the "Submit New Comment" button.

I think as a result we will see an increase of comments.