Because inflation is used to drive money towards the very very few. It's essentially one part of economic cycle hijacked: if you don't raise wages with inflation, someone is going to pocket that money. Those who do, are not the ones paying wages. System controls inflation by creating more money out of thin air. Money that's being pumped out is then laundered to assets that aren't affected by inflation.

If you want to gather a nest egg, savings for the rainy day, invest in valuable metals.... It's basically the only thing a middle class can afford and trust. Don't invest to anything that exist only in paper.

Next: derivatives are cashed out..They are astronomical in scale of value, all exist only in paper. By collapsing that, then catching just a small portion of the perceived value and changing that to other type of assets is still billions. Which is the next part of systematic market meltdown, where trillions are used to pocket billions to very small number of bags.

Interesting that the Brinner guy at the end picked the two other guys names out of thin air immediately on mention of what the allegation was.

Ok, did that kitten just appear out of thin air? I watched frame by frame and couldn't figure it out. Did someone toss it out of a car?

I took my car in for alignment years ago, and the mechanic who was working on it came into the customer lounge holding a kitten. He said he heard it meowing and found it in a front wheel well of my car. It wasn't mine. He had already called his wife to see if it was ok to bring it home if I didn't claim it (no pets allowed where I was living at the time). I was glad it found a home, but I was terrified driving back, wondering how many kittens had fallen out on the way to the shop. Luckily, I didn't see any kittens, squished or otherwise, so I hoped it was the only one. I still have no idea where it came from or how it got into my wheel well.

what a profoundly sad thread this has become.

i am not referring to the most excellent posts by @Chairman_woo and his discourse with @shinyblurry.

no.

it is the ignore function use i am talking about.
what an intellectually weak and vapid excuse to not engage with those who you may disagree with or (gasp) not actually like.

are your tender sensibilities so fragile as to not survive scrutiny of one who may disagree? or is it the manner in which they disagree?
is THAT the measure of how you judge anothers ideas?
words?
and you find this to be a valid reason?
this makes sense in your world?

well allow me to point out that without the dissenting voice challenging your preconceptions and only allowing those that parrot the same homogenized,pastuerized vanilla-same cloned vomit will only serve to create a stagnant pond of lifeless banality.

but as long as you are safe in your little bubble world in which you are always right and the circle-jerk perpetuates a lackluster and flaccid worldview.then thats ok right? as long as the echo chamber reflects how RIGHT you are.

@chingalera offends you?
good! because maybe you needed to be offended.

@VoodooV we have to apologize to @bareboards2 for derailing her thread?
no we fucking dont.
human discourse is by its very nature an ugly evolving creature.so get over yourself.love your commentary,hate your high horse..so get the fuck off it.

@bareboards2 is a very nice and sweet woman,and sometimes can be sensitive but she is a big girl and i dont think we will find her weeping in a dark,curtains drawn room.in fact i am willing to bet she loves the fact her video got such a great discussion going.so who are you to judge? or tell us what we should or should not do for that matter?

this brings me all back to my main point.
the sift used to have a vibrant community that discussed,argued and debated.the arguments were legendary and we still see old skool sifters refer to these people with fondness,even if they disagreed with them vehemently.
they were passionate and had something to say.
the list reads like a funeral march to those great voices who have passed and no longer engage in the sift:@MINK,@rougy,@choggie,@thinker247,@joedirt

what do we have now?
bunch of panty waist pussies who will only jump on the band wagon because other people join in the carnage.jumping on @BoBknight,@shinyblurry,@Lantern.
its like a bully convention with free crystal meth.
these folks might as well be black living in mississippi in the 1800's.
look! a chrsitan fundamentalist!
a conservative right winger!
lets lynch em......

and those tired pussies dont even have the courage to choke on their own hypocrisy.
wont even acknowledge that those in the minority have some serious balls to post comments on a secular left site.
this hasnt become a self-masturbatory thread.
its one big circle jerk.

so to those old skool peeps that i know still lurk here on the sift.
please come back.
for the love of god come back.
because these pussies are to busy sucking each others dicks.

im going to get some fresh air because you fuckers have sucked all the vibrance out of the air and left it stale with your own hubris.

and for the love of christ.get the fuck over yourself.

I don't think you can look at it as either-or. I'm not sure you can even simplify down to single issues like "wages" because there will be outliers on either side.

I think on average (if I can use such a term) we still have a male supremacy in many if not most areas.

I think gender is important and our physical bodies dictate many of our abilities or potential abilities; I don't think it's possible to be entirely gender neutral on most issues. Women should have less winnings in Tennis, because they play less and they play less well. Hell, they could just abolish women's and men's tennis and only have a joint competition - then it certainly would favor it fairly. It would however mean that the female to male ratio would be 1:20 all of a sudden, since the male body is built stronger in general.

How it should be approached I don't really know. It won't be easy to change the people's minds in a positive way. Too many feminist proponents think they're Rosa Parks and feel completely justified in debasing and downright embarrassing behavior like the girl at the end of the video, the PyCon incident, "Elevatorgate" etc. I don't have a problem with them standing up for themselves at all - everyone should be free to protect their space, but they should also respect others' space (now I'm talking PyCon particularly).

Right now the male/female discussion has very little scientific base (at least as far as I know), we only have anecdotal stuff. It would be interesting to have studies going in neutrally and examining the basic differences in women, so we have some basis to argue from.

Some things are relatively simple - women can have babies, men can't - this means time off from work, etc etc. Right now employers consider this when hiring and shouldn't they?

Other things are grabbed out of thin air like: men focus on single things better, while women multitask better. I'd like to see some data for that and for other differences between the sexes.

Gorillaman seems to want to gender/sex out of the discussion entirely; I'm not sure that's really fair or helpful since we are different.

I suppose I would like people to not be thought of as a mass of blue and red, but rather as individuals and judged on the individual skills. Like say, compare ME and Serena Williams - there's no possible argument that I would beat her in tennis (or most any physical activity) ever. She should clearly be valued higher than me in those areas.

Sports solve the issue by going around it - making guy sports and girl sports. That's one solution, but segregating society is not cool. Imagine making guy workplaces and girl workplaces. Not really cool, is it? So, how do we find jobs, places in society that appeals to the individual? I would imagine we figure out the requirements of job and judge applicants on their merits - some women would beat all men in some jobs, and vice versa.

I don't think society is trying to keep women down, at least not consciously. Consider if the present position is caused natural evolution of society or if its patriarchal rule enforcing it? If you look at the hyper-muslim countries, I'd say it was the patriarchal rule, but over here? I'm not sure.

Ramble ramble.

But....that's his hobby-thingy?!

No way man, that RC Chopper chump needs to fork-out for retired air-force over there-Your $30 off-the-shelf whirlybird in the $1200, 25-scale fighter plane's air space.

It sure seems to me that currently, unfettered "capitalism" is in full swing in the health care industry and what the administration of health care facilities truly fear and lobby so furiously against is the standardization of health care costs based on real world supply and demand, not prices conjured out of thin air from some mysterious Chargemaster grimoire.

The health care industry has no incentive to change the current model. Why would they? Could a CEO or executive board of a hospital get traction for disrupting the current status quo when it is so obscenely profitable? I think the answer is obvious that there will be no systemic changes from within the health care industry which leaves just one possible source for market correction: government regulation.

Leaving aside the argument about whether Medicare is more efficiently administered than private health care and actually costs far less money (it is), don't you think it would be a good thing to have a watch dog organization whose sole purpose is to analyze the "Chargemaster" and make the health care industry actually accountable to the free market?

It sure seems like "Chargemaster" is just a new word for that time tested practice of free marketeers since the Boss Tweed days: price fixing. Anti-trust law actually helps create a true free market and we are in desperate, desperate need of it in the medical industry.

Not too sure what the pilot was thinking, even with my mediocre knowledge of flight and how it works, I could easily see that he entered into a slip.

He was waaaay too low to turn the chopper the way he did, and because the thrust was pointed away from the ground, it literally "slipped" out of the air for a few seconds, getting him danger close to the ground.

Perhaps if your beloved so called "job creators" paid people a living wage rather than horde more and more of their profits for themselves there wouldn't be a war on poverty.


>>> You are your own boss, whether you work for someone else or not. You create the value and sell your time and labor to others, and can increase the value of both in many ways: providing solutions for others, inventing new products or boosting your own knowledge base. Yep, there are socialist countries that will pay you a living wage to push a broom, and those economies can't hope to compete with non-socialist economies.


I will go out on a limb and assume that you would shop exclusively at a Wal-mart-type store that paid their employees a living wage as opposed to the real Wal-mart? There aren't enough such "conscious consumers" to sustain such a business.


The problem with your narrative is you believe that the wealthy all won some type of lottery, that they did not provide any service or create an invention that yielded deserved financial rewards. This is a common sickness surrounding socialism: the game is rigged and those at the top are there by pure chance. This is what Obama was raised to believe.


The rich pay the lion's share of taxes in America, while the bottom half pay NOTHING in income tax yet get plenty of benefits. This model is nothing new, the ancient Athenians taxed the wealthy at a much higher rate than the poor. The difference is they didn't endlessly spend and create money out of thin air. I'm not against the social safety net, but what we have now is unsustainable and beyond ridiculous.


I agree that many of these CEOs are overcompensated turds, but they are a small part of the problem. In order for them to be paid, stockholders have to be happy, and for stockholders to be happy, a business has to be successful. Only in the fantasy world of government is anything too big to fail.


You're somewhat awakened in that you see that the ole government's robbing peter to pay paul routine doesn't work. Wonder where the trillions went? First and foremost, to con artists and bureaucrats, who gobble up so much of every dollar seized by government very little reaches the intended recipients, and that will NEVER change. "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."


If you want to attack "greed", start with these Obama worshipers who nonetheless sheltered their own wealth when it came time to pay up.


http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/01/obamas-tax-evaders-of-the-year/

@shinyblurry

Now you're just using fallacious arguments. Why don't you present your very best argument as to what you think falsifies the Bible and let's see if it holds any water?

Fallacious arguments? Every time I point out a mistake, you invent a convenient new rule for understanding the Bible (or more likely you copy-paste what it says on some apologia clearinghouse website). I could literally find a quote that says, "oranges are black" and you'd justify it somehow. I just found a passage that gives two incompatible lineages from Joram to Joatham. And in a book that's supposed to be completely true, you excuse it by telling me the writers are taking artistic licence? WTF????? This isn't a poetry slam! It's the bloody word of God! If you claim everything in it is true, so much so that you've given up sex, condemn gay people, etc., then everything else in it *must* be literally true or you have no foundation for giving up sex or condemning gay people. Those could be metaphorical warnings about the lure of great pleasures in general. Either one of those things about Joram and Joatham written in the Bible is false, or anyone can point to any passage and call it optional, or poetry, or a style of writing, or just a metaphor. You can't have it both ways.

I didn't pull it out of thin air. Scripture says do not test the Lord thy God. You haven't proven anything. God will not let you test Him with personal prayer any more than He will let you test Him through the prayers of others.

And from the other thread:

Or perhaps He had sovereignly arranged for only insincere prayers or prayers outside of His will to be prayed for at that time which would give the results of the test the appearance of randomness.

First, I'm saying the effects of personal prayer *can* be scientifically measured, so either your contention that God will not be tested is bunk, or self-prayer is really just meditation. You also didn't understand the set-up of the prayer-for-other test. In that scenario, there were real ill people in the hospitals, and they compared the outcomes for patients who had had others sincerely praying for them from a distance versus those who didn't. IOW, the sincere prayer happened. There has never been any measured health benefit for the ill people. They died off and recovered in equal numbers.

You keep saying that my position is one of cognitive dissonance. Look at yourself. You twist your mind into any shape you need for your dogma to hold true, never once truly considering the possibility that it's all in your head. You've said the words that you might be wrong, but you've never shown it's more than lip service. I've never seen you take a critical eye to your position on God and the Bible, despite the numerous opportunities I and others have given to you.

And this is exactly what Feynman's talking about when he says the scientific approach starts from the position that all hypotheses are wrong, then goes about trying to prove it through observation. Anything that's still standing afterwards is good scientific theory. Religion, on the other hand, starts from the assuming the conclusion that God and the Bible are real, and any observational facts that don't line up must themselves be wrong facts, no matter how well documented they are. And when those facts can no longer be denied, then the Bible passages in question are suddenly no longer considered to have literal meaning, and now have only a "metaphorical" meaning, or must be understood from a different perspective.

If every word in the Bible is subject to this convenient wishy-washy fanciful method of interpretation, then it's a lousy foundation for a system of faith. You cannot follow anything that you can change the meaning of by arbitrarily saying, "That part is meant to be understood non-literally." The Bible, as it stands now, is either a 100% true book that we humans are incapable of understanding; OR a book that we are meant to learn from that also has lots of loopholes in it. It cannot be both, not as it stands now. The whole Bible should be re-written such that what's left in it is literal unmistakable unfudgeable truth. I think it would be a very, very short book, or, a much longer book filled with qualifications, something along these lines:

"In the beginning (the beginning of time as we know it in the universe) God created the heavens and the earth (meaning the whole universe, and not necessarily that quickly—there could be a gap of several billion years all of which could still be considered "the beginning"; the "days" that pass are metaphorical, and do not represent normal days as we know them, nor did those things necessarily happen in that order). 2 Now the earth was formless (in the sense that it hadn't been defined yet as separate from the heavens) and empty (in the sense that it didn't have anything living on it, though it did have mass, including water and dirt supporting it), darkness was over the surface of the deep (the deep of the ocean; there was already light somewhere else, but there was still darkness in that location), and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (this is not to be interpreted as God only being present in one place; this is a metaphor for a protective watcher)."

Otherwise, as you seem to fear about secular morality, the Bible itself could be interpreted to mean absolutely anything by anyone at any time, if they thought hard enough about it.

I cut out the words you don’t entirely agree with. The rest of my comment is all about our perception of you. That should be important to you if you think God wants you to talk to us and, one assumes, help us learn something. Right? Is that a consideration for you at all?

Sure, and I fully admit I have turned a blind eye to this in the past. I should have been more sensitive to peoples concerns than I have been. I'm sure I've wasted many opportunities with people here as Satan hoped I would. It's been a process of growth and maturity in my walk with Christ, and this will continue until the day I die.

If I decided it was my civic duty to start showing up at a certain church and talk atheism to the parishioners, I would expect resistance, of course. I would pay very strong attention to how people were reacting to me and what topics or phrases or types of argument were setting people against me, and see if I could understand their perspective and adjust the way I spoke to help them understand me more. In that scenario, my goals for being at the church are different from the parishioners' goals, and since their goals for being there could be fulfilled (perhaps better) by ignoring me and by my being quiet, I’m the one who has to make the effort if I want to engage them.

I agree with you here.

That’s what I meant by "uninvited". It doesn’t mean anyone requires an invitation to join the Sift, or that anybody expects you to leave. It means nobody asked you to come and explain the "truth" of things to us. Our goal here is to kill time, follow political stories, discuss topics of interest to us and generally enjoy ourselves. Your goal here, however vague, is different from our goals, and often in conflict with them. I was enjoying thinking about Feynman’s points, then you come in with your arrogant opener, "It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it." Read it again to yourself. How would you react? Take @Quboid’s initial comments seriously too. Don’t nitpick phraseology like "pushing people away from your belief." Look past what you disagree with and address the real content. It's respectfully written and a valid question.

Well, the difference here on the sift is that it is not by default a place for atheists to hang out. It's a place for anyone to hang out and share their videos and opinions. It just so happens it has attracted a lot more atheists than theists and so everything done on the sift is bent towards their worldview, including the videos and conversations. You're right that nobody asked me to come, but I didn't need an invitation either. If you look at any video on religion here, people feel free to speak their mind about Christianity and Christians but for some reason they take exception when I do the same. I understand what your argument is about and what you're saying, which I appreciate and recognize as being essentially valid, but your comment about being uninvited doesn't apply. Atheists run the sift but the sift wasn't created for them.

And I'm actually saying this selfishly because I do want to understand what you’re saying.

And FWIW, everyone sees everyone through a funhouse mirror, especially types we don’t have a lot of contact with and don’t understand. For us, yep, that’s you.

Yes, I see people through my presuppositions. My worldview is the biblical worldview. I do understand you because I used to be in your shoes. I'm sure some of you will say the same thing.

I can provide evidence for any claim I make, if you ask for it. Find the body of Jesus? Don't be ridiculous. How could we? And if someone found the body of Jesus, you'd use bogus science to claim we hadn't proven it to be his, just like you still use bogus science to claim the universe is less than 10,000 years old or that macroevolution is a myth. I routinely claim the Bible is falsifiable on its face, but every time someone falsifies it, you change the meaning of the words, claim it's a metaphor, or do some other dodge, like how you handled the discrepancy between an omniscient God and a God who is surprised to discover that Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit.

Now you're just using fallacious arguments. Why don't you present your very best argument as to what you think falsifies the bible and let's see if it holds any water?

In the example of God being surprised, it is you who are assuming God was surprised. The text doesn't say He was surprised, it only says He asked Adam and Eve what they did. Why do you think that means that God didn't know what they did? How many parents have you heard asking their children whether they did such and such knowing full well that they did do it? That's exactly what God was doing.

OK. Here's the most clear-cut contradiction I’ve come across in the Bible. The topic seems so petty it's almost embarrassing to use it, but compare Matthew 1:8-9 with 1Chronicles 3:10-13. They give incompatible lineages from Joram to Joatham.

The genealogy in Matthew 1:8-9 isn't meant to be a complete record. It is actually a style of writing in Hebrew which is more concerned with symmetry than accuracy. That is why there are 3 groups of exactly 14 generations. Matthew would have assumed that his audience would know the details he left out for the sake of symmetry.

You pulled this out of thin air. Are your answers here divinely inspired?

We can scientifically test for, find and measure the efficacy of self-prayer. It's only prayer for others that consistently has no measurable effect. Science can and does test and prove some prayer effective, so you can't hold that God will not be tested. I've just disproven that.

So I'll ask you again: considering that we can reliably measure the effectiveness of self-prayer, why can't we measure any effects from intercessory prayer on behalf of others?

I didn't pull it out of thin air. Scripture says do not test the Lord thy God. You haven't proven anything. God will not let you test Him with personal prayer any more than He will let you test Him through the prayers of others. Scripture says God doesn't answer prayers that aren't prayed in faith, so when you are praying just to test Him, you aren't going to get proof He is there. Although there is one test I think God will accept. If you prayed this prayer I think He would answer it:

"God....if Jesus is your Son and He really is the way....and if He really is everything the Bible says about Him....then I will follow Him"

>> ^messenger:
stuff

>> ^deathcow:

They must be talking about using space to get from Europe to Australia, as friction is a real bitch otherwise.

Possibly, although I think its somewhat more likely they'd just be flying at very high altitudes where the atmosphere is very thin.


From what I read on wiki it seems the engine is basically rocket/turbine hybrid. They use liquid hydrogen as fuel but instead of storing oxygen they suck it out of the air. The problem the cooling fixes seems to be related to supersonic airflow. Turbine engines need subsonic airflow to work properly so they use a ram, a cone on the front of the turbine, to slow the airflow before it enters the engine. This heats the air entering the engine up a lot, hot air takes up more space and so its difficult to get enough oxygen to the hydrogen fuel. Cooling the air after it passes over the ram lowers the air pressure and allows more air to pass through the engine. Scramjets approach this problem a different way in that they can operate with supersonic airflow, although they have the limitation of not working subsonic.

Anyway. Its quite fascinating. I don't think we'll be seeing commercial aircraft using this technology anytime soon though. I'd be pretty nervous about flying on something that is basically rocket powered. Space tourism maybe? If it can fly to high altitudes with the turbine and then switch seamlessly to using onboard oxygen it could be a much more efficient way of getting into space without using onboard oxygen the whole way up.

Oh, and RIP Concorde. I used to go to school under their flightpath out of Heathrow. 11am on Wednesdays they used to rattle the windows passing over.

You pulled this out of thin air. Are your answers here divinely inspired?

We can scientifically test for, find and measure the efficacy of self-prayer. It's only prayer for others that consistently has no measurable effect. Science can and does test and prove some prayer effective, so you can't hold that God will not be tested. I've just disproven that.

So I'll ask you again: considering that we can reliably measure the effectiveness of self-prayer, why can't we measure any effects from intercessory prayer on behalf of others?>> ^shinyblurry:
The Lord doesn't perform on camera for skeptics because He isn't a guinea pig subject to our experiments. Those who test the Lord will not get any results.

Now, that perspective/wording makes sense. IF his goal is tax reform, then he's doing a horrible job.

The thing is, if tax reform were his priority, I think he would put together a tax reform roadmap first, not start off with his plan to distribute as yet uncalculated benefits (20% is just a number out of thin air). If this is just a bad campaign, it's the worst I've heard of. Given that he's a politician, and I think the best financed politician ever, it's more likely that he's got a hidden agenda, and those who can read the wind are figuring it out, testing their theories, and coming up positive.

Sincerely, if he's all about tax reform, then by now he should have identified at least ONE loophole that he could find general agreement on as a good candidate to close. No? If not, then on what basis does he think tax reform is necessary? You can't realize the floor needs sweeping unless you have seen seen some dirt. So why not mention just one?

What has he ever done or said that gives you the impression he may care about anything other than the wealthy? He can't even identify with the middle class. He thinks his wife owning two Cadillacs and being friends with Nascar owners will get him in with the working class. He's really that disconnected. It's just blind faith you're going on, and in politics, that doesn't meet with a high success rate when compared with analysing behaviour.

No, the reason he isn't making it clear is that this is a tax gift to the wealthy first (including himself), and later he's going to finance that gift from the pockets of the middle class and poor.>> ^bareboards2:

I get that. Although I don't think that Rmoney is only about the wealthy. It's hard to tell with Rmoney, since he is the King of Flip Flopping -- what the hell does he really believe and want to do? I honestly don't know. If he gets into office (GOD FORBID, INCLUDING THE MORMON VERSION OF GOD PLEASE), I don't know how hard he would push for lower tax rates for the wealthy. He is such a flip flopper, I can see him letting that go.
The goal of reforming our tax code is a laudable one. I personally think it is impossible -- there are too many vested interests in the pieces where "I got mine" and nobody is going to want to let "theirs" go.
However, my original point remains -- if Rmoney's goal is to reform the tax code, which people have been wanting to do for decades, HE ISN'T MAKING IT CLEAR.
I am starting to feel sorry for the man. He has wanted to be President for so long. To be running such a poor poor campaign, unable to make a single smart step... I feel for him as a fellow struggling human being.
And relieved that he is so piss poor at it.

This video made me feel bad, because I used to consider myself pretty good at this game, but nowhere near the complete pwnage shown here. Like, I never shot people out of the air, that seems so rude...