Lets not try to oversimplify things just because it's confusing. Judaism is a religion but being Jewish is a culture and an ethnicity. It isn't like Christianity where the order actively seeks to convert members from foreign world. Judaism spreads by having its members procreate and maintain their roots. So where in Christianity it's more based on 'new faith', Judaism is more closely tied with family traditions.

I don't know where this 'Judaism = only about faith/religion' idea comes from, but it's not just the religion, unlike your typical black/white western sense. But more like a way of living. http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm

By the way Kurds and Tibetans technically do not have a country either but that certainly don't stop them from having an identity.

"Message received loud and clear. Now what answer do you want to hear?"

Did this guy go from an alcoholic to a tea-totaller based upon what would make him the most popular or was it for a more authentic reason like one we would look for in the leader of the richest and most powerful nation in the world?

Oh, and feel free to ignore all the other points in the video. Best stick to the most basic and oversimplified premise you can find.

>> ^lantern53:

I knew a guy who was an alcoholic. Now's he a teetotaler. What a flipflopper!
Anyway, 'economic stimulus' for one, is not the same as Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan.
We definitely need stimulus, but all we got was debt, $50,000 for every man, woman and child in the US.
Romney ain't the anointed one, like Obama, but I think he's gotten the message from people that realize Obama's plan has failed.

Downvoted for overall poor concept and delivery <comma> for oversimplifying rules <comma> for glossing over rules that aren't absolute or are debated (the "Oxford comma") <Oxford comma> and for having mistakes in punctuation in a video about proper punctuation <exclamation point>

To wit: "...when country music comes on the radio, COMMA, I go crazy!"

Rule: If a subordinate clause comes before the main clause, you need a comma between the two.

>> ^Skeeve:

Nice of them to make it simple for kids... but we did not evolve from Chimpanzees. We share a common ancestor to Chimpanzees. Sloppy simplification can be worse than no simplification at all - especially when the "my grandma wasn't a monkey!" people get involved.


Yeah but stupid people will always be stupid. At least this way the kids who this does spark an interest with will go on to learn the facts eventually themselves, even if it is in the way of going one day to their mate, or a teacher in class "oh, we descended from apes didn't we?" and then they are in a prime position to learn the complex truth of the matter, because they give a shit and it was already somewhat in their head.

I just like things that are entertaining and educational, I can see the use of it even if it isn't bang on scientifically correct. I can see your aggravation too, if Bob Hale oversimplified parenting or grammar (even though I'm not great grammatically I'm not a rapist and it fucks me off when I see it) I'd be straight up on my soapbox

I am not sure I like this guy's videos. They are oversimplified at best, when not patently incorrect. At the end of all of his vids, I feel he hasn't left any useful or new information, but rather spattered out some vaguely intelligible terminology which the layman would hopefully find 'interesting'.

He's right. The math does not add up. There is too much debt and not enough millionaires to tax.

We must create more millionaires so that we may take as much of their wealth as we can...right?

Who wants to be a millionaire?!

so this is why we are screwed...people can't do math even when it's presented in an oversimplified manner.

>> ^ChaosEngine:
You don't think you're oversimplifying the issue just a bit? Or more likely, by an order of magnitude?
Games, moveis, music; all these cost money to produce. You don't think that the people (yes, people, not big faceless corporations) involved deserve to be compensated for their efforts?
People harp on about "a broken business model", but I've yet to see someone come up with a working alternative. Yes, treating your paying customers worse than pirates is not the right answer, but that doesn't make piracy any more morally acceptable.


Piracy is totally acceptable. Intellectual property is logically and morally absurd. Patents - claiming you personally own a slice of the universal laws of physics - are particularly obnoxious; copyright - claiming you personally own access to a string of information, which nobody else is allowed to know without your permission - is usually only something silly that gets in the way of discourse. Merely silly, that is, until people (yes people, I hold each of them individually responsible) send their stormtroopers to attack the innocent just to keep themselves in business.

Mass media always costs more money to produce than it's actually worth. No movie or game, however many millions are spent in its creation, is worth more than the price of a single unit. When producers invest all this cash they're relying on the miracle of media duplication to get paid. That single unit can be copied and sold again and again and again, to thousands or millions of people, multiplying itself and its value. Often they're able to sell their one little media fragment enough times to make a profit - good for them, the bet paid off. To then turn around and complain when others take advantage of that same miracle to enrich their lives is not only a textbook example of biting the hand that feeds you, it's also deliberately obstructing a process that makes the world better, which is a monstrous crime.

These people don't 'deserve' compensation. They're gambling. Whether gamblers make their living gambling or not, they don't 'deserve' to win and it's nobody else's responsibility to ensure that they do.

This is an extremely simple issue.

>> ^gorillaman:

>> ^ChaosEngine:
Care to elaborate? Or should I just take your word on it and ignore the overwhelming amounts of evidence that supports my position?

Evidence that piracy impacts media sales? There's plenty of that. So, media companies have a flawed business model. That's it.


You don't think you're oversimplifying the issue just a bit? Or more likely, by an order of magnitude?

Games, moveis, music; all these cost money to produce. You don't think that the people (yes, people, not big faceless corporations) involved deserve to be compensated for their efforts?

People harp on about "a broken business model", but I've yet to see someone come up with a working alternative. Yes, treating your paying customers worse than pirates is not the right answer, but that doesn't make piracy any more morally acceptable.

I just briefly read about it. Essentially below certain temperatures superconductors cannot have a magnetic field inside its body (I still don't know why), so the magnetic field flows "around" the superconductor, looking kind of like what air looks like going over an airplane wing. That seems oversimplified, but I'm dumb and I haven't taken E&M in 2 years...>> ^MycroftHomlz:

^jealous.
@rottenseed, It is the Meissner effect. I can go into it... are you sure you want that?

Wow. That's all you glean from this? Hedges is a smart, well spoken fellow. How can you not be at least a bit curious as to his reasoning on the subject before dismissing him in a grossly oversimplified way?

A tad oversimplified imo. Here in Switzerland we gobble just as much Hollywood as Americans do, but when stuff like that happens in school a) the teachers are on the kids back in a matter of seconds b) the kid goes to court (if found guilty: criminal record and fines to pay, not jail time).

I think the first part of your response is closer to the point: it's a culture of tolerating homophobia (and other forms of hate/violence towards the Other) as "freedom of speech/religion". At least that's how it seems seen from this side of the pond.

>> ^rougy:

It's our culture. It's Hollywood. A peaceful rectification doesn't sell tickets.

Again, this is all about regulating pollution.
One side says there's evidence we are possibly irreversibly damaging our environment with our pollution.
The other side says that's wrong, and we should be able to pollute as much as we want.
Oh, and regulating pollution would cut into profits, I'm assuming in a major way, considering the well funded opposition.

Or is that oversimplifying too much?

I am oversimplifying things a bit here, but here's how I see it.

========================================================================

I am a merchant with a peach orchard, and I want to sell the best peaches to the market.

You are a farmer who knows how to grow peach trees, and pick all the peaches and throw them in a basket.

I hired you to make best peaches to sell to the market. But lately I've been getting some bad batches. Most are excellent peaches, but some were too tart. I address the issue and tell you that some of the batches were bad.

You, the farmer, tell me that all your batches are of excellent quality, and the batch you have today is all excellent. So I, as a merchant, pay you for your work and sell the peaches at the market. Again, some good peaches, and a few bad ones. Now word is going around that people who eat my peaches get stomach aches. Nobody wants to buy peaches from me anymore.

I goto you and tell you that I want the best quality peaches. Farmer says there's nothing he can do about it because peaches all look the same to him, and he just picks them from a tree and throw it in the basket.

I, as a merchant, want quality control. So I now hire a professional picker who can tell the difference between good peaches from bad ones when he picks them from the trees.

You, as a farmer, is upset because I've now hired this extra person into the farm who takes away from our profit margin. But I, as a merchant, tell you that we have to keep quality control if we want to keep our customers. Otherwise, I will have to stop doing business with you and find another peach farmer.

You are upset because I am intruding your rights into your job and expertise. I am upset because you refuse to control the quality of your peaches. And I am forced to impose quality control because you are not doing your part of the job as the producer.

=============================================

This is how I see the situation. The community must actively differentiate themselves from these bad seeds instead of hiding them and defending them. By doing so, you are protecting the very thing that are out to hurt you. If you fail to differentiate yourself, then we have no choice to take all of those involved with the same assumption. The community may argue that these people are crazy and these radicals have nothing to do with them. And yet, these radicals are still within their community. Nobody within the community is willing to fish them out, because they see it as turning their backs on their own kind.

And there lies the irony. The community may say they are different, and yet they still won't fish out the bad guys within the community, treating them as part of their family. It is the community's responsibility to look after its members, including keeping quality control. By refusing to keep control, you are avoiding responsibility. And someone else, whether you like it or not, will have to take up the duty.


I've made a detailed comment here: http://videosift.com/video/NYPD-is-Morphing-into-the-CIA#comment-1279011

If you disagree with what I've just said, feel free to read the extra comments and then respond.

I admittedly can't find statistics on this. My google-fu must be tuned to much with finding tech related stuff too much now.

Consumption taxes cost the gov't a lot of money, not businesses per se. Most of what the stats I saw was due to consumption taxes actually being more prone to fraud. Granted, there's plenty of tax evasion with income tax, but it's actually less costly to find relevant info to detect and bust those people. It's easy to pull bank records, payroll info, etc.

If I find this data, I'll PM it to you or post in a relevant area.

If you're looking for a system that fits perfectly with ideals, you'll likely object to a progressive income tax. I'm not interested in what is philosophically ideal as much as I am in a system that works for the economy. I don't really care that I pay for other people's education, health care, etc. I care that as many people as possible are employed, that there's lower crime, that overall everyone is more prosperous on average, etc. That is far more important than me paying a few extra dollars in taxes for maybe even things I disagree with, and don't want to pay for. I didn't go around protesting that my tax dollars were being spent on the most recent Iraqi war, saying that their decision to go to Iraq inhibited my personal freedoms to do what I want with my money. It was for common defense, even if I disagreed with going in.

The individual freedom argument is oversimplifying the issue. Case in point, if a flat tax caused crime to go up, how is it a gain in personal freedom that you don't have to pay more taxes for things you object to if you're more prone to being robbed or murdered? If you're an entrepreneur, how are you more free if you don't have to pay for other people's education, but you can't make your business work because you can't find the skills necessary in your labor force?

It was progress for society to setup compulsory education for all people. You could argue it restricted people's freedom to not go to school, or parents to choose to not educate their kids. But that's frankly a ridiculous argument to say that progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't progress at all. Society progressed because the general population became literate through a compulsory requirement to become educated as children.

The truth is we have and should continue to make decisions like this based on what would benefit society, not what fits an ideology. Ideologies provide frameworks that help come up with new ideas, but those ideas should then be looked at with what the results would be, not lock us into only using ideas from that school of thought. Those discoveries that violate common ideologies eventually end up forcing us to change our ideologies in small ways or completely abandon ideologies altogether because they don't work anymore. But we should never do something only for the sake of ideological consistency.

I can't see how a flat consumption tax would help society. Objectively speaking, one issue our economy is facing right now is there is too much wealth concentration in the hands of the rich, so there's an incredibly weak market for purchasing goods and services business owners are producing. I'm not saying this to proclaim the rich are evil or anything of the sort; I'm just saying pragmatically the economy can't work for business owners nor the poor and middle class if consumers don't have money to buy goods and services the rich are producing. One way to remedy that is progressive taxation.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I don't know where the 98% efficient is coming from. The compliance cost alone I have read is close to 5 billion hours or so. With computers, I would imagine the sales/consumption tax is nearly automatic. Hard to find examples that aren't in someones sphere of influence. As for the "not progressive enough", that isn't really in the spirit of compromise. If I don't want it at all, and you want it all, halfway seems like the only way it will end up. A consumption tax seems easy enough halfway point. If you find it lacking, then join a charity that subsidies it out of your own pocket. Stop trying to be fair with other peoples money. Maybe I don't want to give every single useless tom dick and harry a leg up in life, I only want to help people I know and trust. Unless we are trying to make being a reclusive shut in completely against the law now. Progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't really progress at all.
Edit: Here is a less new, but more exhaustive link on costs.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr138.pdf
Last edit I swear:
I know you might not trust this, but this is a little blurb from the "Fair Tax" http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq_answers
It is progressive, which I don't like, but it is the best compromise I can find around. Seems reasonable enough.