Well, I am privileged! I'm a straight, white, middle-class male with a shiny new red gem beside my name. If that ain't privilege, I dunno what is. So on behalf of the downtrodden masses (aka @makach)

*blocked

And once again, screw you SNL for pointlessly blocking the one funny sketch you do a year.

Did I watch it? Hell yeah. I didn't even torrent it, it was right there on google, but you idiots denied yourselves the ad-revenue because... er, reasons, I guess. Probably too busy smacking your heads against a wall repeating "Kenan IS funny, Kenan IS funny..."

In conclusion, I rule.

I love Snopes. Of course, the devil is in the details:

"The editor of the biographical text about Barack Obama which was included in the booklet maintained that the mention of Kenya was an error on her part and was not based on any information provided to her by Obama himself:

"Miriam Goderich edited the text of the bio; she is now a partner at the Dystel & Goderich agency, which lists Obama as one of its current clients.

"'You're undoubtedly aware of the brouhaha stirred up by Breitbart about the erroneous statement in a client list Acton & Dystel published in 1991 (for circulation within the publishing industry only) that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me — an agency assistant at the time," Goderich wrote. "There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.'

"A New York Times article about Barack Obama published in 1990, a year before the Acton & Dystel promotional booklet was issued, correctly identified his birthplace as Hawaii.

"A variant of this item paired the image shown above with the statement "Big Oops! Harvard Law Review did not cleanse its 1991 yearbook which states he was born in Kenya." As noted above, the biographical sketch pictured above was put out by a literacy agency; it was not part of any yearbook published by Harvard."

alcom says...
@kingmob The right-wing conspiracy of convenience says that the data has been adjusted to heighten the urgency and panic and perpetuate their scientific fraud. This is a misunderstanding of flux adjustments that used to be made to climate models in the 90's and early in the 00's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_circulation_model#Flux_buffering

Recent improvements in modelling equations mean that they no longer rely on flux adjustments, but hearing that they had to made adjustments at all sounds sketch.

Because the "hockey-stick" model was an overshoot based on the peak in 1998, deniers tend to either:

a) Argue that the "warming hiatus" between 1998 and 2013 disproves AGW theory. This fallacy disproved itself in the last 2+ years as global surface and ocean temperatures have exceeded the 1998 record year on year.
or:
b) Attempt to discredit scientists arguing that their own funding depends on the alarming data that they publish. Far-right conservatives continue to demonize scientists as a cabal of billionaires working in concert to sway public opinion. If that was true, then the whole hiatus period sure didn't help their cause, but the graph hasn't moved.

This is sound science, and denialism is collapsing under the weight of its own bullshit. At the time of posting, NOAA said that July 2016 also marked the 15th consecutive warmest month on record for the globe. That is the longest stretch of months in a row that a global temperature record has been set in their dataset.

@kingmob The right-wing conspiracy of convenience says that the data has been adjusted to heighten the urgency and panic and perpetuate their scientific fraud. This is a misunderstanding of flux adjustments that used to be made to climate models in the 90's and early in the 00's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_circulation_model#Flux_buffering

Recent improvements in modelling equations mean that they no longer rely on flux adjustments, but hearing that they had to made adjustments at all sounds sketch.

Because the "hockey-stick" model was an overshoot based on the peak in 1998, deniers tend to either:

a) Argue that the "warming hiatus" between 1998 and 2013 disproves AGW theory. This fallacy disproved itself in the last 2+ years as global surface and ocean temperatures have exceeded the 1998 record year on year.
or:
b) Attempt to discredit scientists arguing that their own funding depends on the alarming data that they publish. Far-right conservatives continue to demonize scientists as a cabal of billionaires working in concert to sway public opinion. If that was true, then the whole hiatus period sure didn't help their cause, but the graph hasn't moved.

This is sound science, and denialism is collapsing under the weight of its own bullshit. At the time of posting, NOAA said that July 2016 also marked the 15th consecutive warmest month on record for the globe. That is the longest stretch of months in a row that a global temperature record has been set in their dataset.

Dang, was trying to find the Key & Peele sketch they did about this. There aren't any good links on Youtube.

@SDGundamX, first up, it was a throwaway line, you're reading way too much into it.

I'm not going to go over Jim Jeffries joke (it's been discussed to death already), except to say that, yeah, I got what he was trying to do and no, it still wasn't that funny or clever.

Besides, I wasn't trying to compare the two. Mine was a throwaway line, his was an extended sketch by a touring professional comedian. My point was simply that taste is in the eye of the beholder.

And would you please do me the courtesy of not telling me what I'm thinking. I'm not angry about ignorance, I'm angry about woolly thinking (specifically, lack of critical thinking).

If you're ignorant, then you just need to be taught. I'm not angry at ignorant people, I'm sorry for them and I want to help them.

My problem is with people (like the guy in the video) who have been presented with evidence, but ignore it because it doesn't fit their worldview.

200 years ago, if you believed that disease was a result of demonic possession, that's unfortunate. If you believe that today, you're deliberately ignoring knowledge.

As far as viewing people who reject evidence as a dangerous "other", I'm ok with that. As I've said before, I don't believe in "tolerance" as a virtue. If someone isn't bothering me, or someone is doing something I don't like, but it doesn't harm anyone, then I'm fine with them; I have no need to "tolerate" them.

But if people are doing something that causes harm (racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc), I don't tolerate that at all, and will speak out against it.


As for your torture example, it is flawed. You're saying that you wouldn't reconsider the ethics of torture, even if evidence of its efficacy was available. Do you see the problem?

You proposition was that torture is unethical, and your hypothetical evidence states that it is effective. The two are orthogonal properties. It is possible to be both effective and unethical.

Besides, I didn't say you had to change your position, I said you had to reconsider. If someone presented you with a philosophical argument arguing for the ethics of torture, are you saying you wouldn't even hear it out?

I hold positions like that myself. Despite everything, I believe that one day, people will overcome their petty differences and venture out into the stars. That doesn't mean I don't question it..

This is a sketch right ?
He's practically a cliché of cliché all the way to the yoga ball chair....
Only in America indeed.

Same can be said of many things - caffeinated tea, for instance.

Then also, think of all the dopamine that is released from a satisfying meal. All food and drink has the capability of releasing chemicals and hormones that give us humans all sorts of desired effects - from fullness, to satisfaction, to alertness.

And they all can be commodified. This particular "Roger" sketch doesn't quite hit home like the rest of them.

Its an American television show intended almost entirely for American consumption. You yourself acknowledged you don't know very much about him. It is clearly not intended to introduce him as a candidate to someone who was previously unaware of him, it is after all a comedy sketch.

Trump has a notorious and long history of having an extremely thin skin and reversing his position multiple times. He actively and very publicly campaigned on some of the issues in that video, and now onto the general, realizes they make him (hopefully) un-electable.

The clip is meant to highlight the comical policy shifts and pandering, not introduce him to people who arn't familiar with him.

As someone has already sifted the sketch this was based on, I'll just leave this here... http://videosift.com/video/Life-of-Brian-What-have-the-Romans-done-for-us

I use the sketching method. Averaging out short straight lines in pencil, then coming back with pen later.

I'm a huge python fan to pretty much academic levels, and I hold up this sketch as an example of comedy as a craft, and of Cleese in particular as a craftsman.

Every line has its place. Every word. The premise itself is funny enough, and the way it's developed is great, but what I love the most is the way the core in particular was pared down to balance extracting the most comedy and frustration against the massive repetition.

They did improve on the intro in particular as time went on, and the end works best in the context of the whole episode, but the core remains pretty much unchanged. Not only was it scripted meticulously, it also allows the performers plenty of room to change it around and keep it fresh.

Agreed! This was the only sketch I 'liked' from this past week. SO very disappointing.