Thanks. Hopefully, this doesn't strain him and his server.

We shall see!

Lyrics:

oh my god!

my bleeding heart bleeds blood for you, woah, woah

traveling down this lonely road, woah

facing my hurt, hurting my face, yeah yeah yeah

i chainsaw your face off, watching your brains rotting, kid
drain your veins raw, straining your esophagus

위하여, 음악에 미친 널 [we-hah-yeo, umage michin null]
위하여, 술잔에 비친 널 [we-hah-yeo suljane bichin null]
[translation: "cheers to you who are crazy for the music! / cheers to you who are reflected on the (wine) glass!"]

finding the truth
take it back
finding the truth
it's nothing
change
and tesselate
as we fight to the death

il mio amore è corrisposto

we all dance to the polka
for it is so fun
still dancing to the polka
with my accordion

love is everywhere
smoke is in the air

pick it up, pick it up!
oi! oi! oi! oi!
pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!
oi! oi! oi! oi!

a to z, z, z
a to z, z, z
a to z

as we cross the open seas
twoards the call of war
our axes we'll free
guided by the hand of thor

yeah yeah yeah
and our love will never end

List of genres:
1. Ambient
2. Baroque
3. Chiptune
4. Dubstep
5. Emo
6. Folk
7. Grunge
8. Horrorcore
9. IDM
10. Jazz
11. K-Pop
12. Latin
13. Math Metal
14. Noise
15. Opera
16. Polka
17. Quan Ho
18. Reggae
19. Ska
20. Trap
21. UK Garage
22. Viking Metal
23. Wonky
24. Xoomii
25. Yodel
26. Zouk

Source YouTube

I love how such a narrow clip provokes such wide-ranging discussion here on the Sift. I think the clip itself raises two central questions:
1) Is Islam - in this point in history - more dangerous a religious ideology than the others, and
2) Is such a question/comparison even relevant? Or perhaps "promotes Islamic hatred" as the douchebag facing Maher seems to think?

To 1), I've argued above that yes, it is. as for 2), raised mostly by the commenters here, I would have to say "no, but" to both. Religious (and non-religious) ideologies should be strongly and non-violently denounced whenever/wherever they do harm. In the US, for example, Christianity does way more harm (to women's/gay's/atheist's rights, to education, etc.) than Islam does, but neither excuses/diminishes the evil done by the other. The "but" would be for when people get accused of discrimination and "islamophobia" when calling out the evils of Islam.
The necessity of the second "but" is illustrated by @shinyblurry's comment: there is always the danger of right-wing and/or Christian fundamentalists taking criticism of Islam to be a defense/validation of their own strain of wrong/dangerous BS and/or racisms (to be fair, sb only exhibits the former). This is inevitable, and should not stop people from criticising/denouncing unethical ideologies, nor should it prompt amalgamation of "criticising Islam" with "hating the for'ners/ragheads/Muslims".

Beyond the subject of the video itself, the correlation between poor socio-politico-economico-etc. status and the adherence to extremes, a point well-made by @Babymech, @Yogi and others is an important factor in the higher numbers of "Islamist evil" worldwide, one that I am well aware of. There is no better way of turning whole populations to fundamentalist extremes (or at least worse ones than they had before; let's not fall into the "noble savage" fallacy) than by meddling with their politics and then bombing the hell out of them. The danger is to go to the extreme of excluding the very nature of those fundamentals from the picture, which is just as simplistic and false as is blaming them exclusively.

Moreover, I always shudder at the left-wing strain of argumentation which puts ALL the blame on the Western invaders, (edit: 19-20th c.) colonisation and co. This view relies heavily on the "noble savage" form of racism, which assumes that only "White people/Westerners/Judeo-Christians" can wreak political/social havoc in the lands of those poor, innocent "Brown people/Muslims" (those two often being conflated). Having lived in Africa for 5 years I have a knee-jerk reaction to this kind of self-centered guilt-tripping, which deprives the "Brown/Black people" of one aspect of human nature: the ability to be evil, to fuck themselves up without any help from the "West". They can, and they do.

This tangent may seem irrelevant here, but the reason I bring it up is because that it is this sentiment that is behind much of this "Islamophobe" name-calling in the US and Europe, and behind the difficulty many "Westerners" have in bare-facedly criticising Islam, when they often have no such difficulty with their "home"-religion, Christianity.

@aaronfr raises the problem of how to go about denouncing an unethical set of beliefs, and gives several good examples of how not to (it is noteworthy that the only example of violent action is one taken by other religious people; I have yet to hear of atheists using anything other than words and pictures to make their point). Hitchens’ endorsement of the Iraq war lowered my esteem for him greatly (somewhat saved by the fact that his stance on this was of no influence to anyone, contrary to his huge effort against the evils of religion), but it is noteworthy that he and Harris are the most criticised (and the least influential) when they hold such positions.
On the side of the religious, however, it is often the crazy fundies who are the loudest and, in certain areas (with the aid of socio-etc factors of course) the most influential. And they have, especially in the Quran and the life of M., a reliable and divine source of hate/violence-mongering.

As you say, peace and prosperity are some of the best deterrents to religious extremism and unethical behaviour (but not solely; cf: the US, Saudi Arabia and co.) This does not render unnecessary denouncing the unethical nature of Islam, Christianity, etc. As noted above, the negative effects of religion are still felt in relatively peaceful and prosperous nations today (in France, for example, homophobes of Christian, Muslim and possibly Jewish faiths are causing a significant rise in homophobic violence ever since the gay-marriage hearings).

So long as the distinction between "Islam(/religious ideology)" and "Muslim(/person)" remains clear, we should be free to criticise and denounce the former to our hearts content. (Note how "Islamophobia" shits all over that distinction; one of the many reasons that term should never be uttered unironically).

_{My apologies for the dissertation-length comment}

Debate, yay! Let's take this in order:

@00Scud00 You don't actually disagree with me it seems. Christian fundamentalism is (almost) as dangerous as Islam fundamentalism imo, with the tiny caveat that Jesus' message was mostly pacific passive-aggressive, à la "be nice to everyone here, me and Dad will torture our enemies in the afterlife", whereas Muhammed's was very much "death to the infidel, by our hand and/or God's" (e.g. s2:191-3; s4:89; 5:33; 9:52, etc). As for nation-building, it is more rooted in Islam - if only by virtue of being what their holiest figure did, contrary to the "kingdom-of-heaven-is-not-on-earth" Jesus (of course, Christianity's inherent One Truth totalitarianism is, as history shows, a perfect backup ideology for colonizing and war-weilding as well.
Of course people growing up with Islam will, for the most part, adhere to the good and ignore (sadly, instead of revolting against) the evil, just like with any other religion. That does not change the inherent wrongness and dangerousness of the ideology itself.
"You're condemning an entire belief system and billions of Muslims based on a statistically small group of whackjobs, doesn't sound very scientific to me. the comparatively greater (observable and quantifiable) numbers of threats/acts of violence done in the name of Islam than those in the name of other religious ideologies in this point in history " FTFClarity. If I mention >100'000person-riots demanding the deaths of atheist bloggers, which religious beliefs are most likely to be at the source there? Proportionally, which religious beliefs have, today, the most negative effects on women? Which population of ex-"religion" is most likely to receive death threats and/or be killed for religious reasons? I could go on, but I think the point is made that, proportionally, Islam is the greatest cause of religious-fueled harm today.

@Yogi, apples and oranges dear, not to mention your very narrow definition of Islam's toll (the sunnis bombed by chiites and vice-versa, and all the honour-killing victims, to name only a couple, would not agree with you). The US-wrought massacres in the ME are unforgiveable, no doubt about it, but most of the excuses made to justify it were secular, not religious. Fundamentalist Islam is above all a threat to its immediate neighbours (usually other muslims). Islamist terrorism is only one aspect of the ideology's dangers, and takes its greatest toll in Africa and the ME. Counting only US victims is terribly self-centered.

@SDGundamX Hello old debate-buddy; I will freely admit that I do not want to spend days and days compiling exact numbers of "victims of Islam" vs "victims of other religions", and I think it is rather a dismissive tactic to demand such data. That is why I formulated the question differently in the response above to 00Scud00: take a look at the state of the world, and simply compare. Does this paint all of Islam in a broad brush? You think it does, I do not. I do not find it contradictory to accept the wide variety of "Islams" and Islamic practices/interpretations while arguing that the core fundamentals of Islam, i.e. the founding texts and exemplary figures, can and sadly often do lead to or are invoked to motivate violence and unethical behaviour, and that at this point in history it is the one that does so the most. I do not imply that there is "one" practice of Islam, that is you projecting. There are, however, a set of texts at the core of Islam, and with it a set of beliefs (as you yourself point out).
There is a reason why "moderate" Christians, Muslims, etc. are called "moderate": they only "moderately" adhere to that core. And yes, Muslims disagree with eachother about how to live/interpret that core, and sometimes (like the Christians and Jews etc. before them) kill eachother over their disagreements.

Is there good stuff to be found in those fundamentals? Yes, of course, but they are basics of human empathy and animal morality, and do not require holy validation (this applies for all religious fundamentals of course).

You and many others seem to be unable to dissociate "hating an ideology" from "hating every individual who adheres to it, no matter to what degree". It is noteworthy that the people who accuse others of painting Islam/Muslims "with one broad stroke" are often guilty of implying exactly that when they make that accusation: "you express dislike of Islam and/or the acts of certain Muslims, ergo you can only be expressing dislike for all of them, because one=all!"

As for equating Islam with danger, there is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is to equate Muslim people with danger, and yes, there is a huge difference, one that people like myself think so obvious as to not have to spell it out until opposing voices accuse us of not making that difference, often because they themselves cannot. When the fundamentals say "believing something other than Islam is worse than murder" and "kill the non-believer", it is a dangerous ideology. Thankfully we know that the majority of individuals will eschew that part of the fundamentals, gaining the "moderate" achievement. This does not diminish the danger inherent in the fundamentals.

@Babymech It is not ignorant to say that Chechens have been bombed, massacred, and isolated, and are poor as all get-out. It is ignorant to suggest that these are the only possible reasons a culture might have violent strains running through it, and that one should by all means not look towards the beliefs that explicitly command killing people who don't believe what you do. Moreover, my history is pretty rusty, but of all the many places and peoples the US has bombed and massacred, I don't remember Chechnya being among them. The Boston bombing may have been political in nature, but suggesting that it can only be so and cannot have religious motivations is simplistic and counter to, well, reality.

Man Muslims are just batshit crazy. Turns out that when they're poor, bombed massacred and isolated, they get violent strains running through their culture. WEIRD

Dear god, of all videos to offer a 1080 option for...

And what's with the extremely, high-res macro close-up shots? Look, I know the video title is self-explanatory and I have only myself to blame for clicking, but... man... Some of the skin doesn't even look human.

And is this so serious an issue in India that they have a metal instrument designed solely for it?

To top it off, my computer inexplicably strained to play this one back, as though my PC was trying to spare me the disgust.

To me there is no controversy. Whatever this stuff is it changes lives.It is difficult. I have never felt so alone yet so alive, transformed. I lived in an existential world, for some reason I believed in nothing. Never in my wildest dreams of taking mushrooms or acid did I ever think it had an actual link to who a person really is on an infinite and universal scale. Yet, here it is, the minimalist strain of tryptamine. Like TMK said, it is twenty years of pharmacology, art history, religion and philosophy all in a toke that lasts for ten minutes more or less. I was a speculator, a doubter as well...just like you probably are right now. If you doubt then you should shed the ten minutes of your life to find out. What are you afraid of? The immensity of truth? To know this is not the end? To know that real existence exists outside of this bark, these bones, these plants, this world, this universe? Become aware; this is our destiny, our compass, real evolution. FUCK capitalism with a sick dick.

Straining to look past they way you have tried to make your point, I think I pretty much agree with you. I've suggested several times on VS and elsewhere that gun control is, in itself, a minor issue, and that even the gun culture I take issue with is part of a larger sickness. Hell, even on this page, I have pointed to propaganda driving both the 'pro' and 'anti' sides of this "debate".
Still, I see no sense in shouting "the sky is falling". It is ineffectual.

Hell of a strain on the country too.

Elvis really strained his pelvis in this one!

Not really....If ya wanna critique, these folks are way too white...seeing them perform does little justice to their efforts filmed or otherwise embodied in recorded tracks on YT with a wannabe clever album cover...To Me, they strain at sucking and are incurably Caucasian....That coming form a white boy, that makes and loves music....these dweebs' sound make my skin crawl for an escape hatch away from hipsters...:)

And since you love em so much, i guess i need to copy this review to one of their sifted viddies (probably pimped by you or another incurable white person with no ear for talent) straining for attention....Yeah. Pretty much recoil from their sound and vibe altogether, they embarrass their creed and associative alliance with blood kin, wish they'd stop trying !

Well, I am going to have to take a break from the Sift until this contrast issue is resolved. Which I hope is in the plans (I know you are getting lots of bug reports, much more important than this.)

It has gotten to the point that I come to the Sift and I have a headache within five minutes of straining to read. And I haven't even been here all that much -- I've been conditioned, I guess, over the past four days.

Grey on gray (and green). I'm dying here. (Why not black letters? Why the gray letters? I don't understand.... is it something to do with the mobile version? Does it look better there?)

Anyway. I guess I am on hiatus for awhile.... Rats.

Light text on dark backgrounds causes eye strain, so I vote light. Can we get rid of the background texture too? I think the simple look of a single color background looks better.

Wherever you end up, the contrast between background and text really needs to be stronger. It really shouldn't be a strain to read anything.

And the blue text on the light textured background of the Top Sifts area literally shimmers for me. I do hope that at least is fixed.

My personal preference is the light background. I physically feel pushed away with the dark.

But this is not about my personal preference -- it is about the casual visitor. As a constant user, I can choose my preference of light over dark (once you fix the contrast, oh please, oh please No gray letters!!!). I

I would go with the industry standard for the casual user, and most websites have a lighter background. What is the message you want to send to a casual user? The dark has a specific message, the light has a specific message. Which do you want to convey?