My point. Honesty would go a long way, much farther than exaggeration to make a point. Things are bad enough without any need for exaggeration clouding the waters. The video strongly implied that this is how all milk is produced, while, as you indicated, as much as 50% is not produced using these methods. Those 50% should be mentioned, IMO, and applauded for taking the extra time and effort to give their animals a better, at least comfortable if not free, life.

Your stats sound like a reason to buy milk...from local smaller producers. Otherwise only the giant factory farms that are invariably the worst at care for the animals will be left. A better solution in my eyes is to support those doing it 'right'.

Your stats are confusing. In one paragraph, you say that 50% of milk is made by 'smaller' (<500 cow-'good') farms, then you have other statistics about tiny (<100 cow) farms. If under 500 cow farms are USUALLY the "good" kind, why mention the under 100 cow stat, unless it's just to show how few there are in what's likely the 'best' category? (or is it to include my family's farm techniques in the equation, since we've discussed it before?...so you know, we had 200+- head on 300 acres when we had them, free range...now we (well, they, I moved to California) have about 100+- angora goats) Again, the second set of stats would also seem to me to be a good argument for supporting local, small farmers that take much better care of their animals (and produce a better product), rather than a good reason to boycott farm products altogether....but that's just me.

EDIT: Can we agree that the tactic of, without warning, showing horrid animal abuse to people who love animals is not a good way to get them on your side?

Once again, they take the worst case scenarios and pretend that's how ALL milk is made, and all cattle are treated. It's a lie.
I'm getting pretty tired of that methodology, no matter who uses it.
Yep, lady, vegans are crazy....and liars, exaggerators, and attempted guilt purveyors....at least in your case.
Try honesty if you think you have a point to make....otherwise I'll see exaggeration and think 'Oh, I guess they DON'T have a real point to make, that's why they just lied to make their point'.
Yes, all these things happen, but not in all cases BY FAR. It may be a good reason to stop buying milk from factory farms that use these methods, but not a reason to stop altogether anymore than my wife's stated reason...she says that's it's just white cow pee. That's just about as honest as this video is.

Also, side note, when an organization that wants to reach people who care about animals do it by showing videos of animals being tortured, I'm turned off on the organization every time. It's why the SPCA won't ever get a dime from me. I don't reward attempted guilt trips. EDIT : This video is akin to the SPCA commercials of abused dogs ending with a statement about how this is why no one should be allowed to keep dogs.

Everybody call these guys conmen. They're not. To con somebody you actually have to make up a lie, you have to be creative and convincing. These guys are neither, they just take from people who gave up on thinking altogether.
They're as much conmen as a guy who takes candy from a baby is a master thief.

...but oddly neither mysterious nor cooky.


Just to be altogether ooky.

No, I mentioned those few officers that had not seen the criminal action (and so not ignored it), they are just such a tiny minority that they are statistically insignificant. I gave them...and the non-corrupt forces an incredibly generous 10%, even though I believe the true measure is closer to <2%. I have yet to see an independent investigation of any police force that failed to find rampant criminal behavior force wide. I conceded that they likely do exist...somewhere...but they have yet to show themselves, and appear to be quite endangered if not extinct.
Whistleblowers do show up, but in such tiny numbers compared to total law enforcement that they statistically don't exist at all.
I understand that's your position, I just disagree. Ben Franklin was talking about private citizens VS law enforcement, and you have twisted it backwards. Those IN law enforcement have a higher duty to be honest, non-violent, non-criminals. Do you not agree? And please understand no one has suggested putting them all in prison based on a presumption of guilt...which is what Ben Franklin was talking about...the court of public opinion is a different matter. Also, in practice, assuming that all law enforcement is 'bad' and are untrustworthy liars actually lets far more innocent 'escape suffering', since they are the one's making the (often enough, false) charges. Just something to think about.

OK, let me try another tact. Do you think it's OK to put all members of a mafia crime family in prison, even though some may have done little more than honest accounting work? Well, I'm not suggesting prison, or even replacement, just meaningful, independent oversight EDIT:with real teeth. While I would LIKE to replace all officers (including the 'good' ones, let them all re-apply with stricter standards) and start fresh, I do see that that's not in any way reasonable or feasible...the best I can hope for is a change in behavior and a change in how we treat them...to one of zero tolerance for any professional malfeasance.
OK, once again, there is a statistically insignificant population of law enforcement that is totally 'pure' and not criminal. They exist. Because law enforcement as a group has become SO corrupt, they will be lumped in with the rest in public opinion until they prove themselves. There comes a point when the presumption of innocence is so damaged by a particular group of like minded individuals (which excludes by race, as a race is not 'like minded') that it no longer makes sense....and I'm far past that point. I now presume they are all trained liars (and I contend that's true, all of them, 100%, it's part of the job, and another way they're 'bad', but that's another discussion altogether) and that they'll lie to and about anyone they come in contact with. It's a terrible presumption to have to make about a group of people, but the only logical one to make since the alternative so overwhelmingly often leads to severe suffering for the innocent.

Cool stuff. Looks like molded styrofoam. Wish it was bigger.

Totally off topic but...

I've been pondering when to get my sons into Star Wars and realized I'm not sure the order I should introduce them to them, original trilogy first (the good ones) or numbered trilogy first (the embarrassment).

Maybe I should skip the later trilogy altogether.

Egads @TheFreak @kceaton1 @ant ... all of these comments Makes me feel the need to 'splain the situation! Not that I should have to ... but here goes:

I am friendly and open to almost everyone I meet [there have been very few exceptions] in my life ... up to a point. I prefer my solitude. However, in a rather large living environment where one must leave the property to smoke nicotine [don't judge me], human interaction with fellow pariahs is unavoidable. Several of us tend to hang out by the lake around the same times during the day and a few of us have become good friends. Over the years people come and go so he started hanging around [99% are women in this bunch by the way] on a regular basis shortly after moving here a couple of months ago. I'm generally not in a hurry to get to know someone new and will often avoid the gang altogether in favor of quiet time under a shady tree.

I was cordial with him at first, but I also trust my instincts which picked up a slight player/creep vibe that quickly overrode the initial physical attraction there could have been. He started bringing a chair out to sit by me if I didn't go where everyone was congregated. Chagrined, I try to zone him out by playing games on my phone [hint hint] and don't initiate any conversation. He has a asked a mutual friend to find out if I like him [what is this ... grade school??]. He has also made inappropriate comments when others aren't present.

So, ah ... I don't think it's me ... m'kay

Folks on the street haven't been all too friendly towards the Greeks for some years now, and the exhaustion caused by this mess only added to an attitude of "just get it over with" over the last year or so.

For nearly three years, I have tried to provide counter-arguments whenever someone went off on a tirade against the Greeks (and others) during a conversation with me, or generally around me. You can't really try to explain the birth defects of the Eurozone in 20 seconds or less, but just having some raw data ready at hand (pensions, wages, state of the healthcare system, etc) was usually enough to get people thinking.

But today was different. Today was ugly. Three times I was involved in an ad-hoc discussion about Greece and three times people couldn't care less about the facts at hand. It always boiled down to "we've paid enough, they need to piss off". Period. End of story. People turned sour, big time. All this time, I had never been yelled at, or laughed at, not even once. Until today.

Worst of all, a friend of mine with family back in Greece stopped arguing altogether. What's the point, she said...

I find it best to avoid stern looking men with assault rifles altogether. This goes doubly so if their boss makes them wear a stupid looking hat to work. That's bound to put anyone in a contrary mood.

Odd, because it did work for me, as I can't even see @speechless's comments due to one particularly nasty, insulting conversation we had one day that ended in my ignoring him/her. Now there's no way to un-do that if I wished to, without having lucky do it for me.
Agreed though, stricter enforcement of the 'rules' would have made my requesting this feature (yes, I requested this...go ahead and blame the Newt) moot. The people that constantly made the site a place I wasn't sure I wanted to visit, IMO, violated the rules repeatedly...but my opinion is only, like, my opinion man, and if the moderators don't think they've crossed the line, this feature was the only way I would be able to continue here...since I was unable to ignore a few members (now I'm not talking about speechless) because their inflammatory hate speech was so often quoted and commented about, so I would click 'see it anyway' out of curiosity, and often ended up replying.
Now that I don't see them at all, I feel much better about being here. It does mean that I no longer contradict their insanity publicly (or at all), so they get to spout their hateful ideas with less opposition, but there came a time when enough was enough and I realized that I was only giving them the attention they were seeking just by replying, and certainly not making a dent in their ignorance or hatred, and it wasn't doing me any good either.
Since they know how far they can skirt the rules while still being as annoying as possible, this was the best option I could think of....and I'm quite grateful to Lucky for implementing it for me (and others).
I think it sucks ass that most of the dissenting (right wing) voices here have become so angry and hateful that they aren't worth listening to anymore, and seem to only post here to get a rise out of others, not to inform or discuss. I wish that was not the case, but since it is, for me it was either stop reading them altogether (requiring this addition to 'ignore'), or just leave like so many others have. I was not ready to abandon the sift and let them 'win', so this seemed the best alternative.

It would be nice if you could see who you are ignoring on your profile page somewhere, and had the ability to choose to un-ignore on a person by person basis by one's self. Who knows, it's possible that some of them might go to the lounge (where ignored users can still be seen), indicate they had changed, and make me interested in reading their comments again. As it stands, I would have to go to @lucky760 for that 'un-ignore'...it would be better, I think, if we could do it ourselves without bothering him, but I don't know how possible or reasonable that really is.

The info on the batteries is at the bottom of this page:
http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall

There are different types of Lithium ion batteries, so I'm curious as to what combination of minerals Tesla is using. The temperature range they can operate in seems decent, from -20 to +43 degrees C, which is ok for most places. Shipping outside the US is probably going to be really expensive, as they weigh 100kg each, so add up to about another thousand dollars for that.

Overall though, looks like an amazing solution - hook a couple of these up, and with some solar panels you can stop paying for grid power altogether.

So as a relative newcomer* to the backcountry, here's my $0.02:

They were incredibly lucky.

Going into a gully like that after a snow storm is a "terrain trap" where even a small slide can accumulate very deep snow. Getting buried under 2-3m is bad, but 10m+? Unless you have the world snow shoveling champion team in your party, you're dead.

Good on them for carrying shovels and probes, but where were their transceivers? The article states that the victim had his transceiver with him but the others didn't. A single transceiver is about as useful as a prick in a nunnery.

The only reason that guy is alive is he managed to stick his ski pole above the snow. Without that, by the time they find him, they're not rescuing him, they're recovering the body.

Most importantly, they knew it was a sketchy line and they went anyway (and altogether.... jesus.... spread the fuck out... no-one gonna rescue you if you're all buried).

Right there, that's the fatal mistake. I know guys who have hiked for 6 hours to get to a run, looked at it and turned back. If you're not sure, don't go. Even if it means climbing back out.

So to sum up:
unsure about conditions: don't go
the entire party doesn't have a shovel/probe/transceiver each: don't go
if you absolutely have to go: one at a time and aim for a safe spot

/sermon

I'm being a bit of a prick on this. It's really easy to criticise, but I've been there and I know that powder fever takes hold. But *nature hates you and wants to kill you. Keep that in mind.

* I've been side-country riding for a few years, but started splitboarding last year.

Tyson's only interesting statement before Nye spoke was to suggest Dawkins' question was wrong, or at least premature as he wonders, "...whether there is no such thing as consciousness at all".

It is a silly suggestion because we all agree we experience consciousness, therefore, de facto, it exists, as an experience. The question is why we have the experience, not whether we have it. This conclusion that experience of consciousness might not exist is what Nye was reacting to because Tyson hadn't said anything yet about where our understanding of it might come from.

After Nye's comment, Tyson says our understanding of consciousness might come from some place altogether unexpected. Most answers to the big questions do. That's why they're big questions. So to a scientist, that's an unremarkable statement, not worthy of comment. But you can't go from there to, "asking why is a bad question". Tyson's analogy with the procession of Mercury was a bad one because nobody suggested that perhaps Mercury's procession didn't appear out of whack. It did. People only asked why it did.

For the anthropic principle to be a legitimate way of dealing with fine tuning, there needs to be a multiverse, but there is no evidence for a multiverse. Even if there was a multiverse, as the video pointed out, the Universe generator would be even more finely tuned than this one. You would have to explain the fine tuning of the Universe generator before you could dismiss the fine tuning in this Universe. Even still, the anthropic principle is not adequate to rule out design to begin with. I found an argument which explains why it is not adequate. The anthropic principle has a couple of basic principles in it:

1. we should not be surprised that we do not observe features of the universe which are incompatible with our own existence.

2. We should not be surprised that we do observe features of the universe which are compatible with our existence.

For although the object of surprise in (2) might at first blush appear to be simply the contrapositive of the object of surprise in (1), this is mistaken. This can be clearly seen by means of an illustration (borrowed from John Leslie): suppose you are dragged before a firing squad of 100 trained marksmen, all of them with rifles aimed at your heart, to be executed. The command is given; you hear the deafening sound of the guns. And you observe that you are still alive, that all of the 100 marksmen missed! Now while it is true that

3. You should not be surprised that you do not observe that you are dead,

nonetheless it is equally true that

4. You should be surprised that you do observe that you are alive.

Since the firing squad's missing you altogether is extremely improbable, the surprise expressed in (4) is wholly appropriate, though you are not surprised that you do not observe that you are dead, since if you were dead you could not observe it. Similarly, while we should not be surprised that we do not observe features of the universe which are incompatible with our existence, it is nevertheless true that

5. We should be surprised that we do observe features of the universe which are compatible with our existence

*quality

Excellent breakdown. I love the side-by-side comparisons. Jackie Chan is the awesome.

Reminds me of behind the scenes of Rush Hour. The fight upstairs in the Chinese restaurant there's one gun and the American filmmaker wanted Jackie to toss it aside as if he would prefer to fight mano a mano.

Jackie pointed out the absurdity of that stupid concept altogether and made it so his character's focus in that scene was the exact opposite, to fight to get his hands on the gun, thus shutting the bad guy down.

It's awesome that he's done so many of his own stunts, but I feel bad for him because he's said one thing he loves about making films in America is they do everything they can to prevent him from getting hurt, and that's simply not the case in Hong Kong.