I'm a white guy, but I have enough Cherokee in me to be classified as Native American if the tribes would accept me. Which they won't. My girlfriend is mostly Native American, and her tribe won't even recognize her.

But, I look really white. Cracker white. Drywall white. I can tan like the dickens, but then it just turns back to pale honkey white as fast as the day is short.

The life on reservations is no picnic. My gf's nephews and her sister-in-law live on a Canadian reservation, and it's abject poverty. It's not that they don't have money, it's that they tend to value education as a lower priority and alcoholism and drug abuse is rampant. Theft is huge up there, too. None of her nephews can have nice things without them being stolen. Also, with the alcoholism and drug use there's a decent amount of violence. Also, the Canadians around the reservations tend to treat the Native Americans as lesser beings. My gf, who is American and part white and black and East Indian and everything else under the sun (but mostly Native American), experienced the Canadian racism first hand. Most of the local white vendors would be extremely rude to her because they assumed she was from the local tribe.

Now comes the part where I put my Libertarian hat on and sound like a complete racist. I disagree with reparations or any special funding given to the Native Americans by tax dollars. Hey, at least I'm consistent. The reason I believe this is because none of the people paying into the taxes are responsible for running the Natives off their land. It would make as much sense as us holding the entire Democratic party responsible for paying reparations because their party founder signed the Indian Removal Act which lead to the Trail of Tears (fact!). NetRunner had nothing to do with his party's racist founder, so it wouldn't be fair to blame NetRunner, right?

In order to make amends the people directly victimized and the people directly responsible for victimizing them would need to be held accountable. But, they're all dead. Now, let the comment downvotes begin.

^I understand your point, but this place thrives on positive feedback, i.e., star points for sifted videos. Now if we make it too easy to get star points then they'll have the approximate value of a Deutsche mark during the Weimar Republic. However, if we make it too hard for the more obscure gems to receive star points, then the majority of videos that people will sift be the ones that have a greater probability of success. Therefore you'll see more TDS, Colbert Report, and cat videos, and fewer small but worthy gems. In other words, this place will become like a Hollywood studio.

Now I like seeing cat videos sometimes, and I also like seeing obscure music videos too. That's why I like this site so much, because you can find virtually every variety of video under the sun here. So a balance needs to be struck, I believe.

I don't think 12 votes will be too high for good small-niche videos to be rewarded, but that is admittedly based on a hunch, because I don't have hard numbers to back my case. But raise the bar too high and like I said, this place will become more like Digg or Reddit. That is not meant as a slam against either site, because I have occasionally posted videos from both. Still, I don't want this place to be a clone of either of them, because why should we even exist if we're nothing more than an RSS feed from both sites? Then that would make VS one of the worst things I can imagine a web site to be: BORING.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a light switch to play with.

>> ^Lodurr:
I agree with DFT, though I tend to think that local activism is the best form of activism. The best contribution you can make to the world is raising well-adjusted children, or providing stability in the lives of people around you--being a benevolent boss or a good neighbor. I think it's a waste of time and energy to focus on the ultimate direction of the country and ignore the effect you have on people around you. I think Thoreau is saying a similar thing--to resist in full force injustices in your personal life, because everyone doing this in tandem is the best way to address your government's problems.


Good point on not forgetting local activism but MLK said it best: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Civilization requires both local and global activism.

I don't think public debate is getting enough respect in this thread. It often looks like progressives are whining and bitching about everything under the sun but public debate does shift a nation's mindset. Civil disobedience brought big changes on integrating blacks but it took decades of public debate at all levels of american culture to begin cementing those changes in.

Nothing new under the sun... Stalinist philosophy of shortages. Create a shortage and the people will relinquish their rights.

As edeot already mentioned, I also believe nested comments would be great. The threads would be more interesting and/or entertaining if this were available. Other ideas:

1. I've said it a hundred times before, but it bears repeating: More video hosts. Here are some solid hosts that have had a presence on the internet for over a couple of years already:

- FunnyOrDie
- 5MinLife
- blip.tv
- MyVideo.de - Sure, it's a German-language host, but they already have many videos here.
- Current TV
- Reuters - hopefully that will encourage more world news videos

BTW, none of those are region-blocked

2. Fix Vimeo and CollegeHumor so that sub-Gold members can post videos. It's my understanding that they're unable to post videos from them right now.

3. Replace the iFilm logo with Spike TV, because that's what iFilm became well over a year ago. Go ahead and type in 'www.ifilm.com' and see what happens. iFilm is no más. And then fix it so that sub-Gold members can embed their videos.

4. Thumbnails, thumbnails, thumbnails! I'm not talking about thumbnails for every video site under the sun; just give us thumbnail pictures for all of our approved hosts. Right now none of these approved hosts have thumbnail pictures:

- Google
- The Onion
- VideoJug
- Spike TV (formerly iFilm)
- MySpace
- Yahoo!
- DailyMotion
- NBC
- MTV Music
- Comedy Central
- Hulu
- Game Trailers
- Veoh

In fact we only have seven out of the 20 approved hosts that have thumbnail pics. Those are CollegeHumor, YouTube, Metacafe, Vimeo, Break, Revver, and LiveLeak. If you want people to post from more approved sites, I think you need to give us more thumbnail pics. They usually boost vote tallies, as most experienced members already know.

BTW, both Atom Films and Comedy Central use the MTV Music player, so if you can get thumbnail pics for MTV Music videos then you should be able to do the same for Atom Films and Comedy Central, which are both owned by Viacom. Viacom also owns Spike TV, but they still use a different player than the others I just mentioned.

5. Get rid of both the hobbling and Siftquisition features. Like I said before, they're good ideas in theory, but in practice they've done more harm than good.

6. Give us the option to block any user from commenting on our profile pages. This should hopefully lead to less squabbling.

7. Put up all the unassigned channels for bid, going to the members with the most star points. We have too many unassigned channels, and many of those get misused because of this.

8. Provided it doesn't significantly increase bandwidth or other operational costs, give us a game room. The membership was in favor of it, so make it so, but ONLY if it doesn't increase your costs significantly.

9. Crown members get the privilege of prima noctis with probationary members, as God has ordained it our right.

clearly, nobody who posts on this video is a regular watcher of Red Eye.
It's a COMEDY show that airs at 3 a.m. It's ridiculous and done for laughs. How often is Canada made fun of in this country? A whole lot. You can't tell me no Canadian show has made fun of America before either.
Seriously, if you're getting insulted over a joke show, grow the fuck up. Red Eye makes fun of everything and anything under the sun.
Please understand what the show is before you say it's legitimate news. Clearly, you're just angry because a show made fun of something you happen to like. If this video was about something you hated, you'd applaud it and show it to all your friends. Thi s was not an intent to belittle Canada's help with the War on Terror-- it's making fun of the idea of "taking a year off" from the army-- which would sound ridiculous, no matter what country said it. I don't think the Canadians understand how ridiculous Americans think Canada is, and that fueled this clip quite a lot.
Picking apart this video like it's in depth journalism is a waste of your time BECAUSE ITS A FUCKING COMEDY SHOW. Put the same effort into a half hour of Jon Stewart and you'll get the same resort-- a few cheap laughs produced for your entertainment.
Oh, and for that idiot who apologized for America-- I'm not sorry. In the slightest.

I can't stand this. This, is borderline slander of Canada.

Mounties and Police are two different sections of Canadian law enforcement. My father is a cop, my Grandad was a Mountie.

The Mounties do NOT wear the red jacket as standard uniform, they wear it as DRESS clothes, the same way that police officers have dress uniforms.

This can't possibly be real. It can't, they're talking about every Canadian stereotype under the sun, except the fact that we live in Igloo's and ride dog sleds, and even then, the fact that we live in the "Frigid North" implies it. Even though I'm sitting here looking out my window at the sun shining out on my snow-free front lawn, watching motorcycles ride up and down the street because of how nice it is outside.

Christ, Nomino is so right it's absolutely absurd. The Canadian army has so many achievements, even freaking HITLER respected them.

From wiki: "While the German leader had no qualms about destroying culturally significant locations in France including many French war monuments which were torn down by the Nazis, the Vimy memorial carried no messages of Allied triumph over Germany. So it was protected by Hitler, who assigned special units of the Waffen SS to guard the monument from defacement by regular German Wehrmacht soldiers.[10] University of Ottawa historian Serge Durflinger[1] notes that "Hitler admires it immensely, he says so at the time. As a result, the Germans respect[ed] the memorial all through the war."

Respect from potentially one of the most evil bastards that have ever lived, and these assholes can't do anything but make fun of our army?
An army that has suffered casualties at the hand of the united states on multiple occasions? the first few Canadian casualties IN the this fucking war were 9 soldiers that were bombed by U.S. planes.

Jesus, I don't generalize Americans, because I know there are those of you who aren't completely ignorant to the truth, but people like this need to learn some fucking respect and do some research before they decide they want to make fun of an entire nation.

There are some posibilities here. Some flash games could be great for community competition. Like legacy mentioned above, I also love the game aspects of videosift - the "levels" and associated new powers and such - this is something that could be highlighted much more.


>> ^kronosposeidon:
I don't know if this would help or not, so I'm just going to throw it out there:
Add a games section, which has been suggested several times already. It might broaden this site's appeal, and that might mean more memberships and/or a way to broaden VS's advertising appeal. Might. Hell I don't know, but it's worth thinking about.
And before the purists scream "This is a VIDEO site!", let me say this:
1. We have Sift Talk and channel Talk posts, in which people discuss just about everything under the sun. And the subjects often don't have a damn thing to do with videos.
2. This site has blogs. What do blog posts have to do with videos? Unless there's a video in it, probably nothing.
3. We have a chat room. Where people chat. No videos present, nor even possible.
4. We have a crossword puzzle. Last I checked, a crosword puzzle is a type of GAME.
So this site has already branched out beyond mere video posts. Are games that much of a stretch? As mentioned before, we wouldn't even have to "sift" them. Just have a game room where the games are already posted and people can play. Maybe make it so that games can be suggested and/or voted on, that way the good ones stay and the lame ones go.
Like I said, I don't know if games would help at all, but I think we have to start being creative with suggestions on how to broaden this site's appeal.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
I don't know if this would help or not, so I'm just going to throw it out there:
Add a games section, which has been suggested several times already. It might broaden this site's appeal, and that might mean more memberships and/or a way to broaden VS's advertising appeal. Might. Hell I don't know, but it's worth thinking about.
And before the purists scream "This is a VIDEO site!", let me say this:
1. We have Sift Talk and channel Talk posts, in which people discuss just about everything under the sun. And the subjects often don't have a damn thing to do with videos.
2. This site has blogs. What do blog posts have to do with videos? Unless there's a video in it, probably nothing.
3. We have a chat room. Where people chat. No videos present, nor even possible.
4. We have a crossword puzzle. Last I checked, a crosword puzzle is a type of GAME.
So this site has already branched out beyond mere video posts. Are games that much of a stretch? As mentioned before, we wouldn't even have to "sift" them. Just have a game room where the games are already posted and people can play. Maybe make it so that games can be suggested and/or voted on, that way the good ones stay and the lame ones go.
Like I said, I don't know if games would help at all, but I think we have to start being creative with suggestions on how to broaden this site's appeal.

So you're suggesting we sell out? To shame, kronos, to shame.

I don't know if this would help or not, so I'm just going to throw it out there:

Add a games section, which has been suggested several times already. It might broaden this site's appeal, and that might mean more memberships and/or a way to broaden VS's advertising appeal. Might. Hell I don't know, but it's worth thinking about.

And before the purists scream "This is a VIDEO site!", let me say this:

1. We have Sift Talk and channel Talk posts, in which people discuss just about everything under the sun. And the subjects often don't have a damn thing to do with videos.
2. This site has blogs. What do blog posts have to do with videos? Unless there's a video in it, probably nothing.
3. We have a chat room. Where people chat. No videos present, nor even possible.
4. We have a crossword puzzle. Last I checked, a crosword puzzle is a type of GAME.

So this site has already branched out beyond mere video posts. Are games that much of a stretch? As mentioned before, we wouldn't even have to "sift" them. Just have a game room where the games are already posted and people can play. Maybe make it so that games can be suggested and/or voted on, that way the good ones stay and the lame ones go.

Like I said, I don't know if games would help at all, but I think we have to start being creative with suggestions on how to broaden this site's appeal.

If any of you wish to ring in the New Year by weighing in on the perpetually contentious abortion and capital punishment debates, which NEVER solves ANYTHING, then go right ahead. Start off 2009 by pissing people off, because that's always how these debates end.

OR, you can choose NOT to share your opinion on these topics at all. Instead maybe you can write a nice email to a friend, or call your mom, or take your kid(s) to a movie, or anything else that's positive. At least you won't be wasting your time on this. And let's face it: You are wasting your time if you voice your opinion here. You are not going to change anyone's mind, and every person with at least half a brain has already heard every opinion about abortion and capital punishment. There is nothing new under the sun.

I choose to have a Happy New Year, and I hope you all do the same. Peace.

War is hell and warriors are mostly devils. Nothing new under the sun.

The times have changed, this video has been sifted!
previous attempt:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Architecture-in-Helsinki-Do-The-Whirlwind-byP-Robertson

Pixelart video by Paul Robertson
http://probertson.livejournal.com

AIH: http://architectureinhelsinki.com/

Lyrics "Do The Whirlwind":

She said you'd given up,
Your folks told me you should be left alone,
On a mountain top knocking the aeroplanes down with stones.
Do the whirlwind and carry the hope that stings all night long,
Don't abandon him 'cause he quivers when he hears your song,

Believe me, it's safe to see.
At least be confused about right and wrong,
Plan to settle down,
Over the moon under the sun.
Do the whirlwind and shotgun the seat that beats that beats
Hanging on to the one you love
To keep keepin', sleepin', dreamin' on.

Folks given up under the quivers and lines,
You do the whirlwind,
Don't abandon,
Get a handle of yourself, son.

Now count how many levels that I smacked you back to oblivion
My heights olympian
I'm from the Caribbean, Barbados
All fatal
Styles that I construct and conduct in a manner like Banner
Sky scanner, eye jammer
40 miles above Highlander with my grammar
I shitted on Bush and tried to cap Santa
Rap vandalizer
Verbal brutalizer
Who's the wiser, me or he
Who moves to grow flesh in test tubes
I have mastered such degrees in less moves
My discipline
Envisioning
Ritalin
FDA approved, we lose
Medication taking brute forces
They battling and tallying losses
See how costless holocaust is?
Helicopters now replaced by flying saucers
Over the ghettos where some brothers are taught to bust shots
To get a lot of what is had by the haves not the have nots
Raps drop pun your brainstem
This is Lif aka codename Mayhem
What made you think that I wouldn't come back with a bloody axe
And some muddy facts over tracks?!

Up in the ghetto we're taught to bust shots
That's a bird in the bush and a fine line to walk
Get down, stay down
Hold up, back the fuck up
Get up, stay up
Hold up, back the fuck down
Brothers is taught to bust shots [repeated]

Fact one:
America don't give a fuck about you so get off it
I'm not a prophet they just want the profit
They make you want it so you cop it, soon you can't stop it
You're addicted
But low on doe so you get evicted

Fact two:
Darfur's in a state of emergency
It's genocide
Code red classified
If this was Kosovo it'd be over, bro
But it's brothers so it equals no coverage, mo' sufferage
People drawn and quartered
Castrated, slaughtered, burned, disgraced
Gang raped, displaced
While the rest of the world just turn face to chase
Some economic goals
Balance the lost souls
But live it up
We 'bout to burn in hell 'cause god knows

Fact three:
The Bush Administration's worth nothing
Just fuck 'em!
Throw 'em in the barrel, buck 'em!
Oh, you ain't know them flood waters was coming?
You can't smell that african blood running?
Oh, to y'all niggers is worthless or something?
Fuck Clinton too!
You ain't really down because you live uptown, bitch
Rwanda!
Check out what we're looking at here across water
In the ghettos, brothers and sisters, it's self slaughter
How could colonized minds lead to such uncivilized times?
Maybe the tribes were harmonious and you were erroneous
It's no fun
In fact, it's sin under the sun
And son, in the event you meet some cops just run
Or maybe walk real slow and lick shots at Po
Not with the gun this times, through intelligents lines
You see, they look strong externally, internally they're dying
Just elevate
When drama escalate, you just shine!

The moonbats are always happy to defend the free market for "adult" games and porn.

Everything else under the sun, tho, must be heavily regulated under a microscope by huge "efficient" federal bureaucracies, especially the shaping of young minds in government schools.

Hypocrite, thy symbol is the jackass.