....for anyone unfamiliar with Chile 1973.

In 1973 he collaborated with brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to force 'free market' reforms on the country by way of a coup. The coup used murder and torture to terrify opponents into silence. Business owners sympathetic to the coup allowed their warehouses to be used as impromptu torture centers to torture union members that had previously been employees. The national futbol stadium was transferred into a massive torture/rape/prison/execution complex where tens of thousands of Chilean citizens died. Milton said his coordinated economic plan for the coup would require some 'shock therapy'.

For more on this, read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. It details this incident and dozens of similar ones to impose 'free market' capitalism on the people by way of fear, torture, force, bribery and blackmail. http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831

related sifting:

http://videosift.com/video/Sept-11-The-start-of-a-dark-era-for-Chile
http://videosift.com/video/USA-commits-911-attrocities-on-Chile
http://videosift.com/video/The-War-On-Democracy-by-John-Pilger

>> ^Ryjkyj:

Oh yeah, I get it. I'm not an idiot.

I didn't think you were an idiot, I just thought maybe you were unfamiliar with the idiom, based on your responses.

>> ^Ryjkyj:
All I'm saying is that Obama has said a lot of things, but it's just like QM to focus on a colloquialism that denotes racial, and by association, economic status. That's QM's subtle form of labeling that he uses to imply a lack of education and thus, inferiority. He does it so often, that even I can't really tell anymore when he's doing it intentionally or by accident.
Calling him a racist is beside the point. Except when he's complaining about why people don't listen to him.
The really hilarious part is that he tries to label a professor of constitutional law as an idiot and simultaneously a communist political mastermind.


Yeah, I find these days that the gap between what people on the right say and reality is so wide it's often hard to build a bridge between what they said and the truth.

I don't really think that's an accident, either.

I was all prepared to quickly mute this. (I'm old, dude)
Didn't know the band before--now I'm a new fan. Great stuff!

It is fascinating that musicians that can actually--ya know--play an instrument--will make great music even if it's a new style that you're unfamiliar with.

Going to see them in concert would be awesome!

Valid complaint/question, @xxovercastxx. There's no official procedure for this scenario, but it is customary to make a public notification that the video was removed instead of silently vanishing the post in the darkness of the night.

Plus, it gives newer, unfamiliar users the chance to partake in a discussion about it.

>> ^lucky760:

9 : 5
10 : 6
11 : 5
9 : 5 (or 10 : 5)
This is a website, not an SAT exam. A channel subdomain name should simply convey the general idea and do so succinctly.
If the idea of the channel is to be focused on teachers, students, classrooms, and the educational system, school is well-suited.

strlennification! I guess that means channels like Documentaries, Shortfilms, Catsanddogs, Controversy, Conspiracy, all red-headed step children now.

I'm just being cranky about channel names being inconsistent. Calling it "school" is actually a clever choice in keeping with Videosift's tradition. I just think that tradition has led to the channel list becoming quite a mess.

My point isn't to make using channels more like an SAT test, my point was to make it easier for people to categorize videos into channels. Succinctness is as much about clarity as it is about brevity, and the way to bring clarity would be to actually name channels after the category of information they're meant to contain, and not after nouns associated with the category.

People familiar with our site's eccentricities will know that we often name channels that way, but would people unfamiliar with the site intuitively understand that they need to look in the school channel for educational videos like this?

You'd also wind up with random videos that have nothing to do with education going there, like say a video of a school being demolished, or a video of Donald Trump demanding to see Barack Obama's diploma...

I'm just giving my opinion, and I fully confess to being needlessly cranky about it, but it's not like what I'm saying here is crazy talk. The word school is not synonymous with education, and it's not like education is some fancy shmancy 14-syllable word that only eggheaded people like me would understand...

I was very impressed by his exchange with Sick Santorum. So many people are unfamiliar with Iran and its history.

I have read an excellant book on the US overthrow, All the Shah's Men, which goes a little into the after-effects to the present day, including the hostage crisis.

I tried to explain this to a friend once, but it is so far from the narrative taught in schools and by the media, he thought I was spouting a conspiracy theory. Very frustrating.

>> ^longde:

let me clarify a few things:
-I didn't say you wanted the comments to flourish; I don't think you do. I'm saying I don't think you would mind or care if they did. I see you as indifferent.
-I never said or advocated a permaban for people making racist or hate statements. I do think such statements should be prohibited; there are many ways to do so, just like we prohibit other things on the sift.
-We have to use some judgement, but hate or racist statements against any race should be off-limits. I also see the distinction about statements which are about race and racist statements. What stood out for me in BKs comment:
The tone of the comment; I didn't read any sarcasm, irony or jest in the comment; and BK didn't clarify that there was any.
The blanket, non-factual statement which cast all members of the race in an extremely negative light. Let me put it this way: If BK had said "BurdT, this is why people call you nigger" I think we agree that would be bad, since it targets BurdT specifically due to his race. However, BKs statement is much worse, because rather than target BurdT only, he is slurring any and all black people who will read the thread. No qualifiers; these people on the video are scum, so you of the incidental same ethnic group are also scum. WTF
Using "nigger" was the least of it, IMO; but clearly he was using it its most derogatory way
Yes, I can ignore BK, but what about new potential black sifters? Shouldn't the sift be a welcoming place to all? When statement like that are not called out and dealt with, it implies acceptance to those unfamiliar with the sift.


I'm not indifferent to it. I don't want people being hostile toward a group of people based on things they cannot help. It's one thing to make light of it, but to seriously hate and then vehemently target people is another thing altogether. And luckily we don't have that here on the Sift. Let's be thankful.

I also didn't read any sarcasm in BK33's comment. Like I said, I think he meant it to be racist. I don't want us policing behavior on this site. Let me qualify that statement. I don't mean I want people going around attacking people of a different color; I simply think we cannot police matters of the heart, and if we try we'll probably experience more bad behavior than good. What he said was racist. No doubt. I don't condone what he said. Still, his comment is to a hateful, hostile comment what thumping someone on the ear is to a knife wound.

To your point, I agree if he called burdy the n word, that would be something entirely different than what we have here. If BK33 called burdy that, I'd ban him myself. You and I will have to disagree that calling all black people the n word is worse, because I just see that as the absurdity of collectivizing race. Though if BK33 went around calling all black people "n***ers" on here, then I'd also ban him on the spot. That's not what he did with his comment, though. He made a generalized absurd comment that was a thump on the ear, not a knife wound.

Not to sidetrack the conversation but campi also makes a good point above: why is burdy exempt from not using the word? It was his subdomain at one point if you remember?

let me clarify a few things:

-I didn't say you wanted the comments to flourish; I don't think you do. I'm saying I don't think you would mind or care if they did. I see you as indifferent.
-I never said or advocated a permaban for people making racist or hate statements. I do think such statements should be prohibited; there are many ways to do so, just like we prohibit other things on the sift.
-We have to use some judgement, but hate or racist statements against any race should be off-limits. I also see the distinction about statements which are about race and racist statements. What stood out for me in BKs comment:
*The tone of the comment; I didn't read any sarcasm, irony or jest in the comment; and BK didn't clarify that there was any.
*The blanket, non-factual statement which cast all members of the race in an extremely negative light. Let me put it this way: If BK had said "BurdT, this is why people call you nigger" I think we agree that would be bad, since it targets BurdT specifically due to his race. However, BKs statement is much worse, because rather than target BurdT only, he is slurring any and all black people who will read the thread. No qualifiers; these people on the video are scum, so you of the incidental same ethnic group are also scum. WTF
*Using "nigger" was the least of it, IMO; but clearly he was using it its most derogatory way

Yes, I can ignore BK, but what about new potential black sifters? Shouldn't the sift be a welcoming place to all? When statement like that are not called out and dealt with, it implies acceptance to those unfamiliar with the sift.

>> ^blankfist:
>> ^longde:
We have a tolerant community -- for racial slurs against and a hostile environment against certain groups. A few of us want to discourage that, while others don't mind if that behavior flourishes.
I thought you said the original statement went over the line. Now in the same thread, you say its a benign comment. Which is it?
And what makes you the arbiter of what should and should not offend someone? What benchmark do you use to determine what goes over the line. Also, if you really think that a comment which haphazardly disparages a whole group is OK, what anti-black statement would be over the line.
No one on here wants the racial comments to "flourish". Let's scale back the hyperbole a touch, please.
His comment was relatively benign. I see that there's probably some racism in his heart, which I don't condone, but that doesn't mean I want to see him banned over it.
You seem to want some hard and fast rules. But then how would you enforce those? No suggestion of racism or you're banned? No alluding to racist speech? Don't say "n word" because it's the same as "n er"? What would make you the arbiter of what is enforced as "hostile" and what isn't? Would you tolerate bans of people calling rich white people greedy or honkeys? Or is it that some racism is tolerated?
We have a great community here, and we've been surprisingly tolerant and civil over the past five years, so let's not go mucking that up by finding excuses to run unpopular members off the site.

Since the following videos are in the top sifts at the same time as this video, it's curious to see which un-self-reflective people will fall for the idea that professional comedians are literally incapable of thinking of anything funny to say about a huge part of global news and culture


He doesn't say he literally couldn't. He is just giving a reason why he doesn't. Imagine he had instead said "Why don't I do jokes about electricians? Because I don't know anything about being an electrician, and neither do you".

Nobody would be saying: "well, you could make lightbulb jokes" or "you know electricians work with electricity - can't you joke about that?". Barring the political charge, I think we'd all understand what he means - it's easier to make jokes about things he and the audience are both familiar with.

That doesn't mean he couldn't make jokes about Muslims or electricians, but unfamiliarity would make his life harder. It seems like a reasonable goal for him to do the funniest stuff he can think of, and it's easier to think about things you know well. Clearly the other part is true as well - people can respond better to jokes if they know the subject: I'm sure there's many electrician or Muslim or programmer jokes that just aren't going to work for a varied British audience (but that might go down great at an electrician conference, on TV in Turkey, or on TopCoder).

What I mean is, the renderer, the part of the engine that powers all the visuals is not the native unreal engine renderer. It was rewritten by 3D Realms, so the "unreal ugliness" isn't there, it's "DNF ugliness" . The "plasticy" or "plastic wrap" look that was coined during the Doom 3 era, has little to do with the engine but the artists.

Just because Epic is endorsed by nvidia, doesn't mean they purposefully ruin the experience for ATI cards. That's like saying since ATI endorsed Half Life 2, Source has been purposefully made to not work with nvidia cards properly.

I believe they've fixed the AA issue on new versions. Batman has AA, DNF has AA and the new DX11 AA looks great. Keep in mind, a lot of games take years to develop and by the time it releases, the engine can be a bit dated. Homefront for instance? That version of unreal is 3 years old.

The engine is not without it's flaws (IE: without serious modification, the default player movement code for a first person game, imo, feels awful. Not Metro 2033 awful, but pretty bad) but it's constantly being updated and improved. The reason why developers use it is because it's tool set is fantastically good. It makes development so much easier, unless you're a programmer unfamiliar with Unreal's way of wanting to be written. And developing on PS3... which I hear might've also been improved.

barton is an opportunist on steroids.
he makes the argument and then uses cherry picked (and rarely comprehensive and complete) historical data to make his argument.
which works wonders on those unfamiliar with this nations history.

if you watch his other interviews and lectures he relies heavily on anecdotal evidence in order to set up his revisionist premise and a main reason why true historians dismiss him.

damn! it still isn't sifted. I guess people find it unfamiliar!

In reply to this comment by geo321:
Thanks for the promote! I'm surprised the sift hasn't given that video more love.

In reply to this comment by marinara:
*promote

haha! ♥

i won't get into the bipolar stuff again, because you already know what i think. instead i want to touch on something you mentioned. in clinical psychology, it has long been known that the patient-practioner relationship (or whatever you'd like to call it, "therapeutic alliance" etc) is beneficial. in essence, it is an instantiation of a placebo-like effect. a patient forms (or already has) expectations about treatment outcomes, and these expectations do in fact produce effects (through a number of mechanisms -- i'll spare you the thesis).

as a scientist, but also a caring member of the human race, this creates a dilemma.

on the one hand, i feel it is important to point out the potential harm of alternative medicine, because we know its effects, if any, are placebo -- and placebo effects are neither consistent nor universal. in other words, you have a better chance of fortuitous outcome with scientifically proven medicine -- medicine that has been rigorously tested against placebos.

on the other hand, the fact that placebo effects produce measurable improvements across a wide range of illnesses raises important questions. what qualifies as a real treatment? what separates a real treatment from an unreal treatment? why should treatments that improve, heal, or cure people be treated as inferior because their underlying mechanism is psychological rather than pharmacological? is deception ever morally acceptable?

when you think about it, the kinds of rituals that produce these "common factor" effects will be exacerbated in alternative medicine -- because there IS no active substance. but far from being null and void, these rituals can lead to improvement (in certain situations, the boundaries of which we do not clearly understand because, as i've opined before: science is hard; science of human behaviour is fucking hard).

[disclaimer: i use 'placebo effect' in a very broad sense to mean more than what most people would consider it to mean. really i should be using 'expectancy effect' but people unfamiliar with the literature might be even more confused by that.]

>> ^enoch:

p.s:dont feel bad trashing this dudes videos.berticus has to hold his down from exploding when i post one of this guys vids.

Hah. you could give it a try, no?
I'm still interested by your disapproval of jigglin' asses.

In reply to this comment by Deano:
>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

riiight, cause your utter disdain for unfamiliar cultures & music is more powerful than the waves of arousal you'd experience if seated in a chair, a foot or so from such skilled gyrating hips.
>> ^Deano:
Just me or is this sort of thing incredibly unsexy? In fact I see no redeeming value at all. And the "music" makes me want to give up.



There's so much garbage in that comment I don't even know where to begin.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

riiight, cause your utter disdain for unfamiliar cultures & music is more powerful than the waves of arousal you'd experience if seated in a chair, a foot or so from such skilled gyrating hips.
>> ^Deano:
Just me or is this sort of thing incredibly unsexy? In fact I see no redeeming value at all. And the "music" makes me want to give up.



There's so much garbage in that comment I don't even know where to begin.