Of course. People always try to manipulate facts so that they fit their agenda.
History doesnt lie. Historians however... and history is written by the victors.
That doesnt make history meaningless, because sooner or later the truth gets out. It took a long while on WW2 and even WW1 (read The Sleepwalkers), but it happens. Also people, thanks to the Internet, get more and more informed from different sides. Common sense has been reformed. People actually understand cause and effect now, and dont just believe in what the news or some history books say that were written by PC or victor authors.

The problem with history is that it is taught fundamentally wrong. When it happened and who were involved are more or less unimportant. The real importance is that we learn from it, so we dont repeat historical mistakes and know what happens when we do this or that decision. People need to think for themselves when learning history, how that is projected on todays happenings, how we can avoid the things that happened so many times in history and always caused the same bad thing and how it all worked together to cause that. That should be taught. Instead names and dates are the most important thing to our society. No wonder history is so easily manipulated and repeated then!

I find the issue of "stepping on NYPD toes" to be trivial and unimportant. What is much more critical is that American laws and culture would, today, tend to discourage bystanders from stepping in and helping as these Swedes did.

Ask any lawyer, and they'll tell you to turn around and walk the other way, because nothing good can come from intervening, and/or you'll just be opening yourself up to lawsuits. I consider that to be a great failing in the direction that America has taken since I was young (80s) and especially before then. Modern America sure seems like a much more litigious, narcissistic, and entitled place than it used to be.

What I got out of the video is that 'like a girl' is most often derogatory and that it starts to impact women through their (for lack of a better term or for lack of knowing better) formative years. It can then be a self-fulfilling prophesy and make them feel lesser. All of this is not good and we should try not to use these terms.

However much the video is contrived to make an impact is unimportant. This concept does exist and is well known. I know I've used the term to describe a man that ran 'funny' and I know it was a shitty thing to do. Probably making me feel better in the moment.

I think that as we grow up, we do a lot of shitty things because we don't know better. As I grow older, I want to become better and understand things more. Now into my 40's, I still think I have room for improvement. And when it comes down to it, does it really matter if girls, in general, can't run as fast as guys? I think it matters more that if you want to run fast, you try and do the best you can and you don't even have to have the goal of being faster if you simply enjoy running. There is always going to be someone faster than you unless you are the fastest man or the fastest woman.

Anyway, what's your take on my comments as far as mansplaining goes?

Some of us STILL feel that way about cell phone users. ;-)
(I still say what my dad said in the 80's..."Cell phones are for people who are so unimportant that they can't afford to miss a phone call."...it's no longer true, but I still think it's funny.)
I think your examples are good theoretical reasons to tackle this issue now, while it's still possible to see the recording device....I keep wishing someone would actually make the facial recognition scrambler from 'A Scanner Darkly' for those of us that don't want to be tracked and recorded any time we leave our property. Of course, even if they did make it, I probably couldn't afford it.
I just HOPE these are just a fad and that they never catch on. I could really get behind them if they didn't have the camera/microphone built in, and instead relied on a good GPS to interact with the real world, but I know the answer to that wish...'good luck with that'.
At least, if you're correct, people can tell when the recorder is on, unless the indicator is broken or disabled. Remember, it's well known that it's fairly easy for hackers and the state to access your PC/laptop/cell phone camera without any indication that it's on, so the red light isn't a 'catch all' indicator, but it's way better than nothing.

I know, imagine if you had come up with your own opinion from the facts or something equally unimportant?

This is an almost perfect news story for today's media: totally unimportant in any real sense, yet spectacular and with a happy ending. The one thing it lacks is the search for a missing white girl. Maybe they can write that in somehow.

Yummy, arguing on the internet!
I haven't done this in years, I'm gonna throw my hat in the Ring now.
I spent countless hours here for years, just enjoying the show. Staying out of all this, in the end at least, unimportant chatter. I came for the videos. Then somebody starts singing about sluts and I end up with an account. What can I say? I like sluts.
I spent much time reading and skipping over the posts of @shinyblurry here. And I still wonder why people feel the need to argue with him in such detail and length. He talks a lot about his faith in God and Jesus but what it come down to is this: He believes in The Bible.
The Bible features God and Jesus and all that but most important of all, it features a heckload of arguments for all kinds of things that are often in direct conflict.
Earlier in this thread, somebody threw a Bible quote about how rape victims have to marry their rapist in @shinyblurry's face and he actually started to explain (correct me if I misunderstood) how it's a punishment for the rapist that he has to pay money and marry the woman if the father chooses that.
I have money to burn. Is Jessica Alba married and where does her dad live? She's super hot and I *need* that kind of punishment. God wants her to fulfill her marital duties, right? If she's not available, I could make a list.
Now, I could argue this IMO rather distasteful idea with him, quoting the Bible back and forth, using other philosophical sources for arguments (I'm sure Hitchens mentioned rape somewhere sometime) but all that doesn't matter.
He believes in The Bible.
If I went back in time and edited early versions to my liking to include gems like "Every man shall also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed no abomination: they shall surely be praised", old shiny here would organize gay pride parades now. Because it's in the book. Whatever is in there, it's the truth. Whatever.
It's the same reason why creationist (I have no idea if old shiny is among them) can not accept evolution. It's not in the book.
They believe in this powerful, omnipotent god, not just in I-can-command-all-sea-animals-god. No, not that Aquaman shit the Greeks had, I'm talking about I-invented-the-universe-god. Get this, this guy did *invent* the universe. And still it was all some Siegfried and Roy BS we *know* to be nonsense. 7 days? Really? Was he in a hurry? Couldn't he wait until we get to the Game of Thrones and Tivo part of History? Was there another Earth to take care of? Contract work?
The idea to credit that dude for creating Evolution itself is too much to ask for these people. The idea that God created a giant machine (the universe) and allowed it to feature other tiny, tiny machines that repair, reproduce and improve themselves (life itself; evolution), is too mindblowing.
Who's more awesome in your book? The god that can do magic or the god who could do magic but opted for inventing everything science has discovered so far?
You know, science failed to disprove the existence of god. They can't do that yet. But they can disprove The Bible, at least parts. And yet, they still side with that darn book.
They don't care about God, the don't even care about Jesus. They care about what they read about them. They care about their perception of it.
Telling @shinyblurry that Jesus was a little, brown, jewish Hippie who got mixed up with existing mythology is like telling a fourteen year old that Ed Cullen is, by his own admission, a creepy murderer who stalks underage girls 80 years his junior. They don't want to hear it because that is not what the book said. They book didn't say that god created the natural laws of physics, chemistry and biology and set them upon the universe to wreak havoc until dinosaurs showed up. The book said it took 7 days. And ribs and dirt.
The Bible says so. Nothing else matters.
That's why it's pointless to argue scripture with him. The book is everything and allows so brilliantly for circular logic and cherry picking. It worked with slavery and how many are willing to argue nowadays in front of a TV camera for it? But gays are not slaves and women can always be picked on. Some wrong ideas are easier to conceal behind a book cover than others.
The Bible is everything to him, God and Jesus are just featured players. In the end they could be replaced by Donald Duck and Batman, they just weren't around back when they started to write it.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't love to hear your thoughts about the latest Daft Punk single, @shinyblurry. Or are you more into Rock music?

Urgh, the sort of brain dead, weird point picking that some people do.

BillO and his picking on public tv is just asinine. How this became a talking point is just infuriating. It matters FUCK ALL in any budget anywhere, and yet the right have decided it's a good thing to make be a talking point so the actual important points are ignored.

The politicians do this all the time here in Australia too, and it's infuriating. All the moreso because people take the bait and end up making the crap they've decided should be the talking points be the most important thing to discuss. No matte how COMPLETELY unimportant it is in the large picture.

URGH

I read Cosmos at the age of four. Carl Sagan was always a favorite of mine, but I don't agree with his views on religion (of course he is mostly talking about Christianity). So, while I maintain my fondness for his invoking of the wonder of creation, I can't say I agree with anything he said in this video. It's really just one straw man or gross misrepresentation after another..

He asks, why is man similar to God? Yet, it is written that God created man in His image.

He said the size of the Universe rules out our having any particular significance. That just doesn't follow. God is omnipresent, and can give equal time and significance to any part of His creation. No matter how small we are in comparison to the rest of the Universe, the Universe is small compared to God. He can give significance to any part of His creation, so how would we know what He considers significant?

He says religion was an attempt to explain origins, but now we know better..

Yet, science doesn't know better. On origins, science knows exactly zip. In fact, most of the evidence science has found in the last century points towards a Creator and not away from one.

He says religion makes mistakes; if he is talking about scripture, I don't agree, but in any case science is not omnipotent, and it makes mistakes all the time. On the objectivity of science, I like this quote:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it

He said religions contradict each other, and so they should, since only one could possibly be correct.

He said there is nothing to say that the Universe was made for us, yet the evidence shows that the universe is fine tuned for life

He said life has no purpose, which shows the nihilism inherent in the naturalistic materialist worldview. Carl Sagan would probably agree with this statement by Richard Dawkins:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

He said there is no proof of origins, which I agree with, if we're talking about the story that scientists tell us about abiogenesis and evolution from common descent

He said there could be more advanced beings, so why not God?

He said we need to get over not being important and embrace being tiny. Yet, this desire to be tiny and unimportant is actually desire for total autonomy, apart from God. It is a desire to take God off His throne and take His place on it. That's not a tiny idea, that is sinful mans greatest desire.

He said religion arose because of fear, yet Christianity arose because of Jesus Christ

He also turns around the story in the garden, saying man was kept ignorant, starving for knowledge. What he failed to understand was that God wanted to teach us His way. He knew the difference between good and evil; all we needed to do is follow His instructions and we could have spared ourselves all of this suffering and death. Yet, He gave us a choice, because He didn't want robots. Why do you think He put the tree there in the first place? People reason it as if it was just incidentally there and we broke free of God..yet, God deliberately put it there, to give us a choice, and we abused that choice.

He wants to believe order comes out of chaos, but there is no such thing as chaos. There always must be an overriding order for anything to arise at all. Science cannot explain the uniformity of the nature; it is actually *the* fundamental assumption of science, that science could even be done at all. You can't say that the Universe will operate the same way even 10 seconds from now. Another case of sitting in Gods lap to slap His face.

He said we determine the significance of the planet and ourselves..

Again, this is man wanting to put himself in Gods shoes. Man is not wise, has never been wise, and would utterly destroy Himself if not for God maintaining order on this planet. The heart of man is filled with violence and depravity. God is the only good in this world, and all good things come from Him.

>> ^VoodooV:

LOL!!! you're comparing this topic to the actual work that engineers and physicists do? That is hilarious. Yes, I'm sure the engineering world has much to thank the awesome ability of arguing on a message board over what .999... is equal to.
This has nothing to do with calculus. This has nothing to do with actual practical work. This has nothing to do with solving actual problems. This is about going onto a internet message board and browbeating others which has already happened as I predicted.
Before you start insulting the education of someone else, make sure YOU'RE not making any mistakes of YOUR own, eh?
Sorry I can't stay and "debate" with you on this truly fascinating topic. I have to go to my job tomorrow and do REAL work and solve ACTUAL problems. Sure it's not as grand and as thought-provoking as comparing .999... to 1, nor do I get to beat up on some hapless internet newb who happens to take the troll-bait. But hey, we have to get our satisfaction somehow.
>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^VoodooV:
So enlighten me, o' wise ones. What is the point of this other than troll-bait and/or ego masturbation?
This topic is the intellectual equivalent of QM coming in here and making ad-homs about "His Earness" or waxing egocentric about why he is virtuous and true and the rest of us are all immoral entitlement whores.
You saw how quickly messenger called into question the entire sift's intelligence over Entropy's post.
This sort of thing does not lend itself well to civil discourse. Admit it, the only purpose of a topic such as this is to entice someone to come in here and to argue that .999... is not 1 so you can have a grand ole time stroking your ego and patting yourself on the back over how smart you are and how the other person is dumb.

This simple concept is one of the fundamental principles of calculus. Without it you don't have engineering, physics, or a million other things known as the modern world. It's not some obscure irrelevant math trivia only used by math geeks. It is a fundamental first year mathematics principle used by every scientist, engineer, and pharmacist in the work they do every day to make all the things you take for granted.
But yeah, just because your not educated enough to appreciate that you should rag all over it and insist it's unimportant. We should burn all the books you don't care for too, right?



Get over yourself. The video isn't supposed to start any kind of fight or internet debate. It's a simply instructive video about basic math.

If you want to be upset with anyone for starting an internet fight over something you consider unimportant blame the first poster in the thread that tried to turn it that way...

Oh, I see, it was you...

LOL!!! you're comparing this topic to the actual work that engineers and physicists do? That is hilarious. Yes, I'm sure the engineering world has much to thank the awesome ability of arguing on a message board over what .999... is equal to.

This has nothing to do with calculus. This has nothing to do with actual practical work. This has nothing to do with solving actual problems. This is about going onto a internet message board and browbeating others which has already happened as I predicted.

Before you start insulting the education of someone else, make sure YOU'RE not making any mistakes of YOUR own, eh?

Sorry I can't stay and "debate" with you on this truly fascinating topic. I have to go to my job tomorrow and do REAL work and solve ACTUAL problems. Sure it's not as grand and as thought-provoking as comparing .999... to 1, nor do I get to beat up on some hapless internet newb who happens to take the troll-bait. But hey, we have to get our satisfaction somehow.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^VoodooV:
So enlighten me, o' wise ones. What is the point of this other than troll-bait and/or ego masturbation?
This topic is the intellectual equivalent of QM coming in here and making ad-homs about "His Earness" or waxing egocentric about why he is virtuous and true and the rest of us are all immoral entitlement whores.
You saw how quickly messenger called into question the entire sift's intelligence over Entropy's post.
This sort of thing does not lend itself well to civil discourse. Admit it, the only purpose of a topic such as this is to entice someone to come in here and to argue that .999... is not 1 so you can have a grand ole time stroking your ego and patting yourself on the back over how smart you are and how the other person is dumb.

This simple concept is one of the fundamental principles of calculus. Without it you don't have engineering, physics, or a million other things known as the modern world. It's not some obscure irrelevant math trivia only used by math geeks. It is a fundamental first year mathematics principle used by every scientist, engineer, and pharmacist in the work they do every day to make all the things you take for granted.
But yeah, just because your not educated enough to appreciate that you should rag all over it and insist it's unimportant. We should burn all the books you don't care for too, right?

>> ^VoodooV:

So enlighten me, o' wise ones. What is the point of this other than troll-bait and/or ego masturbation?
This topic is the intellectual equivalent of QM coming in here and making ad-homs about "His Earness" or waxing egocentric about why he is virtuous and true and the rest of us are all immoral entitlement whores.
You saw how quickly messenger called into question the entire sift's intelligence over Entropy's post.
This sort of thing does not lend itself well to civil discourse. Admit it, the only purpose of a topic such as this is to entice someone to come in here and to argue that .999... is not 1 so you can have a grand ole time stroking your ego and patting yourself on the back over how smart you are and how the other person is dumb.


This simple concept is one of the fundamental principles of calculus. Without it you don't have engineering, physics, or a million other things known as the modern world. It's not some obscure irrelevant math trivia only used by math geeks. It is a fundamental first year mathematics principle used by every scientist, engineer, and pharmacist in the work they do every day to make all the things you take for granted.

But yeah, just because your not educated enough to appreciate that you should rag all over it and insist it's unimportant. We should burn all the books you don't care for too, right?

#3 is the only relevant question...it was done to harass women who want an abortion. It's a backdoor ploy to humiliate them in an attempt to convince them not to have one.

In light of that, the answers to the first two questions are totally unimportant.

>> ^lsue:

Well I have to say that I disagree with you regarding your stance on late term abortions. I don't believe it should be criminal (for either doctor or patient) to undertake a medical procedure which concerns your own health and well-being. The point of the removal of laws against abortion is to decriminalize, not to encourage late term abortions or make them commonplace. What good would criminalization do?
But regardless of this disagreement, I felt that your first comment describing Canada's lack of abortion legislation "right up until the last second before birth" largely simplifies a complex issue and undermines the regulations which exist to get women the proper care when they need it (early in their pregnancy). This is why I replied.. I didn't mean to provoke an argument.
>> ^bcglorf:
>> Criminal laws on/against abortion are a federal matter though. And Canada has for some time now very clearly established that there is NO LAW against abortions. Current Canadian federal law in ALL provinces and territories makes all abortion, even up to 9 months, perfectly and completely legal.



But criminal law is an enormous part of the entire debate. Currently in Canada, it is perfectly and 100% legal to kill a fetus 1 hour before going in for a c-section. It is equally and completely 100% illegal, and considered one of the highest crimes in the nation to kill that exact same baby 2 hours later once the c-section has been completed. I say that's madness and more than just a little bit troubling.

I think you are far to quick to dismiss that situation as irrelevant or unimportant.

>> ^packo:
because things like religion, abortion, immigration... while important to people, aren't important to politicians who use them as "look over here, don't look there" tactics...
they don't want you to focus on how they are blatantly working against the average American citizen's economic interest for their corporate and financial masters
they want you to fight over issues they themselves deem unimportant while feigning concern
they'll use semantics to confuse issues rather than take action
they'll wrap themselves in the flag, all the while ushering in fascism for their own short term social/economic benefit
these people aren't patriots, they are committing treason, and should be hounded through the streets until they can no longer run due to exhaustion; then made public examples of
public servants? the only people they are servicing are themselves
these aren't the departments of this or that I'm talking about... I'm talking directly about the people elected by the citizenry to represent them
they're selling your future, and the future of your children... for the right to suckle at the tit of your new corporate and banking masters


I agree with a lot of what you're saying here but you also make a lot of common mistakes.

first of all, the "important issues" that "matter to people" that powerful people cloak themselves in. Things like abortion, gun control, illegal immigration, terrorism...are wholey fabricated by those same politicians. They're not just using these issues to disctract you, they're creating these issues and convincing you that you care about them to polarize you against fellow Americans. Obama's gonna "tik ur guuuuns" right? Because liberals don't like guns? Bullshit. Of course there are liberals that don't believe in guns, but liberals on the whole split about evenly with the rest of America on the issue. It's a fabricated issue.

Why aren't teapartiers supportingthe OWS movement? Isn't the movement founded on the same frustration that got all those conservatives to load up on the Fox news busses? Oh wait! It's because OWS is against Wallstreet and Teapartiers are against Government! Bullshit. The citizens of America, in the course of serving their own corporate masters have been manipulated once again.

You give politicians too much credit. There is not vast conspiracy to sell out to corporations. Politicians are merely narcisists who are taken by the delusion that their own ideas are important enough to matter to the country. or their narcisists who believe they're own unique personal attributes make them qualified to lead other people. They're not driven a plan to sell out to corporations, they're driven by massive egos. And this is what makes them susecptible to corporations. Big money finds ytheir flaws and draws them out. Politicians succumb to whatever weekness drives them, money, power, sex altruism...big money can give you anything you want.

This is not a problem with liberalism, conservatism, politicians, corporations...this is an issue of human nature. How do you fix that?

If you figure out a way, please let the rest of us know. In the mean time, stop getting sucked into the argument that your corporate masters have duped you into. They know what drives you, they know your weaknesses...and they're playing you against your fellow americans the same way they play politicians against themselves.