Shiny uses the term "Evolutionists", therefor loses the argument. But, s/he starts from the weakest of grounds to begin with, so it's expected.

The "debate" of science vs religion has been over for ages. I'm not debating that. Just commenting on the dumb terms that creationists have to use to defend their fantasies.

Scolding? Weakest goddamn scolding ever.... should have had Key and Peele bust in halfway through the interview

Horrifying. One of the weakest A-list Marvel characters ever conceptualized, even though he was one of Stan-The-Man's favorites....upvote for Johansson and Jackson, the only draw to get the 30-60 crowds asses in seats besides a van-load of snot-nosed brats.

Things are ugly enough as it is.

It used to be that if spooks needed your passphrase, they'd sneak in an put a bug in your keyboard... but if they have the private keys to sign replacement firmware for your keyboard then they don't even need to sneak in any more (actually I'm not sure my keyboard even needs signed firmware).

I think someone cleverer than me could probably contrive a defense against that particular attack, but I'm not in the habit of checking the integrity of my peripherals, or working in a tempest shielded room.

I think strong crypto is probably safe, but in the real world the crypto is hardly ever the weakest link.

The question with all these things is what advantage would it have over current military technology (i.e. firearms)?

While that was cool, it wasn't very powerful. Most of the slugs didn't even penetrate the laptop screen. Pretty sure even the "weakest" handgun would manage that.

Uhhhh, Party All The Time-Eddie Murphy? "How bad could music be" should have been the motto that year....For all the fans here of some of the cheesiest music ever released, 86' was one of the weakest and whitest for pop music-The UK dished-out some real cheese that year as well-

I recall spinning only ONE pop LP that year over and over, Better to Travel-Swing Out Sister, the only new talent worth the mustard, engineered and recorded wonderfully, with a sound that stood out as original without rehash.....The mid eighties were a goat turd for good music.

I mean come ON!? Graceland?? Lionel Ritchie?! Mr. Mister??!

I remember losing all faith in rock and or roll that year and listening to mostly trad jazz and heavy metal for the next 4 years. Pop music hit an all-time low in 1986.

Well this one is the weakest of the pit stop features, but I liked the first three and posted this on the back of liking the others more!

The teams are all so secretive that they would never make the interesting technical discussion that we want... if you take the Sauber cutaway series for example, gearboxes would be an obvious episode to cover, but for contractual reasons they can't show us the inside of their gearbox because it comes from another team! These videos are the best that I can find, but unfortunately most F1 fans will have seen them as filler pieces during the race coverage

I do feel that I have failed in tagging and channel assignment though, can you suggest what I should have put to avoid wasting your time? The more technical ones will always be in the engineering channel, and the less technical ones will be in sports/wheels.

I did post a few which were a little bit more interesting from a technical point of view:

• http://videosift.com/video/RS27-Engine-on-the-dyno-Renault-Sport-F1
  
• http://videosift.com/video/How-to-strip-and-paint-an-F1-car-Caterham-Unchained-ep-4
  
• http://videosift.com/video/Understanding-Aerodynamics-A-brief-lesson-by-Mike-Gascoyne
  
• http://videosift.com/video/Adrian-Newey-Drives-RB6-And-Leyton-House-March-Silverstone
  

I am also not for blatant redistribution of wealth; however, I strong disagree with:

1) Corporate tax loopholes: Apple 9.8%, Google 11.9%, Yahoo 11.6%, Amazon 3.5% paid for Fiscal Year 2011 instead of advertised 35.5%
2) Off-shore tax havens
3) Privatizing profits and socializing bail outs
4) Subsidies to corporations and industries already drawing massive profits
5) And last but not least, the simple fact that not a single person went to jail after the 2008 crash due to cooked books in the financial sector

It is the responsibility of every citizen to give back to their community to promote a Quid Pro Quo society. Hopefully, many of these problems will be solved in our lifetime.

As Cornel West so eloquently stated earlier last year, and I paraphrase, the true test of every democracy is what to do with its weakest demographic. The fact that people are born in these social strata (i.e. success not always earned) is reason enough to put the pressure on the most fortunate, a group in which I happen to belong, to support those who never even get a chance.

Since most of what I say lands on Neo-Conservative deaf ears, I'll play their game and ask "What would Jesus do?"

Finally, QM, we always argue respectfully, and I want you to know that I do not favor any party. Both Democrats and Republicans put party ahead of nation and that's a disgrace.

I took the time to form some questions. All you've done, again, is try and find the weakest link, attack it, and ignore everything else as if you've destroyed my point. Just answer the questions and stop making me ask again and again. You can answer with caveats, like I did. You can answer by rewording the question or changing the terms. But answer the questions. BicycleRepairMan did it and I appreciate his direct, non-condescending answer, even if I don't agree. Why can't you?

In question 1, it seems you disagree with the use of the word "Palestine". Fine. Call them whatever you want. They're people. Whatever. Do you disagree with anything else in 1.?

2 and 3 are very simple Yes/No questions that go to the mindset of whatever you want to call the Muslim people who live in Gaza.

The last two questions relate to your using that video as evidence of something. I'm saying you can infer nothing about the "nobility" of their cause. They might even be the completely horrible bloodthirsty people bent only on killing for no reason whatsoever that you're painting them as, but that video wouldn't be the evidence for it. Just answer the questions. If your answer isn't the same as mine, that's OK. We're adults. This isn't a schoolyard. I'm not going to kick your lunchbox over the fence.

Funny, his Pacino was the weakest of the bunch and normally Pacino is the one most impersonators nail. At least he didn't inflict another standard -- Christopher Walken -- on us.

However, he nailed the subtleties of Ford, Spacey and Pitt, not an easy thing to do.

It's the typical Republican playbook, attack where you are the weakest. Lie so often, so loudly, and so blatantly that eventually you can browbeat the public into believing your nonsense.

It worked on Kerry.

@alien_concept all the more reason to have a caring society that looks after its weakest members, and not just the most successful.

top yt comment:

Gotta love the admission of waiting until the soldier is at his/her weakest, and that is the right time to pounce. Strong, intelligent, capable, educated and self-supported individuals often need no religion. And the parasite churches know it.

The rise of the middle class has meant a decline in church attendance, and this is one of the many ways the parasites are fighting it.

But now the middle class is in decline. Anyone else think religion is playing an active role in this?

If we're using terms like "tangible evidence", then I assume we're talking in scientific terms. If we're talking scientifically, then you need phenomena, a theory to explain them, and ways of testing that theory. "I would say..." isn't a scientific statement. What qualifies as "tangible evidence" has to be easily understood and agreed upon by everyone. If people don't agree that something is evidence of something, then it's meaningless. Like, if I suggest that graphite pencils are electric insulators, and you say that's bollocks, we can create an electric curcuit with a light bulb. We both agree that if the light bulb turns on when the electric circuit passes through a graphite pencil, then it's definitely not an insulator, regardless of our initial positions. So if the world at large doesn't agree that NDEs are necessarily evidence of God, then it's a meaningless argument. When you theorize God, it doesn't flow logically that when people are near death that they will necessarily see God. You can look at evidence and say, "This fits in with a theory of God." That's fair, but calling it evidence is not scientific. NDEs also fit with my theory that people seek ultimate authority the the worse and worse their living conditions are. I don't claim that it's evidence that I'm right, just that it supports or "fits" my theory. In other words, it proves nothing at all.

I confess I didn't watch the whole thing (I guessed where it was going once it trailed away from logical enquiry, and so far I haven't heard any surprises -- if there's anything new and interesting in this particular story, lemme know where and I'll watch).

About the mother praying at that moment. It's possible that there is some connection between mother and child that hasn't been properly measured, that only occurs when children are under extreme stress, and even then, only in rare cases (most mothers don't report "knowing" their children were suffering or dying when they hear the news later). That doesn't require Yahweh, or even any God. It's just a phenomenon that we don't know about. And again, "We can't explain it," isn't evidence of God any more than fully explaining the phenomenon is proof that God is fake.

If you cannot provide a test whose conclusion we both agree on for God's existence, then by scientific definition, you have no theory at all. When I press you, the only test you provide is me givnig myself fully to God, and the proof will be that he will contact me eventually if I do it well enough. There's so many loopholes in that to begin with, that no matter how long I did it without result, you'd be able to say why it didn't work. Also, even if it did have a result, I wouldn't agree that the result is proof of God. My theory is that if someone wants to believe something hard enough, and if they bend their will to believing it, they can come to beleive anything they want. It's widely dismissed as "self-delusion" or "choosing to live in a fantasy world" if you're talking about anything other than religoius faith. Some, including myself, also include religious faith in that category. No matter how real it seems, if you convinced yourself of it, that's a good reason to believe you might be deluded. Bottom line, there's no test that we generally agree on, so there's no theory, just your faith that it's true.

About the mother again. All of that could have been wishful thinking/guilty conscience. Mothers often feel guilty when horrible things happen to their children, and one way of "making up for it" in their own minds (or socially) is to tell themselves (or others) that they were suffering too at the same time, and even at a distance were praying for God to intercede.

So I can't explain what happened, but I can provide two decent theories that don't require God.

I'm not sure why, but to people of faith, there seems to be a fear that everything unexplained, if not explained by their God, is somehow a strike against him. That's not at all how science or logic work. There is no phenomenon that requires God to be responsible for it, except the ones he is specifically described as having done himself in the Bible. There's nothing in the Bible that says people's experiences when suffering extreme mental trauma must be caused by God. If they're explained some other way, your theory of God stands just as strong as before. It's when you go attributing everything that YOU don't understand to God's hand that you get yourself into trouble because when those things are later objectively explained another way then you have to change your story. Better to think critically from the begining, and say with authority what God definitely is and isn't, and what God definitely is and isn't responsible for. Then, if any single one of those things is disproven, then you can simply agree that your description of God is wrong.

You missed my comment above about God and patience. You've said elsewhere that God lives outside time, and looks at the history of the universe like a movie that he can browse and interfere in at will. But then you also say that he has "patience" which can "wear out". "Patience", by definition, means being forced to wait, and "wearing out" means eroding in time, both of which requrie living in time. These two ideas of God both living outside of time and having patience which wears out, if words have meaning, are incompatible. They cannot both be true. If you continue to hold to both of those claims about your God, then that's proof that he doesn't exist as you describe him.>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^messenger:
Yet another example of a numinous experience caused by severe mental trauma. This is exactly what I theorise happened to you, as I mentioned in one of our previous conversations. This lends some support to it. We are genetically predisposed to seek guidance from authority figures, and the worse our condition, the more we seek it out. Being at death's door is the weakest condition possible, and add to that mental trauma, and the brain makes up whatever idea it needs to survive at that moment, and it seems real.
Also, if God wants us to know him so bad, why does he have to attack us with jellyfish first? He can either let us know outright he's there, or leave us a few clues and hope we put the pieces together ourselves. There's no need for torture.

If it's a numinous experience, how do you explain his mother interceding for him in prayer at the exact moment all of this is taking place?
God doesn't have to attack you with jellyfish, but he will use some means like that to get your attention if you continue to fail to respond to the 100 other ways He tried to reach you. Most often, men are so prideful and stubborn that it takes a full realization of their mortality, or a hitting of rock bottom, for them to realize how much they need God. When you're young and healthy, you feel so strong and self-assured, but it's an illusion..you are at the mercy of forces you don't understand each and every moment of each and every day. Life is fragile, but arrogance lends a false sense of security. They think they don't need Him, that they're getting along just fine on their own. It's only because they don't realize they are a heartbeat away from deaths door, and its only His mercy that keeps them there.

>> ^messenger:

Yet another example of a numinous experience caused by severe mental trauma. This is exactly what I theorise happened to you, as I mentioned in one of our previous conversations. This lends some support to it. We are genetically predisposed to seek guidance from authority figures, and the worse our condition, the more we seek it out. Being at death's door is the weakest condition possible, and add to that mental trauma, and the brain makes up whatever idea it needs to survive at that moment, and it seems real.
Also, if God wants us to know him so bad, why does he have to attack us with jellyfish first? He can either let us know outright he's there, or leave us a few clues and hope we put the pieces together ourselves. There's no need for torture.


If it's a numinous experience, how do you explain his mother interceding for him in prayer at the exact moment all of this is taking place?

God doesn't have to attack you with jellyfish, but he will use some means like that to get your attention if you continue to fail to respond to the 100 other ways He tried to reach you. Most often, men are so prideful and stubborn that it takes a full realization of their mortality, or a hitting of rock bottom, for them to realize how much they need God. When you're young and healthy, you feel so strong and self-assured, but it's an illusion..you are at the mercy of forces you don't understand each and every moment of each and every day. Life is fragile, but arrogance lends a false sense of security. They think they don't need Him, that they're getting along just fine on their own. It's only because they don't realize they are a heartbeat away from deaths door, and its only His mercy that keeps them there.