I'm glad that he admitted that it's our responsibility to take care of the poor. Let's take a look at what the effect of people coming together in a social contract to take care of them was:

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/07/poverty-will-always-be-with-us-until-we-do-something-about-it.php

(quoted for the graph, though Yglesias is responding to another ideological yarn-spinner in Friedman's vein)

Curious how when the welfare state got put in place, the poverty rate went down...until we had a President who believed, as Friedman did, that it's better to let poverty be. That way the rich have their liberty from incentives to make the poor productive, and the poor had the liberty to be kept by them as wage slaves or just die and reduce the "surplus" population.

In fact, you can see that the very year in which Friedman is giving this speech, 1978, poverty had literally been halved in the wake of the Great Society, only to rise again when his kind of thinking came back into vogue thanks to Reagan's apocryphal Welfare Queens.

Personally, I love the way he waves away government's responsibility to the poor by comparing it to the building's responsibility. I suppose government has no responsibility to repay its debts (as buildings do not), to respect the boundaries of property (as buildings do not), or the responsibility to only shoot when absolutely necessary (as buildings do not).

Turns out, government has no need to be responsible at all. I would guess this guy also taught John Yoo in law school.

Late to the party, I know, but hey good for you! What are we celebrating again? I just read the last ten comments.

Something about a new Queen (England?) that approves of yarn and catnip and sunbeams?!? What's the deal with this tiara being mentioned? Also, what the hell is up with all the extra ssses (plural form unsure) in the comments?

PS: Congrats!!!

Congratulations, I will honest to God send you a ball of yarn if you want it. Consider it some sort of tiding.

This video has been declared a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by laura.

*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Imaginative-Girl-Spins-A-Yarn
sorry, paul! Good one, though!

Oui oui, c'est *dupe: http://www.videosift.com/video/Imaginative-Girl-Spins-A-Yarn

>> ^gwiz665:
I'm inclined to think that the tiger is just playing with the dummy, like a house cat with a ball of yarn.


I agree. It shows how powerful the tiger can be, but I really don't see how it shows that the tiger would have done the same to an actual human.

To think that the tiger cannot tell the difference between a human and this overgrown chew-toy seems foolish.

I'm inclined to think that the tiger is just playing with the dummy, like a house cat with a ball of yarn.

Totally - I changed the title.

>> ^arvana:
It's mini-Amélie.

Mitch Hedberg is so freakishly awesome that my brain gets all tangled up like a funny ball of yarn.

The skull is probably a humbug. If you look at the evidence presented in the wikipedia article on it, it is fairly clear from examining other similar skulls that they are 19th century artifacts, probably crafted in Germany.

As with so many paranormal and "exceptional" stories, science and logic takes precedent over people with supposedly sincere motivations who claim things with absolutely no proof or evidence. This is a prime example where you have a cute little old lady spinning yarns and it just feels "mean" not to believe her since she talks with such passion about it. Ultimately though, such "evidence" as presented by her is just hearsay.

Oh, and it is very sad the Arthur C. Clarke died.

Hmm, no video clip of my former roommate scared by a piece of yarn(?) who thought it was a spider. [grin]

Ok fun, must it be unrelated to Sift yet still important OR can it be whatever frivolous fluff anyone feels like having a yarn over?

So... whats everyone's overall favorite alcoholic beverage?

Got a great BB King Story farhad, and the photos to back up the yarn.....

Please reference a younger version of yourself so I could carry meaningful conversations. +1 for the great comment.

In reply to your comment:
“I dunno guys, I must admit, while I was watching I did have the unsettling feeling that they kept hammering home the clash of cultures almost to the point of ridiculousness, that one should die for freedom, one should not be a slave to a potentate of the East, etc etc etc.

It really did kind of feel like I was watching a propaganda yarn structured around a hijacked Frank Miller story and drove home certain concepts to the point of repetition. All this was super glossed over with captivating visuals of violence sex and death... all very base instincts humans possess and crave... It was kind of creepy really, because we were in one of those massive theaters, it was a very 1984 moment.

:31 makes me what to rip my hair out:
"It's just a historical battle film, and it doesn't really mean much about what race the people are or what, uh, country they come from.."

For shame Warner Bros. Someday this is going to be contextualized into the contemporary political climate and it is going to be classed right alongside the Wagnerian operas of Nazi Germany.”