I downvote your comment, so you downvote the vid? If you thought it was downvote-worthy, why didn't you do that originally? Fucking weak, dude. Weak.

In reply to this comment by qualm:
Q: What does a Grateful Dead fan say when the acid finally wears off?

A: This band sucks!

Thanks for the correction. A good friend of mine is a crazy Perry fan, and he's corrected me on that more times than I can remember. It just never takes.

In reply to this comment by ICUDOO2:
Close - but here's what Perry is actually screaming at you

I know how to make a roux, chère. And you should taste my jambalaya.

In reply to this comment by swampgirl:
I would LOVE to know someone that's an authentic cajun cook. About the only folks I know that can cook old southern food now are pretty old.

Who's passing this knowledge down?

thanks for the promote!

Imagine - it only took three times through the queue to get sifted!
In reply to this comment by EDD:
*art
*promote

You think that was weird? Check these out:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Strawberry-Short-Cut-Weird-retro-advertising
http://www.videosift.com/video/Pickle-Surprise-Quite-possibly-the-weirdest-video-ever

In reply to this comment by Xax:
Strange that they'd use a bunch of transvestites in the commercial, but hey, whatever gets peoples' attention.

"Wait'll ya taste 'em!"

Guilty as charged. But I did my best not to abuse it. I think I used it to promote less than 10 of my own vids, and I always made sure to promote at least one other vid as well. I discovered it in December, I think, because someone (NicoleBee?, Stingray?) had mentioned it on your profile. I didn't use it for a while, but then I noticed it wasn't fixed, so I was hoping that was how it was supposed to be.

TBH, I think it might be worth considering giving two points for fixing a dead. I've always been a big proponent of incentivizing dead fixing. One power point isn't much incentive - we get that every two days anyway, and I rarely have cause to use it more often than that. I wasn't around when the original change was made from star points to power points, but I understand that for a short time, one power point was awarded for every fix, regardless of current power point status? I can see how that might have been a problem with people stockpiling power points. But if you can only get 2 power points for, say every 5 or 10 fixes, or every 7 days, or whatever, I don't think that would be a big problem. Just a thought.

In reply to this comment by lucky760:
So you're one of the dishonest members who's been abusing this bug for months. For shame. FOR shaaame...

Thank goodness there was one honest member who noticed it and brought it to my attention.

In reply to this comment by jonny:
dang - you fixed the power point award for dead fixes. no more self promotes for me.

dang - you fixed the power point award for dead fixes. no more self promotes for me.

Yeah, traditional haiku isn't based on syllables, per se. I think it's think more like word parts, but syllables is the best us westerners can do. Some of those cat haiku are really great. I particularly like the second one. Behold! Elevator butt.

Jonny prefers dogs
Unconditional love's best
Let's go for a walk.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
I didn't really count them out, but they are 5-7-5! Although I think there are more structures for Haikus than just that. Well done, regardless. Then of course there is the internet classic I so love.

Glad you liked them. Not good enough to be called haiku, though, huh?

Verses disappoint
Serious cat wants better
Dead boy is empty.



In reply to this comment by schmawy:
I do like these small poems. Also enjoyed your posts on Chogge's profile, too.

don't let it get ya down - we do still manage to have fun every now and then.

In reply to this comment by swampgirl:
Everytime I come back here this same banning crap is going on.

Politics all day,
Nothing but stimulus bill.
Sagging cheese content. *

*plagiarism

Kitty cat must eat,
Hunting mice before sifting.
Wintry real life sucks.

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
Do you think that eventually a manufacturing base in the US is sustainable in the long run?

I think manufacturing in the U.S. will continue to shrink as a % of GDP, but reach an asymptote at some point. All the R&D creates new things to build, much of which requires technical expertise to do so. Also, for smaller businesses, local production makes sense because they can't justify enough inventory to make the benefit of cheaper labor outweigh the shipping costs. And then there's on-demand production. It's only in its infancy right now, but I think it's going to be big.

I agree that yes you have a significant population in the agricultural business, I just simply disagree with subsidization of this industry by the government.

Totally agree. Agricultural subsidies suck. They actually hurt U.S. farmers too. All this push for corn-based ethanol has screwed cattle ranchers, for instance. It's a mess. It's also one of the most difficult things politically to get rid of. But a lot of third world nations provide subsidies too (often in response to U.S. policy) either directly or in the form of price controls, tariffs, etc. It's a vicious cycle, and the only way it ends is if the developed world (U.S. and EU) takes the lead and starts removing them.

Of course you're right that true and fair globalization (as opposed to exploitation) is the best solution. How much luck have you had convincing your neighbors? I haven't had much.

Almost none. Its a hard topic to explain because it requires a very wide macroeconomic viewpoint instead of a localized view. I mean would say 90% of the people I knew in University on one hand wanted development in the third world but were against the implications that developing the third world would mean a short term loss of certain industries locally. But its going to happen eventually. We can't all be growing bananas.

Yep - everyone is all for economic development, until it means they might have to retrain for a different job. That's human nature. Few people are willing to sacrifice their own comfort (and in some cases a lot more than that) for better times down the road.

[edit] pardon the drunken ramblings of a random sifter

My apologies for the seemingly flippant answer. But this involves a deeply rooted philosophical basis of trial by jury. In nearly every jurisdiction in the U.S., a defendant is allowed to ensure that the members of the jury are in fact his or her "peers". Basically, it allows the defendant and prosecutor to disqualify anyone from sitting on the jury that has a predetermined bias which would in any way favor for or against the defendant. In the extreme of case of a capital crime, for instance, anyone that is morally opposed to the death penalty is automatically DQ'd. On the other hand, if the defendant were accused of rape, anyone on the jury that had previously been raped would be immediately DQ'd.

I don't think we need to get into the formal rules of U.S. criminal law here, but the philosophical bases for those rules are worth considering.


In reply to this comment by jonny:
>> ^lucky760:
In actual trials are defendants first introduced to each member of the jury?

They're peers not because you know their name but because only peers have the ability to vote.

Actually, they are. It's called voir dire (jury selection).

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
Regarding the points you raise. The companies you mentioned are multinationals, focus on technology and R&D and are in markets that have high costs to entry (being it market capitalization, research or technology). For example Boeing's only other competitor is Airbus and they fulfill demand orders on a international scale. I think overall they constitute a small percentage of US economy because their operations are so spread around the world, problems in the US economy would affect these firms very little.

It's a bit ironic that you picked Boeing as the exemplar. I live (part time) in Huntington Beach, CA, where Boeing has a substantial presence. A couple of weeks ago, they laid off about 50 workers in this city of about 200k. But that also results in the loss of jobs in every single company that serves as a local supplier to them (tens of companies, hundreds more jobs). More to the point, I named a whole bunch of large, easily recognizable companies that make stuff, as opposed to providing services, just to point out that manufacturing is alive and well in the U.S. It's a well propagated myth that the U.S. doesn't do manufacturing anymore, which Jake bought right into. Trust me, I've lived in a half dozen cities across the U.S. over the last decade, and every single one of them had a substantial manufacturing base. It's certainly true that the U.S. economy has been shifting away from making stuff over the last 50 years, but it's still the case that most cities and towns in the U.S. are completely dependent on their local manufacturing base.


Agriculture is a thorny issue

The thorniest. Twenty thousand years ago when humans first started domesticating plants, that's what they fought over. And we still do. The only thing we fight over more now is decayed plants.

since much of it both in the US and EU is sustained via massive subsidization and are controlled by large firms which enjoy massive economies of scale. Their lobbying towards the US government means they have favorable market conditions in the states, they price their products higher then the world market and the US consumer ends up paying for that.

But that doesn't change the fact that hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in the U.S. are employed in the agricultural business. Again, I was just using it as an example of producing stuff. Perhaps this points out a fundamental flaw of using GDP as a measure of a country's economic strength.

Many of the trade disagreements brought up in the WTO by 1st world nations focus on suppressing 3rd world agricultural markets because the western world cannot compete on price and cost.

Really? I was under the impression it was more the other way around, i.e., the third world nations were begging the west to stop their subsidies and "level the growing field".

It's simply cheaper to produce agriculture in the 3rd world. Globalization must be pushed to happened in this sector strongly as right now it penalizes the consumers, sustains an inefficient producer (when looked globally) and suppresses growth in the third world which wholly depends on Agriculture.

That I just have to disagree with. It is only because of political realities and labor costs, not farming practices or technology (i.e., true efficiencies). There is no way that it is more efficient to grow corn in Zambia than it is in Iowa.


This is why you have all those "Free Trade" products being sold all over the place, like coffee beans for example. I would love to see a globalization effort on behalf of large US manufacturers through foreign direct investment in third world economies.

Woah - now you're scaring me. That sounds like multinationals moving into local areas to exploit local resources - fresh water access, etc. I'm pretty sure I know you well enough to know that's not what you mean. But dig deeper - you are suggesting that profit motivated companies would somehow be interested in the welfare of the residents of the local areas in which they operate. Ultimately, that's how a company should be run, but how many companies do you know of that have that kind of long term vision. (This is really worthy of another conversation on the ethics and ultimate sustainability of commerce. Too much to handle here.)

I totally agree on personal debt problems, there is too much runaway consumerism while the middle class has been diminishing, you have too many falling down in the lower classes and not many coming into the middle class. Now republican usually state that tax cuts would elevate this but I disagree, there is very little financial advice and a general air get rich quick behavior in the US, especially leverage and bombardment of the consumer through what seem like seductive credit card offers that have huge monthly payment penalties and interest rate increases. I mean you can get a credit card from almost anyone now in the US. There is a lot of predatory lending behavior in the credit card industry and not enough good information on the topic. I think some sort regulation and institutions that normalize run away debt is in order.

I disagree with you on some of this, and completely agree otherwise. Rampant consumerism is not the problem. Nor is even ridiculously available credit (at least until recently) the problem. It really is an issue of education. As you say, most people in the U.S. (and I think probably most people around the world) don't understand the first thing about finances. And I'm not just talking about average joe. I wasn't fooling around when I said on Joe's blog that I have been privileged to know some of the smartest people on the planet. I really have - and a few of them could barely balance a checkbook. Seriously. I know that sounds absurd, but it's true. I have twice personally "bailed out" close friends. I doubt it was complete ignorance, but there was certainly a lack of understanding of just how much it would cost to run up large amounts of debt.



But again there are so many layers and layers of complexity with any of these topics and some time your viewpoint really depends on your economic background and beliefs, I am a strong believer in world trade and globalization. I do admit there are lots of growing pains and problems in its implementation. It's easy to say the US economy needs to focus more on services and R&D but its not possible. I remember one woman I debated about agricultural markets got offended when I said that farmers in Canada are inefficient and are holding back agricultural market development in the developing world.

No doubt the layers of complexity are lost many folks. It does almost require someone who is independently wealthy that can spend a lifetime studying these topics to really get a handle on it. But, of course, if you are one of those people, you are instantly labeled an elite, out-of-touch, ivory tower geek. Can't win for losing, eh?

Of course you're right that true and fair globalization (as opposed to exploitation) is the best solution. How much luck have you had convincing your neighbors? I haven't had much.