>> ^obscenesimian:

Yes yes. Kurds, hmmmmmm let me think
oh yes they were abused by turks throughout history but most notably during the the 1890's 1920's 1930's and on up to the 70's and 80's. Ironically, Kurds also were one of the primary agents used by the Turks in the deportations and massacre Armenians before and during world war 1.
Those Kurds.
Who were also abused by Saddam. All part of a long chain of ethnic cleansing, genocide and nationalist violence caused in a large part by religion and creed as well as tribal identity throughout the balkans and the ottoman empire and what became the palestinian mandate.
Which Hitchens thought we should wade into because science and atheism will put right through warfare that which religion and warfare could not put right.
Hitchens got so much so wrong so many times, but he sounded soooo good doing it.
>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^spoco2:
>> ^kceaton1:
Goodbye Chris. Some of his most profound moments for me came when he actually screwed up and was wrong! It would often lead to other talks and dialogs between the people he had erred against and himself and in some occasions Christopher would merely present them and allow the other person to put the matter straight. He could be friends with these people and often was.
It showed me that he had within himself the ability to be very humble and that to him the truth WAS paramount! For that and much more I will remember him always.
He had it within himself to be the best of us all.

His about face on waterboarding after being waterboarded was the point that I started paying attention to him.

His about face on Saddam era Iraq stood out more in my mind. After being a champion of the anti-war movement in the first Gulf war he went and spent time with the Iraqi Kurds. He came back vehement in his conviction that America's worst crime in Iraq was in essence listening to him in the first place and not pushing into Baghdad and removing Saddam the first time.



Or more simply, Saddam was so horrific and brutal a monster that Iraqis and the region as a whole are better off for his removal.

Yes yes. Kurds, hmmmmmm let me think

oh yes they were abused by turks throughout history but most notably during the the 1890's 1920's 1930's and on up to the 70's and 80's. Ironically, Kurds also were one of the primary agents used by the Turks in the deportations and massacre Armenians before and during world war 1.

Those Kurds.

Who were also abused by Saddam. All part of a long chain of ethnic cleansing, genocide and nationalist violence caused in a large part by religion and creed as well as tribal identity throughout the balkans and the ottoman empire and what became the palestinian mandate.

Which Hitchens thought we should wade into because science and atheism will put right through warfare that which religion and warfare could not put right.

Hitchens got so much so wrong so many times, but he sounded soooo good doing it.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^spoco2:
>> ^kceaton1:
Goodbye Chris. Some of his most profound moments for me came when he actually screwed up and was wrong! It would often lead to other talks and dialogs between the people he had erred against and himself and in some occasions Christopher would merely present them and allow the other person to put the matter straight. He could be friends with these people and often was.
It showed me that he had within himself the ability to be very humble and that to him the truth WAS paramount! For that and much more I will remember him always.
He had it within himself to be the best of us all.

His about face on waterboarding after being waterboarded was the point that I started paying attention to him.

His about face on Saddam era Iraq stood out more in my mind. After being a champion of the anti-war movement in the first Gulf war he went and spent time with the Iraqi Kurds. He came back vehement in his conviction that America's worst crime in Iraq was in essence listening to him in the first place and not pushing into Baghdad and removing Saddam the first time.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Death penalty:
"The 775 killers who were executed between 1998 and 2008 had murdered at least 1591 people. That is an average of 2 victims per executed killer."
Liberals never quite get around to thinking about the victims of the convicted murderers on death row; not ONE of the latter has ever been proven innocent--posthumously or otherwise--since the 1950s.
"If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers."
-- Alphonse Karr (1808-1890)


Irrelevant (and also wrong, but anyway). Leaving aside the questionable morality of state-sponsored revenge killing, it fails both as a tool for law enforcement and as a fiscally conservative policy. It costs way more to execute someone than to incarcerate them for life.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Ron Paul Health Care: it was a loaded, piss-poor question and liberals know it. Why? Because there are two scenarios for the question. Is our theoretical 30-year-old living in "our" world where there is de facto socialist health care in the USA? I asked someone with a degree in Hospital Admin what would be his fate. Her answer: "If he has no insurance, his care is free."
OR is the scenario taking place in a libertarian free market health care world, which has NEVER been allowed to exist?
I gots no problems with liberal foolishness; it exists in abundance. What I despise is intellectual dishonesty and these crafted propagandist soundbites from the original source, not even the smarmy Liberalviewer, were just that.


It's a reasonable question. No, that world (thankfully) doesn't exist, but it's a world RP wants to create. We're entitled to know how his pie-in-the-sky bullshit would pan out in the real world.

And to hear a conservative complain about intellectual dishonesty and crafted soundbites is really the pot calling the kettle black.

Death penalty:

"The 775 killers who were executed between 1998 and 2008 had murdered at least 1591 people. That is an average of 2 victims per executed killer."

Liberals never quite get around to thinking about the victims of the convicted murderers on death row; not ONE of the latter has ever been proven innocent--posthumously or otherwise--since the 1950s.

"If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers."
-- Alphonse Karr (1808-1890)


Ron Paul Health Care: it was a loaded, piss-poor question and liberals know it. Why? Because there are two scenarios for the question. Is our theoretical 30-year-old living in "our" world where there is de facto socialist health care in the USA? I asked someone with a degree in Hospital Admin what would be his fate. Her answer: "If he has no insurance, his care is free."

OR is the scenario taking place in a libertarian free market health care world, which has NEVER been allowed to exist?

I gots no problems with liberal foolishness; it exists in abundance. What I despise is intellectual dishonesty and these crafted propagandist soundbites from the original source, not even the smarmy Liberalviewer, were just that.

Life sentences under that would be fine. Give them a few appeals (Because me and you would never want to be in jail without ever having an appeal,) and leave them to rot in their icy tomb. If they can prove their innocence, fine. If not, ice...

>> ^quantumushroom:

QM, you think the death penalty is a good thing? How barbaric and archaic.
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
What is barbaric are the acts committed by the scum. What is outrageous is these cowards, when captured and unfortunately taken alive, fight tooth and nail to stay among the living. A tiny minority of killers are truly insane, the rest are simply chickensh;t vermin.
I'm all for life sentences and abolishing the death penalty IF these fks were actually being punished. They should all be shipped to a federally-run gulag in Alaska where they would engage in hard icy labor till they died of old age. No visitors, no TV, no movies, extremely limited communication with the outside world. Perhaps a few old books. Now there's no liberal ACLUmunist worth his hammer and sickle that's going to stand for such an arrangement.
"If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers."
-- Alphonse Karr (1808-1890)

QM, you think the death penalty is a good thing? How barbaric and archaic.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

What is barbaric are the acts committed by the scum. What is outrageous is these cowards, when captured and unfortunately taken alive, fight tooth and nail to stay among the living. A tiny minority of killers are truly insane, the rest are simply chickensh;t vermin.

I'm all for life sentences and abolishing the death penalty IF these fks were actually being punished. They should all be shipped to a federally-run gulag in Alaska where they would engage in hard icy labor till they died of old age. No visitors, no TV, no movies, extremely limited communication with the outside world. Perhaps a few old books. Now there's no liberal ACLUmunist worth his hammer and sickle that's going to stand for such an arrangement.



"If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers."
-- Alphonse Karr (1808-1890)

@Mcboinkens, Your comments about the language in this video have definitely stirred up some discussion here, so I am glad you made them. In general, I would agree that strong crude language often works against an effective argument. However, given the nature of this crude issues, it is my opinion that the strong language is more than justified. That being said, there are a few points in the video that I thought were worth pointing out if you have not reviewed them already.

2:01. The woman you heard reading this monologue, who knows so much about booming, is not the author. The author chose to remain anonymous, as was stated in text two minutes into this video. The author, who knows so much about booming, may very well be working on cleaning up this mess or cooking for those who are. He says he is good at it.

You can read his original essay here. If you are up for it, his follow up article is also well written.

3:07. This is the point at which the language begins to... deteriorate. It is at this point that the intended audience of the video shifts from general audience to being directed towards people who need/must/ought to know about booming. The author lists off the people he believed should know about booming in the video. This change is marked by the following statement:

Nomenclature. Since this is your first day of booming school, you have to fight--no wait--lets go over some important definitions in oil field grammar.

I'm not going to lie, I am no linguist. I had to look up the definition of nomenclature. But yeah, he's talking to oil/gas/producition/workers using the same language they use amongst themselves.

3:40. "Boom is long and bright orange or yellow. It is not bright orange or yellow so that you can see it, fledgeling boomer, but so that it governors, senators, presidents, and the media can see it."

Again addressing the boomer trainees, the author re-affirms that the intended audience here is people who use crude language routinely. Noting this, the statement describing booms lacks some of the crude language you find offensive because it contains information important for the rest of us: the lion's-share of the booming you see going on is just for show.


Now that that's off my chest. Fucking *promote this fucking tutorial already!
There's fucking oil hitting the motherfucking coast there and it's a goddamned tragedy!

Oh, and check out these images about how the oil/spill/cleanup is going.
(They make me cry on the inside.)
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html

>> ^Mcboinkens:

@NordlichReiter
Thanks for catching my mistake. Normally I edit my posts before I submit them, but I was kind of in a rush so my your and you're were mixed up, haha. But anyway, that is what I meant. I still don't know if this occured, but I remember hearing that BP hired locals to drop booms. I think that everyone was in such a hurry to try to contain the spill that they were not properly trained in booming techniques. It is a shame this woman was not down there to help out, she seems to know a good deal about booming.

This sounded familiar. Check this out, from DailyKos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/11/11558/1890

And its sequel:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/14/31041/9176

I beg to differ...

How about the panic of 1797, lasting 3 years
Depression of 1807 lasting 7 years
Panic of 1819 lasting 5 years
Recession of 1833-34 lasting 1 year
Panic of 1837 lasting 2 years
Depression of 1839-43 lasting 4 years (attributed largely to Jackson, one of the worst in history)
Recession of 1845-46 lasting a year
recession of 1847-48 lasting a year
recession of 1853-54 1 year
Panic of 1857 18 months
recession of 1860-61 8 months
recession of 1865-67 lasting 32 months
recession of 1869-70 lasting 18 months
panic of 1873 and the ensuing long depression lasting 65 months
recession of 1882-85 lasting 38 months
recession of 1887-88 lasting 13 months
recession of 1890-91 lasting 10 months
Panic of 1893 lasting 17 months
Panic of 1896 lasting 18 months
Recession of 1899-1900 lasting 18 months
Recession of 1902-04 lasting 23 months
panic of 1907 lasting 13 months
panic of 1910-11 lasting 24 months

Bang up job the old monetary policy was doing...

^ That's not the version of history I've read.

Most people say that we went from the Great Depression to 1973 without any real crashes or panics, and that that was a good thing. We then went from 1974 to now without any real crashes or panics (with a reasonable debate over whether 2001 counts as a real crash too, or if it's attached to 2009's crisis).

There's debate about the 1973 recession, but it seems reasonable to say that was a confluence of conditions that taught us something. Same with 1930. Probably the same will be true of 2009.

Before that, Great Depression-style crashes and panics were happening multiple times a decade (1907, 1901, 1896, 1893, 1893, 1890, etc.).

Most people consider centralized banking and banking regulation to have been at least part of the stabilization we saw in the 20th century, and that stabilization was a net benefit to the economy.

>> ^ravioli:
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" -Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four, 1890
Haven't I heard this somewhere not too long ago ?...


Just saw Star Trek yesterday... Spock says it to, I think, Kirk.

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" -Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four, 1890



Haven't I heard this somewhere not too long ago ?...

>> ^zombieater:
It's interesting - every single person in every photograph is wearing a hat of some kind.


I was going to say the same thing. I collect vintage photographs and have one of a large crowd from the late 1940's where most everyone wears a hat. I don't know exactly when the hat trend died down.

Your video, The streets of Oslo around 1890 taken by hidden camera, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^Ornthoron:
Fantastic! It's fascinating that parts of Karl Johans Gate (the main street in Oslo) looks almost identical today.


Yes a fantastic find. It almost looks fake, i mean, you see these types of clothes in fictional portrayals and arranged photos, but this is just daily life. Very fascinating.

At 0.14, you see the university of oslo on the left, and the Royal Castle in the background.
Here is the location in Google maps:
http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=59.915139,10.734635&spn=0.002057,0.006974&z=18&lci=com.panoramio.all