He may never have reached Asia as planned, but one cannot discount the sheer will required to make his journey. At the age of 41, he defied naysayers across Europe and led four voyages across an uncharted ocean in wooden sailing ships that were not designed to take on the punishing waters of the Atlantic.

In what has become known as the Columbian Exchange, Columbus’ voyages enabled the exchange of plants, animals, cultures, ideas (and, yes, disease) between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. Once the Europeans were able to reach nearly all parts of the globe, a new modern age would begin, transforming the world forever.

Some historians have taken the position that while brutal, Columbus was simply a product of his times and being a figure of the 15th century should not be judged by the morality of the 20th-century.

Down with all the naysayers.

That was fucking epic. I loved it.

*quality

So OF COURSE you'd never critically-analyze yourself and admit to being a racist prick at times.. @lantern53

You're a disingenuous liar, who lies to yourself everyday..

"Don't worry, self.. We're still a good person"

"Ignore those naysayers, self.. That arrest was mostly lawful so it's okay to lie about it"

"Psh don't be silly, self.. Those black teens MUST have been doing something criminal.. why else would the police be harassing them?"



And the cycle of cognitively-dissonant, racist cuntbags continues..

Can't wait for THIS bullshit explanation of how you're..

"totally-not-a-liar"

..despite the comment where you openly gloat about doing so..


*grabs even more popcorn*

This is fun. Looking at the reflection, and knowing pretty intimately how reflective surfaces work, it still seems questionably-real. At 0:43-0:44, the reflective angle shows a large strip of earth-tone well above the horizon line, and also above the reflective bend of the door-handle curvature meaning it's not an artifact of the surface angle. The large strip of earth-colored element that's splitting the mans reflection up the middle in the same frame very well could be an angular reflective artifact, or just the reflection of a low-angle shot between his legs. (just to cut off any naysayers along those lines).
It is as clear a sky as glass despite the 'willy willy', and that seems supported by the reflection. I actually think this might be legitimate. If it's not... Well fucking-A, I'll go back to school if it's not.

Follow the money for the magnitude of reaction. Santa Monica, Westwood, populated by rich folks-one reason. Also, the location of the epicenter and recent infrequency in the same area, factors stack-up for worry when this could evidence a pre-trem for more to follow. Let it happen in bumfuck and see how little news it makes. PAC-Rim may go in your lifetimes naysayers, pack a go-baggy.

Codex Alimentarius
Agenda 21
Georgia Guidestones

...anyone notice the nefarious pattern here??

Naysayers need only look to their own frustration and confusion commingled with what they think they know to be true of the world the inhabit.

Many years ago, in a millennium gone past, I remember when people first start talking this thing called the internet.

"It's amazing" they said. "There's all kinds of fascinating information on there. People will learn heaps of new stuff"

But there were naysayers. "What about all these people who will tell people how to build nuclear weapons, napalm and explosives?"

And goddamnit, after over 20 years...somebody finally has.

Well done sir!

Despite naysayers to the contrary, the Bible is historical and Reliogious fact. People try to claim that events in the Bible didn't happen ... i.e. there wasn't a Jesus (proven that has was born, crucified and that thousands reported seeing him post Crucifixion that even atheist historians agree on), David, Solomon, etc etc

Perhaps you should widen you mind's understanding to consider that perhaps the flood legends/records in ancient civilizations point back all to the common event of a world wide flood.

It is one thing to say that you choose not to follow God and what he stands for (thus Free Will), but don't be intellectually dishonest to claim that what the Bible records didn't happen. The proof continues to be provided and yet people don't believe. Even when Jesus, the Son of God was present and healing people and raising them from the dead, people still chose to turn away and call for his Crucifixion.

Just because you cannot conceive of a way that a world wide flood could happen doesn't make it not so. 200 years ago, we did not have knowledge of flight, DNA etc and the more we learn continues to demonstrate that we intricately complex designed by a Creator, God, and not happenstance. How people can claim evolution and believe in entropy at the same time is mental deceit.

Come on guys, it's not like ulysses1904 hasn't had a bevy of accomplishments of his/her own. Why, I remember the other day seeing one of his/her sculptures in an art gallery and in addition to being totally grown up, it was 100% original: not a shred of derivative inspiration.

So take that, you naysayers! I'm what you'd call a fan of his/her work.

So the devil's antics are based in human years? I don't understand how the greatest of ALL angels gets "willier" over the course of 2000 some years when his existence is outside the restraints of time and space.

Same thing with God and His evolution of ideals. The law and then forgiveness and blah blah blah; slaves, no slaves; anathema, no anathema; burn shit to the ground for sins, don't stone the "prostitute". It doesn't make sense. None. At all.

Unless God ISN'T omnipotent, omnipresent, and/or benevolent. He can't be all of those things and yet so ignorantly rule creation within the context of human civilization pre-information age. Sorry, but if you don't see this pattern, you're living in denial. Either that or the idea of these beings is true and the Bible is the Devil's work.

Oh SNAP, didn't think about that in all of your squabbling, did you? The arguments over what to canonize; burning of Biblical apocrypha; human courts judging anathema over naysayers who were believers in God themselves; King James' toying with the text; and the list goes on and on. Lies! If God be love, Jesus saves and by faith be known, these historical truths makes your "holy" text anathema!

My bet is that the Devil knows the Bible because the Devil orchestrated it. If I believed in that sort of thing, that's what would make the most sense to me. But I suppose reason plays no part in the smoke and mirrors of gods and monsters.

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

Well, I think it is marvelous. Fie on the naysayers!

*quality

I really feel for her and other teachers like her. I can't even imagine how crushing it would be to be willing and desiring of devoting your life to enact positive change in the world, only to be crushed by the pencil pushers, the naysayers, the rigid lines. This is why America fails at education.

Four years ago, meet a few days ago in 2013. Hello from the future: Naysayers denied in record time!

NVIDIA Introduces GRID Remote GPU Appliance...Claims industry's first visual computing appliance for remote GPU acceleration.
March 22, 2013
http://www.deskeng.com/articles/aabjmy.htm

see also
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/nvidia-launches-vca-appliance-tips-maxwell-volta-gpus/

Look at all the naysayers who can't fathom how a system COULD work. It's called imagination and engineering, kids. Go ahead and laugh at CSI now..

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/02/02/0027200/light-field-photography-is-the-new-path-to-3-d