Your not worthless just not needed.

No real jobs have been created in 6 years, just part time temp with out benefits.

The government does not create jobs but sure could create policies ( or cut) to stimulate job growth.

With all the jobs lost to overseas over the last 40 years you better get used to lower standard of living. Better get a real degree, not Woman Studies and other useless degrees such as Hotel management, Art History , African studies, Psychology or Animal Science.

What rights are you seeking exactly? You must understand your rights cannot supersede others' rights. Basically, you can't have sex with adolescents under the legal age of consent where you live for the following reasons (from the wiki on ephebophilia):

-- Some (I would say most) adolescents are unable to understand the physical, emotional, and social consequences of sexual activity
-- Adult sexual relations with adolescents can be an abuse of power, using psychological coercion.
-- Sexual relations with adolescent girls can lead to pregnancy and parenthood, for which adolescents may not be prepared emotionally and/or financially.

I don't think you should be demonized for your attraction but I think you should understand why society may put you in jail for acting on it.

In the midst of serial killers, pedophiles and pastors wanting to kill gays, i can understand how this video came into light, people can badmouth it all they want to, but I have seen what Christianity does to people. It tears them apart emotionally, sexually and psychologically. Perhaps in another several years this might be more appreciated, only after another event like the Witchtrials or another Crusades....at any rate I thought the message it was trying to convey was obvious, dont be a christian because the religion/relationship really messes you up.

Taste is at least 50% psychology.
I once made a raspberry sorbet. Yes, it tasted very much like raspberry (because it was mostly raspberry) and if you work long enough with fruits, it's characteristic shade of red gives you a good hint what it is.
I like to let people taste stuff I make without telling them what they're eating. And then I ask them what they thought they ate. I gave several people that sorbet and out of 12 people, two or three gave me the correct answer what it was on the first try. Every red fruit you can imagine was mentioned by the others, one guy even told me it could be watermelon.
Another time I made a Cassis Panna Cotta (Cassis is french for black currant, you illiterate crouton). That stuff is purple like rain and Joker suits. We served it in a room that was lighted in blue and violet, like a Dario Argento movie. The Panna Cotta looked brown under the colored light. Some people thought they were eating something with chocolate in it.
In both examples I was dealing with people who made a living with selling and producing food.
That's how trustworthy your brain is when it comes to taste. Sometimes you can't tell raspberries from watermelons. And that's why the wine business is at least 50% bullshit.

@newtboy - There is a men's and a women's bantamweight *title* because the men and women don't fight each other, so they can't have just one title, but they aren't separated as different "men" and "women" divisions. Subtle difference, but still very meaningful I think.

@Lawdeedaw - That difference in severity makes all the difference. I'm curious if Knox (2012) cites how many husbands versus wives are subject to prolonged physical and psychological torture by their spouse.

Absolutely. It's a mistake to make assumptions about what AI will be like. The doomsayers too often attribute human qualities to it. It's like speculating about alien intelligence. It will come in bits an pieces as we understand it more. My own guess is that, not weighed down by long obsolete genetic imperatives and human psychological pathologies, it will most likely be (in its higher form) an extraordinarily capable problem solver and prognosticator. It will lack the human flaws that typically motivate the killer AIs of science fiction. Of course, it will probably have it's own unique flaws. I do think it's wise to be wary of software that has developed beyond our capability to understand it (much as we don't understand the workings of our own consciousness).

Probably my primary concern about robotic weapons comes from a DARPA proposal I read about some time in the past. What they wanted was an autonomous, bird sized UAV. It would contain surveillance equipment and sensors, and be able to share the data it collects through a mesh network established with it's fellows and the commanders as well as receive orders. It would be intelligent enough to find a suitable strategic vantage point and hide itself. From there it would simply observe. With a large enough swarm of these, perhaps many thousands, you could send them into a city at night. They would each also potentially carry a small warhead allowing them to launch themselves at and destroy threats. Once these robots were entrenched, which might only take an hour or two, whoever controls them would effectively rule the city. Even if they were cut off from their command structure, they might still retain enough intelligence to recognize a particular individual, someone in a forbidden area, someone holding a weapon, or someone not brodcasting the right IFF signal, or any number of things. There might be no defense against such a thing (though there probably will be).

To me, that concept is terrifying. It's not huge hulking terminator-like war machines that could be the greatest threat, just flying, self-guiding, intelligent hand grenades. All someone would need is the capability to manufacture them. No raising an army, no speeches or threats, just a factory and a design. It's also not too far fetched to believe this capability might be available in just a matter of a few decades. They'll be easier to build than nuclear weapons, and oh so convenient and easy to deploy.

Um.... anyways, I dunno where I was going with that. Just lots of random pontificating, but because it's technology, it's silly to try to stop it with legislation. It will happen, as ChaosEngine rightly points out, the best course of action is to be on top of it and to understand it.

The title of this sift also suggests it's about public defecation, not some psychological issue.

Does something like this sound better because psychologically you know it's a direct recording of the singer's voice vibrated and etched onto that surface or does it actually sound better acoustically? Obviously, you'd have to ignore all the crackles.

I like others said, lost it almost off the bat, thanks to two other factors: the fact that he mentions not to laugh or smile. Which for some reason makes you "do a practice run" when you hear it (really that is something that might make a good psychology test). Second as others mentioned is how others reacted to the video, ended up making me smile or chuckle.

Anyway, they win and I'd like to keep it that way, we'll see how long the Internet/Cthulhu will let things stay this way..

I'm going to be devil's advocate here and take the side of fearful American white trash:

Dear gays,

You're ruining the last good thing we had going on here in this country. We took care of the natives, forcing them into small communities where they slowly became psychologically oppressed and fraught with addiction.

But then we lost our control over niggers, who had their places down on our plantations. No matter, we can still push asians around because they're our bitches. But then we started to take them seriously. I don't even understand that.

I can't tell the difference between India people (Indians? Like our natives?) and allah-la-las -- and, really, I suspect because they're all in a similar area of the globe, they're the same. I might even believe Asia and India/Middle East are separate continents or somehow not entangled socially, economically and politically.

I think that's all the colored people, so lastly, addressing devil worshipers and homosexuals, who are really very similar in their connection to Satan. I can't tell you how disgusted I am about a penis going into an anus. It's just so gross. Hot lesbians are alright, but even that goes a little far, as I'm uncomfortable talking about that with people and church says no. Yes, that's bad too... and my wife definitely doesn't need to know anything about what I just said about lesbos. Now, a dyke, on the other hand, I think men are technically allowed to punch dykes.

I've already said too much. I feel gross.

In conclusion, it's been a downward spiral into immorality. Starting with the freedom of black people, who slowly made us lose sight on what is right and decent in the nation which God granted us. From negroes, came homosexuality.

Sometimes I have a hard time understanding even how she wishes to explain it (yeah, I get it--relative alignment and whatnot).

I however don't view "whatever is in the mirror" as some kind of alternate universe or merely a switch of directions in my head (as she states, that most of us have a psychological impression to do so): I definitely see me, and not a "reverse".

I know, as others mentioned she is explaining it more than likely for younger audiences, but I wonder if there are better ways to do it. I find it far easier to understand it through the traditional physics explanation of photons bouncing off of objects, hitting the mirror and coming to my eyes (but, that isn't what she wants here; that is why I boiled it down into two words: relative alignment). It just makes sense, what could then end up happening--at least to me.

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Discovering Psychology: The Power of the Situation. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

Yeah, the british guy seemed really intelligent, but really awkward (both socially and physically). I doubt he would be a good choice.

Obviously, I expect them to run extensive psychological exams on the last few candidates, I mean... these people will need to be intelligent, resourceful, with nerves (and balls) of steel, and also in good shape obviously.

The one thing that I don't like about the One Ring explanation:

It turns you invisible, unless you are the one person for whom it was actually designed (Sauron).

To me, it seems like the rings of power and especially the one ring should grant a more consistent actual power than that. The three elven rings made by Celebrimbor outside the influence of the one are much better examples.

Narya is the "ring of fire", and in the timeline of LoTR it is held by Gandalf. Which makes sense, because he does a lot of fire-related stuff with his magic. Nenya is the "ring of water" held by Galadriel, and Vilya the "ring of air" held by Elrond. These are used less consistently in the books (or movies), but one movie example is the flood that helped save Frodo and get him to Rivendell. In the movie, the flood is shown as being made of water with horse shapes surging through it, which suggest the magical influence of both Nenya and Vilya (water and air) working together. Anyway, those 3 rings have a consistent and fairly well established list of powers associated with their "elemental" attachments, fire, water, and air.

But the one ring lacks that consistency. It is supposed to help Sauron with his urge to dominate, but it doesn't really explain how that works. It doesn't make him invisible; only others who wear it. Also, it helps him to control or at least influence the wearers of the other rings. That is probably the best, most established power of the one ring, but it is also a bit shaky because wearers other than Sauron don't get those abilities. It seems to make other wearers just more susceptible to corruption, greed, and lust for power.

To me, I think it would be more interesting if the one ring actually granted a more specific power, unique to the psychological state of the wearer. The consistently presented thing about the one ring is that it corrupts, and nothing corrupts more than power. So basically, I think that the one ring should be analyzing whoever wears it, and granting them a unique power that is specifically designed to provide them with their greatest source of temptation to abuse that power.

The invisibility power actually makes a lot of sense for hobbits. As presented in the video here, they generally aren't very ambitious. BUT, hobbits are established as being stealthy beings by default, so granting them invisibility is a good source of temptation to turn that stealthiness into more nefarious purpose. So, I don't mind that the three main hobbit (or hobbit-like) wearers (Gollum/Smeagol, Bilbo, Frodo) all consistently get the invisibility power out of the ring.

Human wearers like Isildur would have less consistent powers granted by the rings, because they have more diverse motivations than hobbits. Just as an example, I'd think that Isildur would be motivated by martial prowess and leadership after watching his father killed by Sauron and the human/elven armies decimated at the end of the second age. So, the ring could perceive that about him and grant him physical power and charisma to lead -- both of which would be very easily turned to corruption. Invisibility just doesn't logically provide the same level of temptation for someone like Isildur.

Finally we come to Sauron himself. He is already an exception to the "ring grants invisibility" concept. But for him, the ring should (and arguably does) represent power and control. Sauron had to put on a false face and play the role of deceiver to get Celebrimbor and the other elves to accept him and create the other rings. Having to stoop to that rather than simply crushing them made him despise that sort of approach; after creating the one ring he cast that aside and became all about sheer power and domination, rather than trickery and deception. So, I see the ring's powers granted to Sauron himself as being sort of a conversion of those cunning/deceptive abilities into might, self preservation, and overwhelming mental dominance that allows him to control his orc armies.


Sorry for the length of that -- I have just always felt that the established powers of the one ring would be a bit more interesting if they led to corruption through real power granted to the wearers, rather than "it makes them invisible, but not Sauron, and in general corrupts them, just because".

This is a very interesting question that I've thought quite a lot about during my life (to myself, not in any sort of professional capacity).

The conclusions that I have come to (so far) are:
I think that, yes, religion in general terms IS a significant (but it is a stretch to say the ONLY) restraint on a pretty large number of people. Which is a prospect that I personally have a negative and pessimistic reaction to, similar to what it sounds like you do.

However, I think that there are lots of mitigating circumstances. First, many different religions currently provide that restraint to people. And in the past, many many more religions provided it to even more people. Many of those different religions have been very very different. Some have been near polar opposites. That proves that if your goal is restraining people from being utterly evil, and someone suggests that religion has made or is making a noble effort towards that (like your uncle), the positive aspects they are cheering for are not unique to any single religion, or dogma, or whatever.

If one accepts that many many diverse and completely different religions can potentially have the positive effects that we're looking for, then the actual source of those effects can not be something specific to any one religion. Instead, it has to be something that is held in common by all such religions.

Religions are so diverse and different, it might be hard to imagine something that they have in common. No specific god is held in common, even though all the Abrahamic religions might arguably share that aspect. Not even the simple idea of a god or gods or creator is far from universal; Buddhists revere no god.

Yet I believe that there is one easily overlooked thing that all religions DO have in common. Humanity. They all come from flawed but usually well-meaning people.

However, atheists hold that humanity in common with religions as well. And that makes me believe that if we understand humanity better, either through psychology, or empathy, or whatever, we can achieve the positive effects of religions without the religions themselves. Certainly without the stone-age dogmatic nonsense -- which tends to have arguably as many if not more BAD effects as good. This actually gives me great hope for humanity; rather the opposite to the conclusion that I came to originally when pondering the question.

There may always be people who have no empathy, and for whom nothing would serve to restrain them from what humanity at large would easily identify as great evil. No religion will handle such individuals any better than no religion ... so I guess I don't lose any sleep over that.