Sorry if i've got the wrong end of the stick here, but i find it very hard to understand what you're trying to say and i genuinely try my best. Are you chastising voodoov for downvoting your comments? Not that it matters because he has a right to reply when you make comments here, but i think he has good cause to.

For example:
"I have a legitimate beef with rabid supporters of any particular ideology or philosophy when the shit becomes tiresome and repetitious when tinctured with rage and anger and intolerance?" -- Is this a question or a statement?

You've also quoted the law of Thelema and Max Planck's personal opinion (not scientific appraisal, just one person's opinion - who lived in a time of religious persecution) of the existence of a supreme being, neither of which seem related, and you didn't refer to them in the rest of your post. It seems strange to argue in favour of keeping your personal beliefs to yourself whatever they may be when at the same time you use the personal belief of Planck as an opener for your argument.

It isn't clear to me what you're saying, and the parts that are clearer seem contradictory.

Where do you draw the line though?

CMBS or RMBS made money for "bankers". Well some bankers anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_failures_in_the_United_States_(2008%E2%80%93present)

However it also drove home sales (and home building). Are the home builders responsible for people taking mortgages on houses they could not afford?

What about the realtor/broker who showed them the house?

Or the developer who developed it?

Or the appraiser who appraised the property for hundreds of thousands of dollars more in value than it is worth now?

Or the people at Freddie Mac who earnestly wanted to put lower income people in homes?

Now, you take all the money from the bankers that survived and you give it to who?

The people who bought a house, put very little money into it, and now have to give it back?

The real estate developers who lost everything? (Of which there are many)

It all sounds well and good to take from one group and give to someone else, but I think it is easy to point the finger at the bankers and not take a look in the mirror. We all did this and allowed it to happen.

That said bankers shouldn't be making big money when they are losing big money...

And another one. So now that we have it in print, can we drop the pretence and call it what it is: the world's most sophisticated system of industrial espionage.

I'd complain about being spied upon by supposed friends and allies, but as recently declassified documents showed, the Allied Control Council reserved the right to spy on any and all communications in Germany, even beyond the reunification in 1990. So it's not like we had any privacy to begin with, only the illusion of privacy, lasting a whopping 61 years. And it's all legal. Unconstitutional, but legal.

Snowden's material included surveillance statistics, showing that the NSA is intercepting, on average, 20 million phone calls a day in this beautiful country of mine. Most of it will be plain old industrial espionage, just like the bugs they planted at the EU offices.
So I'm rather surprised at the lack of outrage coming from my government. I know they don't give a rat's ass about the privacy of us plebs, but industrial espionage on a massive scale? I'd assumed they wouldn't like that one bit. Not a peep though, only silent obedience.

Anyway, everything's presented as shocking news in the media, so I thought I'd just link a certain document, aptly named AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL. As you can see, it is a report that was presented to the European Parliament in 1998.

Skip to 7.4.1:

The Interim report said that within Europe, all email, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency, transferring all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by Satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York Moors of the UK.

Got my yearly appraisal at work this week, wonder if this would do the trick there too.

Of course it's a risk factor. I too would be a fool not to agree. I just think that there are confounding factors that make the health consequences of a particular BMI difficult to unravel. Thus, we should avoid playing doctor for people that likely already have doctors.

>> ^scannex:

Thank you for clarifying. Yes of course that was the part of the argument I meant. The latter half statement you made is something I agree is not productive or appropriate.
Re the trivial jump: BMI is a imperfect scale to be sure. It does not account for exceptionally muscular people among other things. I think at a certain point we got disjointed on just what we were arguing with one another.
Perhaps my fault. In short my stance is this. BMI is not a clear indicator of much of anything. It, under many circumstances can provide excellent early warning or, in cases where people are already known to be overweight (clearly not muscular) provide a scale on which to measure the severity of their problem.
Details matter and circumstance matter, I would be a fool not to agree.
My specific question though was based on my deduction that your stance was: In people who are in the overwhelming majority (being that there are way more properly assessed clinically obese than body builders)that obesity was not a major risk factor for a myriad of other diseases.
If that was the wrong assessment of your position I will be overjoyed to hear it.
>> ^bmacs27:
While I agree we might not change each others' minds I'm not sure I'm entirely clear on which point in my last post you explicitly disagree with.
You believe it is trivial to jump from BMI to the healthiness of an individual? Would you stand by that claim in the case of, for example, extremely muscular athletes? Arnold has a BMI around 33 (Obese), is he doomed to future health complications as a result? I'm honestly shocked that someone that seems to keep appraised of the literature would put so much emphasis on such a flawed measure of overall health. Clearly there are interacting risk factors, no?
>> ^scannex:
Cheers to you as well Bmacs, while we disagree on that point I appreciate the conversation.
I think we are at an impasse however, and will need to agree to disagree.
The best to you though.

Thank you for clarifying. Yes of course that was the part of the argument I meant. The latter half statement you made is something I agree is not productive or appropriate.

Re the trivial jump: BMI is a imperfect scale to be sure. It does not account for exceptionally muscular people among other things. I think at a certain point we got disjointed on just what we were arguing with one another.
Perhaps my fault. In short my stance is this. BMI is not a clear indicator of much of anything. It, under many circumstances can provide excellent early warning or, in cases where people are already known to be overweight (clearly not muscular) provide a scale on which to measure the severity of their problem.
Details matter and circumstance matter, I would be a fool not to agree.

My specific question though was based on my deduction that your stance was: In people who are in the overwhelming majority (being that there are way more properly assessed clinically obese than body builders)that obesity was not a major risk factor for a myriad of other diseases.

If that was the wrong assessment of your position I will be overjoyed to hear it.

>> ^bmacs27:

While I agree we might not change each others' minds I'm not sure I'm entirely clear on which point in my last post you explicitly disagree with.
You believe it is trivial to jump from BMI to the healthiness of an individual? Would you stand by that claim in the case of, for example, extremely muscular athletes? Arnold has a BMI around 33 (Obese), is he doomed to future health complications as a result? I'm honestly shocked that someone that seems to keep appraised of the literature would put so much emphasis on such a flawed measure of overall health. Clearly there are interacting risk factors, no?
>> ^scannex:
Cheers to you as well Bmacs, while we disagree on that point I appreciate the conversation.
I think we are at an impasse however, and will need to agree to disagree.
The best to you though.

While I agree we might not change each others' minds I'm not sure I'm entirely clear on which point in my last post you explicitly disagree with.

You believe it is trivial to jump from BMI to the healthiness of an individual? Would you stand by that claim in the case of, for example, extremely muscular athletes? Arnold has a BMI around 33 (Obese), is he doomed to future health complications as a result? I'm honestly shocked that someone that seems to keep appraised of the literature would put so much emphasis on such a flawed measure of overall health. Clearly there are interacting risk factors, no?

>> ^scannex:

Cheers to you as well Bmacs, while we disagree on that point I appreciate the conversation.
I think we are at an impasse however, and will need to agree to disagree.
The best to you though.

>> ^sepatown:

i don't think he makes good points at all. without comparing those pie-charts to the pie-charts of other aid organizations, those percentage splits are meaningless. how does the layman watching the video know if 37% is a lot or not much? is 27% for awareness programs good or bad? who knows? how much of that 27% is essential for boosting their income?
also his problem with the Legacy Scholarship Fun is strange as well, he recognizes that it's a good program but has a problem with $1.1million being spent on 'only' 700-800 kids. once again, without context how do we know if that is bad? 1.1million by 800 kids is like $1400 bucks per kid, per year. that doesn't jump out at me as some insanely unjustifiable figure UNLESS YOU PROVIDE ME WITH CONTEXT which he fails to do, which is interesting because he spends some time attacking the fund for that exact thing.
the only thing more annoying than the people jumping to support this KONY thing by clicking 'like' and then feeling good about themselves are the people jumping just as quickly to the contrarian position and the demonizing this charity because they wanna be in that group that thinks that they're somehow smarter than everyone else because they've read on Reddit or a blog somewhere that Invisible Children's Accountability & Transparency only scored 2/4 on Charity Navigator and therefore must be a scam.


In a 12 minute video he's made some good points but it's clearly a starting point for a debate. He doesn't strike me as a contrarian but someone who's choosing to be reasonably sceptical.

Charities throughout the world too often get a free ride and I would not be surprised if the next big financial scandals are charity-related.

I haven't actually made it through the Kony video. I saw a twitter link with a breathless gushing exhortation to watch it and the first five minutes seemed to follow in that vein. I'd rather a more clear-headed appraisal rather than rushing to frame the subject emotionally.

>> ^artician:

Huh. Dunno if I'd even be interested in the film, but these guys are kind of picking low-hanging fruit, all but declaring they hate it before the review even starts, and then base their reactions of the film by how far it deviates from their expectations.
At least Plinkett can put together well-thought out arguments presented with some some semblance of thought toward the media and its history and aesthetics. Boo.
EDIT: okay, I watched the entire thing (because if you're going to criticize something, you should know what you're talking about, right?)
This video seems more like a demo-reel for a couple of guys who wanted to make films for a living but missed the boat. Nearly all their criticism is inapplicable to the general viewer, or even most film critics, as it's so subjective to their own expectations, and devoid of any real critical appraisal.
I'm not even arguing that the film isn't bad. I wouldn't know, as it looked like shit and I never saw it, but this video is an embarrassment for any film critic, let alone these shit, failed, beer-mongering authors. These guys really piss me off, because there is 0% talent here, and 100% "let's leverage the internet popularity for our own gain" (Like: "Pick a shit movie and tell everyone how shit it is! We're genius!")
Fuck these guys.


Overreact much? Me thinks you missed the point. Also, the guy on the left IS Plinkett

Huh. Dunno if I'd even be interested in the film, but these guys are kind of picking low-hanging fruit, all but declaring they hate it before the review even starts, and then base their reactions of the film by how far it deviates from their expectations.

At least Plinkett can put together well-thought out arguments presented with some some semblance of thought toward the media and its history and aesthetics. Boo.

EDIT: okay, I watched the entire thing (because if you're going to criticize something, you should know what you're talking about, right?)

This video seems more like a demo-reel for a couple of guys who wanted to make films for a living but missed the boat. Nearly all their criticism is inapplicable to the general viewer, or even most film critics, as it's so subjective to their own expectations, and devoid of any real critical appraisal.

I'm not even arguing that the film isn't bad. I wouldn't know, as it looked like shit and I never saw it, but this video is an embarrassment for any film critic, let alone these shit, failed, beer-mongering authors. These guys really piss me off, because there is 0% talent here, and 100% "let's leverage the internet popularity for our own gain" (Like: "Pick a shit movie and tell everyone how shit it is! We're genius!")

Fuck these guys.

This guy is full of false dichotomies and pretension. First, the whole "ritual" and "community" things are not specific to religion. Look at the art world, school, family life: all full of ritual. And the point about community has already been made above. Second, no one will look down on an atheist who likes aspects of culture and human thought/production linked to religion, be they architectural, textual or other.

He starts with the premise that it's the norm to know that believing in deities is non-sense and no-one does, and those who do do no harm. Well bullocks. The reason people are loud about arguing against superstitious beliefs is because they have dire consequences, especially when they are indoctrinated into vulnerable child minds who cannot oppose them (because not testable nor evidence-based). And that is a danger to humanity, period.

As for thinking about things, as it said above, education should take the place of giving people knowledge and material to be in awe of (e.g. anything by Carl Sagan) and philosophise about. The only reason the evangelicals/pentacostalists are convincing is because they are preaching to a crowd of indoctrinated sheep, making a conscious effort to bypass any critical thought. I think it would be terrible to "preach" that Shakespeare is wonderful. No. Live it. Learn to appreciate it critically. Or dislike it, but know why. And no, propaganda is never good. It is trying to imprint a message onto you without you questioning. No matter how "good" a message is, it should be up to the receiver to critically receive it, and accept/reject it based on their critical appraisal thereof.

Ugh, this guy annoyed me.

Agree completely. Fox is saying that IF he wins Iowa then it's basically null and void because Paul has no chance of winning the nomination. They are NOT saying that in general the Iowa caucus is meaningless, which is what TYT implies.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

Christ, I feel a little sick just typing this, but I think Fox might be right on this one.
/cleans puke off keyboard
I'm not saying they are morally correct, simply that their appraisal of the situation is probably accurate. I don't think anyone really believes Paul will get the nomination. He is simply too far from what most Republicans want (esp on drugs and foreign policy).
It's a shame he's such a nutjob, because some of his policies are interesting.
edit: Actually, I take it back. Having watched the outcome, Cenk makes some really good points.

Christ, I feel a little sick just typing this, but I think Fox might be right on this one.

/cleans puke off keyboard

I'm not saying they are morally correct, simply that their appraisal of the situation is probably accurate. I don't think anyone really believes Paul will get the nomination. He is simply too far from what most Republicans want (esp on drugs and foreign policy).

It's a shame he's such a nutjob, because some of his policies are interesting.

edit: Actually, I take it back. Having watched the outcome, Cenk makes some really good points.

>> ^Skeeve:

Agreed, for the most part.
He obviously has talent, but to be a great artist one tends to need life experience (often of a darker nature) and that is something he doesn't have.
It should come with time though.
As for why we haven't seen a Mozart, etc. in hundreds of years, maybe its because the great artists of our time aren't composing classical music (which tends to cultivate the misbelief that it is somehow superior). Now, I'm a fan of classical music, but listen to While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Gimme Shelter, or All Along the Watchtower and tell me you don't feel as moved as when listening to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, or The Marriage of Figaro.
>> ^TheFreak:
Bullshit.
Try listening to Jay Greenbergs Symphony no 5. It's horrible.
It's an unorganized cacophany. One moment it sounds every bit like an action movie score then immediately it swings the other way and you'd think you were listening to the music from a 30's cartoon. There's no rhyme or reason behind any of the sounds you hear, no progression, no building of emotion, no story being told, no subtlety or purpose...just great big sloppy swipes of an oversized lyrical paintbrush.
That 60 Minutes segment describes Jay's early and enduring interest in writing music. I believe that's about the only element of the story that's not pure hyperbole. From listening to his music you can tell that he has obviously learned a great deal at a young age about arranging orchestral music. He has knowledge. What he lacks is everything else necessary to create great music.
Boys his age do one thing with great expertise and skill....masturbate. And that's what "Blue Bird" is doing with his music...masturbating all up in your ear holes.
Jay Greenergs interest and dedication to study clasical music composition, as well as the encouragement he's received, has brought him a long way. The real shame is the uncritical feedback he's getting from the people around him. Without anyone to tell him that his music is ham fisted and clumsy there's every likelyhood that his narcisistic self appraisal will lead him to nothing.
Jay Greenberg has demonstrated an impressive ability to learn how to compose in a classical style. It remains to be seen if he can turn that technical skill into artistic achievement.



Brilliantly said. If you really listen to some music of "recent" times, it can be amazing. Gimme Shelter is a perfect example. Listening for the voice cracks when the lyric is being yelled "rape! murder!".. I could reel off an entire bunch of pink floyd songs that i think are on par with classical music.

I think that the reason there were "more musical genius" around back then is for several reasons - what else was there for an intelligent and interested young person to do then? Let's face it, the most interesting thing around back then was a piano. We have more instruments now, the world is more connected, we can sample each other's music and combine it. There's too many reasons. And you died by the time you were 40, so when else were you gonna do your burst of creativity if not from a young age?

This was exactly my reaction. This child needs to struggle his way into brilliance, or he'll never reach his true potential. Undeserved success can ruin people.

>> ^TheFreak:

The real shame is the uncritical feedback he's getting from the people around him. Without anyone to tell him that his music is ham fisted and clumsy there's every likelyhood that his narcisistic self appraisal will lead him to nothing.