>> ^rottenseed:
Anybody who has been to an average school let alone the "best" would know that quoting wikipedia as a source of your argument is a NO-NO.


Why? It's about as accurate as any other encyclopedia and certainly more up to date.

Would it have been better if he said the quote was from orwell.ru?

This idea that Wikipedia is useless is ridiculous. Read it with some skepticism, as you should with any encyclopedia, and check the source citations, which may not be an option with a traditional encyclopedia.

I would be lost without "WhoreMap", "DrugFinder", and the "Encyclopedia of Easy Crime"

Y'all mythalogical niggaz is comical
The astronomical is comin through like the flu bombin you
And embalmin in your crew too
With the musical mystical magical you know how I do
With word attack skills and vocabulary too
My rendition of this Edition is all brand New
You're through I make the planetarian like Doctor Who (who who?)
So Who! (who?)
Born to get tripped on, word is bond
I'm kickin rhymes til the A.M. vultures swarm
Not Quincy but I'm Back on the Block and not sellin crack
I'm comin in with the fat funk flows and tracks
So what you sayin black, with all that yackedy yack
My artifacts can't be beat with bats
I'm sayin, I eat up everthing up on the menu
and bend you and send you swayin, to be continued...

Spur of the moment opponents are suspects
Caught up in precipitation reign of the tech/niques
I speak my concepts freak
The ich-ni-son-shi funk figures of speech
Now that shit is in the open, I'm open, tokin, scopin
Waitin for the next nigga to get opened on
And break him down like a organic compound
That's the weight of the world as the Earth goes round
Now, how the fuck you sound?
I represent my clique, Microphone Pound
You better pack your leather, dope, or medication for the shakin
Meditation from the earth-to-quakin shit that we be bakin
Never fakin I gets down for my crown clown
Shakin the membrane of Encyclopedia Brown
Freakin the funk in any throwdown
While you sustain the sounds, up in ya...

I comes down breakin ground
So back up offa me and sit yo' ass down
Now when I'm on the microphone I roam through zones
But don't be tryin this shit at home
No matter what race creed colour him or her
I comes cleaner than Jeru, and Damage an amateur
As chronical facial disorders occur
I'll assassinate your character's caliber
I channel my anger, from the double edged banger (Banger!)
and turn into the microphone strangler
Stop tryin to see where your eyes can't follow
Say goodnight to the world and goodbye to tomorrow
You rave and cuss so it's a must ya get bust
We're not to be fucked with, Toys Ain't Us
For eternity, through infinity
I eternally, get in ya...

What you folks want? Yeah
We got the funk so come on down
What you folks want? Yeah
We got the funk so come on down
What you folks want?
We got the funk so come on down...

>> ^Morganth:
"Dead-on" would be the opposite of what this clip is. The top 10 best U.S. states as ranked by the so-called
"Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence" have a 40% higher rate of
violent crime, including murder, than the 10 worst states by the same
ranking


One thing I've noticed about statistics being used by pro-gun activists in the US, is it's always looking at either the difference in violent crime in between states, and the immediately 1-5 year effects of enacting harsher gun restrictions in other countries such as Britain.

For the first point, do you really think that in a US state which completely outlawed gun ownership it would really be that hard to smuggle weapons across the border from a neighbouring state which happens to have very lax gun ownership laws? Is the widespread evidence that guns are being bought in the US and used in Mexico for crime ring related violence not proof enough for you of the futility of such a narrow analysis?

For the second point, it's pretty clear that after purely enacting harsher gun laws there isn't going to be an immediate sudden dip in either gun ownership levels or as a result violent crime. In comparison a policy a while back in Australia encouraged a voluntary no questions asked hand over of guns. That alternatively, would have an immediate impact.

Given what I've said, consider the following statistic. Now I'm completely aware of the limitations, particular the issue of firearms being moved across borders, and the fact that it is likely living standards and poverty levels among other factors would have the overarching impact.

National Master ranking of murders with firearms (per capita) by country

Do you see a highly developed country above the US, 8th highest on the list? Yes, I'm sure despotic countries with a lack of data were neglected here, but that is of no real significance. How far do you have to go down before you see a developed country? How many times lower is the rate of murders with firearms for that country?

And it's no wonder. The US has the highest level of gun rate ownership in the world. 90 guns per 100 residents.

In the face of that, can you really tell me with all due certainty that gun ownership makes people safer and doesn't empower the criminal who is almost guaranteed to catch the victim without a gun just conveniently in reach? Can you really tell me without a shadow of a doubt that the whole notion that guns make people safer, a very parochially American view is not manufactured propaganda by the US gun industry to serve their own financial interests with a complete indifference to the death of their own countrymen?

>> ^smooman:
is it me, or is it laughably obnoxious when wikipedia is referenced in a serious discussion?


You should read the studies that have been done on Wikipedia. For example, there was a study done around 2005 by the science journal Nature that found it to be of the same order of accuracy (or inaccuracy) as Encyclopedia Britannica, which I believe is considered the most prestigious encyclopedia.

Articles in mainstream news sources, like Newsweek, on academic areas in which I have specialized knowledge commonly have groan-worthy inaccuracies or POV-pushing, or they make statements that aren't up-to-date, so I think we have an essentialist's tendency to overestimate the difference in accuracy between conventional sources and Wikipedia.

Also, at 3 million articles, Wikipedia has 30x the number of articles (e.g. 1) as Britannica, so unless you only care about a fraction of humankind's knowledge, or you have endless time to read textbooks in hundreds of academic fields, Wikipedia is the only game in town.

Alternative Links:

High Quality but region blocked
http://www.hulu.com/watch/63310/cosmos-encyclopedia-galactica#s-p1-so-i0
High quality but slow buffering (not region blocked)
http://www.guba.com/watch/3000083820
Veoh link ( HQ, but requires Veoh addon installed)
http://www.veoh.com/collection/cerebral/watch/v6294157DP4jJ8Hh

^ I think this conversation has gone past the point of, well, being a conversation.

You claim "the best evidence you can offer is a link to the democrats website that makes claim to the party", despite the fact that I have actually given links to Encylopedia Britannica, US History Encylcopedia, the Law Encyclopedia, a transcript from the Democratic National Convention in 1872 where Jefferson's grandson says he's been in the Democratic-Republican party for 80 years, and Martin van Buren's Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States, but apparently you are only able to notice that I also pointed out the Democratic Party itself makes the same claim.

You say that I "keep harping on the logo and platform change" but then say "that's not my argument," yet you've offered nothing else.

I'd never heard someone claim Jackson founded the Democratic party before, so when you first claimed it, I went and checked, because I thought I might be misremembering (they're both J-named Presidents, after all).

Everything I've said came from what I read, and only in my last response did I really try to draw my own inference.

You have yet to provide a source that frames the situation in the terms of "Andrew Jackson founded the Democratic Party" or even "The Democratic party begain in 1828".

For your convenience, I will provide the sole reference I've found that repeats your revisionist claims: Conservapedia. I'd think twice about trying to cite their credibility as being higher than Encyclopedia Britannica, though.

I'm not sure what, if anything, you're reading that backs you up beyond conservapedia, a single dictionary entry that used the word "dissolve" instead of "split", and your strongly held belief that Jefferson and the Democratic party are like oil and water. Sorry, I forgot, you don't like my analogies. I mean that you think Jefferson and the Democratic party can't possibly be combined.

My argument is pretty hard to refute; the people you claim "founded" the Democratic party themselves say they never left the Democratic-Republican party, they just changed the name.

If they say that, who's the supposed higher authority that gets to say "nice try guys, you really founded your own party"? Perhaps Adams or Clay could dispute it, but I've not found any source that says they made any attempt to dispute it. If they didn't, why are you?

Okay. First, I'll point out that you still don't have any sources that repeat your own claim that the Democratic-Republican party simply disappeared into thin air, and that there was a clear and clean break between that party and the Democratic Party.

Second, you either didn't understand my explanation of why the Republican party would be different, or well, I guess there is no other real explanation, because you laid out a straw man instead of responding to what I actually said.

Third, your fixation with the logo is unhealthy. Seriously, if we change the logo now to a Fox to mock Fox News, does that mean Bill O'Reilly founded the Democratic party? I'm not being entirely facetious -- if the Democratic-Republican party didn't have a logo before, but during the Jackson presidency they adopted it to spite the people calling him Jackass, does that make him the founder of the Democratic-Republican party? I think it makes him a Jackass, but that's not what we're talking about.

But really, this all comes down to #1. You said the answers.com page was accurate. Here's some of what you deemed accurate:

Encyclopedia Britannica:

In the 1790s a group of Thomas Jefferson's supporters called themselves "Democratic Republicans" or "Jeffersonian Republicans" to demonstrate their belief in the principle of popular government and their opposition to monarchism. The party adopted its present name in the 1830s, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson.

So, one party, that changed its name.

US History Encylcopedia:

By the end of Madison's presidency and throughout Monroe's two terms, known as the "Era of Good Feeling," the Democratic Republican Party largely abandoned its minimalism and supported tariff, banking, and improvements policies originally supported by its Federalist opponents.

After the retirement of James Monroe, the newly renamed "Democratic" Party came to rally around the candidacy of Andrew Jackson. Jackson steered the party back toward its minimalist origins.

The Law Encyclopedia entry starts with:

The modern Democratic party is the descendant of the Democratic-Republican party, an early-nineteenth-century political organization led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Also known as the Jeffersonians, the Democratic-Republican party began as an antifederalist group, opposed to strong, centralized government. The party was officially established at a national nominating convention in 1832. It dropped the Republican portion of its name in 1840.

They don't all agree about the exact timing of the change, but they say it was a change in name, not a newly founded party.

In the course of searching again today, I found a couple original-source documents:

Thomas Jefferson Randolph (Thomas Jefferson's grandson) said at the 1872 Democratic convention that he'd spent 80 years of his life in the Democratic-Republican party (source), and Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States By Martin Van Buren, where he discusses the topic at excruciating length, but frequently talks about the roots of the Democratic party beginning with Jefferson.

Look, you're just wrong. You can disagree with the history as it's written, but that makes you, not me, the revisionist.

It's okay. I don't blame you for being mad. You don't like the thought that Thomas Jefferson and William Jefferson Clinton were both from the same party. Here's a thought, maybe we should change the logo to a brunette sucking cock, to commemorate the founding of Limbaugh's Clinton's Democrat (as opposed to Democratic) party. The logo change, that's really all it takes to found a new party.

Someone call Hillary and let her know she won the nomination at the Democrat National Convention, where only Michigan and Florida count. Best not show her the new logo though.

Really? You must not have read any history books on the period then. Or clicked on the link I gave, and scanned the page.

I'm well aware of where the logo comes from...so what? If Democrats decide to start using Obama's logo from now on, does that mean Obama founded the Democratic party?

As for this:

>> ^blankfist:
I don't think anyone said if the platform is different, then the party is different. Not sure where you got that.

It came from this:

>> ^blankfist:
And there is a huge "break in the identity of the party between Jefferson's party" and the other big government, interventionist presidents you mentioned above (FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Obama). Jefferson believed the government that governs best is the government that governs least. Thomas Jefferson extended Washington's ideas in his March 4, 1801 inaugural address: "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." (cited) None of the recent presidents in either party have been very Jeffersonian.

That's either a non-sequitor, or it's your only substantiated assertion. Otherwise you're just answering my references with a denial of the existence of the references I already provided, and calling sources like Encyclopedia Britannica revisionist.

I meant "identity" in a more superficial sense. The Colony of Virginia was very different from the State we now call Virginia -- but it's still Virgina. Today's Virginia still carries a thread of identity from its colony days that hasn't been broken, that didn't change when West Virginia split off, and that wouldn't change if they decide tomorrow to change the name of the state to Virg. Its history would still start with being founded as an English colony.

Now, if West Virginia, instead of remaining a distinct entity decided to just merge with Ohio, it wouldn't make Ohio's origins become the same as Virginia's, but the acquisition of that territory would certainly be an important chapter in Ohio's history. That's analogous to the situation we have with the Whigs and the Lincoln-founded Republicans.

Now, you revisionist fucker of pigs, do you have a single source that starts the history of the Democratic party with Andrew Jackson, that never mentions the Democratic-Republican party?

I know you love Jefferson, and hate Democrats, but the former begat the latter, even if you don't like it.

>> ^vaporlock:
Check the sources and make your own judgments.
Here are a few:

Thanks. My judgement is that your links are from an unreliable and demonstrably biased source.

Criticism of SourceWatch
SourceWatch has a generally liberal and left-wing outlook on issues, and most of the project's investigative and critical articles are aimed and directed at what SourceWatch perceives to be prominent conservatives, those that are right-of center and Republican Party organizations and individuals.

Sourcewatch has been criticised by conservatives and opponents of environmentalism for its political stance. Alan Caruba, who describes himself as a critic of "environmental propaganda' writes "Source Watch is a project of the Center of Media & Democracy, a left-wing organization that devotes a lot of time to attacking the public relations profession in general and conservative writers in particular."[4].


http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/SourceWatch

WikiPedia:

Lieutenant General Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin (Russian: Владимир Сергеевич Илюшин) (born 31 March 1927) is a son of aircraft designer Sergei Ilyushin and a noted test pilot in the Soviet Union. He spent most of his career as a test pilot for the Sukhoi OKB.

Ilyushin is purported to be a cosmonaut; it is alleged he became the first man in space on 7 April 1961. This honor is generally attributed to Yuri Gagarin whose spaceflight, Vostok 1, took place on 12 April.

The theories surrounding this alleged orbital spaceflight are that a failure aboard the spacecraft caused controllers to bring the descent capsule down several orbits earlier than intended, which resulted in its landing in the People's Republic of China whereupon the pilot was held by Chinese authorities for a year before being returned to the Soviet Union. The international embarrassment that would have resulted from having their pilot held is cited as the Soviets' reason for not publicizing this flight and instead focusing their adulation on the subsequent successful flight of Gagarin.

However, there are reasons to disbelieve this allegation, notably that although both were Communist governments, relations between the Soviets and Chinese were strained, and the propaganda value to the Chinese of a Soviet pilot captured flying over their territory would have given little reason for Chinese complicity in a coverup.

According to Mark Wade, editor of the well known website Encyclopedia Dramatica, "The entire early history of the Soviet manned space program has been declassified and we have piles of memoirs of cosmonauts, engineers, etc who participated. We know who was in the original cosmonaut team, who never flew, was dismissed, or was killed in ground tests. Ilyushin is not one of them."

"This weapon, known simply as Tri-Entity or Turbo, is a great, unhealthy looking three-bladed sword. The central blade is the equivalent of a long sword of sharpness while the two outer blades are similar in size to short swords of sharpness. When [the wielder] swings and hits, he causes 2d6+1d8 damage, with a +5 bonus for the weapon's enchantment.

The two outer blades can be shot from the hilt, attacking as arrows of accuracy +4. If the arrows miss their target, the blades fly back to the sword like a pair of boomerangs and reattach by the end of the current round."

- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Encyclopedia Magica Volume 4

Only reason wikipedia has scandals and Ecyclopedica Britannica does not, is that people have access to wikipedia. I use wikipedia every day, but I haven't looked in a "proper" encyclopedia in about 10 years..

F U you friggin tin can. Your mother was an encyclopedia and your father was a computer!

When they let their seeecret stuff get so old, it should be ok to talk about it.
I'm still waiting for my Polywell fusion reactor, too.