I did not expect to sit through the whole 1/2 hour...but I found him intelligent and informative.
He's only the third person I've ever heard talk about the extinction event happening to dinosaurs BEFORE the asteroid hit.
Well worth the watch.

The raving lunatic with a machete is a clear threat to everyone in the area. Incapacitating him with tasers is far quicker and safer (to the cops and civilians) than trying to contain him with riot shields. Is there a chance that the taser could kill him? Sure. However, the chance is far lower than if you shoot him with a gun. And again, it isn't just the life of one man at stake. The suspect was obviously deranged, violent and unpredictable. At any point, he could have made a beeline for one of the cops or some random pedestrian and done serious damage. That's 30 minutes of putting lives at risk vs 1 minute of relatively safe tasering.

As for the possible positive outcomes... what, he recovers and leads a mediocre life working as a janitor because nobody wants to hire someone with a history of violent psychosis? How many years would it take to reach that point? How much taxpayer money would be spent? Is a single lost cause worth all that time, money and risk? If humanity were on the verge of extinction and every life really mattered then sure, he might be worth it. However, there's no shortage of perfectly sane and productive members of society that don't run around swinging machetes and howling like animals. Society already puts down animals that pose a threat to humans. Why not extend that policy to the most dangerous animal of all?

No, I mentioned those few officers that had not seen the criminal action (and so not ignored it), they are just such a tiny minority that they are statistically insignificant. I gave them...and the non-corrupt forces an incredibly generous 10%, even though I believe the true measure is closer to <2%. I have yet to see an independent investigation of any police force that failed to find rampant criminal behavior force wide. I conceded that they likely do exist...somewhere...but they have yet to show themselves, and appear to be quite endangered if not extinct.
Whistleblowers do show up, but in such tiny numbers compared to total law enforcement that they statistically don't exist at all.
I understand that's your position, I just disagree. Ben Franklin was talking about private citizens VS law enforcement, and you have twisted it backwards. Those IN law enforcement have a higher duty to be honest, non-violent, non-criminals. Do you not agree? And please understand no one has suggested putting them all in prison based on a presumption of guilt...which is what Ben Franklin was talking about...the court of public opinion is a different matter. Also, in practice, assuming that all law enforcement is 'bad' and are untrustworthy liars actually lets far more innocent 'escape suffering', since they are the one's making the (often enough, false) charges. Just something to think about.

OK, let me try another tact. Do you think it's OK to put all members of a mafia crime family in prison, even though some may have done little more than honest accounting work? Well, I'm not suggesting prison, or even replacement, just meaningful, independent oversight EDIT:with real teeth. While I would LIKE to replace all officers (including the 'good' ones, let them all re-apply with stricter standards) and start fresh, I do see that that's not in any way reasonable or feasible...the best I can hope for is a change in behavior and a change in how we treat them...to one of zero tolerance for any professional malfeasance.
OK, once again, there is a statistically insignificant population of law enforcement that is totally 'pure' and not criminal. They exist. Because law enforcement as a group has become SO corrupt, they will be lumped in with the rest in public opinion until they prove themselves. There comes a point when the presumption of innocence is so damaged by a particular group of like minded individuals (which excludes by race, as a race is not 'like minded') that it no longer makes sense....and I'm far past that point. I now presume they are all trained liars (and I contend that's true, all of them, 100%, it's part of the job, and another way they're 'bad', but that's another discussion altogether) and that they'll lie to and about anyone they come in contact with. It's a terrible presumption to have to make about a group of people, but the only logical one to make since the alternative so overwhelmingly often leads to severe suffering for the innocent.

Tasmanian has had a very rough time with the Tassy Tiger also being hunted to extinction (kind of a marsupial wolf iirc) and, not to equate humans to animals, the Tasmanian Aboriginals also being wiped out due to small pox and other diseases from well meaning missionaries.

In the devils case, this seems to be an awful trick of evolution, as noted in the video, a single animal experienced a cell mutation which left it with a communicable cancer that is uniquely suited to transmit via the devils form of (anti)social interaction... = (

Well, yeah, magnets don't repel against anything except magnets.

Unless there's some physics-shattering discovery some day, there will never be something compact that just repels against the surface of random ground. And no matter how much power you have, it definitely won't be able to repel against water.

At most, perhaps some day after our grandkids are dead there could be super powerful little jets that can force enough air downward in a tiny space to support the weight of a person, but human extinction will probably occur first, and static levitation is impossible.

(They use gigantic machines to generate a magnetic force to levitate a tiny frog, but that kind of force will never be compact nor support any meaningful mass.)

http://videosift.com/video/Diamagnetic-Levitation

The US and most of Europe are just beginning to experience this, so unfortunately far too few people know it, but in many parts of the world most frogs and toads have gone extinct. As many as 2000 different species (1/3 of all frogs & toads) are expected to go extinct. In regions like the Amazon where once there were dozens of species and millions of amphibians, most are completely wiped out.

Of course it's unreasonable to say reason is becoming extinct. I would say that for the last 300 years or so, we've become amazingly reason-driven. There are probably more people alive today who are reasonable (who believe that the validity of their own and others actions is best judged by a measure of their rationality) than in all of human history.

As for your other questions:
1) Do I even have a bit of an analytical mind? Yes, in a jar, in the fridge.
2) Did I ever have history in school? Yes, on several occasions. We never covered Fox News though

*quality *engineering to make this work. I'm guessing this is 3d printed.
*promote

On a less positive note, it's going to be a problem when my amphibious brethren aren't there to eat the bugs and provide a few links in the food chain. I hope they get a grasp on Chytrid soon, we have enough problems with habitat depletion as it is. I'm often surprised the mass extinction of an entire CLASS of life doesn't get more attention. It's a pretty big deal (but I am biased).

People will still call you a liberal or conservative, whatever.
When you get your information like that you will have many different opinions that dont fit one side. People will attack you even more, since youre now in the middle, between the extremists. Even if youre on their side on some things, they will still attack you because you dont go the whole way. On the other hand people from the other side will attack you because you have a trait of their "enemy" on one topic, so you must be a full blown "other sideling".
But people want to be accepted by the society, so they most of the time decide for one side. Thats why the world is getting more black and white and reason is becoming extinct.

@robdot

You're either trollin' or just real thick.

Yes, the simulation could in start an arbitrary place.
Yes, the devs could pre-programmed our knowledge of historical events.

That's besides the point, you're missing the point.

One philosophical tool we humans use to analyze the world is called - Occam's Razor.

Meaning, hypotheses that are overly complex should be simplified to their bare minimum in order to draw the best conclusions.

You COULD make a simulation with pre-programmed historical events.. and procedurally generated galaxies..

but that's even complex than simply setting up a few simple rules and variables.. and letting that simulation play out.

THE EVEN MORE GLARINGLY POINT THAT YOU KEEP GLOSSING OVER is..

It's much more likely that any civilization advance enough to create such simulations...

Would probably be extinct or too busy living in utopia to do so.

AGAIN, a point the author of the video concede MANY times.

ExxonMobil had the Bush administration lobbying strongly to replace the chair of the IPCC with a more agreeable alternative, which we know about because of a leaked memo. So let us not pretend that the IPCC are above the skepticism of being politically influenced. The name "intergovernmental panel" says it all, in my opinion; i had assumed the I stood for Independent.

I don't apologise for not reading the entire thread because i noticed that in your first post you said the following, and it gave me cause to doubt your take on the science in the rest of the thread. I've been in too many discussions in which i spent hours researching only to find out people were completely wrong, and i spent 45 mins on your first paragraph already. Anyway here is the quote again:

"IPCC best estimates for 2100 are about 1.5 degree increase, so another hundred years and increase that is about twice as bad. Of course, it's twice as bad as what we saw the last 100 yeas and not only survived, but thrived under."

Firstly, the planet's flora and fauna have most certainly NOT thrived during that time. Humans have flourished by exploiting nature, so yes we have 'thrived'. In the same way that if i were to steal money from a dozen old ladies, i might say i was thriving even though i was out of work during the economic downturn. Pretty much every source agrees that the one thing the ecosystem is not doing is thriving - we are in or on the verge of the sixth mass extinction on the planet. So this is an inspiring yet futile "hurrah for us!" bravado that ignores the truth; we stand on the deck of a galleon around a big bonfire, ripping up planks and chopping up the boat, throwing it on the fire and going "we're all lovely and warm!" as we sit lower and lower in the water.

Secondly and in my opinion most significantly, according to the IPCC conclusions on page 8 you have used the term "best estimates" to mean "best case scenario" rather than "most reliable estimate" - which is why i have downvoted that comment, as it is misleading and incorrect. I would say it's cynically misleading, but i suspect you've lifted that from a cynical source rather than being cynical yourself.

I don't know if you realise, but you referred to only one result out of four, the rest of which strongly indicate a greater than 2 degree rise. Your reference is to RCP 2.6 which assumes CO2 emissions peak between 2010 and 2020. A decade in which the most populous countries on the planet are developing and a decade in which we must start to reduce global emissions so that we have a good chance of your best case scenario happening. We are already half way through it, and according to Mauna Loa observatory and every other source i could find (including EPA, NOAA and IEA) we are still increasing our CO2 emissions year on year including this year, where we've broken the 400ppm milestone, 120ppm greater than pre industrial times, half of which occured since 1980 (Pieter Tans).

So in fairness, you might have underplayed the IPCC report (which you seem to get almost all of your information from) in as much as newtboy might have overestimated the dangers and rapidity of climate change. I think you're out on a limb by telling him that the scientific community disagrees with him and he's using dodgy sources, when you've cherry picked one quarter of a conclusion from one source (the IPCC) to argue for your best case scenario which you refer to (unscientifically and incorrectly) as the "best estimate".

However, i do at least appreciate that despite your doubts (and in my opinion, slight confusion over the results, i don't think you're being intentionally misleading) you are very much behind changing our behaviour and using resources that are more appropriate... and that's what really matters right now is that people recognise the need to change.

Interesting info, but also kind of false/lame advertising.

How to break the Internet:
1) allow older hardware to keep running; can't really do anything to cause that
2) cut the cords; as he said, you couldn't cut enough to cause a problem
3) allow (?) a solar flare to happen and destroy our power grid; oh, shut up

How about:
4) wait for a huge meteor to collide with Earth and cause a mass extinction and all of mankind; boom, Internet is broken
5) wait for the next ice age

They aren't describing "how to break the Internet." It's just "things that could affect the Internet."

Don't be so sure about that being the case if you come to the USA.
I was pulled out of my car at gunpoint, thrown to the ground, and had the knee to my face because an idiot officer read my license plate wrong and assumed my car was stolen, then when he realized his mistake, threatened me with reprisal when he said "...remember, bud, I know where you live if you report this".

I did report it. I had to fight tooth and nail just to make that report, the officers at the station didn't want to take it or allow me to make a written complaint, and actually said at one point 'we don't take written complaints about officers.', and absolutely nothing came of it in the end.

Until American police forces clean house, if I wanna see a "good cop", I'll have to go on vacation to another country. When you say "People in your country hate cops so much because the good ones allow the bad ones to dominate the public Image." you miss the point that they also allow the 'bad' one's to act badly with no consequence, and stand behind them consistently with lies about what really happened...only to be proven clearly to be liars when video comes out. That's why I say the 'good cops' are endangered, if not extinct at this point.

The extinct pigeons from North America are the Passenger pigeons which were wiped out in the late 19th Century.

The pigeons kept as pets, which are the same ones used as carrier pigeons, are still quite plentiful.

I still say they're rats with wings.
That said, I've raised rats as pets...so....

I've read before that real homing/carrier pigeons are extinct since WW2 when they were invaluable. Is that not true?