Dunbar's number also has a few things to say about the mood on the sift as well, methinks.

>> ^rbar:
I am a big believer in Dunbars number but I dont think it can be used so easily about left or right wing policies.

I agree with that in part. Certainly the conclusion the guy in the vid states is taking it way too far. However, it's a psychological phenomenon that speaks to that classification we all make; dividing people into those we know, and everyone else.

I think one of the deep differences between people on the left, and people on the right centers around the interpretation of that concept to a large part.

People on the left say humans are humans whether I know them or not, and while it's harder to instinctively identify with and sympathize with people you've never met, it's something you should always strive to do.

People on the right say humans are humans, and nobody cares about anyone outside their group, and nothing's gonna change that, so we should construct society in such a way that our naturally selfish impulses serve the community.

I personally think both of those are true, and that moderate economic policies give you the best of both worlds.

This whole Democrat vs. Republican thing is just a fight over what "moderate" means.

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory... ...will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

- Abraham Lincoln

Fascinating how editing has evolved over the years, the long takes for the sake of exposition are so dated. I was watching a film from the 50's the other day, and everybody constantly used the other character's name, I'm sure it was to help make the exposition more obvious. A very respected editor named Walter Murch wrote a book called "In The Blink Of An Eye", which addresses this...editing has evolved to work with our natural pacing of eye blinks, exposition unfolds in our current idea of 'real time'...
If this film were made today, the exposition would take up maybe ten percent of the film, and the rest would be hallucinatory dream visuals, the reverse of this...

Dr. Strangelove? Really? I thought you'd want a credible non fictitious character. Rather then a comment from a dark comedy.

In reply to this comment by Goofball_Jones:
General Jack D. Ripper: "Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face."

God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids.

>> ^ant:
Music was annoying. Wouldn't it be easier to drop the whole coconut pack?


I agree - the music is horrible.

The human should always win, if we're able to employ our natural talents: use of tools. Knife with sharp serrated edge should do it, if not a portable power tool of some sort. Plus, we could shoot the monkey.

Go humans!

Hopefully one day we will rid ourselves of puritan guilt and shame. The human body and sex is at the core of our nature and is not a big deal. Titillation is a good thing; healthy even.

Cultural conditioning aside, what is offensive about this? It's cute. This clip wouldn't even raise an eyebrow in most of Europe.

Note: It's always the puritans who get caught doing the really messed up kinky stuff.

I guess I'll nix that 'Edward Penishands' clip I was about to submit.

ichifish, I agree with you that these qualities are part of our nature and I've never assigned them to something outside of myself. Rather, I believe that our nature is divine. I haven't believed that God is something 'out there' or the guy in white robes or any other traditional view of god, since I was about 14.

I think because the atheist argument is stuck on this definition of god, there is a stubborn adherence to an antiquated idea, limiting the exploration of something new. If you don't believe we are truly divine, the essence of love, so to speak, try this for an experiment:

Get the person you love to sit in front of you on the floor. Hold their hands, massaging them all the time, while you stare into their eyes. Do this for at least ten minutes.If you feel foolish or embarrassed, just relax and keep going anyway. The love you feel for them will well up in your chest, 'til you feel it's going to burst. It's absolutely beautiful.

Now for the interesting part: if you were to do the same with a complete stranger, or someone you didn't like, or someone whose looks even scared you, you will find exactly the same result will occur.

It's been done by many people, all over the world and the results are the same. Go to a tantric workshop if you don't have the opportunity otherwise.

gwiz, our choice has nothing to do with semantics, because when you have one parent who believes in no god and another who believes everything is god, the closest mid point between these disparate ideas, is that there is something amazing about our world, which deserves a word to describes its awesome-ness.

I agree with gwiz665 that the at the heart of the problem is a stubborn belief that there must be something out there that we can attribute qualities such as love and compassion to, instead of just admitting that these -as well as all of the other emotions and motivations- are part or our nature as living creatures.

General Jack D. Ripper: "Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face."

God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids.

"I could go on."

Don't. Your words are poison.

Man forged God in the depths of his lowest animal needs. As such God's laws are a reflection and rationalisation of man's inherent inclinations, reinforcing the attitudes and prejudices impressed on us by millions of years under the cruel yoke of natural selection. Humanity's innate morality is nothing but a grim evolutionary survival strategy: Be monogamous - a child with two parents has a better chance of surviving to pass on their genes. Don't slack off or steal - far better to increase the productivity of your community, giving an advantage to your relatives and the genes they carry. Love your family and spouse - protect your offspring and means to produce more. Don't be gay! - Gay people won't have children and are effectively worthless from an evolutionary perspective. And on and on.

Some of the conclusions are right, accidentally, and others are wrong, but they all lie on a shoddy foundation. The best stratagem is not always the ethical one; witness the spectacular efficacy of napalm. On the surface it may appear obedience to our nature and divine law works as well as true, self-realised, morality - it keeps us relatively safe and comfortable, but consider the repercussions of predicating all decisions on either the unfit tool of instinct or religious ideas inherited from peers and unexamined critically, themselves of course only distillations and perversions of instinct. In other words imagine a person acting wholly from irrationality (that is, the average person); at best such a person is utterly amoral. You may as well flip a coin.

Our instincts betray us, but liberation is at hand; freedom from the natural order is achieved by mankind's unique percipience - reason. Reason is our salvation and the true path to ethics. To achieve righteousness it is necessary to cast aside the lie of instinct and religion.

Logic leads quickly and directly to the principle of self-ownership. That's the principle we should be teaching our children. Not an oppressive standard of behaviour to which they must adhere, but a solid foundation on which to build with the bricks and mortar of experience and reason, the substances of truth.

Greenpeace is a retarded naive and evil organization that wants to keep people poor.
They say they want a better environment and that we should pollute less. But they don't want nuclear power. They only want solar which is nowhere near being economically viable. But this is just naivety.
The absolute worst thing is their anti genetically modified food stance. You know they actually convinced Zambia to reject food aid because it was GM. They also oppose golden rice with extra vitamins that would reduce blindness and other diseases in Asia. They oppose the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It is like they want the third world to starve. Which they probably do because it would help the rain forest.
They want everyone to do organic farming. This is ridiculous as it would require much more land to feed people which mean much more clearcutting of forests to support agriculture.
They oppose more development in developing countries like opposing mining and logging. These are the natural recourses of these countries and they have every right to use them. We got rich by exploiting our natural recourses so why shouldn't they?
Greenpeace can complain about their little things and be against poor people developing while most of them and their members are really rich and have comfortable lives..

Am from Uzbekistan. This is all because of the fucking goverment that is just raping my nation over and over again, the whole thing is mafia from the soviet times. Across the border Kazakhstan is booming economically while our goverment seeks only to oppress the people and media.

They just shot up civilians protesting ridiculous goverment taxes and actions mercilessly, and then turned around and said it was terrorists... Everyone in the world turned a blind eye because of The Global War on Terror. Uzbekistan kicked the US forces out, and got all cushy with Putin. Even if the western countries embargo cotton from Uzbekistan, all that will do is drive Uzbekistan into the arms of Russia even more, who are looking to strike pipeline deals for our natural gas reservoirs.

I wish I could just assassinate the entire fucking cabinet and hang the president because they have been committing crimes against our own people ever since we gained 'independence', its such a facade and it makes me sick.

Absolutely we eat it. Without doing so I sincerely doubt we could have ensured our survival up to this point in time, I personally believe it has been essential to the development of the technological culture that allows us to spend time "sifting" through these little amusing tidbits online.

You are absolutely correct, dag--people don't seem to realize what we are doing. I think that if you eat meat, you should hunt, at least once. Perhaps we can evolve ourselves to be vegetarians in the long run, but for now, it seems prudent to accept our nature as omnivores, at least from an evolutionary perspective.

Regardless of all that, fast food is disgusting. Upvote for truth

So a republican working at a media firm with ExxonMobil as one of its clients throws together a video that makes no points nor counters any of V.P. Gore's. The obvious conclusion is that it was made by public relations professionals at the direction of a multi-national behemoth? Ha! Good work, ABC; you've connected the dots and come up with... a squiggly line. Every cloud looks like something to the mind of the observer.

It's ABC who is presenting the argument here. But since they couldn't tie it to more than one guy, they set it up so our naturally suspicious minds fill in from the supplied info. I can't believe they spent money investigating who made the sad satire.

Propaganda actually presents some kind of information. Penguin army just calls the movie boring. How dare! And people might believe it based on this subtle animation. Scandal. Too bad the creator of the video didn't work in the idea department instead of the graphics department. And take it home to post it.