>> ^shuac:

And just what was Barack Obama doing during 1966-1970?
Note that I've tagged this comment with the sarcasm tag, because Obama was 5 years old in 1966, making the above question kind of ridiculous. However, had I not opted to write this extra comment pointing out the sarcasm, I'm quite sure the tag would have gone unnoticed and someone here would have undoubtedly come to Obama's defense in a frothy, picayune fashion. How do I know this? Because it's happened many times before: the sarcasm tag is too subtle.

See, to me the whole point of sarcasm is that the subtext isn't obvious, or at least isn't obvious to everybody. If you'd made that post without explanation or "intonation" I still would have got it. Its like an inside joke. You have to risk excluding people to make others feel included in the joke.


Although, it did just dawn on me that you might be using the sarcasm tag and explanation ironically. Thats really some next level meta-sarcasm right there.

how DARE you attack joss whedon!
dont you know who he is?
he is JOSS and his opinion is like like dew from the golden truth tree!
all celebrities have bigger and better functioning brains than the rest of us and we should always..ALWAYS...listen to their words of wisdom.
they are like..meta-humans and we should never have a contrary opinion.

i mean really...who needs facts?

>> ^radx:

Long story short: code is at the bottom.
Either I'm too blind to see the obvious or embedding a Rutube clip is, pardon my French, a fucking pain in the arse.
The iframe code you can get through the respective button on Rutube doesn't work. The video ID itself, injected into a template, doesn't work. Although, the latter at least produces a working player, just no valid video code to use it on.
What you have to do is get the proper video ID for embeds.
Open the site's source code and look for the following entry:
<meta property="og:image" content="http://tub.rutube.ru/thumbs-wide/91/4f/914f09904b50b553f3a345ef8ce61b49-1.jpg" />
That's a link for the thumbnail image Rutube used, and since it was taken automatically from the original video, it includes the proper video ID, as marked in bold.
Now take the ID and inject it into a working template, eg:

<object width="640" height="360">
<param name="movie" value="http://video.rutube.ru/$ID"></param>
<param name="wmode" value="window"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<embed src="http://video.rutube.ru/$ID" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="window" width="640" height="360" allowFullScreen="true" ></embed>
</object>

Long story short: code is at the bottom.

Either I'm too blind to see the obvious or embedding a Rutube clip is, pardon my French, a fucking pain in the arse.

The iframe code you can get through the respective button on Rutube doesn't work. The video ID itself, injected into a template, doesn't work. Although, the latter at least produces a working player, just no valid video code to use it on.

What you have to do is get the proper video ID for embeds.

Open the site's source code and look for the following entry:

<meta property="og:image" content="http://tub.rutube.ru/thumbs-wide/91/4f/914f09904b50b553f3a345ef8ce61b49-1.jpg" />

That's a link for the thumbnail image Rutube used, and since it was taken automatically from the original video, it includes the proper video ID, as marked in bold.

Now take the ID and inject it into a working template, eg:

<object width="640" height="360">
<param name="movie" value="http://video.rutube.ru/$ID"></param>
<param name="wmode" value="window"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<embed src="http://video.rutube.ru/$ID" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="window" width="640" height="360" allowFullScreen="true" ></embed>
</object>

<object width="640" height="360">
<param name="movie" value="http://video.rutube.ru/914f09904b50b553f3a345ef8ce61b49"></param>
<param name="wmode" value="window"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<embed src="http://video.rutube.ru/914f09904b50b553f3a345ef8ce61b49" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="window" width="640" height="360" allowFullScreen="true" ></embed>
</object>

@ReverendTed
I will try to be brief, because I can’t wait for the “we solved abortion” party, and because @kymbos has made me self-conscious '. There is much to be said on the subject of your tangent, but I will keep it at this:

a) nothing is “extra-physical” (or meta-physical, or supernatural, etc.)
b) consciousness is subordinate to cognition and the treatment of sensory input, as even your illustration of consciousness testifies (see also: how blind-from-birth people dream)

A brain which has never received/treated sensory input is nothing more than a muscle-regulator. I am very grateful to @Tojja for linking the Sagan piece, because I now have a great mind backing my own intuitions.


Now back to the problem of regulating/prohibiting abortion. I take your lack of response to my rebuttal of the adoption “solution” as your agreeing with me (tell me if I’m wrong), in which case it illustrates what I argued concerning the lack of pragmatism on the pro-life side. Because let’s face it, the following are constants:

a) people will have sex, sometimes leading to unwanted pregnancy
b) people will want/need abortions, whether legal or not
c) criminalising abortion (be it on the doctor’s or the woman’s side) results in risky practices, especially by the most at risk (poor/uneducated)
d) putting all would-have-been-aborteds up for adoption is abhorrent and absurd

So what to do about it?

I notice that your argumentation goes back to the whole “potential” shtick, including the emotionally manipulative retroprojection of human individuality on a ball of cells in the example of how pro-lifers think. Sagan argues against the whole “potential” thing better than I do, so I’ll leave it at that, but I do take issue with the “good comes from bad” argument. Yes, undesired kids can grow to have great lives, just as the contrary can happen. But in a case opposing an individual who is and one who might be (but is not yet), it is the former’s choice that takes precedence (yes, we’re pro-choice, not pro-abortion or abortion-tolerant). Don’t forget, many unexpected pregnancies end in chosen births, not abortions. The important thing is not whether it is unexpected, but whether or not it is undesired. It is the choice of the woman, usually based on reflexion on what would her and the eventual child’s quality of life be like, to let what is at that stage only potential become an actual human individual.

Do you ever miss what you were like before you existed? That nothingness before life and after death is all an aborted foetus ever gets, because it never reaches the stage of cognition that allows for consciousness and thus for identity. As an aside, I must admit I found your comparison between the pro-life stance and the It Gets Better campaign rather crude, insensitive and not well-thought-through at all. I’ll let you figure out why. As for eugenics, that is another debate entirely, whose crux is not “can a woman chose to pursue/terminate a pregnancy” but instead “can (a) parent(s) chose to pursue/terminate a pregnancy based on discriminatory criteria”. The difference should be easy to spot.

_{We seem to agree on humanitarian aid, so high-fives all round}

I recommend you put down the studies and use your brain. Humans who walk and or run everyday sometimes for dozens of miles don't weigh 300 pounds. They just don't I don't care what study you think proves that someone with giant mounds of fat attached to their skeleton lived back in a hunter gatherer society. It's JUST NOT FUCKING TRUE. You don't get 40% body fat from running and eating nuts.
>> ^LarsaruS:

>>I recommend reading this study comparing a hunter gatherer society's energy expenditure to western society.
Also look at this meta study regarding energy expenditure and activity level and its relation to obesity.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^LarsaruS:
>> ^Yogi:
I like it when women who have curves say that women are supposed to have curves. It's just not true, we're supposed to be starving hungry animals running around ALL over the F'n place trying to persistently hunt down our food. I sincerely doubt there was ever a fat "cave person".

If you look at the old (stone age) stone figures for fertility they are all round so I guess they had rotund people back then too...

Because fertility gods are pregnant!


I recommend reading this study comparing a hunter gatherer society's energy expenditure to western society.

Also look at this meta study regarding energy expenditure and activity level and its relation to obesity.

Where they constantly complain about "reposts" and "karma". It's a strange, rather self-congratulatory community at times and it feels like a group I just can't get into.

The stuff you find is brilliant at times but it's strictly a read-only experience for me.

Actually can anyone explain what the point of karma is? Is there a leaderboard or something because I've never seen one. I just don't get their meta-game.


>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^ulysses1904:
Everything from Rita Pavone to a documentary on Three Mile Island to the VICE guide to Liberia to math and science videos and old songs and movies that I had forgotten about or never knew about. Where else you gonna find all that?

Apparently on reddit
rimshot!
Thank you, I'll be here all week....

Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell also are gods of comedy that make excellent political commentary via their art.. Patrice O'Neal had great points as well. Kudos to meta-cognition.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Most Meta Tony's every. It's the Tonys about Tonys.

I <3 meta!

Ant! Posting adorable ants!
Very meta.

Good point about google analytics. You can't interpret any of that data as representative of popularity or usefulness of different features, but it could certainly help point out where users are focusing their attention in the interface itself (are the submenus more or less used? what's the most common path to submitting a video?).

Minimalism can be, but isn't necessarily, a design goal. The Principle of Least Surprise should absolutely be one. There shouldn't be submenus that look and behave differently. The variety of decorations and information surrounding a video on the single video page is unnecessarily complex. Much of the information is of a similar nature (meta data about the video), but is presented about a half dozen different ways, sometimes redundantly. Another goal should be to group similar or related activities together, which they are to some extent now, but could be better consolidated. (Why are the different community activities - SiftTalk, Lounge, Blogs, etc. - all separated?)

I'm trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to avoid specific suggestions to one area of functionality because this is the kind of change that needs to be comprehensive, not achieved with a lot of tweaks to the existing interface. The latter method is how it got where it is now, slowly accumulating elements and features for over two and half years since the last major overhaul of the interface. Given everything that's been added or changed since then, it's probably time to consider another overhaul.

so meta it hurts....

They got the falling camera on camera, meta camera action!