>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^bcglorf:
So the moral is, it is absolutely time to panic.
Not just maybe, but absolutely time to panic.
Fortunately, he IS overstating the situation. Right from the very start he declares how stable the last 10k years have been, and that the last 100 have already broken all records seen over those 10k years. Go use google scholar and read Michael Mann's recent work on reconstructing the last 2k years. Mann is one of the leading scientists arguing that it is time to panic and things are getting bad very fast. His research is publicly available on google scholar for everyone to go and read.
If you can be bothered to go and read that before shouting me down as a denier, you will find the following in his research. That there is at least some evidence that on at least two occasions over the last 2k years, climate HAS been as warm or warmer than current.
I'm not saying it's all roses and that there is nothing to see here. I AM saying that if you go read the actual research you'll find a much more nuanced and less panic stricken assortment of facts than what is presented in this video.

Can you post a link to the page your talking about? I used google scholar, but Mann has published quite a few papers and I really don't have time to read them all.
That said, even if I read the paper, I'm not confident I'd understand it fully. From my limited research into climatology, it's a reasonably complex science. My problem is that I don't really have time to study all the theory around this.
And frankly, I shouldn't have to. I'm not a climatologist. No-one alive today can possibly hope to understand all science in every field. That's why we specialise. With a small amount of ego, I'm willing to say that most climatologists are worse programmers than I am, but that's ok too, 'cos that's not their field.
What I'm trying to say in my trademark, rambling, incoherent way is that I generally accept a scientific consensus (assuming it's been properly peer reviewed and so on). Fallacy of majority? Possibly. I'm willing to accept the possibility that there's a gifted climatologist out there who is desperately trying to get the rest of them to understand the crucial theory/evidence/algorithm they've missed, and it's all going to be ok. Hell, I hope there is, but it seems unlikely to me.
To apply Occams razor: which makes more sense?


You can see Mann's latest work here. Just don't stop with reading the abstract where he declares the reinforcement of his previous studies and findings. Go further down and look at the reconstruction of the last 2k years the article was built on. The green EIV line is the 'newer' statistical method recommended to him by statisticians that claimed his previous method was biased towards 0(minimized highs and lows). You can clearly see the EIV reconstruction shows multiple peaks in the past. More importantly though, look at the last 100 years on the graph. The bold red line is the instrumental record. It blots out most of the last 100 years, but if you look closely, you can see that none of the reconstructed lines spike away into scary land like the instrumental record. In fact, none of the reconstructed lines climb above where the EIV line has peaked multiple times in the past. To me that screams the need to look harder still at the probability that our methods for reconstruction aren't sensitive enough to pick up a short spike like what we know from the instrumental record is currently taking place. That doesn't prove spikes like the last 100 years are common, but it DOES call into serious question the claim that it's never happened before in the last 2k years. That final claim is the vital and key point between everyone panic and lets study this further to understand it fully.

>> ^bcglorf:

So the moral is, it is absolutely time to panic.
Not just maybe, but absolutely time to panic.
Fortunately, he IS overstating the situation. Right from the very start he declares how stable the last 10k years have been, and that the last 100 have already broken all records seen over those 10k years. Go use google scholar and read Michael Mann's recent work on reconstructing the last 2k years. Mann is one of the leading scientists arguing that it is time to panic and things are getting bad very fast. His research is publicly available on google scholar for everyone to go and read.
If you can be bothered to go and read that before shouting me down as a denier, you will find the following in his research. That there is at least some evidence that on at least two occasions over the last 2k years, climate HAS been as warm or warmer than current.
I'm not saying it's all roses and that there is nothing to see here. I AM saying that if you go read the actual research you'll find a much more nuanced and less panic stricken assortment of facts than what is presented in this video.


Can you post a link to the page your talking about? I used google scholar, but Mann has published quite a few papers and I really don't have time to read them all.

That said, even if I read the paper, I'm not confident I'd understand it fully. From my limited research into climatology, it's a reasonably complex science. My problem is that I don't really have time to study all the theory around this.

And frankly, I shouldn't have to. I'm not a climatologist. No-one alive today can possibly hope to understand all science in every field. That's why we specialise. With a small amount of ego, I'm willing to say that most climatologists are worse programmers than I am, but that's ok too, 'cos that's not their field.

What I'm trying to say in my trademark, rambling, incoherent way is that I generally accept a scientific consensus (assuming it's been properly peer reviewed and so on). Fallacy of majority? Possibly. I'm willing to accept the possibility that there's a gifted climatologist out there who is desperately trying to get the rest of them to understand the crucial theory/evidence/algorithm they've missed, and it's all going to be ok. Hell, I hope there is, but it seems unlikely to me.

To apply Occams razor: which makes more sense?

So the moral is, it is absolutely time to panic.

Not just maybe, but absolutely time to panic.

Fortunately, he IS overstating the situation. Right from the very start he declares how stable the last 10k years have been, and that the last 100 have already broken all records seen over those 10k years. Go use google scholar and read Michael Mann's recent work on reconstructing the last 2k years. Mann is one of the leading scientists arguing that it is time to panic and things are getting bad very fast. His research is publicly available on google scholar for everyone to go and read.

If you can be bothered to go and read that before shouting me down as a denier, you will find the following in his research. That there is at least some evidence that on at least two occasions over the last 2k years, climate HAS been as warm or warmer than current.

I'm not saying it's all roses and that there is nothing to see here. I AM saying that if you go read the actual research you'll find a much more nuanced and less panic stricken assortment of facts than what is presented in this video.

That was refreshing and made me feel really good.

I have struggled with nVidia/ATI for years, as a developer and a gamer. nVidia is the lesser of two evils by far though. I will never touch another ATI card. In the last 12 years I have purchased 3 of them. Every few years they trick me again with higher clock speeds and lower prices, and I think to myself "they can't still be that terrible [i]now[/i]", and I regret it [b]every[/b] time. I can't overstate how terrible they were.

Anyway, point being that Nvidia may be a shit company to liaison with, and they stick their shit advertisements in front of every game (whether their hardware works with it or not), and have worthless, intentionally confusing product naming for heavily downclocked, overpriced hardware, and they wag their corporate ego around the industry quite mightily (much to my chagrin), but do they still work. The worst failure I've ever experienced from an Nvidia product was better than the best performance I've had from ATI, and that's not an exaggeration.

But still, I really enjoyed this.

In reply to this comment by Jul210s:
The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document. It has no providence other than the opinions of the author and signers. It accomplished nothing.


Pretty asinine comment. Tough to be a legal document before there was a country...though I bet the British government thought it wasn't legal either.

I'm not big on overstating the significance of any person or document in history, but to say it accomplished nothing makes you either overly literal or looking for an argument. Which is it?

>> ^transporter:

42 st. bernards x [7 cups per day per dog / 140 cups per forty lb bag of dog food] x $35 per bag = $73.50 per day
or $2205 per month or $26,827.50 per year. I don't own a dog or know how to shop for dog food so all this could be drastically overstated, but good lord. whoever's behind the camera is a good man; that or they are receiving some awesome donations/subsidies.
also, i want more videos of these dogs. i would seriously watch a full length documentary, and there doesn't even have to be a narrative. just these dogs rolling around on each other.


I second that. Totally watchable.

what do you think the function of the taser gun is?

i thought it was there to be used instead of a gun to stop someone from causing bodily harm... you know... so you wouldn't have to shoot the person with a gun...

but in the videos i've seen, they're being used more as a punishment.

are you ok with police dishing out punishment with a taser?
especially when the perp is restrained and poses minimal threat?

>> ^lantern53:

>> ^tymebendit:
i am with the no taser camp.
the police are using the taser as torture device, not protection from bodily threat as it was meant to be.
you don't wanna do as we say? - tased
you pissed us off? - tased
i don't like your face? - tased

Grossly overstated hyperbole.

>> ^tymebendit:

i am with the no taser camp.
the police are using the taser as torture device, not protection from bodily threat as it was meant to be.
you don't wanna do as we say? - tased
you pissed us off? - tased
i don't like your face? - tased


Grossly overstated hyperbole.

Jacko won it, unfortunately. I'm more of an Elvis fan. Hard to overstate the cultural impact that both these guys had, though.

I kept waiting to hear some insight in this video, but it did nothing but overstate the obvious.

I think Tyson is overstating it when he suggests that all American progress was due to the shared national vision of landing a man on the moon. We got tons of science out of it, but more and more science isn't doing us any good as long as it accelerates our self-destruction. If there were some project that would focus the collective will to save the planet from us, that would be cool.

42 st. bernards x [7 cups per day per dog / 140 cups per forty lb bag of dog food] x $35 per bag = $73.50 per day

or $2205 per month or $26,827.50 per year. I don't own a dog or know how to shop for dog food so all this could be drastically overstated, but good lord. whoever's behind the camera is a good man; that or they are receiving some awesome donations/subsidies.

also, i want more videos of these dogs. i would seriously watch a full length documentary, and there doesn't even have to be a narrative. just these dogs rolling around on each other.

Clearly our perspectives differ. Perhaps things are just different in the U.S., and as I've never worked there I'm not in a good position to comment. Certainly nothing I saw would disqualify someone from a job here, although if the position required good communication skills it would be something to bring up in the interview (CV depending). At least in IT, requiring college level grammar from all candidates whether or not required for the position would lead to such a dramatic shortage of candidates that the whole industry would just grind to a halt!

I do think you're overstating the case when you say it "never happens" except among crazy people, even though your basic point is a good one (i.e. don't do that!). What field do you work in?
>> ^chilaxe:

@longde @oritteropo
I think this is a debate between the professional world and the unprofessional world.
Any career adviser would be very clear on this. Using the grammar knowledge of a 14 year-old makes other people think less of our intelligence. Don't do it. Doing it on an account that's connected in any way to our real-world identity never occurs in the professional world except among crazy people.
Perhaps there are multiple perspectives, but from the perspective of the professional world, I believe the videosift community hasn't been realistic in this discussion.

I see some good points, but they lose alot of credibility by calling Bain a venture capital firm. It was a private equity firm. There is a huge difference between the two types of firms.>> ^bareboards2:

Factcheck.org takes on this doc in an email today:
Summary
A 28-minute political documentary released this week by a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC presents a one-sided, often distorted and misleading view of Mitt Romney's years leading the venture capital firm Bain Capital.
Interspersed with appropriately eerie music, the video focuses on four Bain-financed companies and features heart-wrenching interviews with people who portray Romney and Bain as ruthless, quick-buck corporate raiders who reaped huge financial rewards at the expense of faithful employees.
But a closer look at the companies highlighted in the video reveals a murkier picture. The video often overstates, or outright distorts, Romney's culpability for job losses or bankruptcies.
The film talks about layoffs at DDi Corp. and discusses questionable manipulation of stock prices after the circuit board company went public. But Romney had left Bain Capital a year before any layoffs and a public stock offering that ultimately netted Bain and Romney a big payday. The company's subsequent bankruptcy filing came two years after Bain had largely divested from the company, and was the result of the dot-com bust. Moreover, the company emerged from bankruptcy, and its current CEO credits those early Bain investments for setting the foundation for the company's current success.
The film claims Romney was involved in the acquisition, management and demise of the now-defunct KB Toys. He wasn't. Bain bought the toy company nearly two years after Romney left Bain.
Likewise, the closing of UniMac's plant in Marianna, Fla., occurred seven years after Romney left Bain and nearly two years after Bain sold UniMac's parent company to another private equity house.
More broadly, the video presents a myopic view of Bain Capital, cherry-picking some of the worst Bain outcomes to portray Bain in the worst possible light. Romney's record at Bain Capital also includes some success stories (see Staples and Sports Authority, to name a few) at companies that added new jobs.

Factcheck.org takes on this doc in an email today:

Summary

A 28-minute political documentary released this week by a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC presents a one-sided, often distorted and misleading view of Mitt Romney's years leading the venture capital firm Bain Capital.

Interspersed with appropriately eerie music, the video focuses on four Bain-financed companies and features heart-wrenching interviews with people who portray Romney and Bain as ruthless, quick-buck corporate raiders who reaped huge financial rewards at the expense of faithful employees.

But a closer look at the companies highlighted in the video reveals a murkier picture. The video often overstates, or outright distorts, Romney's culpability for job losses or bankruptcies.

*The film talks about layoffs at DDi Corp. and discusses questionable manipulation of stock prices after the circuit board company went public. But Romney had left Bain Capital a year before any layoffs and a public stock offering that ultimately netted Bain and Romney a big payday. The company's subsequent bankruptcy filing came two years after Bain had largely divested from the company, and was the result of the dot-com bust. Moreover, the company emerged from bankruptcy, and its current CEO credits those early Bain investments for setting the foundation for the company's current success.

*The film claims Romney was involved in the acquisition, management and demise of the now-defunct KB Toys. He wasn't. Bain bought the toy company nearly two years after Romney left Bain.

*Likewise, the closing of UniMac's plant in Marianna, Fla., occurred seven years after Romney left Bain and nearly two years after Bain sold UniMac's parent company to another private equity house.

More broadly, the video presents a myopic view of Bain Capital, cherry-picking some of the worst Bain outcomes to portray Bain in the worst possible light. Romney's record at Bain Capital also includes some success stories (see Staples and Sports Authority, to name a few) at companies that added new jobs.