@Fairbs
i agree that trump is dangerous.i am reading david cay johnstons "the making of donald trump"...and boy oh boy...

i viewed trump as a used car salesman,a circus barker but he is worse..far worse.

as for obama acting on russian interference,and the fact that nobody is pointing out the obvious...is just depressing to me.

the ability for a president to do that never existed until GW and his merry band of neo-cons.

but thanks to addington and woo,the president has the power to do,what previously took approval from congress.

as i told newt,IF the russians DID hack and therefore influence our elections,then this would equate to two things:
1.this is an act of war.
2.the election would be considered compromised,and trumps presidency would be illegitimate.

i am confident that there was cyber-spying going on.all nations engage in this tactic,and as dore points out,we even spy on our allies.we can safely assume that along with the spying,there was hacking,again...all nation states participate in this tactic.

but as of now there is NO evidence that putin directed russian intelligence to hack the 2017 election in order to put in his muppet trump.

so until such time as they provide such evidence.
i will remain skeptical.
would not be the first time intelligence reports have been manipulated to politicize a cause.

see:iraq
see:vietnam
see:korean war
see:panama

shall i continue?

Keep in mind, it's not JUST the CIA making these claims, it's an unprecedented combined report from (I think) 14 separate (EDIT: 17) intelligence agencies. Yes,they may be colluding but it's not likely.
Recall, the intelligence reports leading to the Iraq war were edited and misstated by the Bush cabinet and we've now seen that the full reports were not certain about evidence of WMDs.
Putin's own MO is evidence that, if there was Russian government involvement, it was at his direction. If it were done behind his back, there would be a number of computer scientists gone missing by now.

In short, don't blindly trust any agency, but don't distrust conclusions reached by all intelligence agencies combined, or pretend that the public report is all they have....most evidence possible would be classified (like a bug in Putin's office recording him ordering hacks, we would never hear about that proof).
Should we be skeptical, yes, should we dismiss the reports because we don't get to see classified proof, no. Should we find a way to declassify the proof, absolutely, the public's trust in the nation's intelligence community hangs in the balance.

jimmy dore is from the young turks.

while you may disagree with his delivery,you cannot deny that historically the intelligence community has been used as a battering ram to perpetrate some fucked up,and sometimes,illegal shit.

multiple intelligence agencies also swore that saddam hussein had WMD's and was collaborating with al qeada.

multiple intelligence agencies swore that the conflict in vietnam needed to be expanded,and use sect of defense robert mcnamara to sell it to president johnson.

mcnamara later recanted and displayed deep regret for the lies he sold not only the president,but the american people.colin powell ended up doing the very same thing,for the EXACT same reasons.

in my opinion,CNN has slowly become a propaganda arm for the state.so it is NO surprise that they reference these "multiple intelligence sources" as a means to increase tensions between US and russia.

and while i am positive that russia,along with the US and pretty much every advanced nation on this planet engages in cyber spying,until i see actual PROOF that putin directed russian intelligence to actively hack our elections in order to put trump in power...i am going to remain skeptical.

because i have seen "multiple intelligence sources' as an excuse to engage in some pretty despicable activities by my government.

i live by a very simple axiom:
governments lie.

@Fairbs
while i agree that russia is the aggressor in regards to crimea,can you provide evidence that our election was hacked by russia?

was there actually cyberspying going on?
probably,all major nation states play that game,and all deny participating.(looking at you china).

because i see a LOT of accusations,and declarations of russian hacking,but i don't see any actual..you know..evidence.so i remain skeptical of the russian hacking meme,and am even MORE skeptical that the hacking was intentionally to give trump an edge.

and you are right,maddow simply reported the troop deployment in poland.she reported that this deployment was rushed,and before schedule,,,

and then she did something very curious.
she posits the question,and implies that it will answer a previous question..that she does not actually STATE..but "after all the worry.we are actually about to find out..if...maybe..russia has something on the new president"?

this is the old "i am not saying your sister is a whore..i am just saying your sister is a whore".

she never directly speaks of russian hacks.
she never directly accuses putin of influencing our election.
she just puts it out there,that if trump withdraws troops,then maybe..possibly..he is sucking putins cock.

i'm juuuust saying.
with all due respect...
your sisters a whore.

look man,i adore maddow and i love her analysis,but can we have a moment of honesty here?
she is fairly biased,and is particular on the stories she will cover,and during the run up to the election and even during..she has engaged in some serious apologetics in regards to hillary clinton.

as for the host from secular talk.
this is just his opinion.maybe he did take some liberties,and made some assumptions but i agree with him on calling maddow out for her dog whistle tactics.

lately the democrats have been beating this drum like indians on meth,and when i see so many tv pundits all beating the same tune,without providing tangible evidence....my bullshit alarm starts to go off.

@newtboy
can you show me where hedges promoted russian propaganda?
i ask this sincerely,because i have not seen any evidence of what you are accusing him of.

i get that we disagree,but hedges has earned my respect for his journalistic veracity.

you have earned my respect for being a decent human being,who i happen to agree with more often than not,but in this case i will not simply disregard hedges stellar work because you accuse him of being a propagandist.

i have read his books.
watched his lectures.
and sifted through his sources.

you have openly admitted you have done none of these things,yet..you have formed an opinion on his work by the venue he has chosen.you have even gone as far as to presume his intent on WHY he is on that venue.

now..you are free to speculate all you wish in regards to hedges motivations,and even be skeptical of his work due to him being on RT atm (he was also on Telesur,and al jazeera english).


i do not find this skepticism unwarranted nor unreasonable.i understand why you may feel this way.

but i am the captain of my own ship.
i do consider hedges respectable and worthy of consideration,because i have considered his words,read his books and watched his lectures.

i have considered his works and found them informative and reflective of our current situation.

just as i have found:howard zinn,noam chomsky,amy goodman,jeremy scahill,laura poitrus,glenn greenwald,paul jay,richard d wolffe.

does this equate to everything that they postulate the unerring word of GOD?

of course not.
i can disagree with someone and still respect them for their views.

example:@bcglorf

i really do not see an issue here.
i also do not understand why i am being put in a position to defend why i may respect a reporter/journalist for the good works they have produced.

i am sure there are authors/journalists/academics that you admire and trust their work,because they have earned that trust by being consistent with their methodology.

so i do not see a rub at all.
i see you making conflations and comparisons based loosely on associations,and not tangible and concrete evidence.

if you have evidence,and i am simply being biased and residing in my own bubble.then by all means..pop that bubble...i am human after all,and just as prone to confirmation bias as the next person.

@bcglorf
i have no issue with disagreement.
i have read many of hedges books,and to see his evolution over the years really should not surprise anyone.

we all have an evolution of sorts when we continue to investigate,and challenge our own preconceptions.the intelligent man or woman,will accept this new information,and change their conclusions accordingly.the hyper-partisan and/or rigid fundamentalist,will dismiss this new information because it conflicts with their dearly held preconceptions.

some people struggle with a changing landscape,and prefer to reside in their own comfort zones.

i like hedges because he challenges and criticizes power,but he also tends to speak in apocalyptic verbiage.

i also respect hedges because he does back up his opinions with actual sources.now we can disagree with his conclusions,but how he came to those conclusions,he is quite clear.

on a side note:i cannot watch or read hedges for extended periods due to the fact that what he is pointing out is so damn depressing.

but he is incredibly consistent in regards to criticizing power.

which,in my opinion,is so very vital in these times,because we see the majority of corporate media revealing a reverence and fealty to corporate power.

chris hedges has earned my respect.
but i do not demand that everyone read or listen to him.

and speaking only for myself,i refuse to dismiss a viewpoint simply because it may be on a venue of questionable intent.
i read the american conservative,though this is a website funded by pat buchanon.i do so because the american conservative produces some damn fine content,with journalists who source their material.

i may disagree with their conclusions,but i cannot ignore the quality of their work.

this is the same reason why i no longer do work for crooks and liars and the young turks and good god..SLATE.does this mean that everything they produce is utter shit?

no..of course not,but they all have taken a book out of the FOX model, and became hyper-partisan,faux outrage machines.

now let us take this video,which so happens to be on RT.
what is it that hedges is saying that is WRONG? or false? or a lie?

i have no issue with disagreement,nor skepticism,but is anything he is saying really that controversial?
what is he saying that should be dismissed?
should his words simply be dismissed due to him being on RT?

if we refuse to accept the words,or conclusions from any public personality,simply because of the media that they happen to be on,then..in my opinion..we relegate ourselves to a handful of outlets,and it diminishes the conversation.

is it any wonder or surprise that those academics that are critical of power are NEVER seen on corporate media?
that those brave and courageous journalists and academics are forced to the fringes in order to get their messages out.

we can disagree with their messages and conclusions,but for us to even have the OPTION to disagree.they need a media outlet in order to even put the word out.

do you see what i am saying?

i am probably wording this wrong,and producing more confusion than clarity,but when the corporate media controls who and what gets to be discussed,debated and argued.then THEY are the ones who set the agenda.they are the ones who set the lines of discussion and the parameters of that discussion.

and people like hedges have not been invited to the table for decades.

it appears that any journalist,or academic that is critical of power are relegated to the fringes.

you will never see noam chomsky on FOX,or MSNBC,or CNN.

but you will see them on independent media.
such as democracy now,or the real news and yes...venues like RT and aljazeera english.

i probably totally messed my point up,but it is in there somewhere.
i am just gonna stop right here,because now i am just rambling.

I'm skeptical.

First up, I find it unlikely that a smoke detector would work that well outdoors at that distance.

Second, as evidenced by the comments above, I'm not sure this kind of finger-wagging actually dissuades smokers.

regardless of how skeptical anyone is, you will still be fooled by excellent VFX.

On balance I think I'd prefer to be fooled by really excellent CGI than to be skeptical to the point that I think anything fantastical must be fake. Truly I still can't see what people thought was unrealistic in the first video.

Nothing about this is technically impossible, with enough money (that part is the toughest to swallow: where did these kids get enough money?)... we've done it all before on a smaller scale. It's believable to me. I'm a skeptic, but I also know the internet jumps to "Fake!" pretty easily. Like with the Zapata flyboard, for example.

Yup; here is the Live Science take---in brief--it's a conceptual artist's thing (Vitaly Bulgarov) who has faked a website and even the Korea development company...

"New video clips purporting to show a 13-foot-tall (4 meters) humanoid robot piloted by a person in its torso look like something straight out of "Avatar" or "Transformers," but a Live Science investigation has revealed reasons to believe some skepticism might be in order.

The robot clips have been picked up by a variety of online news and technology outlets, including Kotaku and Wired UK. But the South Korean company that is supposedly developing the robot has virtually no online presence and was unfamiliar to robotics researchers contacted by Live Science.

Furthermore, the only source for the videos or any information about them is the Facebook and Instagram pages of a designer whose website mentions a conceptual art project about a "fictional robotics corporation that develops its products in a not-so-distant future."

The designer, Vitaly Bulgarov, told Live Science that the robot is real. However, he declined to share the names of scientists or engineers working on the project, and messages to the purported CEO of the company went unreturned. [Gallery: See Images of the Giant Humanoid Robot]

Mystery business

According to Bulgarov's Facebook page, the videos were taken in South Korea at a company called Korea Future Technology. Almost all references to this company online appear to be associated with Bulgarov's posts and the subsequent news pieces on the robot. Bulgarov said the company has been operating for several years."

""Robots are messy business," said Christian Hubicki, a postdoctoral robotics researcher at Georgia Tech who worked on the DURUS robot. "They get torn apart and put back together over and over, and transmission grease gets all over the place. Even the nice white floor is beautifully unscuffed [in these videos]. Never once during likely hundreds of hours of debugging the giant robot did it kick in a way that scratched it up?"

The people around the robot also appear to be too close for safety and are not following the standard practice of wearing safety goggles, Hubicki said.

Bulgarov said the company's CEO required that the lab be clean, and that the videos had been brightened in postproduction. Fearing said robotics labs in Asia can be relatively neat.

However, there's another problem: Hubicki told Live Science that the robot's leg joints look unusually smooth given the force that the step of a 1.5-ton robot would exert on the motors. [5 Reasons to Fear Robots]"

http://www.livescience.com/57296-giant-humanoid-robot-video-hoax.html

I'm not saying it IS bullshit, it just seems a bit weird I've never heard of it before. There's a point where "with this one weird trick" style videos have to be taken with a skeptical eye. I've been an adult for the entire lifetime of the internet, and with no previous information, I have to wonder if a Bic lighter has enough BTU's to heat up that nut, as the wheel stud and wheel make a decent heat sink.

In reference to your other post, paraffin wax (candle wax) is actually a component in surfboard and ski wax. I just think it's more effective at preventing rust, rather than seeping into it. As it is similar to kerosene, the video might be somewhat correct. I just doubt the Bic lighter part.

Interesting but seems gimmicky. Im no engineer but that pole shaking alone seems extremely problematic. How efficient comparatively to regular turbines, and long term ware on the equipment(all the shaking). Also can it size up. Be interesting to see if they are successful. Call me skeptical.

I dropped a decent chunk of change on this when it was announced. I'm skeptical I'll ever get to play it, but honestly, I don't care at this point.

I'm just glad someone is really pushing the bounds of technology.

There is skepticism that the DWave even actually is a quantum computer:

https://www.wired.com/2014/05/quantum-computing/