Well, as far as I know, I don't have any corporate sponsors that are financing the dissemination of my opinion for their own interests ... that I know of?

Hold on, you're twisting my words. I'm making a statement of social science, not of ethics. I'm not in the mood to argue ethics, generally have a mixed opinion, and don't like discussing it since it becomes purely an emotional argument.

On a theoretical basis, you would say in the market for labour, competition pushes labour costs down to their equilibrium demand/supply level. If there are a shortage of skilled workers for an X industry or skill set, the price or wage goes up, or vice versa. That's why you typically see union structures in less skilled or more standardised rather than specialised job types. Those, with a high quantity of people possessing said skills for the job.

But as always it's a trade-off. If firms in a particular industry or skill subset start paying too little for their workers, less people will decide to study it, and they will miss out on the talent and skill pool of those who were incentivised into other industries. On that basis unions aren't necessarily good or bad for industries.

On a personal level, I'd say that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with unions and they make perfect sense. Firms organise themselves into trade associations and it would be naive to say that they don't share information on wage levels, or for that matter that this kind of information is not freely available. Why shouldn't the counterparty in the so-called market for labour not be able to organise themselves equally?

As for your last comment on whether competing is always necessary, I tend to have a pretty cynical view of the world and believe that people are generally consciously or subconsciously acting in their own interests. You may point out altruism and I will say people are satisfying a innate biological need to help others, a characteristic that would have come about in our cavemen days when co-operating distinguished your survival ability from other tribes, but ultimately something motivated in you by the evolutionary survival advantage that it conferred to you rather than any pure form of altruism.

Economics as a theory of study is pretty much predicated on this notion. What is the extent of the truth of this in reality? Who knows. I have little ability if any to truly glance into the mind of what anyone else is thinking or what motivates them.

Baptismal Font

In the Bible, Jesus taught about baptism (see, for example, John 3:5). Because many people do not have the opportunity to be baptized in this life, the fonts in temples are used by the living to be baptized in behalf of those who have died. The baptismal font rests on the backs of 12 oxen, following a tradition dating back to the Temple of Solomon that is described in the Old Testament. The oxen represent the 12 tribes of ancient Israel.

https://www.lds.org/church/temples/why-we-build-temples/inside-the-temple?lang=eng

http://www.vibrationdata.com/Temple_Baptismal_Font.htm>> ^zor:

I think I saw not one, but maybe a half dozen golden calves there. You know, we outlawed those for a reason. They misappropriate the energy we're supposed to be spending serving God.

The song was popularized by Old Crow Medicine Show who has long been affiliated with Alt Country/hippy jam fests. To be fair to OP though, there has been a bit of a fusion of the "scenes." Live electronic bands like the Disco Biscuits, Sound Tribe Sector 9, and the New Deal spawned this sort of new breed of "hippy-raver hybrids." As @visionep pointed out, there is somewhat of a natural symbiosis there. Anyway, this unholy alliance has come so far along as to push classic hippy bands like String Cheese Incident, Galactic, and Medeski Martin and Wood towards more electronic influenced sounds. These days you see kids on phish tour rockin' skrillex tattoos (oh the humanity). Whatever. I for one welcome our next generation of inebriated overlords. We all like to get down. Let's get down together.

>> ^Lann:

@visionep I known a lot of [insert creative subculture] that love bluegrass/Americana/old timey/folk music. So this isn't really all that strange to see. Also, this isn't exactly your normal country music you hear at some truck stop in Kansas.
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So you're saying you think there's a situation in which throwing peanuts at someone and saying "this is how we feed the animals" is acceptable behavior?

Part of why I sorta just view the entire conservative jihad as one giant threat to mankind is this way you guys always rally around people you identify as part of your tribe, no matter what kind of horrible thing they've done.

The only thing you guys condemn your own for is ideological apostasy -- bigotry, corruption, cruelty, even murder doesn't really seem to bother conservatives, at least when it's done by a conservative. But if a conservative says the rich should pay more taxes, or that global warming is real, or that gay people have the right to legally marry -- if they do something like that, then you'll immediately grab your torches and pitchforks and run the guy out of town.

>> ^bobknight33:

You and I don't know why they threw peanuts.

Tribes Ascend on Xbox 360, haha. Nope.

Tribes on a 360 controller. Theres your problem bro.

Good video. Couldn't tell if the last part was ending on an upnote or not

>> ^L0cky:

I'm not offended, I'm just wondering who you were referring to. It seems a little random to bring up.
>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^L0cky:
huh?
>> ^dannym3141:
i tend to find that sometimes simple word play jokes can be really funny to people who don't speak english as their first language.


If you're offended by that, please explain how and i'll try to remedy the situation. It's written without malice; i hang around with other europeans a lot, and that's what i've noticed and as we have non native english speakers on the site i thought it might be why it's a popular one. I hope you don't feel that laughing at simple word play jokes is a bad thing, because i don't (i just don't like this one). Nevertheless, if i can make you feel better about the comment i will try to.



Well i think in my own head i was wondering at the way simple things become funnier when you're not native to your audience - like that guy that lives with tribes and they giggled over simple things. The internet being a big mixing pot, i was speculating at the way the basic elements of humour do well on tinternet. A bit like this and the "we are sinking" video. I think a littly too far ahead of myself at times though, and i explained it poorly, and perhaps no one cares. Send complaints on a postcard.

if they fell, would it be a tragedy?
because to me, a tragedy is something negative, but unexpected

skyscraper construction is similar, but they (usually) plan for things like slips/falls/etc... and try to mitigate the situation through safety equipment and procedures... hopefully to the benefit of not just the worker's lives themselves, but their families and friends

that's not to say high altitude construction doesn't have it's share of deaths by accident, but those to me are actual tragedies... because most likely steps were taken to prevent whatever happened from happening

no safety equipment used by these adrenaline junkies

and when looking at the phenomenon of adrenaline junkies, I believe one must look further than just the safety precautions taken to determine whether the term "tragedy" is applicable... what is the reasoning behind taking the endeavor at hand? is it solely personal (selfish) reasoning, or are others included in the reasoning (especially friends and family who have no option but to watch and hope for the best)?

that statement is the reason that "tragedy" is applicable when a father from some tribe in africa gets attacked by a lion while hunting for game... and it isn't applicable when it's a lion tamer putting his head in the mouth of a lion for show...

in fact, the more one "tempts fate" solely for selfish/personal reasons... the less I think "tragedy" applies

these guys in the vid, if they fell, it wouldn't be a tragedy... it's kinda weird to expect people to care more about your own safety, than you yourself do... and I'm not saying people caring is a bad thing... its a good thing... in fact, it shines a more selfish light on the original person in the first place... ESPECIALLY if these people caring more than they do themselves, are known... such as friends/family

This place looks incredible. It wouldn't be out of place in a Tribes game, either.

Indeed, it was Hannibal's precise coordination (and his African cavalry) that allowed him to surround the Romans at Cannae, perhaps the first such manoeuvre in history (IANAH!). If he had capitalized on his early victories and marched on Rome after Cannae, he may well have taken the city. Instead he decided to dick around in southern Italy trying to convince the local tribes to join him, which gave Rome a chance to catch its breath...

@shinyblurry But I found the real struggle was to objectively define truth. Any foundational truth, really. What is beauty? What is altruism? What is truth itself? 7 billion subjective perspectives does not equal one objective one.

Well, as you say, our understanding is limited, and we may neveer truly figure it out, but from my pespective, if anything could ever be seen as objectively true, that would have to be science. Compare science to religion, there are thousands of religions, all claiming to see some deeper truth in the universe, but there is just one science. There is no such thing as "Japanese science" or "American Science" or "Middle eastern science" The first law of thermodynamics isnt different in Germany og Guatamala, and if we ever make contact with an alien race on the other side of the universe capable of science, they will have discovered the same law. Theyll also discover that energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared and so forth. Compare that to religion: As soon as two tribes are separated by a mountain or a lake, their religious "truths" will start to diverge.

Or, maybe we're wrong, maybe, despite being independently confirmed over and over in different parts of the world and even in the farthest stretches of the universe, the laws of physics and logically sound facts derived from science is all wrong, maybe there is some other, unknown objective truth waiting to be discovered. Still one thing seems glaringly obvious: Christianity seems to be as far from an objective truth as one can get. Even Christians can't agree on it. There are something like 30 thousand recognized branches of Christianity, and when taken at the level of an individual, the picture is even worse. Almost every christian seems to have a different idea about whats really true about Christianity.

So, if I had to hedge my bets on how we can find objective truths: Science.

The regions of which you speak belong to another era...
They've never really been conquered or been part of established empire. People are still organized along tribal lines, with the tribes engaged in continuous inter-tribe warfare...
I know it sounds racist but those boys are like klingons, the Pakistani government has never really dared to take them on.

Thank you, that was largely how I understood things to be within the tribal regions as well.

I have troubles with calling the tribal regions not really part of Pakistan when it's pointed out how bad some of the boys there are, but later when an American drone kills some of those bad boys in that region it is a gross affront to Pakistan's national sovereignty. It's either part of Pakistan or it's not, and if it is part of Pakistan and America is supposed to mind it's business what is America expected to do when the bad boys from that tribal region keep killing Americans and more importantly and in even greater numbers the moderate Pakistani's who are the closest America has to true allies in the region.


Despite all of that they've never really bothered us until the "war on terror". They've always bbeen kind of our crazy cousins. We don't wanna be around them but they're family.

I'd argue that they never really bothered anyone because they'd largely been getting what they wanted. That's not the kind of problem that gets better just because you keep giving the extremists what they want. It leads to a situation where a guy like Osama can find enough friends to hide within a mile of the very Military Academy that Musharraf graduated from. I firmly do not accept that the 'war on terror' created the problem, it just forced it to be recognized and dealt with.

Americans will leave, leaving Pakistan with a mess. They did it before and we've been screwed since. There's a huuuuge (as in a small city big) Afghan refugee camp near where I live that's some thirty years old, from the last time American boys were in the region playing their geopolitical monopoly game. It's horrible.

Agreed on both counts. As far as America is concerned it's more cost effective to just reset the clock in Afghanistan every so often so the problems there are kept localized and not something that will bother them for another decade. It's a twisted game and I desperately want to see real solutions embraced that will see the moderate locals have a real chance at being the victors in the end instead of the perpetual victims.

Saudi's are equally nuts and there's not a single American president who doesn't go pay a visit right away upon taking office. Best friends.

I'd say the Saudi's are even worse. They've spent billions of dollars in Pakistan's tribal regions setting up jihadi training camps and calling them 'schools'. Regrettably the male only students come out illiterate but well trained in extremist Wahhabi doctrines and guerrilla warfare. The Saudi 'charities' have spent more money on 'education' in these tribal areas than Pakistan's own government and have been doing since long, long before the 'war on terror' ever was recognized by the West or Pakistan. That building block of an internal war against Pakistan itself has been building for a long time and without the hard push Bush made I firmly believe that would still be official Pakistani policy. The situation would be worse and when ever the militants decided to start pushing it would have been far more unpleasant than what Pakistan has faced so far from those elements.

I guess my point being, we're actually not a bad bunch. Just in a shitty situation. Come sometime and I can show you around. Most of the country is safe. Safer than mexico anyways.

I would honestly love to take you up on that. My kids are a bit young but I do hope to make it over there someday. I too believe you guys are a great bunch in a bad situation, the road out of it though is just so long, difficult and nasty. I wish all of you there the best of luck and honestly spend a lot of time trying to understand what is happening there and what small part little old me can play.

The regions of which you speak belong to another era. Villages out there take days to walk to along mountain trails in some of the highest mountain ranges in the world. Is similiar to a lot of terrain in Afghanistan. Natural forts.

They've never really been conquered or been part of established empire. People are still organized along tribal lines, with the tribes engaged in continuous inter-tribe warfare. Every kid is handed a gun as soon as he's old enough to shoot and raised to abide by the honour code (pashtunwali, yes they even have a name for it). When the tribe is under attack, you don't question right or wrong, you defend the tribe. They're no electricity, television, newspapers, literacy, or any other medium that counters this message. I know it sounds racist but those boys are like klingons, the Pakistani government has never really dared to take them on.

Couple that with the decades of training provided in the arts of guerilla warfare; including drug running, weapons manufacture, crude bomb manufacture, etc. by the CIA and ISI during the cold war and the Soviet invasion, means they are a force to be reckoned with as the US is finding out in Afghanistan.

Despite all of that they've never really bothered us until the "war on terror". They've always bbeen kind of our crazy cousins. We don't wanna be around them but they're family. Most of the country is similarly undeveloped (as in people still live like 3000 years ago undeveloped) and backwards. Bringing them into the modern era is a long term project but there's a 150 million more people on that waiting list.

Since the war on terror Pakistan has taken a serious beating. This was supposed to be our decade of growth instead the economy is in shambles. We've been through yet another round of Western supported, foreign policy obsessed, military dictator leaving our civil institutions in shambles. We've lost around 4 thousand soldiers another 8.5 wounded. 40 thousand civilians killed and 3.5 million internal refugees (dirt poor and starving variety).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_North-West_Pakistan

Those are big numbers, people are angry. The Americans are unlikely to win in Afghanistan. They're putting tribe against tribe. All this talk of democracy vs. extremism/terrorism is not something the average Afghan understands. The average Afghan is illiterate and does not understand complex ideas. He understands this: foreigners, christian army, my tribe has chosen this side because we always hated those other fuckers anyways. Americans will leave, leaving Pakistan with a mess. They did it before and we've been screwed since. There's a huuuuge (as in a small city big) Afghan refugee camp near where I live that's some thirty years old, from the last time American boys were in the region playing their geopolitical monopoly game. It's horrible.

From the Pakistani perspective the War on Terror has been a disaster. It's solved nothing and created tenfold the problem it aimed to solve. The Afghans are a primitive bunch (made more so by warfare) and need to establish a government, after which they will slowly over time, maybe a century, join the civilized world. Pakistan wholeheartedly supported the Taliban (as did the US) when they took control of the country and brought peace to it. Warfare is the real bitch not how "extreme" they are. Saudi's are equally nuts and there's not a single American president who doesn't go pay a visit right away upon taking office. Best friends.

Now the government/military of Pakistan is in a tricky situation, we have to play both sides, thus the lack of trust. Either side has the ability to seriously take Pakistan on and bring it to it's knees. The government the American's have propped up in Kabul wouldn't last a month without them, is corrupt, and allied to the Indians, with whom we see ourselves as being in a state of justified war. What to do!? What to do!? (in a indian accent).

I guess my point being, we're actually not a bad bunch. Just in a shitty situation. Come sometime and I can show you around. Most of the country is safe. Safer than mexico anyways.

Sorry that was a long post





>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^FermitTheKrog:
Thanks for having a more nuanced understanding of the matter... thought I'd share a Pakistani perspective:
-Yes, no arabs here. Lots of Muslims though as in loads of other countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population
-Pakistani's despise the drone strikes for the same reason we despised the Bin Laden assasination. It is a terrible loss of sovereignity to have foreign soldiers killing with impunity, racking up civilian casualties, within your borders. It makes the matter worse, Pakistan is radicalizing tremendously fast and every time the US flattens another village in Afghanistan or our border regions, everytime American troops accidentally kill ours, that pace accelerates.
-An analogy: If Mexico had drones over the US taking out gang leaders in LA, the US would flatten Mexico in response. All we do is get angry.
-Things are not that bad: Liberals are not dying off. We are in government by popular vote. The Pakistani military is not some tinpot force, it is very much in control of itself and thus of it's nukes. We will deal with the militancy problem over time; education, economic opputurnity, writ of law; not bombs. We are a third world country, Afghanistan has been a war zone forever now, these things take time, most of us still shit in fields, out people are hungry, we have bigger problems to deal with than car bombs.
-In Pakistan, conservatives want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Palestine is the example. Amongst the ultra right (3-4% of the population, I'm sure you have them too, wherever you are) the "we" is Muslims and the "them" is a collaboration of Zionists and American bible thumpers.
Liberals want the American's gone because they are an imperial force at our doorstep. All talk of human rights and democracy is hogwash. Saudi Arab is the example. If they go away we can educate our people out of the mental cesspit they seem to be headed into. American bombs make us look like traitors to our people and weaken our stance.
Thanks for listening. Open to discussion


>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^vaire2ube:
well the trick is eventually we dont tell the kids running the drones that its actually REALITY! Ahh! Ender's Game!
But by then the arabs formics will be gone.

The populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are primarily Muslim, not Arab. There are in fact more Arabs living in America than there are in Afghanistan and Pakistan combined.
I know, not your point at all, but if you try and hash out the real news by reading through middle eastern news outlets you won't be able to make head from tails wondering why a pro-Arab outlet like Al Jazeera would willingly say anything bad about Iran. It's not until realizing that Iran is largely Persian and not Arab that it makes any sense.
I rant about this because it's crazily important and the details matter. American drone attacks have killed hundreds within Pakistan, but even by Pakistan's most anti-American media those people were largely militants responsible for killing Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani Taliban have meanwhile killed thousands of civilians, including former PM Benazir Bhutto, and there is infinitely more outrage and hatred for America's drones than for the Pakistani Taliban. It's something important to think about. What's more, there is MORE hatred in Pakistan over America's raid that killed Bin Laden than there is for the unmanned drone attacks. That's even more important to think about.
The reality is that the moderates in Pakistan are fighting an uphill struggle in Pakistan. We need them to win but they are being killed off faster than we can defend them, and even attempting to defend them is hurting their cause to boot. It's easy to declare that a strategy is bad and has horrible consequences, it's a lot more important though to propose a better alternative. Stop the attacks and do nothing means a Pakistan where the Taliban where still best friends with the military and intelligence agencies. It means a nuclear armed state that was best friends with terrorist organizations eager to use those nuclear weapons in their jihad while we lacked any way of assessing just how close and willing their partnership was. Don't dismiss this assessment as doomsday fear mongering. One of the debates in Pakistan's national assemblies after Osama's death included elected representatives bemoaning Pakistan's failure to protect a great Muslim hero like Bin Laden. Pakistan is a battle ground between extremist and moderate populations and we have a very vested interest in who wins that struggle.


Thank you for adding so much to the discussion, very much appreciated.
Yes, I do understand the sovereignty issue looms huge in the opinion of American actions within Pakistan's borders. I can really understand how that would enrage anyone with any manner of national pride. America is in a tough spot though too. The mountainous tribal regions along the Pak-Afghan border are not under the control of the Pakistani central government. On paper the border may run there, but in practice militants can relatively safely travel back and forth between the two. What's more, there still remain places within Pakistan's proper borders that are controlled by the local tribal leaders, and NOT the central Pakistani government. Those local tribal leaders are allying themselves to the Pakistani Taliban and providing them safe haven within Pakistan to launch attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Afghan part does make it America's business. The Pakistani part in my humble opinion, should be a source of greater public outrage than it is.
I guess I find it worrying that extremists can be in de-facto control of large swathes of land within Pakistan's proper borders. So much so that it is still unsafe for the Pakistani police and even military to patrol there. To me, that seems like it is already an enormous sovereignty issue. America's attacks against militants in that region I can understand being a source of outrage. I don't understand why there isn't equal or greater outrage that those regions on the ground are no longer under the control of the Pakistani government at all and being used as a base of operations for launching attacks on the rest of Pakistan.
I think America's problem is knowing whom they can trust within Pakistan's power structure to work against rather than with extremists like the Taliban. Hamid Gul, former leader of Pakistan's ISI, scares the crap out of me. How many of his friends are still in the ISI that think like him? The JUI-F party declared Osama a muslim hero in Pakistan's National Assemblies. How much support has that party been able to hold onto within Pakistan still after taking that stance? Political parties like the PPP seem to share alot of moderate values, but have historically been ridden out of office by the military every few years.
Do you have good reasons that those fears are unfounded? From what I see and read(largely from "The News International") the moderates like yourself have always been in an uphill struggle against extremists and the opportunists willing to work with them.

What a fucking stupid ass response. BEcause my friend is exposed to .... because my friend does... my friend.. my friend does this.. You MUST be retardedly drunk to make such stupid ass comments like that. You think each distric/station/region reacts the same way your "friends" station does it makes it proper to group All the stations as one. Your a fuckin tool this night. Sleep tight and realize in the morning how ignorant your words are. People train and improve their life saving skills required to excel at the job.
In reply to this comment by doogle:
so, what do they do? My friend plays Lord of Ultima all day. All the better since there can be an attack any time, and he's always ready. His tribe relies heavy on him to defend anytime during the day while they're at their actual work work (they can't play the game at work work). The scant chance he's off on a call during the day is minimal, but he has seniority so he can choose that dead dead time. Not (only) because it's less busy, but because he likes to have hours like other non-firefighters.

So, I ask, what do they do when they're not on a call? Maybe like my other friend who play video games on the arcade coin-op they recently moved into the station...

Maybe... others' taxes? Building a school in Africa? Writing that screenplay? Tell me.
In reply to this comment by BoneRemake:
That is a fantasticly ignorant comment. I hope you are as drunk as I am. To state the obvious, Firefighters do NOT sit on their ass all day waiting for calls. I do not know what hill billy town you are from, but in centers with populations worth mentioning, Firefighters fuck around productively.
In reply to this comment by doogle:
Disgusting. You're not hired by the state to turn against it. You don't like the retirement plan? Learn another trade where you can sit on your ass all day waiting for an incident.

Sounds more like a job than a game.

In reply to this comment by doogle:
so, what do they do? My friend plays Lord of Ultima all day. All the better since there can be an attack any time, and he's always ready. His tribe relies heavy on him to defend anytime during the day while they're at their actual work work (they can't play the game at work work). The scant chance he's off on a call during the day is minimal, but he has seniority so he can choose that dead dead time. Not (only) because it's less busy, but because he likes to have hours like other non-firefighters.

So, I ask, what do they do when they're not on a call? Maybe like my other friend who play video games on the arcade coin-op they recently moved into the station...

Maybe... others' taxes? Building a school in Africa? Writing that screenplay? Tell me.
In reply to this comment by BoneRemake:
That is a fantasticly ignorant comment. I hope you are as drunk as I am. To state the obvious, Firefighters do NOT sit on their ass all day waiting for calls. I do not know what hill billy town you are from, but in centers with populations worth mentioning, Firefighters fuck around productively.
In reply to this comment by doogle:
Disgusting. You're not hired by the state to turn against it. You don't like the retirement plan? Learn another trade where you can sit on your ass all day waiting for an incident.