Slippery slope fallacy.
"If we allow gays to marry, what's next? Can I marry my dog?"

No-one is talking about banning guns. I wouldn't support that myself. I have friends who are hunters and target shooters.

But be reasonable; you can have a gun for target shooting or hunting or even "home defence" (if you're really that paranoid), but you don't need an AR-15 or anything with a high capacity magazine and it's not unreasonable to make sure that people who own guns aren't complete nutjobs.

NZ is in the top 15% of gun ownership rates per capita (22 guns per 100 people), but our average annual firearm homicide rate for the last 30 years or so is ~0.2 deaths per 100k people.

Compare that to the USA. The US tops the chart of gun ownership with 112 guns per 100 people. So the gun ownership rate is 5 times that of NZ, but the average annual firearm homicide rate is 4 deaths per 100k people. That's 20 times the number of murders. Even if you allow for the higher gun ownership rate, you're still 4 times worse than NZ.

And the difference is simple: we have sensible gun ownership laws.

I saw a great post the other day.
"The conservative mind:
Abortions? BAN THEM!
Gay Marriage? BAN IT!
Marijuana? BAN IT!
Guns? eh, banning things never works"

But hey, you're gonna need those guns for when Donary Trumpton ushers in a tyrannical dictatorship. Good luck with that; let me know how you get on with an AR-15 versus a predator drone.

I'd propose the overall end result isn't so bad. The kid stayed safe, the victim's home wasn't robbed, the bad guy got shot but sounds the injury was non life threatening. Now, the odds of that whole situation ending like it did versus something more tragic is pretty remote and an awful lot of bad things all came together and good fortune somehow still prevailed.

Talk to me about why the headlights looked like they were flickering. Some sort of shutterspeed versus LED thing?

It makes sense that we would process plants somewhat better than meat, as meat in a survival situation is hard to come by compared to vegetation. However, it cannot be denied that we evolved as omnivores and still are such barring a personal choice.

A plant based diet may be more healthy for you, I don't care to argue the science of it. I would note that science, at least in regards to our diets, continually changes. I went through multiple phases of science saying that a certain substance (alcohol, chocolate, eggs, butter, etc) was bad, only to reverse the decision as time went on and further studies were done. I don't say that as an excuse or to deny which diet is best, simply that we have a long way to go in determining what is best for one of us versus another.

My complaint about vegans is that they usually slam anyone who doesn't choose to be vegan over their choices. I've had many vegetarian/vegan/pescatarian friends tell me that the food I choose to eat is sentient. Where do we draw the line on sentience, I usually ask them? For a vegan that seems to mean on any non-plant product, even honey. A vegetarian might choose to drink milk or eat cheese, since nothing is being killed. A pescatarian obviously thinks fish are the cutoff for sentience. But if we are going to cut to the nitty gritty, insects that most any scientist would agree have no idea of what is going on other than an instinct to perform a set series of actions are consumed in mass quantities for their protein. Worms, insects, crabs and lobsters don't even have the pain transmitting chemicals that allow a creature to feel pain. Of course, they do react to stimuli, but so do plants.

Basically we all individually make a determination as to what we consider to be truly sentient and able to understand the far reaching concepts of death and pain. Some people draw the line at plants, others at lower level life forms, but in the end it all comes down to what you believe.

Monkey Island games were always wacky and difficult puzzles simply because it required you to think of objects in such ways as to break the fourth wall of the game itself. Guybrush and his infinite pocket space.

Also note, these are good games despite their frustrating bits. There were far more frustrations prior to the days where you are given dialog choices, when you were required to type in all of the dialog options using key words. Cough, cough, older Tex Murphy games and just about every text adventure from the dawn of home computers.

I loved those games, but many of them turned into puzzles that maybe one person in the family finally figured out after brute force trying thousands of combinations of objects with each other. I did that multiple times in the original Myst. I think there was one passcode that took close to 10,000 attempts. LOL!

Or how about games that had dead ends but didn't alert the player? Cough, cough Maniac Mansion. People could die, but as long as one person was left alive, the game never ended, even though only the bad endings are left. But it's not like modern games, some of the bad endings were themselves puzzles, and some deaths lead to a half good and half bad ending, like winning a lottery and then having a character abandon the plot altogether because he/she is rich and then THE END.

Those were the days. None of this FNAF shit -- which is really what deserves the infamy of terrible, convoluted puzzles...

Before video games became as massively popular as they are today, it wasn't always a requirement to make your game easily solved and you were not always provided with prompts for failure or success until many grueling hours, days, months, sometimes YEARS of random attempts. How many families bought a Rubik's Cube versus how many people solved it without cheating and learning the algorithms from another source?

Go back hundreds or thousands of years and it wasn't common for chess or go or xiangqi (the most popular game in the entire world TODAY) to come with rules at all, so only regions where national ruling boards were created will there be standardized rules; so, the truth, rules, patterns, and solves of games have traditionally been obfuscated and considered lifelong intellectual pursuits; and, it's only a recent, corporatized reimagining of games that has the requirement of providing your functional requirements and/or game rulings so as to maintain the value of its intellectual property. I mean, look at how Risk has evolved since the 1960s -- now there's a card that you can draw called a "Cease Fire" card which ends the game, making games much shorter and not epic at all. Easy to market, but old school players want the long stand offs -- I mean, if you're going to play Risk... TO THE BITTER END!

Sorry, it turns out my fresh install of my email client decided to sort Videosift emails into the junk folder, so I missed a bunch of replies.

Mainly I was ready to string these guys up for mucking around with historical artifacts. The sensitivity to it is because the current occupiers of this country already wiped out millions of indigenous people, and now the least intelligent among us have to drag what's left further through the mud with their buffoonery.

I also think the way the government has dealt with this is perfect, but, I still cringe when considering the disparity between how this was dealt with, versus so many recent, violent and unnecessary urban confrontations lately.

Your video, Epic Rap Battles of History Deadpool Versus Bobba Fett, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

It's a difficult thing to really justify or demonize because sex is a head game, a dance but also a match of submissiveness versus dominance; it can become violent and abusive through the ebb and flow of permission and denial. One moment I'm smacking her ass during sex, after a year of smacking her ass, she needs to be spanked before sex even begins, and now 10 years later there's whips and clamps and shackles. It all started with a mildly amusing smack to the ass that over time became a mutual fetish.

All of that extreme abuse porn is a matter of course, just like the secret fetish in a relationship starts with something innocent then leads to something semi-professional. This is the end result of a fetish that started with Deep Throat in the '70s opening the world to oral sex. Now it's facial abuse. She doesn't need a deep throat, now she just needs to undergo a hazing.

Will regulation change an industry piloted entirely by desire and sex starved user demand? Or would the culture simply evolve around the regulations?

Japan blurs out genitals, so what happens? The culture evolves around the restrictions and now we have a thriving bukkake subgenre. You want cum in eyes? Niche. Cum in hair? Niche. Cum on teeth? For real though, the focus is on teeth. We don't even need genitals now! Just pick a spot on the body and then ejaculate in mass! What a phenomenon.

Niches form and when they trend, that's when you end up with a popular site like facial abuse.

But hazing porn exists in the reverse and is also quite popular. Pegging? Come on, where's my face sitting fans? Hey now, there's also a lesbian variety of big assed Brazilian women who abuse skinny blond girls. I don't know what they're saying, but clearly it means something along the lines of dig that white caucausian nose further up my brown latin pussy. One woman is empowered, the other not so much, but she likes it, so... empowered? But who watches it? Men? Surely not women. Well, I know several women who watch the shit out of lesbian domination porn.

I had the absolute pleasure to sit with some really open lesbians and watch lesbian domination porn where the women wrestle each other, and the winner gets to fuck the loser in humiliating and abusive ways. I mean... the topic of empowerment is tough here. If you do porn just own it. Damn. Come on, it's just sex. People just like giving each other a hard time and they're always worrying about the next generation, even though they know humans are all dirty, filthy, sex craved fiends.

I think the most abusive porn I've watched (was sort of forced to watch) was a man having his penis hit with a hammer by a very mean woman. He liked having his penis hit with a hammer for some odd reason.

Well, to be brutally honest, I knew that before we even set foot in Iraq that this type of stuff was going to happen (if not even worse stuff further down the road) simply because the ONLY two examples in history we really have that allowed for the successful creation of new countries after horrific wars were: Japan and Germany.

But, there were some major things that needed to be noticed, if indeed Iraq ended up being a successful story; though it would have taken a few generations and perhaps 30 years... It would require us to remain in Iraq for a VERY long time.

I called it before the war even started. I literally stated that if we pulled out before we succeed in "our" goal (and BTW, we STILL have not "pulled out" of Japan nor Germany, but we aren't enemies either; but it shows you the level of commitment we had in the 50's versus our, "...we have to see results in one year, otherwise we'll just drop the whole thing like hot bricks...", type of idiocy prevalent in our politicians and populous right now...

I don't think we should have EVER gone into Iraq, simply because we never had the backbone NOR the stomach to actually remain there and to see it ALL the way through. When Bush proposed this war, if he would have been a smart man, he would have told the entire nation that going there would be a new level of commitment we hadn't been used to for quite some time. IT WOULD get Americans killed; possibly even a fairly high amount...

Nobody simply wanted to face the truth and reality of what they wanted to achieve and WHAT it would actually take to get it done. Instead, we went to war, just long enough (and I really hope this wasn't the biggest reason; but, my EXTREMELY cynical and negative side wants to say it's true...) to line the pockets of the politicians that signed on and, of course, the banks, portfolios, and third parties all involved in stealing--literally--billions of taxpayer dollars and making billions more in revenue and other sources...

Truly making Cheney and Bush utterly despicable. By that point, that everything was realized to be an utter falsehood we had two choices: stick to the course created for a false reason (but turn it into on of history's greatest success stories; and WE COULD have done it, it just required...well...something Americans didn't wish to give Iraqis, sadly); and dropping the war as fast as possible with some sort of "transition" to the Iraqi government.

We took option two and we KNEW full well (at least if you were smart enough to know ANYTHING about history, just what was about to come eventually for Iraq) that their "peace" we created for them, to "save" them, was utter horse-shiat. They are now paying for the war crimes our leaders perpetrated against them...

Had we stayed, if we were still there and the media was patiently trying to explain to the American people WHY we had to stay--if we TRULY wish to FREE a country and make it into something great and new--it takes time and a lot of it.

Like I said, if you want to see what you have to do to pull this off, go look at Japan and Germany following WW2. It's not pretty; life WILL be lost. But, it might, just might, be better than this jihad social network that is in its infancy trying to become a true monster...



/political rant--because like the guy that Chomsky refers to, I saw this crap coming a long, long, long time ago
//I really had issues with the whole Iraq thing back in the day; but, I did say that if we went in, we should prepare to commit not for years, but for DECADES... I think THAT is where the American people, in general, didn't realize how truly long this fight would really be as it was indeed a "generational" fight... To me, it makes complete sense why we utterly FAILED, but ALSO why we were beginning to get things to actually work (and then flushed it all down the toilet--because a President sent us over to fight a war that I don't believe we were mentally prepared to REALLY win/fight; and as I said at the end, our soldiers (and their families) simply weren't ready for a war that would span a decade or more...
///Too many people think like the politicians do with war; war should be "nice and clean", "quick and simple", "profits and power"; as Sherman once said which applies to these type of politicians, but sadly many Americans in general who see war like a video game, not recognizing the true horror AND the true lengths men, woman, and children in those areas will need to change to make peace a word that can once again be common place in their society--not just for the hopeful: "I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers … it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated … that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation."

First statement = opinion
The remaining life of one man versus 30 minutes of time for 30 men.

Second statement = uninformed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_Taser_incident

Third statement = uneducated opinion
The incident involved a large number of trained officers presumably adequately trained to assess and address the situation

The entire last paragraph = biased conjecture
All projected outcomes proposed are negative. All possible positive outcomes ignored.

Troll Score = 10/10
Every word inflammatory and pointless yet I am compelled to reply...

Well played sir.

You do realize the people who have the whole world as their oyster are in an entirely different form of isolation, right? You're oversimplifying the concept of isolation in an effort to push your Jesus drug.

I understand this because I have lived that life; being both the life of the parties at fortune 500 companies and a solitary hermit, addicted and lonely in a world that no one else fully understands. Not because of a lack of Jesus drug, my friend. I tried the Jesus drug and it is the cause of much of my cognitive dissonance.

The love of a God didn't save me from trauma, sexual and gender identity issues, clinical depression, and the ever looming bipolar disorder. Living is hard, even if it's also simultaneously fun and easy for me to succeed; because the concept of my personal identity isn't flush with the expectations that society and my family have. Being myself almost always gets me in trouble and is misunderstood with sometimes violent repercussions. This forms further cognitive dissonance which is a psychological isolation that has physical isolation as a matter of course. Depression runs in my family, despite all of their love and adoration of Jesus. Southern Baptists, bless their hearts.

There are so many other factors you're ignoring just so that you can present the lamest of analogies of seeds on dry soil and sin cages.

Sin cages. Ignorant science versus the logical sin cage. Nuff said.

There's almost nothing logical about anything you say. The only logic is that you make things make sense according to the Bible. If it's scientifically logical but goes against the teachings Christ or God, it's wrong. If the Bible can support the science, it's good!

But that's not how science works. Scientists do not make stupid excuses in order to support prior written works which lack evidence. If something doesn't make sense, a scientist no longer uses it as a basis to explain the world around them.

You, on the other hand, make every excuse to prove your stupid philosophy is true and that science is wrong for not agreeing upon the truth of your hippy God love cult. Prove me to be objectively incorrect in my perspective and I will give up on my convictions. Because what is a conviction if it's a false one based upon circular logic and feel good analogies? Oh, them feels. Them Jesus feels. Jesus hippy love.

OK, his studies beat my anecdotal bias.

...That being said, I will continue to eat breakfast cereal with milk pretty much every day (as I have since I was very very young), and be strongly tempted to attribute my own lack of having ever broken a bone to that.

The other anecdote I have in my favor is coming from a farm family that raised chickens. I grew up in a prairie grassland area (converted to irrigated farmland thanks to aquifer access), while my cousins lived a couple hours away in limestone hills ranchland. Both of our families raised free range chickens.

Our chickens produced very thin-shelled eggs, and displayed behavior to suggest they were calcium-deprived. For example, our chickens wouldn't cannibalize their own viable eggs, but if we threw empty shells to them they would fight to eat the shells. Same but to a lesser extent for leftover bones, etc. (I assume they fought less over these because bones are harder to near impossible to break down with a beak). On the other side of the table, we sometimes exchanged eggs with my cousins, and their chicken's eggs were always extremely thick-shelled and hard to crack open.

When I asked about that, my folks told me (and later my Biology teacher confirmed) that was because the sod/soil around my home and flora and fauna growing from it contained very little natural calcium. Chickens raised in our area would often be supplemented with commercial feed that contained extra calcium, but we let ours range for food and eat table scraps; almost never supplementing their food with any commercial stuff. But the limestone (aka calcium carbonate) around my cousin's house contained very high amounts of natural calcium, which was naturally infused into the plants / grains / insects that their chickens ate, giving them incredibly thick shells.

So, I guess that while calcium intake apparently doesn't have a very statistically significant impact on human bone growth, I think that it must have a much more significant role to play in egg thickness if you happen to be a chicken... At least if you compare extremes of low natural calcium diet versus extremely high natural calcium diet.

I finally just finished watching the 3 hour finale on my DVR (kept trying to avoid this spoiler post) and was thoroughly happy with the results.

I'm way on board with your sentiments, but must add my 2 cents.

First, I think it's important to realize it's not the way ANW runs the show that causes the competitors to behave the way they do; it's the American competitors themselves who share that undesirable selfish, braggadocious attitude/philosophy. Even when you watch the Japanese Sasuke competitions, when there's an American competing surrounded by Japanese competitors inside Japan, you still feel that same air of arrogance.

I've been watching the Sasuke for many years and started watching ANW before it was ANW (even in the first "seasons" on Attack of the Show where the competitors had bounce on a trampoline and swing on some monkey bars to earn their way to Japan). The American attitude always been something that bothers me and takes a huge chunk out of my interest.

I always find it disconcerting the way they don't explain any details, such as why Geoff got to climb first (which is why he gets to claim he's the first person to ever reach the top).

The other thing I've been crying "foul" on is that they seemed to lighten it up on the obstacles. This year there were 38 people to go to round 2. That's ridiculous. But what's worse is that round 2 had way too long a time limit. Normally competitors who succeed on stage 2 have about a second left when they hit the button, but many of those who went through to stage 3 had around 30 seconds on the clock.

I had to rewind a couple of times, but I confirmed Isaac said "share the moment" not the money.

My wife and I were both displeased that Geoff announced he gets to say he's the first to beat stage 4. That's such a poor attitude, and I liked Popeye a lot more until then. And regardless how they decided who got to go first, I think they both have to be considered as equally the first to finish stage 4. (Side note: I was really bummed they didn't use the loud "bang! bang!" sounds to start stage 4 like they do in Japan.)

I myself don't have a problem with the very redesigned courses each season.

The USA versus the World bullshit is some serious bullshit that's hard to swallow. Not only is the whole "our country is better than you" concept horrible, but the actual competition is shit. It's not the same beating the course one rested person at a time. But also last year the Europeans brought in a rock climber who knew nothing about Ninja Warrior and just sent him in fully rested to do the arm-centric work.

Boy, we could get together and write a dissertation on this subject.

What a monster. Both guys are so deserving. Both in their 30's!!

On a less joyous note, I take pretty serious issue with the way ANW runs the competition. Once I found out about the original Sasuke, I went back and watched every single season. Because it's awesome. But I feel like the Japanese organizers of Sasuke clearly understood that the competition was "competitors versus course", not "competitor versus competitor". In that vein, any set of competitors who complete the course should be equally rewarded.

Can you imagine dedicating your life to completing that course, succeeding (as one of only two people in the world, over nearly a decade of competition), then walking away with nothing because the other guy was an insignificant amount faster than you?

Props to Isaac for at least mentioning "share the money" in the post-interview (not included in this sift).

Another way I massively disagree with ANW is that they significantly redesigned the courses for every year of competition. Some variation is essential to testing the competitors' adaptability, but with so much new stuff each year they excluded lots of top talent due to bad luck or running order. Cynically, maybe to avoid paying the prize money. Last year was particularly bad with only two guys making it to stage 3. I feel like this year the pendulum swung back a little too far (or maybe "farther than intended") which is why they actually had two winners. That said, that new cliffhanger is ridiculous, but at least it's a variation on existing obstacles instead of something totally unique.

Lastly, let's not forget ANW's "USA versus The World". Really? That's so stereotypically American it's sick, especially for an adopted competition.