Ta-Nehisi Coates had a good piece about the flag the other day:

The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it

So much of progressivism is masked racism. Minorities struggle against many forces that aim to keep them down, and none are as pernicious and challenging to overcome than those posing as defenses of "civil rights."

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http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/538/is-this-working?act=1#play
^

Funny, recidivism is high because there are no social support mechanisms post release, surprise surprise..

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why-scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/

"How is it that Nordic prisons that seem so cushy yield recidivism rates one-half to one-third of those in the U.S. (20-30 percent versus 40-70 percent)? "

I could add more quotes that would show up you're awfully, typically misinformed opinions, but it won't change your mind and I doubt anyone else around here needs to be more convinced that you're an idiot... ; )

This is an interesting story, from Stockholm city police register of the year 1536, using Runes to protect the name of a (high status) married woman found with someone who was not her husband... about half way down this article:

http://www.jyu.fi/gammalsvenska/runkunskap.htm

Google translate didn't do a very good job, fortunately my reference filled in the details. It was also interesting that the ring above the 'a' in på was off to the right, and not directly above like modern usage.

I would like to see those links, but they do not link correctly.

New scientist

Wired

Found them. What struck me as most relevant about either of the articles is from the Wired article that basically says, in the penultimate paragraph, that this finding doesn't necessarily mean anything because 1) there may be physical laws or phenomena that we do not yet understand governing the behaviour and 2) we know how a lattice works in our computer simulations - we do not know how a lattice might work if one were to physically exist, why should it act like anything we know?

However, it is a real possibility.

On the housing thing, I found this really informative.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/house-rules

Oh god, it's 31 minutes long? Fuck that noise. I'm just going to assume it's "blah blah god blah blah those awful gays blah blah climate change is fake something something obama"

@newtboy, apparently he squeaks in on a technicalit
y.

Between being Canadian and being an idiot, you would hope it's the idiot part that disqualifies him. That, and he stole his campaign logo from Al Jazeera

Oh no, that looks rather terminal, doesn't it http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/31/fotopedia-will-shut-down-its-apps-and-website-on-august-10/

Thanks for letting me know... even the snapshot on archive.org isn't terribly helpful.

just an idea here @lucky760,which i suspect many long time users may not even consider,because it is old news to them,but is there a way to expose top videos from years ago?

i am not suggesting re-hashing a related/suggested tag but actually making a spot for top voted sifts,which from years ago could hit 300+ votes.

follow my logic here:
IF the purpose of all this time and energy you are putting in to revamp the sift to a more sleek and user-friendly (which means phones and tablets,to the chagrin of us neanderthal PC users) in order to attract new users,doesn't it make sense to reveal the wonderful content that started this site?

the sift has become more than just a voter-based community,categorizing quality videos.
it has become an archive.
so many sifters from years ago submitted some amazing content just when videos were becoming popular.the birth of the youtube generation and we were there,and youtube was not the juggernaut it is now.

you had to really put some time into finding decent videos,using multiple sites.the results from all that time and energy were spectacular though and i think new users would be just as enthralled as we were back then.

so instead of cluttering up the front page with list after list,maybe..possibly..we could add the lists as a single link.

so if someone already familiar with the sift could click the top 15 link and be directed there.
this would satisfy sifters like @dannym3141 and i suspect a majority of others.

you could do the same with related/suggested and more videos from=sifter name here.

this would work on two levels:
1.new users would be exposed to some of the most amazing content that they had never been exposed to before.
2.many of those older videos are now defunct,giving current sifters an opportunity to undead that video,therefore retaining the integrity of the video archive and upholding our *quality status.

all-time sifts
legendary sifts
tales from the archive crypt

just some ideas what to title the link.

what say you?

Yahweh has NEVER given evidence of his existence. No more so than any other god anyhow. They all answer prayer equally and randomly well. They all claim to have made the universe/world, they all claim to be the true one... Near death experiences differ by culture expectations of that culture and don't all conform to the supposed Christian expectation... he has done nothing to make himself stand out from the rest of the gods that Christians dismiss. Heck, I've never seen a Frost Giant or evidence they ever existed, so clearly Odin has one up on Yahweh.

In the 4,000 years or so from Adam and Eve's time in the Garden to Jesus, Yahweh couldn't or wouldn't make himself known to the other races. He didn't reveal himself to those in Africa, Asia, the Americas or Europe, just to one tiny specific group of people in the Middle East. If couldn't then he's not the omnipotent, omnipresent god he claims, if he wouldn't that makes him a racist ass not worthy of following by picking one people to be his chosen people.

The only reason Europe became Christian was forced conversion when the Christian armies of Rome forced them to, which setup a tradition of most Europeans and later Americans being born into a faith. Were the exact same people born in Saudi Arabia they "would know that they know" that Islam is the true religion, or same in India but applying to Hinduism.

And saying that atheists have had supernatural experiences and can change to theism when talking about it, ignores the whole point of the video, especially the part when he talks about the linked Darren Brown video, which demonstrates that it is easy to make a spiritual experience happen that has no basis on any real god.

By way of example: I used to be a heavy evangelical Christian, I watched TBN and Fox News religiously (pun intended, see this old post of mine here on the sift from an old account that I couldn't recover http://videosift.com/usercomments/Charon... heck see my Revelations from the Word posts on my blog, http://www.brianathomas.com/archives/category/religion/revelations-from-the-word/ or more embarrassing my older political posts http://www.brianathomas.com/archives/category/politics/ which while progressive now, go to page 4 or so around June 2008 and back and you see a Libertarian and further back Republican with some crazy anti-vaccine paranoia , climate change denialism, science denaillism and other things I'm deeply ashamed of now)... I've had deep and meaningful spiritual experiences with god. After Republicans ruined Christianity for me (as the Republican party is clearly 100% against every teaching of Jesus... and yeah we can tick that off as being humans, but god does nothing to correct them, he may have spoke to my heart or whatever one wants to say to have more empathy, but over half the Christians in this nation still vote for a party 100% devoid of the teachings of the Jesus of the Bible while claiming to do it for Christian reasons) and I eventually lost faith (while Republicans are the reason I initially lost faith, they aren't the reason I stayed away, god is a dick is why I stayed away). After I lost faith in the Christian god, I gave paganism a try, and I've had just a meaningful spiritual experiences while worshiping at a Druid rite as I have at any Christian church. This is why people pick a religion, first by accident of birth (most people are Christian in the US because their parents were, and back to Europe where going back further they were forced to convert by invading Christian armies), second by choosing one that connects more personally with them... for many they see the hypocrisy of Christianity (and its general lack of empathy) but do connect with some form of paganism, and pagans generally have a patron god they serve above most others, and that god is the one they have a deep connection to, the same deep connection that Christians claim to have with Jesus/Yahweh... One doesn't drive a plane into a building killing 3,000 plus people without a deep and meaningful relationship with their god, and to dismiss t hat relationship as being deceived is naive and demonstrates a lack of empathy.

Now, I will allow the possibility that god does exist, but not in the form Christians propose, but perhaps closer to what the US Founding Fathers believed, but perhaps expanded a bit with more modern knowledge. A Deist like view. That this god somehow this god, created the energy and set into motion the laws of this physical universe that spun out from the big bang, but he's had nothing to do with anything since then. Perhaps all religions actually worship the same god but with their own culture's expectations and interpretations. However this would mean that all religions and lack there of are equally valid, which most faiths (aside from most modern paganism) doesn't allow for as their claim rests on being the true one.

I've rambled on far too long already so I'll leave it at that.

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In the comments the project writes:

We are very passionate about our mission of rescuing as many images as possible before they're all gone. we have over 5,000 images in the archive currently and hundreds of rolls in the backlog waiting to be processed.