I stop to think about things all the time.

What he's representing and what it represents to the passerby are worlds apart. In this case, he's clearly in a neighborhood where the average citizen sees the police as a protection against a non-uniformed man with a gun, rather than an activist or educated individual upholding their rights.

Gather several hundred open-carriers and visit capitol hill, or go to the nearest politician-laden golf resort with your assault rifle. Don't march up and down neighborhoods (http://goo.gl/5lhLnG) looking for trouble.

From the mostly-benign situations such as this, to the people who've had their fill of shit and gun down a crowd of innocents: making openly aggressive statements in this way is addressing the wrong audience. This is not the way to make the point.

Lastly, even though I agree with you, you can't tell me I'm lumping someone into a perceived fairy land when you title videos "Student Prevails Over State Robot Thug".

HOW Can you disagree that an organization that commits actual massacres...ACTUAL FUCKING MASSACRES is better than Fox News.

Are you using some metric that isn't on this planet? Is there something that Fox does to make people think those things that is the equivalent of Killing Hundreds of people?

We will never agree until you can accept that Murder is worse than Thought Crime.

Eh. Ultimately, satire can offend, but its goal is to enlighten people. If it's good satire, there should be a net positive societal gain.

I'm arguing that if you end up offending more than you enlighten, there's no net positive societal gain there. Especially if you offend a subset of the very group (targets of racism in this case) than you're trying to uplift with the satire.

It's got to be case-by-case, and it's often a very tough call. As I mentioned above, Dave Chappelle himself, by most accounts a comedic genius, struggled with it immensely in his material. And figuring all of this out is a tricky, ongoing process of discovery and dialog which requires a more nuanced viewpoint and empathy than you're showing a willingness to take on. Honestly it's a lot to process and I often wonder and question my own ability to navigate these issues.

Ultimately, I feel like you and many others just want win an argument and not really have to think about things like this anymore in the future. You want your racial satire and you want your rape jokes without talking about or thinking about any boundaries or grey areas for the purveyors of that comedy, and that's that. Black and white.

If something like this comes up again, welp, you already have an answer for that. You can just pull out your rubber stamp that says:
"It's satire people! Those offended don't get the context of the joke."

Colbert's character is a satire of just that kind of black and white way of thinking, so it's highly ironic for his viewership to mimic it.

I think what you're describing as The Artist is the refusal to grow up. The world has advanced: many professional creatives today have to work hard to increase their IQs and manage large data sets. That's good: data is beautiful and complex.

I don't think these things are in-born and unchangable. I think practical people who are intellectually curious can go into any of many secure careers

Just my opinion here, but I think there are better ways to solve the issues with soaring profits while paying people nearly nothing for said profits.

Negate tax loop holes. If you're making a billion more each year, you shouldn't be showing a 0 dollar tax burden year after year. Incentivize expanding (lower taxes, etc), heavily tax companies who sit on their money or offshore nearly everything but still call themselves a US company. You should not get both the benefit of low cost offshoring, while the US has to maintain a military presence, infrastructure, and other safety/security institutions that allow you to operate your business and live in safety as you do.

Regulations on speculation that have made a lot of markets spiral out of control. I'm no economist, but when you see prices rise and fall based on rumors and possibilities...look at fuel prices especially. People shouldn't be making money on commodities when they have no hand in adding value to said commodity. If they aren't processing/shipping/extracting/packaging/ANYTHING but sitting on something waiting for a price spike, you need to take that avenue of profit out of the equation. There are places out there with enough buying power they can literally buy all supply, hold it for a few days to jack up the price and sell it off. Creating false shortages should get you a kick to the nuts.

Basically put profit back into production and manufacturing instead of offshoring and screwing with markets to get profit.

Leads to stagnation and often times inferior products as people race to the bottom to drive costs down to increase profits.

For stagnation, look at the broadband market. They have done jack and shit to improve it for a long time now for the majority of the the US, there is absolutely no reason for them to because monopolies and ability to drive costs down while continuing to jack up the rates and influence laws in their favor.

Inferior products, a good example of this would be the Craftsman line of products. Or hell something as simple as kitchen utensils...they look the same until you've had em for a bit and your forks and spoons are bending and not holding up in the dishwasher like they should getting kinda "off" looking.....probably made in China or some other Asian nation with inferior stainless steel. Then you got your US made ones, they might be more expensive but they still make them the same way they did your grandparents silverware...which your grandparents left to your parents and they still look better than the inferior china ones.



This is why I don't believe offshoring lowers consumer prices, because you might spend less on a single thing..but it likely won't last as long and you end up either buying a "good quality one" or repeatedly buying shitty ones. I do however believe offshoring lowers COMPANY costs, and increases their profits. Rarely does stuff actually end up cheaper once they offshore it, and if it does it usually comes with a swift decline in quality.


Lots of ...."off" ways of thinking about things that have become ingrained into the media and people's minds. And I think it's intentional. Minimum wage debate puts the focus on the "greedy" worker, and gives them another reason to move more jobs offshore "to maintain low prices for consumers" yet the company profits continue to go up. IE they pay less to make it, you pay the same or more to buy it. And people are too busy blaming joe schmoe for his minimum wages to notice they just keep doing this shit.

If it wasn't running when it went through the ice there's a very good chance that with very little work the engine and mechanicals would be fine. A strip down clean and rebuild would be the worst case scenario there. The electrics may be shot, but replacing those wouldn't be too hard with a donor car from a scrappy. Likewise with the interior. Take it all out and let it dry properly and it'll be fine. Certainly a lot better than not having a car.

In the west we often think about things like this in terms of how much it would cost to pay someone else to do all this for us. The owner of the car in Russia would be much more likely to do the work themselves. So, the cost becomes the cost of parts, rather than labor - and labor is often the most expensive part of any repair job.

Besides that, even if it was a write off it's far better for the environment (and these guys are probably eating fish they pull out of that lake) and for the owner if they get the car out of the lake.

If you just want to fantasise about what the dog is thinking etc. then I fail to see how my comment would prevent that? Unless of course you think I'm right and resent your little bubble of ignorance being burst in which case fuck you and your backwards mindset.

Just because you don't appear to care doesn't mean everyone else feels the same way. Or are you one of those people that finds unnecessary education somehow offensive?

If you don't like it or disagree then either ignore me or challenge my point, what you just said there was basically "Your a douche because you tried to make people think about something instead of taking it at face value, and thinking about things is a drag".

"That you don't get it or like is fine, that you want to spoil it for everyone else that's why your an asshole." -Bill Hicks

Yes those are good points, however one thing I've found in my studies (in part, sitting through an ethics class every week for the past 2 years) and elsewhere is that the Nazi regime is used as a way of objectively describing what 'bad' is and contemporary examples are overlooked. The main examples of this 'bad' are the way in which they conducted human research, the genocide they committed and the fear they instilled in their own population to be obedient through the SS, propaganda etc. Of course there are many other examples but those are a few of the main ones. The issue I always have sitting there listening to these lectures is that we are turning a blind eye to what is happening in the world today, it's easy to understand why if you do a bit of thinking on the matter, but most people don't seem to be able to do that, or they are simply too scared to talk about it for fear of reproach.

So to start with, I could name countless things that America (and other countries such as the UK/France etc) has done over the past 50 years that would make any rational person cringe if they hadn't known about it previously, however you can find those things out yourself with a little research on the internet, so there's no point listing them here (and I'm sure you know many of them already anyway). I think what is important is why these things don't seem as objectively bad to you as what's been done in the past. The answer would have to be pretty complex, however I think one reason is that things are not done as overtly these days. Wars are often waged by proxy, or people are led to 'buy in' to the excuses that are often given to begin wars, change leaderships etc.

I mean, it's easy to think, ,OK so the Nazi's sent around death squads to ensure people were obedient and that's objectively bad, but how does one quantify how immoral or unethical it is to watch/listen to and record almost the entire world's digital communication exchange between individuals and groups and then have the ability to send drones with bombs on them to kill anyone they feel like (with an unknown amount of collateral damage) without fear of reproach. No reproach being literal, the US has ~half the worlds military expenditure after all.

Now you might say, well nobody is knocking on my door making sure I'm pro-Obama and killing my entire family if I'm not, however I think the thing people often overlook, and it comes back to my previous two points. These things are happening in other countries and they are often by proxy, so to fully comprehend the level of immorality the US has sunk to, one first has to educate oneself on all these events, then one has to have enough empathy to care about the events and people involved, then one has to be educated enough in morals and ethics to be able to make some measurement as to how bad they are.

In my opinion it's a tall order to get most people to understand/learn all these things, most people are too worried about keeping their jobs, looking after their families or friends etc. Even those that meet all those requirements won't all agree that these things are bad, and even if they know they are bad, they are too fearful to speak their mind about it, or perhaps they have a specific agenda (i.e. someone like Jay Carney who is paid to spout BS for the president all day). There are lots of ways things can be justified, and lots of angles that can be taken in arguments.

So I guess my point is that despite the fact things are not as bad for you as they would have been under the Nazi regime, that doesn't mean millions of people in dozens of countries are not being oppressed in similar ways to what they would have been back then. the US doesn't precisely meet Emilio Gentile's definition of a Fascist state, however it meets many of the criteria, and I think if you look at the big picture (primarily what's happening in countries that the US wants resources from) you can see that @Fusionaut's remark wasn't too far off the mark.

"Truth" is an idea in the mind of a crazy person. You don't need to know the truth in order to not lie.
I'm not sure where you pulled "truth" out of, I never wrote the word.
I do not hold ANY beliefs. I railed against those who do. Belief is thinking a thing is 'true' in the face of all evidence to the contrary. I am a scientist, and I think in hypothesis and theory, which allows for new information to reshape my thoughts. (but you seem to have told me to stop accepting new information)
Funny, you seem to have assigned a convenient label to me (liberal-conservative/republicrat-demicon ) not knowing if any fit a single one of my 9 heads. I used the standard anti-Obama stupidity that those who agree with douchebags like this guy use repeatedly, why can they label him but I can't use their label? Please elaborate.
I think perhaps you should take your own advice. That, and try to make cogent sentences/thoughts rather than blather. It's not useful to simply state 'your stupid and wrong and only a programmed idiot, stop trying to get new information and shut up.' without any actual information or even stated ideas to back you up.
That said, where would you suggest one get information if broadcast media and the internet are off limits? Print? HA!!!
As an aside, I don't live in Babylon, I live in the USA. Let the Mesopotamians deal with the turds.

Back when I was in High School (not all that long ago, mid 90s), I had a somewhat low opinion of some of my History/Government/Social Studies type classes. A lot of that was because they were *all* hired as teacher/coach combos. I felt like they had a tendency to phone in the teaching bit because what they were really there to do was the coaching. I still think there is a big mismatch between the amount of money and energy spent on sports programs versus academics in public schools.

However, as much as I scoffed at those teachers at the time, looking back they did some of the things this kid is suggesting quite well. They talked with us, discussed and debated issues that came up for whole class periods, trying to get opinions from everyone. They got me/us thinking about things. One of them gave us a project to watch a Hollywood movie about some historical event of our choice and then write and present a report about what facts they got right or wrong. Looking back, I'd have to say that it could have been a heck of a lot worse if they were just expected to teach to some arbitrary standardized test, and their jobs or at least salary depended on yearly improvement in test scores.

So, I think that @Yogi is right and that is probably more of an institutional failing than a bad teacher, although we don't really have any evidence one way or the other from the videos. In spite of thinking that his anger is perhaps directed a bit off of the most important target, he definitely comes across as more reasonable in this interview (which makes sense, he's had time to cool down and consider things more fully). Hope the school doesn't come down on him too hard, if at all.

Sorry, but this comment touched a nerve with me.

If that's truly the case, then you really need to find other more important things to be personally "embarrassed" about. Perhaps you should start thinking about things that might have more personal relevance, or at least, that you have some personal or financial accountability to be embarrassed for. Unless your last name is Abrams, I can't see how a movie trailer possibly reflects personally on you.

This looks awesome and I plan on seeing it in the theater.

I still think of things in terms of "If...then" statements.

I agree with you in general. I think it will be a successful product potentially. I just think people are going to find themselves disappointed given all the hype. I just don't think the technology is satisfactory even on the cutting edge. It would be like all (even the best) portable mp3 players sounded like finger nails on chalk boards. Apple came along and made an affordable "finger nails on chalk board sounding portable mp3 player" and we all expected everyone was going to be jumping to buy one rather than simply continuing to listen to their nice home stereo instead.

Just as a first order critique. Do you really think gamers are going to settle for 640x800 screens that subtend even wider visual angles? With 800 pixels over 90 degrees you're talking about a nyquist frequency of 5ish cycles per degree. That ain't exactly a retina display. That's like a tenth the resolution of a retina display on a linear dimension, or one one-hundredth the number of total pixels.

I think this thing will have a highly anticipated launch and peter out as people find themselves preferring to game with their traditional interfaces instead.

yeah I always figured that if I won the lottery, my life would actually be sadder because it would be so much harder to figure out if my friends were genuinely my friends or they just wanted to mooch off the cash. same thing when it comes to finding a significant other.

our entire society is built around the idea that we don't have enough resources to go around for everyone to live comfortable lives and wanting for nothing. so we create a system by which attributes and skills that think are desirable are rewarded with more resources than those who don't.

which is fine, It was necessary for the time, but as our technology improves, we're going to have re-think many things. We're already at the point where the ability to clothe and feed everyone is rather mundane, in fact we have an obesity problem.

problem is, change is hard, people have a hard time letting go and adopting new ideas. People have become extremely wealthy off of the status quo so in their view, we should never change.

society as a whole is probably going to go through a major upheaval when we solve our energy problems and energy is cheap and renewable, but that is precisely why some people are going to not want it to happen.

>> ^bareboards2:

Sorry my response was so pissy..... I am just frustrated that after forty years of talking about this, I am still hearing the EXACT SAME RESPONSES from folks who don't take the time to actually think about the topic. It all just parroted back, the same old same old.
I sound like a broken record because I hear a broken record. For forty years.
Anyway, had you gone back and listened to the beginning of the clip where they call themselves "real men" or something like that, my comment might have made more sense. Can you imagine three young women saying "if I do this amazing act of bravery, then I'll prove myself as a real woman"? We just don't talk like that in our culture. And that makes me sad. And had done for FORTY YEARS.
If it is still going in ten years, I shall be even more sad.


I have some exciting new thoughts for you to try out, but let's start with the mundane specific case of the gentlemen in the video. It seems obvious that they're contrasting 'men' with 'boys' rather than 'men' with 'women/girls'. That's the old rite of passage being invoked, nothing to do with sex at all. Being British, they also can't help talking with a certain degree of irony that some might miss. These points are only worth making because they highlight your paranoia and oversensitivity.

Sex is ultimately irrelevant; at a 50/50 split it's too shallow a distinction to be meaningful in most cases. Gender is a personal construct, which scarcely signifies outside the individual who inhabits it. If someone, for whatever reason incomprehensible to us, chooses to incorporate their ability to tolerate capsaicin into their gender identity then it's really none of our business. We've certainly no cause to be threatened by it on a personal or cultural level.

I don't consider myself to have a gender. The rational thing to do is treat people as individuals. When you talk about the cultural implications of calling someone a girl, that means as much to me as a teenagers complaining about discrimination against vampires.

It's possible to think very seriously about a topic and decide it doesn't matter. It's just as important to point out what doesn't matter as what does. Then we can stop wasting our energy, forty years worth in your case, on trifles - and concentrate on what's actually worth thinking about. Feminists seem to only think about things that don't matter, which is why everyone hates them. Every human being on earth, and I mean that literally, agrees that the various sexes and genders don't need to be assigned different rights, or at least that we're not sophisticated enough to be able to tease out and codify the very subtle differences between those groups, individuals, and any individual at different moments in their life. That's where the issue ends. There is nothing else to talk about, but when you've squandered so much time on and identified yourself so strongly with such a simple little idea you have to invent a lot of nonsense non-issues to rant on about just to make it all seem worthwhile.

Stop being a feminist; start being a rational person who naturally agrees with the single sensible point feminists have to make and go and do something useful with your time.