There is some skepticism from the economics writers, and more so in the Grauniad than the BBC or our local rags, but even there they're more vocal about Greece and close to silent on Britain.

I think the IMF deserves much more scrutiny from the press than it's had

Actually the whole thing reminds me of the 80s and Reaganomics, with the whole group think from the political classes and surprisingly little argument from anyone else.

Maybe they realised how pointless it was to point out the inevitable?

It is a long time ago, and I was quite young, but I don't even remember any Cassandras at the time... certainly our local newspapers all drank the kool-aid.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'dui, statist idiot, face first' to 'dui, statist idiot, face first, cassandra feuerstein, officer michael hart, skokie' - edited by xxovercastxx

I know you believe you are a brave awakened cassandra, privy to secret truths that others are not capable of understanding, but from outside this bubble, the image is less flattering.

I'm up to date on most of the major conspiracy theories, so it's not that I don't understand them or that I'm brainwashed by TV (I don't have TV service), it's just that I flat out reject them as unprovable foolishness.

I find conspiracy culture to be extremely lame, in the same way that I find Scientology and Magic Mormon Underpants to be lame, and have no problems saying so. When you accuse others of being unaware, gullible, mentally handicapped, unintelligent or lacking in reason, you do so from a very vulnerable position, because these are the same terms people use to describe conspiracy theorists.

In short, throwing stones from within a cathedral of glass is not without risk.

I hope that this momentum continues so that future historians will look back and see this time as a second Enlightenment. The fundamentalists, Cassandras and superstitious holy-rollers need to lurch back into the dark from whence they came.

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, and to quote Cassandra Clare:

“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.”

It's a tool passive aggressive people use to make the point about you, to delegitimize your point of view. It is just thinly veiled mockery. For a theist, ridicule from atheists, or more commonly, militant antitheists, is a daily event. It's just something that you get used to. It is rare to find rational discourse on this subject, although a few people on this board have stepped up to the plate.

It is about ego, and prejudice. Since he has decided to bash me in this thread, let's take HPQP as a good example of this. You only have to look at his videos to see that he has quite a lot of hatred stored up in his heart for Christianity. Thoughtful people aren't going to dedicate their time to trashing something they disagree with. This is clearly obsessive behavior fueled by anger and resentment, and most likely an underlying inferiority complex.

But, this is the way of the culture. Rudeness and intolerance is becoming the norm, especially in these United States. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705331806/Poll-Americans-are-becoming-more-rude.html

I appreciate you advocating for more decorum on here. On this subject particularly, if you watch some of the debates, like say dawkins vs lennox, you can see it is possible to discuss these issues in a respectful and civilized way, that is even intellectually satisfying. Even Hitchens said that the question of God was the greatest conversation you could have because it was a subject that led to every other important subject. It's sad that many people here don't seem to realize that and go out of their way to stifle discussion.




>> ^SDGundamX:

@hpqp
Thanks for explaining why you @GeeSussFreeK and I.
I'd like to explain my position more clearly. I'm not saying sarcasm is bad or should be banned or anything. I'm not saying "don't be mean to Shiny." I know you can't regulate people's behavior on the Net and I'm not about to try.
If I understand what you wrote correctly, you're saying using sarcasm is still "being a dick," it's just not nearly as much of being one as replying "you're a fag" to someone's argument. If that's what you're saying I agree with you on both counts (i.e. that using sarcasm is rather boorish behavior but it's not nearly so bad as resorting to direct insults).
Sarcasm can indeed be useful depending on what you intend to use it for. If you're looking to boost your own ego at another's expense and look intelligent while doing so, then really sarcasm is exactly what you're looking for. So too if you're hoping to get comment upvotes on the Sift--it seems like many of us Sifters appreciate a good burn.
But sarcasm also has a number of drawbacks and I personally find these to outweigh the benefits. The first drawback is adding unnecessary confrontation to a discussion. Sarcasm is an in-your-face ploy. It's personal. It might not be a punch in the face like "you're a fag" is, but it's at the least an back-handed bitch slap. Its goal is to belittle. If the target of the sarcasm wasn't aggressive before, they most likely will be when they reply because--let's face it--who wants to sit around and be insulted? Sarcasm exponentially increases the odds that a thread is going to devolve into a verbal brawl and that the original points being debated will get lost. Why introduce that risk into the argument? Why not just rationally argue your points?
Which brings me to the second drawback--sarcasm stifles debate. Sometimes this is intentional--rather than argue the points under discussion, the poster is looking to score ego points (or upvotes or whatever) because they really don't have anything substantial to contribute. I think, though, more often here on the Sift the debate gets lost unintentionally. People are so busy grandstanding and showing everyone how witty and sarcastic they can be that they forget to address or flat-out ignore valid points made by the opposition.
This is what I was trying to point out in the other thread. People dog-piled on Shiny not because of his main point (about the irony of toasting what he perceived to be an alcoholic/excessive drinker) but because he suggested praying for Hitchens (which, as far as Shiny goes is pretty mild in terms of the evangelical department). As I've said before, you actually were the only person to respond to the content of Shiny's comment rather than attack Shiny himself--your quotation implied that Hitchens would be pleased with the idea since he felt his drinking to be more of a benefit than a hindrance. It moved the conversation forward, if only for a moment. Things went rapidly downhill from there.
I know that sarcasm is all the rage these days--the fact that we now have a 'sarcasm' button for our comments on the Sift is telling. But reading the threads here on the Sift I can't help feeling it is detracting more than it is contributing. If the goal of posting is to feel good by belittling others, well I guess that's fine and dandy then. But if our goal of posting here is to approach the truth through dialogue, then I think the sarcasm is getting in the way of that.
Ultimately, of course, everyone is free to choose how they act on the Sift. My hope is that people who read this post who may be considering being sarcastic in a reply to another poster will think a bit more about what their goal is before posting. Looking to feel superior to another person? Flame away! But if you're looking to make a valid point and further the discussion, maybe sarcasm isn't way to go.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

safesearch: off
>> ^spoco2:
Cassandra Peterson, Google Image Search... I'll say no more.

safesearch: off
>> ^spoco2:

Cassandra Peterson, Google Image Search... I'll say no more.

Cassandra Peterson, Google Image Search... I'll say no more.

His own story is proof enough of what he is saying. Here is a man with a prestigious and decades long career in journalism that immediately gets stabbed in the back the minute he questions the corporate propaganda line. His job gone, his visibility gone, his prospects gone. Condemned to a life sentence of giving out Cassandra oracles in obscure forums for thinking for himself.

^ Baiting anyone who wants to fight with a very non-controversial statement.

I find it funny that people buy into the shadow statistics website. Why are their numbers more believable than the government's?

For that matter, if TIPS gives a payout based on government-based CPI, doesn't that mean this measure becomes an effective way to gauge whether the market agrees with the officially-published CPI? If the market believes the government consistently under-reports inflation, then wouldn't it bid up the constant-value yields, and make this test show that the market expects high inflation?

It's kinda the beauty of the test -- both yields are set by market forces, but the payout for TIPS will be adjusted by the government-reported CPI, while constant-value won't be. The spread is determined entirely by market-expected worth of the TIPS vs. constant-value.

Now, this isn't a way to measure inflation, it's a way to divine what the market consensus prediction about the 10-year rate of inflation is.

The way I see it, you have four possibilities:

1. The government is lying, and the market knows it.
   
   In this case, the constant value yield gives you an upper bound for the rate of inflation -- the market expects that security to pay back the rate of inflation + market interest of >0%.
   
   
2. The government is not lying, and the market knows it.
   
   The above is true, and the test as described can also be expected to be a reasonable predictor of the 10-year inflation rate.
   
   
3. The government is not lying, but the market thinks it is.
   
   In this case, we would see a high TIPS spread, but real inflation will be less than it predicts.
   
   
4. The government is lying, and the market doesn't know it.
   
   This is the Austrian belief. It means for some reason all the people controlling all the money in the world believe the Government's fraudulent statistics, while shadowstatistics.com, Peter Schiff and Ron Paul play the role of economic Cassandras.
   
   I don't see why smart (and therefore most) money wouldn't bet on their predictions, if they are indeed accurate. They have no new theory, or special information, and certainly aren't keeping what they know to themselves. As a liberal, I don't see why the market not listening to their "correct" ideas doesn't violate the basic premise of why we should surrender our lives to the infallible, prescient markets, but I digress.
   

My judgment is that #4 would indicate not that Paul and Schiff are right, but that Karl Marx is right, and capitalism should be considered a fatally flawed system.

Mostly though, I think the evidence points to reality falling somewhere between #1 and #2. To the degree that the government is lying, the market is aware of it, and adjusting accordingly, with inflation likely to fall between the TIPS spread and the constant-value yield...and neither number is large right now.

I'm more of a free marketeer than Paul and Schiff -- I think if they really had valuable insight, more money would be moving on the basis of their theories and predictions.

Christopher Hitchin is Cassandra..crying out warnings that no one hears. We will have to relive Pearl Harbor (a "surprise" attack..like 9/11...remember?) in order to take hold and stop this. I am not optimistic.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'peak oil, dancing, sexy' to 'peak oil, dancing, sexy, oily cassandra' - edited by calvados

For reals....

"People of the future, I'm sure that these messages will give many of you a smug and superior feeling of satisfaction, so my message to you is FUCK OFF. Instead of using us as a yardstick to measure your own miniscule accomplishments, think of all the injustice that surrounds you as you read this.

My fellow messengers, frankly, are sanctimonious, insufferable bores; like so many self-important wannabe Cassandras, sucking up to their nonexistent descendants. They seem to think that you will somehow - in 100 years - be miraculously wiser and less corrupt than we, when in fact the opposite might very well be true.

If money, and greed have ANY seat in your current power structure, you have some serious work to do. If corporations have armies, if you have no social security net, if you have no national health care program, if entire countries are still starving, you have some serious work to do. So stop rummaging through our home movies and get to work you lazy bastards!

Oh, and if you've indeed cured cancer, enacted world peace and extended the human orgasm to 7 1/2 minutes, then kindly disregard this message."

-dft

From YouTube:
This exclusive video clip comes from the 1982 broadcast of Los Angeles based Entertainment magazine 'Real People' from 1982. This segment features Cassandra 'Elvira' Peterson applying her Elvira make-up. As you've never seen 'Elvira' before, with make-up, minus wig and dress with RED HAIR. Special thanks to Cassandra Peterson for approving the distribution of this footage. Thanks to Robert Abend for recording this nearly 25 years ago!