You're very ignorant if you think that everyone has the same rights and opportunities. And degrading attitudes about women still exist today. The stereotypes that label men as rational, strong, decisive, and protective and women as emotional (irrational), submissive, weak, and nurturing are still very much alive. Just look at the top sifts of all time:
1. A very talented MAN playing the ukelele
2. Two talented BOYS' well-made lightsaber video
3. Autistic BOY being awesome at a b-ball game
4. Talented MALE robot dancer
5. Prairie Dog, generally accepted as MALE. Thus: Drama KING
6. Very clever rant about Pachebel. Again, a talented and clever MAN.
7. FINALLY, an intelligent WOMAN with integrity. But, wait! She's also very beautiful. Do you think this would be the #7 sift if she hadn't been so gorgeous? I don't think so. Listen to some of the comments:
"Plus, uhmm - she's like a hot Christiane Amanpour. But I like her integrity too."
"She's 40% Kylie Minogue and 60% Naomi Watts."
"...Plus, shes hot."
"Is there anything better than a hot, articulate, angry blonde ... I don't think so."
"Lara Logan is hot. Not only is she drop dead pretty, she is smart, she has an acerbic tongue and she tells the truth. Lately, she has been wearing tight tops with a push-up bra that really make her tits looks great. More Iraq stories, please............"
"shes hot and reaaaaaaly intelligent..."
"I want this woman to have my children."
"Lara Logan, will you marry me?"

I give major props to the guys of videosift for focusing FAR more on her integrity, intelligence, and how articulate she is. They really were very good about that. But I really, really think that a lot of those votes had everything to do with the COMBINATION of brains and looks. If this had been an ugly woman, it would not have received NEARLY as many votes, I'd bet you anything. Moving on.

8. Awesome commercial. The wind is a tall MAN doing funny things. Love this sift.
9. Drug spiders. MALE spiders (Mr. Crack Spider, etc.), Male narrator.
10. Quantum Physics narrated and explained by a MALE scientist.
11. Clever prank, talented FEMALES. (Yay!) All old/overweight women are the ones being tricked, all beautiful and young females are the tricksters. Some sample comments:
"...also, they were hot."
"Those twins could prank me in the bathroom anytime."
"Twin hot German chicks in a bathroom is guaranteed to make #1."

Again, the majority of the comments had nothing to do with the way the girls looked, but on the prank itself. Cool. Movin on.

12. Jon Stewart (MAN) being funny and clever and awesome.
13. A pretty GIRL with a great bod doing something pretty cool. Comments:

"She can spin on my escalator any day she likes."
"This is cool and I think it's pure science. For example, it would be interesting also to rub her down in various oils and see how it affects the results. Or underwear versus no underwear for example. What would happen?"
"She's a hottie."
"oh and this is *nature too because humans are part of nature.
and *sexuality because those tight jeans make her look sexy to me."
"I predict a chubby girl stuck between the glass railings of a shopping mall escalator near you."
"Indeed, perhaps she will leave a trail of freshly erected posts behind her as she spins her way from town to town."
"I suspect she already left a trail of freshly erected posts, both at the original venue and among some of the male sift viewers judging by the comments."
"Videosift seems to have an immense fondness for rotating women."
"You males are all full of bull putty. If this was a 15 year old pimply faced fella doing this it have about 20 votes and an eia tag immediately."

14. Dolphins blowing bubbles
15. Cool music video. MALE band, MALE hands.

Most people see the world through the eyes of a man and they don't even know it. Men look, women are looked upon.

Top Box-Office Movies of all time: (I'm going to point out the gender of JUST the main character (protagonist).

Titanic (1997)- As far as I can tell, not having seen the movie, the MALE/FEMALE share the main character spot.
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) - Male
Shrek 2 (2004) - Male
E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)- Male
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - Male
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Male/Female?
Spider-Man (2002) - Male
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)- Male
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)- Male
Spider-Man 2 (2004) - Male
The Passion of the Christ (2004)- Male
Jurassic Park (1993) - Male
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)- Male
Finding Nemo (2003) - Male
Spider-Man 3 (2007) - Male
Forrest Gump (1994) - Male
The Lion King (1994) - Male
Shrek the Third (2007) - Male
Transformers (2007) - Male
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) - Male
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) - Male
Iron Man (2008) - Male
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) - Male
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) - Male
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) - Male
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - Male
Independence Day (1996) - Male
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) - Male
The Sixth Sense (1999) - Male
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) - Male
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) Male/Female
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - Male
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) - Male
Home Alone (1990) - Male
The Matrix Reloaded (2003) - Male
Meet the Fockers (2004) - Male
Shrek (2001) - Male
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) - Male
The Incredibles (2004) - Male
Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) - Male

I could keep going, but I think you get the picture.

In reply to this comment by Shepppard:
Alright, this is a video of someone doing what they love.
I don't understand the controversy. Just because I watched this doesn't make me think of a woman as an object. I see her dancing, and I see her doing something she loves to do. I'm not sitting here thinking "I'd hit that so hard she'd walk funny for a week" I'm actually sitting here enjoying it because it's a dance.

People need to seriously reconsider what they want to pick fights with. Society on the whole has come to terms of equality. Black, White, Yellow, Purple, brown, male or female, everybody has equal rights and opportunities.
No race is better then the other, and same goes for the Sexes.

People don't treat women as brainless objects anymore. You can vote, you can drive, you can work, the only thing you can't do is pee standing up. People have accepted that women are NOT objects anymore, and therefore can actually watch something like this and appreciate it as art.

Because we (at least not all of us), don't have our head in the gutter anymore and can accept it.

>> ^gwiz665:
I don't get it...

It’s a scene from The Day The Earth Stood Still. That was the phrase Helen had to say to Gort to keep him from destroying the earth (should anything happen to Klaatu). Deano also has a good summary in the comments here (spoilers!)

Those are not the most famous words spoken to an extra-terrestrial. These are!

videos of the game are here :
http://www.videosift.com/video/Worst-Game-Ever
and here:
http://www.videosift.com/video/ET-the-Extra-Terrestrial-Atari-2600-Game-Walkthrough

Now how about it being taught in schools? It contradicts the Bible, so are you going to deny it being taught? What about other stuff that contradicts the bible? Are you going to make gay people illegal? Stop space exploration, stop the search for extra terrestrial life, it all contradicts the bible.

God these people are too stupid to run the damn country.

The people best suited to running countries and leading men don't want to, and the people who want to are always least suited.

Semi-offtopic rant over.

harry - speaking for england/britain and what i know of it, it isn't an issue to us. We accept that evolution is extremely likely to have been true, and move on with it. We don't even seem to have archaic and vehement christians shaking their crucifixes at us and telling us that we're wicked for believing in evolution. Most of the christians i know believe in evolution, and if i said to them "what about it contradicting the bible?" they'd just say something like "well god may have put it there to test us for all you know, but i admit that based on the evidence we have evolution is highly likely."

They'd also probably say something about the bible having been written by humans, and it having been subject to translation and manipulation over the years, but the core of it is what's important and true.

We just don't have it. No big fat psychopaths who scream about "TEH DARK SIDE!!1111" or whatever it was. I forget cos i watched Star Wars straight afterwards.

*promote

Wow.

I just realised. Those aren't extra terrestrial aliens. Fullerenedream, my impeccable fiancee just pointed out- this video depicts the first 45 seconds of a hard takeoff singularity

It turns out the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute is right around the corner -- last time I visted for a fundraising art show they held, Dr. Arroway (Foster's character) was just hanging out with the 6 of us that showed up. Nice woman, interesting work.

Actually, yaroslavvb, hypnosis does indeed work. Yes, the participant has to be willing, but the brain patterns displayed by those under hypnosis are not witnessed during any other state of mind, be it wakefulness, meditation, or any of the sleep stages. It is a state of mind that one must be willing to reach, but it is indeed a true state of mind. I didn't believe in hypnosis either until I actually took some classes and did some research on the subject.

As far as paranormal activity, supernatural events, and visits from aliens (the extra-terrestrial kind), well, they're bunk.

I knew a couple of people who ate those brownies once and it definitely went extra-terrestrial on their ass, do not doubt the power of the chocolate treat.

One has to wonder whether Casey truly didn't know the difference or if it was a last ditch attempt to discredit his whole argument by picking out a rather obscure and insignificant passage to make him appear hypocritical as the interview concluded.

Exactly , the whole thing was completely out of context, Dawkins wasnt making a simple "Aliens probably exist and they must be super-intellegent" statement, the whole point, which was preceded by a musing on how mind-bogglingly huge the universe is, thus making it probable that many planets have life, not just earth etc. Was to show how someone or something might be so intelligent and sophisticated they would seem like Gods to us, but that even so, we would instantly know they werent designed, they had come about, just like us, by gradual, natural selection over millions of years..

It wasnt by any means any serious measure or assumption of how probable extra-terrestrial life might be.

All in all if anything could be said about it, it is that Dawkins is the exact opposite of close-minded like some claim.

This is the intro to the Japanese based cartoon series loosely based on the book "The Little Prince" that aired in Europe and North America in the 1980s. If you are wondering why I sifted the Japanese version it's because the dubbed one just fails for me, I like the song in this one. My mother gave the book to read a while back. I loved it.

The show was made by the Knack animation studio and first aired in Japan in 1978 under the title "Hoshi no Ojisama Puchi Puransu" (Prince of the Stars: Petit Prince). In it, the Little Prince often traveled to Earth to help people.

The Little Prince (French Le Petit Prince), published in 1943, is French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's most famous novel, which he wrote while renting The Bevin House in Asharoken, New York on Long Island. The novel includes a number of drawings by Saint-Exupéry himself, which are reproduced in most versions.

Ostensibly a children's book, it makes several profound and idealistic points about life and love. In it, Saint-Exupéry imagines himself stranded in the Sahara Desert, thousands of kilometers away from inhabited places, where he meets a young extra-terrestrial (though entirely human-appearing) prince. In their conversations, the author reveals his own views about the follies of mankind and the simple truths that people seem to forget as they grow older.

The essence of the book is contained in the famous line uttered by the fox to the Little Prince:

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux" (It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye).

There are also two other main points in the book, both spoken by the fox. They are: "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed" and "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important".

Throughout the book the children's view on the world, on the main points of the human life and relations between people, which is represented by the Little Prince and partially by the narrator, is set off against the "grown-ups'" one, revealed in memories of the narrator and in the characters, met by the Little Prince on asteroids. But the author underlines, that the "'grown-ups' are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people."

The Little Prince has been translated into more than 160 languages and, to date has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide and turned into an anime series that ran 39 episodes. It is often used as a beginner's book for foreign language students.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_little_prince

What of 2001? Foundation? Childhood's End and my own personal favorite Dune? They all offer different takes on what a higher supreme being may or may not be. I mean it's perfectly possible that we are actually a large biological experiment run by extra terrestrials, who view us in the same vain we view mice, a baser animal that can be used to gain insights. Or perhaps it could really all be Douglas Adams like and the mice maybe running the whole thing... Or maybe there is a 'supreme architect' as the Freemasons put it, but thinking that his attention is purely focused on us would be delusional given the vastness and mystery of the Universe. Even then this superior intelligence would need a creator of and within itself.

But what's clear is that it's determental for human society to treat religious text as dogma, and the fervent word of God. Theologians themselves say that ultimately the Bible is an allegorical fable, put together over many year following the death of Jesus Christ, agreed on and put forward by the Council of Constantinople. See Dead Sea scrolls...

Satellites, debris, whatever. By definition if they're flying (or in orbit, I suppose) and you can't identify them, then they're UFOs. So what? Does not mean that what you see is extra-terrestrial in origin.

Yawn.