Tags for this video have been changed from 'eoo, me, Stephen Fry, I mode, American TV' to 'eoo, me, Stephen Fry, I mode, I need, interest in others, American TV, shut up, heroism' - edited by calvados

>> ^Trancecoach:

I find it interesting that, other than the fact that this show passes itself off as news and the Daily Show passes itself off as a comedy program, there is essentially no difference between what this show is doing in this particular clip and what the Daily Show does on a regular basis.
Well, I suppose there's one other difference: that the folks who watch Daily Show consider it their source of news, while the people watching this consider this a real source of news. I wonder who's better informed?
or maybe that's no difference at all.


A lot of people consider TDS a credible news source.

I find it interesting that, other than the fact that this show passes itself off as news and the Daily Show passes itself off as a comedy program, there is essentially no difference between what this show is doing in this particular clip and what the Daily Show does on a regular basis.

Well, I suppose there's one other difference: that the folks who watch Daily Show consider it their source of news, while the people watching this consider this a real source of news. I wonder who's better informed?

or maybe that's no difference at all.

Pretty words, but it's still not an answer. You paint a picture of people walking hand in hand in peace, but that is not human nature. I have all of history to support my assertion, and you can't seem to give me one shred of logic as to how abandoning government would be of any benefit.

Please understand that when I say fear is a good thing that I don't mean everybody should live in fear all the time. I sure don't. What I mean is that anybody who wishes to promote their own self interests at the expense of somebody else should be in fear of reprisal. That is the only way some people will think of others before themselves.

And as dramatic as the example of the incident in Arizona is, I don't believe it would happen any less often if people carried weapons around like in the old west. There is a reason cities started banning openly carrying. Simple arguments would escalate to murder. If you feel defenseless in public, try pepper-spray. Somebody with a gun would not have stopped that nutjob in Arizona. Instead of being tackled by people in the crowd, he probably would have been shot to death. And then we might never have the opportunity to find out what the hell was going on in his head, and consequently what we might do to prevent it from happening again somewhere else.

It is easy to spout platitudes about government doing more harm than good, but aside from vague statements about a free and voluntary society, you don't seem capable of explaining how such a society would work. Let me use one of your examples: fresh water is a precious resource, yet manufacturers of our sanitary facilities used to frequently design their products in ways that would waste that fresh water for no purpose. If your free and voluntary society was viable, then there would be no reason to regulate how much water was used per flush, because all the manufacturers would design their products to be efficient. They didn't, so they got regulated.

That's how the real world works. That's why laws are passed and regulations are enacted. Because people are selfish, and they don't care about the best interests of others. That's why your system would dissolve into chaos.

I'm still open to an explanation as to how I'm wrong. You've responded several times but never with anything of substance. That makes me inclined to believe you have no argument, and are living in a fantasy. Prove me wrong.

Thank You, I understand so much more about Obama's troubles I really feel bad for him, he really tried to get this through. To bad the Republican's and people have no interest for others health. I don't understand these groups at all. I wonder what their position would be if they had cancer and no coverage.

"God will take care of HealthCare."

*Cringe*

I will proudly vote to re-elect Obama. If for nothing else, to not help these republicans get the power they are assuming they will get by opposing all of the bills that will help America, and in turn make the uneducated American's vote against Obama for "not doing anything"

^ That's interesting: the other one says it was made from the original negatives, and that there were no known prints. Whereas this one says it was made from a print and that the negatives were lost.

The former. The latter is incidental.

>> ^Ryjkyj:
That depends. Do you like to memorize numbers because you enjoy it or because you think it makes you seem smart or interesting to other people?
Answer honestly now because it will let me know which link to send you.

That depends. Do you like to memorize numbers because you enjoy it or because you think it makes you seem smart or interesting to other people?

Answer honestly now because it will let me know which link to send you.

also:

http://www.kakaporecovery.org.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=92&Itemid=191

Sirocco had an uncertain start to life, suffering a respiratory illness at three weeks old whilst being raised by his mother Zephyr. The treatment he required meant that he had to be hand-raised, and he was the first male kakapo for this to happen. Unfortunately he had to be raised in the absence of other kakapo, and as a result became imprinted on humans. Older age doesn’t seem to have increased his interest in other kakapo yet; he doesn’t associate with them at all, and instead he booms in the presence of humans.

As a result, staff have realised he is unlikely to be an effective breeding bird, but instead an extremely good advocate for his species; and can provide the best opportunities for people to meet a live kakapo.

While Saddam was monsterous, there's little room for debate there, his level of monstrocity was miniscule compared to what was happening in Africa. he gassed perhaps, at most, 10s of thousands, African warlords hacked millions to death


Saddam's war with Iran left more than 1 million dead. I don't know the numbers for Saddam's kills with chemical weapons, but Saddam killed a lot more people with conventional arms than with chemical weapons. In his Al-Anfal campaign alone estimates are as high as 2-3 hundred thousand killed, mostly people already taken prisoner shot execution style at pre-dug mass graves. That's nearly a quarter million for just one act of Saddam's brutality against the Kurds. Unknown numbers of countless others that were even suspected of opposing Saddam and their family members were killed as well. He killed 60 random members of his own party's leadership just to ensure that when he took power no-one within his party could oppose him. He was even less discriminate about killing anyone in a suspected position of opposition. I don't want to detract from the monstrosity of what has and is still happening in Africa, but Saddam's reign of terror was I think more difficult to rival than you describe. In Rwanda, probably the single worst genocide in Africa in my generations time saw a body count of around 800,000. By all counts worse than Saddam, but not by as much as I once believed.


If we are to use "level of evil" as a reason to attack a foreign nation, we should do it in order, based on levels of evil, not because he tried to kill someone's daddy.

I agree that would be ideal, but I don't believe we always have the luxury. In the end, the nation as a whole is most interested in it's own best interests, and other considerations are all a distant second. Since I do believe that Iraq is better off for Saddam's removal, I am willing to settle for a mere convergence of American self-interest and Iraqi self-interest. Even if Bush only went in because of his daddy, or more likely to make Cheney some extra cash, I still support the action of removing Saddam from power and believe that was a massive change for the better. I believe that given the alternative between the American invasion and another 10 years of Saddam's rule, the nation of Iraq is immeasurably better off than it otherwise would be today. In other words, I support the war even though I may have entirely different reasons than the American leadership or public for doing so. I support the war even if there are a dozen other places I wish that America would have chosen instead, I still consider Saddam a good choice for removal too.


What I mean is, the most important factor we should consider when making forign policy is what effect that policy will have, both for them and us.

And that I agree with completely. I just consider that in Iraq the actions that Saddam took are much more important than American foreign policy towards him over that time. Whether America supported, ignored or actively opposed him earlier the shear magnitude of the violence and evil Saddam continually used is what should guide the current decision.

^ I think we're on the same page, and ultimately I think you just said you agree with my overall point -- the statement "government can't create wealth" is false.

The question you raise is "can labor in the hands of the government create greater wealth than labor in the hands of individuals?" which is fair and valid, and I'd agree that most of the time, government cannot do it better. I just don't agree with people who assert that it never can spend money that results in benefit greater than the sum of dollars spent, whether that's wealth or something more abstract.

I'm always interested in other perspectives, and while I most certainly have an existing viewpoint, I'm open to changing my mind on things if someone gives me a good reason to do so. I figure it's good to invite people to make good-natured attempts to tear down what I believe, just to make sure it stands up to scrutiny.

However, I find that holding the average Republican talking point up to the light pretty much always makes them shrivel into worthless nonsense. There's a difference between "Government should not try to do X because we think Y would be better" and "Government is incapable of doing X". The former is the statement of a viewpoint, the second is a false declaration that, if true, would vindicate their unstated viewpoint.

Same goes with Michael Steele's asserting that government can't create jobs (and worse, says never in the history of mankind has it ever done so) -- what I think he wants to say is that government can't create permanent private sector demand for employment through temporary government spending. That would be the start of a valid debate, but it's not what he's actually saying.

My main concern is that there seem to be people who don't know any better who think these misleading statements are directly true; they think government can't create wealth, and government can't create jobs.

I don't think that's being honest, and I hope you would agree with me.

I agree with Almanildo. While I think you can dismiss all dogmatic thinking and supernatural explanations out of hand, religious texts have played and still plays a major role in literature, arts and philosophy. The texts are also interesting in other aspects.

To dismiss the texts as uninteresting would be wrong, something I don't think people like Dawkins do.

1: I tend to be too long winded. after reading several of these, i started writing my own in my head. Even in my head i realised some points would need footnotes because i am not concise.

2: when speaking i can sustain a single sentence for so long, that people glaze over, loosing focus on the words that im saying and become facinated by the fact that i am not breathing. they often feel forced to inturpt me to demand that i breath.

3: I have come to learn reacently that i place enourmouse value on respect. being respected by others, and in my giving it (more slack on that). this insight has come from my realising so many relationships (esp family) had not included it, and i had acepted this, without realising what was absent.

4: I often find that other people are facinating when i shutup and let them speak about themselves. doing so enriches me, and i feel my life events are so less interesting in comparison. There is a balance to be ahd here, which i have not achived

5: I am dislexic. i'm also lazy. i could spellcheck this, but i've chosen not to for ilisturtive purpoises. i often misspell phoneticaly. where i have not its probably a typeo. these are not the same thing. i've correct a few of those or this would be genuinly ilegiable.

6: I feel that the human mind is incredible. it can re-peace together information from a single with a lot of noise in. like typos/misspellings, or a crowded room/party. the mind is so good at this that we can stop listening to people, thinking we've heard them and understood, when actualy we havent. listening is a pasive act, not an active one.

7: i have insights that are not original and get me nowhere either.

8: I once had my right testicle swell from about walnut size to bigger than a tenis ball in a mater of minuits. my left was unchanged. they injected morphine into my leg to calm me down. this was good.

9: one of my middle names is Kevern. It is after a cornish town near where i was born.

10: my mother was one of the last débutantes, introduced to the queen. my father was working class, and became an anglican vicar. This has left me with mild class confusion. i can be neither upper, nor working class, as i lack the inside information both would have. so i must be a variation of middle. about as mild and irelivant an identity crissis as one can have. very british.

11: i consider myself both british and cornish, but not enlgish.

12: I am a geek. i read alot, would have collected comics had there been a shop near when growing up (and had i had money), played warhamer 40k/bloobowl, RPGs etc. still do. only reacently played DnD. wasnt keen. want to play a game with a few friends to a system im making up myself.

13: I dont belive women like men. This is not a logical feeling, but its clear i feel it deep down. I get symanticaly hung up on things, and feel the term "men" is to broad. "women tend to like some men" is perfectly true. this is only important because i consider myself a member of "men" but, not of "some men". this is deeply unoriginal i'm sure, but influences how i interact with people, and is so likely to be one of the many factors that maintain my singleness. I mention it because its something about myself i'd like to change, but about which i feel powerless to do so.

14: I have 1 older brother. I always wanted to have a daughter, but I now dislike my own genes so strongly, i would not like to be a genetic father. as i am 31, this may not matter. I would hope i could be a good father. I would be determined to not make the mistakes my own father did, but would likely faily in atelast part as well as making my own new ones. joy.

15: I am thin, but not fit. i'd like to be strong. but i play video games for hourse. I like dance, freestyle, and almost joined a dance group as a child, but was peer preasured out of it. i like to sing, but am not good. I have reacently started Capoeira. this seems to be a wonderfull balance of all those thigns for me.

16: I grew up always imaging i would go to university and get a degree because that was what you did. discovering that this was not an expectation/aspiration/the norm for some people shocked me, because it made me realise how much i'd taken that path for granted.

17: I wanted to be an astrophysicist. i longed for space but the UK has no space program and im not that bright.

18: i have changed academic course in my life several times, at alive, degree, and then quit my PHD after 18months of it due to realising i had a violent hatred towards it and was depressed.

19: I once had to ask a friend in class how to spell the word "the" because i had forgotten. this was a foolish move.

20: As a young child, my bowels did not tell me when they needed to be evacuated. they just did their own thing. This was socially disastrous. 2 years ago i had 1/3rd of my large intestine removed due to cancer, and now im just glad they work atall. perspectives change.

21: I have great respect for the military, but dislike that we need one. I understand their need for discipline, but had i joined, would likely have passively resisted it untill i had gone insane. i am contridictions.

22: I can hold long converastions with myself, often considering what i would say to people, going overthings and yet once did not speak to a person for almost a week. i was brushing amdness, had breakdowns, and have had a panic attack in a restaurant. the human condition can be frustraighting.

23: I've gone over 24hrs without eating more than once, because i've been busy/distracted. i dont always take good care of myself. i dont always care.

24: I have things i need to be doing. I barely watch any videos on VS any more, due to time. maybe 1 or 2 every 2 weeks. and yet i check sift-talk/blogs page daily. the people matter.

25: as i keep mentioning, my new belife system is atheist. It seems that lossing christianity is very common, but as when someone is first converted, the point of change can be a profund period internaly. I have a strong science background, and a respect for holistic things. i dont reject things i dont understand, but i dont integrate them either. i belive in chaos. belife is not worship. i dont worship anythign.

26: i found others lists very interesting. i doubt mine has been, but found value in typing it. theres in isight in the selections i chose, from many for the 25, and i apologise that being of interest to others is not the primary criteria i chose by

isn't it lack of government oversight that got us into this mess in the first place???

Were the riots of the 60s a result of government failing to enforce Jim Crow laws? Rather than put law enforcement under a single umbrella, you need to understand the difference between a good law and a bad law. Before you even make the jump to regulation, ask yourself if the regulators are being regulated by the constitution? Nope. Sort that one out first, there's your problem. "Regulation" is an extremely general term used by politicians to great effect to blame others for problems and changes in market behavior that they create. We have a central bank in this country that price fixes interest rates since 1913. This is a socialist idea that was passed on the basis of its objective rather than its result. It turns out that letting a pseudo-government agency set interest rates results in an artificial lowering to delay politically inconvenient recessions. This artificial price fix results in the wrong kind of investment decisions and incentives, leading to phony bubbles that carry with them the seeds of their own destruction. I'll explain below.

In order for credit to exist, savings must exist. That's what credit is, someone else loaning their money out to someone at interest rather than spending it. Everyone wants a low rate of interest as a borrower. Everyone wants a high rate of interest as a saver. By definition, savings is underconsumption. Someone, somewhere, has to be saving rather than spending money in order for real credit to exist. These two forces are at odds with each other, to find the happiest medium between savings and production. That's completely perverted by a price fixing system where the government is dictating the interest rate for political purposes. Too easy dictation in the 90s caused the tech stock bubble, worthless tech stocks were trading at hundreds time earnings. When that "growth" came crashing down in 2000, Bush didn't want to have the recession occurring under his first term or he wouldn't get re-elected. So he and Greenspan lowered interest rates to 1% for a whole year to keep businesses borrowing and consumers consuming. The problem is, where is the savings coming from to allow both to happen at once? Overseas. We are the world's largest debtor nation now, borrowing from everyone to consume products that they make. They accumulate our paper money. We get their products. 70 billion a month trade deficit and still going. That's our economy the last twenty years. We abuse a reserve currency of the world status gained under the gold standard to export our now inflationary currency all over the world. That's coming to and end at some point. The Fed is increasing its balance sheet like there's no tomorrow, trying to replace the credit no longer being loaned to us with a printing press. It won't work. It didn't work in Weimar, it didn't work in Argentina, it didn't work in Zimbabwe, and it won't work here. The inflation is in the pipeline, it will hit during Obama's term. Obama and McCain are both socialists, the pork filled bailout bill they voted on ought to be evidence of that. Neither one understands that the recession needs to happen like the druggie needs withdrawal, and the more you try to stop the failures and painful reallocations with more drugs, the longer you're going to be in rehab.

So where did all that money from tech stocks filter into? With such low rates of interest and a removal of houses from the government's own inflation calculations, inflation shifted from tech stocks into real estate rather than being purged in a recession. So nobody but a few libertarian economists who learned a type of economics that isn't taught here could see the problem, one of them being Ron Paul's economic advisor Peter Schiff. In that mania, lending standards were abandoned to take advantage of the artificial demand created by the dictated low interest.

In other words, the market got drunk, but it was the FED THAT SPIKED THE PUNCHBOWL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucDkoqwflF4

You can see the austrian view (Schiff) directly in conflict with the pro-government keynesian/monetarist view that is predominantly taught in this country (Laffer/Swonk). That's why none of the so-called "harvard educated, brilliant, phd holding" managers of a these banks and investment firms were not only oblivious to what was going to happen, but regularly confuse weaknesses for strengths. It's that ass-backwards, we teach the economic equivalent of astrology. Why? Because who has the most to gain from a sexy interventionist theory that says inflation is necessary to prevent hoarding and politicians spending its citizens' money for them can stimulate economic growth? Why, it's the benefactors of inflation!

I'll address Necrodancer later, I gotta go. He seems awfully confused on what socialism is and how socialist we are.

>> ^MINK:
lithuania has a fairly free market because it's fucking corrupt, and i can tell you it's not beneficial to the consumer. the lies they get away with in unregulated advertising are shocking. of course they do it, because they can and it works.
corruption is what humans do unless someone with a bigger gun tells them not to.
individual freedom will always fuck up the common good. crime does pay. if you legalise business practices which are currently criminal, you'll get more of it, not a magical balanced free utopia.
Imstellar, in your version of a free market, who would stop Microsoft dominating the place with shitty software? I think we need MORE regulation there, not less. How is it efficient for microsoft to keep churning out that crap? you are asking for everything to be a marketing, bribery and advertising contest.
here on the sift we have a free market of ideas and video uploads, and look what happens, a bunch of cliques and lolcats and vote whores and the noise level is so high that you can't find the good shit without watching 10 crappy videos. Can you imagine what it would be like here if siftbot stopped checking for sock puppet accounts?


You're confused, I blame the all-encompassing buzzword of the day "regulation" for this, people don't understand the markets and have come to take it as meaning "government making it all better and overseeing greed." Government indeed has desirable functions in law enforcement and offering recourse through courts for disputes. They should NOT be price-fixing, monopolizing money, or handing out taxpayer money under socialist ideals of directing industry or "enhancing market confidence," this has collusion and corruption written all over it. Politicians are humans and someone spending millions of his own money to get in a low-salary position of controlling other people's money is probably going to be a more harmful source of greed than any businessman. Because even though Henry Ford became a millionaire, thousands of people got cars out of the deal. Not sure the same would have come from government expenditures...

But many would consider this form of corporate wealth redistribution "regulating" the market. I don't.

Your example of false advertising is an example of where law enforcement should take place. Can I sell a product that purports to do something it doesn't? No, that's a swindle, the contract was not upheld, and you can go to government-provided courts to be compensated. Similar things apply to other swindles, though in most cases even the government can't prevent you from falling for some e-mail scam to a Nigerian clearing house. Unless, of course, you agree to have them snoop all your incoming e-mail to check for this stuff. I'd hope you understand that that's a pretty stupid of you, though, for giving up your privacy in order to protect yourself from being gullible. Not understanding cost/benefit ratios is a huge socialist mistake. They're always missing the potential costs and focusing on the benefit.

Gun bans, for example, have the intention of reducing violence but in reality remove the deterrent criminals otherwise have against a society that does have them, causing crime to increase. Plus, it makes you defenseless to oppressive government. The utopian allure of creating a "perfect" society where no gun crime exists and everyone can live in peace and trust is what gets them to miss the greater cost incurred that any thinking man would have foreseen.

The Fed is another one. Fractional reserves caused a lot of bank runs in the old days. Instead of banning this practice, they backstopped it with a central bank, but the central bank price fixed interest rates, causing a crash in 29. Further temporary socialist measures turned it into a fifteen year depression, a nuclear explosion compared to the firecrackers of the original problem. Then the FDIC was created. This incentivized a lot of risk and borrowing, which has helped the current problem fester. See how the failure to correctly solve one problem has led to a cascade of "solutions" that create even more problems that beget even more solutions? That's socialism, my friends. It just builds and builds until eventual collapse.

I would say that another socialist mistake you are making is that law enforcement itself is a proper regulatory measure. Not when they're selective, they're not. There is plenty of legislation out there that legalizes something for one industry, but not the other. Banks can loan out money they don't have at interest. Any other industry, and you're thrown in jail for fraudulent lending practices.

LOLskers at your Microsoft argument, too. Who prevents Microsoft from churning out crap? Consumers, mayhaps? People were free to not adopt Windows ME or Vista, and that's exactly what happened, their sales were disappointing for both. Anyone investing in Microsoft don't like failures leading to lost earnings. But Microsoft is smart and continues to sell XP, which is a perfectly good OS even today. But if they currently get any tax credits or subsidies, they shouldn't. No company should have access to forcibly appropriated money, period.

I think the real scary thing about all this, besides the fact that you don't understand it, is that you seem to be implying that a government office operating on forcibly appropriated money is capable of greater efficiency than the private sector. Maybe it comes close for laying pavement and picking up garbage. But in the grander scheme, no. It wasn't the case with Chernobyl and it ain't today, buddy. You take a hell of lot of innovations and products for granted if you believe that.