One of my favorite lecturers.

Another great post Enoch. Thanks.

Hah, great jab at the end there by the host.

Your video, jeremy scahill lecture-war crimes and drone wars, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

You are very welcome sir. I am on a mission to expose this awesome lecture. I have always liked Jeremy, but I was really impressed with him in that vid.

thanks mate!
it's a great lecture ya?

that is some serious promoting going on my jeremy scahill lecture,and i thank you my friend..it is a fantastic talk.
but its the weekend and that lecture causes ...whats the word..thinking.

Well, I think 9/11 was probably the watershed moment there.

And lets be real, there are other reasons the US has interest in the Middle East beyond just stopping terrorism.

I love the Stewart formula. Make people laugh enough and they'll sit and listen to your sincere thoughts on anything, EVEN when you completely remove the comic veil. Not that I am at all criticising him or suggesting it is a deliberate ploy, I'm just glad somebody can say things so eloquently to an audience without it sounding like a lecture.

...this is one of the most boring interviews i've ever seen..

And I'm the sorta person who watches hours long lectures about politics, science & social issues for fun..

Nothin' like posh, straight-laced, long-winded, anecdotes about how mildly vexing it is when people mispronounce your ridiculously "quirky" Welsh name, ad nauseam. T_T

Longest three minutes EVAR.
Must be a CIA agent testing new torture techniques.. @_@

Vice just did a story on this very topic. The most interesting actor they hired pretended to be a prestigious doctor who even gave a lecture among other actual (Chinese) doctors to a huge audience, and he didn't even know what he was talking about.

Interesting stuff.

One more thought that I had:

Before Tesla, electric cars were niche marketed as adequate. In the sense that if you were a person very highly motivated to be "green", you could get one, drive around short distances, and in general enjoy a small subset of the versatility of an internal combustion gas guzzling car. You could get by, but in general life with an electric car was a step back from life with a gas car.

The reason Tesla is amazing is that it flipped that on its head. You're not sacrificing anything, you don't need an attitude of "I can use a bit less and take one for the team" for a Tesla to appeal to you. Everything I watch about the Model S says it is a fast, high-performance, fun to drive, luxurious car -- objectively BETTER than a similarly priced gas-powered car to most users (who can afford one, but that will include more and more people over time).


Same thing goes for home solar and other "green energy". Adoption rates are NEVER going to soar when solar is "adequate". And then only adequate if you make very big lifestyle changes like cutting back on heating and cooling, using low-draw appliances, etc. etc.

But as Tesla is doing to cars, maybe this can do to energy. Musk is saying NO, you don't have to cut back. You don't have to settle for less. You don't have to take one for the team. Install some (currently fairly expensive) solar panels and 1, 2, or however many of our power packs, and you can have a BETTER experience than being on the grid, paying high bills every month and dealing with the occasional outage, etc.

I guarantee that pitch will do more to push the adoption of green energy than 10 years of Al Gore living in a mansion and flying around constantly on a private jet to give $100,000 lectures explaining why everybody else needs to cut back or we're all going to melt...

"What is life?", public lecture by prof. Jeremy England, MIT has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims on that post.

You see how your arguments don't hold water.

Yet you still refuse to concede that Anita is full of shit and a con-artist.

"But if?!"

What if Jesus came back. What if a meteor hit.

..What if that "good guy with gun vs. black bad guy with a gun" bullshit actually worked out.

Breaking News: 45 concealed carried Utah State students stopped an alleged gunmen who made childish threats during Sarkeesian lecture this afternoon.

Again, 4chan trolls are trolling you with a mind virus.

http://videosift.com/video/This-Video-Will-Make-You-Angry-CGP-Grey

HOLY CRAP!!! I would have canceled under those conditions too.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58521856-78/sarkeesian-usu-video-feminist.html.csp
The reasoning the FBI gave for saying that "the threats against Sarkeesian would not prevent a safe lecture, even if firearms are permitted" was that similar recent threats to kill her had not been carried out yet. Even though there had been numerous specific threats to mass murder attendees, Utah state law prevented them from restricting firearm possession at the event, they weren't even going to check for them (to know who to watch). So while I was wrong to say she did it because of police advice, I do think it was the smart decision. Imagine if she had gone ahead with her event after the threats and someone shot 45 people, starting with her. At that point, "I told you so" seems pretty hollow.

Well, even if you did say they were toxic I'd have agreed with you, like others here have said any reasonable comments made would have been buried under a metric fuckton of bullshit anyhow.

I think there is a misunderstanding here however, when GenjiKilpatrick and others are talking about Sarkeesian "being called on her shit" they mean the reasoned criticism, not the threats, nobody here is arguing in favor of that.
I am curious though, unless you know something about these threats that I don't, how do you know that they are in fact "Serious"? Most people can dream up all kinds of crazy shit or even talk about it, but that still doesn't put you into Dexter Morgan territory (Dexter would be too polite to say anything like that anyhow, and Sarkeesian doesn't fit Harry's Code).
If you are referring to the UCU lecture that she cancelled, then no, neither campus security nor the FBI advised her against going through with the appearance, she made that choice on her own.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58528113-78/sarkeesian-threats-threat-usu.html.csp

You also say "It's unseemly to imply a single woman should ignore such threats or assume they are not credible", which makes me wonder if this was a man we were talking about would you still feel the same way? Adam Orth received death threats to both himself and his family and while it did create a lot of discussion, even heated discussion, it did not generate the same kind of mass outrage that this has so far. Gabe Newell also got a threat from a developer some time back and that got barely a peep out of anyone.
Simply put, we still live in a society that puts on a good public show of equality for men and women, but privately we still teach our little boys that men are still the true protectors of our society. We don't get as upset when men face danger because that is what we expect of them, and this kind of deeply embedded cultural belief is the real heart of sexism in our society. This debate over the role of women in video games is all superficial because I believe it comes from those much older beliefs.

We'll start with the "youtube comments are toxic".

We're in agreement. Even youtube agrees.

While it's unfortunate that the comment cream doesn't rise on youtube..

This still doesn't eliminate that fact that tons of valid criticism is being censored by Sark & plenty of other unscrupulous agenda-pushers.

It's a perfect opportunity to squash any dissent, under the guise of -

"there is no real debate here. only insults & threats. I had to disable comments to spare my audience the vitriol"

However, imagine if the youtuber was an outspoken Scientologist or Creationist..

Snowball's chance in hell you aren't viewing that as a deceitful tactic to avoid scrutiny.

"Everyone knows creationism is easily debunked/scientology is a cult. Clearly they've disabled comments because they want to squash dissent/valid arguments"

Rarely, if ever, would you think -

"Disabled comments? I get it. They probably just got too many death threats. Scientologists have feelings too yuh know"

Nonetheless, when the EXACT SAME scenario is put in front of you..

..with regard to topics that tug at your liberal, tree-huggy sympathies..

You lose all skepticism. Why is that?

Literally all it takes is a 30 second google search to discover the inconsistencies in Sarkeesian's statements & actions.

From the first article -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the words of Tumblr user robbiebaldwin:

“She says she wants to ‘create a dialogue’ or ‘force video games into open debate,’ except she turns off both comments and even ratings on her videos. Wanting to hear your own voice in an echo chamber is the total opposite of ‘open debate.’”

Leading the charge against Sarkeesian’s decision is Tumblr user amazingatheist, who posted a ten-minute video entitled "Who’s The Damsel Now?"

Arguing that Sarkeesian’s “censorship” of YouTube comments counteracts her message about strong women
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Are you seeing the larger picture now @newtboy @Babymech etc.?

This self-described - "critic of sexism in pop culture" - is espousing a set of ideas & strong statements..

Then completely cowering, juking, and being absolutely non-responsive when called on her shit.

She disabled the RATINGS for FSM's sake!
The neutral, objective, non-threatening, non-absuive RATINGS!

That's the way you stand strong for your cause, right!
By disallowing even your supporters from showing their approval!

And before you even mention that cancel lecture of hers.

WHAM!

BAM!

Straight from Utah State -

"Throughout the day, Tuesday, Oct. 14, USU police and administrators worked with state and federal law enforcement agencies to assess the threat to our USU community and Ms. Sarkeesian. Together, we determined that there was no credible threat to students, staff or the speaker, and that this letter was intended to frighten the university into cancelling the event."

They were all "Please don't cancel. We love con-artists! We're Mormons, remember!"

*TooLong,Don'tGiveaFuck*

Anita Sarkeesian is a self-proclaimed pop-culture critic..

Who claims that she wants to 'create a dialogue' & 'force video games into open debate'..

She then proceeds to disallow any & all discourse or scrutiny of her work - positive or negative - going so far as to disable like & dislike ratings on her videos.

Oh and I forgot to add..

She conveniently forgot to disable the vitriol 'whining' on her Kickstarter page until AFTER those comments boosted her campaign to over $150,000 in donations.

[i'll search for the video while you whine about citing sources]

BUT AGAIN! THIS ISN"T JUST ABOUT HER!
It's the overall debacle & all the stupid articles surrounding it.

Tho first I have to slog thru this shitstorm because you're easily distracted by syntax & word choice.

Shit, this is pointless.

Oh well. Done for now.

Exactly.

This is Mercedes Carrera's point.

She is outraged because Sarkeesian - the new face of female empowerment in the gaming world - was completely non-responsive when Carrera reached out to her.

Full Stop.

@Babymech completely missed this point.

Then went on a red-herring tangent, dragging the thread down with him.

As for my jabs at Anita..

The reason you've barely heard about Sarkeesian is because - until recently - she was just another starving artist youtube personality.

When I first stumbled across her Feminist Frequency videos, I too was duped by her ostensibly critical analysis of female tropes in pop culture media.

So for the uninitiated - Stephen Colbert, Mercedes Carrera, yourself - Sarkeesian seems like:

"Wow, the next generation of Women's Rights Advocates is fierce."

But just like any other ego-tripping prestige hound, the flaws in her arguments began to bubble up.

Other youtubers - commenters & personalities alike - started calling her on her bullshit.

In response, she disabled the comments on all of her videos.

That was just the start of a series of shitbag tactics to cover up her bullshit.

So yeah, unless you're familiar with Sarkeesian's brand of - lalala, I can't hear you cause I'm too busy empowering my wallet with bullshit lectures about first world problems - kabuki theatre..

You could be forgiven for thinking that she's actually promoting a level-headed positive message.

When in reality..

She generates stylized drama for the purpose of furthering her own narrative & career.

Can't let all those Women's Studies courses go to waste, can she.

Anywho..

The point is.
Cytherea deserves the support of anyone that truly cares about the empowerment of women & equality of genders.