There is something innately fascinating in finding technical, biological and economical explanations of historical developments, and it's definitely so much more satisfying than having to resort to nationalism, racism, or religion to explain one region or another's successes.

The risk, I guess, in treating human history as a set of engineering problems, is that the human mind is so attuned to finding cause and effect that it might make us a little blind to situations where the answer is actually more blind chance than anything else.

One of my favorite of these explanations is when China's 'failure' to colonize the world is attributed to the success of porcelain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0OhXxx7cQg

It seems almost too neat to be true - like the false etymology of Marie est malade - so does anyone know if there are scholars who poke holes in the Porcelain vs Glass explanation?

Edit: Improving my googling shows that this explanation remains reasonable but still also involves a bit of blind historical chance. Colored glass was available in ancient Greece, and the Romans and Egyptians used manganese oxide to decolor it, which led to transparent glass and the basis for lens-grinding... that decolorization process apparently didn't pass on to China or wasn't valued by their culture, perhaps due to the clear competitive advantages of porcelain.

Screw your 'he deserved what he got' attitude. The police are not judge, jury, and executioner. It's their job to stop criminals and collect evidence...period. If they can't do that job without resorting to ACTUALLY nearly brutally killing compliant people, they shouldn't be cops, they should be cons.

Hitting the cop car is not "nearly killed two officers", they apparently weren't injured enough to require treatment, hardly "nearly killed" in my book.

"What if" arguments are the bastion of people who can't make an argument with the facts, so they feel the need to create new 'facts' to rail against, IMO....but OK, I'll play along...What if this video didn't exist? I suggest that the officers wouldn't even go on paid leave, the action that's been takes thus far...sending them on paid vacation.
How does one get THAT deal, screw up royally and criminally at your job in a way that's likely to cost your 'business' millions in damages, they'll stand by you and pay for vacation for a few months while they 'look into it'. WHAT?!?

If this is the treatment one can expect when criminals DO stop, as he clearly did at the beginning of the video, why on earth would anyone not continue to run like their life depends on it, which it nearly did in this case? That's not at all reasonable.

I have chosen a different word..."want". Some people want religion, because they think it helps them somehow. The same can be said for heroin...wanting something doesn't make it 'good'.

You can call it pedantic nit picking, I say the words have quite different meanings (one reason they are spelled and pronounced differently), and if people are lazy and use word/meanings they don't intend, I can't help but try to correct them in order to properly understand them before I can determine if I agree with them....(EDIT: or to determine what part I disagree with. In this case, I disagreed with the specific contention that anyone 'needs' religion, which you've seemed to have somehow read as a slight against religious people, and a directive for them to think as I do...which was certainly not my intent.)

I understand people SAY they "need" religion, but they have the same issue of not distinguishing between "need" and "want". No one has ever, not once, died from a lack of religion...but many have died from an over abundance of it (usually in others).

You would be incredibly wrong in that assumption. Much of my family is religious, as are many of my friends. We often have had respectful, deep theological discussions and they invariably come away with a new view point of what they had taken for granted, while I often come away with only a new example of how religion got it wrong or contradicts itself. I don't lecture them, I give them a chance to explain themselves, then I tell them where they seem to have strayed from reality (for example, with Christians, it's nearly always when they resort to the bible as proof of something).

Me thinks you protest too much, and understand me too little. I don't think I wrote any such dictation, I merely explained how religion is something people 'want' rather than 'need'. It is religion that is zealously judgmental, it's religion that dictates how other people should live and think, I only expressed my wishes on that front (after being prompted to do so by you), not any command. Please re-read.

(I hope you have noticed that I have refrained from targeting any one religion, as my remarks are applicable to religion as a concept and not directed at any sect.)

I think you're missing the point. I propose that we execute anyone that poses a threat to the general public. That means anyone who commits a violent crime (or threatens to commit a violent crime) regardless of their mental state. People who are mentally ill tend to be less predictable (making them a greater threat in general) but the punishment should be the same regardless. You stab someone, you are executed. You threaten to stab someone, you are executed. You attempt to stab someone, you are executed.

As for being a janitor, most people don't want to clean toilets or mop floors even if they get paid to do so. It's a last resort when nothing better is available. If you took a survey of janitors and asked how many would rather have a different job even if it paid the same, I'm pretty sure most say that they want a different job. Janitors are definitely a necessity and I appreciate their work but I would never want to actually be one myself.

*ban 1.0

Felix Alexander
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHv8YE293RE


*related= http://videosift.com/video/Blind-Pass-Resort
*ban2.0
Felix Alexander
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHv8YE293RE

Yes. If you grab a person 1/2 or less your size by the neck, hurl them to the ground while flipping them over backwards, still arm baring them by the neck, then you toss them across the room and jump on them, throwing them as hard as possible across the room into the wall head first, severe injury and/or death are totally foreseeable consequences. (If you look, her head nearly hits the desk behind her, and does hit the ground HARD).
As I clearly said, I 100% believe they would absolutely have charged any person doing this to an officer with attempted murder, and turnabout's fair play. It would have been wholly unsurprising if her neck had broken from that treatment.

It is totally proper to expect that, if one officer can't remove a child (or adult, for that matter) without resorting to violence (and god damn it, a high school girl is a child, so that attempted excusing of the attack falls completely flat), they call a second officer. If 2 officers can't remove a child without injury, call 3. Much better idea, call mom.
Perhaps we've failed as a society when we put actual cops (who have a serious issue with self control and violence lately) rather than trained security guards (EDIT: who don't have immunity or a blue wall to protect them from their own bad action) in schools, or when we resort to the most violent way of dealing with every issue rather than having a little common sense and calling a calm and quiet child's parent.
The reason teacher's can't touch them is to prevent the kind of actions the cop took. It's a protection system for the school and the teacher, to prevent them from being closed/fired by a lawsuit. In fact, it's illegal for a private citizen to touch another person without permission, so why would you want them to take the chance of losing their career and the school?

The fact that both the school system and the police force agree with me give me hope....but not much. The fact that so many people want to either blame the victim or excuse the outrageous, clearly over the top actions of the cop erases that hope.

I think you gave the easy answer...call her parents. I bet you anything that if mama got on the phone and told her to leave class, she would do it right away. That makes way more sense than calling officer slam (his nickname at the school) to re-escalate a situation that had already calmed down.

Actually, she was not being arrested. She was only being removed, at first. At least that's what's been reported. That means that, at least at first, she was not 'resisting arrest', only 'resisting removal'.

I do agree, force is a FINAL resort, rightfully in the hands of police. My issue is it's often used as a PRIMARY resort (meaning it's often the first thing tried). There were MANY options available to the cop besides violence against a child, he didn't try anything once his command was ignored except unnecessary violence. For instance, he could have, with less force and no injury to anyone, dragged the girl and her desk out of the room and waited her out in the hallway, but instead he chose to react with severe violence to being 'disrespected' by a child.

Saying she 'brought it on herself', to me, is the same as saying abused women 'bring it on themselves' by not capitulating fast enough to their abusive spouses, and abused children 'bring it on themselves' by not being perfect at all times.
Even if you want to call what she did 'resisting arrest' (which I think I've already debunked, but may still be questioned), the force used was SO out of proportion and unnecessary that this officer has already been banned from all schools in the state, and will likely lose his job and money in the end. If her fellow students had not risked the same treatment by pulling out their phones and recording his actions, we would never have heard about this, and the poor girl would have a record for assaulting a police officer instead of an FBI investigation against the officer. That sounds like one more instance where always on-body cams might have defused the situation, because KNOWING he was on camera, I bet he would not have acted so rashly against a calm, non violent child.

EDIT: He's now been fired.

Honestly, there's no easy answer here.

First, allowing teachers to use violence against students (aka corporal punishment) is barbaric and wrong and out of the question.

There are then escalating levels of disciplining a student who is disruptive. My question is why the girls parents weren't called before the police.

Yeah, she was being a pain in the arse, but it's not a disciplinary issue not a criminal one.

Ultimately, force is the final resort and is rightfully in the hands of the police. In this case, I feel like an excessive level of force was used, but if she is resisting arrest (and she certainly appears to be), then she really is bringing it on herself.

Interesting to see how, after Germany was defeated in WW 2, West Germany resorted to free market Capitalism in effort to build strength in the short term. Germany is still living off of the prosperity they created. (East Germany, by contrast, employed more of the Bernie-Sanders-type of thinking and, well, it didn't go as well there).

*ban2.0


Njoy Travellers Resort
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLtb6cYmPPc

*related= http://videosift.com/video/Cairns-Backpackers

Calypso Backpackers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpHKmuGLAEw

*ban1.0

Calypso Backpackers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpHKmuGLAEw


*related= http://videosift.com/video/Cairns-hostels

Njoy Travellers Resort
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLtb6cYmPPc

A lot of mud slung in this clip, but nothing at all to back it up. It is not fundamentalism to hold a position that disagrees with you. Ask any of the three people criticized in the interview and they could explain their reasoning without resorting to dogmatic principles (might be hard for Hitchens...), racial superiority or any of the charges.

What is fundamental is the unshakable notion that all bad is equally bad so we shouldn't talk about the bad they do because some of us do bad. It combines fundamentalism with non-sequitur.

Cuba is one of my favourite places to travel to. If you ever get the chance to (and the US will get it very soon,) I recommend going. Go off the resorts, talk and meet with everyone.

As for computers, technology and the ilk, there is a black market for it. A lot of tourists have deals set up where they bring in tablets, phones, clothing for people and get paid well for it.

I was talking to one of the guides from Moron (yes, actually named that.) They said aside from drugs, the second highest black market industry is high fashion. They essentially see what the tourists are wearing, and then they try and copy, hand make, bargain for the same clothes. Tech works the same way, they see the cameras, phones, tablets, and either cobble together something from parts they have around, or they make a deal.

It's a really rad place, food, dancing, people, if you get a chance to go, go. You will love it. =)

"They" who, specifically? Based on what "evidence," specifically? Seeing as how you have to resort to suggesting that this particular scientist's views on evolution have anything to do with his work as a climate scientist says more about the credibility of your "position" on this issue than it serves as any sort of "argument" on the topic at hand.

I'll take the scientist's take over the alarmist's take, every.single.time.

Pathetic... I made it to the first cut where 'presumably' a doctor said one sentence with no context and immediately they jumped to a new scene.

If your argument is SO pathetic and weak that you have to resort to this kind of blatant and obvious obfuscation, then you are the personification of your argument.