Really solid video. Abortion is a medical procedure which has to be available to those who need it. Until a pregnancy reaches the point of viability outside the parent, I don't see any room for debate as to whether abortion of that embryo / fetus should be legal, and entirely the choice of the pregnant person.

What *shouldn't* be legal is harassing anyone trying to access healthcare, in any context. But of course, there *isn't* any other context that I can think of where people are regularly harassed. I suppose it's been happening to some degree lately with vaccine stuff, but that's likely to be temporary (and the Venn diagram between anyone willing to harass people over vaccines and over abortions seems likely to have a LOT of overlap).

Wow, do I need to draw a venn diagram every time I comment here?

(non funda(mentalists - religious people (fundamentalists))

The group of non-fundamentalists includes religious and non-religious people. My comment was in response to the video's comment.

The way it works is:

Of the millions of votes in the database, a tiny sliver belong to you. Of the hundreds (?) of thousands of videos, a tiny sliver are ones you'd find with a search.

Picture it as a Venn diagram with a giant circle for all votes and a giant circle for all videos, and they intersect just a tiny, tiny bit (almost not at all) for a search of videos you've voted on.

The trick is to make it so when you do such a search, the system is able to whittle away all of the excess votes that don't belong to you and simultaneously whittle away all the videos that don't match your search and simultaneously link together the matched videos with only the matched votes.

The syntax for performing this type of query is straightforward, however, that would kill the database, so I need to be able to make our internal search engine support it, however, when the search engine is indexing for these types of parameters it may kill the database, and we need to index semi-frequently.

So, long story short: Maybe it'll be doable, but maybe not. I know "no global search, just the ability to search my votes" sounds like a piece of cake, but it's really a much huger task than it seems.

This video belongs in the centre/overlap of that particular Venn diagram.

Feminists are some of the most boring people on the planet, next to Christians and sports fans. They remind me of the Eddie Izzard joke about the boring kid who puts everything into Venn diagrams. Feminists seem to live their life obsessed with notching down hash marks in a two-column M/F scoresheet.

i agree with everything you just said, but i think you might be over estimating how much of it is science.
it's a great deal business. at least in the US. where medicine is mostly for profit. for huge huge profits.
medical RESEARCH is in fact, science. and i have faith in it. the dispensing of medicine is however, a business.

i'm saying this as someone who has degrees in health science fields. spent 8 years as a health care professional. spent 1/3 of that time doing administrative work. and now owns a business as a CAM practitioner.... which btw, is also a good bit business.

i'd also like to stick up for alternative medicine here.
a good deal of it is bullshit. any results are simply the placebo effect. but i don't think we should discount the placebo effect. it's an amazing mechanism. if you feel less depressed because someone hit you with a tuning fork and you didn't have to take any pills or go to a counselor, then okay. that's awesome. i still think you probably need counseling, but whatever. i also think you should take a good hard look at your diet and how much exercise you're doing. but how much does it cost in the US to go to a counselor, go to a doctor, get your anti-depressants and have a nutritionist and a phsyical trainer help you learn how to excercise and eat right? it's probably cheaper to pay someone $80 to hit you with that tuning fork and convince yourself it's going to work.

I make a decent living practicing complementary health care. but i don't tell anyone they need to be hit with a tuning fork or have someone throw energy beams out of their hands at them. i tell people they need to stretch, and i teach them how. i tell people they need to sleep properly, and i help them do it. i tell people they need to find an effective way to deal with stress, and i give them that. i tell people they need to find a form of exercise that's right for their bodies and lifestyles, and i help them find it. a lot of people just need someone to trust and someone to talk to. and that's why they call me a "therapist". i never tell people to go against their doctor's orders. i never tell anyone to stop taking their medicine or not to be vaccinated. and that's why what i do is COMPLEMENTARY.

we're too quick to dismiss a different approach when it comes to health care.
the same people are also very quick to be able to recognize the problems with our for profit health care systems when it comes to political discussions. the profit motive hasn't just tainted medicine in terms of disparity. it's tainted it in terms of effectiveness. this is where a holistic approach is good. it's not effect to only treat the symptom. if someone is overweight, has high blood pressure, their stress is out of control and they have diabetes. prescribing them pills, while necessary in the short term, is not at all where the "care" should end. i know doctors will also tell their patients to eat right and exercise but they do not teach them how to do it. because for profit health care doesn't think that is profitable. a for profit system does not want you healthy.

soooo... the market has opened up. if the way we practice medicine and viewed health in this country was working, people wouldn't pay to get hit with tuning forks. oh and half of this is a problem with our education system.
>> ^dag:

^Yes, how dare anyone question the all-knowing oracles of medical knowledge.
I think the reason that many geeky type people always toe the main-stream medical line is because they conflate medicine with science (which we all love). Yes, it's almost the same, but if I had to draw it as a venn diagram, there would be a crescent of over-hang. Medicine to me is 80% science and then the rest is filled in with dogma, patriarchy and business ($$).
That crescent of non-science is the part that makes me squirm. I don't think it's that wrong to question medical programs like vaccinations- with the idea that it may be being pushed non-scientifically by the medical industrial complex. (big pharma).
Bill Maher is not a kook.

Art and entertainment are not mutually exclusive, nor are they dependent... the same goes for your personal tastes and the quality of a film.


I mean I could draw a venn diagram if you'd like...

>> ^raverman:

Pretentious Hipster Rubbish.
The new generation of beatniks claiming they are brilliant minds because their poetry doesn't rhyme.
He tipped out the water to be ironic. This movie is only cool it if stays 'indie' and underground.



>> ^Mammaltron:

Sounds like a great excuse to just film whatever you feel like and not bother with a good story.
See also: David Lynch

>> ^harry:

If he's going to be pedantic, he should know those aren't Venn diagrams (those by definition have to show ALL possible combinations of sets) but a Euler diagram.

Er, that's you being pedantic, not him.

If he's going to be pedantic, he should know those aren't Venn diagrams (those by definition have to show ALL possible combinations of sets) but a Euler diagram.

Not a bad idea, but also kinda already covered - I'll include this venn diagram of things to best explain.

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/6153/bestof.png

edit: hmm, all these replies didn't appear before I bothered with this - ah well, it's still relevant :>

>> ^looris:

Isn't adding the commercial channel enough? O_o
>> ^marinara:
hey looris, i don't like your description. if it's a commercial, say so. TIA



The title and the description didn't give any info about what the video is, I suppose i would have to look to the channels to figure it out. hmmmm. commerical music geek animation. Where are my venn diagrams!!?! Well I know it's not a reality comedy show, not a dozen other things.

To be perfectly fucking honest, I'm not mad at you, Looris. It's this waste of time video, I don't like.

My main email is gmail. You can be sure I'll be turning this feature off. I can't understand why i would want 2 inboxes.

If you have questions about the scientific merit of a given medical practice, then contact an expert (i.e. an M.D. Ph.D.) and discuss your concerns with them. Go to a library, and read the actual scientific literature pertaining to a given topic.

It is true there is a business side to medicine, but no one controls science. And in the rare instances that science has been influenced by business, it has always corrected itself. (e.g. Some poor graduate student spent 2 years trying to confirm single molecule transistors and never got it to work. The original data was eventually proven fraudulent. See Jan Schon) Since their conception in 1796, vaccines have proven to a be a valuable way to control the spread of viruses.

In conclusion, it is good to question science and medicine. Questions, however, need to be reinforced with controlled scientific experiments, otherwise they are out of ignorance.


>> ^dag:
^Yes, how dare anyone question the all-knowing oracles of medical knowledge.
I think the reason that many geeky type people always toe the main-stream medical line is because they conflate medicine with science (which we all love). Yes, it's almost the same, but if I had to draw it as a venn diagram, there would be a crescent of over-hang. Medicine to me is 80% science and then the rest is filled in with dogma, patriarchy and business ($$).
That crescent of non-science is the part that makes me squirm. I don't think it's that wrong to question medical programs like vaccinations- with the idea that it may be being pushed non-scientifically by the medical industrial complex. (big pharma).
Bill Maher is not a kook.

>> ^dag:
^Yes, how dare anyone question the all-knowing oracles of medical knowledge.
I think the reason that many geeky type people always toe the main-stream medical line is because they conflate medicine with science (which we all love). Yes, it's almost the same, but if I had to draw it as a venn diagram, there would be a crescent of over-hang. Medicine to me is 80% science and then the rest is filled in with dogma, patriarchy and business ($$).
That crescent of non-science is the part that makes me squirm. I don't think it's that wrong to question medical programs like vaccinations- with the idea that it may be being pushed non-scientifically by the medical industrial complex. (big pharma).
Bill Maher is not a kook.


As Raigen said, in this instance Bill is being a kook. Yes, we need to question everything, especially medicine. But at the end of the day one has to look at the science behind the medicine and make an informed decision. The science, as Frist said, shows that vaccines work and will save your life.

I think it's really funny how, in the last few years, people have begun to fear and distrust vaccines. Smallpox, a disease that killed 300-500 million people in the 20th century alone, was eradicated thanks to vaccines. Thanks to vaccination the occurrence of Polio went from 350,000 cases in 1988 to 1300 cases in 2007.

Vaccines work, ignoring the science kills people. Bill Maher ignores the science. In this instance he is a dangerous kook.

>> ^dag:
^Yes, how dare anyone question the all-knowing oracles of medical knowledge.
I think the reason that many geeky type people always toe the main-stream medical line is because they conflate medicine with science (which we all love). Yes, it's almost the same, but if I had to draw it as a venn diagram, there would be a crescent of over-hang. Medicine to me is 80% science and then the rest is filled in with dogma, patriarchy and business ($$).
That crescent of non-science is the part that makes me squirm. I don't think it's that wrong to question medical programs like vaccinations- with the idea that it may be being pushed non-scientifically by the medical industrial complex. (big pharma).

I'm with you, Dag, on most of those points. Questioning things is what makes someone a skeptic to begin with, and you could apply that Venn Diagram to almost any (if not all) avenues of science. Scientists need funding, and not all are unbiased in their pursuit of knowledge. Please, question "the all-knowing oracles of medical knowledge" until you're blue in the face, but make sure that when you're done you've seen, understood, and accepted the evidence and the facts. Not testimonials and anecdotes. Maher did bring up that Frist used an anecdote, however I'm confident Maher fails to realize that the entire "alternative medicine" movement is based on anecdotes and the placebo effect.


Bill Maher is not a kook.


^And there is where we disagree on the subject of medicine and Mr. Maher. He is plainly a kook when it comes to such a serious subject as this, because he employs the exact same tactics as those religious kooks he fights against. If I could send him an amazing book I own called "Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine" what do you think the chances are he'd read it? And if he defied logic and actually read it, would his mindset allow him to see the truth, based on research and evidence into these sorts of things?

He reminds me of my mother. She's not "spiritual", but she believes almost entirely in "alternative treatments". She once argued with me to get off of my insulin treatment for Diabetes and seek an Acupuncture and more "natural" route to cure it. I calmly told her to look into these things from unbiased sources.

I lent her that book.

She threw it at me.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Yeah, I suppose I was trying to say that. The professional/practice component is where the dogma, patriarchy and business surface - and for me at least brings medicine out of the pure science realm into something else. We aren't cowed into carrying umbrellas at monthly check-ups with meteorologists.

In reply to this comment by longde:
Re: 20% dogma, patriarchy, and business. You could say the same for the pure sciences. To me, medicine is as much a science as physics and biology, with the difference that there is a professional/practice component that isn't there with the 'pure' sciences.

In reply to this comment by dag:
^Yes, how dare anyone question the all-knowing oracles of medical knowledge.

I think the reason that many geeky type people always toe the main-stream medical line is because they conflate medicine with science (which we all love). Yes, it's almost the same, but if I had to draw it as a venn diagram, there would be a crescent of over-hang. Medicine to me is 80% science and then the rest is filled in with dogma, patriarchy and business ($$).

That crescent of non-science is the part that makes me squirm. I don't think it's that wrong to question medical programs like vaccinations- with the idea that it may be being pushed non-scientifically by the medical industrial complex. (big pharma).

Bill Maher is not a kook.