>> ^eric3579:
Looks to me like they took the running out of free running. There's more running in a gymnastics floor exercise.


Exactly. This looks like pole dancing to me. Plus, there's thousands of circus gymnasts that can do the flag. If you want that, go see the Cirque du soleil. I think I'll stick with Parkour, thank you.

They're not even pro bowlers!

A republican stay-at-home dad? No wonder he's so fucked up!

Also, one of the differences between the two lines of shirts : the "liberal" shirts are mostly statements of opinions with straightforward caricatures, while many if not all the "conservative" shirts consists of insults (i.e. pissing on "liberals", Hilary at urinal) or aggressive imagery (serpent around the bill of rights, "give war a chance", etc.).

The kid is so young he can't count the bullets left in his magazine!

In reply to this comment by JAPR:
考えられなかった is practically a tongue twister, and I'm really rusty, lol. Thanks for the compliment.

In reply to this comment by Bidouleroux:
What impresses me more is hearing a person of English mother tongue pronouncing Japanese almost correctly! マジ感心.

Yeah, those られる are a mouthful. But I was most stricken by how well you can hold off your English stress accentuation. Stress-timing also massacres the rhytym of Japanese mora-timed sentences. You regularly hear English-as-mother-tongue naturalized Japanese speak with a worse accent than a Chinese grandma, even after some ten to twenty years hearing and speaking nothing but Japanese. I have it easy though, as my mother tongue is French (no stress + all mora except ら り る れ ろ).

Yes, there is obviously another side to this story, as we all know americans are the best team players and have the best sportsmanship... I mean, they're the number one country on earth right!?
[/sarcasm]

Seriously, for an american sportsmanship = socialism and team play = communism.

What impresses me more is hearing a person of English mother tongue pronouncing Japanese almost correctly! マジ感心.

What's impressive is not the kid, but how old this clip is!

>> ^blankfist:
I think at the end of the day, we can all agree the current system needs to be reworked, because it's broken. I believe the answer isn't in socializing health care, but rather removing corporations from it.


lol. You don't seem to understand the words you're using... removing corporations = socializing. Corporations are private entities. Everything else is public, because the antonym of private is public. That's why in a non-biased country like Canada, we call "socialized medicine" simply "public health care". The former is a scaremongering term based on McCarthyism and the fear of anything communist and the latter is a neutral, descriptive term. We have public health care in Canada, not socialized medicine. Our health care is directly managed by our provincial governments, but it could be managed by an NGO, a co-op (OMG SOCIALIZATION!!!!11) or whatnot, as long as it's not a corporation. A government-controlled corporation would not do either, because their goal would still be profit.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
>> ^Ornthoron:
I'm saddened by the fact that there is a need for overly simplified videos like this one.

he last point, i think, is the hardest to get, I have read books by scientists who don't seem to really grasp the non-directional nature of evolution. Deep inside, the idea that it is somehow directed towards making us, humans, seem ingrained in most people's mind, phrases like "more evolved" "higher up on the evolutionary tree" etc are often wildly misplaced and over-used.

I think a large portion of those scientists subscribe to what I call the anthropic fallacy. They use the anthropic principle to argue backwards that humans are a teleological certainty. It's a subtle logical fallacy. Normally, you would say:
1. If humans are to exist, the laws of the universe need to be such and such.
2. Humans exist.
3. Therefore, the laws of the universe are such and such.

Of course, it's tautological and doesn't say much. So, many are tempted to extrapolate and some come to the strong anthropic principle, which says too much and is indeterminable, or they try to be smart and say things like this:
1. If humans are to exist, the laws of the universe need to be such and such.
2. The laws of the universe are such and such.
3. Therefore, humans are to exist (i.e. they must exist at some time in this universe).

This looks logically true if you use material implication, but it is in fact false when using the semantically correct counterfactual conditional. That the laws of a universe are indeed such and such as to allow humans does not implicate that humans exist in that universe, just that they can exist. So as you said, evolution does the rest. Evolution may be random or not, but we won't settle that with pure logic. Any determinist or materialist should put is money on "not random" though of course not random does in no way imply design or anything of that sort.

>> ^quantumushroom:
"Affordable" and "government" are oil and water. That is all.


That's the exact kind of "bull" Moyers was arguing against in the video. I would ask you if you are an idiot, but I think everyone here already knows the answer (except you of course).

>> ^Sagemind:

"French Girl.."
Why on Earth would any French Canadian be offended if they were mistaken for a French person?

This can actualy be a sensitive topic in Canada since French Canadians see themselves as French First and Canadian Second while the rest of Canada Sees them as Canadian First and French second. That's a debate we Canadians like to get into because it is offensive to us english Canadians that they should consider themselves above and beyond other Canadians - But that's a debate for another time!

lol "above and beyond"! Just "different" will be distinctive enough, please. But of course, it's easier to admit to someone being different than to them being "above and beyond", so that's probably your psychological straw man that lets you ignore the real facts: Quebecers are different than other Canadians, both culturally and linguistically. We have been different since 1759 and it will not change anytime soon. Even since before 1759, we have considered ourselves "canadiens" since until the 20th century there were more (linguistically) French people than English in the territories known as Canada (Ontario + Quebec). Thus, "French Canadian" is historically pleonastic since the majority of Canadians have been of French descent. Also, since the English side of Canada is still in love with the Queen of England, the term "English Canadian" is more than fitting for them. They've always considered themselves subjects of the Queen/King first and Canadians second (because Canadian was until recently a term reserved for Quebecers).

You could say this is less true nowadays, but you'd be wrong: in Quebec we didn't care for the Queen, but in the ROC (rest of Canada) they absolutely wanted her in the Constitution. So they forced the Constitution on us (Quebec) with their royal - plus some centralizing - shit in it. Of course, we never signed it, but because of Supreme Court rulings - a Court then presided by a majority of Trudeau-nominated judges - the consent of provinces was seen as not formally necessary, so leaving Quebec out was not a problem (this is the equivalent of the Republicans having a Republican-controlled Supreme Court rule in favor of outright torture on some provision that torture isn't explicitly forbidden in the Constitution). English Canadians are all the more English whereas in Quebec we don't care to be ruled by someone else. It's not like we want to separate from Canada to join France.

And so we see that between Quebec and the ROC there are cultural differences, linguistic differences and even political differences. Why do the English Canadians fear so much these differences? Do they have an inferiority complex? Or a superiority complex? Are they just dumb? Well, anyway they refuse to admit obvious facts and then delude themselves with a vision of a united and harmonious Canada (which never existed on any level since 1759), so there is something wrong with them, that much is certain. We just don't know what exactly.

Hey! Shouldn't we have diplomatic access or something here in Canada? I mean we're still ruled by the effing Queen (I hear she doesn't do much effing or even hugging anymore though).

>> ^blankfist:
By the way, I've been driving for twenty years, and not once has someone in the backseat slammed into me and cracked my skull open. Not once.

lol. That's called anecdotal evidence and has zero statistical significance by itself.

Wikipedia's definition does not exactly do justice to the etymology of the word "mongering". While in its usual, and chiefly British, sense it simply means "a dealer of a specific commodity" (e.g. fishmonger), its derogatory sense conveys pettiness and undesirability (e.g. warmonger). Thus "fear mongering" is not just "the use of fear in order to influence opinions and actions towards a specific end", but its use towards a petty or undesirable end. The use of fear is itself petty and sometimes undesirable/unnecessary, but the end can nevertheless be grand, as it is in this instance. But the use of fear, though acceptable in this case, cannot be generalized, as it not only desensitizes people to fear in general but makes them even more complacent towards real danger.

The Daisy Girl commercial from the Lyndon Johnson campaign in 1964 is the best example of fear mongering. Instead of using fear to pass a message of general public interest, the ad aims to sully the reputation of a political adversary while making oneself look good. It is equivalent to taking your constituents hostage while disguised as your opponent and then playing the hero by "rescuing" them.