*promote the Kids!

That was always the biggest question I had when I heard about this "cylinder" of light bending around an object. Yes, if you bent light around you, so that it recombined on the other side, you would in effect be totally blind because no light was reaching your eyes.

Michio Kaku described this as a problem in a video I saw here on the Sift a while back, and he said so far you'd basically have to cut two eye holes in the cylinder, but then there would just be two eyes floating around the room.

^Choggie, that ended when technology took over the progression of our evolution on this planet. We, as human beings, are no longer part and parcel of "Natural Selection". Or else people like me would not be here still walking, talking and breathing; I would've died years ago due to complications with Diabetes had there not have been advances in medical science to treat it.

Our compassion for each other to keep us alive and well keep us from being "naturally selected" and it is a good thing too; think of all the minds that could be lost to us without medical science and its achievements. I always use Stephen Hawking as a good example of this.

Trial and error, failure and success: Everyone is right when they say no treatment can be 100% effective, but if we don't keep trying, we'll never get there one day.

>> ^choggie:
Another way to look at it would be to decide, "Fuck it. Vaccines have their benefits which far outweigh the dangers and the few who will suffer as a result of the poisons contained therein." This is surly the sentiments of the companies which manufacture them and are impervious to any real trauma, blowback, or litigation.....
What ever happened to let the planet cull the weak links from the genetic pool, eh??

Duckman:
While your statistic is accurate according to the CDC, that is in reference to Autism Spectrum Disorder; there are varying degrees of the disorder, and not every child diagnosed has that severe Autism that everyone is so on edge about. Yes, having the disorder is bad in and of itself, but there are varying levels of the disorder. Here's a list of statistics on the prevalence of types of PDDs from the Autism Society of Canada's website:

"Prevalence of specific PDDs

* CDD Rare: ~ 0.2 in 10,000= ~ 500 Canadians
* Rett's Rare: ~ 1 in 10,000= ~ 3,150 Canadians
* Autistic Disorder: ~ 20 in 10,000= ~ 73,000 Canadians
* PDD-NOS: ~ 15 in 10,000= ~ 47,000 Canadians
* Asperger's: ~ 5 in 10,000= ~ 15,000 Canadians

Reference:
Fombonne, E., 2003: Modern Views of Autism, Can. J. Psychiatry, 48:503-505.
Fombonne, E., 2003: Epidemiology of autism and other pervasive developmental disorders: an update. J. Autism.Dev. Disord. 33:365-381\"

http://www.autismsocietycanada.ca/asd_research/research_prevalence/index_e.html

Why are the levels of Autism increasing? A very good explanation could be the same reason the levels of diagnosis on other diseases seems to spike with the progression of medical science: We get better at diagnosing illnesses.

If something is causing the disorders to become more common in children, and the public at large, it will be discovered, but at this point there is not sufficient evidence to suggest that anything in our vaccines or our drinking water is creating a neurological disorder epidemic. The burden of proof lies on those who claim it is "not natural", just like those who say God created the Cosmos. For all we know right now it could be natural, and we have just never realized it before.

But, to paraphrase Tim Minchin: "If you can show me how it works and why it works I will spin on a fucking dime, and I'll be embarrased as all hell, but I will admit it with evidence, and I will take a compass and carve "fancy that" on the side of my cock."

NordlichReiter:
I completely agree with you that it doesn't appear that way with our politicians, nor does the mass media help in anyway with the preponderance of getting celebrities to pitch in their own "opinions" on the current state of affairs within our societies. To go back to the Anti-Vax nonsense, Jenny McCarthy is a perfect example; she believes her "mommy instinct" trumps all known medical science and evidence, and now it appears her kid never even had Autism in the first place, but an entirely different neurological disorder:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1967796-1,00.html


>> ^Duckman33:
Whether this video is bullshit or not. The fact remains that 1 out of every 110 children born has autism. That is unacceptable. So what is the cause if not fluoride in the drinking or vaccines?? I find it hard to believe this is natural. Anyone of you geniuses disputing the video have an answer?

There's so much wharrgarbl going on in there I almost popped a blood vessel.

Contrary to the "Idiocracy" belief that our society is being "dumbed down", as it were (and, believe me, I still find myself saying this is the case) evidence suggests the opposite is the case. In first world nations across the globe intelligence quotients are rising (and plateauing in some cases, while minority's IQs are still rising), and belief in silly religions and superstitions are falling.

Yes there is Mercury in Thimersol, but it isn't the horrific kind.
Bad Mercury: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylmercury
Thimersol Mercury: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylmercury

The key words there are "Bioaccumulate": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulate

For a look at the whole "Vaccines/Thimersol causes Autism" wharrgarbl, I rebuke with a video I posted to the sift a while back: http://videosift.com/video/Do-Vaccines-Cause-Autism-A-Detailed-Examination

Oh, and hey! How about the fact that Dr. Wakefield, the father of the whole Vaccine/Autism debacle with his article published in The Lancet was discredited finally!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/02/and-now-the-antivax-failure-is-complete-the-lancet-withdraws-wakefields-paper/

As for the whole "Flouride" wharrgarbl I'd just recommend reading the Wiki's Article on Water Flouridation, in particular this section right around paragraph 3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation#Ethics_and_politics

(Emphasis mine)

"Conspiracy theories involving fluoridation are common, and include claims that fluoridation was motivated by protecting the U.S. atomic bomb program from litigation, that (as famously parodied in the film Dr. Strangelove) it is part of a Communist or New World Order plot to take over the world, that it was pioneered by a German chemical company to make people submissive to those in power, that behind the scenes it is promoted by the sugary food or phosphate fertilizer or aluminum industries, or that it is a smokescreen to cover failure to provide dental care to the poor.[19] One such theory is that fluoridation was a public-relations ruse sponsored by fluoride polluters such as the aluminum maker Alcoa and the Manhattan Project, with conspirators that included industrialist Andrew Mellon and the Mellon Institute's researcher Gerald J. Cox, the Kettering Laboratory of the University of Cincinnati, the Federal Security Agency's administrator Oscar R. Ewing, and public-relations strategist Edward Bernays.[84] Specific antifluoridation arguments change to match the spirit of the time.[85]"


The video is right; let's get the facts. And if your facts only support your "New World Order", "omfg they're trying to control our minds" nonsense, well then, those are your "facts". There's a funny thing about why smart people believe weird things; read about it in Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things". It showed me the error of some of my foolish beliefs as well.

And I'm at the point where I wonder why I bother doing this, I'm talking to walls and making friends with no one. I guess I just care too much about seeing fear mongering bullshit like this peddled as if it has any rational backing whatsoever.

http://christophersisk.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/thestupiditburns.jpg

/downvote

And if I don't have a car bomb in my automobile when I stumble out, I'll be sorely disappointed.

/father was born in Belfast

>> ^rougy:
What about the joint of AK47 on top?
Piff!
This isn't Irish at all!

I hereby grant this Diabeetus causing video its passage to the front page.

If I had to make a guess into the same antarctic wind here, I'd say that the "Hotness" of a video must lie in the time in which it was published relative to how many views/votes it has.

I just looked over the "Hotness" videos on the front page, and that's what I got from it.

I also wholly agree with Mr. Burdturgler on his assertion with my addition in parentheses:
"Only unique (first time) views from logged in members (should) count toward the votes/views ratio."

*discard

Need. To. Play. NAO.

I was just talking about Old Republic with some coworkers yesterday, and the day before. And, no, I'm not ashamed at all in saying that I'll be taking a week off work when this game is released.

I tried Chatroulette for the first time last night.
It was a terror.

My very first random partner was a MASTURBATING COCK shown from right betwixt the fucker's thighs. And those guys sure are fast to hit the F9 key before I can shake off the disgust and shock and hit the "Report" button.

After using it for about half an hour, I got a total of four masturbating penises and about three dozen chat partners, all of whom disconnected immediately after no less than 5 seconds because they were either:

A) The afore mentioned cocks.
B) Horny, awkward teenagers looking for slutty internet girls.

Apparently my long hair even confused one for a few seconds when he asked me if I was a "M or F?"
When I said "Can't you tell by the goatee?" He replied "But you have long hair."

That's a whole lot more respect and hope lost for our species in just 30 goddamned minutes.

And here's Tycho from Penny Arcade's take on it, and it is beautiful:

"It was a lot of fun watching this story mutate as the day progressed, warping in its essential shape, culminating in something like justice. A brigand has tasted his own medicine, and it is bitter.

His Twitter is a hoot - he taunts Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling about the ability to alter game behavior at will, and in the very next message attempts to seek the developer's sympathy. It's like, wow, douche. Is lion taunting statistically correlated with lion attacks? Do some math, motherfucker. He's an utterly unrepentant hacker, yet he wonders what strange force keps gets his boxes banned. It would be like if I'd made a reputation for myself entering local cafes, slipping into the back to shit directly on their hot grills. And then, when I came back the next day, they told me to leave - even if I hadn't managed to shit on anything during that particular visit! Come to terms with the idea that there is a point beyond which you are not worth the price of your subscription.

There are times during the video when "The Pro," a moderator on the service and the supposed villain, sounds like a real bastard - but I've got sufficient life experience to recognize the underlying waveform in his audio stream.

He is using his Dad Voice.

When you and I log into the service of our choice, we can log off at any time. Try to imagine a world where you could not escape these people, where it was your damnation in a literal sense to stew in a crockpot of social disease. Maybe he should be nicer to people who claim to have fucked his grandmother until she was destroyed by the process. That's something he can work on, maybe. I'm sure there's an informative pamplet he can peruse. In the meantime, let's get that statue made."

Douchebag's Twitter: http://twitter.com/iTzLuPo

And he actually told MajorNelson over Twitter that he should expect a "class action suit" for saying his video of The Pro was edited. Wow.

I actually purchased Death Comes to Town from iTunes. And as far as I'm concerned, it is awesome. It captures the essence of The Kids in the Hall. I'm really depressed that it won't be back for another week...

I'm not a fan of sports in any sort of way whatsoever. But that that fucking awesome to watch.

Oh for the love of... Don't tell the Americans they get most of their oil from us!

Goddamnit! Now we're screwed!