This is surprisingly accurate commentary for CNN. I just wish he hadn't equated this with the sensationalist claim of "declaring war on the U.S. Dollar". There's enough tension already with U.S. politicians blaming China for the American deficit. It would have been more accurate to simply say that China and Russia don't trust the long term stability of the USD (since it seems unlikely that the U.S. will be able to honor its debts -- he could have kept this last part out, even though it's the elephant in the room).

It's strange that Maddow doesn't seem to fully understand how counterproductive her partisan bias is. Once again I was impressed by Stewart's eloquence.

Great interview.

>> ^PHJF:

Pretty sure that doesn't count, but it's still neat.


Yeah, it counts: "The ball is in play once it has been kicked and moved, and at this point in time other players may enter the penalty area and play continues as normal."

The real question is how a scaled up version of this plug will behave at 10 thousand psi.

Remember when the Wii came out, and everyone was shocked at how stupid the name was?

It's four years later, and no one even cares about the name. If it's fun, kids will play and it will be successful.

Reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHv0V-4qS20

Check out the booming, gentlemen: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html

It's interesting that their booms are better at trapping oil near the shores than at diverting it. Also notice the total lack of catch basins. Solid work by BP.

WTF is wrong with these reporters?

That would've been the perfect time to call BP's bluff. The two guard officers would most likely back down, because they know perfectly well that it's not a crime to film the coastline.

I read in some places that Epic Beard Man is mentally unstable. That explains why his recollection is more colorful than the bus video.

War can do awful things to a man. Given what he said about the Iraq war, he clearly understands that Vietnam messed him up.

>> ^geo321:
Epic Beard Man turns out to be an epic liar. His version of events doesn't jive with the bus video.

Boo hoo, cry me a river.

Kevin Smith is too fat to fly unless he buys two seats, which he normally does. In this case he wanted to get an earlier flight, was put on standby and the airport staff neglected to check if the flight had two neighbouring free seats. It did not, and he boarded the plane. When the crew realised this was going to be a problem, he was asked to leave.

Southwest admitted this was a mistake, and apologized for it. But Kevin Smith conveniently omits the real problem in this video, and goes on for 3 minutes about how he's now too fat to fly with Southwest.

And yes, he's too fat. I for one am glad that some airlines won't let someone that big fly using only one seat.

That's got to be the nicest RC design I've ever seen.

Best Onion video ever.

It's bizarre that he makes a point of not funding one field at the expense of another, but simultaneously claims that nowhere in medical diagnostic machines you see principles or designs which were discovered or invented by medical researchers.

This is an absurd claim, because even if a physicist discovers an elementary principle, it's completely unclear if this principle is applicable for a given medical purpose. And even if it is (which will probably be discovered by someone else, in another field), it is not at all clear if it is the best (most accurate, reliable, affordable and safe, according to some metric) principle for the application, over all techniques which are already available. This is something a medical researcher investigates.

I'm especially surprised that he mentioned the MRI machine. One of the biggest controversies in Nobel Prize history is the 2003 Nobel Prize for Medicine, which was awarded to a physicist and a chemist, but not to Raymond Damadian, the medical doctor who made leading contributions to the field.

So anyway, while Neil deGrasse is accurate in saying that one should not exclusively fund medical research at the expense of other fields, this video is completely misleading in the sense that it overemphasizes the contributions of physicists, and intentionally omits contributions made by researchers in other fields, as if a physicist's discovery of an elementary principle were the hard part in the process of developing medical equipment.

Disclaimer: I'm a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering.

I usually like Jon Stewart, but I can't stand how he turned everything into a left vs. right debate.

It would be much more productive to realise that both Bush and Obama's administration promote fraud by letting the chairmen of big banks and financial institutions control the Fed and the US Treasury.

>> ^thinker247:
I like how he's wearing gloves as a precaution, then just drops the ball in there, letting the mercury splash.

Mercury is only really dangerous if it enters the bloodstream (which happens if you ingest it or breathe its vapor). It's ok to have mercury bounce off your skin once in your lifetime, as long as it doesn't come near a wound or thin skin (like under your fingernails).