Europeans sure put a hell of a lot of work into advertising. Mad Men indeed!

Wow, really?
I got a down-vote for a typo?

Notice how we can't go back and edit/fix our typos after one day.
There's going to be a lot more of these. Are we down-voting all typos now - Just so I know - because I have a lot of work to do if we are.

Testing, testing...can anyone hear me? Everything is different and I'm scared.

Joking aside, thanks guys I know it was a lot of work.

One thing, I used to like being able to see how many comments were on a video before I opened the vid page.

All in all--I like.

Stunning. Lots to work with here.

>> ^Stormsinger:

I'm a bit curious how she manages to afford that nice apartment, without participating in our "wage slave" economy.
Personally, I find it hard to believe that I could have as much freedom and leisure as I currently have, if I was spending the time necessary to avoid participation. Specialization has distinct benefits, and I doubt that my specialty is much in demand among these folks, so barter isn't going to be an efficient option for me.


Freedom and leisure is a good benefit to keeping passive. Wage Slavery was considered a horrible thing back int he day...so horrible that Actual Slave owners were making the argument that it was worse than being actual slaves.

The idea is to keep everyone wanting bullshit, striving to gain wealth forgetting everything but yourself. It's hard to convince people to forget that they're all in this together, it's a lot of work but it is working to some extent at least. We should work to fight it, there's no reason why some Multinational Corporation needs to own your towns factory just so they could decide it's not making enough and close it. The people who work there, who have a stake in the place should own it.

Here's a good clip from "The Corporation" with Chomsky.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJrEQtQDmXQ

Proof that just because something takes a lot of work doesn't automatically make it worth it.

No. I'm not going to study theology to help you make your case. Where you show you don't understand science or logic, I try and explain it to you. You are the self-proclaimed god expert in the room, and the one who wants us all to believe what you're saying, so when I ask you a fair question about Yahweh, I expect you to either give me an answer, admit you can't explain it, or accept that your original assertion is false.

"Why did God do X" isn't the right question because it relies on the assumption that God exists and in fact did X. A better question is, "Is it reasonable to believe that a god who does X, Y, and Z exists?"

So yes, you gave me a lot to work with in the sense that you wrote a lot, but the way you write makes it very hard to make connected arguments if I have to come back and ask you for clarifications and detail on your fantastic assertions, and you reply either defensively or with more vague and fantastic assertions. Surely you can put yourself in my shoes and anticipate my questions at least a little bit. Unlike most here, I'm actually trying to understand your point of view, so it's worth using words that I'm more likely to accept.>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^messenger:
@shinyblurry
Please keep in mind when you answer me that I’m not asking you for the details because it’s an interesting story and I want to know all of the lore like a Star Wars fanboy. I’m asking because -- unlike the majority of people you probably speak with -- I’m giving your faith every benefit of the doubt I reasonably can as a rational person. For me to accept the story, it must hold together. For it to hold, all apparent problems must be resolved without relying on tautology.
My main thrust in this particular comment thread is dealing with the issue that for everything that appears impossible or utterly fantastic to me, when I raise it, you explain it, but with something else equally fantastic (Asserting that God has to punish us for our sins is just as fantastical as asserting that God doesn’t want to punish us), so I’m not left understanding things any better. So, I challenge that new thing, and on it goes until you run out of scripture.
Then, although my questions are as valid as before, you have no real answers. At these times you give quasi-answers: you phrase your answers in the passive voice (“…what was required…”); you answer with a leading question that asserts a comparison without your having to say they're equal (“Wouldn’t you…?”), with a rhetorical question (“Could it be that…?”), or a poor analogy rather than a declarative (The King’s law about adultery, or comparing rapists going to prison with lapsed church-goers (one example of a mortal sin) being sent to Hell); or you criticize how I’m thinking (“…instead of trying to constantly falsify it, you might actually try studying what Christian theologians (and not skeptics) have said about it.”; and, “use some common sense”). So my question doesn't get answered.
So, as you're talking to a group of mostly logical, scientific-minded sceptics here, why not frame your answers so they make sense to your audience? Ask yourself the next logical sceptical question that springs from the answer you just gave until you arrive at something that really makes sense.

I gave you quite a bit to work with in my replies. The reason I suggested reading the works of theologians is because they discuss the very things you are inquiring about "Why did God do X?", and that very in depth. These are issues which are not entirely concrete because God does not always tell us why He does "X". Some things can be inferred, some things can be logically deduced, and some things are yet a mystery.

When they can't use deadly force and tasers, this is how it's usually done. It's a lot more work but in the end no one was hurt. And to think his friends even shouted directions for him all the time helping him and the cops didn't react to that... They didn't lose temper at any point, gave him countless opportunities to start acting like a grownup. I would give them 8+, drunkards have the same amount of power as solber people, they just are so uncoordinated, in my days as a bouncer i was amazed how much larger and stronger guys i could throw out but it takes buttload of patience and in the heat of the moment it's very hard to keep calm. Mostly it's prioritizing and controlling the situation, relocating the problem to more sparse populated area and try to talk some reason or subdue. What i see is happening here too, they did let him walk surprisingly far but there was room to manouver.

Haha, yeah, that last push was a lot of work for me!
In reply to this comment by UsesProzac:
Congratulations on diamond. ;

>> ^VoodooV:

so did they or didn't they?
every article I've read announces they've found it! but in the article itself they backpedal and say that they're pretty sure they found it.
I loves me my science but they are notorious for hyping up stuff like this only for the hype to not measure up.


They found a blip which is a particle that resembles the Higgs, they have yet to determine if it is a boson. Bosons are usually the force carriers, so this is important if it is the fit into the understanding of what the Higgs is in the standard model (a force carrier for mass). If it turns out to be a fermion, or crazy worse, a lepton (very improbable), then we will have to go back to the drawing board for the standard model. Also, the Higgs is seemingly lighter than predicted, this causes some math issues with zero-point energy. With as much as a full gigaelectron volt difference between the 2 detectors for the Higgs, there is still a lot of work to do. That isn't to understate the importance of this, there is something going on.

I think their issue is probably based a lot of illegal immigrant workers, places using them can hold deportation over their heads, pay them a lot less, work them a lot more, and avoid minimum wage US workers.

Minimum wage is a useless tool if they can bypass it by hiring people who willfully don't seek it for one reason or another. Deportation even if they are a legal immigrant due to lack of job keeping them here on their work visa.


Then the other is the "taxes are so high" excuse, where your paycheck isn't broken down properly and they are taking things out that they shouldn't be and just blaming it on taxes. Or overtime goes unpaid because "We don't pay overtime, yet we'll work you 80 hours a week and never inform you of this." Or you work through breaks and lunch, but they subtract lunch/etc from your pay because they need to do so to appear to be meeting labor standards if anyone ever looks into them. So they can use the "He worked through lunch? We didn't pay him for it...why would someone do that? He must have taken lunch."

And people who can't speak or read english or have poor comprehension. They spend more effort on ripping these people off because whose going to listen to them? They can't communicate well enough with their employer to argue one way or the other. Non-English speaking is a huge bias in the US work force, and I can somewhat see it. But there's still labor practices, if you don't want to hire someone who can't speak English...don't. But it's easier to break labor practices and rip them off if you do, which is why they hire them.


And they get away with it because they are 1) Huge corporations or 2) So shady without seeing it first hand someone wouldn't know something is up because their reports are so full of lies. Both categories will also fuck with your unemployment benefits despite it not costing them anything to let you have them. Why? Because it makes other people in the company unwilling to risk quitting with cause and trying to draw unemployment while they pursue legal matters against them. If they can keep you poor and on the edge, you don't have the ability to do anything about...you'll be out on the street before anything happens. And it's pretty hard to do anything court related if you don't have a mailing address, plus all of the other things that will happen to you, your kids, etc if you choose to try to fight and lose your job over it.....like inability to find work ever again because you complained and they let people know you did. And good luck proving they are hindering your ability to find work or that you are on some sort of unofficial black list.


I don't doubt for a minute that what they say is 100% true. It's already taking place out in the open with CEOs and what not raking in money and driving down wages of everyone else or laying off major swathes of their work force while they post record profits. And no one in government is batting an eye at that display of greed and the questionable nature of the finance industry still dictating the terms of the economy even after they got bailed out massively and changed nothing.


Corporate corruption is going to be a bitch to handle when the government relies on it for it's donations/bribes.

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:

>> ^AeroMechanical:
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
I'm starting to not get new pop culture references. Does this mean I'm getting old?
http://pinterest.com/

Oh, no. Of course not. It means you are an adult. That usually takes until at least 30 these days at a minimum.
edit: Almost as soon as I wrote that, I realized the logical fallacy. Truth be told, in all likelihood, the 25-year-olds I know today who still play Pokemon and watch Naruto will never really become adults. I suppose maybe that isn't a bad thing though.
So being an adult means you can't like fun stuff any more? Fuck that!


That's about the size of it. Instead, you have to get all excited about mortgage rates and how much your job matches you on your 401K. Then you have kids, which people say is a lot of fun, but looks more like stress and a lot of work to me.

The other day, a friend of mine said he didn't need to smoke ganja any more because when his baby daughter smiles, it's better than any drug. I just about puked.

I disagree, granted it looked like it took a lot of work but when I saw him at the first of the video I never would have guessed his hair was even thinning out. Much less a full on combover.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

"it's a fucking work of art"
No, it's really not. It looks marginally better than your average combover, I'll grant you that, but if you're going bald, man up and shave your head.

Good luck on the revolution front. Not only do we need a new foundation on how we deal with corporations, police, military, science, religion/state, prisons, health-care, lawmaking, politics, policy foreign/domestic, executive functions state or country, emergency response systems, logistics roads/bridges/railroad, infrastructure, welfare and societal needs, energy, money/goods, trade, etc...

Like he said, we need a new foundation on our psychology. What we teach our children is bunk, it will make the majority of them happy for a few fleeting moments and unhappy the rest of their lives. We need to find a new foundation to help find happiness for everyone for the majority of their entire life--without resorting to competition and instead combining our strengths and creating a great community.

I'd wager the closest you'll get is to literally do education completely different than what we do now. Start at an early age and give the children a glimpse of ALL trades to be used and learned in the world. Over time find what they excel at and LIKE doing and help them achieve their goal in that field. Then continually narrow the field as they get older so they can truly become a master at something, like a chemical engineer. Education would, graphically, look more like a giant plinko board that students slowly make their way down and filter themselves into the field THEY want. If we supported students all the way PASS college to the point they were job ready (and in fact you could perhaps harmonize corporations into the mix, so that when you get your degree not only have you most likely interned/researched at the place you will work gaining practical knowledge you are ready day one out of school to start a job you LOVE and excel at.

I know you'll get clumps and pools of people in places you may not have uses for them, but if we truly put our minds to it I bet we could find a way to still get the method to work (I know corporations won't necessarily do what I said except in--most likely-- the science fields, but having just a few large companies do it would help). Then if we lived a slower paced life, with more time off to OURSELVES than in slavery to someone else you might see a change in the overall attitude of our community and maybe civilization. Help people pay for modest houses and maybe even some furniture. Cover healthcare needs for each other, maybe even other social services as well. Tone the military down to a defensive one, one that can defend us, but can only truly become a real war machine like what happened in WWII.

Granted, there would be a lot to work out, but I highly doubt it's impossible to create a GREAT life here on this planet if we all work together to make it happen. Hell, we walked on the fucking moon! I know most of this will require not only leaps in science and with those leaps, hopefully ,soon, some of those bring about leaps in the psychology fields helping us to genetically weed out sociopaths, psychopaths, unipolar, bipolar, borderline, Asperger's, sever depression/anxiety, OCDs, addictions, etc... Plus with expanded bio-engineering, especially in genetics, if we could make sure people atleast have an IQ of say 120 (hell if you truly find the master switch--just turn it up), get rid of all genetic diseases and birth imperfections, rid us of deafness, blindness, baldness, etc... Then add in the advancements in bio-engineering on the mechanical, nanotechnological, electronics, and computers and we'll have one hell of a ride (of course if we haven't solved the psychological issues by then, we will almost certainly kill ourselves off). But, that stuff is 50 years away with some probably 150-200 years away. If we can help stabilize our humanity, through engineering and perfecting our psychology, I really believe we'll have a chance one day to see some sort of Utopian society.

Everything he talked about most likely leads to something that MIGHT be better than what we had. But, it won't be here in the U.S. and I doubt it'll even be in Asia (China, South Korea, and Japan). Europe, excluding the U.K. has a chance, with northern Europe having a better chance. You never quite know who history will choose next to bring the next big leap in progress to the human civilization.

/I didn't think I'd write something so long about that. Oh well, I just felt like sharing a little more optimistic view on what could happen to we humans.