I'm no troll, so I guess my only other option is idiot? I'm glad you were available to define my choices so succinctly.

I am a dog owner who has great affection for his animals I value the quality of life for my animals so I take the time to learn about and understand how they think instead of humanizing my animal and then wondering why it doesn't act like one of my children.

You are right that most people, including myself, really love their animals and that some people potentially would have a hard time containing their grief or fear when the animal is in a bad situation, that's not what I was commenting on. When the dog started recovering the lady kept up her hysteria and really showed that she doesn't understand or care how dogs think which in my mind shows that she was putting her own feelings before the dogs well being.

>> ^EMPIRE:

"it's a dog lady... hold it together?" Nice one.
You are either a troll, or an idiot who obviously can't understand the rather well-known affection an owner may have for his/her pet.
Get lost.

Using kids in videos like this, especially without parent consent is poor judgement, but come on, this is American sexuality hysteria at its worst. You need more tits on tv and just relax a little.

Wow I always assumed that the sift was like, fifty years old or something. In this case, I'm honored to be a three-year member, the discussions, the videos and the level-headed people here on the sift really have had a huge impact on my life in more ways than one. Ofcourse, anyone outside the community reading this might think I'm laying it on a bit thick, I mean honestly, can a couple of youtube videos and comments really change a person's life?

Three years ago, I had only just graduated highschool and was still very much woefully ignorant in terms of politics, philosophy, science, you name it (for the record, not much has changed) And whats more I found myself within a great deal of spiritual/emotional turmoil. I was trying to reconcile the biblical teachings and practices I learned in the Church (I went to a Catholic high school) the teachings of the longhouse, the 7 grandfathers, as well as this deep cerebral yearning for more.

My mind was exposed to so many intellectually stimulating figures here on the sift. Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Bertrand Russel, Christopher Hitchens, the list goes on and on. Whats more, aside from the occasional bursts of hysteria, I found myself much more politically aware and far more comfortable with all those little skepticisms haunting the back of my mind all those years in highschool. Never before had I encountered so many learned and witty, like-minded individuals.

Happy Anniversary Dag, awesome work. Let's keep the good times rolling.

Somehow, this seems really, really tacky.

Edit : Although the clip quoted in this sift's description needs to be repeated in all coverage of this event. Let's see if the media pay as much attention to this as they did to, for example, Terry Jones, when they desperately attempted to manufacture hysteria.

And Spoco, relying on one news outlet is like information malnutrition. You'll end up stunted... and besides, Australian journalistic standards are pretty god-awful.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

http://www.reuters.com/

http://english.aljazeera.net/

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

... and many others, none of which I would rely on individually but, after a process of info amalgamation, it's possible to end up with a mildly accurate picture of what's going on.

What a travesty!

It's clear to me from this video that the world is now headed for a disaster of biblical proportions! I mean Old Testament, real wrath of God type stuff: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Pittsburgh Steelers dominating the Cleveland Browns at the end of the first half! Human sacrifices! Cats & Dogs, living together! Mass hysteria!

>> ^spaceman:

Why I don't care:
1) You once believed in a god.
2) You are a guy.


@spaceman | The reason why the rest of us watch and listen to "just some guy; who believed in God":

The only reason you can type your sentence is from/due-to "other" men. Religion in all forms is from "other" men (unless you claim to hear voices or a physical divinity; but, please, not as an affront to you, make sure you're not psychotic or schizophrenic before telling us your interesting story as that is the case almost always; same with drug use; same with some other illnesses: narcolepsy, sleep walking, night terrors/sleep paralysis, and many other sleep related issues and all nervous system illnesses). Only a few things below talk more about what you said.
--------------------------
--------------------------
A little more to add to the conversation. Hopefully, this gets it all out as it will be fairly long, but the video is hard to reply to in a short manner. I hope this covers a large extent of what I wish to say about this very well done video witness/testimony.


One set of values you can research and witness to it's validity on your own, as he has done. Science also allows for this methodology, using the well known precept of "The Scientific Method".

A quick example is that many people of faith, even Evid3nc3, talks of feeling "x" with their "hearts" and knowing "x" with their "soul". In science there is nothing more than a simple, yet complicated, physical processes. It's all a creation and manifestation in your brain; if you think you "feel" something with your heart you're causing minor self-hysteria to the extent of creating a minor hallucination.

The "soul" is called the(primarily in psychology, neuroscience, and neurology; there are many other terms that try to mean "you"; typically, in grossly inaccurate ways, such as: ghosts, "psychic" remote viewing, many religions use of the magical-energy-divine soul, etc...) psyche which is typically (starting from the outer-functions and moving into core-functions) sensory systems, language center, feelings, memory, and then the key-piece the neo-cortex. So it must be understood that your brain does a lot of things still baffling (mostly the mechanics or mechanisms of function and chemistry), but the overall picture is fairly clear.

But, the brain is not a floating energy source, nor is it an absolute definition at any given point or time. Depending on how and where you look at the brain the very concept of you is different. It more akin to superposition of an electron or a kaleidoscope; the definition of you is not concrete until measured and even then you are already not what was measured.

Even from what little we do know, belief plays a central role in how our neo-cortex makes decisions and operates (even with memory and other functions, which is why we do make many mistakes as it's due to how our brain physically commits to anything it must or will do; it's perhaps the single best reason to show why, "To err is human; to forgive, divine."; you don't understand the human condition if you cannot forgive...). Could this translate into a bigger picture; our connected neurons telling us to accept faith and belief, sometimes, because that is what it does at the small scale?

*Offtopic Look up articles, books, and videos (look at TED for Marvin Minsky, Jeff Hawkins, Craig Venter, Jonathan Haidt and others --some of which are here on the sift-- related topics on there like the Mind, AI, facial-pattern-contextual-semantics-divergent-cat vs. dog software based Recognition, and then other media pertaining to 'Artificial Intelligence') or if you want to know strictly about how the brain works and makes it's decisions, look for a type of setup called a "hierarchical structure"; also known as a pyramid or pyramid scheme. One cell makes a decision based off of the accumulations of "guesses" the other millions of cells connected to it made; these cells are fundamentally the foundation for that setup, but the neurons are more flexible than that as each can be a parent and also part of the "foundation" structure, making the brain a fantastic structure. With time this becomes accurate (this occurs in less than a few milliseconds), although our vision, for an example, is horrifically distorted and wrong, if you could look at one "frame" based on a few cells. Only a small fraction of the frame would be correct; literally it would be as though your senses got one pixel correct in a 1080p image. Yet, repeat this millions of times with different data sets each round (and this is done as said above, fast) you get an accurate picture; or at the least 20/20-to about one-arc minute (the resolution for the human eye, on average).

One set you can't test, we call that belief or faith. "What is the reasoning for taking the leap of faith?", this is what you have to defend at this point. If faith is your only defense, I will (like many others will) assume you haven't looked into your own faith enough yet or you even refuse to look out of fear of being wrong. If you do not understand the topic you must be willing to ask for help as he did or you'll be a slave to your willful decision of ignorance, to the extent that you feel compelled to defend them, but you never convince anyone except yourself--and for yourself it is only because of the rote-righteous indignation.

If it's true it should withstand all scrutiny. Unless truth isn't your ultimate goal. Then, for us and many others there is no reason to follow your faith. Usually, this type of merit and defense are directly related to age due to learning this all when you're a child and devoid of an intense ability to decipher, attribute values, connect, and draw in a belief (if with some facts and proof you could call it a hypothesis).

It's all from men... I'm wagering you're dismissing this flippantly due to religion; if not what exactly is your point, as I truly would like to know why and where this claim of non-relativistic knowledge comes from, without a woman or man?

Also, if it has to do with his belief in being mistaken for believing in God that's a moot point as we have all erred in life. I know of no person that has reliably been able to "claim divinity", other than Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, etc... But, we also know now that mental illness and other factors can account for any manic or psychotic leanings. We also know magicians (or magister, proper) have been around A LONG TIME.

Plus, as Arthur C. Clarke put it, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.". Which then one must ask another question, "Can divinity itself ever be established as being magic only?". This is then rounded up by a statement from Larry Niven (sometimes called Niven's Law(s)), "Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology.". These collide and distinctly form a conclusion about divinity and any of it's powers (descriptive magic or divinity and it's "how to use it" manual are indefensibly getting closer in each step to being more akin to physics; plus the Christian God hates magic, which begs the question, "Why do you need a God, if we can exact the same effects?"):

Divinity can only hope to use advanced knowledge and technology in a collusion to bring about one standpoint alone: "divinity" if described by God in any kind of ruleset (some of it is in the bible, already) stands on a rigorously tested and time shown: shaky ground.

Men would be gods whether God existed or not.

(P.S.: only the beginning and some bits here and there are for you, @spaceman. The rest is for our vestibule.)

Again I must add that this is a great find @dystopianfuturetoday.
You're doing yourself a great disservice not watching it (or all of it as the case may be).

>> ^Fusionaut:

It was fireworks! http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/03/3105511.htm?section=just
in


I'm guessing the fish are a coincidence due to the distance involved (they weren't next to each other; so to speak...).

Although, fireworks (or things like that) due make some sense. I wonder if there were any "town" shows as I saw mention of only revelers for fireworks (which seems highly unlikely to cause something like this; unless these birds have a form of mass hysteria, like humans).

The lightning sounded like a better idea, but they should be able to match it to the autopsies. It'll be better once they have a few thorough autopsies done and a good idea of "where" they died (altitude, in the general area or a slight wind carry). Maybe, even a sonic boom could be at play. A plane might be able to make one loud enough, but if it happened at 30k like proposed I'm unclear whether residents would even hear a sonic boom. Also, I'm unsure as to the strength of a thunderclap (as it's also a "sonic boom", to some degree--far different cause than speed, as in lightning's case it's temperature variants), can the thunder cause a "fish in a barrel type effect, especially if the birds were in a storm with rain or a "heavy" cloud structure.

Maybe they were stunned and the fall actually killed them. Hopefully, we find out quick. I always fine these large die-offs interesting as sometimes the causes can give us more insight into how our planet works. One (actually two, in the same place) that I can think of off the top of my head was a Human die-off.

It was from Lake Nyos, in northwest Cameroon. Lake Nyos is one of three "exploding lakes" here are two interesting articles about them, but there is a (it's a National Geographic show, I'm very unsure of the title, it's related to the BBC show, "Killer Lakes", I just put up here; at the bottom is the link for it), but I know Lake Nyos is included in it) show about it which is a must watch -- they figured out what was happening basically on accident as well (this was not even a theory before; now they're afraid there are "mega-pockets" which is talked about in a History Channel "Mega Disasters" episode (I think "Methane Explosion", though "Methane" is used for sure) -- if something happens at an "ocean geographic scale" it would kill a lot of people; it has the potential to be worse than Yellowstone, but we have absolutely no information on the likelihood of this occurring nor the size of such an event). Nyos killed roughly 3500 livestock and 1700 people, some of the villagers were 16 miles from the lake. One of the other lakes is in Cameroon and the other is in Rwanda.

Here are the Wikipedia links:

Limnic Eruptions or also known as Exploding Lakes -- think of them as being somewhat like a soda can with the lid popped off and some Mentos thrown in.

Second, Lake Nyos which killed a large amount of people in 1986 and left scientists baffled.

There are some media links at the bottom of the wiki articles.


Here is the BBC documentary I just put up for the sift (HORiZONS, BBC World); trust me it's an interesting watch. Make sure you have time to watch it as it comes in at a FULL episode and is 44 minutes long. This documentary talks about the 1986 disaster and the mystery surrounding it.

They'll get into the mechanics and also show the reason some scientists are scared this WILL happen again, but this time it might kill hundreds of thousands--maybe more...

The CDC state they have been monitoring Gardasil closely and they state that as of 30 Sept. 2010, 56 deaths have been reported out of a total of 32 million doses. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/hpv/gardasil.html. Like Skeeve pointed out, that's 0.000175% of all doses given, an incredibly low number.

There has been no established causal link between these deaths and the use of the vaccine, even cases of blood clots were mostly found to be related to other risk factors.

Now unless we can no longer trust the CDC, I'd say that it's probably a pretty safe bet that this vaccine is worthwhile. I've not done a ton of research on this (obviously) and am always willing to alter my position based on the evidence, but it really feels like this is yet another case of unscientific anti-vaccine hysteria.

Cats and dogs living together... Mass Hysteria!!!

First of all, I'm all for diverse styles of clothing, but it's hard to take you seriously as a legal representative on national television if particularly your tie and your socks make you look like a clown.

Second, I'm quite baffled at the discrepencies between Assange's lawyer's statements and local news reports. The latter make him seem like a rapist on the run which completely contradicts what was stated in this interview. Naturally, the lawyer is putting a positive spin on the whole situation, positive for his client. Still, I wonder if it's intent, negligence or simply the usual hysteria on part of so many journalists.

I probably sounded pretty snide but that wasn't my intent.

My point is every few months someone with a diamond or higher starts complaining about how hard it is to get videos sifted. This is almost inevitably followed by requests to lower the threshold.

First, the irony of someone with a few hundred or more sifted videos complaining about how hard it is to sift them is like a multi-millionaire complaining that his income has dropped in the recession.

Second, the last thing we need to do is lower the threshold. We have more than enough toothless dogs, Japanese gameshows, Jessica Rabbit fanart slideshows, and Funny or Die clips without lowering the bar.

If someone can't get votes, maybe they should sift something that sucks less. At the very least, do what I do, and grumble to yourself about it.

Also, apologies to @blankfist who is the apparent recipient of my ranting here. It's not meant to be directed at him, but I've seen this happen enough to know that his comment is the type that will snowball into a mass hysteria like I've described.

>> ^Gallowflak:

@xxovercastxx
Ooh, ouch.
No, it's not a responsibility to upvote. It's a responsibility to participate in the community of which you're a part. It's this second sense of responsibility which I suggested was being diluted by the increasing scale of the site.
Is there a problem here?

for the past few days i have had to field questions about this very subject.
i was taken aback at how many people bought into this non-issue.
because thats what it is...a non-issue that has been re-packaged to promote a political talking point.
so lets review those points:
1.what is being proposed is not a mosque but a community center.
2.the proposal is not at ground zero but 5 blocks away in an old burlington coat factory.
those two points alone should be sufficient to allow this non-story to be ignored as the political fodder it is,but that wont happen because:
people are too lazy or ignorant to look at the facts and ignore the hype and/or are too frightened of people named habib and mohamed.
a media created hysteria over a non-issue and it is working brilliantly to stir up those unwilling to think for themselves.
freedom of religion NOT freedom from any religion other than christianity.
i live in a country of dumb-asses.

That crowd was anything but hysterical. They stuck around to make sure the situation was resolve in the right way.>> ^Lawdeedaw:
>> ^ToKeyMonsTeR:
Man you equate mental health issues with a kid freaking out cause some guy comes and grabs you for crossing the street? Then proceeds to slam you into a car... Gettin mad and yelling back = mental issue? Give me a break.
I don't care if you're a cop, a judge, or fucking Obama himself, you don't hit a woman like that and you especially don't do it to fucking kids. I can't fucking comprehend how anyone can say it's ok.
Edit: @ grim, well why give the cop the benefit of the doubt and not give it to the citizen they are supposed to be serving and protecting?

Because the citizens do not back off. They only make matters worse.
I am not saying punching a woman in the face is okay, but neither is enciting a near hysteria in a group right either...

>> ^ToKeyMonsTeR:
Man you equate mental health issues with a kid freaking out cause some guy comes and grabs you for crossing the street? Then proceeds to slam you into a car... Gettin mad and yelling back = mental issue? Give me a break.
I don't care if you're a cop, a judge, or fucking Obama himself, you don't hit a woman like that and you especially don't do it to fucking kids. I can't fucking comprehend how anyone can say it's ok.
Edit: @ grim, well why give the cop the benefit of the doubt and not give it to the citizen they are supposed to be serving and protecting?


Because the citizens do not back off. They only make matters worse.

I am not saying punching a woman in the face is okay, but neither is enciting a near hysteria in a group right either...

"Mass hysteria"? I think not. For every freak tea-bagger there are ~10,000 Americans who are relaxed about their political stance. The people in this video are extreme.