First, since this is your SOLE focus, and so you inappropriately insert it into every conversation you participate in, you are preaching about it. No one likes to be preached at, and that methodology always ends with the preached at becoming opposition to the preachers. That means that the way you go about trying to convince people of your point is working against your goal and is creating adversaries rather than cohorts.
Second, most people strongly disagree with your base premise, that all life is equal. Have you ever taken medicine or other steps to get rid of a disease? Ever slapped a mosquito? If so, you are an uncaring, hypocritical, torturous and murdering bastard! You killed billions of living micro organisms, and likely thousands of macro organisms. If all life is equal and it's cruelty to kill, period, then all life is evil because it's impossible to live without killing.

That some people can't see that their pet cause is not the most important issue facing the planet and/or that their viewpoint on a particular topic might not be rational is the root of all that's wrong with the world.

It's Floyd...isn't it? Sorry, me can't insert picture good. The link is to the comic of Thak and Gork on their Time Log. One of the onlookers is driving a Floyd's delivery truck. Floyd doesn't care about the state of his abode since meat is his life. It's all there in black and white.

http://41.media.tumblr.com/6695731eb3e85a1ca88573d64346e153/tumblr_inline_nql0z1WFHw1s5y24d_500.jpg

The ultimate problem with this is that it's not really needed.

Let's assume that all the problem get sorted out and the F-35 magically becomes the fastest, deadliest, stealthiest manned plane in the sky. It's still hamstrung by the squishy meatbag in the front.

For the cost of one F-35, you could have 10 predator drones. Slower, less maneuverable, less stealthy.... but also cheaper and expendable. You shoot down an F-35, you not only destroy the plane, but you most likely take the pilot out of the equation as well (even if they eject, they're still not going to be flying another plane any time soon). Shoot down a predator? "Game over. Insert $10 million to continue"

Manned air superiority fighters are last century.

Warning, this is long. It's a general reply to bob, but really it's a rant about the reality of this country, origins, issue, and where we are headed... Like they say in Horace and Pete, at this point we just might deserve a president like Trump (especially because we are stupid enough to vote for HIM, and for so many Senators AND Congressmen like him or even far worse)...

Reply to bob at the top...


I hate to tell you, but "SHALL", according to the times in which the founding fathers wrote this IS indeed the utmost highest form of that period meaning that you "HAVE TO" do something.

Go ahead and let your own party change what grammar and vocabulary meant from that period--or simply not have enough brains to know what it really means (though most of us know by now their assistants have let them know what it means, they just refuse to believe reality and instead insert their own collective psychotic delusion).

Typically when it says SHALL (BTW, NOT doing that job should be getting them in HUGE amounts of trouble as well), they should be doing everything they can TO nominate a new judge into the open position in their next open session (not a session one year away, so Trump or Hillary has to do it).

If they want to complain about the nominee they CAN, just while they are under scrutiny to go up for the vote. But, they simply are NOT supposed to do nothing and furthermore say they WON'T do anything...

I'll have to look up what the penalty is for not doing this, but it could be a full "boot" from their job. Simply what has been referred to by Republicans in the past as Impeachment. But, then the Senate has to start that (I'm not sure if anyone else can; hence, this is why I said I'd try to see if there is anything else that can be done)

I believe they can also do it at the state level... BUT ALL of this requires for our government officials to do their fucking jobs! PLUS, the citizens that voted them in to give a shit!
----------


We REALLY, REALLY, do not deserve a country like this...it is BARELY alive and well. We are just a few presidential terms away (plus senators and congressmen) before we grind to a complete halt.

Then we can finally watch everything implode on CNN and FOX while REAL extremists take over and then the real fun starts. True extremists taking control with minimal bloodshed and shouting matches, civil war with outcomes that grant us either the NEO-United States (the U.S.A. V:2.0, which might be good), to the Neo-Confederacy (since that is what it all amounts to on the FAR right's spectrum). OR we simply just dissolve and become something entirely new.

Hey, bob did you know that your party used to be JUST like the Democrats of Lincoln's age. The Republican's were more like the Democrat's of our age. Weird right. THAT conservative party died out with Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party; then all of the citizens decided that they simply liked the name "Republican" more (since they'd always voted for that name, right...it'd be weird to change it). That is where the Republican's became a FAR different party than they had been (though they still had a few more GREAT leaders before their schism drove them all, sadly, into madness ). The "Democrat's", they thought slavery was just peachy at first, and now they vote for gay-rights. NEITHER party remembers it's roots and the citizens of the United States have had their idiotic teachers and parents tell them all sorts of stories about how great either party WAS, but never telling them what they are like NOW. We all need to vote for our president, nowadays, without even LOOKING at their part's affiliation. It doesn't do any of us any good. Because none of them have ANY real lineage or links to the old presidents of these United States--they're full of shit.

Just remember, Republicans and their party were formed basically to try and abolish slavery--now they are more likely to put it back into action; a complete reversal of their direction, progressive and liberal!

Democrats tried to keep things the same as it was and to even expand slavery--now they want to allow marijuana to be legal, allow gays to have rights, and essentially pick up many progressive and liberal causes... They too have utterly reversed the direction they were at and taking during Abraham Lincoln's time. Conservative on many topics and wanting to expand the states' rights and abilities. Now they are the ones that would abolish slavery and even have Lincoln on their ticket if he ran...

Our parties in these United States are abysmal, a joke, a farce, and shouldn't even be used... The Founding Fathers would be dismayed over so many issues it wouldn't be even funny. They would more than likely throw OUT the Constitution and start a new draft, simply due to the amount of changes we've made in the WRONG direction and the fact that they weren't able to see the future far enough ahead to imagine gigantic empires made only of Business (with a mere handful of people, not hundreds, thousands, and many more like it was in their times) and how News would become so powerful it is essentially as powerful as the president of the United States--and if watched by enough people it is even FAR more powerful than him/her (like in Russia; The Internet being the ONE thing the Founding Fathers would pat our country on the back over and it's what can restore balance to the people who watch or only can gain information from these entities; a new type of "University" where anything can be shared; truth and facts obtained at every man's fingertips nearly instantly at any point on this planet; it IS the world's greatest WONDER ever made).

Lastly, they would absolutely abhor our parties and how they are used--internally and externally (how our politicians...how all the issues interconnect together; all politicians that receive outside money, they would likely want to have them all impeached, same with those that USE the media; they would HATE parties--but they know they'll always exist, you just have to get rid of the things that LET parties abuse we the people and also the government, and those things are: money and media...).


/length

eh.. it's a pretty condescending premise, and not very funny.

I'll wait for the next video comparing women to dogs, or, Texans to bull. Or Americans with a <insert stupid animal here.>

Now, while we may find agreement that <stupid animal> is indeed stupid, I don't actually believe that it is fair to paint everyone in the US as also being so. (Nor do I believe Texans are like bull, or women are like dogs.) It's just not true.

Even the individual points made are flawed, and not very funny.

Sorry, PHP. I can't give this one a vote.

"Automatically ok"? Not necessarily. But in cases where it makes sense, at a stretch even "plot sense" for the character to be there; yeah, I think that is OK.

The Last Samurai isn't a documentary. But, the general historical justification for Tom Cruise's character being in Japan is pretty much valid. Meiji was interested in the West -- clothes, technology, weapons, and military. He actually did hire Westerners to train his army, although from what I read it sounds like they were German, French, and Italian rather than American. Still, the movie portrays the general situation/setting with at least *decent* broad-strokes historical accuracy. LOADS of movies deviate from even this degree of historical accuracy *way* more without drawing complaints; particularly if their main purpose is entertainment and not education / documentary.


Your hypothetical reverse movie makes some valid criticisms. Even though it would have been historically possible for a Westerner to be in Japan at the time -- even to be involved with training a Western-style military -- it would be unlikely for such a person to get captured, run into a Shogun that speaks English, become a badass (or at least passable) samurai warrior, and end up playing a major role in politics and significantly influencing Emperor Meiji.

My defense against those criticisms is that, for me at least, the movie is entertaining; which is kinda the point. Your "Union Samurai" movie might be equally entertaining and therefore given an equal pass on historical inaccuracies by me.

The whole characters as a "lens through which the audience can appreciate a culture/history outside their own" issue is (slightly) more weighty to me. I don't think those are often necessary, but I don't feel like my intelligence is being insulted if the movie maker feels that they are in order to sell tickets.

I love the Chinese historical novel "Three Kingdoms". A few years ago, John Wu made the movie "Red Cliff", mostly about one particular battle in the historical period portrayed in that book. For the Chinese audience, Wu made the movie in two parts, summed up about four and a half hours long. For the US / West, he made a version trimmed to just over two hours. Why? Because he (and a team of market researchers, I'm sure) knew that very few Westerners would go to see a 4+ hour long movie, entirely in Mandarin Chinese (with subtitles), about a piece of Chinese history from ~1800 years ago that very few in the West have ever heard of or know anything about.

I think the full 4+ hour long movie is great. In my personal top 10 favorite movies of all time, ahead of most Hollywood stuff. But I also understand that there's no way that movie would appeal to all but a tiny, tiny fraction of Western viewers in that full-on 4+ hour format. But, even though I personally think the cut-down 2 hour "US" version is drastically inferior to the full cut, I am glad that he made it because it gives a suitably accurate introduction to the subject matter to more people in the West (just like the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Dynasty Warriors" videogames do), and makes that tiny, tiny fraction of Western people that know anything about it a little less tiny. While being entertaining along the way.

For other movies, sometimes the best way that a filmmaker can sell a movie to an audience that otherwise might not accept it (at least in large enough numbers to justify the production costs) may be to insert one of these "lens" characters for the audience to identify with. I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with that. It might not work for movies that are taking a more hardline approach to historical / contextual accuracy (ie., if Tom Cruise showed up in "Red Cliff" in circa 200AD China), but outside of those situations, if that is what the studio thinks it will take to sell tickets... Cool.

The Last Samurai is, like @ChaosEngine said, a movie primarily about an outsider learning a new culture (and accepting his own past). He serves as that lens character, but actually the hows and whys of his character arc are the main points of interest in the movie, at least to me.

I'm sure that an awesome, historically accurate movie could be made dealing with young Emperor Meiji, Takamori (who Katsumoto seems to be based on in The Last Samurai), and the influence of modernization on Japanese culture at the time. It could be made with no Western "lens" character, no overt influence by any particular individual Westerner, and be entirely in Japanese. But that movie wouldn't be The Last Samurai, wouldn't be attempting to serve the same purpose as The Last Samurai, and very likely wouldn't sell as many tickets (in the US) as The Last Samurai (starring Tom Cruise!) did. That wouldn't make it a worse movie, just an apple instead of an orange.

If that were to happen, I would guess that the Japanese audience would be insulted by the proposition that they can't understand other cultures without a 'Japanese guide' helping them care and comprehend.
It's terribly sad to me that average Americans are so infantile that, for the most part, they don't even see that their intelligence is being insulted when an American is inserted into another countries history/mythology for their benefit.

I'm assuming i'm not the only one who went back and played, paused each time, to see the images that were inserted. I was more entertained by doing that then listening to what he had to say.

Something got inserted, and I think it was more than a couple o frames..

I can't put my finger on it, but I think this video has some kind of subliminal message with a hint of sexual innuendo, like in Fight Club where Tyler Durden inserts those couple of frames into the children's movie reel.

What irritates me the most is product placement on news sites.

With everyone using AdBlock I can imagine they're struggling for revenue, but it's frustrating when you see say tech sites previously with good editorial commentary running "XX releases new product" every second post which all read like a press release. Or "xmas gift ideas" articles that are pretty much glossy ad inserts.

I just wish after the first line about his father being the best pilot ever they'd done a quick insert of child Anakin from Episode I racing his stupid little pod car thing.

Still, freaking excellent to see what I was envisioning when I watched Episode IV a couple of weeks ago (for the first time in near 20 years).

*quality

I dunno about that, the M-E is such an immense cluster-fuck and a lack of manpower is hardly the only cause of ISIS or reason for its continued existence. Prejudice against *insert nationality here* migrants certainly isn't going anywhere any time soon.

That conveniently leaves out the fact that income tax rates have plummeted since the 1940s. That's been the big consistent change, not the government increasing spending as a percentage of GDP, which wildly fluctuates.

The reason why there's a fight to get this funded is because there's a portion of this country that thinks you must pay for every new expenditure by cutting spending elsewhere because the national debt will kill us if it doesn't come down, and taxes can never ever ever ever ever be raised ever ever ever ever. They will absolutely never consider that raising taxes is worth funding anything, and are completely okay with cutting funding for things that are even needed and are worth the money (see cutting funding for PBS).

I say "principled" because they sure don't ask for reduced spending to pay for when they need help. See Katrina and other disasters, Mitch McConnell's fund to help nuclear power workers, etc.

But the fundamental problem here is the flat refusal to accept the reality that:
1. The national debt and annual deficits can, will, and should fluctuate depending upon circumstances. The "sky is falling" reaction to added debt is beyond ridiculous. This country has flourished economically under almost non-stop deficit spending. This isn't to say raising the national debt and running annual deficits is always good, but it sure as hell isn't always bad.
2. The same reaction to tax raises is also ridiculous. Tax rates can be increased or decreased, depending on circumstances, and raising or lowering them isn't inherently good or bad.

A sane reaction to this whole thing isn't - "well, they spend money on things that don't matter, so that's why this can't be funded."

It's "I don't care if it costs every single one of us an extra dollar in taxes in a year, or we need to cut funding on (insert wasteful program here), we need to get this done."

insertion @ 1:51