There was actually a really great segment by PBS recently called "What Plants Talk About". They argued that plants do in fact communicate and change behaviors rapidly based on their active environments.

I think what Sheldrake and the like encourage is that humans know little to nothing about the inherent nature of anything.

More than anything this should be exciting, we are barely out of a 1 year perception of what anything actually is or how this world or the Universe works, let alone why humans even stand today to be sitting behind a bunch of computers poking fun at or trying to figure out the nature of things.

People love thinking that we are elevated modern humans or something. It's fairly laughable and will be even more laughable even 50 years from now.

DMT is proof. Smoke it and see for yourself how little you know about your "consciousness" and what is "real".

I can't tell if the basement-bottom budget of this show is commendable or laughable.

Now, I don't know why I have so much trouble explaining this but I still really want you to understand that I'm not excusing this mom's actions.

The only thing I'm saying by suggesting her reaction is normal is this:

If I was skating through a public park, not watching where I was going, and I ran directly into someone's kid with a fucking weapon made of wood and steel, knocking them to the ground (except of course for their gravity-defying head), the first thing I would expect is for that parent to come at me.

I would be apologetic, just like the guy in the video because I would know it was ENTIRELY my fault. What I wouldn't do is try to explain to them that I actually bear only seventy-percent of the responsibility and that they shouldn't let their kid stray out of arm's reach in a park.

Sure, I would defend myself because I wouldn't expect that they were just going to immediately forgive me and think only about their shortcomings as a parent. I would defend myself because I still have the right to be safe in a public place, regardless of my actions.

What would I not do though? I wouldn't hit them with a fucking skateboard. Especially not the one I just hurt their child with. I wouldn't do that because I would know the only excuse I had was the petulant, middle-school refrain of "she hit me first!" I wouldn't do that because it would escalate the situation even more and I don't like to use violence to solve my problems. I'm perfectly capable of defending myself without hitting someone's irrational mother.

And then there's the question of pressing charges. Which for some reason to me is just laughable.

Was the lady wrong? Yeah, absolutely. Was she crazy? Maybe temporarily, it might have had something to do with someone running into her kid. I know a lot of people might not have acted the way she did (I would certainly have been more concerned about my own kid than the skater) but I know a lot of people might have FELT the way she did.

I just still don't think her actions were so far from what a person could expect after being a dumbass and skating directly into a little kid.

Maybe I don't get it because I'm an overprotective, irrational parent. Judging by how many times you referred to the child in the video as "it" however, maybe I just shouldn't expect you to understand my side either.

I second @JustSaying here -- what exactly does it tell you? (Snowden seeking refuge in countries with abysmal human rights records)

What it tells me is that it is pretty pathetic that Snowden's best chances for freedom and a life outside of a concrete cell in Gitmo come from someplace like Venezuela, Ecuador, or Russia as compared to his home, the "land of the free" USA. I think it says much more about the current government and political environment in the US than it does about Snowden.

Given my take on it, I think it is laughable to accuse Snowden of hypocrisy. Aim that word at an entity that deserves it -- the country and government that labels itself:

*the "land of the free" (except for those that we lock up in indefinite detention without trial, those guilty of thoughtcrime, anyone trying to travel freely outside of the country or even from state to state, etc.),

*"home of the brave" (except for any vague threat of 'terrorists', in which case we ask everyone to panic and allow a friendly TSA officer to treat you like a sock puppet, in spite of the fact that you're 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist),

*originator of the bill of rights (unless the government has some tenuous and self serving reason to revoke any/all of your rights: Free speech? Hah! Free press? Hah! Unreasonable search and seizure? No such thing! Due process? Hah! Speedy and public trial? Hah! By a jury? Hah! Cruel and unusual punishments? Waterboarding and other 'enhanced interrogation techniques' don't count! The government laughs at the bill of rights and pisses on their grave.),

*bastion of democracy (except I don't remember voting on ANY of the shit that Snowden brought to our attention, and it seems that neither do any/most of our elected 'representatives' -Hah!), and

*home of the American dream (as long as your dream doesn't involve freedom from any of the myriad transgressions listed above).

Oh how my once proud nation has fallen.

Republicans should be against this. It doesn't get more "big government" and "wasteful spending" than paying untold hordes of government agents on taxdollar payroll to monitor every mundane activity that we ever do and then trying to sift through that mass of shit for any meaningful data, trends, or leads (the very idea of getting a "lead" on a real plot from this is laughable).

Democrats should be against this. It shits all over personal liberties, and creates absolutely zero positive outcomes for anyone unless you count people on TSA / HomeSec payroll. However, such "government program" kinds of jobs would be much better spent on traditional infrastructure things: roads, parks, public works, etc. etc. Democrats are stereotypically less reluctant to tax and spend, but usually the things they spend ON are better than pissing it away on TSA and HomeSec.

How did we let fear drive us to this? Land of the free and home of the brave my ass.

Most Christians (and other religious people) post on secular websites freely without any issue. It is only the zealous, hyper religious people that can't form a thought that isn't based on their fairy tale book that regularly garner animus.
The idea that Christians are persecuted by the non-religious is laughable. The opposite is true, in real life and the internet. When one side of an argument is arguing for exclusion or hatred of a group, it's invariably the religious side making that argument. Because you can find one post in 1000 that's blatantly anti-religious doesn't make you persecuted. What about the 250 in 1000 posts that are blatantly anti-secularism (like each and every post of yours I've ever read even part of)? I'm guessing that, like logic and rationality, you ignore them in favor of your story book answers and your imaginary friend's 'laws'.

In feminist theory there are many branches. There are two main branches that have sub-branches.

Liberal feminism - the idea that we are all equal through our capacity for rationality. Equality will come about through the practice and recognition of this equal capacity for rationality and as institutions change so too will women's capacity to demonstrate this. The reason that this currently can't be exhibited is because of a patriarchal system that views women as weak and soft minded. This leads lib fems to try to be "man-like" of mind so as to assert their equal status; girly but strong minded, ie. Thatcher(extreme example), Clinton, Rachel Maddow.

Radical feminism - Men are the oppressive class and women are the oppressed. (Try to deny it seriously. If not within the West then within the rest of the world) As a result women must form a opposition to this oppression by mens of taking sides. Women can still be equal of any attribute such as reason etc but none the less by virtue of their biological sex they are relegated to 2nd place based on that alone. The response is to form an equally if not more powerful class to overthrow the patriarchal system. Now this is where the original video things its anti men. It is anti patriarchy, anti a system millennia old that places political capital on birth right/biology. To argue against this risks committing a naturalistic fallacy whereby what IS is what is RIGHT. Through time we can cite all sorts of examples where that is not the case - slavery, pederasty, segregation. One way of addressing this patriarchy oppression is by banding together and attacking overt examples of gender/sex discrinination and oppression as is put forward in the video as reverse oppression (whatever). The other more radical feminism asks that women forgo their own proclivities and become political lesbians. This requires that they become a lesbian not only in solidarity with their sexed brethren but also actively reject men as a necessary part of a flourishing life.

So much of the discourse, on both sides, confuses the aims of which ever brand of feminism they prescribe (sometimes a mix of both) with instances of activism/oppression. Anecdotal evidence can only do so much in a systematic and ingrained norm such as gender roles.

The original video is laughably inane and self-agrandising in its selective use of anecdotes and conflation of one idea with another. It is as worse than radical-radical feminist arguments insofar as it cherry picks examples to highlight that which is unsystematic whereas rad fems point out things that are systematic but their ends are not understandable, or acceptable if understood, by most. That doesn't mean they are wrong.

TLDR; Lib fem, go with the flow and ask for gradual change. Rad fem, form a opposition of power and overthrow current system then restructure from what is divorced from historically contingient oppressive gender description.

The whole thing is laughable... well, it ought to make for a good mind-numbing flick to watch. Leave yer brain at the door! I should check for some Portal-themed items and see if I can walk into the theater with that shown.

Actually, that's exactly what I say, and average modern human morality is considerably superior to the filth that the biblical God advocates.

The moral standard of western civilization is founded upon judeo-christian beliefs. Read:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-that-Made-Your-World/dp/1595555455/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366921071&sr=8-1&keywords=book+that+made+your+world

Following the morality the biblical God advocates is the hardest thing you will ever do. The standard of today is a superficial, politically correct morality where you pretend to be nice to people but curse them when they aren't around. God requires a transformation on the inside where you have genuine love for your fellow man.

I am only saying that they are wrong by todays generally agreed upon moral standards. Some of these moral standards are extremely effective and have been around since very early human communities, so they only have the illusion of being absolute due to high adherence rate.

Are you saying nigh universal adherence to certain moral standards isn't evidence for an absolute standard of morality?

Murder, theft, oppression and incest are three fairly obvious examples. The evolutionarily advantageous trait of society building tends to list it's effectiveness when such things are widespread. But we have a very long human tradition of sanctioning and celebrating murder and theft as long as it occurs well outside our cohort. Killing other tribes is celebrated in the bible, as is stealing their possessions. Ethically justified slavery took another 4000 years to mostly get rid of, and hell, it was common practice to fuck your fifteen year old cousin all the way up to about the late 1800s here in the good old US of A as long as it was under the marital auspices of the church, of course.

Yep, but thank God that his just definition of morality - if we didn't have god's guidance through scripture, we'd probably do crazy shit!

You don't understand what God was doing in the Old Testament, or why He did it the way He did. It is morally consistent with His goodness and holiness, and there are logical reasons for why this is so. So far you are not interested in hearing them or discussing them. When you are let me know. In the end you don't have any excuse for suppressing the truth about Jesus, no matter what you think about how God acted in the Old Testament.

Using the word 'absolute' is a concession to brevity, but nice try - seriously dude, this is laughable and it wouldn't even stand up in Jr. High debate - absolutes do exist, they just need to be well justified, and yes if you want to be nitpicky about it there is an ever so remote chance that 1+1 is not equal to two in some distant corner of the universe. But as humans with an admittedly limited scope of understanding, we have to accept that level of certainty. If you want to relegate your theory to claiming its space somewhere in the possibility that we might be wrong about the whole 2+2=4 thing, go right on ahead.

There, that's what I meant by absolute. happy?

Basically, what you're saying is that because 2+2 probably equals four everywhere in the Universe, you are free to make absolute statements about morality? The fact is that your belief system leaves you with no justification for any absolute statement what so ever. Why should 2 + 2 always equal 4 in the first place? Can you tell me why the laws of physics should work in the same way 5 seconds from now without using circular reasoning?

Can you justify any piece of knowledge without God? If you can then tell me one thing you know and how you know it. Could you be wrong about everything you know?

Well then thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass in the whole god based morality thing. I prefer to have a really good reason to never slaughter innocent kids. But thanks for finally answering my question: there has been a good reason to butcher a toddler after all! Praise The Lord, for he is good!

It comes back to the same question: As the giver of life, and the adjudicator of His Creation, is it wrong for God to take life?

And here's another interesting brain tickler. If everything god commands is right, and god has a track record of testing his faithful with their willingness to commit infanticide, how can you say that this lady isn't moral?

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2001-08-17/news/0108170166_1_baby-s-death-baby-s-father-documents

The scripture is finished and anything which contradicts it is not of God.

Wrong, I know that things are wrong because humans and cultures have a long history of interacting with reality, and certain strategies have been more successful than others. You haven't spent one iota of your time discrediting this notion, whereas I have given you plenty of examples crediting mine and discrediting yours.

What I am supposed to be discrediting? You're asking me to nail jello to a wall. You have not even defined what "successful" is supposed to mean beyond pure survival. In that case, every civilization has been successful. Tell me what your definition of success is supposed to be.

For the millionth time, I have no hopes of convincing you of anything - you'll defend your stance against literally any proof. But you seem to come here on the sift with the intent of demonstrating to others that there is some logical basis for your beliefs.

What proof? The foundation of atheism stands upon the shifting sands of relative truth. You, the atheist, ultimately make yourself the measure of all truth. Because of that, you can't tell me a single fact about the world that you can justify.

Well you're failing miserably, mainly because you are only capable of restating the following sentence as if it is an agreed upon truth:

"Not only is the entire concept logically contradictory, but it doesn't match our experience, which is that some things are absolutely wrong. "

I don't expect you to have any good support for that, but the audience out there just waiting to be convinced, they will need at least something.

Torturing babies for fun; not absolutely wrong?

I'm still waiting for you to give Stalin some kind, any kind of argument as to why he should adopt your morality and abandon his own. If you can't tell Stalin why he is wrong, then you have no hope of escaping the charge of incoherency.

"... If people rob and cheat you, you don't say that they are just executing their particular survival strategy, you say that those things are wrong. You know they are wrong because you have a God given conscience which tells you that they are. "

Actually, that's exactly what I say, and average modern human morality is considerably superior to the filth that the biblical God advocates.

I am only saying that they are wrong by todays generally agreed upon moral standards. Some of these moral standards are extremely effective and have been around since very early human communities, so they only have the illusion of being absolute due to high adherence rate.

Murder, theft, oppression and incest are three fairly obvious examples. The evolutionarily advantageous trait of society building tends to list it's effectiveness when such things are widespread. But we have a very long human tradition of sanctioning and celebrating murder and theft as long as it occurs well outside our cohort. Killing other tribes is celebrated in the bible, as is stealing their possessions. Ethically justified slavery took another 4000 years to mostly get rid of, and hell, it was common practice to fuck your fifteen year old cousin all the way up to about the late 1800s here in the good old US of A as long as it was under the marital auspices of the church, of course.

Yep, but thank God that his just definition of morality - if we didn't have god's guidance through scripture, we'd probably do crazy shit!

Do you see that these are absolute statements? On what grounds do you say there is no absolute morality? Saying there are no rules is a rule; this statement contradicts itself

Using the word 'absolute' is a concession to brevity, but nice try - seriously dude, this is laughable and it wouldn't even stand up in Jr. High debate - absolutes do exist, they just need to be well justified, and yes if you want to be nitpicky about it there is an ever so remote chance that 1+1 is not equal to two in some distant corner of the universe. But as humans with an admittedly limited scope of understanding, we have to accept that level of certainty. If you want to relegate your theory to claiming its space somewhere in the possibility that we might be wrong about the whole 2+2=4 thing, go right on ahead.

There, that's what I meant by absolute. happy?

When God issued the command to wipe out Canaan, it would have been immoral for the Israelites to disobey Him.

Well then thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass in the whole god based morality thing. I prefer to have a really good reason to never slaughter innocent kids. But thanks for finally answering my question: there has been a good reason to butcher a toddler after all! Praise The Lord, for he is good!

The problem is the current systems in check to prevent criminals from obtaining guns to kill people has been laughably de-balled and stripped down over the last decade +. When a felon can go to some of these 'no gun laws' states and buy an assault rifle with a 100 round drum, a glock with a 16 round clip, armor piercing ammunition and a flack jacket from the back of some guys van and it is 100% legal.. something is terribly wrong.

I do agree that this tends to get rather overboard. I'd much rather see assault rifles available for use at firing ranges instead of being personally owned vs outright outlawing them that will only cause other potential issues. I also agree 'assault weapons' is a buzzword.. though some weapons most certainly qualify (especially if the military classifies a weapon as such).

As to legalizing drugs, I wouldn't personally want to legalize 'all' drugs, but when there is already a dangerous, highly addictive drug that costs the country and states millions and takes/ruins thousands of lives a year, it seems to me that keeping a certain drug highly illegal to the point that in some states being caught with a gram can net you 10 years in prison.. there is something horribly wrong with the system.

A pity then that there are absolutely no memorable characters of note.
This was in no way a character-driven movie. If it was you'd focus on one or two people and the story would be simplified. This was all about the plot which asks the characters to flit around doing stupid things.

I still don't get how the Nolan who gave us Memento ended up producing these awful, bland, poorly constructed action movies.

I used to laugh at Schumacher and Burton but their more fantastical imaginings of Batman work better. This is a man dressed as a bat with a stupid voice. To try to frame this "realistically" in a film doesn't work. And particularly not when you constantly take the liberties shown in this video. And the second film with that laughable cell phone tracking tech just underlined how lazy and poor these films were.

I'll say the first half of Batman Begins was good but then veered sharply away from the comics which inspired it. In fact the main problem with the trilogy is that ripping off Frank Miller and trying to mesh that with a more Hollywood style sensibility just didn't work.

Ah, Taxocrats and their laughable horseshit.

Seize all the money of the wealthy and you'd have enough to run the thugverment for 10 days. THEN WHAT, LIBS?

And there is no such thing as a "spending cut" from either side,

>> ^deedub81:
It's not the media's job to "inform" people. The example about nearly 70% of people believing that Saddam Hussein had attacked us on 9/11 is laughable. If that stat is true (which I doubt), it's the uninformed American population that's the problem.

It seems like you missed the main point. Or that you're being willfully contentious to support your bias.

The point here is that the uninformed population IS the problem. And the only institution that can inform the population, that has a DUTY to inform the population, the vairous news media, is failing in their job. Hence...the uninformed populace.

I can't imagine how you can possibly claim, or hope to support, your position that it's not the job of the news outlets to inform the people. That's just patently absurd. But it does appear that the majority of news sources either agree with you or, at the very least, place that responsiblity low on their list of priorities. It hasn't always been that way though. There was a time when the presentation of fact was considered a sacred duty. Something's broken now though and there's only speculation on what the cause is or what the solution should be.