I just looked at that first link. They say she's a "commoner" and "middle-class". Her background would make her bloody posh compared to 99% of the population. Only the Royals could get snobbish about someone like that.


>> ^kronosposeidon:

>> ^jan:
Not really a Queen, from net search
After her marriage to Prince William of Wales, Kate Middleton's title will be Her Royal Highness Princess William of Wales. On the engagement announcement, Kate used her full name, Catherine. So she will likely be known as Princess Catherine of Wales.
If Prince William receives a dukedom following the marriage, she will be known as Duchess as well as Her Royal Highness.

When Prince William becomes King, his wife, Kate Middleton, will be Queen.

http://bit.ly/9BYztO
http://tiny.cc/kcl8f
http://bit.ly/9guct1
Until Kate becomes Queen, let the courtiers decide her exact title and the pecking order at Buckingham Palace. In this palace, AC will be Queen tout de suite!

>> ^jan:

Not really a Queen, from net search
After her marriage to Prince William of Wales, Kate Middleton's title will be Her Royal Highness Princess William of Wales. On the engagement announcement, Kate used her full name, Catherine. So she will likely be known as Princess Catherine of Wales.
If Prince William receives a dukedom following the marriage, she will be known as Duchess as well as Her Royal Highness.

When Prince William becomes King, his wife, Kate Middleton, will be Queen.


http://bit.ly/9BYztO
http://tiny.cc/kcl8f
http://bit.ly/9guct1

Until Kate becomes Queen, let the courtiers decide her exact title and the pecking order at Buckingham Palace. In this palace, AC will be Queen tout de suite!

>> ^LarsaruS:

They are guarding the Royal Palace in Stockholm. They have live ammo and have limited police authority as well, as in they can arrest drunks and annoying tourists that break the law at the royal palace. Drunks taking a leak on the palace tends to be frowned upon...

Yea, been there done that, we once arrested a couple of drunk Norwegian journalists that pissed on a fountain on the other side of the castle (from where this was filmed), needless to say that hilarity ensued when we made them clean up the mess.

Actually the Royal Palace guards does have extended police authority as the get to do things like search cars without a warrant, it's just that no one besides the occasional drunk dares to commit a crime close to the castle (due to being surrounded by soldiers with assault rifles, the über skills to use them and slightly relaxed restrictions on shooting and stabbing people).

They are guarding the Royal Palace in Stockholm. They have live ammo and have limited police authority as well, as in they can arrest drunks and annoying tourists that break the law at the royal palace. Drunks taking a leak on the palace tends to be frowned upon...

trivia: the church/palace in Azgard looks inspired by Reykjavik's cathedral.

Not seen this version of the video before. Lovin' the Chopper!

Anyway, scenes are something like: Soho Square / Wardour Street / Hampstead Heath / Ladbrooke Grove / St James' Park / Buckingham Palace / Embankment

First off - congrats NR on a rare manifestation... Civil dialog. Here's hoping it becomes a habit rather than an exception.

there's a moral problem with military targeting civilian population centers.

Countries don't put production and infrastructure into "military-only zones". Fuel, electricity, steel, plastic, textiles, technology, computers, food, factories, manufacturing plants, and many other commodities are also critical military supplies. Action that effectively impacts the ability of a government to support a military by necessity will target civilian population centers.

We're looking for what amount to organized criminals operating within the borders of sovereign foreign nations. ...We're looking to stop a bunch of Timothy McVeighs in a country that doesn't really have any sort of governmental enforcement of law and order.

Hm - disagree on semantics. McVeigh was a radical that operated AGAINST the government he was within. Terror groups recruit locally by playing on local prejudices, but their heart and soul (and wallet) belong to some other nation. Case in point with the 9/11 bombers. A more accurate comparison would be your second one, where you hypothesized what a foreign government would do if McVeigh blew up their buildings - let's say Saddam's palace. If TMcV did that then the U.S. would have said, "Oh - terrible tragedy... We condemn it utterly..." but behind closed doors they'd pop champaign and maybe sponsor other radical groups in the hopes of getting a few more TMcVs to crop up.

The use of these kinds of 'plausible deniability' terror-ops forces is becoming more and more common. They can't do large-scale damage without nukes (thank goodness) in most areas. However, in Arab nations there are so many tribal rivalries and bad blood that they can do more than just commit random atrocities. They can topple nations, and win wars. And even in the U.S. they did billions in damage and killed thousands. My opinion is when nations in any way support these radicals they are culpable and have no right or expectation of immunity from a response.

I saw Muse at the Palace in Detroit, MI this March...never been to a better concert. Muse friggin' rocks.

>> ^Truckchase:

>> ^NordlichReiter:
Yea it's a great world. Except for those countries where its not.
Bullets are not disease.

That has nothing to do with the topic of the talk. Give your own talk to address the issues you want to address.


At the time of my original comment I was of the mind that this guy was talking from a high place, down to his audience.

I had this documentary in my mind, below.
The Vice Guide to Liberia, http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia-trailer.

The youtube part one of the the documentary above
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQSjyYRTDVM

The rest of the speech was excellent. But yes at the time of my, quoted comment below, I was in a different state of mind. But it has everything to do with the topic of the talk. This was a broad scoped talk which eventually ended in skepticism, fear, and science denial. I was thrown off by the premise of his talk, and took immediate distaste for the rest of it. We should endeavor to look out from our high palace walls unto the rest of the world.

Science is great until it is hijacked by money, laws, the company, and or the media.

Title fixed.
>> ^RadHazG:
Correction Arvana - It's 4 themes total. I don't believe the last 15sec or so is an actual theme just a tie up of the overall feel of each.
Star Trek : Original Series, Star Trek : Deep Space 9, Star Trek : Voyager, last one is Star Trek : The Next Generation

I was just in Port-au-Prince 2 months ago. This is hard to watch. Especially seeing the Presidential Palace in ruins. The Haitians I was with took such pride in their "White House." Devastating...

>> ^Doc_M:
Disclaimer: I recognize that I know jack-shit about space technology, and that I don't understand how exactly we get information direct from from outerspace installations and etc... but seriously, come on. 30 years and no improvement?


30 years? How about 3000 years of God slacking off. (Forgive me, Lord.) He incites chaos at the Tower of Babel, yet NASA continues to send these blasphemous vehicles into space. This is like a million times closer to Heaven than the tower those heathens built.

But at least It Was Written. If it wasn't written and the authors weren't authenticated within a 0 percent fail rate (because it's 100% Truth, as proven by its existence), our modern minds might not believe a story about a tower made out of pre-industrial material reaching God's palace in the sky. Aha! But our Lord God is much more wise and clever than we puny mortals: He moved Heaven.

So that's like 2 things to be thankful for, in spite of this monstrous affront to our Creator.

(I thought they were all going to die, which is why I upvoted it. Wish I could have my vote back...)

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Tunnel, Corn Palace, Rape, Love, Heart' to 'Tunnel, Corn Palace, Rape, Love, Heart, rape tunnel, rape, mooncounty, valentine' - edited by Eklek

I would go further and say it's almost impossible NOT to screw up with American nation building. My point on Iraq is not that nation building there was sure to work. If anything, it was almost certainly doomed to the horrific failures we've been watching over the last years. My point was that spending those same years under Saddam's rule would've been worse, more and more as each year goes by. The majority of the problems in Iraq regarding infrastructure and the economy didn't start with the American invasion, but with Saddam's continuing construction of new palaces while sanctions starved the rest of the country. The reason the riots and mis-content America faced from the public hadn't boiled out when Saddam was in power was entirely a testament to the fear he had sown in people. If you were suspected of questioning Saddam, you might find the police knocking on the door the next day and handing you a video of your daughter being raped by them.


I'm also more than a little concerned that the country is going to dissolve about 15 minutes after the last troops leave.


Me too, but I'm confident that at least the Kurdish region will make out alright. I'm also hopeful the interest they show in working with the rest of the country will help keep it stable. In either event though I find it hard to imagine an Iraq that is worse than it was under Saddam.


To a large extent I think America needs to rethink the way it uses military power in modern times. Specifically, this idea that any trouble spot in the world should be dealt with by invasion and US-led regime change.
...
I definitely think going through the UN for problems of that scale is a good idea


I agree that America needs to be extremely careful with it's use of it's power. I also feel though that if America is never willing to use that power, then many nations are going to start acting that way. Look how many instances there are of nations that ignore all UN warnings, condemnations and rebukes over human rights violations and atrocities, content in the knowledge that it is all bark. For every wrong step America has made with military action you can point to an atrocity that went unchecked by inaction as well. In the line that needs to be walked between when to act and when not to, Iraq is an example of a fight that was put off too long, rather than jumped into too soon.


In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
I think we ended up getting lucky with Iraq. I don't think it's a testament to how it's somehow impossible to screw up with American nation building, I think it's a testament to how expensive in terms of both money and lives it can be, even when the country is theoretically low-hanging fruit in terms of nation building.

I'm also more than a little concerned that the country is going to dissolve about 15 minutes after the last troops leave.

I do want us more active in Sudan, but not militarily. I still think the fix for Sudan is for America to use its diplomatic ties to encourage China to stop supporting the Sudanese massacre.

I'm less certain of what to do about Congo. I certainly don't want us to roll in there with troops and tanks and tell them we're going to "help" them establish a stable government.

To a large extent I think America needs to rethink the way it uses military power in modern times. Specifically, this idea that any trouble spot in the world should be dealt with by invasion and US-led regime change. I didn't like us doing that during the Cold War, and I like it even less now.

I definitely think going through the UN for problems of that scale is a good idea. I don't think that means giving the UN a veto over US actions, but I definitely think we should be extremely careful about when and where we "go it alone."

For the moment, I think America's plate is past full. If the world comes to us begging for help, we should help, but I don't think we should be shopping for new places to invade, we should be getting disentangled from the countries we're currently in.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
I find the argument of 'why not country x' to be completely lacking in relevance. I'm not arguing that America chose to remove Saddam because it made the world a better place, especially for Iraqi's. I'm arguing that for whatever unknowable reasons America really chose to remove Saddam, that an Iraq free of Saddam is better for the region and the Iraqi people. So much better in fact that you'd be hard pressed to screw such a war up badly enough to make things worse when you were done. Now the Bush admin certainly tried very hard to screw it up, but thanks in large part to the Kurds the situation in Iraq today IS much brighter than it would have been with Saddam still in power.

Would it be 'better' if America had put the same effort into Sudan or the DR Congo? Maybe, the atrocities in the Congo shock the conscience, but it would also be harder to stabilize than even post-Saddam Iraq. I find it hard to use that as an argument against what America did in Iraq. To play that argument out in a fair way, I would point the finger at the whole 1st world and blame them all for doing nothing to help the people of Sudan and the DR Congo. I would give a slight nod to the Americans though in understanding that they were tied up in Iraq and that their actions there had at least helped a different humanitarian disaster.

Yeah...unfortunately. Vegas is a nice place to visit, but not to live. One giant dustbowl with trash blowing around it; both garbage and white. S'OK though. I'm out of here soon. Sorry to hear about the $800. But hey, as long as you had fun, that's what counts!

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
You live in Vegas? I didn't know that. Sorry, man. It was a short and busy trip. I lost like 800 bones. Damn roulette wheel conspiring against me.

I had a blast. I'm gonna post some pix to my blog soon, I think.

In reply to this comment by videosiftbannedme:
What? And no invite to come see you down on the Strip? Sigh. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Have fun. If you want a really large drink, along with a souvenir cup that makes the a great 5-foot bong, hit the bar in the front of Imperial Palace. I believe they still sell them, neck-strap included.