>> ^Hybrid:

THEN HOW CAN WE KILL THESE EVIL CREATURES?

...with fire?

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I'm not condoning the clearly eggregious tactics of some financial houses nowadays... Places pulling shady stunts get no love from me.
But what the heck is with these commentators' attitudes about the borrowers? They talk like people with mortgages bear NO responsibility for keeping track of their accounts. Anyone 'surprised' by a raft of late fees on a mortgage has not checked their account ONCE in at least 2 months. I couldn't sleep nights if I wasn't double checking my account every week.
The banks are being slimy - no questions. But a simple 1-minute check on your account just ONCE a month stops this kind of crap. Are people such helpless, stupid, pathetic sheep now that they can't be expected to even do THAT?


You forget, in America there is a two-way contractual system The bank agrees to loan, taking on all the risks associated with such load. The borrow does the same.

If the bank is shafted, it loses a lot of its investment. If the borrower defauls, he loses his credit score, his house and perhaps can have a default judgment set later...

So, in other words, borrowers say "I will pay, unless i do not, in which case you can penaize me per our contract." Either way, they follow the terms. So, even under default, they still obey the contract.

now, would you loan someone 500 dollars without knowing that person? You say the borrower should check his account, but that is barely his "job: whereas it is the job of the banks.

I feel shocked to agree with you, because I usually don't. Well put.

In reply to this comment by Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I'm not condoning the clearly eggregious tactics of some financial houses nowadays... Places pulling shady stunts get no love from me.

But what the heck is with these commentators' attitudes about the borrowers? They talk like people with mortgages bear NO responsibility for keeping track of their accounts. Anyone 'surprised' by a raft of late fees on a mortgage has not checked their account ONCE in at least 2 months. I couldn't sleep nights if I wasn't double checking my account every week.

The banks are being slimy - no questions. But a simple 1-minute check on your account just ONCE a month stops this kind of crap. Are people such helpless, stupid, pathetic sheep now that they can't be expected to even do THAT?

I'm not condoning the clearly eggregious tactics of some financial houses nowadays... Places pulling shady stunts get no love from me.

But what the heck is with these commentators' attitudes about the borrowers? They talk like people with mortgages bear NO responsibility for keeping track of their accounts. Anyone 'surprised' by a raft of late fees on a mortgage has not checked their account ONCE in at least 2 months. I couldn't sleep nights if I wasn't double checking my account every week.

The banks are being slimy - no questions. But a simple 1-minute check on your account just ONCE a month stops this kind of crap. Are people such helpless, stupid, pathetic sheep now that they can't be expected to even do THAT?

Only a little religious study will lead you to understand they took rafts from the middle=east
>> ^mgittle:

I'd like to see the explanation of how species made it to other continents if Noah let all the animals off the ark in the same place.
Also, there is no mention of plants. I guess they can't drown.

Krishnamurti was paraphrasing the Simile of the Raft from the Pali Canon, Theravadin Buddhism; Alagaddupama Sutta, MN 22: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html

I don't believe it. It doesn't mesh up with the whole Adam and Eve story which God tells us is TRUE per the Bible. Heck. The 10 Commandments were written on stone rather than a digital storage device. 6000 years ago such highly efficient devices didn't exist... and God simply wanted to make sure he used the highest technological medium for the day. Stone and Chisel.


Why such a highly impractical. Highly immobile. Prone to shattering. Difficult to reproduce. Material? Well... to spread his word to the global masses in as SLOW and UNRELIABLE a method as possible via word of mouth. Through illiterate sheepherders who were likely more interested in populating their flock of 'sex sheep' than increasing the religious flock. All to support some invisible dude in the sky with a resurrected zombie son (who is supposedly God himself), who unbelievably claims to walk on water. Any wise man would have simply used a fucking raft to cross a damn body of water. But. He just had to show off didn't he?! The fucker.

@blankfist, you're right, I'm pathological because I thought you implied a causal link.

What was it you said again? Oh yes, it was this:

I also disagree with the welfare state because it can cause a generations of people to be lazy (from abundance to complacency). I can say that safely because I see it directly with people on a Native American reservation.

...

They learn from the previous generations to have abusive and addictive personalities. Usually that means child abuse (which happens way too much), alcoholism, drug addiction and gambling.

What did I say again?

blankfist, you mean to tell us Native Americans on reservations were once rich and industrious, but welfare checks turned them into poverty-stricken drug-addicted violent degenerates?

What is it about my comments that turns you into a big ball of personal attacks?

I mean seriously, you're coming just shy of calling me an outright liar, when I basically just asked if I was hearing you right because I found what you said so shockingly misguided, I couldn't really believe I'd read it right.

I can agree with Throbbin's contention that what we're doing with reservations is only having the effect of perpetuating a bad situation, and not doing anything to correct it; but it seems to me that there are a huge number of factors holding them back, and aid money alone is never going to fix a wide array of deep, systemic problems like you have with reservations.

But you appear to be making an altogether different argument. You seem to be saying that the situation on Native American reservations was not only caused by aid attempts, but that this is somehow analogous to the entire raft of programs that make up a modern welfare state like Denmark.

That seems crazy to me, and I can't quite believe you really think it's true. So, I asked "is this really what you think?"

It's real. I've seen a video where she inflates a life raft.

The paintings it is based on, thanks to basilisk on Reddit:

• Last Supper by da Vinci
• The Birth of Venus by Boticelli
• The Anatomy Lesson by Rembrandt
• On the right, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer; on the left one of the Portraits of Henry VIII by Holbein
• The Raft of the Medusa by Géricault
• The Death of Marat by David
• The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo

Chorus:

• The Son of Man by Magritte
• Composition with Large Red Plane by Mondrian
• one of Frida Kahlo's self-portraits
• Portrait of Dora Maar Seated by Picasso
• The Scream by Munch
• The 1899 self-portrait by Van Gogh
• Ten Marilyns by Andy Warhol

Verse:

• Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses soeurs by unknown
• Maestá by Cimabue
• Salome by Caravaggio
• Olympia by Manet
• Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix
• Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden by Dix
• The Kiss by Klimt

Chorus again, then

• La Mariée by Chagall
• Las Meninas by Velázquez
• One of the Sunflowers by van Gogh, probably the Third Version

Ever like... heard of a boat? A raft perhaps? haha

Comrade,

Good to have a discussion. I'll try to keep this up with ya, but I'm kinda busy
Lets duel

>> ^griefer_queafer:
Point is, isn't this just merely self-regulation?

Suppose that the leaders pay attention to scientific findings, and they realize that things have to change. Yes, the ‘insurance’ is a form of self-regulation for capitalism to increase industry and corporate markets. But, as is typical of a capitalist, they are trying to make a business out of saving the planet, at the risk of millions of lives.
My friend, Corporations are merely the bourgeoisie in a new form. Corporations are merely organized institutions to serve bourgeoisie interest, an interest in gaining capital.
The regulation is not a true regulation, however. What they are doing here is selling an idea of ‘regulation’. True regulation would be addressing all the points in our economic systems and finding the ‘open systems’ and making them a ‘closed system’, in the permaculture sense. Reduction of waste. Control of production to meet the needs, not the wants. We don’t need to produce thousands of cars that will never get sold solely for the insane and desperate hope that they somehow could.
>> ^griefer_queafer:
Please respond to this question: what if 'growth' as it occurs today, also occurs concomitantly with POSITIVE effects to the planet?
Also, please make 'growth' relevant to our neo-capitalist moment.

neo-capitalist? In what ways have we moved beyond the worker? Are you to tell me that an office worker is not alienated in the cubicle? Are you to tell me that the the sweatshop labor in china, Indonesia, India, etc are not workers? Are you to tell me that nowhere on the planet, workers are paid in slave wages with the boss reaping profit off surplus value? Are you to tell me that workers control their hours, control their pay based on labor and the value of the product?

I think you have some tarnished definitions. Corporations are the logical outcome of Capitalism. Corporations operate on capitalist principles. We do not live in a post-industrial society. Manufacturing and productive have increased substantially, less workers are needed for high-tech facilities, but in the United States and other developed Imperialist countries, we don’t see the worker. We are alienated from them, and we exist as fragmented consumers. We are needed to buy these products so this economy and corporations can continue to exist. Neo-capitalism? Perhaps, but capitalism nonetheless. The changes aren’t as substantial as it may seem. Things have just become harder to see in post-modernism.
So what’s growth?
Destruction of the natural environment, say, the Amazon, for cattle ranches. Increased production to meet an increased demand. This is unsustainable, because Capitalism favors the increased demand. What do corporations want Americans to do? Consume. BUY BUY BUY. This is all very obvious. We see it everyday. Hell, just look at Christmas. Where do the resources come from to make these products and where do they end? We take it from the earth and it winds up in a dumpster or landfill. The resources aren’t returned, there is no equal exchange, energy is wasted in the inefficiency of our system.
Paper pulp released into the rivers. Environmental damage of the Niger River Delta for the oil, with acid rain so powerful it eats the tin-roofs of the shacks were the local villagers live. People that live on that land that don’t get ANYTHING from the energy companies except the corporate hired gunmen to maintain a ‘favorable business climate'. How then, is this 'favorable bussiness climate' POSTIVE for the planet? Its not positive for the planet or for any of us.
>> ^griefer_queafer:
Why is it a short term goal if the idea is to fundamentally change the ways in which 'growth' affects the planet?


But they aren’t trying to fundamentally change anything. They want the Maldives to go under so they can sell them the fucking life rafts! Capitalists/Corporations don’t give a shit about the mass amount of human suffering that will occur. They just want to maintain their profit margin, seize the planets resources, privatize everything, and maintain control over the worker. You are a worker, I am a worker. Even intellect and academia is a commodity that is bought and sold. We are the proletariat. We have a boss, we don’t control our hours, our labor is sold for surplus value, at the cost of our liberties and our security on this planet.

Incredible! Nothing goes to waste in nature! And not me, ponce - If I could have it my way, my burial process would involve being floated out to sea on a wooden raft, and then someone would shoot a flaming arrow into my corpse as I floated away... that's probably from a movie, can't remember which; but an awesome way to go about it.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Ants-adapt-to-floods-create-river-raft-for-Queen
http://www.videosift.com/video/Fire-Ants-Create-Life-Boat-To-Save-the-Queen
http://www.videosift.com/video/Fireants-Build-Lifeboat-In-Amazon-Jungle-Flood
http://www.videosift.com/video/Fire-ants-form-liferaft-to-navigate-floodwaters

I wonder how many more are out there
I got these from Ant's "Ants!" playlist. Only went as far as page 4, however.

Maybe it did exist but died. Have you checked my playlist?

In reply to this comment by EndAll:
yeah, I thought it might be too but a thorough search turned up nadda! oh vell.

edit: lol, apparently not to thorough though, you were right. a dupe indeed.

In reply to this comment by ant:
Hmm, seems old to me since I have seen it. Maybe a dupe. who knows.

In reply to this comment by EndAll:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Ants-adapt-to-floods-create-river-raft-for-Queen

'Nother one for that playlist of yours - which I've been browsing; fascinating stuff!