Lodurr

All 4 links clearly and plainly show a liberal/democrat bias in the news media. It is what it is. I'd love to see all bias (left or right) vanish but it is a free society and as such it is more important to have freedom of speech - warts and all. Cable news is awful. Affiliate news is better. Newspapers are liberal bastions. Radio is owned by the right.

I remember how they did this all the time when Bush was president.

FOX didn't need to because every other news agency was showing all the Bush stupidity. They gave up on that critical role once the guy they liked got the gig. The only TV news outlet filling this role now is FOX. I'd rather have a crappy news channel hitting on his faults than no one at all. Clearly NBC, CBS, ABC, NYT, AP, et al are very biased in favor of Obama. They want him to do well, and prop him up when he makes mistakes. Like when during the Clinton years they sat on the Lewinsky story for weeks until a plucky guy that tilted right broke the story. The media gave up on journalistic integrity due to bias long before FOX. But I'd rather have a free news media full of bias on both sides than just one biased side.

The PEOPLE love Obama and his health care proposal, and therefore the media has to report on it if it is to remain viable in the free market

Uh - no - they don't. That is you projecting YOUR bias. The majority of Americans are against both Obama and his reforms.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform

The Nashville Network?

Haw haw. No - of course I mean Turner News Network before it went belly up.

There's now a 66% chance that flag pole has genital warts

Mall-wart is rarely on the right side of any issue that benefits the communities they exist in. Sucking money out of the areas where their stores are, paying their employees the lowest allowable by law, and pushing slave labour conditions on the production line.
So with this business model it doesn't surprise me that stupid mistakes are made. Having the vast proportion of your workers living on more than one third less than a living wage and below the poverty line. Depending on labour turnover to stabalize low wages.

I could argue that Mass Health has been a tremedous success from a accounting perspective. Next year's health cost in Massachuseets is 1/3rd of 1% of the total budget. That's right folks, 2010 for MA, is $27 BILLION. The Cost for Mass Health: $88 Million.

I’ll have to see your sourcing on this, because I haven’t found a single source that can verify your claim about health care in MA only costing 88 million in 2010. Regardless, that’s quite a change from 2009 when the MassHealth budget alone was 1.3 billion…

http://www.pnhp.org/mass_report/mass_report_Final.pdf

Now, considering that MA is running a 1.4 billion deficit, that’s a pretty high ticket item. If your health care costs with MassHealth are so cheap, then why this?

“Among the areas particularly hard hit by cuts are public health programs, education grants, MassHealth coverage, and unrestricted local aid…”

http://www.massbudget.org/documentsearch/findDocument?doc_id=681

Those insurance companies Mr. Pennypacker is defending…

I am not so much defending insurance companies as I am dismissing misinformation about public health care being ‘superior’ or ‘necessary’. There is no evidence that moving to a public option will be cheaper, or provide better health care. There is no evidence that it would provide more care for more people either in volume or population. HR3200 is a shell game that funnels money and power into Washington. Frankly, I’ll take a private system – warts and all – any day over a public system that gives the government power over my health care decisions.

conspire with your health and more profit for them, and there's NOTHING you can do about it

The exact same statement can be made about public health care coverage, and with far deeper and wider scope.

We wouldnt dream of privatizing it and have an insurance company deciding what to pay and not pay for (after having spent years paying insurance) and watching them do everything they can to avoid a payout

You let your government do the exact same thing and you have no way to redress your wrongs. As Massachusett’s proves – the government quite often will decide to cut cut cut cut your care in order to balance it’s budget. Then you have an unelected government bureaucrat deciding what to pay for and you get to watch them do everything they can to avoid a payout. I'll keep my personal and financial freedom any day, thank you kindly.

provide Free, universal, government-sponsored healthcare for EVERYONE, stop paying insurances, and STILL SAVE TAXPAYER MONEY

You, Weiner, and Obama have yet to supply a single shred of factual evidence to support this fantastical, imaginary claim. Your words are opinions, and nothing more. While your opinions are passionate sir, they do not convince. I’m not prepared to sacrifice my personal and financial freedoms based on your unsupported opinions.

why shouldnt the government take care of its citizens??

Because this is America, and the Constitution does not state that it is the government’s job to ‘take care’ of citizens. In fact, we fought a few wars to make sure that government DOESN’T ever intrude into our personal lives. Our Bill of Rights is designed to stop the government cannot interfere in our life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

You'll still be hard pressed to find someone in a country with public health care trade it, for the American system

Tired of hearing this logical fallacy. SO !FREAKING! WHAT? We aren't asking other countries to trade up. This statement is irrelevant and annoying. What is actually happening is that you people in OTHER COUNTRIES are asking us to trade our system for yours. You'll pardon me if I don't give a rat's @$$ whether someone from another country would trade his system for ours or not. That isn't the issue.

But let's play the game, shall we? When polled, the American people overwhelmingly state that they are happy with thier current health care insurance and coverage.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/24/obama-pushes-national-health-care-americans-happy-coverage/

89% of the insured are satisfied. 70% of the UNINSURED are satisfied. 93% with recent illness - satisfied. 95% with chronic illness - satisfied. Sounds like we're pretty happy with our system. Now - using your idiotic logic - that means YOU should abandon your public health care system for our private one right? No? Well WHY not? After all - you guys keep saying that 'we wouldn't trade our system for yours' as if you're justifying why we should change our system. Therefore I'm going to use that same line of reasoning on you. Since we're happy with our private system, you should switch to our system.

Don't like that kind of logic? Then PLEASE stop making equally stupid statements about 'we wouldn't trade ours for yours'. It's moronic.

Refreshness on theoretical physics should be always welcome , however to be technically careful with new proposals is mandatory !
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"Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Published: 6:02PM GMT 14 Nov 2007
Comments 596 | Comment on this article

The E8 pattern (click to enlarge), Garrett Lisi surfing (middle) and out of the water (right)
An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.
• Garrett Lisi: This surfer is no Einstein...
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Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).

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In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month."
Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.
Although the work of 39 year old Garrett Lisi still has a way to go to convince the establishment, let alone match the achievements of Albert Einstein, the two do have one thing in common: Einstein also began his great adventure in theoretical physics while outside the mainstream scientific establishment, working as a patent officer, though failed to achieve the Holy Grail, an overarching explanation to unite all the particles and forces of the cosmos.
Now Lisi, currently in Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says.
"Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph.
"Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. "This must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound."
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The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego.
He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a "radical new explanation" for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.
The reason for the excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.
But some are taking a cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: "The proposal in this paper looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in."
And a colleague Eric Weinstein in America added: "Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I'd love to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long shot."
Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.
E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."
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What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.
Lisi's breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8's structure matched his own. "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"
What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.
Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but this arises naturally from the geometry of E8, he says. So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. "How cool is that?" he says.
The crucial test of Lisi's work will come only when he has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.
"The theory is very young, and still in development," he told the Telegraph. "Right now, I'd assign a low (but not tiny) likelyhood to this prediction.
"For comparison, I think the chances are higher that LHC will see some of these particles than it is that the LHC will see superparticles, extra dimensions, or micro black holes as predicted by string theory. I hope to get more (and different) predictions, with more confidence, out of this E8 Theory over the next year, before the LHC comes online."

^ That was a lot of words to go through just to say "my wholly biased impression of you is right, Mr. Poopy-pants!"

Look, my general issue with this game of name calling and labeling when it comes to politics is it's usually just an attempt to attach some sort of positive or negative connotation to a person's beliefs without actually examining them.

The word socialism doesn't mean evil. Liberalism isn't socialism. Libertarians have no special claim to the word liberty, nor its definition.

If you want to make the case that there's a higher moral imperative for keeping a privatized health care system, warts and all, than the imperative to use what's been proven to work in many other countries, make that case.

Calling liberals socialists is just a cheap way to try to wiggle out from under having to make the choice between a) advocating some unproven strategy that's never been tried in any other country, ever, or b) declaring that letting people die due to lack of insurance is more moral than raising taxes to cover them.

>> ^lucky760:
Though ^some people are bothered by tagomedy, I don't want anyone to be discouraged from practicing their craft. Furthermore, other members should not change another members' tagomedy just because it bothers them. It's grown to become an integral part of Sift culture, and most people enjoy reading as well as creating funny tags. What you should do in such a situation where your title and tags aren't sufficient for dupe prevention is add keywords to your video's summary to increase the chances it'll be discovered a dupe when others submit in the future.

I'm not really upset Doc, but I just thought I was "doing it right." My concern is that actively editing tags kind of devalues the power of the down-vote. If the community as a whole decides to upvote a sift, warts and all...

I understand the channel assignments, and I understand the request for MORE tags to make dupe searches easier, but if I want to be douchey in my tag choices, then those are my issues.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker: Until you have gone through the process of child-rearing and parenting, then I fear you will have very little capacity to understand what I'm talking about.

We are not discussing child rearing, we are discussing the moral relevance/culpability of human parasites. I understand the rhetorical utility of you pretending that a child and a blastocyst are the same thing, but when you throw in "child-rearing" it betrays the lie of your rhetoric, you can call them "unborn children" if you want, but please stick to the issue at hand.

Your terminology regarding children relegates them to the status of a wart or a tapeworm.

While you seem to have an issue with the WORD parasite, I do not, I understand that I was once a parasite, and since my host wanted me she kept me to term, this causes me no issue or sense of revulsion. Your assertion of innocence and helplessness is built on a mythology which requires that this is not the case, unfortunately for your mythology we know enough about the process that I can easily show what it is.

What's race got to do with it? My caucasian sister & brother in law adopted a half african/american girl and she's a fantastic kid.

Then you should have some idea what race has to do with it.

Healthy black babies (even at half price) get stuck in the system all the time, white babies without serious disabilities do not, you should know that if you are as familiar with trans-racial adoption as you claim.

dicotomy is illogical.

Since you can only spend a dollar once , you have to choose for every cent you handle if, and which, innocents you want to save. Every choice has opportunity cost, claiming it does not is absurd. How many adult human lives is a human zygote life worth? Why choose a new life over the many existing lives which could be saved with resources freed up by its absence?

If people don't want, or don't have the means to care for, potential children, it seems to me significantly more moral to do the responsible thing, and not have them.

I'm a fan of the original, warts and all. In interviews they said no more scouting missions, instead there will be "missions everywhere", whatever that means.

They definitely got rid of the flags too.

Mostly I don't mind the preparation phase, I just wanted it to be more varied, and wanted the optional pre-assassination missions to provide more substantial assistance in the real assassination.

So if I am walking through a dark alley when I'm hit over the head/tied-up/whipped, then it's my fault, and I have no moral recourse?

I again dismiss the attempt to draw moral equivalency. Pregnancy is not a mugging. The mugger is an adult who chooses to commit an act of violence. The fetus an innocent life incapable of decision making. Holding the mugger responsible for his crime is the just punishment of a guilty adult. Aborting an unwanted pregnancy is the unjust punishment of a guiltless child in-the-making. They are diametric opposites.

Please support that assertion, a fetus does harm and contributes nothing, even children do harm, as they are troublesome and expensive to raise. While reproducing benefits the genes, it does not benefit the individual.

Until you have gone through the process of child-rearing and parenting, then I fear you will have very little capacity to understand what I'm talking about. Mothers form intimate bonds with children that stretch across the gamut of their existence. Mental, physical, social, emotional - and this begins in the womb. Your terminology regarding children relegates them to the status of a wart or a tapeworm. My perspective ascribes more inherent value to a human child than that, and therefore we are at cross purposes.

People without children are happier/healthier/richer than people with them, and I can show you numbers to back that up if you doubt it.

Happier is a subjective term. Healthier could be quantified I suppose. Richer is also a bit subjective since it could be many things besides raw income and people with children have support networks & assets that single people do not. These days people can find 'internet statistics' to support any claim though I guess. I'll bite. What are yours?

And if this mother or father is black? Does your world view really require that all these fetuses be white? Your little fairy story does not work for non-white newborns.

What's race got to do with it? My caucasian sister & brother in law adopted a half african/american girl and she's a fantastic kid. Black families adopt white babies & vice-versa. It's not a big deal.

Is it morally superior to bring to term one potential human, or to save hundreds of actual fully developed humans?

I see no viable reason why you can't do both. Framing the issue as a dicotomy is illogical.

Have you never known somebody who was pregnant? Are you really arguing that being pregnant is free? Are you aware that, even for people with good health care, pregnancy has a higher fatality rate for the mother than abortion?

Yes. MANY. I've also seen the adoption process, and for the mother giving up the child the transaction very much is 'free'. The adoptive parents pay for the whole shebang (no pun intended). The stats on maternal mortality vs. abortive maternal mortality are mixed depending on who & how you look at.

Xbox 360 causes warts...look it up.

upvote for noncontagious genital warts

They were only in the 10s of thousands, I think this is unprecedented in human history. It is one of those records you don't want having though, like smelliest fart or largest wart.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
This is just one more reason I'm glad I'm not a doctor, nurse, physician's assistant, etc. Sure, they make good money, but they have to deal with gross shit like this. And think of all the other nasty things they see: hemorrhoids, infected wounds dripping pus, genital warts, yeast infections, and so on. And then they have to probe rectums, urethras, etc.
Still, I'm thankful that there are people who are willing to do this stuff. Let them have the nightmares.

...sounds like just another saturday night to me.

>> ^peggedbea:
1)haha, youll totally meet those nutjobs in costa rica, you can ask them about it.

I mean, if the doctor actually believes what he says, he has the power to revolutionize the treatment of this disease. If he believes the only reasons hypnosis doesn't work is because he doesn't believe it, he should gather up some nutjobs that do believe it. Maybe he could just tell these people it's warts. Then maybe they could reproduce the same results! This would be amazing. Why is he just sitting on his ass saying "oh well, I'm not sincere anymore so it can't work."

2)i think the point was that that the disease doesnt get better. its a congenital defect.

Well I mean, it's not like he lost a limb. It obviously can get better, because it DID get better! He was born with it, and I'm sure he still has the disorder, it just got much better for a while.

My point is, you should expect these things to happen. Cancer can go into remission. Sometimes it'll go into remission immediately after someone imagines the cancer melting off their body. You should expect these things to happen to individual people at some point. You should expect a person to exist that is so amazed by this that they tell the story to everyone who will listen. This is such a great story you should expect it to end up on TV even. That's great, but if you can't reproduce it and show a statistical difference between your group and a control group, you can't draw a causal relationship between the two events.