heh heh, nice vid...

here in china, the iphone is all the rage - but like the vid implies, people here buy it mostly for the name recognition and 'prestige' ... even when the features don't match up to the latest devices by samsung, htc, etc

although most of these phones and/or their components are made right here, the masses seem less tech savvy than westerners

case in point, i'll be sitting around with chinese friends and everybody's got their smartphones at hand... i'll start doing a comparison of the various handsets, and they'll just stare blankly... go silent for a minute or so, and then blurt out, 'but this is an iphone!' hahaha

right now they're all excited about the iphone 4s, and especially siri - i haven't yet had the heart to tell them that siri doesn't support chinese (in fact, most people don't seem to be aware that siri was available over a year ago, but apple snapped up the company, reworked the app, and launched it with the 4s as something new and revolutionary)

anyway, it's all funny - i'm pleased as pie with my htc... with better camera, vid resolution, memory, processor, screen size, and gps -- zero problems and more fun and free apps than i have time for... as well, my provider gave it to me for free (~us$700) after 10+ years of customer loyalty

only possible gripe would be battery life, but between the recharges i get while driving, sitting at the comp, or even with my portable recharger (us$28), it's never really been much of an issue

>> ^Grimm:
If anything that wiki page "confirms" what he was saying. Those are the religions that they were affiliated with...but they did not make it part of their campaign because all the different sects looked at each other the way they now look at the Mormons. That is...disn't matter if you believed in Christ (were a Christian) if you belonged to one of the other religions you and your group had it all wrong. What are the odds that a devote and outspoken "Quaker", "Theist" or "Unitarian" could get nominated these days?


yes, exactly!

like i said previously, penn's right in saying this happened... but his assertion that it began ~40 years ago... that's where i think he misspoke

sounds a bit like an ewok - lol

cool... penn has always had my respect - read a lot, educate yourself on the issue, reason it out for yourself, even if you're wrong... then engage in dialog with others and reassess your beliefs (if necessary) - rinse and repeat

i do think he's a bit mistaken about the advent of politicians protecting themselves with the blanket-term 'christian' - no, no... not that they don't - they do... i just think that such behavior began much, much earlier in the us, which kind of makes his point a bit weaker

here's what forms a large part of my dissent of penn's position:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_affiliations_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

anyway, thanks for the vid... and as an asside, i just noticed that when penn's getting really intense, a small buttocks appears between his eyebrows - lol

hrmm... much anger, i sense

iirc, the word atheism comes from greek and means 'without god(s)'

as a sidenote, what does this mean for those religions whose core tenets don't include a god or pantheon of gods, ie daoism, buddhism, confucianism?

is greta angry with them? she scares me - lol

superior? bah!

whether the impetus for survival be cooperative or competitive, native cultures around the world and throughout history have been made extinct through attrition, disease and assimilation

to me, the question of why must be added to the what, who and how

h. sapiens of that time also knew how to live in harmony with nature... you see, the population of the entire earth, until the advent of agriculture, didn't break 1 million souls

if you don't like the implied speciesism, we can fast-forward a couple of decamillenium and look at what happened to europe's 'white indians' - do we mourn aspects of lost cultures and societies like those of the belgics, franks, jutes, picts, celts, angles, saxons, frisians, etc?

what happened to them? who did it? why did it happen?

did native american tribes engage in the same sort of behavior? yes, of course they did - they knew war, they knew rape, they knew genocide -- we can play a game if you like: name a common era tribal culture, and i'll do my best to discover which less successful tribes they dominated to extinction or complete assimilation

this made me so sad that i immediately went looking for a video showing the gradual extinction of neanderthals in europe due to the encroachment of h. sapiens...

still looking

well... it is derived from a 'food product' ... chilis

the active ingredient in pepper spray is capsaicin, which comes from the fruit of capsicum plants... so... chili peppers - really, really spicy ones

spicy or hot is typically measured on the scoville scale, or shu (scoville heat units) - 100% capsaicin is about 15-16 million shu - us law enforcement pepper spray's active ingredient is 10% capsaicin... so say, anywhere from 500,000 to 2,000,000 shu

are there chili peppers that hot, say something edible? yes!

bhut jolokia, naga viper, trinidad scorpion peppers are all over 1,000,000 shu... and are eaten routinely

i've tried the 'ghost pepper' bhut jolokia as a dipping sauce for beef... uhh, it wasn't pleasant... tears, snot, burning tongue and cheeks - it was about 1.1 million shu

i bought a bottle of the chili sauce to 'trick' friends with... but ended up giving myself something like what these students felt:

i opened the bottle to see if it was as hot as i remembered - i touched it with just the tip of my pinky and then touched my tongue... damn!

i later took a nap and on waking, rubbed my eyes - big mistake... my left eye felt like it was on fire - i had to hold an ice cube to it for about 15 minutes

stupid thing was when i tried to to explain to my angry wife why i was late picking up the kids from school, i re-enacted the pepper incident (without the touch and taste)... and touched my eye again... lol, round two with the ice cubes

heh heh

careful... your reference (2 corinthians 11:19) may be showing your christian credentials - that's a big no-no on the sift

and you don't even use the cliché correctly, sheesh!

so... what is it you disagree with?

1. that maddow isn't an attack dog for the left?
2. that the federalist society isn't evil?
3. that it's pure coincidence that the federalist society's annual dinner (planned many months in advance) just happened to take place on the same day as the scotus announcement that it would hear the legal challenge in question? how could any scotus justice have predicted that??
4. that maddow is misinterpreting canon 4c of the code of conduct, which only applies to lower level judges?
5. that virtually all our scotus justices 'violate' the above regularly? heck, ginsberg 'violated' it again just three days ago while being the speaker at an nwlc-sponsored event.
6. that supreme court justices can't have their votes 'bought' by just treating them to a nice dinner?
7. that this whole story isn't just a tit-for-tat over the right's squawking over justice kagan's apparent refusal to recuse herself? i don't necessarily think she should.

so... which is it?

share with us? throw your pearls before the swine...

or is your snarkiness simply a knee-jerk reaction to a true centrist's better erudition and analysis of yet more political polemics?

ha!

well, let's just put this in perspective then...
26 of our 50 states took the obama healthcare initiative to our highest court.
wouldn't this be the same conflict of interest if any state funds were used to host any activity to which our supreme court justices were invited and attended? (by any measure, they are the plaintiffs in this case.)

answer: yes, by your very myopic and obtuse assessment... it would.

take a deep breath, pull your heads out of your behinds, and realize A. that this is one-sided reporting of a bipartisan pasttime, and B. that the members of our SCOTUS are selected because they are the premier interpreters of our nation's constitution, and therefore given the benefit of the doubt because of the long road and fractious appointment process that has brought them to their positions.

frankly, i don't care which way they vote on this issue - i live overseas. but if i were a betting man, i'd wager that we see a 5-4 / 6-3 split, both against the constitutionality of the current plan. this will clearly disrupt your shortsighted view of political partisanism.

seriously, don't bother to respond to my comments if you don't understand the issue, or are too lazy to do your homework.

rachel maddow is figuratively the unwanted offspring of a beck / limbaugh coupling, where they then pissed on the infant and put her up for adoption.

simply put: she inherited their style but has an axe to grind with their politics.

non-issue...

justice thurgood marshall attended naacp events, and current justice ginsberg regularly attends now functions

maddow's as bad as fox news

actually, the good samaritan part happened IN taiwan. i have been living in the PRC and ROC for going on 20 years. of course, the roc is a better place to live... there's no question. it's simply that there are blatant similarities that make this particular video heartbreaking for all of us and symptomatic of chinese culture specifically.

there's universal health care (as you would assume), and then there's universal health care (which you might never suspect)... the latter is what taiwan has. i've commented on it here on the sift in the past, so i'll just link you to the the anecdote in question:

http://videosift.com/video/Healthcare-in-the-US-vs-Canada-Europe-and-Asia

it is probably not due to china's political system, per se... rather chinese culture. i have seen and even experienced the same in taiwan, which is democratic. the culture simply puts less value on a human life and welfare than many westerners do... you can see it in their medical system (universal health care is not what you might think here), and even the elderly, many of whom begin to feel they are simply a burden on their families, who will purposefully cause accidents to either end their lives or to bring some kind of "income" to their families. once when i was going home late here in china, i saw what appeared to be a shadowy mound of garbage in the middle of the street. i thought to myself, "damn, that is dangerous." so i stopped to move it closer to the sidewalk. turns out it was a nonagenarian scavenger woman who had been struck by a car. i phoned 119 (their 911) and tried to comfort her as best i could. soon there was a small crowd, and then the police and ambulance arrived. the police asked what happened, and all the chinese said i hit her. the paramedics revived her enough for her to confirm that it was me who struck her. can you believe it? they were all ready to take me in when i managed to make the point of her injuries being inconsistent with my riding my bicycle home in the opposite direction. now, before making comparisons with our overly litigious societies, keep in mind that 99% of their lawsuits are 'settled' on the spot... and in cash.

@NetRunner: agreed that it's not the worst, nor is my anecdote...

and certainly odd changes in policy and illogical requirements do increase bureaucracy... but i'm not certain that i can agree that there isn't any valid reason for change...

think back through the last 11 years of us elections, in particular the previous three presidential elections... claims of voter fraud, hanging chad, dead rolls, acorn, etc -- now, i don't know if or what impact wisconsin's regulatory changes have on that... but that's the nature of government: we expect incompetence, and success is generally just a fortunate coincidence

from my tale, our overseas missions weren't always as i described... they changed, radically so, post 9-11 -- i used to be able to phone my nation's consular services and be shown respect and have my questions answered... help was given freely and easily, as one should expect

not so anymore - now we're herded in like infected cattle and treated as a possible terrorist - the 'help' has morphed into a hindrance... but are the reasons for such valid? how can we say...

and no, i wasn't dealing with the department of immigration... just my embassy in filing a consular report of birth abroad (CRBA), and those policies have changed recently too... for no apparent reason

i'm an american citizen, not an immigrant - there wasn't one iota of reason to suspect my not being a citizen... and soooo many reasons to accept that i was...

my family came to north america in the early 18th century... i'm tall, blond, and blue-eyed... i speak perfect american english with a non-regional accent... i served my country for six years in the usmc and am a veteran of the persian gulf war... and this is in addition to all the documentation i presented...

instead, i was treated as 'suspect' by a foreign- and indifferent-looking woman speaking to me in broken english... quite rudely questioning ME regarding something i have always assumed was fundamental: my being a us citizen

i guess my point is that videos like this present the particular situation as being 'scandalous' ... when in fact it's commonplace... and while annoying, it's not really insulting -- try visiting a us consular mission abroad and then complain about the bureaucracy, invasion of privacy, and being treated in a demeaning way

honestly, watching the domestic situation in my home country from overseas for the last 15-odd years is amazing... the partisanship is ridiculous, and so are most of their claims -- it's like having your body (the nation) infested with two distinct groups of intestinal parasites--like an old-south, grangerford-shepherdson blood-feud--the attacks from both left- and right-leaning tapeworms have risen to the level of threatening the very health and life of the host

videos and other seeming vitriol like this appear to me as symptomatic of such an unhealthy bent: a bloody feces-laden discharge

not a perfect process... but what is seen in the video seems reasonable

as an american living overseas for many years, i've seen american bureaucracy at its worst in our consulates, embassies and trade offices ... what is seen in this video pales in comparison

try this one on for size before complaining of invasive, unfair requirements and possible conspiracy:

my son is born overseas and i want to apply for his us citizenship / passport

i try to phone the embassy to ask what documents i will need to bring by three-hour train ride - i get a 10-minute phone tree that answers nothing and simply refers me to their website, which is rattled-off so quickly that i need to listen to the 10-minute phone tree two more times to jot the url down

the website explains that answers cannot be given over the phone, and i can only speak to a human in an emergency circumstance - the website gives me some ambiguous answers, and states that if i have questions i will need to make an appointment online - an online calendar appears showing me possible appointment dates/times - all monday to friday between 9-11am and 2-4pm... also the american citizen services section is closed for all american holidays AND those of the host country - yay for having to take unpaid time off from work!

i get a date and time to appear, and i try to collect all relevant information to only make a single visit

at the appointed time, i appear and am told to surrender my bag and phone, pass through a metal detector, and then i am frisked - upon arriving at the proper office, i am given a number and told to wait - when my number is called, i approach the proper window and speak to an 'american' through a speaker system embedded in the 1-inch bulletproof glass

i have somehow managed to have most all of the necessary documents (not to the website's credit, but to my overkill), but one requirement stops me... they don't accept that i am a us citizen... what the hell?!

i show them my original us birth certificate, my valid us passport, my valid us driver's license, my social security card, proof of my us address, my us high school and university diplomas, my voter registration card, etc...

all are unacceptable proof...

i am told that to satisfy their requirement, they will need at least five-years' worth of us school transcripts from a single us location... since i was a military brat, and changed schools often, this was an impossibility

i finally get through to a supervisor who i had phone my state senator, who is a family friend, and he rips them one and they finally relent

clear? nope... one further requirement is that my son's notarized foreign birth certificate needs to be translated into english and notarized - i have the translation but not the notary seal (this can only be done at the embassy) - i ask them to notarize it and they inform me that i will have to leave and mail it to them with a check and pre-paid, express-mail return envelope - once i receive that, i should set up a new appointment and return... with their assuring me that the process (CRBA) would be complete at that point

i do what they said, and two weeks later I receive the now-notarized translation and set up a new appointment - i return at the stipulated time with all the proper documents and go to pay the fee...

then i am told that my infant son has to be present as well... and so the process can't be completed at that time

i return home, a 6-hour roundtrip commute by train, and set up a new appointment... returning with my 6-month-old son so that they can see him through the bullet proof glass, and then i can pay the exorbitant fee

as if all of this isn't enough, the cashier will not provide change... and they want me to leave, set up a new appointment and return with exact change - i offer to leave 'a tip' of close to us$20 in order to finalize this ridiculous process without having to return... they refuse

having read all of this... can you still complain about what this woman and her son had to go through?

nonsense