Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

At 4/8/09 01:55 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: I don't get it though, photoshopped or not, these women are still shit loads hotter than the average woman.

Not really. Most models nowadays have a quite masculine appearance (low body fat, tall). In reality the vast majority of men prefer women who are shorter and have a higher percentage of body fat than they do:

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/03/traits-
of-men-who-prefer-breasts-booty.php

I'm not sure quite why this is the case, but it might have to do with the fact that the people who control the fashion world are primarily gay men or straight women of high social status.

At 4/7/09 12:50 AM, poxpower wrote:

Music costs nothing to make, so they don't need money

O

http://instruments.shop.ebay.com/items/O rgan__W0QQ_armrsZ1QQ_mdoZMusicalQ2dInstr umentsQQ_msppZQQ_pcatsZ16217Q2c619QQ_sac atZ16219

software is made by underpaid grunts already.

O

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/b estcompanies/2007/snapshots/1.html

---

The whole argument you're making doesn't follow. If music was so much cheaper to make, then competitors would flood the market and drive down prices. (Note that talented musicians are a commodity like any other, and should be seen as a price of producing music).

Also, it's really not hard to justify any shenanigans from your teenage years. If you're a Republican you can say that you were confused because you hadn't yet found God. If you're a Democrat you can blame racism, sexism, or classism or something else like that (it worked splendidly for Obama).

At 4/7/09 01:07 AM, RaharuHaruha wrote: And then it is discovered that you were a member of a internet community called NewGrounds as a teenager. Are you embarrassed or ashamed? Do you even have something to worry about? Or are you proud of it?

Obama did hard drugs as a teenager, McCain got into fights, and Bush was a drunk driver. Will people really care if you were a member of a website called Newgrounds?

At 3/30/09 05:33 PM, KemCab wrote: Socialists and anarchists, what do you expect. Globalization's happening, get over it.

Socialists and Anarchists are both fools for opposing globalization. Socialists benefit because there will only be a global system which can be reformed without being threatened by outside competition. Anarchists benefit because the global system becomes less redundant and more vulnerable to attack.

At 3/31/09 12:16 AM, Elfer wrote:

At 3/30/09 11:13 PM, ApotheosisLost wrote: Whenever you make something illegal you only create an underground market for that kind of thing. Especially drugs. So I'm in favor of legalization of most drugs. Maybe not meth. Meth is too far, even for me.

But still, what good does having it illegal actually do?

Ugh... It cuts down on how many people use them (yes, it does create a black market, but not everyone will be willing to participate).

At 3/29/09 05:34 AM, Demosthenez wrote:

Tell me, please, from your extensive forays into the business world how would you know they dont work 20 hour days or even 10 hour days?

Oh they do. They really do, at least from the senior executives that I know. The blackberry basically makes it so that you never have one second off, no matter what you're doing. You have to respond to emails at home, take texts while you're driving.

IMO it would be ideal if these companies lowered salaries and then hired a greater number of execs, just so that the quality of life would be better for these people.

You have no idea what you are talking about. You have no functional idea of how a company manages itself at the highest levels or what the people do who are there at the top. I would not have any idea if my mom had not been in a high level executive position at a Fortune 100 company and if I didnt read the Wall Street Journal. Yes, the Wall Street Journal. The only worthwhile paper out there. Shit contains a wealth of information.

I know a handful of people who are executives in major companies. But not in a Fortune 100... I can only imagine that it would be awful.

You are usng 30 Rock, a TELEVISION SHOW, as a parallel to what you believe to be true? Take a minute and think about how asinine that is. Please, step back and wonder about that for a minute.

If all you know about the corporate world is what you read in a shit article by your local rag and what you see that is produced by Hollywood you have no place to be bitching or stating facts about these issues because YOU DONT KNOW THEM OR UNDERSTAND THEM. Get knowledgable or dont have an opinion. Its harsh but its the way it should be, if you are ignorant dont pretend to know about things you dont understand.

Very true.

Maybe not 20 hours but 15 hour days are pretty normal. Leave at 8 and come back at 10. But thats only 14? Yes it is. Ever wonder why its called a "Crackberry?" Because they are used to be answering emails 24/7. Wake up, email. Go to sleep, email. Always connected.

Yeah. Ever seen someone type tests on their blackberry while driving home from working and using a hands free cell phone at the same time? I have quite a few times...

And what do you do for 20 hours? Oh, I dont know, how does meetings, more meetings, investor relations shit, talk to the press, talk to your underlings, get your books in order, make sure economic forecasts are in order, make sure you have enough stuff ordered, make sure you are ready for your quaretly earnings report, check emails, check with your other branches (operations, finance, whatever), secure money, hire, fire, talk to the board, a million other things that I dont know because Im not a business student and I am not an executive.

A lot of it seems to be just taking questions from people below you and making sure they don't mess up (and if they do, pulling an all nighter to fix their mistakes).

Shadow an executive for a day if they let you. If you honestly think they do nothing you are sorely mistaken. Its a pretty complicated chain of events that leads a pack of gum into the checkout aisle at your local grocery store, shit aint magic.

Yeah. Executives do work really hard, and there is a reason why they make so much money.

At 3/28/09 01:24 PM, westonsarver wrote: I was discussing this subject with friend last night, and I thought that i might ask your opinion about it.

Does your first amendment right justify hate speech and racism? Take this church, for example. discuss.

Yes, I think that the first amendment should protect all speech which does not directly call for violence.

Also, making racist speech illegal would be insane by most definitions of racism. Would it be illegal to distribute a chart of SAT score means just because there is a black-white score gap?

At 3/27/09 03:31 PM, thedo12 wrote:

but to abatrarily make a hour where you tell everyone to turn off there electricity or else there against the planet is retarded. You,d be better off just promoting conservation of energy on its own right and not some bullshit earth hour non-sense.

Moreover the entire principle is retarded. What if I get my power from a nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, or wind plant? The implication is that people are protesting by not using electricity, but alas much of our electricity does not come from fossil fuels.

The environmentalists need to be honest and admit that they oppose electricity consumption because they don't like consumption, and not because of "global warming" or "Nuclear radiation" some other fad.

At 3/28/09 12:58 PM, polym wrote:

At 3/28/09 12:52 PM, Al6200 wrote: Also, I reject the informal use of reductio ad absurdium. After all, Hitler used Reductio Ad Absurdium and was a horrible leader so it must not work.

A little irony here?

Intentional. : )

At 3/27/09 07:47 PM, Der-Lowe wrote: That's why God invented ceteris paribus, and empirical bases.

That just allows you to constrain things to one variable. That doesn't turn that variable into a cut and dry true/false answer.

---

Also, I reject the informal use of reductio ad absurdium. After all, Hitler used Reductio Ad Absurdium and was a horrible leader so it must not work.

Informal logic is the use of the principles and ideas of formal logic. In formal logic, one starts with a set of axioms and tries to prove theorems from those axioms, showing that they are consistent. In informal logic, one applies the techniques of formal logic (like reductio ad absurdium, strawman, appeal to authority, whatever fallacy you want) to debates on complex and abstract topics. I do not believe that this is an effective way of debating, because it tries to take complex issues and treat them as cut and dry - true/false.

An example of formal logic:

There exists an even integer which is not divisible by 4, therefore not all evens integers are divisible by four.

An example of informal logic:

You have claimed that high school GPA predicts college performance, yet there are people who graduate with GPAs below 2.0 who become CEOs of major corporations.

The problem with informal logic is that in the real world situations are almost never cut and dry. There are almost never universal solutions and ideas which can be understood with certainty. For example, let's say I'm debating with someone about the use of the LSATs. My proposal is that the LSAT predicts law school performance. He argues that it doesn't predict college performance. The problem here is that the correlation between LSATs and law school performance can be anything from -1.0 to 1.0. Trying to turn the debate into a cut and dry argument over who's right and who's wrong is impossible, because we're dealing with numbers.

Likewise, people try to discuss the new deal using informal logic, but it is a futile exercise because there are many variables on which we can judge the success of the new deal which make it impossible to decide if one side is "right" or "wrong.

So I propose that when people discuss issues like public policy or history on a site like Newgrounds, they try to win debates by showing that their idea best fits the given facts and data points, instead of trying to show that their idea is "true" with informal logic.

At 3/26/09 12:21 PM, Scarab wrote: I was going to straight-out avoid this thread on the grounds that the original post is entirely uninformed, and has fallen not only into a trap of definition, but a trap of perception. I feel there are some things that need to be clarified, and despite me still being in the process of learning about the world, I think I can have a go at pushing this into a larger discussion. If you wish to use my political stance as something, I will mention it below at points, although not in-depth.

Fair enough.

There has been a thread in this forum addressing the issue of perception and definition in regards to communism recently. It simply reinforced once more that the issue of communism cannot be generalised to a clump of people sharing similar characteristics and interests.

Just like any other political idea, communism has been interpreted in a vast amount of ways. If you were to look for a correct denotation of the term, in a perfect world you'd find a whole range of explanations. In many places today, you'll find only the postmodern-exclusive stereotypes you put forward. The same goes for "liberal", "conservative", and so on.

You're overgeneralizing things.

You describe your so-called typical communists in such a way so that they come off ignorant, yes? That does not describe a large number of theorists behind traditional Marxism well enough, who were almost all well-educated enough to be able to critically analyse society effectively. Let me point out here that Marxism is not a synonym for communism, so my last sentence might be worded incorrectly, but I think you get the gist. The ideas of Marx (and Engels) eventually lead to communism through a proletarian revolution (there goes that Obama argument, more on that below), but this has been long debated through the "far-left" itself.

The thing is that no one actually starts with the axioms of Marxism and shows that it's a consistent value system (the way that an engineer might test out a new device, or a mathematician might prove a theorem). Most people accept Marxism, not because it makes sense, but because it provides a simple and clear scapegoat. If I'm poor, it's because there's a rich person who is stealing my wealth. If I'm unhappy, it's because there's a happy person who is siphoning off my share of the supply of happiness. If some people are smarter than others, it's because they're holding down everyone else (if you look up leftist writings on education, you'll see that they follow this dogma very closely).

It is true that there many intelligent Marxists. But they are not Marxists because of some great logical insight. They follow leftist beliefs because they're bitter, and get emotional relief from having a straightforward scapegoat and victim that they can "project" their ego onto.

Let's take Russia as the unavoidable example. I would ask you to count the number of fifteen year olds that made up the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks, or maybe I would ask you to tell me how many Newgrounds users contributed to Iskra, but that would be pushing it. Just by saying it I make my point. Even at the dawn of the 20th century, there was no solid founding for the Marxist movements as differences developed between the parties. I'm not even comfortable describing people like Georgi Plekhanov as "communist" for fear of being incorrect. I'm going to go on to my views for a moment: I'm with Trotsky on the idea of a united front, which can in theoretical terms stem from a party being one. Anyway, that's irrelevant mostly.

Fifteen year olds in America are Marxists because they literally think that wealth is a zero sum game. They lack the experience or insights to conclude otherwise. Communist rebels is Russia support Marxism because they need scapegoats.

It may surprise you to learn that not all theorists on the far left wish for quick, violent revolutions also. If Marx's ideas are to go by, then change has to be a slow (as in, more than a few days, weeks or months, irrelevant Obama link), probably painful process in which capitalism transforms into socialism. Marx states that this will happen quasi-naturally, just as societies have moved from feudalism to capitalism by themselves. There are also a number of Marxists that are generally not politicians. This may fit with the original figures in this thread, but the kind I refer to here continue to contribute to the theory through their own ideas, a lot of which stray from what people often see as communism (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc.). I don't know about you, but that sounds like a job to me, and doesn't really show someone that "sucks ass at life". Also, I don't know if this is correct, but I don't believe they had Internet access in the Frankfurt School.

In Marxist doctrine, capitalism transforms into socialism when you remove the people who exploit the working class (obviously they don't come out and say this, but it follows from the notion that wealth is a fixed quantity and distributed unevenly). Unfortunately, in the past this has meant literally killing off entire groups of people. But for modern Marxist it usually just means educating people so that they are less greedy.

I'm currently reading some stuff by Antonio Gramsci if that gives off a slight example of what I'm talking about, though he was an active party member. He wrote some of his work in prison on toilet paper. See? Ideas are fun!

Your typical communists are just postmodern, media-brewed stereotypes. In history, a number of activists on the "communist" side of things have been genuinely dedicated to creating positive conditions for everyone. Hell, even Lenin believed in principles like that in theory, and some of his practices can be identified as having that hope. No, I don't believe true socialism as Marx described it has happened before. I don't even like calling, for example, Stalin or Kim Jong-il communists, but I guess there's a lack of a better term. I think for Marx's stages to apply to the world in practice, there would need to be a global wave of socialism, like Trotsky wrote about. That's enough about that. There's one last thing...

lol. Everyone believes in "creating positive conditions for everyone". The question is whether or not their policies actually lead to that, or...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_
Forward

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

Barack Obama isn't a communist. It needs to be said first that change need not be revolutionary change. Not even the institution behind him push for extreme measures that might be seen as communist, like encouragement of class warfare, mass nationalisation etc. However, Obama is not the point of this thread, as fun as it is to turn an idealist based thread to one about identifiable, concrete policies and personality.

Obama is not that radical on economic issues.

Feel free to say whatever. I'm still learning (both content and how to write a good argument), and I learn quite a bit through stuff posted here. It benefits everyone!

History = irrelevant?

Quite a good post I must say, my response notwithstanding.

I think that the number of ISPs is small enough that a conspiracy to control content could work out in the absence of direct legislation.

At 3/20/09 04:11 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

I'm not so sure. A BS in Medicine can easily take as much as 8 years, specially if you have failed the entrance exam once.

Okay, but consider that someone can take more than four years to get a BS in the US, and someone with a BS usually already has the ability to get a decent paying job right out of school. Maybe we have to pay doctors in the US more not just because they are more educated, but because they have earned another degree which allows them to do a different job.

At 3/18/09 09:15 PM, Der-Lowe wrote: The school of Medicine is by far the most difficult school in University. Applicants must pass both an entrance course and test to get into first year. Less than 40% pass, and the system is of dubious legality, since University is to be "open". The course of studies is plagued with difficulties, both academic and administrative, some say it is designed to make students quit. This is true in most of the cases. One has to study for 5 years to get a Bachelor's degree in Medicine, then an internship (3 years), but I *think* there are no further degrees required (ie, an MD)

Okay, that might be why American doctors make more. In the US you need a Bachelor's degree in anything (which takes 4-5 years). Then you need to go to medical school for 4 years, and then go on to a residency. I've heard that to be a competitive applicant to medical school you need a 3.8+ GPA in your undergrad.

So that's probably why American doctors make more, they need way more education. In contrast, an engineer in the US needs about 4 years of education. A lawyer needs 7 years. A researcher (professor) usually needs 8 years or so. So we probably just need to offer higher salaries so that people will a degree will be willing to invest 4 extra years to become a doctor.

At 3/14/09 03:51 PM, RippinCorpse wrote: Does anybody else feel that the government (specifically the GOP) has an extreme animosity towards science?

No. Scientists get grants from the US government to do research. If there was an extreme animosity then we'd be talking about the government BANNING research. Not just cutting funds...

Oh, and I'm not talking baby-killing, human-beaver hybrid science. I mean the entire practice of understanding the world around us.

I don't think that distinction is as cut and dry as you're making it out to be.

In the eyes of a politician, science is either blasphemous or a waste of money. Under Bush, the former was a more popular excuse. Under Barack, the latter.

Huh?

Remember Obama's State of the Union (but not really) Address? How 'bout the GOP response by Gov. Bobby Jindal?

"140 million dollars for something called volcano monitoring?"

That's not an unreasonable argument. How much damage do volcanoes do? Does that justify 140 million dollars of federal funds.

Gee, how could THAT be useful? This is science that has direct effects on human lives, and it is STILL attacked by the morons we put into office!

140 million is a lot of money. You could fund a lot of grants...

While the bailout was bumbling its way through the Senate, you could turn on C-SPAN any time around the clock and watch the Republicans taking a shit on any number of scientific initiatives to be funded by the bailout.

Why do you guys think this is? Do you think it's even happening?

140 million to understand the earth we live on (and what lava comes out of it) has always made more sense than a thousand of times that to bail out banks that don't give a shit me, my economy, or anything other than their profits.

That's not opposing science, it's opposing federal funds for science. There's a big difference.

At 3/15/09 04:37 PM, Der-Lowe wrote: I have a good "Economics Naturalist" question:

Why are there less doctors/population in the US, if docs get paid much more in relative and in absolute terms in the US?

It's probably because there are other high paying jobs in the US that require less education and ability to deal with human blood. (Think lawyer, investment banker, manager). It's possible that those opportunities don't exist in other countries so the US has to pay doctors higher salaries to stay competitive.

At 3/10/09 09:07 PM, Stannous wrote:

Kids, young-adults, or adults, whatever you wish to call them, that are currently just entering college are probably still unsure exactly what proffesion they want to go into. If they're smart enough to be an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, or some other money-making job, and they have no other giant passion, they'll probably want to be one of those money-makers.

Engineers from a strong program usually start at 60k a year (it can go above 100k if you move into management). Lawyers who graduate from a top 14 law school or don't graduate in the top 10% of their class start at around 140k. Those who don't usually start at around 40k. (There are exceptions, of course). I've read that doctors start at around 200k, depending on their specialty.

That might seem like a huge gap, but consider that engineers only have to go to school for 4 years, and any GPA above 2.5 is usually acceptable. However you usually need a 3.7 GPA to be competitive for a top 14 law school and it's 3 years of graduate school. Medical schools are difficult to get into, and I've heard that a 3.8 GPA is usually what makes you "competitive". That's harder than it sounds. A 3.8 is four A's and one B every semester.

At my college, most classes are curved to a 75%-85% average and 70-79 is a C, 80-89 is a B, and 90-100 is an A. So to get an A you pretty much have to do 5-10 points better than your classmates on your tests. (I've heard rumors that at elite colleges grades are curved to a 90 average). So if the tests come back and the average is a 50, then most professors will raise everyone's grade by ~30%. Likewise if the average is a 90% most professors will curve it down 5-10 points.

So you can imagine that getting a 3.8 GPA requires you to be 5-10 points above average in 80% of your classes. That's tough.

However, considering universal health care will probably not pay more than medicare, and possibly will pay less (I know doctors that work independently that have received checks for under 10$ from Medicare.), I don't see why anyone in college would want to pay lots of money extra for med school unless they have some grand interest in saving lives. Most doctors I know encourage their children to look for a non-medical career, not just because they worry about what universal health care pays, but because you often are sleep-deprived and over-worked in medical school, as an intern, and as a resident.

That's true. And that's why they make so much money.

Female doctors tell me having a family is very difficult in those years, meaning they might not get married until they're 30, 35 or more... Why would someone want to go into a career that now pays less money, requires lots of money to study for, is taxed heavily, is a lot of hard-work, and one that some may need to put off having children for?

I would not make that trade off. That's why I'm either going to go to law school or get an engineering job in Virginia.

I realize that there are still good people that would want to do it to save lives, but I try to think of myself as beng a nice, generous person, and I certainly would not consider medicine if I were in college.

Like I said, that's why they make so much.

So my question is, why do supporters of universal health care think people will want to be doctors when the universal health care plan pays them so little? It's all good and well that low-income americans get health care... But I'd rather pay to get an operation than not pay to be put on a waiting list for weeks if not months for a somewhat urgent surgery.

How much of a pay cut are we talking about? Even if you cut their salary 30k, they're still heads and shoulders above what anyone would make without grad school.

At 3/10/09 08:00 PM, Proteas wrote:

At 3/10/09 07:53 PM, Al6200 wrote: That has nothing to do with the economy. The war is Iraq is more or less over.

My point was that the media has shifted from one "quagmire" in favor of another, and nobody seems to have noticed. Much the same way the media dropped Cindy Sheehan and other war mothers in favor of covering Hurricane Katrina.

That's because the Iraq war is more or less over. There's not a lot to cover.

At 3/10/09 05:42 PM, Proteas wrote:

Has anybody noticed that since Obama took office, the focus is no longer on how bad things are in Iraq but on how badly the economy is doing? When Bush was in office, we would hear nightly reports on how many people were killed in Iraq that day, and weekly (if not more often than that) we'd get an update on how much the public thought he sucked as a President. Now all we hear about is how much the economy is in the shitter, and how the Dow Jones seems to be an accurate representation of President Obama's performance in office.

That has nothing to do with the economy. The war is Iraq is more or less over.

http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CA SUALTY/OIF-Total-by-month.pdf

The Republicans are no more crushed today than the Democrats were crushed after the victories of Reagen or Bush.

At 3/8/09 09:19 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

2) The rich certainly aren't stupid, at least in finance... if they felt that higher taxes benefited them in general i don't understand why they are all too often opposed to it. of course this is referring to businessmen... not to entertainers and intellectuals who want heavy-handed and progressive taxation merely to punish the rich.

The idea is that rich people save most of their wealth while poor people spend it. To boost spending and stimulate the economy, you can redistribute wealth to poor people.

At 3/8/09 11:37 PM, StephanosGnomon wrote:

By the very act of voting, one gives consent to the winner despite one having preferred the loser.

Voting means giving consent to the system. Consenting to the system IS consenting to the presidency.

Yeah, but nearly half of the population didn't want our president to be in place. More than 50% of the population preferred him, but a lot didn't. (My point here is not that democracy is unfair, but rather that you have no right to have leadership that you consent to).

At 3/8/09 07:45 PM, EKublai wrote: Fundamentally, people must have certain rights or society breaks down. For instance, no government can exist without the consent of the governed. That is the natural right that the entire animal kingdom operates under.

Really? Nearly half of the people in the US didn't consent to Obama's presidency, and there are a lot of parts of the country where a huge majority didn't support him. Likewise, there are a lot of issues where the majority opinion goes against what the government actually does.

I used to believe in something called "Natural Rights". The jist of rights theory is that people are born with a set of basic natural rights (generally they are life, liberty, and property - but there could of course be others). The government can only take away your natural rights if your actions threaten someone else's natural rights. In essence: your right to swing your arms around ends where my nose begins.

But after thinking about the issue extensively, I've decided that natural rights are an incomplete philosophy of governance, for the following reasons:

1. Complex Situations. Suppose I am building a factory that will manufacture much-needed medical equipment, but the only location where I can build the factory is already populated. Is it okay for me to ask the government to tear down their homes?

In complex situations, where everyone loses rights, natural rights are meaningless. You have to resort to utilitarianism.

2. Free Choice. The idea that someone cannot force another person to lose their natural rights implies that there is some "neutral" decision that the person would have made if you had not interfered. But what is that "neutral" decision? How can a person live without interference?

Natural rights only defend free choice when a person is only exposed to physical coercion. It is meaningless in cases of psychological coercion. And don't give some sneerish comment like "You're an idiot if you can be psychologically coerced". But is that really so? If I teach my children to be young earth creationists, they will lose the freedom to decide if they want to be conditioned with that philosophy. But alas we don't know what their decision would have been without coercion.

At 3/6/09 10:51 AM, thedo12 wrote:

I dont think he was implying that at all.

what I think he was implying is that creativity should be valued in school as much as math or literacy not instead of.

That's sort of what I was trying to say. He acts like creativity is separate from math and science. In reality, if mathematics is engaged at a serious level, it is as creative as any play or short story.

I think the route to creativity is letting students pick concentrations and study those areas in depth. Sure, it will require students to do more work, but students will be willing to do more work if they're studying a topic that they love. Besides, even if a student does a complete 180 in terms of interests, it won't hurt them because they'll just have to be a little behind when they start college.

For example, I think that it is possible to teach linear algebra and differential equations to bright high schoolers. To someone who likes math they are much more interesting and compelling then calculus or trigonometry (the later of which is particularly mundane). Likewise a student who likes fixing cars should be able to get a detailed education in that area, and a student who likes music should be able to take advanced music classes.

At 3/6/09 12:18 AM, hansari wrote:

Well his forte is for the Arts, so yes, his speech is a bit biased, but I think he was speaking generally on education itself. (perhaps if there was more time...)

That's not uncommon though. A lot of people talk about arts as "creative" and math/science as implicitly "non-creative".

Glad that you found a subject matter that gets you "hot and bothered", but the vast majority of us unfortunately don't. And I believe that stems from the fact we don't get the proper opportunity to get a real "taste" of each subject...

I think that you'll find something. I didn't really get passionate until my junior year of high school.

And I do agree though that letting students approach topics with more depth and less breadth would be a good thing. It's hard to get passionate about calculus because it's so disconnected from reality. The equations you study in calculus (those which have exact solutions and only vary with respect to one variable) are a small and unsatisfying subset of all the differential equations that exist.

I think that he identifies the root cause of creativity incorrectly. He seems to act like someone can only be creative if they're a dancer, or a musician, or someone in a "soft" topic. But in reality, you can be creative in anything. Einstein was a creative physicist, Euler was a creative mathematician, and there are passionate programmers. In fact, it's sort of douchey to imply that people who deal with math and science are uncreative robots.

I personally discovered my passion for mathematics when I started writing code. Equations came to life, and I realized that mathematics was a creative field when I took differential equations. In fact, two things in mathematics strike me as having particular beauty:

Consider a rotation matrix. You wouldn't think that anything would satisfy the equation:

Ax = cx for x =/= 0.

But it turns out that the eigenvalues of a rotation matrix are imaginary! (If you haven't taken linear algebra, ignore this part).

Secondly, consider the Laplace transform L[ f(t) ] -> F(s)

L[1] = 1/s
L[t] = 1/s^2

Integrating on the t-domain is equivalent to multiplying by s on the s-domain. HARDCORE, I know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!

Wow, that whole video is a major non-sequitor. There's no argument or flow of logic. It's just a bunch of random quotes thrown together that don't actually suggest anything.

Does Alex Jones actually have a coherent argument that a New World Order exists, or does he just throw random bits of evidence together?