Latest History Talk Posts at VideoSift.com

Rotteenseed Hits It-2-Fiddy

choggie (http://history.videosift.com/member/choggie) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:08:42 -0700

(48 comments - 338 views)
....and I dinna have to vote for any of his shit......
Congrats RS, a sillier of the sift!

- choggie

Watch James Burke Live on the Web

Fedquip (http://fedquip.videosift.com) — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:23:37 -0700

(3 comments - 366 views)
For all the James Burke Fans here on the Sift, you might be interested in this "webinar"

Burke Online Live Webcast

The Knowledge Web with James Burke
Thursday, May 22, 2008
8:00 am Pacific /
11:00 am Eastern /
4:00 pm London /

I'm certainly going to try to make it, he is a great influence on how I view technology and history. You can tell I'm a huge fan, Here is an experimental page I recently built through"knowledge web" inspiration Let me know what you think of it. Ten minute segments surrounded with links to information about everything Burke talks about. I'm considering putting the labour in for each episode.

- Fedquip

50 greatest television commercials/ads. parodies

ant (http://history.videosift.com/member/ant) — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:03:24 -0700

(1 comment - 535 views)
Boing Boing shares Nerve's five pages article on its 50 greatest commercial/advertisement/spot parodies from television of all time. Parodies of such ads began popping up in the early '70s. Most of them have videos.

- ant

Cartoons of a Racist Past Lurk on YouTube

ant (http://history.videosift.com/member/ant) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:40:54 -0700

(1 comment - 585 views)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/business/media/28cartoon.html from http://digg.com/movies/Cartoons_of_a_Racist_Past_Lurk_on_YouTube ...

"Some of the cartoons were removed on April 16. A message saying the cartoons were no longer available because of a copyright claim by Warner appeared in their place. By evening the messages disappeared, and some of the cartoons were back. Representatives for YouTube and Warner would not confirm whether the companies had tried to remove the cartoons..."

- ant

HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst

CaptWillard (http://history.videosift.com/member/CaptWillard) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:26:46 -0700

(6 comments - 554 views)
By Robert S. McElvaine

Mr. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College. His latest book, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America, has just been published by Crown.

Related Links: Larry DeWitt: The Follies of Instant History: Another Meaningless Poll of Historians

"As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach." — George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb 10, 2008

A Pew Research Center poll released last week found that the share of the American public that approves of President George W. Bush has dropped to a new low of 28 percent.

An unscientific poll of professional historians completed the same week produced results far worse for a president clinging to the hope that history will someday take a kinder view of his presidency than does contemporary public opinion.

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.

At least two of those who ranked the current president in the 31-41 ranking made it clear that they placed him next-to-last, with only James Buchanan, in their view, being worse. “He is easily one of the 10-worst of all time and—if the magnitude of the challenges and opportunities matter—then probably in the bottom five, alongside Buchanan, Johnson, Fillmore, and Pierce,” wrote another historian.

The reason for the hesitancy some historians had in categorizing the Bush presidency as the worst ever, which led them to place it instead in the “nearly the worst” group, was well expressed by another historian who said, “It is a bit too early to judge whether Bush's presidency is the worst ever, though it certainly has a shot to take the title. Without a doubt, it is among the worst.”

In a similar survey of historians I conducted for HNN four years ago, Mr. Bush had fared somewhat better, with 19 percent rating his presidency a success and 81 percent classifying it as a failure. More striking is the dramatic increase in the percentage of historians who rate the Bush presidency the worst ever. In 2004, only 11.6 percent of the respondents rated Bush’s presidency last. That conclusion is now reached by nearly six times as large a fraction of historians.

There are at least two obvious criticisms of such a survey. It is in no sense a scientific sample of historians. The participants are self-selected, although participation was open to all historians. Among those who responded are several of the nation’s most respected historians, including Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winners.

The second criticism that is often raised of historians making such assessments of a current president is that it is far too early. We do not yet know how the things that Mr. Bush has done will work out in the future. As the only respondent who classified the current presidency among the ten best noted, “Any judgment of his ‘success’ or lack thereof is premature in that the ultimate effects of his policies are not yet known.” True enough. But this historian went on to make his current evaluation, giving Bush “high marks for courage in his willingness to attack intractable problems in the Near East and to touch the Social Security ‘Third Rail.’ ”

Historians are in a better position than others to make judgments about how a current president’s policies and actions compare with those of his predecessors. Those judgments are always subject to change in light of future developments. But that is no reason not to make them now.

The comments that many of the respondents included with their evaluations provide a clear sense of the reasons behind the overwhelming consensus that George W. Bush’s presidency is among the worst in American history.

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: “the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . . . . God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.” Another classified Bush as “an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . . . .” Still another remarked that Bush’s “denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly.”

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”

Four years ago I rated George W. Bush’s presidency as the second worst, a bit above that of James Buchanan. Now, however, like so many other professional historians, I see the administration of the second Bush as clearly the worst in our history. My reasons are similar to those cited by other historians: In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States enjoyed enormous support around the world. President Bush squandered that goodwill by taking the country into an unnecessary war of choice and misleading the American people to gain support for that war. And he failed utterly to have a plan to deal with Iraq after the invasion. He further undermined the international reputation of the United States by justifying torture.

Mr. Bush inherited a sizable budget surplus and a thriving economy. By pushing through huge tax cuts for the rich while increasing federal spending at a rapid rate, Bush transformed the surplus into a massive deficit. The tax cuts and other policies accelerated the concentration of wealth and income among the very richest Americans. These policies combined with unwavering opposition to necessary government regulations have produced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Then there is the incredible shrinking dollar, the appointment of incompetent cronies, the totally inexcusable failure to react properly to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, the blatant disregard for the Constitution—and on and on.

Like a majority of other historians who participated in this poll, my conclusion is that the preponderance of the evidence now indicates that, while this nation has had at least its share of failed presidencies, no previous presidency was as large a failure in so many areas as the current one.

- CaptWillard

Scientology and the problem of religious tolerance.

Irishman (http://history.videosift.com/member/Irishman) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:42:24 -0800

(17 comments - 879 views)
This started as one of my comments on one of the (more embarassing) scientology protest videos, delivered me a couple of comments on my profile, and got me to thinking what my real views on this subject are.

It is my intent to have a dialogue with all of you honestly, openly and with no personal malice or prejudice. Let's get this whole subject out in the open with everyone's thoughts and feelings so that we can look at it in the light of day and see if we can all evolve our understanding of the problems, the benefits, and each other.

>>>>
I am not wishing ill on those that protest an evil organisation, I am Ripping The Shit out of the mindless vegetoid slugs in this particular video who are devaluing and embarassing one of the most important social/internet phenomena of the 21st Century, which is a movement against a cult disguised as a religion.

I hold the same disgust toward scientology as I do toward judeo-christianity, which has delivered us the most violent century in ALL of human history, the 20th.

Whilst attacking the cult is commendable and to be wholeheartedly encouraged, the underlying social issues and problems created by consumerism and materialism that lead vast numbers of people to seek some kind of meaning in all manner of religions, cults and fads are being completely missed by everyone involved.

In many ways, the movement against scientology is the same type of beast as a religious cult, with the vegetoid masses signing up to feel part of something noble and larger than life.

So who do we blame for all of this? Well let's start with all of those organisations preaching religious tolerance. Religious tolerance has ALWAYS created a smokescreen for hideousness. It's about time that was said by the way.

What do we do about it? Remove the smokescreen of religious tolerance and all of the nastiness born from organised religion will suddenly spring into the light of day. Think about if *your* religion would survive such a removal of the Smokescreen of Religious Tolerance.

What about real spirtuality and the belief that under the cloak we are in fact divine and spirtual beings? People will always seek out this truth for themselves, as they have done for more than ten thousand years *without* the presence of corrupting religions and labels.

I'm not preaching existentialism. Since the industrial era rationalism and science have tried to remove the magic and the sheer weirdness of reality, yet all along every single one of us KNOWS from our own experiences that life isn't rational and reducible, that there is an ever present 'other' and irrationality to reality. In fact this is the brick wall that science has been banging its head against now for 50 years, the latest attempt at rationalism being to remove Time itself from the equations.

Let's move this to sift talk and get everyone's thoughts. If people want to attack scientology then they better be ready to face the really hard questions and the bigger picture.

In reply to this comment by QuadraPixel:
Then why do you wish such ill on those that protest an evil organization, that you have no association with?

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
As I said before Kommie, I'm an eschatologist, not a scientologist.

In reply to this comment by QuadraPixel:
Wow, now that's a little harsh, but not when it comes from a SCIENTOLOGIST.
http://www.videosift.com/video/Busted-for-Interbulating-a-scientology-party
http://www.videosift.com/video/Cult-of-Scientology-takes-over-Clearwater-Police-Dept

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
Personally I'd like to see every single person in that video joining a suicide death cult as soon as possible.

- Irishman

FYI : Downloading Long Videos

Farhad2000 (http://farhad.videosift.com) — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 22:40:03 -0800

(1 comment - 324 views)
With the amount of new users we are seeing I wanted to just inform them that it is possible to download many of the longer documentaries for watching in full screen, and in usually better quality (especially with AVI's from Google Video).

If you are using Firefox the best thing is to get the Videodownloader plug-in at the Mozilla Add-ons page here.

Once installed it will add a small icon at the bottom right corner of your screen.

When you are viewing a video, first go to the original video hosting site (Youtube or Google), then click the icon, this will bring up a small pop-up window that allows you to download the video.

The formats for YouTube are FLV which require a flash player. MP4 and AVI videos can be played using <ahref="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/">VLC.

If you are using IE it is better for to just download Firefox at Mozilla. Trust me.

NOTE: Please delete the video once viewing has concluded. </ahref>

- Farhad2000