^{See Barry Schwartz below for context}

Here are two brand new videos from the extraordinary Ted Talks that you just want to watch.

Siftables with David Merrill

Virtue with Barry Schwartz

Values Australia is very often utterly confused about the USA. On the one hand it produces extraordinary minds such as these. On the other it produces minds such as this:

FEBRUARY 14, 2009

After we kill them; what to do?

After the pending Second American Revolution results in killing the people who have wrecked this country — yes, you KNOW who I’m talking about — what are we going to do as a nation to move forward?

There are lots of very very serious things to consider. What to do with the people who are presently living solely on social security? What to do with people who depend solely on medicare? What about the infirm, the retarded, the disabled?

[ ... ]

I want to form serious working groups; think tanks, to seriously consider these matters.

Getting rid of the scumbags who wrecked the country is the easy part. We can take them out in under an hour. The REAL hard part is what to do once we’ve gotten rid of them?

Perhaps, we now think, it’s that one extreme is impossible without the other. Perhaps the US is the first truly full-spectrum society in human history, in all its horrifying beauty.

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