Favorite Documentary?

[Tarantulas]

Who Killed the Electric Car? is the most surprising documentary I've seen.  Mainly because I never knew there was such a thing as an electric car.  And it worked great, with no emissions.  It was fast, it was quiet, and it's a lot cheaper than paying for gas.  The only down side is that it couldn't go quite as far on one charge as you can on one tank of gas.  In my opinion, they also looked cool.  But it was completely taken off the market.  Hydrogen is still decades away, but the technology for electric cars more than just exists, it has existed.
Mild SpoilerAnd when they recalled them, they destroyed them all.  Took them to dumps and crushed them, even though they worked great.

I watched that recently... it was 2 hours well spent.

[MarkAndrew]

Im fairly sure my dad has it now via DVD


edit:  yup its on DVD

http://www.suncoast.com/Connections--Vol--3--5-Discs--Front-Page_stcVVproductId3031341VVcatId455365VVviewprod.htm

Connections2 and Connections3 are on DVD. The first series, just Connections, isn't on DVD...via an legitimate method.  I was looking long and hard at ebay before I found them on youtube.

[MrTorso]

Man good one.  I do love Connections.  In fact I'll go on record saying Connections with James Burke is my favorite, non-porn star, documentary.  The first season is available on youtube...which is nice since the only other format is VHS via ebay.

So what is your favorite porn star documentary then??

[Variety of Cells]

I disagree.  I don't buy the notion of 'advanced societies'.  Our civilization has more technology.  Their civilization actually works within the laws of nature.  Is the definition of an advanced civilization a civilization that is doomed to keep growing until its surroundings can't support it?

boy, i have so many questions!

i assume you're american (only americans lament the plight of the american native), so i'll say this:

the great thing about america is you can go buy land and live exactly how you want to live. if you want to form a hippy hunter-gatherer commune, you're free to do so.  the question is: do you think that is feasible on a global scale given the number of the people in the world?   i'll be fine in michigan, as i have 1/5 of the world's fresh water to fish in & drink,but what about those in nevada? how about alaska? should we cut them off from our "naturally growing fruti & veg & game animals" here?

what do you feel about gun control & hunting laws?

the thing that disturbs me is your attitude towards private ownership of land.  if you don't believe in it, can i have your house & your car? it's for the good of the community after all   
     seriously,though: are you a socialist or are you just a utopian who longs for a more primal culture? 

are the animals you lament over that arebeing driven out by the farmer more important than the humans that the food is going to feed?

it was native americans who taught the pilgrims to grow corn..does that count as farming?

do you think this country would still be the way it was in 1492?  the answer in reality is NO.  it'd either be part of mexico and canada, or the united states of Lakota.  the native tribes didn't get along, if you recall your history.  they fought over land,too.
----------------------
if you have some logical suggestions for how your ideology would work in the real world, i'd love to hear them,because i don't see how it can feasible work.

if not, why don't you buy some land in montana and live exactly how you want to?  of course that limits the 'net access and hi-def TV and things like running water & heat,but you are free to do that if you wish.

speaking of, there was a cool documentary on PBS about a guy who did that in the 60s.  forgot the name of it,but i'd like to see the entire thing.

However much I would like to live in the past, I do understand that it's just not possible to with all the people on this world.  If I were to buy land in Montana I would still be living in America.  I would not be free to do whatever I want.  I would still have to pay taxes, so I would still have to have some sort of job, and I would still be a citizen.  Even Native Americans who technically have their own nations are still bound to most of the rules of this country.  Land also costs a lot of money. Especially good land that you can live off of.  It is not possible to just go live as a hunter gatherer.  It requires a lot of land, and a lot of knowledge, and a group of people.  I don't have Any of those.  Plus there are laws for hunting. 

I do not claim to have the answers.  The reason I bring up how people used to live is because it worked for them.  It will not work today.  But our method doesn't work either, in my opinion.  Though I feel there is a lot we can learn from the past.  And you made a good point that living one way in the forest will not work for those people living in the south.  I am not suggesting a new universal plan, that's what I am against.  People need to find a way to live in the climate they live in. 

Alright, now I have time to address more of your questions.

I feel that citizens need to have the right to own guns in this country.  This doesn't really have anything to do with my other points, but if you prevent citizens from having guns then you prevent the citizens from being able to defend themselves against the government.  I do not own a gun now, because I do not feel it is necessary right now.  But I do find some comfort in knowing that I have the right to arm myself if I felt the government was not serving in my needs.  Though I have no problem with background checks.  I'm guessing that's not what you meant.  You were probably addressing hunting for sport, which I find disgusting.  There are people less fortunate than us that actually need those animals to live.  And I have trouble defending the rights of people to kill animals for fun, when there are those who need to kill them to survive. 

As for ownership of land, I am not a socialist.  Where a people lives defines who they are, and they should have the right to defend it.  Though I would be more in favor of pieces of land belonging to communities of people versus individuals.  And I don't believe in a utopia.  No society is perfect.  But that's fine if there is no one society.

Are animals lives more important than humans?  If growing more food was just helping to feed starving people then I honestly wouldn't have a problem with farming.  But it is also increasing the population, creating the need for more food, and more farms, and creating less homes for animals, in a cycle that only perpetuates itself.

Yes, that counts as farming.  And no, not all farming is harmful.  They didn't grow much more than they needed.

I disagree.  If our form of agriculture didn't exist, then this country would still be populated by many many different tribes.  It couldn't be all one tribe, because each different climate requires such a different way of living, and such a different belief system.  If Spain still existed, then yes, it would all be Mexico.  And if the French still existed, then it might all be Canada.  But if neither of them existed, then there would still be a variety of different cultures and civilizations. 

One suggestion would be to stop creating huge surpluses of food.  And again, I do not have all the answers.  I don't even have very many answers.  I just have a different point of view.

[davo]

thanks for the answers. just trying to understand where you're coming from. 

a clarification and a couple points:

what i meant by "united states of Lakota" is thay they were (are) the biggest tribe in the US. they would have kept growing and ultimately taken over the other tribes' lands & killed off much of the competing tribes. they tribes fought & killed each other all the time over land,food,women. 

points:

-you don't need to have a job to live in america. not really. maybe a few hundred dollars a year for property tax,but so what?  how do you think we afford to keep hostel enemies out of the country?
   i know someone (more than 1) who lived in a cabin in colorado. chopped their own wood, took showers at the ymca,hunted & fished.  yeah, they had a job,but they didn't need the job really. only for minimal rent of the cabin. & that's easy to get around by bartering.


-it's a false dilemna to say someone hunting for sport is stupid because other people need that game for food.  the "other people" are not getting that food anyway.

-in spite of an imperfect system of farming (IE the gov't paying people to grow crops/store crops/not grow crops),it's the best system we have. (like democracy)
  the lesson here it not to stop people from farming,but to let the market (IE PEOPLE) decide how much food needs to be grown.  then there would be little waste.

-you could move to sub saharan africa or the rain forest or.... and live a tribal existence if you really wanted to. 
   i'm not trying to question your character,but my guess is you don't really want to sacrifice in order to live how you believe is right,because it is possible.  (there's no rifftrax in the woods...)

[davo]

oh yeah! did anyone mention MURDERBALL? that was pretty good.

as was WORD WARS - funny & stranger doc about scrabble players.

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

what was murderball about, ive heard of that somewhere.

[MrTorso]

Murderball is the flick about the quadriplegic rugby teams.

[Variety of Cells]

thanks for the answers. just trying to understand where you're coming from. 

a clarification and a couple points:

what i meant by "united states of Lakota" is thay they were (are) the biggest tribe in the US. they would have kept growing and ultimately taken over the other tribes' lands & killed off much of the competing tribes. they tribes fought & killed each other all the time over land,food,women. 

points:

-you don't need to have a job to live in america. not really. maybe a few hundred dollars a year for property tax,but so what?  how do you think we afford to keep hostel enemies out of the country?
   i know someone (more than 1) who lived in a cabin in colorado. chopped their own wood, took showers at the ymca,hunted & fished.  yeah, they had a job,but they didn't need the job really. only for minimal rent of the cabin. & that's easy to get around by bartering.


-it's a false dilemna to say someone hunting for sport is stupid because other people need that game for food.  the "other people" are not getting that food anyway.

-in spite of an imperfect system of farming (IE the gov't paying people to grow crops/store crops/not grow crops),it's the best system we have. (like democracy)
  the lesson here it not to stop people from farming,but to let the market (IE PEOPLE) decide how much food needs to be grown.  then there would be little waste.

-you could move to sub saharan africa or the rain forest or.... and live a tribal existence if you really wanted to. 
   i'm not trying to question your character,but my guess is you don't really want to sacrifice in order to live how you believe is right,because it is possible.  (there's no rifftrax in the woods...)

Being able to live that way still requires a huge knowledge of your surroundings.  You need to know what you can eat, where you can find it, how to track animals, how to build your house, what animals are dangerous, what other tribes are dangerous, learn their language.  It's not as simple as just moving there.  But even if I did move there, eventually people would contact us, because we are ever expanding.  You need to be able to move around as hunter gatherers, and that's becoming increasingly difficult without butting into tribes that are already there or us.  And if I just moved away, would that stop our culture from doing things that I see as harmful to our environment?  It's not as if we would be unaffected.  All the trash we burn here in Minnesota travels through the air and into the water and into the fish and has been found in the breast milk of women in Inuit tribes in northern Canada.  Pollution is a global problem.

Do you know what is causing the most destruction to the rain forest in terms of how much land is lost per year?  It's not logging, it's farming.  Poor people are slashing and burning sections of the rain forest so they can farm it.  Then, once it isn't fertile any more, they slash and burn more forest, destroying more per year than logging does. 

And I very much disagree with your assumption that the Lakota would take over all of the U.S.  It is true that they went to war frequently with their neighbors, but their war is much different than ours.  They went to war to make sure their borders were secure and that they had enough land.  They went to war if they wanted more women.  They went to war to make sure the other tribes knew they weren't pussies.  But they did not go to war to take over the other tribes land.  Their war was not to beat the other tribe into submission, it was an assertion.  Some people died, yes, but the goal of the war was not to kill everyone.  Once the battle was over and one side won, then they left and went home.  They did not claim the others tribe land as their.  Maybe they expanded their borders a bit if they needed to, but they generally left the other tribe their land.  In this way, no one tribe ever took over the whole of a continent.  Their goal was never to assimilate other tribes.  So tribes generally stayed in one location, that they usually said was given to them by their god.  It was their country, and they defended it, but why would they live anywhere else?

I am not supporting the immediate abolishment of farming.  That would be catastrophic.  But we have enough food to feed us right now, so do we really need to make a whole lot more than last year?

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

The only reason they never escalated that war was because we showed up.  Given enough time it would have been natural. 

[Variety of Cells]

The only reason they never escalated that war was because we showed up.  Given enough time it would have been natural. 

Huh?  I don't understand.  They started fighting more frequently once we showed up, and war actually increased because we were pushing tribes out west, forcing them to butt against each other which usually resulted in conflict. 

I completely disagree that one tribe would take over the entire U.S.  Each culture only knows how to live where they call home.  Tribes up north don't know all the secrets to living in the desert, and tribes in the south don't know what it takes to live up north.  And they wouldn't want to live up north.  They like where they are, and have no desire to take over other tribes land.

And the reason they could live that way is because their populations were not rapidly growing.  They had just enough food to feed how many people they had.  And if it did grow some, then war would have lessened it.  If a tribe had expanded to the point where they need more space, going to war probably would have reduced them to a point where they wouldn't need the extra land.  And they knew this, so they didn't always go to war.  Their populations were checked, and not ever expanding like ours is. 

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

Eh maybe a lot of what you say is true.  However i still think they would have eventually killed their neighbors completely.  Even if they never occupied the land. If all they were using war for was to reduce population they were doing it rather haphazardly.  Its much easier to just kill your population yourself. 

[Variety of Cells]

Eh maybe a lot of what you say is true.  However i still think they would have eventually killed their neighbors completely.  Even if they never occupied the land. If all they were using war for was to reduce population they were doing it rather haphazardly.  Its much easier to just kill your population yourself. 

That was not the soul purpose of war.  And something else to consider is that in between wars (which were more like battles) tribes became friends again.  There were only a few instances when tribes were eternal enemies.  Generally, after they asserted their power, making sure other tribes knew that they existed, and released some of the teenagers urges to fight, then things went back to the way it was before.  They did not use war as a means to control population.  They didn't thing "we have to many people, let's go to war and kill some of them."  They thought.  "there's nothing we can do.  There is not enough food here to feed us all, we have to risk going to war."  So then they did, and their population decreased. 

[gbeenie]

I'm sorry, variety. I don't bear you any personal animosity, but your utterance of such mindless nonsensical phrases as "enslaves animals" is a pretty strong indication of the complete lack of any serious adult thought. Rather than getting into an ad hominem shouting match with someone possessing a rather verbose manner of saying pretty much nothing, I would just as soon leave this discussion alone and wish you well. It's my hope that, one day, you will come to realize just how directly in opposition to observable reality your current mindset is, if only for the reason that the "philosophy" you have adopted is a virtual guarantee of a lifetime of misery, and I wouldn't wish that on ANYONE, especially with a world as beautiful and magnificent as ours out there, just waiting to be enjoyed.

I think Penn Jillette (who, because of his loud, brusque stage persona, doesn't get enough credit for being a great thinker, which I sincerely believe he is) put it best:
"If you look at the larger picture of history, particularly in fifty-year or larger chunks, the world is ALWAYS getting better, and people ALWAYS think it's getting worse."

I hope you come to see that one day, variety, and I wish you luck.

[gbeenie]

As far as favorite documentaries go, I like The Last Waltz.  Sure, it's a bit biased in favor of Robbie Robertson's more romanticized view of what being in a band SHOULD be rather than what being in a band actually IS, but there's no denying it's some damn good music. 

I've always wanted to see that; I'm ashamed to admit I haven't.