If I'm not mistaken, this is culled directly from a recent NOVA about origami. It was a good episode. Odd they don't give NOVA credit.

Now that PBS is on the political chopping block, it's time to make that overdue donation to your local station before you lose it.

Wearable Tech Probably Won't Help You Lose Weight has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals on that post.

@bcglorf
i feel i have to ask you a question,and i feel quite foolish for not thinking of asking it before.

i do not ask this snidely,or with any disrespect.

are you a neo-conservative?

because this "If he was on America soil, I'd agree with you. If he was living in a European apartment, I'd agree with you. Heck, if he was living in Russia I'd agree with you."

is almost verbatim the counter argument that was published,ad nauseum,in the weekly standard.which is a neo-conservative publication.edited by bill-the bloody-kristol.

and it would also explain why we sometimes just simply cannot agree on some issues.

ok,let's unpack your comment above that quoted.i won;t address the rest of your comment,not because i find it unworthy,it is simply a reiteration of your original argument,which we have addressed already.

so...
you find that it is the region,the actual soil that a person is on that makes the difference between legal prosecution..and assassination.

ok,i disagree,but the MCA of 2006 and the NDAA of 2012 actually agree with you and give the president cover to deem an american citizen an "enemy combatant".however,the region where this "enemy combatant" is not the deciding factor,though many have tried to make a different case,the simple fact is that the president CAN deem you an "enemy combatant' and CAN order your assassination by drone,or seal team or any military outlet,or spec-ops...regardless of where you are at that moment.

now you attempt to justify this order of death by "The reality is he was supporting mass killing from within a lawless part of the world were no police or courts would touch him. He was living were the only force capable of serving any manner of arrest warrant was military."

if THIS were a true statement,and the ONLY avenue left was for a drone strike.then how do you explain how this man was able to:foment dissent,organize in such a large capacity to incite others to violence and co-ordinate on such an impressive scale?

anwars al awlaki went to yemen to find refuge..yes,this is true.
but a btter qustion is:was the yemeni government being unreasonable and un-co-operative to a point where legal extradition was no longer a viable option?

well,when we look at what the state department was attempting to do and the yemeni response,which was simply:provide evidence that anwars al awlaki has perpetrated a terrorist attack,and we will release him.it is not like they,and the US government,didn't know where he lived.

this is EXACTLY what happened with afghanistan in regards to osama bin laden.

and BOTH times,the US state department could not provide conclusive evidence that either bin laden,or awlaki had actually perpetrated a terrorist act.

in fact,some people forget that in the days after 9/11 osama actually denied having anything to do with 9/11,though he praised the act.

so here we have the US on one hand.with the largest military on the planet,the largest and most encompassing surveillance system.so vast the stasi would be green with envy.a country whose military and intelligence apparatus is so massive and vast that we pay other countries to house black sites.so when t he president states "america does not torture",he is not lying,we pay OTHER people to torture.

so when i see the counter argument that the US simply cannot adhere to international laws,nevermind their OWN laws,because they cannot "get" their guy.

is bullshit.

it's not that they cannot "find" nor "get" their target.the simple fact is that a sovereign nation has decided to disobey it's master and defy the US.so the US defies international treaties and laws and simply sends in a drone and missiles that fucker down.

mission accomplished.

but lets ask another question.
when do you stop being an american citizen?
at what point do you lose all rights as a citizen?
do we use cell phone coverage as a metric?
the obedience of the country in question?

i am just being a smart ass right now,because the point is moot.
the president can deem me an "enemy combatant" and if he so chose,send a drone to target my house,and he would have the legal protection to have done so.

and considering just how critical i am,and have been,of bush,obama and both the republican and democrats.

it would not be a hard job for the US state department and department of justice to make a case that i was a hardline radical dissident,who was inciting violence and stirring up hatred in people towards the US government,and even though i have never engaged in terrorism,nor engaged in violence against the state.

all they would need to do is link me with ONE person who did happen to perpetrate violence and slap the blame on me.

i wonder if that would be the point where you might..maybe..begin to question the validity of stripping an american citizen of their rights,and outright have them executed.

because that is what is on the line right now.
and i am sorry but "he spoke nasty things about us,and some of those terrorists listened to him,and he praised violence against us".

the argument might as well be:enoch hurt our feelings.

tell ya what.
let's use the same metric that you are using:
that awlaki incited violence and there were deaths directly due to his words.

in 2008 jim david akinsson walked into a unitarian church in tennesee and shot and killed two people,and wounded seven others.

akinsson was ex military and had a rabid hatred of liberals,democrats and homosexuals.

he also happened to own every book by sean hannity,and was an avid watcher of FOX news.akinsson claimed that hannity and his show had convinced him that thsoe dirty liberals were ruining his country,and he targeted the unitarian church because it "was against god".

now,is hannity guilty of incitement?
should he be held accountable for those shot dead?
by YOUR logic,yes..yes he should.

now what if hannity had taken off to find refuge in yemen?
do we send a drone?

because,again using YOUR logic,yes..yes we do.

i am trying my best to get you to reconsider your position,because..in my opinion...on an elementary moral scale..to strip someone of their rights due to words,praise and/or support..and then to have them executed without due process,or have at least the ability to defend themselves.

is wrong.

i realize i am simply making the same argument,but using different examples.which is why i asked,sincerely,if you were a neo-conservative.

because they believe strongly that the power and authority of the american empire is absolute.they are of the mind that "might makes right",and that they have a legal,and moral,obligation to expand americas interest,be it financial or industrial,and to use the worlds largest military in order to achieve those goals.they also are of the belief that the best defense is the best offense,and to protect the empire by any means necessary.(usually military).

which is pretty reflective of our conversations,and indicative of where our disagreements lie.

i dunno,but i suspect that i have not,nor will i,change your position on this matter.

but i tried dude...i really did try.

@newtboy

My last appeal from a different angle.
You said:
I have been clear that not all, or even a majority of Trump voters are blatant racists, but they all are willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with blatant racists and support blatantly racist policy....

You are writing off everyone that voted Trump for pretty much any reason as either racist, or willing supporters of racists. Stop me here if I'm misrepresenting what you are being clear on.

Assuming I'm safe so far, here's my fear: You are almost enthusiastically embracing the us versus them mentality that hate thrives on. What's worse, is this mindset, which it would appear a great many democrats and media outlets share, strengthens the us versus them dynamic.

Maybe that doesn't scare you. It would seem likely even that the democrats aren't scared of it either. It seems that being 'right' on the matter is believed to be enough.

Here's why guys like me are scared though. Your guys LOST the election. I'm afraid I'm watching the democrats chase off Trump voters that just wanted jobs to feed their families at EXACTLY the time when you need them. Chasing them off is how you lose the next election all over again. If the democrats can't get the message that the Donald was considered the lesser evil by a huge part of America and change themselves to reach the people, then what will wake them up?

Intolerance is a virtue.

With all love and respect to my friends in this thread, I wasn't joking and I don't apologise. Barack Obama is a subhuman nigger and he should be strung up to die like a nigger.

When you participate in the sort of widespread oppression and generalised evil that he has, both as an individual and a member of an unabashedly fascist government; when you, say, lock free people in cages because you don't approve of the things they choose to put in their own bodies; when you commit those crimes against humanity, you lose any claim you might have had to be considered a part of our species.

So he's a nigger - as you would expect him to be, plebiscite systems won't elect human beings while humanity is in the extreme minority in every country in the world.

The fact that you're all less concerned with the hundreds of thousands of real lives this megalomaniacal nazi turd-demon has destroyed (what a guy) than you are with a little name-calling, speaks to the total moral degeneracy of today's faux-progressive orthodoxy.

I don't disagree that his response was more than needed, but I don't expect someone who's been taunted and hit repeatedly (and I saw the shove as WAY more than a friendly Elaine style push, and the second hit looked to be to his neck/chin, not shoulder) to think it through and be restrained, but I do agree a good pimp slap may have sufficed....a call to the cops should be the proper response, but it's clear that wouldn't work for him in a white girl vs black man incident in real life.

All that said, I still say that if you start a physical fight and you lose, badly, that's never your victim's fault, it's yours, and genitalia have nothing to do with it (unless someone gets kicked in the balls). I know <100 lb women that brag about getting high and going to bars intending to fight men, and winning those fights. Assuming gender or size makes someone not dangerous is naive.
Edit: note, his first reaction was to walk away from the taunts, and his first reaction to the first shove/hit was verbal, so decking her was technically his second choice, or third depending on how you look at it. ;-)

Bill is trying to get through to exactly people with your voting strategy.

He's saying :

Don't throw away your vote by voting for a 3rd person, just because you don't want either Trump or Clinton.

What people have to accept is that the president will either be Trump or Clinton. So the only sensible thing to do is to vote Clinton, just to be doubly sure that Trump is not going to get in.

Save your protest against Clinton for the next election (assuming we don't have Trump again!) Because voting for anyone but Clinton, is basically a vote for Trump.

You lose either way this election, so voting is now just a matter of making sure you lose as best as possible.

That's what Bill is saying in terms of false equivalency: Just because they are both bad, doesn't mean that they are of equal badness

Anyway I'm not in the US but the knock on effects of your vote will still effect me so please vote Clinton

If you become what you despise in your battle against it, you lose the war, no matter what the outcome of the battle is.

Side note....Americans have been guilty of nearly every atrocity you mention in the past. I suppose you must think we should have been eradicated for the flaws of some of our citizens/government?

omg that is a lynch mob if I ever saw one, you don't have to agree with them, but you lose *all* credibility when you do this to someone because they have a different opinion

not cool guys

I'm not a liberal, nor a conservative. I'm a pragmatic moderate.

Of course, ANYONE to the left of you is a "shit liberal". There are more of you every day because the electorate is being polarized.

Unfortunately for you, there's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more "shit liberals" everyday than people of your "ilk". Also, there's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more people who aren't of your ilk than are, and you keep pushing everyone who isn't as irrationally conservative as you away to the Democratic Party.

Remember, people like you caused Trump to get nominated instead of Kasich or Bush, and you might have won with either of them vs Clinton. But no, you're a man of principle! And those principles led you to Donald Trump, the candidate who could never be elected, even with all the political winds from circumstance at his back. Even against the second most disliked major party nominee, only to Trump himself!

I don't expect you to bow down. I expect you to drive yourself crazy as you'll continue to fight the insane fight while you lose election after election, and destroy the Republican Party as you keep it hostage under the threat of primarying any rational members they have left, handing election after election to Democrats until conservatives and the Republican Party become irrelevant and powerless.

That's what you can do. You keep that fight up! Never give up, never surrender! No matter how far you feel yourself sinking in the quicksand, between millennials completely rejecting your ideology, growing populations of minorities who reject you, demographics that show that eventually large electoral vote rich states like Texas will become competitive and will flip and turn blue. Nevermind the GOP has managed to win the popular vote one time in the last six elections, soon to be a seventh. Next time, keep thinking going down this path will work!

But don't you stop fighting! Keep struggling! I expect nothing less! This isn't about this election anymore. It's about wreaking havoc against your own side for decades to come! Nominate Trump in 2020 again! Primary the traitor Paul Ryan!

Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!

MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nono, you gotta courtesy flush. That's where you flush right after finishing the excretion phase and before beginning the clean-up phase. It gets rid of a lot of the smell-causing material and the excretion isn't aerosolized because it's blocked by a large mass (at least in my case..)

Of course, the courtesy flush might just be deadly with a toilet like this but... y'know, you win some, you lose some.

If you buy a house, buy one you could see yourself comfortably retiring into. If you have to move for work, rent YOUR house to someone, and rent in the new city. Should you lose this new job, you can always move back "home". If it becomes permanent, list the old house for sale.

...and yes, if you don't have enough money to do what I just laid out, then you don't have enough money to buy a house in the first place.

Agree with lots of it. Taste is definitely to a large part habitual, you definitely dull your sense of taste if you eat lots of sugary / salty foods.

However choosing potatoes is a terrible idea for a diet. Like sugar, starches rapidly turn to glucose, release insulin and promote addiction. They admittedly have high satiety and may be less calorie dense than what he was eating before (which is what caused the weight loss) but I would not suggest swapping one addiction for another.

Also I love refuting the instinctual assumption that you can lose weight eating badly by simply offsetting it with exercise. He's correct to stress diet over exercise. Exercise does make you lose weight (and has other health benefits) but the effect of high calorie food utterly dwarfs exercise:

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/29/12051520/exercise-weight-loss-myth-burn-calories-video

Also, it's more of a subjective thing, but lean meat proteins (eggs, chicken, fish) are very filling and can make it easier to avoid the high GI carbs that absorb into your body too fast to be used effectively and end up as excess body fat. I'd argue you're making your diet considerably more difficult if you try to give up meat at the same time as losing weight.

WTF!? You lose for being happy you won?!? I think they should have gone Attila on them, since they'll be thrown out of the sport anyway. Make the next judges think twice before pulling that crap, and remove those judges from sports permanently. I would have attacked with my whole being if they pulled that on my student, to the death. After all, it is their life and livelihood.
Also, the announcer can eat a dick. What BS he was spouting.
The competitor better refuse to accept the win...he lost fair and square...that was a robbery right there.

i am just going to add to the opinions and perspectives that @MilkmanDan ,@ChaosEngine ,@dannym3141 and especially @newtboy who i agree with so clearly that i swear we are related.

since many dynamics have already been covered, i.e:police culture,racism,incompetence etc etc.

i shall offer a historical perspective in the ways of the power dynamic.

while this is a power vs powerlessness dynamic dealing with agents of the state,it helps to understand just how we got to this point,and it is NOT the first time we have been here.

see:labor movement of the 30's and the labor strikes,and the response from not only the business community but our own government.

see: the civil rights movement and segregation,and how demagouges used political power to divide by way of racism,and then used police to intimidate,beat and imprison.

there are many MANY examples here in america where the police have been used to suppress and oppress a people or community for less than altruistic reasons,and most certainly not aligning with the ideology we were taught in school the function of police.nevermind the syrupy sweet,idealized picture shoved down our throats since an early age.

so we see on our facebooks,our twitters and/or whatever social media you prefer,that black lives matter...and the counter point,that NO..ALL lives matter.

now this would make sense in a world that never took history into account,or a growing cultural norm of violence and oppression that had been slowly seeping into poor communities (mainly black and latino).

oh wait..
that's right.
social media pundits NEVER fucking consider any of those factors,because just like bill o'reilly,those are pesky nuances and context conflict with their own narrow narrative.

but let us consider them and how they may possibly be a major driving factor in americas current climate.

let us take ferguson as an example,that is a good place to start.
and let us go back to 2008,where we can see the boiling begin to take place in this extremely impoverished community which was already struggling.

the population is a black majority,poor to working poor.home ownership is low,food stamp recipients are high and the future is pretty bleak.

in 2008 ferguson received approximately 18% of it's total fiscal revenue from misdemeanor infractions i.e:traffic,parking,moving violations.small time stuff.basic fines for small infractions.in 2008 that number jumped to 66%.

why?
what happened?
what changed?

well the comptroller of ferguson (and greater st louis),along with HUNDREDS of other smaller municipalities across the country,had bought the rotten fish that wall street was selling in the form of bullshit derivatives.

now wall street and the big banks got their tax payer bailout,but towns like ferguson did not.they lost millions,sometimes billions.this meant pensions were either reduced or outright denied,because there was NO money!

but a town still has to pay police.
fire fighters and school teachers,
clerks and judges,
keep the roads paved and the street lights working.

so what is a local government to do?
can't tax the working class who own homes.you already jacked their property tax to the roof.
can't tax the local business,you already squeeze them as well.
how about those non-property owning people in ferguson?
they need to pay up as well,and let's use the police force to relinquish them of the paltry money they don't have.

to the tune of 66% of all of fergusons revenue.
that is insanity.

so what if you live in ferguson?
chances are you are black,and either poor or working poor.

you make,if you are lucky,20 grand a year and by one man's testimony he paid over 2,000 in traffic tickets in one year.the majority of americans dont see those kind of numbers their entire lifetime.

and what if you began to realize that it was not just you.that almost every person you know or talked to had similar stories.

would you begin to feel a tad bit targeted?

what if the city of ferguson started to become very creative with not only their rules but how they enforced those rules?

what if every year the fines went up?
not remained the same,but actually UP? every year.

what if,as a community people began to actually fear the police? to experience anxiety just by the sight of a patrol car,even though they were not engaging in anything illegal? and who knows...maybe there is some new ordinance on the books that you are unaware of?

would you become paranoid and suspicious of law enforcement?

and then..what if....you started losing friends to cops.people you grew up with being shot in the street,and every time the mayor comes out and calls it a "justifiable killing".

would that make you feel any better?
any less paranoid or anxious?

there was ONE police shooting in ten years and then..as if by magic ..(which is how the media seems to always portray this..shocking news..at 11)..you lose 5 friends in a year.all to cops..all "justifiable".

would you begin to think there was a conspiracy?
targeting you and your neighbors?

i BET you would.
i know i would.

now lets look at the cops.

they are just a tool.
an instrument for the state to uphold the law and write citations for infractions.they dont MAKE the laws,nor the infractions,not even the fines.

they just do what they are told.

and they are told to go into these poor and working poor neighborhoods and write tickets,a LOT of tickets.

do you really think they are unaware of the growing hostility towards them? the looks of disgust,fear and apprehension?

but...this is their job,and they do what they are told.

they see.
they know.
they are aware of the growing hatred towards them,and this makes them anxious..and defensive..and in some horrible,tragic cases...trigger happy.

a natural and normal response to heightened stimuli in the face of great uncertainty.

so they react impulsively and out of fear in a way that ten years ago would have been unheard of.

they think themselves good cops.
they do a good job.
they do what they are told.
and the people hate them for it.
so they respond instinctively and with poor judgement.

we..as citizens,respond with disgust and indignation when a cop abuses his/her authority.we see this as a major moral breach in the citizen/cop relationship,because we feel as agents of the law they should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us...and rightly so,but when you put a human being in a tense and dangerous situation,not of their making,they will fail at some point to react correctly and with sound judgement.

they SHOULD be held accountable,but so should the city council members and the mayor and all the local representatives who created this toxic climate in the first place.

the lesson to be learned here is that nothing is a binary situation when people are concerned.

so when black lives matter protestors address people to make them aware of the situation,this is what they are talking about.the police killing are only a last stage manifestation of a situation that began in 2008 on wall street.

and we need to be aware,because right now it is the predominantly black communities,but soon coming to a neighborhood near YOU.

the poor and working poor have become expendable.no longer relevant to the system.which is why police shootings are being handled the way they are.our value is ever increasingly being judged on how well we can feed the system.

until this disparity is addressed there will continue to be police shootings.people will die and there will be no indictments.

because police do what they are told.

it is up to us to make policy makers accountable for their actions,and in doing so address a toxic climate that both the poor,working poor and cops alike have to swim in.

stop forcing cops to write tickets to fund a city that lost it's savings due to fuckhead bankers.

this blood..all of it..is on those bankers hands.