What a pile of crap. Firstly, shes not saying praise jesus, Its a commonly used phrase which youre bending to spout your own personal agenda. This isnt the anti- god topic some sifters try to turn everything into, so quit trying.

Secondly, i have two kids and have lived in apartments, if either ended up standing on an a/c unit a slap would be the LEAST i would deserve, and that goes double for a 7 year old with special needs.

Do you have any kids? If so, how the fuck do you NOT consider balconies and windows as danger zones in HIGH RISE apartments? How many kids have you read about falling from them? There was one last week here. The very first thing i did before we moved in was mesh the balcony railings, seal the window latches and give the ground level windows a good kicking. What you DONT do is play the percentages or even worse, not even consider it. Thats how you end up with a 7 year old standing on an a/c unit. *SLAP*

>> ^spoco2:

>> ^thumpa28:
Yeah, the theological angle is the one to concentrate on, how fucking predictably boring. Back on topic, the mother needs a slap.

It's worth mentioning, it really is. It's a big fucking problem that people have a disconnect that goes
"Holy crap, my daughter almost died, that man was amazingly good and quick and threw himself into harm's way to save my child"
"Thank God for that"
No, thank the man, thank him, thank his upbringing that he wouldn't stand by, thank his reflexes, thank others that brought his attention to your daughter. Do not thank a mythical being.
If you're going to say it was god that stepped in and 'saved' your daughter, why don't you also blame god for letter her get out there in the first place, or giving her autism such that she would do such a thing?
It IS a problem because it's just an excuse for people to turn off most of their brain and answer anything with 'it's god's will'... And this leads to all sorts of problems as people who do this never bother to look at root causes, or actual solutions, or anything else, because 'things are just like that because of god's will', or they don't do things because 'god will set it right if he feels the need'.
And then you go and say the mother needs a slap... have you looked after an autistic child? Have you looked after ANY child? Do you know how easy it is to let your guard slip, even if just for a minute, and to have them do something you hadn't even considered was a possibility?

@marbles:

First you need to acknowledge what a conspiracy is. When two or more people agree to commit a crime, fraud, or some other wrongful act, it is a conspiracy. Not in theory, but in reality. Grow up, it happens.

Thanks for the vocabulary lesson, but I used the term conspiracy theory, not conspiracy. Conspiracy theory has a separate and more strongly suggestive definition (this one from Merriam-Webster): "a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators."

I openly acknowledge that the government of the United States has and does commit conspiracies, as you define the word. (You mentioned Operation Northwoods in a separate comment; a post on Letters of Note from few weeks ago may be of interest to you, too, if you haven't already seen it: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/08/possible-actions-to-provoke-harrass-or.html.) The actions described therein, and other such actions, I would aptly describe as conspiracies (were they to be enacted).

Definitions aside, my problem with posts like that of @blastido_factor is that most of their so-called conspiracies are easily debunked. They're old chestnuts. A few minutes' worth of Google searches can disprove them.

It may be helpful to distinguish between what I see as the two main "conspiracies" surrounding 9/11: (1) that 9/11 was, to put it briefly, an "inside job," and (2) that certain members of the government of the United States conspired to use the events of 9/11 as justification for a series of military actions (many of which are ongoing) against people and countries that were, in fact, uninvolved in the 9/11 attacks. The first I find no credible evidence for. The second I consider a more tenable position.


The Pentagon is the most heavily guarded building in the world and somehow over an hour after 4 planes go off course/stop responding to FAA and start slamming into buildings, that somehow one is going to be able to fly into a no-fly zone unimpeded and crash into the Pentagon without help on the inside?

Once again, much of what you mention can be attributed to poor communication between the FAA and the government agencies responsible for responding to the attacks (and, for that matter, between the various levels of government agencies). And again, this is one of the major criticism levied by the various 9/11 investigations. From page forty-five of the 9/11 Commission: "The details of what happened on the morning of September 11 are complex, but they play out a simple theme. NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11, 2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never before encountered and had never trained to meet."

Furthermore, it seems to me that one of the biggest mistakes made by a lot of the conspiracy theorists who fall into the first cateory (see above) is that they judge the events of 9/11 in the context of post-9/11 security. National security, on every level, was entirely different before 9/11 than it is now. That's not to say that the possibility of this kind of attack wasn't considered within the intelligence community pre-9/11. We know that it was (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks_advance-knowledge_debate). But was anyone adequately prepared to handle it? No.

In any event, when's the last time you looked at a map of Washington, DC? If you look at a satellite photo, you'll notice that the runways at Ronald Reagan airport are, literally, only a few thousand feet away from the Pentagon. Was a no-fly zone in place over Washington by 9:37 AM? I honestly don't know. But it's misleading to suggest that planes don't routinely fly near the Pentagon. They do.


And how did two giant titanium engines from a 757 disintegrate after hitting the Pentagon's wall? They were able to find the remains of all but one of the 64 passengers on board the flight, but only small amounts of debris from the plane?

In truth, I don't know enough about ballistics to speak for how well a titanium engine would withstand an impact with a reinforced wall at hundreds of miles an hour. But, if you're suggesting that a plane never hit the building, here's a short list of what you're wilfully ignoring: the clipped light poles, the damage to the power generator, the smoke trails, the hundreds of witnesses, the deaths of everyone aboard Flight 77, and the DNA evidence confirming the identities of 184 of the Pentagon's 189 fatalities (64 of which were the passengers on Flight 77).

Regarding the debris: It's misleading to claim that only small amounts of debris were recovered. This from Allyn E. Kilsheimer, the first structural engineer on the scene: "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box ... I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts." In addition, there are countless photos of plane wreckage both inside and outside the building (http://www.google.com/search?q=pentagon+wreckage).


Black boxes are almost always located after crashes, even if not in useable condition. Each jet had 2 recorders and none were found?

You help prove my point with this one: "almost always located." Again, I'm no expert on the recovery of black boxes, but here's a point to consider: if the black boxes were within the rubble at the WTC site, you're looking to find four containers that (undamaged, nonetheless) are roughly the size of two-liter soda bottles amidst the rubble of two buildings, each with a footprint of 43,000 square feet and a height of 1,300 feet (for a combined volume of 111,000,000 cubic feet, or 3,100,000,000 liters). (You might want to check my math. And granted, that material was enormously compacted when the towers collapsed. But still, it's a large number. And it doesn't include any of the space below ground level or any of the other buildings that collapsed.) Add to that the fact that they could have been damaged beyond recognition by the collapse of the buildings and the subsequent fires. To me, that hardly seems worthy of conspiracy.


Instead we invaded Afghanistan and started waging war against the same people we trained and armed in the 80s, the same people Reagan called freedom fighters. Now we call them terrorists for defending their own sovereignty.

Here, finally, we find some common ground. I couldn't agree more. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more ardent critic of America's foreign policy.

>> ^marbles:
First you need to acknowledge what a conspiracy is ...

the fires burning at 1:07 min: How do they work? Burning debris flies 120 yards, then goes through the window and starts fires on the 3rd floor, w/o leaving evidence at ground level?

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Trancecoach:
Yeah, you're right.. These guys are clearly lying. In fact, they're not even fire fighters! They're actors working on scale.. (how else would they know what it's like to be on a movie set?)
>> ^EvilDeathBee:
I dunno about you guys, but i'm convinced. This is such a conspiracy, there is no other explanation at all.


Is it possible that they're mistaken? In a building that was hit by a plane...fires and such, I would expect some very loud bangs.


...and ground level explosions 80+ floors below.

>> ^ulysses1904:

meh. They will report anything they hear when it's live TV, they have to keep up a constant stream of chatter. That morning at work we were hearing that there was smoke coming from the White House and that the Sears tower in Chicago was burning, blah blah blah. We heard lots of stuff that day, this is par for the course.
Also there's plenty of footage of eyewitnesses whose versions are at great odds with the actual videos of that day. Like some guy insisted the 2nd plane shut off its engines and glided into the 2nd tower.


Yeah hundreds of eye witnesses claim there was multiple ground level explosions, including firefighters, emt, and police. But the 9/11 commission didn't feel it was necessary to hear their testimony, and the few it did hear never made the final report. So obviously the eye witnesses are just delusional and must be suffering from post traumatic stress... :eyeroll:

>> ^Mcboinkens:

Also, if anyone was wondering why he kept apologizing for letting the spider climb up the wall, tarantulas are quite vulnerable to falls, especially when they are in a position where there abdomen hits the floor first. It can crack, which is lethal in most cases. That's part of the reason why they stay on ground level, often in some type of burrow.


Thank you.

Now for the rest of my life I'll have the knowledge that looking at the walls for spiders is only going to get my feet bitten.

[redacted]

No matter how well intentioned, I think military interventions nowadays that aim to dethrone an authoritarian regime are practically guaranteed to fail.

Modern combat is fought through surgical air strikes with a limited ground force. It minimizes invading state casualties but poor intelligence from limited local manpower inevitably leads to mass civilian casualties. This progressively undermines local support. Fostering a vibrant democracy or training a self sufficient military and police force, hell, let alone rebuilding the infrastructure from the initial invasion cannot be done quickly. As has been seen from Afghanistan especially, this allows insurgencies to organise and further air bombing simply adds to their recruitment numbers.

Removing totalitarianism also reveals long-held grudges and power imbalances such as how removing Saddam's minority Sunni Ba'ath Party fermented a civil war with the oppressed Shi'ite majority. Local revolutions on the other hand, without intervention create a sense of solidarity regardless of past differences. A foreign coup d'état does not.

States that have democracy thrust upon tend to squander them or relapse back into authoritarianism. Often this is from a lack of established and respectable candidates to choose from, haphazard transition to a market economy (e.g Russia) or a lack of consistent ground level demands from the people resulting in simple pandering by politicians to secure votes with no intentions of governance. Democracy is only able to work effectively when individuals with growing affluence over time begin to demand better infrastructure, services and generally representation of their interests.

Not to mention, especially in Africa, many countries were wished into existence by exiting colonial powers with no logical cultural, religious or ethnic links among them. There is simply no genuine sense of national unity. This is arguably what caused the violence in Kenya in 07-08 following the disputed election. Foreign interventions in ex-colonial countries also inevitably leads to the perception of renewed imperialism, not matter how pure actual intentions. This is why intervention in Zimbabwe to remove Mugabe is inconceivable unless it by the African Union, which is far too weak and unwilling. Even now, Mugabe has considerable support by his colonial independence credentials.

Other countries simply have never had a legitimate and effective government in generations. The Taliban did not so much rule Afghanistan as loosely impose Sha'ria law on individual tribes who otherwise had signficant autonomy. Now that representational democracy has been imposed, there is simply no willingness on the part of an individual tribe to work together to improve the livelihood of all, but merely their own people. Politicians and officials are not corrupt because they are immoral but because political survival means following this creed.

Point is, military interventions don't work in removing despotic governments simply because something can and will go wrong. The only place they are appropriate is preventing genocide or aggressor nations. NATO was correct to intervene in Kosovo, the UN was correct to prevent Iraqi aggression into Kuwait (ignoring Iraqi invasion of Iran was not). Intervention should have occurred in Rwanda and equally in Sudan.

The Powell Doctrine more or less sets out what I wrote above concisely. In short, intervention should occur only with mass popular local support, and be undertaken swiftly and effectively with overwhelming force with a clear exit strategy established.

Thanks to Bush though, the US is overstretched militarily and lacks the moral authority to incite other nations into intervening where necessary. More importantly it's lost the deterrence its successful interventions in Kosovo and Kuwait created.

>> ^bcglorf:

Hurray for anything bringing some attention to the situation over there, particularly in correctly referring to it as Burma and not the Myanmar moniker imposed by the military dictatorship.
RedSky said:
For countries that have essentially had institutionalised repression for a generation or more like North Korea and Burma, I honestly think that the best way forward is to encourage trade with some restrictions in the hope that some of it filters through to the people.
I completely agree with your feeling conflicted on how best to help the poor people imprisoned in these countries. Honestly, I think using a foreign military to remove the regime followed by a nation building program on the scale used in post war Germany and Japan is the best way forward. But no nation on Earth has any reason to spend that enormous amount of money and political good will on something that in essence gains them nothing in the end anyways.
I do dearly wish that when Burma was hit so bad by natural disasters a few years ago the world have reacted more appropriately. Instead of allowing the ruling military to refuse and block any aid from going in, the world should have come in by force with as many soldiers and weapons as needed to deliver the volunteered aid to the devastated areas by force, then simply withdrawn after the aid had been delivered and provided. Sure the military would come and take it all for themselves after anyways, but the people there could've seen for a few months that the outside world actually cares about them and would gladly treat them for better than the junta is. Maybe allowing a base of resistance and opposition to gain wider support.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

The speeds and impacts needed for the successful recovery of a hardened rocket booster with no organic lifeforms
is vastly different than the parachute system needed for a passenger vehicle. The "wight" issue isn't relative to the strength factor needed for the parachute, but the size needed to slow said weight. Once you get to a certain weight, you get the snowball effect. The weight from the size of the parachute adds a significant weight value as to need a even larger parachute. Then you need more fuel to carry that parachute and still accomplish the same flight time, which in turn needs a slightly larger chute. Once you reach a certain weight of plane and want to carry a parachute, the plane becomes more of a parachute deployment vessel and less whatever it was originally designed for.
It is why they don't have such a system on the space shuttle for the "just in case", because in reality for most weights such a system it has to be the primary case consideration and not added on as a periphery.
Also, large air liners aren't designed to hang from the tail of the air craft. The tail maybe the strongest part of the plain, but I very well doubt the frame could handle the stress without major redesign. And then the nose of the aircraft would also take the full impact at ground level, which would most likely split the air craft at the wings or result in other catastrophic failure of the air craft. Also, many air line crashes result from catastrophic loss of control or destruction of major control surfaces making placement and successful deployment of such a system without causing a complete air break up an engineering nightmare. Parachutes for small planes and gliders has been around for a long time. Commercial jet liners, as they stand, are extremely safe compared to their terrestrial brothers. The feat of adding on a parachute for these giants of size of science isn't as easy as adding on a piece of cloth, I'm afraid. As a person who has a fear of flying, nothing would make me feel more at ease than such a system, but gravity is a harsh mistress.

>> ^EMPIRE:
Well, you can't forget that the space shuttle rocket boosters and tank are all recovered because they parachute down after use. I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard producing a parachute strong enough to support an airliner. (and it doesn't even have to be a single one. It could be sets of 3 for example on several key structural points). The problem with speed is if the plane is going at least at cruise speed, and suddenly deploys the parachutes, it's an extremely fast stop, and people inside would break their necks. Of course multiple stage 'chutes like Larsarus mentioned would do the trick.


Yeah, was thinking about that too. I think you'd need to anchor the majority of the chutes to where the wings connect with the fuselage. Thats where the weight of the aircraft is carried in flight, and I guess thats the best place to balance the weight between front and back. You'd then need sort of guide shoots at the tail and nose to correct its pitch. Even then, if you lose a wing like this plane did, and your not going in nose first then I think the next problem is rolling...

basically, rocket boosters aren'y too concerned about which way they fall, as long as its slowly.

The speeds and impacts needed for the successful recovery of a hardened rocket booster with no organic lifeforms
is vastly different than the parachute system needed for a passenger vehicle. The "wight" issue isn't relative to the strength factor needed for the parachute, but the size needed to slow said weight. Once you get to a certain weight, you get the snowball effect. The weight from the size of the parachute adds a significant weight value as to need a even larger parachute (also note that empty rocket boosters are much lighter than full rocket boosters). Then you need more fuel to carry that parachute and still accomplish the same flight time, which in turn needs a slightly larger chute. Once you reach a certain weight of plane and want to carry a parachute, the plane becomes more of a parachute deployment vessel and less whatever it was originally designed for.

It is why they don't have such a system on the space shuttle for the "just in case", because in reality for most weights such a system has to be the primary methodology and not added on as a periphery.

Also, large air liners aren't designed to hang from the tail of the air craft. The tail maybe the strongest part of the plane, but I very well doubt the frame could handle the stress without major redesign. And then the nose of the aircraft would also take the full impact at ground level, which would most likely split the air craft at the wings or result in other catastrophic failure of the air craft. Also, many air line crashes result from catastrophic loss of control or destruction of major control surfaces making placement and successful deployment of such a system without causing a complete air break up an engineering nightmare. Parachutes for small planes and gliders has been around for a long time. Commercial jet liners, as they stand, are extremely safe compared to their terrestrial brothers. The feat of adding on a parachute for these giants of size of science isn't as easy as adding on a piece of cloth, I'm afraid. As a person who has a fear of flying, nothing would make me feel more at ease than such a system, but gravity is a harsh mistress.

I would wager even if such a system could be made to work, cases that it could be made for would be less than 1% of crashes that occur. Getting smashes by weather, misdirected my flight control or TCAS or some other human error, or the dozens of other common flight disasters would be helped little by a functional parachute system.

>> ^EMPIRE:

Well, you can't forget that the space shuttle rocket boosters and tank are all recovered because they parachute down after use. I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard producing a parachute strong enough to support an airliner. (and it doesn't even have to be a single one. It could be sets of 3 for example on several key structural points). The problem with speed is if the plane is going at least at cruise speed, and suddenly deploys the parachutes, it's an extremely fast stop, and people inside would break their necks. Of course multiple stage 'chutes like Larsarus mentioned would do the trick.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'tupolev, aircraft, jet, bomber, low, pass, flying, ground level, insane, aerobatics' to 'tupolev, russian, aircraft, jet, bomber, low, pass, ground level, insane, aerobatics' - edited by kronosposeidon

Interesting, I wouldn't have mind to see a few more rotations. After a few rotations I think most stuff would have fallen out of the side. Would be nice if there was a webcam on this installation. Also a camera inside the kitchen would be awesome.

Ground level video:

Genuinely hoping they pull this off although I'm still a bit sceptical.

Randomisation is all good and well, but what made Diablo 1 and 2 such an effective action RPG was that it also had a compelling storyline, fun skills and varied but equally awesome art design.

So far Borderlands sounds like it has a loose storyline at best, I haven't seen much variety from desert environments and I really don't know much about the kind of skills or abilities they may have or whether the guns and FPS action is actually all that good.

As much as I think FPS/RPG is a winning formula, I'm skeptical whether they can pull it off as a relatively small developer after all. I mean judging by the repetitive environments of Hellgate: London, it's obvious that creating randomised level generation at the ground level is incredibly difficult. It's hard enough to make believable looking rooms/dungeons/environments with a top down perspective, but there's so much additional nitty gritty detail you need to include at the first person view level. That's clearly something that Flagship had a lot of trouble with, and I'm not sure if it's really possible to do without a huge staff of developers and plenty of funding.

Ughh... the CN tower has a glass floor too. And I'm completely scared of heights.

I've gone up on it twice now, once recently and I managed to set foot on it before almost crapping my pants. And before when I was about 4.

You also are aloud to go outside on a balcony of the tower, which is basically protected by an industrial strength wire fence. I went out there, and looked over the edge from about 5 feet away, Built up some courage and moved another foot closer to the ledge.

I put my left foot forward as I leaned closer to the edge and again lookde to the bottom. My mind played tricks on me and it felt like the tower started plummeting to ground level. After a few minutes, I took another step forward.

By now, I was proud of my accomplishment, 4 years old, and I could almost touch the railing.




It's about now my dad thought it would be a good idea to come up behind me and pretend to push me over.

...asshole.