Breaking the board is the important bit, but how you break it is even more important. Learning how to punch correctly takes time, effort, concentration, discipline etc, you learn about yourself and about life's challenges in a natural way. It's not something that can be forced fed into you in this contrived manner, because the pain of persistent effort and burden of continual concentration in your mind is much greater than any temporary physical pain. Truly challenging yourself is much harder than any task someone else can set for you.

Otherwise, what is the lesson here? Life is hard, so don't prepare, and then use brute force to make up for it later? Life and martial arts are both about applying the most elegant and effective solution that fit the problem, not about brute forcing your way through things.

So really, the instructor has failed at training both the mind and body here. If he wants the child to believe in himself that he can punch, then teaching the right technique will give the child that confidence in much better way. The child would have never doubted his ability to punch well in the first place, as he overcame life's challenge long before it even was a challenge.

imo, you are the contents of the hypothetical box though not the box itself. the contents will change over time, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but it's the contents and the arrangement and the content's history that is "you". there is no single, persistent "you". "you" are a collective. a generalization.

Clearcoating this stuff would remove its blacker-than-black properties. It would then start to reflect light. At which point, why would you favor this expensive shit over regular paint? I haven't seen details on how the sprayable Vantablack is applied, but if it were mixed into a liquid for application, it would have the same problem, unless, somehow, the surface of the hardened material were burnt away, evaporated off, or chemically reduced so that the carbon material could protrude from the substrate, that may allow the light absorption properties to persist. But I don't know how they accomplish that, other than they say it's a complex process that requires a specialist. I still wouldn't try brushing up against it, just like I wouldn't try sitting there inhaling paint fumes after painting a car. There's a reason precautions are taken in that process as well. I just know that something small and damaging enough to burst cell membranes sounds like something I wouldn't want in a product I'm handling with direct contact with my skin, or with any remote possibility of it rubbing off and getting into the air.

You don't? Obviously specious.

Hater, hardly, you don't rise to any such level of reaction. Too gnatty perhaps.

The downvote was ably and accurately explained by others already.

As to name calling, nothing for you.

However, you, stalker, interesting. I could see it. Ingratiating, hypersensitive, intensely and persistently subjective. Hmmm.

I'm am more than willing to leave you alone...uninteresting,

Perniciously poking the bear, doll.

Gotta love their persistence in spinning a ludicrous argument until it almost sort of works. Just an absolutely absurd situation.

The hilarious thing is that all of this is completely unnecessary.

Firstly, it's of questionable value anyway. I have seen little evidence that Farook wasn't acting pretty much alone. Even if the unlock his phone, they'll probably just find he likes ISIS on facebook or follows some well known twitter accounts.

But more importantly, all of the data on the phone would have been backed up to iCloud, which Apple does have access to and was willing to turn over to the government.

But then some muppet in the FBI changed the password

Yeah, these are really the kind of geniuses we want deciding how companies should write secure software.

And forget taxes, Apple should use some of their $18 billion profit (for a quarter!!!!) and pay their workers in China a decent wage. Seriously, it works out at just a few percent of their profits.

It's wonderful that people can be heroes for just persisting.

I thought NDGT coped with the persistent cell guy beautifully

@RedSky

First, if it were up to me, you could take over as Minister of Finance in this country tomorrow. Our differences seem miniscule compared to what horrendous policies our last three MoF have pushed. The one prior, ironically, was dubbed the most dangerous man in Europe by The Sun.

We're in agreement on almost everything you mentioned in your last comment, so I'll focus on what I perceive differently.

First, I'd differentiate between fiscal stimulus and fiscal spending, the former being a situational application of the latter. As you said, fiscal stimulus during an economic crisis tends to be inadequate with regards to our macroeconomic objectives. You can neither whip out plans for major investments at a whim nor can you mobilize the neccessary resources quickly enough to make a difference and still be reasonable efficient. Not to mention that it only affects certain parts of the economy (construction, mostly), leaving others completely in the wind. So I'm with you on that one, it's a terribly inefficient and ineffective approach.

Automatic stabilizers work magnificently in this regard, but they barely take any pressure from the lower wage groups, especially if unemployment benefits come with a metric ton of strings attached, as is the case in Germany. A basic income guarantee might work, but that's an entirely different discussion.

The problem I see with merely relying on reasonable automatic stabilizers in the form of payments is that they do put a floor into demand, but do very little to tackle the problem of persistent unemployment due to a lack of jobs. As useful as training and education are, the mere number of highly educated people forced to work mundane jobs tells me that, at best, it doesn't work, and at worst pushes a systemic problem onto the individual, leading to immense pressure. Not to mention the psychological effects of being unemployed when employment is tauted as a defining attribute of a proper person -- aka the demonization of the unemployed.

It's still somewhat decent in Australia, but in Europe... it's quite a horrible experience.

Anyway, my point is that I'd rather see a lot more fiscal spending (permanent!) in the shape of public sector jobs. A lot of work cannot be valued properly by the market; should be done without the expectation of a return of investment (hospitals, anyone?); occurs in sectors of natural monopolies -- all of that should be publicly run. A job guarantee, like your fellow countryman Bill Mitchell advocates quite clearly, might be an approach worth trying out. Economy in the shit? More people on the public payroll, at rather low (but living wage!) wages. Do it at the county/city level and you can create almost any kind of job. If the private sector wants those people instead, they'd have to offer better working conditions. No more blackmail through the fear of unemployment -- you can always take a public job, even if it is at a meagre pay.

I should probably have mentioned that I don't buy into the notion of a stable market. From where I am standing, it's inherently unstable, be it through monopolies/oligopolies, dodging of laws and regulations (Uber), impossibility to price-in externalities (environmental damage most of all) or plain, old cost-cutting leading to a system-wide depression of demand. I'm fine with interfering in the market wherever it fails to deliver on our macroeconomic objectives -- which at this point in time is almost everywhere, basically.

Healthcare is all the rage these days, thanks to the primaries. I'd take the publicly-run NHS over the privately-run abomination in the US any day of the week. And that's after all the cuts and privatizations of the last two decades that did a horrible number on the NHS. Fuck ATOS, while we're at it.

Same for the railroad: the pre-privatization Bundesbahn in Germany was something to be proud of and an immeasurable boost of both the economy and the general standard of living.

In the mid/long run, the effects of automation and climate change-induced migration will put an end to the idea of full employment, but for the time being, there's still plenty of work to be done, plenty of idle resources to be employed, and just nobody to finance it. So why not finance it through the printing press until capacity is reached?

As for the Venezuela comparison: I don't think it fits in this case. Neither does Weimar Germany, which is paraded around quite regularly. Both Venezuela and Weimar Germany had massive supply-side problems. They didn't have the production capacity nor the resources to meet the demand they created by spending money into circulation. If an economy runs at or above its capacity, any additional spending, wherever it comes from, will cause inflation. But both Europe and the US are operating faaar below capacity in any measurable metric. You mentioned LRAS yourself. I think most estimates of it, as well as most estimates of NAIRU, are off quite significantly so as to not take the pressure off the wage slaves in the lowest income sector. You need mass unemployment to keep them in line.

As you said, the participation rate is woefully low, so there's ample space. And I'd rather overshoot and cause a short spike in inflation than remain below potential and leave millions to unneccessary misery.

Given the high level of private debt, there will be no increase in spending on that front. Corporations don't feel the need to invest, since demand is down and their own vaults are filled to the brim with cash. So if the private sector intends to net save, you either have to run a current account surplus (aka leech demand from other countries) or a fiscal deficit. Doesn't work any other way, sectoral balances always sum up to zero, by definition. If we want to reduce the dangerous levels of private debt, the government needs to run a deficit. If we don't want to further increase the federal debt, the central bank has to hand the cash over directly, without the issuance of debt through the treasury.

As for the independant central bank: you can only be independant from either the government or the private sector, not both. Actually, you can't even be truly independant from either, given that people are still involved, and people have ideologies and financial ties.

Still, if an "independant" central bank is what you prefer, Adair Turner's new book "Between Debt and the Devil" might be worth a read. He's a proponent of 100% reserve banking, and argues for the occasional use of the printing press -- though controlled by an inflation-targeting central bank. According to him, QE is pointless and in order to bring nominal demand up to the level we want, we should have a fiscal stimulus financed by central bank money. The central bank controls the amount, the government decides on what to spend it on.

Not how I would do it, but given his expertise as head of the Financial Services Authority, it's quite refreshing to hear these things from someone like him.

The mixture of valid points, exaggerations, ignorance of context and completely false information makes it a bit... difficult to digest.

Generally speaking, a lot of errors were made regarding Cologne.

The police fucked up entirely and basically was unable to maintain control of the square in front of the central train station where shitloads of theft, sexual harassment and even a few rapes were committed.

The public media did not report on it properly. They did, in fact, refuse to report it at all at first. But that doesn't stem from an obession with PC nor is it special treatment for refugees/immigrants -- it's good old-fashioned pro-government bias. A few days later, they were all playing the same tune again: bad immigrants, bad muslims, need more law-and-order, close the borders, need new laws, etc. Same shit as always.

And yes, you cannot expect all these refugees to be model citizens from the get-go. Different culture, different language, segregation, no work permit, no familiy, maybe first-hand experience with war -- they are bound to commit crimes, assuming otherwise would be naive.

And accepting a million refugees might have been a bad idea after cutting down public personnel and services for two decades straight. But what's done is done. The question now is what can be done to improve the situation for everyone involved. What doesn't help is further segregation (refugee camps), private security (aka mobs hunting brown people, happened in Cologne already) or downplaying the massive problems.

As for that wierd tirade from 1:07 onwards about true Germans: except for all the people from Bohemia, Prussia and Silesia, aka Poland; or the millions of immigrants from Italy and Turkey; or the folks from former Yugoslavia; etc. Two thirds of the bloody country has family names that mark them as n-th generation immigrant. Half of my extended family is from what is now Russia (Kaliningrad) while my family name is distinctively Dutch. "Paid German taxes" gives a hint to his motivations. Folks in East Germany didn't pay German taxes: do they count? Refugees from former German enclaves ("Russlanddeutsche") didn't pay German taxes, nor did they speak proper German: do they count?

All in all a very misguided rant, too eager to abuse real fuck-ups for his own ideology. Rape culture, SJW, PC -- doesn't apply in this case. It's small government, media with establishment bias, a general inability for open discussion of problems, and a shitload of incompetent arseholes in positions of power (e.g.: chief of police in Cologne, gone now).

By the way, he forgot to mention the hundreds(!) of refugee shelters that were set on fire during the last few months. Bands of immigrants committing crimes are a problem, bands of Germans committing crimes are a problem.

We had a six digit number of prime suspects for trouble already: young, male, unemployed, un(der)educated, no fucking hope. It's the main cause for the persisting problems with Nazis in East Germany: no hope. Adding a million additional people, lots of them with equally bad prospects, without any serious effort to integrate them is bound to blow up in our faces eventually.

The best thing that can happen for the entire Eurozone would be a massive integration program in Germany. And by massive I don't mean a meagre billion Euros. We're talking 15-20 billion a year, for at least five years. The more the better. Even in the current economic regime, it would be much cheaper than the repercussions from staying the current course: doing fuck all.

That shouldn't be a thing(as far as i know or ever heard of). Maybe try again. If it persists id contact @lucky760 to help sort you out.

-edit-
if that's true which it may be it seems. Think we should rethink that rule. Seems unnecessary and a hinderance to sifters participating.

Other than maybe Fred Rogers, Bob Ross has to be the best influence on my childhood/young-adulthood that there ever was on television. I think his personality was his masterwork, and his paintings and show are just the medium that allows us to see it. His calm, persistent, confident, kind, and joyful example have carried, (not always successfully,) through my entire life and his voice has been present in my head at some of the most stressful times I've had to deal with. SO THANKFUL to have been able to spend so many hours listening to Bob Ross while growing up, and SO HAPPY to see his work resurfacing online for a new generation to find.

Thanks, Bob Ross! You are missed but never forgotten.

Ok so, Judge me with your opinions here...
But, I knew all this, intuitively.

I knew what was happening. I understood the persistence of vision as a given phenomenon. I can actually induce this persistence of vision on things as I look at them. Slowing down and increasing this persistence. Not a great amount, but I can do it enough to observe it. This means I can look at any normal object and move my head slowly to the side and watch the image degrade on my retina as I move my direction of vision to the side.

Now Destin, immediately saw this as a trick that fooled the mind into believing the image was a solid. But I wasn't fooled. Why wasn't I fooled? HAve I just been exposed to this before, and my mind is telling me the truth, thus negating the illusion?

I've seen similar tricks like this before, like on a wheel, to create an image, but if I concentrate I can see and immediately comprehend what is happening. I can stare long enough to break up the image and loose the illusion, and then have it come back.

I hope I'm making sense here.
So what I want to know, is, "does everyone have or not have, see or not see as I do?" I assumed we all did. So much so, that I've never had a question in my mind as to how this worked or that it was a trick.

Tell me I'm crazy, that's fine. But I'm interested in what other people are perceiving.

Nope! Personally, I will teach my children they're just words. I can already see the arguments I'll get into with school officials. Removing the taboo from something immediately reduces the use of it as a form of rebellion.

What I'm attempting to point out is this persistent, cultural impression that some words are worse than others, but no real explanation is provided. Instead of explaining to reach an understanding, we're "conditioning" to obey without question. (i.e. If an authority-figure tells you "because I said so", you just do as your told like everyone else!)

This cognitive dissonance is exactly how it happens. Mom is bemused and giving her daughter all this positive reinforcement for what, in most other contexts in a child's world, would be (and constantly is) shamed and punished.

Ideally I'll just say to my kids: "Use those words all you want, but not around people who ask you to stop. We should be courteous to everyone". There will be no such thing as "Bad Words".