That was a well done video. Though, I've always thought that illusion is not actually an illusion, but just a trick. It always relies on ignoring the fact that one tile is in shadow and the other is in light when you go to compare them. If you physically did move the tile as animated above, it would suddenly appear much lighter when it moves into sunlight, because that is how light works. They must have gone to some work to render it in 3D, and then not have that one tile be effected by the scene lighting.

There's a reason why grown adults aren't allowed to use the 6lbers.

That being said, I was a rather avid bowler in my late teens and once came close to doing something similar.

For anyone who doesn't know, you're supposed to slide a little bit on your final step as you release the ball. That's why bowling shoes are soled with suede.

In this particular case, on my final step I planted my left foot in what was probably a little spill of soda. My little slide became an abrupt stop and I flopped forward onto the floor, simultaneously launching my bowling ball (a 12lb) virtually straight up. Luckily, I didn't do any damage to either myself or the alley. The ball gently nudged one of the ceiling tiles out of place and then fell to the floor a few feet in front of me.

Also luckily, the owner knew us well enough (we were there every weekend) that he knew we weren't screwing around and that something must have happened.

Looks nice, but good graphics are commonplace today (I'll assume the every-few-second stutter is a result of the video, not the game itself). More importantly: the elder scrolls are unfortunately plagued by shortcuts in design (no doubt a result of trying to create such large worlds) which they just cannot seem to shake. Leveled lists and tile-constructed dungeons are not fun. The latter are insultingly tedious after the 4th one, and if you don't know what the former are, you haven't played much in the ES series. The same worthless loot over and over again is not fun. Always being at or near the same level as your enemy is not fun. Being able to exploit the system to become so powerful (in everything) that you can beat the end boss before you reach level twelve, is not fun. These things do not make for good gameplay. I don't know how much Skyrim makes use of these old poor designs, but Morrowind and Oblivion were completely based on them, and it ruined what could have been gaming excellence. The same experience again and again and again and again and again is not fun. Here's hoping Bethesda have learned by now, or will learn, someday.

Something else: I'm not sure why they're discussing Radiant AI as if it's new; it's mocked all over youtube with Oblivion.

Anyway, seeing mountains in the distance and plants up close is yesterday's news (I wonder if the shadows are real or faked; the original video demos for Oblivion had realtime light and shadow, but they were removed for performance reasons in the final release). Ditch the LL and tile construction and add a level of environmental diversity and interactivity like that of Thief (which is over a decade old), and I might be convinced to try another ES game.

Alright, joking aside, heres my take,

Might be a...

-----SPOILER-----

The floor is tilted towards the camera like 15-20 degrees, and the camera is in plane with the floor, theres a glass cleverly placed in the line between the tiles 90 degrees to the floor. (so its tilted towards the camera.) The letters are rubbery/sticky so they dont slide down easily. And the letters B, L and E are pressed towards the glass (you can sort of see him doing this, if you look closely.) It's very cleverly and smoothly done and all credit to him for making this fantastic illusion.

I would do this all the time to see if people were paying attention. I also like what those tennis pros did where they would only use song tiles for all their interviews.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
You can't own land in Ethiopia, you can only lease it from the government. It is to that I am referring. Many other third world nations do not have things like titles to land, a major problem if you were trying to get a loan. No hand out suggested, mealy clear lines in which individuals establish ownership/control over objects might help their situation some, not all, but you have to start somewhere.
So what's needed, in your opinion, is redistribution of wealth. Again, government is respecting property rights -- it just has them all. To "start somewhere" with "individuals establish[ing] ownership/control" over land would mean government hand outs of land.
You know, like the US government did with various homestead acts .
Assuming by ownership of land you meant fee simple titles, and not allodial title
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
And my comments seem to be breaking in response to some of your posts today, wonder what that's about.

VS gets all cranky when you quote someone using the at sign to direct their comment at someone. Usually stripping it out (or just the code around it) fixes it.


I don't think I agree with your basic assertion that government owns all the land by default. Does the government also own your body by default as well? If not, why the arbitrary distinction? If so, grounds for abortion are possible, as well as many other oppressive things. So I don't buy the claim that, government "owns everything", nor would you I would wager. Furthermore, their is a difference between distribution and redistribution. If there is X amount of unclaimed land in the US, it can only be expected that people will make claims for it. The fact that in most cases, the land wasn't bought, but rather given by homestead acts, it served more like individuals submitting initial claims of ownership over them. In reality, this is splinting hairs anyway, as there isn't much in the way of unclaimed land anymore.

I have often thought of using an idea something similar to the Ethiopian model of property rights, however, as a means to limit the ease of transmitting wealth easily (allowing for large accumulations of it) from generation to generation. I thought it might be an interesting means to stop people from trying to horde wealth, and instead, be constantly trying to create new wealth. Instead, I think it works backwards from that. Things you don't own, you are slow to invest long term in. If I own a house, I paint the walls, put in tile floors and other things. When I rent, well honestly you probably can't do most of things, but even if you could, most wouldn't. Owning something is as primitive as it gets, and usually the means in which we use to grow things. You only truly want to grow things that are in your control. If we recognize this, we can use the strengths of it, and try to deal with its weaknesses as best we can.

I thought you might like to see 'part one' of your david Firth sift, 'Roof Tiling'

This is part two.

Archimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. The solar powered heat ray he is credited with inventing is thought by some to be a myth - but it may well have functioned based on the results of several experiments over the years.

Archimedes' heat ray was supposedly used in the Siege of Syracuse to focus sunlight onto approaching Roman ships, causing them to catch fire. Some have theorised that highly polished shields may have been used to focus the sunlight, much in the same way modern solar thermal farms use parabolic collectors.

Parabolic mirrors were described and studied by one of Archimedes' contemporaries, mathematician Diocles in his work "On Burning Mirrors", so their existence and possible application was known in the same time period as the Siege of Syracuse.

Over the ensuing centuries, various parties have attempted to prove or disprove the existence of Archimedes' heat ray using materials Archimedes would have had available to him at the time - and also with more modern materials.

A test in the 1970's by Greek scientist Ioannis Sakkas using 70 mirrors measuring 1.5 metres by 1 metre set fire to a mock wooden ship at a distance of around 50 metres. In 2005, an experiment by students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology using 127 small mirror tiles at a distance of 30 metres from a wooden target resulted in a fire after 10 minutes of perfect conditions. A repeat of this experiment for the Myth Busters television series found Archimedes' solar powered "death ray" was unlikely to have performed as reported and that other weaponry available at the time with the ability to set fire to ships, such as catapults, would have been far more effective and likely used.

More recently, the authors of Green Power Science have demonstrated the solar powered death ray was indeed possible. Using just 27 ordinary flat mirrors of various sizes, they were also able to set fire to a model wooden ship. Under ideal conditions, the mast of the model caught fire in under a minute. They believe Archimedes could have had access to many parabolic mirrors made of highly polished metal that would have provided a more focused reflection than flat glass mirrors; and also the necessary manpower for a substantial manual "solar tracking" system to keep sunlight focused on the ships for long enough to set them ablaze.

http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=1006

Just in case anybody's wondering why the shuttle did a backflip... it's to inspect the heat tiles on the underside of the shuttle which may have been damaged during launch, in case they need repairing for re-entry.

It's very cool footage every time.

When I lived in Europe it finally dawned on me how much water we waste here in the US just by flushing our toilets.

I think it's because we pay so little for water services, as opposed to western Europe.

But in Germany, the toilets were much different than the rest of Europe. There was what my friend described as the "inspection shelf". Your turd(s) thwacked down on bare porcelin, sounding like a steak hitting tile. Then when you flushed, the water whisked it away. Also, most German toilets have two buttons (pee or poo) for how much water is pushed through the toilet.

When I returned to the states, I put glass bottles in my toilet tank to bring the water level down to where it is on the rest of the planet.


>> ^EMPIRE:

I never quite understood why in america, the water in toilet bowls is at such a high level. It looks like a clogged toilet.
Can anyone explain?

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Octo-Baby-Cute-baby-does-a-dance-on-a-tiled-flooe

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by dystopianfuturetoday. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

God this show... It's great and always makes me feel better about my own place (which is best described as clean and tidy to the naked eye, but don't look too close), but it was on all the time at one point, after The Simpsons or something, so I ended up watching it daily. One morning I got up and had this overwhelming paranoia about germs. I've never cared about germs for fucks sake! So I start scrubbing my kitchen tiles, underneath the fridge and all the nooks and crannies, like a woman possessed. This was before the kids had even woken up. Pffffft

Anyway, *promote cos I love Spring!

You might want to add the date of the show to the tile as there is another vid with the same title:

http://videosift.com/video/Christopher-Hitchens-on-Real-Time-with-Bill-Maher

Which was from a different Bill Maher episode..