I just shake my head.

Anyone who (A) insists on wearing ridiculous high-heel shoes, (B) sends models out to walk on slippery fucking walkways with giant swinging pendulums they have to avoid and (C) expects it to be taken seriously has fucking lost their mind and deserves any and all punishment coming their way.

Fuck this obsession with pretentious fashion.

I dunno, maybe in Russia you can't trust the quality of the walkway surface itself, but can trust the supporting structure...

How unsurprising.

Here is a comment from reddit - http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ribzs/zimmerman_shooter_of_treyvon_martin_on_police/c462epk

Yes. Martin's nickname was 'Slim'.

And Martin was only 100 feet from his father's house down the pathway between houses where he was killed by Zimmerman.

And Martin was on the phone with his girlfriend telling her he was scared that he was being chased by some strange man. And she told him to run home.

And the initial confrontation of Martin by Zimmerman was overheard by the girlfriend who heard Zimmerman demanding to know what Martin was doing.

Every new piece of evidence continues to paint Zimmerman as a liar:

[1] http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/19/2703029/us-department-of-justice-fbi-and.html#disqus_thread

"Zimmerman said he had stepped out of his truck to check the name of the street he was on when Trayvon attacked him from behind as he walked back to his truck, police said. He said he feared for his life and fired the semiautomatic handgun he was licensed to carry because he feared for his life."

There are no street signs at the spot where Zimmerman killed Martin - it's a pedestrian walkway between the backs of houses that leads to Martin's father's house

There are no signs of grave injury to Zimmerman like he claimed or any hospital trip

There are only three streets in the entire gated community. Zimmerman didn't need to get out of SUV to check which street he was on

He didn't get 'attacked' by Martin - the girlfriend heard Zimmerman approaching Martin demanding to know what he was doing

Zimmerman expects people to believe that this 17 year kid racing home to his father's house at night in the rain while being stalked by a 250 lb unknown adult armed with a handgun suddenly turned around and attacked Zimmerman savagely enough for the nutcase to shoot Martin and leave no obvious signs of serious injury on Zimmerman's body.

I see what you're saying, and that seems plausible on the surface. I could easily see Universities and Colleges just taking "profits" and folding them into projects around the university that don't directly impact their productivity (hey, let's build a new art museum, hey let's build a supercollider, hey, let's pave the walkways in gold...). That way the increased revenues don't show up as profits or even budget surpluses.

But again that speaks to a more general market failure. In a situation like that, competitors should be able to recognize that there's inefficiency, and take it as an opportunity make a profit by opening a competing firm that's more efficient.

This is supposedly the mechanism that punishes firms that grow fat and inefficient -- a more efficient competitor can swoop in, sell an equivalent product at a lower price and make what used to be your profits into their profits.

All this is making me want to go googling for an economic analysis of the drivers in tuition cost increases. Unlike with health care, I can't really think of much that's special about the higher education market that would make traditional market mechanisms break down.

>> ^direpickle:

Universities are like businesses: they like money. Even if they're not stockpiling cash or being 'for profit', they like money. They like to tear down their old buildings and build new expensive ones so that they can get on the covers of magazines. They like to hire prestigious faculty. They like to get money, and they like to spend money.
Even if their fixed maintenance/faculty/staff/utility/etc costs are "low" (which I'd dispute, but even putting that aside), they will always find ways to spend money, and since they continue to have record enrollment rates even with tuition hikes, they'll just continue to raise tuition (and, yes, perhaps hire more professors) until demand stabilizes.

>> ^chilaxe:

@Porksandwich "Socialism works in other countries, and works quite well."

Does this apply to socialist countries outside of northern Europe?
Socialism works in Scandinavia because it's full of Scandinavians. Scandinavians in the US - regardless of whether their family has been here 100 years or 1 year - are like East Asians and Jews in the US... they contribute to society at a rate far above other cultural groups.
If the US was full of Scandinavians it would rank similarly to Scandinavia, regardless of the differences in economic systems. US outcomes in general are driven by cultural groups.


It would be a lie to say you knew every aspect of every country without living in those countries to judge whether it "works" or not. You'd have to live at every income level and in various locations within each country to really KNOW for yourself. For example the US works quite well if you are a billionaire, but not so much if you make minimum wage. Your opportunity chance is going to be a magnitude higher as a billionaire, and if you fail you won't be destitute...versus the minimum wage worker.

With that said, there is a general theme in the US that if they don't believe they came up with the idea, plan of execution and implementation without basing any of it on "other" countries then we don't want it.

The common argument during the universal healthcare debate was that while other countries offer it, it wouldn't work in the US. And that's where the explanation usually ended, they would always follow up with the US needs to come up with it's own solution. And then inevitably it would be slight changes to the current system that already doesn't work for many. Then we would ignore that something like 30-35% of the US population is already receiving Medicare/Medicaid coverage that would typically be considered a universal healthcare program if it included everyone else.

It was a really disingenuous argument when you consider that they are trying to keep corporations involved in healthcare and never considered that maybe they should throw them out of the decision making process until they've come up with a plan. Then figure out how they could allow them in that wouldn't be detrimental.

I just think they never looked at other countries implementations to see what they could use for a framework in the US and see what would be required to implement it corporations or not.

But the point of all this is that, despite the evidence that things work in other countries. The US fosters the idea that borrowing ideas from other countries and suiting them to ourselves makes us inferior, and we'd rather stew in the mess we've created until we can come up with something wholly uninfluenced by things outside the country rather than try to fix it sooner by looking abroad. This would be a fine mentality if we didn't cut funding on things that were designed to give us the edge when it comes to discoveries of new things and ideas throughout various fields. There was a time when we were openly giving many of those findings to other countries to do what they will with them, but now we in turn are too good to look at them and consider what we could gain from their methods.

Our government is there to serve and protect it's people, but it doesn't protect them from corporations through regulations or limitations of the powers they have over us. SOPA and John Doe piracy lawsuits are good examples. Mortgage crisis is better. None of those serve the people or the society the people make up. And corporations are not people, so they are part of the society but they do not create the society. Corporations should exist as long as they are beneficial to society, not a minute longer.

It may be cultural group driven, but it seems the younger people are willing to abandon cultural beliefs to attempt something else so they have a chance at a future. We as a nation are unwilling to undo what we have done...we look at our past and despite there being evidence of marching down a slowly declining path that is becoming steeper and steeper.....we continue downward. Now we have to wonder if it's so dark we can't see the huge spiked pit with the very narrow walkway for the well off to tread upon. While the rest of us walk blindly into the pit.

Wool over our eyes, blinders, cart on a lead. Tracks to the cliffs edge. Whatever analogy you want to use.

Edited for clarity and thinking ahead and using the wrong word in a couple places.

In regards to Crosswords wondering if there's more than one way to solve the puzzles in Portal 2, I'd say yes, but not to the same degree as the first game in my experience (played the single-player 3 times now). Many test chambers require one specific solution with not much room for creative puzzle solving, well, besides the trial and error process of figuring a puzzle out; it seems that the introduction of all these new mechanics (the three kinds of gel, hard-light walkways, forward/backward tractor beams, faith plates, etc.) cumulatively make for much more specific solutions with less room for player delineation from the designer's intended sequence of events to complete them. So, the instances of forging your own path are there, just not as abundant as in the original. The puzzles themselves are varied enough to make repeat playthroughs still enjoyable, imo. The fantastic sense of atmosphere and thoughtful level/sound design, writing, and story also help.

I haven't played the co-op yet, so no clue on that front.

About the DLC stuff, it seems likely Valve will soon release more level packs, hopefully free. It would make no sense to spend dev resources making paid hats/gestures/doo-hickies if all there is to enjoy them in is the out-of-the-box coop campaign. It would be a smart move to counterbalance paid, non-vital cosmetic stuff with more meaty-but-free maps to ensure a vital and thriving community, a less disgruntled one at that. Valve is usually good about making the essential stuff free, and the paid optional stuff at least theoretically attainable through other means (if TF2 is any indication, also Portal 2 hats/gestures are able to be Found by playing/achievements a la TF2, not sure to what capacity though).

Some advanced chambers of the single-player stuff and a Challenge mode would be nice too. But I digress, we'll see which direction Valve takes it soon enough! Just an already happy customer thinking out loud about how Valve could make it even betterer than it already is.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Gary Moore Parisienne walkways guitar awesome' to 'Gary Moore, Parisienne, walkways, guitar, awesome' - edited by Shepppard

"maybe i'll take a picture"


FUCKING RIGHTS YOU WILL. !!! ! ! ! ! !


after I braved the ten feet down my iced up walkway to take those pictures, least you can do is crack open a blind/curtain and snap one off.





I love monicle smile now I know how to do it.

@EmptyFriend, but you own and pay for your own house. These are public walkways. And no one was chalking the buildings themselves.

It's sidewalk chalk on a sidewalk. And, yes, why is it okay for the little girl and not the adults?

this isn't so much a brick laying machine, more of a platform where people can easier lay bricks.
there's still a lot of manual labor involved. it's not like you just dump bunch of bricks and out comes a walkway.

still cool

I want to see the climb down. I remember going to some forest park as a kid and climbing this tall fire watch tower. You walked up stairs for about half way up, then from there you had to walk on a walkway outside the tower and climb ladders. I thought the climb up was fun and exciting, but when I got to the top and realized how high I was, I was frozen stiff when it came time to go down. When I finally did get down, I realized it wasn't so bad and wanted to do it again.

Even after that I still had a fear of climbing down. Even just climbing a ladder on to the roof of the house. I had no problem getting up, but was always nervous taking the first steps to get down.

If Marijuana is a gateway drug this is a downhill moving walkway leading to a 50' wide revolving door.... drug.

I just found a TEDx event where he presented this (see here) and he makes an interesting point: these don't have to be roads. They can be parking lots, walkways or playgrounds. They're aiming for parking lots first so that, as he put it, they can learn from their mistakes at low speeds rather than throwing them into the fast lane and seeing what happens.

>> ^Mashiki:

Wow. A whole bunch of people in a thread, who think they've had some form of police training and/or DF in a police setting. And know the UoF mandate, and all that. Breaking news! That area the kids from the local highschool actively engage in baiting of cars across a major intersection. There is a walkway above the roadway which they refuse to use.
Second thing, title of video is misleading. She wasn't punched for jaywalking, she was punched for assaulting an officer. I'll now return you to your warped world view, where all of you are experts and have no training. Unlike some of us.



Mashiki can you explain to me any reason why the cop was touching the first girl? What is the proper procedure when a officer see's someone jaywalking?

Wow. A whole bunch of people in a thread, who think they've had some form of police training and/or DF in a police setting. And know the UoF mandate, and all that. Breaking news! That area the kids from the local highschool actively engage in baiting of cars across a major intersection. There is a walkway above the roadway which they refuse to use.

Second thing, title of video is misleading. She wasn't punched for jaywalking, she was punched for assaulting an officer. I'll now return you to your warped world view, where all of you are experts and have no training. Unlike some of us.