Impressive how a machine goes to the trouble of finding a low count of moves to solve the whole thing at once. I wonder if the best humans do this. Mere mortals use a sequential systematic approach which means a lot more moves.

BTW this is not "solving", or "cheating to solve" its just blindly following the orders of our electronic overlord.

The A7S II is an incredible piece of hardware but it maxes out at a little over 400,000 effective ISO while the X27 can do 5,000,000 effective ISO. Of course, the A7S II is much more accessible for mere mortals/civilians.

Clear his head.... I have read that those who do dangerous things have different biochemistry than us mere mortals.

I'm thinking he has different biochemistry.

I like a lot of anime, but I have to say, this bit embodies everything I hate about anime. This is the reason Matrix II and III sucked, this is why Superman movies always suck. Heroes need limits comprehensible by us mere mortals, otherwise the action just becomes a bunch of incomprehensible garbage (like the above).

That's Autolycus, King of Thieves. No mere mortal, you cur.

I can agree that he whipped out the taser a bit early and that perhaps there should have been a warning given. "Hey, I will tase you if you do not step back."

Thing is though, I seriously doubt it would have changed a thing. Douchebags like that don't stand down in situations like that. In the Douchebag's mind, he is the evolved Nietzschian Superman genius, and the guards are part of the evil empire so there was simply nothing the guard was going to say to The Elevated One to convince him to step back peaceably and wait his fucking turn like the rest of the mere mortals.

Doesn't matter how right he thinks he is. It doesn't matter if he is ultimately right about everything he was ranting about. The rule is no cameras and he refused to comply. The guard did his job, maybe a bit too eagerly, but he did his job.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

dead (yes, I know Sifty, I'm a mere mortal, and you ignore my commands)


Thanks, *fixed!

*dead (yes, I know Sifty, I'm a mere mortal, and you ignore my commands)

@ReverendTed

Abortion is not murder, but that's not really the point. America, and by extension, the world, doesn't really have a problem with killing as a whole. We war with ourselves and kill fellow beings in the name of religion, politics, land and other resources. We kill criminals if they commit heinous enough crimes. We kill vast amounts of wildlife for fun and sport. We kill flies and other insects merely because they bother us. We step on insects without even knowing it.

We humans kill.
We are killers.
There is no escaping this fact.
Create the right conditions and anyone will kill...anyone.

The only thing you can do is: 1. Hopefully create a world in the future where we don't have to kill as much and 2. Hope that we are killing for the right reasons. Sometimes this will be true, sometimes it won't be. But that's life. That's the human condition. A law will change nothing other than whether or not abortions are performed safely or not. I choose to live in a world where if someone I know decides to have an abortion, that they do it safely with a doctor and not in some back alley. Abortions will happen REGARDLESS of what the law says. If we're going to end an unborn child's life, let's at least make sure the mother remains safe. Outlawing abortions just increases the chance that we'll have two ended lives instead of just one.

Abortion, by definition is the LAWFUL termination of an unborn child...LAWFUL. Murder is the UNLAWFUL termination of a life. Key distinction there.

This false morality that some people are somehow above and beyond the rest of us mere mortals and hold life to be irrevocably sacred just does not understand history or the human condition. These sorts of people seem to be the same people who would casually send us to war for religious or ideological reasons and thus condone the termination of more lives. The hypocrisy is glaring.

In regards to this notion that a person would go have an abortion just because a baby would be inconvenient is sad certainly, but when it comes right down to it....tough. Cost of living in a free society. people are going to things you don't approve of. deal with it. Your rights end where mine begin and vice versa. People who go have abortions out of convenience are in the minority. Quit worrying about what the minority does..especially with their own body. You and I don't get to decide what is right for someone else.

We don't live in a post-scarcity world yet. If every viable pregnancy ever was brought to term, we would have an even bigger resource shortage problem on our hands.

We live in a world where your quality of life (and your offspring) is directly related to your job. Until the quality of life of humanity becomes more equalized, We are going to continue to have situations where if someone gets pregnant it will directly affect their quality of life (and their child's) for the worse. So I really don't have a problem with someone terminating the pregnancy so that they go on to improve their quality of life so that they can have a kid later who will benefit from that better quality of life.

I too would ideally prefer adoption to abortion. But that's not exactly saying much. Adoption agencies have tons of kids and not enough parents to go around. As fertility science continues to improve, fewer and fewer parents are going to want adoption when they can just undergo a procedure and still have their own. This recently happened to a friend of mine who was having difficulty conceiving. She and her husband initially decided to adopt, but at some point, they changed their mind and pursued some massively costly fertility treatments so that they eventually did conceive. I was immensely happy for her, but at the same time, I personally felt they should have stuck with the adoption as those orphans are already here and need help now. But here's the thing. It's not my choice, it's hers and her husbands. So we can deal with the realities of the situation or continue to play hypotheticals. If everyone gave their kid up for adoption instead of abortion, we'd just have a different kind of problem and the quality of life of a vast amount of kids would be affected for the worse.

As for your big questions, They are best left to people far more educated on this subject than you and I. Of course there is some point in a pregnancy where abortion should no longer be an option. I don't think anyone is arguing this. As you say, the question is when. I simply don't know and am unqualified to make that judgement. No matter what is decided upon, it obviously won't satisfy everyone, but a decision has to be made and you can't please everyone.

I guess on the one hand, I agree with part of his rant -- elections don't matter enough, and there's too much continuity in policy from President to President, from Congress to Congress.

On the other, I think it's largely spun in a self-serving way from a right-wing ideologue. His big complaint is that the parties are too similar, but then largely misidentifies this as somehow inherently a liberal confluence of policy, when the real issue is that we haven't had a liberal shift in America's policies since before I was born.

A lot of the problem, IMO, is that conservatives like to sell people on the idea of "divided government" and the whole idea that adding opportunities for the minority to stop things from happening (like the filibuster) are the essence of "limited" government.

They've been on a decades-long crusade to stop or sabotage the government from acting effectively on any topic, and now they're complaining that their success means they were right that the government is some unresponsive, ineffectual, cold-hearted leviathan that must be destroyed...even though they had a lot to do with it getting that way, and have worked tirelessly to keep it that way, regardless of whether people vote for them or not.

I don't really know how we're going to get out of this situation, but the solution has got to start with people getting fed up with this blame-shifting excuse coming from the right. Government is not some alien creature acting on its own whims, it's a human institution, populated with human beings, acting in accordance to laws that are voted into existence by people.

People who think "government" is the problem, are letting the actual people responsible for the problem off the hook, because they're too apathetic to figure out who's really to blame. And assholes like Judge Napolitano want to help encourage them to keep blaming "the government" by trying to make it seem like it's some all-encompassing conspiracy that no mere mortal could penetrate, rather than it being the direct result of decades of Republican malfeasance left unchecked by anyone, including Democrats.

And forgive the rant, especially if you're not normally into politics.

In reply to this comment by eric3579:
http://videosift.com/video/Unprecedented-wisdom-coming-out-of-Fox
I dont do politics but this got to me a bit fired up. I know this is something you might be interested in and was curious what you and @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://netrunner.videosift.com" title="member since August 5th, 2006" class="profilelink"><strong style="color:#0000CD">NetRunner thought.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^Yogi:
>> I presume so, and would then ask, what step do you believe in each generation should have been taken to make the bad situation better instead of making it worse?


Not support Saddam Hussein and his gassing of his own people as well as a brutal 8 year war with Iran? One of the many reasons Iran hates us with very good reason by the way.

That's what I thought.
For the rest of us mere mortals who lack the ability to solve problems by using time travel, what should be done to make the situations better instead of worse?


OH you mean what could OBAMA Do. I don't know because I'm not an expert on Foreign relations. You'll have to read more Chomsky I guess.

>> ^Yogi:

>> I presume so, and would then ask, what step do you believe in each generation should have been taken to make the bad situation better instead of making it worse?


Not support Saddam Hussein and his gassing of his own people as well as a brutal 8 year war with Iran? One of the many reasons Iran hates us with very good reason by the way.


That's what I thought.

For the rest of us mere mortals who lack the ability to solve problems by using time travel, what should be done to make the situations better instead of worse?

>> ^mas8705:

I wish I knew how to post images, this would be appropriate to show in this situation...
http://tvmedia.ign.com/tv/image/article/121/1212349/wwe-raw-20111115034046035.jpg


Try:

<img src="http://tvmedia.ign.com/tv/image/article/121/1212349/wwe-raw-20111115034046035.jpg">

I can't, cuz I am a mere mortal.

>> ^chilaxe:

@NetRunner "rather gross display of immodesty"
Ha. But we're evaluation the relative merits of meritocracy vs. collectivism/experientialism, so looking at the outcomes in terms of how good they are for contributing to humankind seems relevant.

That doesn't seem to be the conversation we're actually having though. We're talking about the merits and shortcomings of markets. I don't have some utopian structure for society I'm trying to sell, I'm mostly trying to debunk the idea that markets are some utopian ideal we should strive for.

>> ^chilaxe:
"My problem with that is that those incentives don't work... Your "lazy liberal" friends still exist despite our largely Randian society"
Isn't that mostly because collectivist/experientialist culture tells us to not follow incentives?

No.

...and even if it was, it's another case of the invisible hand failing to work as advertised.

More to the point, is payment really your only motivator?

Let's suppose you're right, and what you're doing is tremendously more important to humanity than what the rest of us mere mortals are doing. Would you really stop working on it if you got paid less, or if everyone got paid the same no matter what they did?

Isn't the intellectual pursuit enjoyable enough to get you to continue? Isn't the benefit to humankind enough?

Shouldn't it be?

thats double or triple SLI country anyway right, not for mere mortals