When I watched the first Star Wars movies, it always seemed that the Jedi were just extremely long lived due to the Force and that the Empire had been in power for such a long time people had forgotten about the republic. Even Yoda mentioned he was many hundreds of years old.

It wasn't until the horrible prequels that this was shown to be incorrect and that it had only been a couple of decades. Of course the prequels also introduced other stupid crap like midichlorians (sp?), ship and vehicle designs that seemed far more advanced than anything the empire had 20 years later, tech like robot sized force fields that block light sabers, the Emperor's face being caused by force lightning (instead of just being ancient), etc etc.

Plus, it wasn't just Han Solo who felt this way. For instance:

Tarkin: The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion.

Motti: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels' hidden fort-(begin force choke).

So, to be fair, either the Jedi should have had very little presence in the Republic in the prequels (like to the point that nobody really believed in them beyond 'that's a bunch of hokum), or it should have been many years between the fall and the rebellion. Of course, that means that Luke and Leia would have to have been like great great great grandkids of Vader's, but either way would have made more sense. Having them basically 'running' the Republic's military and people seeing them use the Force all the time just doesn't fit.

1) Depends
2) WHY?!?
3) Dunno. It shrinks as girls age, possible it helps keep germs etc out before, you know, anything else might need to go there.
4) The same way as women prolly. Winky Face. I'd wager men have probably _seen_ about as much, or possibly more, hymen (Hang on, plural of hymen? Hymens?) than women given-
a) I don't imagine it's actually that easy for women to see their own hymen - feel free to correct me on this ladies.
b) Gynecology, as indeed almost all of the medical specialist areas, has been the domain of men until recently.

Oh, and I did google it and I don't regret it because of this entry on the wikipedia page:
"In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, medical researchers used the presence of the hymen, or lack thereof, as founding evidence of physical diseases such as "womb-fury", i.e. (female) hysteria. If not cured, womb-fury would, according to these early doctors, result in death."

One wonders what treatment they might have prescribed for WOOOMB-FURY!!!!

@artician, I think you can fairly safely ignore that rumour.

@CrushBug, I dunno. I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I think she lacks the physical presence for the role.

@lucky760 @newtboy

Censorship according to the internet: "the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts."

I see public internet communication as a constantly published work of the human intellect, therefore all digitally published and public communication is media and therefore subject to censorship -- and Videosift now offers a form of individual censorship to its members, not simply the acceptable ignore feature which allows you to check the communication if you so desire.

It bothers me that people would completely block out other people's published work -- and not just their published work but their very existence -- for the same reason that it bothers me that people ban books I don't read at libraries. Mein Kampf is still a book, a poorly written book which glorifies hatred, but still an important part of human literature.

You can choose not to read it, but you can't censor it's existence from reality. Not without burning every copy and then erasing every digital copy. Though perhaps in the future an algorithm will be available which does something similar on an account wide level, visually removing all unfavorable literature and blocking people's facial features, making it so that that person and their communication might as well not exist. But I wouldn't want it to be nullified from my vision while walking through a library, anymore than I would want to nullify a person's existence who offends me; and by extension I believe the freedom to exist and to be acknowledged is an important freedom that we take for granted. You should NOT be able to remove someone from your personal existence. Yes, there are laws in place to do this, but they require criminal abuse to come into effect.

There are greater implications of this type of censorship, that perhaps do not apply directly to the Sift in it's short temporal existence and small community. But it's still an offence to my sense of justice in the realm of communication that such a thing is possible. Even the < ahref="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-04/14/google-algorithm-predicts-trolls-antisocial-behaviour">troll algorithm isn't intended to ban or censor trolls outright, but rather to detect problematic people and find a way to limit the harm they do to a community without removing them from a community.

I think it's one thing if you want to prevent someone from posting on your profile -- which is what should actually be an option (if it isn't already) -- but to silence their voice in video comments is a high form of censorship that I fundamentally stand against. I quite enjoyed some of what Chilngalera had to say; not always and often he offended me -- but not enough to desire to remove him from my existence. I don't think anyone except violent/sexual offenders deserve that. If he vocalizedd violence and sexual threats, why would he still be in the community at all? And if he's banned, why do you need to have an option to block out people's existence?

I was employed for many years to police several massive online roleplaying games, and an ignore feature was a widely accepted form of preventing harassment -- but when it came to erasing the person's avatar or their character's physical body from the game, we always voted against such outright blotting out of a human being. Our rational was and is to this day that if the person cannot communicate to you via explicit words, their presence is an acceptable form of nonverbal communication and a reminder that they are a human being in the community, even if verbally hobbled -- because at that point they have no means of articulating hurtful words.

But to erase that person's presence is a greater act against both the human spirit and human expression as to be a reprehensible act in an of itself. Unless they commit such atrocious behavior in the form of real life physical threats of violence, constant racial/sexual slurs (in a bucket system of soft banning leading up to a permanent ban) or other forms of insidiousness, preserving their humanity is more important to a community than erasing another human being.

I didn't run into schmawy much here, but he was always around. I will miss that presence. Take care in the everafter, wisdomkitty.

I'm deeply saddened that Schmawy passed away and my hope is that it was swift and painless.

He was one of the few people who seemed to make friends with everyone and keep a balanced, mellow outlook. He will be missed and remembered.

I didn't know him much in real life other than a casual facebook friend (slightly more real life than videosift), but on videosift he was a big presence and losing his voice has made the place a little colder.

Good bye, Schmawy, it was fun.

The posting guidelines define it very clearly:

"The presence of human fatality is acceptable and not considered "snuff" if presented as a limited, incidental portion of a lengthy educational, informative news report or documentary that encompasses a much broader narrative. Our definition of "snuff" does include but is not exclusive to any short clip in which a human fatality occurs whether or not any victims are actually visible on camera."

I believe I do know what I'm talking about, unlike some.

The presence of human fatality is acceptable and not considered "snuff" if presented as a limited, incidental portion of a lengthy educational, informative news report or documentary that encompasses a much broader narrative. Our definition of "snuff" does include but is not exclusive to any short clip in which a human fatality occurs whether or not any victims are actually visible on camera.

Many 'newsworthy' videos have been removed because they were far less graphic snuff than this, even though they also were newsworthy and informative (unlike this video). This was nothing more than a graphic murder in full view with a second violent killing alongside it, plain and simple, and there's no more egregious, clear, or more clearly forbidden type of snuff than a short clip of nothing more than blatant violent multiple murder in full view and color. It was not incidental to the video, it WAS the entirety of the video, and there was no narrative or educational portion at all.

@dag, a ruling please.

Sweet Bastard Zombie Jesus!

You don't think well, and are 100% wrong about both my education and acquaintances, but you, on the other hand, do not seem to have either education or personal acquaintances to draw from on this subject. It seems some militant Feminist (they are not the only brand of Feminist, BTW) left a bad taste in your mouth, so now all feminism, to you, is distasteful. That's like eating a single spoilt sausage and from then on loudly telling people at dinner "meat is all tainted and it all makes you sick...you're just too dumb to know it", and continuing on that vein until they either (from exasperation) either stop eating it in your presence or find a way to ignore you, IMO, because attempting to rationally explain that some improperly handled meat is tainted, but not all, falls on deaf ears.

Dictionaries are where you look up the definitions of words, which is exactly what I did. Because you can't grasp the concept doesn't make it wrong.

Because your mind can't grasp the difference between the name of a movement based loosely on an idea and that idea does not mean there isn't one. Sorry, fail, just like your second paragraph in your last post which included many ANTI-feminist theories along with some overboard militant Feminist theories...I wonder if you can follow that thought since you don't grasp the difference in the words and claim there isn't one.

Equality is not advancement of one group at the expense of the other, it's the discontinuation of that process.

MY dictionary?!? Me thinks you protest too much. What's your issue with the English language (or language in general) that use of one of the main tools of language causes you such consternation and spawns such disrespectful and angry sounding replies? I honestly think you're just angry that I proved your argument's major flaw (that flaw being your inability to distinguish between a loose group's name and an idea...which makes one wonder, do you believe there were roaming gangs of large, dark colored cats protesting and attacking police in the US in the 60's and 70's?), but can't bring yourself to admit your argument had any flaw.

"Cultural fiction of gender"?!? Oh...I didn't realize I was having a discussion with a completely crazy person. If you actually believe gender is a "cultural fiction", there's no point discussing anything with you, because you live in a different reality from the rest of us that actually HAVE a gender, and not just culturally derived gender, and have ancestors that had gender before there was such a thing as "culture". What an insane statement, one that totally missed the point as well.

Spit on me, you'll find yourself in a bad place, and you'll find that many in favor of Women's rights are also in favor of removing ALL involuntary cultural distinctions of gender, a thing that has NOT been done by far, and you wish to stop any advancement towards equality of genders while one side is SO far ahead based solely on their GENDER. (damn, that word again describing a thing that doesn't exist...you must hate that, huh?)

Yes, if you fail to even conceive that, unfairly, there is a gender split in society that 99% of the time favors one gender to the detriment of the other, you by default fall into that opposing force, opposing fairness and equality, and individualism. No question. It's sad to me that you can't see that.

I'll ignore your last 2 paragraphs, I'm not speaking for @bareboards2, she's perfectly capable of speaking for herself, but has intelligently decided that further discussion with you on this subject is pointless...and I see she's likely right, you just want to argue about it, as made clear by your never ending arguments spawning from a simple clarification of what 2 words (spelled the same, but one being a proper name, the other an idea) actually mean...according to THE dictionary, and your insistence that the dictionary is wrong because it doesn't support your position that feminism and Feminism are the same thing. BWAAAHAAHAAHAAHAA!! That's too funny. Thanks for the laugh.

Enjoy exploring that hypothesis further, but without my further input. My points are made, some repeatedly.

Dude, I'm not dissing deskjobs here. It's just that for the vast majority of jobs, a 32 hour week can't work unless you have more employees. Yeah, in his company that works and it's brilliant but as soon as you get into jobs that require actual physical labor (let's say construction work) or physical presence (for example sales clerks or cops) it doesn't. It's a huge upside of his company, it's just unrealistic for 80% of every other job.
I can have as many sandwiches as I like at my job. All the fucking time. I can eat Creme Brûlée till I puke my guts out. Cops get to beat up people and pornstars get to have earth-shattering orgasms. Every job has an upside.
This dude acts as if he just found out something amazing. Or as if he just made a commercial for his company.

May you savor your day deathcow. Good to see you've graced our planet with your presence for another year .... moooooo [cough]

See, the presence of a vest-mounted camera prevented an outbreak of violence here.
Proves the need.

I was providing a more "technology tailored" way to fool us and how it might create a great magic trick. I also love magic tricks that make use of self-created "magical" devices (his vest counts towards what I'm talking about).

As I mentioned there are probably quite a few ways to do this trick and I wholeheartedly agree with you that the most likely way the majority of this was done was via misdirection and cues. As it is true with almost everything, the simplest answer usually is the truth.

I however, became interested with he kept moving his hands (and the "cards") to the same spots or moving them, repeating, the same movement over and over again right before the "change" or flip occurred (with other things as well like the smoke--and yes, I know it was more than likely misdirection--but, sometimes smoke is just smoke ).

That is what made me think of a scanner (mostly because I'm a computer/engineering/physics hippie and I have seen scanners that can be made to look exactly like that mat; but I also have learned a bit of magic, with that instead of becoming an amateur magician I instead learned about magic and it's history instead). But, like you said and I also said above in my comment, this all can/could be done through many various schemes. Using differing ways of that same scheme/idea, the same mechanics and/or devices, with sleight of hand and a lot of misdirection (very well done too, simply because there was so very much of it needed--which Penn & Teller commended him on in their own way).

His jacket for example is obviously HIS engineered creation. It has a lot of hidden and secret functionality; in fact it may have been the underlying foundation that allowed the whole trick to work so well (you never know just what exactly is the magician's biggest helper in many tricks). That is what I love, personally, about magic is the engineering and love--the workmanship--that can go into it. Every great magician definitely has that engineering facet to their personality; they all know how to create a device that gives them just what they need. I've seen so many magical devices and how they were used and how they're made as well and I must say, it is a terribly interesting thing to learn about and see done. Sometimes you have devices made just to perform one extremely small function, just to add that little bit of "panache" to a trick...

Every magician--good and average--however do have or need one thing in common no matter what, and this refers to what you talk about (and this magician may be leagues ahead of others, making all tricks completed in that same manner seem simple and mundane compared to what he can accomplish with the exact same, extremely fundamental, aspect to magic; pulling off tricks that almost all magicians would believe to be impossible using such a standard fare of abilities and methods): agility and sleight of hand. With this comes the uses for that "god-like" speed and manipulation. Use that with engineered tools (not necessarily what I mentioned--the scanner, printer, and ink method--but, things easier to craft and more likely to be used like his vest) and it can suddenly make any of the simplest tasks (or even tricks that other magicians perform) we do everyday, extraordinary if not miraculous.

I thought I'd add my idea, because I like to figure these tricks out as well; as I'm sure many of you are as well.

Overall, if I was Penn and Teller, I'd be most impressed with his ability to keep his showmanship intact while obviously needing great concentration on the trick at the same time--not to mention he keeps showing superb sleight of hand the whole time.

So many magicians are just amazing to watch. The tools they create (which can be so complicated that you'd never believe that someone would create such a thing or something fairly complicated to complete one very easy task) sometimes never let their presence be known--if done right. But in other cases you know there is "something" helping the magician, but you can't begin to imagine what exactly he has created or what exactly it is accomplishing for him.

I do wish they'd give us a general idea how these tricks are performed, without destroying the "magic" involved. Just tell us general things, like "misdirection and a magical device", etc... They don't need to explain it into it's minutiae.

I'll always love magic and the amazing use of the mind and the body to create illusions grand and small (or "magic" that just tests the limits OF the mind or the body; feats, as it were).

When the body and mind work together in perfect unison to create such wonderful uses of sleight of hand, feats, and "magical" devices...these are the type of people that will continue--hopefully for as long as humans exist--to create magic as real as it can get. Waking up the child inside us all!

/length

I don't normally feel the need to stand to attention in the presence of the flag, buuuttt, I can make an exception in this case.

To be fair, I don't see "check all hollow volumes for the presence of small stowaway mammals" in the pre-flight checklist:
http://flighttraining.aopa.org/students/presolo/skills/howtopreflight.html

A cat (or whatever) that doesn't want to be found probably isn't going to interfere with control surfaces working correctly, etc. This is exactly the kind of very infrequent, random event that human beings are likely to overlook when doing something like a routine check that comes back nominal 99.9% of the time.

So, I'd wager that the pilot probably did all of the checks correctly and they just failed to reveal the one-in-a-million chance of "cat in wing". And to swing the other direction a bit and praise him instead of admonishing, he was admirably cool as a cucumber while coming back in for a semi-emergency landing. So I guess I'd argue for "pilot win" instead of "pilot fail".