Hedges on Truthdig:

I finished my book with a deep dislike for megachurch pastors who, like Trump, manipulate despair to achieve power and wealth. I see the Christian right as a serious threat to an open society. But I do not hate those who desperately cling to this emotional life raft, even as they spew racist venom. Their conclusion that minorities, undocumented workers or Muslims are responsible for their impoverishment is part of the retreat into fantasy. The only way we will blunt this racism and hatred and allow them to free themselves from the grip of magical thinking is by providing jobs that offer adequate incomes and economic stability and by restoring their communities and the primacy of the common good. Any other approach will fail. We will not argue or scold them out of their beliefs. These people are emotionally incapable of coping with the world as it is. If we demonize them we demonize ourselves.

Stabilized downhill footage is pretty dope. http://digg.com/video/gopro-stabalized-mtb

It's more natural to hold a phone in portrait (vertical) than in landscape (horizontal). Typically landscape requires 2 hands -- and if filming landscape with one hand, it becomes easy to lose grip.

I know it ruins the cinematic quality, but he didn't film the dude for our entertainment, he filmed it as proof.

It's also a logistical issue, as it is easier to grip a phone vertically than horizontally. This is the reason why there are so many videos filmed in this mode. Especially in situations where people are unable to use both of their hands to stabilize the video, such as running, when in danger, or at the top of a bridge...

Also, his subject is a human which stands upright, so filming vertical allows him to distribute his subject matter across the entire canvas; whereas landscape would cut off the primary focus and distribute the background on either side of the subject, which is unimportant to the situation, in place of filming the man from head to toe in a single frame.

Just for fun, I stabilized the video. I think that this may have canceled out the "extra" shaking from the camera mount.

EDIT: Just noticed in the original, someone is filming a TV.

https://youtu.be/1RQS7zgaeds

For the same reasons they do it with meat, fruit, vegetables and other foods: control, consistency, easier to mix with other ingredients like sweeteners, stabilizers and preservatives.
Most food companies don't treat food the way households do, but as raw material for creating a product.

The simplest counter argument to your catastrophic prediction is the stability of the paleo-temperature record. If there has been a methane 'time-bomb' just sitting there waiting to be set off anytime the temperature got an extra degree warmer then temperatures wouldn't be stable as they have been over the last millenia. The gradual shifts from ice-age to global rain forests wouldn't have been gradual at all, and likely wouldn't have been reversible either.

The more likely answer is our understanding of climate functions and things like just how much methane is likely to escape in a certain time frame is incomplete.

For starters, I have to oppose the implied thought that Saddam's reign of terror was preventing this sectarian violence. His rule through the Suni minority to wage genocides against the Kurdish and Shia majority and decades of brutal repression of same all served to make the sectarian hatred and violence worse. Tally up the hundreds of thousands he killed through genocide, the million plus he killed in the Iran-Iraq war and everyone that died by direct execution or deliberate starvation level poverty and compare it doesn't stand out as starkly and objectively a desirable alternative to today.

Now if you ask what would I do differently it depends on what level of power I've got to act with. Ideally, we can go back to first Iraq war and have Bush senior march on Baghdad. This would've aborted one of Saddam's genocides. Equally importantly, this would have kept the Shia Iraqi population's view of America as a liberating force. The standing in the desert and watching Saddam slaughter them thing still carried their mistrust of American forces after Saddam's actual removal later. That singularly stupid move of leaving Saddam in power, at the urging of most of the planet, drove the Shia population of Iraq back to Iran as their sole sympathetic ally.

Next step, after the removal of Saddam, whether we can do it back then, or only a few years ago as it really happened is to truly setup an occupation government. You don't bring stability to a region by immediately trying to transition to a democracy before the shooting has even stopped. The occupation government would be run by somebody with actual knowledge and experience with Iraq, rather than as Bush senior did by sending in a guy with zero experience and a two week lead to brief himself. The task you should place on this leader, is to setup a federated Iraq, with distinct and autonomous Shia, Sunni and Kurdish states. The occupation government would dictate things after taking input from Iraqi's rather than holding them to the tyranny of the majority as Bush and co allowed. The occupation would setup an initial constitution defining what laws and agreements spanned all three Iraqi provinces/states and what extent of autonomy they had to define their own systems of government. The American military's job would be to enforce this very basic constitutional framework. Each Iraqi state/province would be aided in setting up their own governments with a transition plan again dictated not voted upon. The transition plan would define the point in time when each state transitioned from occupation rule to a self determined future and rule of law.

The above plan on the whole would work, but Bush and co couldn't have managed post Saddam Iraq more poorly if they had actively tried to.

If zero time travel is allowed and we are to 'fix' things today, you need a lot MORE power. You need an army the size of America or Russia's and the political will to spend several years doing things the public will hate you for. The end game is still the same as above, a federated Iraq kicked off under a dictatorial occupation. To get there from today though you need to create stability. You need to take an army and march it across the entire country. As each city is cleared of militants you take a census of everybody and keep it because you need it to track down future militants. In entirely hostile locations like were ISIS has full rule, you bomb them into the stone ages before marching the army in. The surviving population is given full medical treatment. Now, as for sorting militants from civilians though, you do NOT use American style innocent until proven guilty justice. Instead, any fighting age males are considered guilty until proven innocent. This level of rule of law needs to remain in place until stability can be restored. You of course guarantee lots of innocent arrests, but your trying to prevent massive numbers of innocent deaths so it's required. As you stabilize the nation you can relax back to innocent until proven guilty and work on re-integrating the convicted.

You'll note that although the methods I'd declare necessary above are by any count 'brutal', they do not extend into Saddam's usage of genocide, torture and rape as the weapons of choice.

Not to poke or prod, but then what would you do to stabilize the country? His fear only worked if he killed harmless civilians, otherwise it wouldn't work at all. It's an all or nothing there.

The democratic government, hardly a corrupt government as the media would have you believe, is actually worse by far now than when Saddam was in power. (Yeah, that's hard to believe...but with the mass terror attacks, beheadings, raping of the Yazidi, unpredictable poverty, and the crime by non-terrorists, it is...) So with wholehearted empathy, I ask again. What would you do to help this even-worse situation?

Your video, Gyroscopic Stabilization in Zero-Gravity with CD Players, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

As I was watching this, the footage started to look familiar... it's a re-cut version of @Zifnab's post with new commentary.

I personally think the new commentary is enough to save it from being a dupe.

IANAMD. My understanding is that contrary to intuitions, deceleration on a motor cycle is more dangerous than acceleration. Maintaining stability is your primary concern, less so velocity of impact. You also don't want to be overtaken by faster traffic, you'd rather see your threats. My friends who do ride motorcycles tell me they are taught to drive aggressively by default. I don't think braking is your first instinct in tight quarters.

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Wingsuit Flight Looks Nuts Using "ReelSteady" Stabilization has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579 on that post.

Wingsuit Flight Looks Nuts Using "ReelSteady" Stabilization has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579 on that post.

I could go either way without wider context, I was basing my comments pretty much entirely on my past experience with such people.

However going only off the vid, the couple filming make it clear they hadn't actually paid for the sauces yet, suggesting that the way they asked had caused the conflict if you see what I mean.

i.e. it wasn't withholding already paid for services

When I said entitlement, I really just meant that it seemed like they couldn't handle the idea that they didn't get exactly what they demanded regardless of how they asked or behaved. But it was purely intuition from past experience. Without wider context I couldn't say with any conviction.

I don't have a lot of time for people who conveniently forget you are still a human being just because you work somewhere. I'd always put basic human respect first and never had much time for "the customer is always right" thing if you know what I mean. (I'm not the best guy to hire for such a job as a result)

I think it would be a more civil society if customers were also held responsible for their actions by more companies, but I recognise this is probably hopelessly wishful thinking.

I do recognise that much of our culture is not set up that way, that's why I consider him a braver man than I in some sense. I would just pussy out in favour of economic stability and whatnot.

I would be foolish if I expected things to not work as you have described. But I did feel a little swelling of pride to see the guy appearing to put his dignity before economics. (or just me projecting)

Probably not a smart move, but laudable perhaps in its own little way.
If the job actually matters that much to him, then yes that was clearly self destructive. Though I felt there was a healthy dose of sarcasm when he referred to it as his nestegg. Perhaps I just misread that.

And again, I may just be projecting all of this.

As for the last part, I really just meant that in the grand scheme of things this probably shouldn't matter that much to them. Either they were being assholes, or this guy had bigger problems than they did with his life.

If it had been a habitual problem that could be another matter, but I see no suggestion of that.

Could so easily go the other way, just that the couple instantly set off my "entitled asshole alarm" for whatever reason. It's usually right, but I don't for a moment think it forms the basis of a valid argument. That's why I went to great pains to use only ambiguous language.

I reserve the right to be wrong at all times in life.