Very elegant presentation.

The little white panel that pops up should really have an elegantly stenciled middle finger on it.

Breaking the board is the important bit, but how you break it is even more important. Learning how to punch correctly takes time, effort, concentration, discipline etc, you learn about yourself and about life's challenges in a natural way. It's not something that can be forced fed into you in this contrived manner, because the pain of persistent effort and burden of continual concentration in your mind is much greater than any temporary physical pain. Truly challenging yourself is much harder than any task someone else can set for you.

Otherwise, what is the lesson here? Life is hard, so don't prepare, and then use brute force to make up for it later? Life and martial arts are both about applying the most elegant and effective solution that fit the problem, not about brute forcing your way through things.

So really, the instructor has failed at training both the mind and body here. If he wants the child to believe in himself that he can punch, then teaching the right technique will give the child that confidence in much better way. The child would have never doubted his ability to punch well in the first place, as he overcame life's challenge long before it even was a challenge.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by oritteropo.

What I get as the "point" of the One Ring is
A) backup / fallback plan in case Sauron is killed so he won't be completely destroyed (containing some of his soul / essence)
B) a trap to facilitate his control of the other races by tempting and corrupting them

And I think your take on the reason for the invisibility is correct according to the way Tolkien intended it. But it still doesn't sit real well with me. To me it feels better to imagine the whole ring story as a take on "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".

The other rings of power are interesting. The three for the elves are largely free of the influence of the one, because Celebrimbor was already very suspicious of Sauron / Annatar when he made them. So the elves can and do continue to use them, though warily.

The seven for dwarves aren't discussed a lot, but hinted that they help corrupt the dwarves natural appreciation for gems and gold into a darker greed for those things. That dovetails into stuff in The Hobbit pretty well. So, while they don't corrupt dwarves in the same way they do men, they DO lead to isolation and and factionalization of the dwarves, which I suppose could have been Sauron's intent.

The nine for humans seem to work quite well as judged by Sauron's intent for them.


I guess that overall, I just feel like temptation and corruption of wearers of the one ring seems like a very elegant way to achieve Sauron's goals when he made it. A ring that grants the wearer the single ability that they most desire but also will be most tempted to abuse would be very difficult for people (and elves or dwarves or whoever) to resist. Gandalf and Galadriel are directly offered the ring but refuse only because they both *know* that they would be corrupted by it. I don't see invisibility as enough of a game-changing ability for either of them to be so confident that they couldn't handle it.

Don't care. At all.

Still, it's good to have the argument put to you so that you can reject it. Most people consume animal products because most people consume animal products, not because they've made an intelligent moral choice.

I see videos like this and mainly I think about how cool and elegant are the logistics involved in food production.

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There's that, too, and that's an elegant solution to the under-inflating problem. But if you look at the initial small bag he inflates (at ~0:46) he basically blows in it and then the end somehow seals itself and he holds it while it stays fully puffed up. There's some type of one-way valve he's created.

You are entirely right.
Entirely.

And yet...
I have been this guy more than once in my life. Or so I am told by others.
To me, it just seems like I've found an elegant way to solve a problem.
lol
But yes, you are right.

*promote the macabre reality in an elegant form

Ever since I was a kid, I was always fascinated with the click pen mechanism. Its such an elegant design, IMO.

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I love mechanical elegance like this. Electronics can do all sorts of fabulous things these days but it's all gone way beyond my understanding. I'm sure there is every bit as much elegance in good programming as there is here but I just can't see it, understand it.

This is such an elegant and simple mechanism, every bit does what it needs to do, and integrates perfectly with all the other parts. Everything just works together as it should. Beautiful.

Logical. Elegant. Beautiful.

And channeling choggie at the same time.

Well done.

The advantages of laissez-bribé should be evident to anyone.

It removes the current disincentive to report bribery and the incentive to act on its influence. It reduces the ability of malefactors to gauge the effectiveness of bribes and removes any hold they have over their subject, because there can be no question of impropriety. It allows for effective monitoring of corruptive influence, provides a running record of officials' interests and creates a new platform for understanding and managing the economic imperatives inherent in the public-private interface. It even builds an inescapable fine into the act of bribery itself and converts otherwise hidden income into taxable revenue! Could there be a more elegant and socially responsible system?

Requires oversight, sure, but it's obviously functionally superior to any naive moralistic alternative.

I think James Randy Moss probably understood all this and, American hero that he is, valiantly laid his career on the line to usher in a new era of honesty and accountability in public service.