Thanks. It's weird, I really didn't see the description...

Looking again, I notice that in the latest layout the title and the 'submitted by' info is located right under the video in the white background area, but the description is lower down in the gray portion on top of the comments. If you didn't have a chance to get your second coffee, you might miss it!

And you know what else is similar? Both NZ and Canada have strong socialist policies with both extensive welfare and medical programs that serve as safety nets for the poor, mentally ill, etc.

Also, one thing both countries DON'T have, as far as a I know, is a huge black/gray market of illegal firearms that are cheaply available. One of the biggest problems in the U.S. is that even if tougher gun laws are enacted, the horse is out of the barn already--there are millions of unregistered firearms that are floating around in the U.S., changing hands at gun shows or simply on street corners and there is little anyone can do about it.

I don't see anything where the video should be... just a big dark gray space...

Look, drugs are bad, okay? My grams did cocaine for so many years, she's barely pushing 98 without the fear of owl brains pouring out of suitcases at 9 in the morning. It's like the gray that unfathomably drips aerosol from the airplane in my parakeet canal. What.

But yeah, this statement is just another example of your EXTREME, at this point willful, Naivety.

Are you sure you read that article?

Because the author reminds us that the only reason those ridiculous false charges were dismissed.. was luck.

New York Housing Authority will generally sit on any evidence for months.
Getting that footage would normally be a batttle in-and-of itself.

In that time, NYPD would engage in character-assassination.
Just like police in Ferguson with Mike Brown. Or Trayvon Martin. Or the man who filmed Eric Garner's death.

So great, a recourse that has an extremely slim chance even go to trial.
Even if it does go to trial, public opinion has already decided..
"Well He deserved it. He was a thug anyway."

And on the even slimmer chance that a cop gets punished for their incompetence.. the damage is already done and the victim/s already dead. i.e. Freddie Gray.

I'm not thinking in binary. There's gray area.

There's no debate about the fact that virtually everyone is somewhat racist. This isn't a debate about that.

I'm saying making any joke that is related to race isn't racist every single time, just as avoiding saying anything that could be construed as racist doesn't mean you're absolved of being a racist.

A joke that is actually racist is expressing an idea or feeling of one race's superiority over another directly or indirectly through humor.

Ironically making racial statements that I absolutely don't believe is NOT racist because I'm not expressing racial superiority. I'm pointing out the idiocy of racism and poking fun at racists.

About the random black person overhearing my joking, yeah, they'd be offended. Thank you for making my point. They'd be offended precisely because they heard those words out of context.

If you saw a grown man say this to a little girl sternly:

"...go cry me a river..."

You might be inclined to think he was acting like a jerk to her. But what if you had heard....

"It's a figure of speech. If you ever for example hear someone say 'go cry me a river', they don't actually mean one person's tears can be that much water."

It's the SAME THING. That man did nothing wrong, but you heard him say 'go cry me a river' to a little girl without context, it may look bad, when it's not.

Just because someone may get offended by hearing something out of context, it is not automatically something wrong with what that person said.

Even the dreaded N-word... Are you telling me that it was wrong and racist for Mark Twain to use it in The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin?

The one thing I would agree with you is that you also have to be mindful of context before saying the joke. Those racial jokes I make? I'm not going to say those in situations where there's a high likelihood that those statements could be overheard and misinterpreted. If I wanted to tell those to a black person, I'd make REALLY sure they knew I didn't actually believe the racial statement.

And you know what? Usually, it turns out fine. I've played that Louis CK thing for a black friend of mine, but I laid down the context first that it's Patrice O'Neal, etc. And they laughed hysterically at it.

Richard Pryor is considered by most comics as being a pioneer in using comedy to shed light and provide insights into racial tensions, etc., and actually is credited by many people far beyond just comedians to have helped further the cause of fighting against racism.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5048430

His use of the N-word wasn't racist. The use of the word was communicating that he was not Bill Cosby, not that there was anything wrong with Cosby's comedy, but it was to signal that he was talking more about reality, including the rough edges especially about racial topics, and there wasn't anything wrong with that either.

The kill somebody thing. You ever seen someone say something like, "My roommate AGAIN left all the lights on! I'm gonna kill him!"? My point there is you shouldn't call the cops because you think he's homicidal.

Anyone remember TI graphing calculators, which at the time I was using them (90s) I think ran on 8088 processors?

Quite a bit MORE expensive than this. MUCH less powerful, even factoring in Moore's law. AND, they were in no way intended to be an open, hackable design like this is. And even with all those limitations, they became one of the primary "introduction to hardware and software hacking" devices of my generation.

When I was a 16-year-old HS Freshman, I had a TI-81 that I hooked up to a PC with a serial port and "hacked" zShell onto. I learned a bit of assembly code and put on lots of little programs like games etc. onto my calculator. I even got an image display program where you could load up bitmap images that were converted to a specific size and color depth (4-8 grays if I remember right). I got busted in my Geometry class that year looking at a blurry grayscale picture of a topless Pamela Anderson. On my calculator. If that doesn't put me in the running for biggest nerd ever, I don't know what would.

Anyway, I can only see this "Chip" thing (I agree that I'm not too big on the name) as a very cool idea. Sometimes, something as simple as a hackable platform or a blurry 4-bit picture of some boobs can be enough to push someone towards a lifelong interest in IT and other technology. Raspberry Pi and the others are great too, but the price of this one gives it a real leg up in the universal accessibility department!

Wow... I honestly got a quick chill up my spine at:
"I also know that Freddie Gray will never be back, and that those windows will be".

That, to me, is as poignant a one-liner as any found in some of the great and famous speeches that can still resonate strongly with us today, years after they were initially given. Big salute to Mr. McKesson, and middle-finger salute to Mr. Blitzer for apparently completely missing the legitimacy and gravitas of those profound words.

Certainly you understand that a mayor (or anyone, really) can request that the governor send them in. I didn't see or hear about any of that. It doesn't have to be done in front of a camera, but if it happened it would have been reported that the mayor had requested that the governor send them in...at least that's how it usually happens.

Have they been deployed now? They had not been last night, the last I saw. I can't understand how the city on fire, cops on the run and injured, and thousands of destructive looters on the streets doesn't meet the requirements, that happened early on. Instead of doing something, they announced a curfew for the next (5?) days and basically let the rioters do their thing on day one. Anyone injured is going to have a good case against the police/city/state for not taking action to stop it.
EDIT: I see now, they sent in 160 national guard members this morning (Tuesday) with more to come...zero on Monday or Monday night/Tuesday early morning.

When it's obvious that local law enforcement is outnumbered 10 to 1 or worse, and the "protestors" have become violent rioters attacking police, citizens, cars, and businesses, and lighting buildings and cars on fire, it's time. That was 3pm, and came with plenty of warnings online. There was pretty good indication that there would be exactly that problem, they should have had serious backup at the ready, they did not.

I can't fathom why there wasn't a curfew last night, there was plenty of time to see it was needed. I also can't fathom why the national guard wasn't requested (yes, I'm sticking with that being proper and normal, but not necessary) by the mayor, or why it wasn't sent in by the governor or the fed without being requested.

It really seemed the authorities could have foreseen there would be severe problems (they've been claiming they have serious credible death threats against the entire police force by numerous factions...that's enough right there to call/send in the National Guard yesterday, before the funeral). Waiting for the problems to happen, then allowing it to continue over night is shirking their duty because they're scared, IMO.

EDIT:from http://www.wsj.com/articles/national-guard-deployed-in-baltimore-amid-riots-after-freddie-grays-funeral-1430218096
Protests over Mr. Gray’s death had been largely peaceful until Saturday, when pockets of violence led to 35 arrests and caused minor injuries to six police officers.
Mr. Batts, the police commissioner, said late Monday that 250 to 300 officers assembled in West Baltimore after a social-media message called on high-school students Monday to stage a “purge”—an anarchic protest based on a film called “The Purge” that includes a period of lawlessness—at 3 p.m. starting at the Mondawmin Mall and ending downtown.
Baltimore police also said they received a threat that city gangs would join together to “take down” law-enforcement officers.

@newtboy - I'm blown away at how certain you are it's all fake. I suggest you do what I did: Instead of using paper on your screen, just take a screenshot and insert into an image editor and inspect things there.

I cut the three tiles out and pasted them side-by-side and they are in fact the same color: http://i.imgur.com/e5lcV5P.png

I dragged straight lines on the checkerboard before and after the dots were added, and it has only straight lines.

I copied/pasted the blue tabletop, rotated it and it fit perfectly on the other one: http://i.imgur.com/QzT8nc8.png

Nothing was fudged in the video. It just shows how powerfully your brain is latching onto what it believes it is seeing.

It's like that dress photo from a few weeks ago. "Is it white and gold or purple and black?!" Many people were hardcore in one direction or the other.

The only one that left me confused is the pills. 1) He said they were red and blue, but they were yellow and turquoise. 2) They had holes in the pills allowing the background color through; it was only there that they looked colored, otherwise they were just gray. I suspect they were just trying to shoe-horn in a red pill blue pill Matrix reference.

exactly the same for me - all the other illusions "work", except this pill one - I saw them both as gray immediately, never red or blue.

(and I have seen The Matrix movie)

The only thing I would add is that the inverse gamma encoding has more to do with band width than disk space. It's about how many gray levels you can send to the monitor per draw frame.

When the gray goo destroys us all, we can blame grahamslam.

I have much more experience than the average person. Lars seems to invent and conjecture as much historical evidence as some other posters here, but what he does is very impressive. You could accurately classify it as trick shooting, but since archery is now a sport instead of a practical thing...it's all pretty gray.

What's neat is that Lars' technique works significantly better than current common practices...albeit in what are currently uncommon situations, such as riding horseback or running & shooting. There are 2 things that makes these kinds of situations difficult:

1) Keeping the arrow resting against the side of the bow and the handle. If you've ever shot before, most beginning shooters will have their arrow accidentally drop to the ground many times before they fire a successful shot. Even for someone who is more than a novice, a strong breeze can easily knock your arrow away from this notch. Shooting while on horseback or running is a whole new level of difficult.

2) Firing rapidly. Firing off many arrows in succession is a difficult thing, seriously. Despite Anna Maltese's dismissal of Lars' demonstration on why firing on the 'wrong' side of the bow is faster, it truly does remove many of the steps, and speeds up the entire process. In modern archery, Right handed people fire the arrow on the left side of the bow, and left handed people fire the arrow on the Right side of the bow. Reasons for this could be conjectured, but from personal experience, learning how to shoot the arrow from the wrong side of the bow is almost like learning archery all over again...it feels weird. From watching related videos, the way Lars holds many arrows in his hand, making sure to rotate each arrow into the appropriate knocked position each time, is a significant achievement that Anna did not touch on.

What's particularly impressive is that Lars has achieved improvements in both categories simultaneously by firing from the wrong side of the bow. To my knowledge, modern trick shooting is the typical shooting style simply with impressive feats of accuracy, or at best being able to throw an object into the air and hit it with one arrow. In comparison, Lars changed the way he shoots his arrows, and has been able to significantly upgrade the art because of it (throwing an object in the air and hitting it with 3 arrows before reaching the ground). In my opinion, this is beyond regular trick shooting, and warrants a reinvestigation on why modern archery is the way it is.