This video Destin does on the structure of the Prince Rupert Drop is really interesting.
https://videosift.com/video/Glass-Exploding-at-130-000-fps-aka-Prince-Ruperts-Drop

In retrospect, this seems like such an obvious move, I had basically assumed that was going to be the structure of the movie from watching the trailer.

As nerdwriter points out though, it's easy to to say that with the benefit of hindsight.

**EDIT**
I'm finding other sources that say that sterile "terminator seeds" are a patented technique, but that Monsanto has promised not to use it. Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/terminator-seeds.aspx

So it appears that my info below is wrong. I will try to talk with my family and get the full story. That being said, I'll leave my original comment and the followup below unaltered.
*********


My firsthand knowledge of this stuff was from more than 10 years ago, and also when I was pretty young (early 20's). So I did some web searching to try to get updated since your question is a very interesting one:

http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/about.html

According to that, Monsanto is the company behind "Roundup Ready", and their corn (and other crops in the line) do use sterile "terminator seeds". It also mentions that farmers "must purchase the most recent strain of seed from Monsanto" each year.

I was never in the decision-making structure of my family farm, but I did remember that we couldn't just buy the Roundup Ready seed *once* and then hold a small amount back as seed for the next year and continue to get the benefits.

I'm not 100% sure exactly how the modification for sterility works -- I don't know if the plant will sprout if you plant the sterile seeds and just fail to produce any ears / fruit, or if it just won't germinate at all. I do remember that we had to be quite careful to fully clean out the corn grown from the GM seeds from our storage bins, and better yet to store our non-GM corn to be used for future seed in entirely different bins. That was done to make sure that we didn't end up planting any of the sterile stuff.

I'm sure that the seed dealers that sell the GM stuff really push farmers to buy and plant it every year, as hinted to in that link. But you certainly don't *have* to. On the other hand, if you go back to non-GM seed for a year or two or more, you can't use a strong herbicide like Roundup if you have an unexpected outbreak of weeds or other pest plants -- the Roundup would kill the non-GM crop along with everything else.

Basically, I don't specifically begrudge companies like Monsanto for their practices concerning these GM crops. The "terminator seeds" are controversial, but don't seem like a big deal to me. If you could buy GM seeds once and then just hold back some of your harvest for next season's seed, they'd only get your money once AND we'd probably lose the original strains. So I see that as kinda win-win, especially if you don't 100% buy into their sales department urging you to use GM seed every single year.

I don't want to sound like a shill for Monsanto -- some of their other practices are pretty shady, particularly political lobbying. But from the perspective of my family farm, the GM corn that we use was/is a real beneficial thing. Significantly less pesticide/herbicide use over time, and it allows for expanded low/no till farming. Before herbicides, tilling was one of the only ways to kill off pest plants. But, it also makes the fields lose some moisture and nutrients. Expanded farming and ubiquitous tilling was largely the cause of the "dust bowl" dirty 30's. Anyway, I'd say that a lot of good has come out of modernized techniques and technology like GM crops.

Quoting Sniper007:

" A child is put at a tremendous disadvantage when they are taught that they can not learn anything except through formal schooling."

-- I completely and 100% agree with this, except . . .

" This is the inevitable life lesson all children are taught in schools (public or private)."

-- Reeeeealllly? Can I get some kind of cite on this? FWIW, I attended public schools -- good and bad -- and never came away with this lesson at all. Nor do I know anyone else who has. In fact, I'd say my view is the polar opposite of your own: as a self-made man, the most valuable lessons I've learned have come from experience (better known as The School of Hard Knocks).

"But for those who do wish to so delegate the sacred honor of teaching one's own child to a third party government agent(...)"

-- So you can't do both? You can't have trained educators teaching your child important fundamentals like math, science, languages and arts while you teach them social skills and whatever form of ethics and mores you want to instill them? To do the first is the cede the second?

Here's a little anecdote on my experience with home schooling:

My sister, now 30, was home-schooled by my parents. Her entire work history, up until now, has been a disaster. Lost jobs, conflicts with managers and co-workers, absenteeism -- everything shy of stealing from her employer. Why? Because she expected the world to revolve around her once she had her GED. She thought she was smarter than everyone else because she never had the social experience of encountering different levels of competence. Because home schooling catered to her needs and wants, she figured employers should do the same. Because she never had to learn classroom structure, she never learned to play nice with authority and know her place and work within it.

This is an anecdote and therefor does not equal data. But I think had my parents decided to send my sister to a public school, she'd be a lot farther ahead in her work-life than she is now and she would have had an easier road getting there.

Your mileage may vary, and hopefully will.

Nothing is ever simple. I'm just not properly explaining what I was saying -- Jon Stewart went off and did his public speaking, crowd organizing thing with this belief in something that he couldn't quite define. He lost his mojo, in a way, saw that he was naked, bereft of his staff. Any talking/figure head with a staff of writers or information feeders can be comparable to other leaders of a similar make up. Trump and Stewart are reality tv stars of a similar make up.

Dag suggested that the writers of the Daily Show are what created Jon Stewart as we know hom, and so I ran with the idea that he, like the figurehead and reality star, Donald Trump, are products of other people's opinions -- this, when left to their own devices, while successful entertainers, they realize the emperor's clothes are transparent and now they have to rely on their own smaller slice of knowledge. Not that Stewart is dumb, but Stewart without writers and correspondents, is a similar archetype to Trump. Stewart's writers and correspondents, including the man whose show he is on in this clip, are akin to the media that Donald Trump treats like his writing staff. But instead of leaving the Daily Show, Trump is leaving *most* of the media, revealing he is not as knowledgeable without his sources.

Anyway, I was following the logic as laid down by dag's logic for why Jon isn't as funny or put together. I also know that good leaders put themselves in other people's shoes before giving advice to other leaders. Stewart MUST do this because he is a decent figurehead, but Trump doesn't -- that's why the media questions him on what biographies he is reading; leaders are supposed to put themselves into their rivals AND heros shoes as a matter of critical self analysis -- so, Stewart is speaking to the media almost as if he is also putting himself in Trump's shoes and speaking about how his own writing staff and correspondent's left him and succeeded.

Stewart has a 4 year contract with HBO. He will have the structure and writing teams he needs. Trump should utilize the media, including books and newspapers, and follow the subtext Jon laid out here.

Edited for spelling, grammatical errs and additional context. Done editing.

I'm a bit surprised the grad student or expert didn't discuss neuromodulators more. The fact is we already have the full connectome of a much simpler system, a worm (C Elegans). And this full mapping is considered insufficient to fully understand the simplified worm behavior because it doesn't fully capture the diversity of different neuromodulators and how they effect processing in neurons. It matters if the neuron is releasing dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, etc. There are ways to approximate these from EM images by analyzing the synapse properties, but ultimately it leads to a much larger problem in understanding neural processing.

In a similar light, the connectome project does not do a good job capturing synaptic strength. We don't really know just from the electron microscopy how strong the connections are. We can try and approximate it by looking at the size/formation of the synapse but ultimately this falls short.

For instance, my memory is that thalamocortical projections (thalamic nuclei to L4 of the cortex) do not make up the primary inputs to L4 on a structural connectivity level, but the strength of those connections are much stronger then the more numerous cortico cortical connections. I don't think the connectome from EM images will be able to pull that out.

The connectome is important, the same way knowing the human genome is important. However, it's really not going to tell us how to simulate a person. It's an important step to be sure, one we are still a good ways away from finishing last I checked (which was three years ago ...)

On the Citicorp Center:

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/structural-integrity/

Interesting story.

meh. thats a weak bonfire. They didnt have a central support so it leaned and fell over way early. They didnt ignite it properly so it only burned on one side making it fall over prematurely. The materials used was weak also which weaken the structure.

it was pretty lame actually. I wouldnt even call it a bonfire.

This is what a bonfire should look like.
https://youtu.be/GQTa-qeqHUM?t=23m28s

I felt like the movie was a bit of a structural mess.

So Cassian rescues Jyn so she can persuade Gerrera to hand over Bodhi so he can give her the message from her father who can tell them about the weakness in the death star.... that just feels like one step too many.

And what was with the Gerrera's weird mind squid thing? That scene felt completely unnecessary and was also the worst looking part of the movie (almost exactly like the tentacle ball things scene in TFA).

That said, the last third was great, and seeing the death star destroy part of a planet from the surface really brought home the horror of the weapon.

I'd put it very slightly behind TFA in terms of ranking it (Empire, New Hope, Jedi, TFA, Rogue One). While I admire that they tried something different and didn't just retread old plots like TFA, I just didn't enjoy it as much as TFA. The characters in TFA were just better and it was just more fun.

@newtboy
hey man,thanks for giving him a shot.
this was the first video i ever watched of officer izzo,and i forgot where i even came across him.

maybe facebook?
i dunno,but i have many facebook friends who are cops and corrections officers.so probably.

i really dug how he addressed the disparity of poor neighborhoods,and the working poor to those of more privileged backgrounds.how he,as an officer,is forced to further compound their struggles by:tickets/racial profiling and as he pointed out..arrest arrest arrest.

from what i gather (because i couldn't find the original) he had posted a video that many of his fellow officers had found offensive and controversial.this video appears to be a clarification directed towards his fellow officers who could not understand why he was criticizing his own profession,and therefore criticizing THEM.

it appears he didn't go the "hey guys,i am sorry" but rather doubled down by clarifying what he felt law enforcement SHOULD be and not what it had become.

he blames the command staff,and in many of his videos he repeats that accusation.i remember even here on the sift we had a cop explain that many of the things we were all bitching about,and being offended by,were actually due to the command structure and not the patrol officers themselves.

which has a ring of truth to my ears being ex military.

i love how he directly speaks of how some patrol officers are forced to do unethical and immoral acts,while the command staff ignores those officers with the most facile of justifications:hey,it's legal.

that puts the officer at risk.just like a bad command staff in the military puts the enlisted man at risk.i mean,just look at the suicide stats for todays military..twenty two military men commit suicide daily,and how does the military brass respond?

those men had mental issues.

oh really? EVERY single one of them?
either there is a suicide epidemic or maybe..maaaaaybe...those who are in command,and whose responsibility it is for the well being of their men,are a gaggle of incompetent fuckwads.who do not have the courage nor integrity to own up to their own epic failures as commanders.

listening to officer Izzo,i suspect there are many parallels between military service and law enforcement.

i respect how he states he is doing this for the everyday patrolmen,even the ones who disagree and are criticizing him.

i think it is a good thing to hear a perspective from a man who does the job.to hear that even the cops are going "what the fuck".

anyways,thanks for watching man,i hope others give officer Izzo a chance as well.

I sure do miss Joe Strummer. I leaned a lot about chords and song structures from Lennon\McCartney and then listening to the Clash added this energy like nothing else.

@bobknight33
why is @newtboy a dumb fuck?

for pointing out that historically suicide bombers have not been exclusively muslim.newt is not disagreeing that radical islamic suicide bombers exist,he is simply pointing out that the practice of bombing in the name of religion is not an exclusively muslim practice when viewed through the lens of history.

the problem is NOT exclusively the religion of islam,the problem is fundamentalist thinking.so while at this point in history it is islam that is the theology that is twisted for a sinister and destructive purpose,the same justifications can be found in ALL religions,predominantly from the abrahmic:judaism,muslim and christianity.

this is not a simple issue,there are many factors to be considered on why people will strap a bomb to their chests and walk into a crowded cafe and blow themselves up.

factors such as:education,employment,community,family structures and most of all...hope.we need hope.all of us need hope but when conditions for normal people are so oppressive and hopeless,people will seek to find hope anywhere,which can be in the form of religion.

look,
words are inert,they are meaningless until someone reads those words..and then interprets them.

this is particularly true when addressing religion.
if you are a violent person,then your religion will be violent.
if you are peaceful and loving,then your religion will be peaceful.

no matter which sacred text you adhere to,be it the quran,the bible or the torah.you will find justification for any and all acts you choose to engage in,be it violent or peaceful.

and THAT is what sargon is addressing!
sargon is dissecting the apologetics of those who are just not getting the plot.radical islam is a problem,a big problem,and attempting to dismiss the underlying factors in order to make a more "palatable" explanation is wading into dangerous waters.

so we can understand the politics and motivation of a young man from palestine who straps explosives to his chest and blows himself up taking innocent civilians with him.we can look at the events that led up to that grievous choice.we know,because there is historical record,how badly the palestinian people are being treated,and have been for decades.the young man was stripped of hope,and the only solace he found was in the quran and so began his radicalization.

it is the politics that always,and i mean ALWAYS,sets the stage but it is the religion that lays out the justification.

which is what newt was basically talking about.
we can use the exact same calculus for fundamentalist christians,or zionist jews.

think about it,how many radicalized muslims live in america?
how many?
deerborn michigan has the largest muslim community in america.now go look at how many suicide bombers are born from that region.
notice anything?

politics is the fuel,religion is the match.

some here may take issue with sargon's take on this situation,but he is making valid points in regards to how some people (mainly on the left) engage in apologetics,while ignoring the larger implications.

if we,as a species,wish to curb the tide of religious fundamentalism and the radicalization of whole communities.then we need to address the politics first and foremost.otherwise this "war on terror" will become never-ending.because the "war on terror' is actually on "war on ideas",really bad ideas,predicated on even worse politics.

today it is islam.
tomorrow it may be christianity,and there is a whole army of fundamentalist and dominionist christians just waiting to be called for their "holy war".

or should i just call it "christian jihad".

What's up with this music?!

I am a philosopher, I like to provoke,
we live in perverted times,
so let me tell you a perverted joke!

A famous, dirty, horrible joke,
taking place in 15th century Russia.
A farmer and his wife walk along a dusty country road.
A Mongol warrior on a horse stops and says
"I'm gonna rape your wife and you should hold my testicles,
while I rape your wife, so that they will not get dusty."
When he raped his wife, the Mongol warrior went away,
the farmer started to laugh and jump with joy, his wife said
"Hey, how can you be happy?! I was just brutally raped!
And he says: "But I got him. His balls are full of dust."

Well, in reality we only dirty with dust the balls of those in power.
And now comes the dirty conclusion - the point is to cut them off!

Now let me warn you - this isn't Macarena, not Chicken dance,
not Aserejé, not Gangnam style and so on and so on.

We stand no chance, there's no time for romance,
it's time to dance The Perverted Dance™!

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls
and our faces won't be sour!
Just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls.

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls,
we can train with cauliflower!
Just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls.

Oh, my god, why am i doing this?! Singing, dancing?!
I feel like that disgusting guy from Canada, Justin Bieber...

So, the problem with capitalism is that it's in the crisis from its very beginning.
From somewhere, I would say, late 18th century, there are prophets who claim capitalism is nearing its end.
It's like that stupid bird Fenix, the more you, you know, it returns.
I got hungry, let's grab something to eat!
What?! No meat?! Only for vegetarians ?!
Degenerates, degenerates, they'll all soon turn into monkeys.

I dont say let's do nothing,
I say sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do.
So cut the balls, just cut the balls!
And racism is also a problem,
so be like Kung Fu Panda - be white, black, asian
and cut the balls, just cut the balls!
They call me The Borat of Philosophy,
The Marx Brother and The Elvis of cultural theory.
Cut the crap and cut the balls, just cut the balls!

Hey, I am Slavoj Žižek!
No, I am Slavoj Žižek!
No, I am Slavoj Žižek,
Fuck that, whatever, let's all be Slavoj Žižek!

Grab and pull the imaginary balls from the sky,
cut through the air and say bye, bye, bye.
Let's join together, let's fall in trance,
let's dance The Perverted Dance™!

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls.
and then take the bloody shower!
Just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls!

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls,
let them face the final hour!
just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls!

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls!
Just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls!

This stupid repetative mechanic music!
Stop it!

Thank you, thank you very much!

The problem is maybe not the big act "Cut the balls",
but you make small changes and all of a sudden, balls are no longer there.
Those in power look down and say "Oh, where are my balls?"
and suddenly their voices get higher and so on and so on and so on.
I stand by my joke. The structure of the joke is that this so called progressive intellectual,
in order to score his small narcissistic point, oh, I dusted the balls,
totally ignores the suffering there and that's the whole point of the joke.
So cut the balls, we need to cut the balls!

What he's talking about here is "cliche", but cliche's have themselves become so cliche, it's no longer effective to use that term to describe them.
This same phenomenon is found extremely widely in literature and music. I stumbled onto this following college, after being trained to have a critical eye for creative work, when I found myself hating everything that humans produced but not understanding why.
My personal theory is that 1) we've not yet learned to teach creators how to identify and cultivate truly unique ideas, and 2) the structure of our current systems for fostering creative work require said work to appeal fundamentally to the largest possible audience, which is easiest when a universal language (visual, auditory or written) exists.
We're trained to build on existing ideas, which is critical for success, but not how to reject established ideas and instead find new ones that are capable of maintaining familiarity, or communicating their core concepts without need of educating the audience.
It's an interesting evolution of process that I'm sure we can find in other areas of the human experience, beyond the field of creative media.