Blender3D http://www.blender.org/
Python (For Blender) http://www.python.org/
HDR Images for HDRI lighting http://athens.ict.usc.edu/Probes/
Blender Textures http://tellim.com/texture_cd/
Indigo Renderer http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/
Blendigo (Indigo exporter plugin for Blender3D) http://www2.indigorenderer.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_openwiki&Itemid=69&id=blendigo
NK Materials for Indigo http://deeppixel.uw.hu/projects/NK_materials.html

Blender Tutorials http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

All of this is FREE. Hope this helps

Like anyone else, I'd like to believe these claims, but they make no explanations for why things like the following do not require Americans to pay income taxes:

• Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution
  "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises"
  
  
• The Sixteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution
  "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived"
  
  
• The Internal Revenue Code
  (published as Title 26 of the United States Code (USC), linked ^above by T-man) which is law codified by Congress

If there are reasons these things should be discounted, I'd be interested to hear them. Or perhaps the only copy of the explanations was stored in WTC 7, which is why the government intentionally set up 9/11?

(Just a playful jab at conspiracy theorists. )

Sorry, this is a dupe of ant's video. His original still works.

http://www.videosift.com/video/A-harmless-prank-on-the-USC-Student-Body-Vice-President-goes-horribly-wrong

*discard

USC is the campus.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'ron paul, election' to 'ron paul, election, debate, south carolina, USC' - edited by MarineGunrock

Film major?

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
No, I went to a conservatory called North Carolina School of the Arts (or NCSA).

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
Did you go to USC blankfist?

No, I went to a conservatory called North Carolina School of the Arts (or NCSA).

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
Did you go to USC blankfist?

"Did you go to USC blankfist?"

No, I went to a conservatory called North Carolina School of the Arts (or NCSA).

Did you go to USC blankfist?

Pong (gameplay footage), Tetris (gameplay footage), Mortal Kombat (making the MK and the dragon logo), Pokemon (making a couple of Pokeballs) with a band member dressed as Pikachu beating up... the USC Trojan?, Zelda (making a Triforce and a sword), Super Mario Brothers (making pipes and blocks), one or two songs I don't recognize, and then back to Super Mario Brothers (making the castle with flag at the end of a stage).

Any body recognize the songs/shapes for the things in between the pipes/blocks and the castle that the princess isn't in?

I'll offer you two bits of info here to consider before we go any farther, yaroslavvb. Please take the time to read, they'll help.

First an excerpt from the Lancet medical journal report I'd mentioned above. As I'd said above and as repeated in their findings, unattractive for young people now. It isn't market theory that drives this. The climb in use is in the years before the program started and why they started it, they had one of the worst abuse rates in the area. The fall started shortly after the program did.

Summary

Background Switzerland has been criticised for its liberal drug policy, which could attract new users and lengthen periods of heroin addiction. We sought to estimate incidence trends and prevalence of problem heroin use in Switzerland.

Methods We obtained information about first year of regular heroin use from the case register of substitution treatments in the canton of Zurich for 7256 patients (76% of those treated between 1991 and March, 2005). We estimated the proportion of heroin users not yet in substitution treatment programmes using the conditional lag-time distribution. Cessation rate was the proportion of individuals leaving substitution treatment programmes and not re-entering within the subsequent 10 years. Overall prevalence of problematic heroin use was modelled as a function of incidence and cessation rate.

Findings Every second person began their first substitution treatment within 2 years of starting to use heroin regularly. Incidence of heroin use rose steeply, starting with about 80 people in 1975, culminating in 1990 with 850 new users, and declining substantially to about 150 users in 2002. Two-thirds of those who had left substitution treatment programmes re-entered within the next 10 years. The population of problematic heroin users declined by 4% a year. The cessation rate in Switzerland was low, and therefore, the prevalence rate declined slowly. Our prevalence model accords with data generated by different approaches.

Interpretation The harm reduction policy of Switzerland and its emphasis on the medicalisation of the heroin problem seems to have contributed to the image of heroin as unattractive for young people. Our model could enable the study of incidence trends across different countries and thus urgently needed assessments of the effect of different drug policies.

Introduction

Switzerland has been criticised for its liberal drug policy. Specifically, the implementation of harm reduction measures, such as drug consumption rooms, needle-exchange services, low-threshold methadone programmes, and heroin-assisted treatments, have been thought to make potential users think that harm will not arise from use of illicit drugs. According to this critique, such a policy would lead to a growing number of new users of street drugs and lengthen the period of heroin addiction. Contrary to this belief, stable prevalence of heroin use since 1994 has been reported in Switzerland.

http://www.sharemation.com/Rubin/H/swiss.heroin.summary_lancet.367.1830-4_2006.html

Second we'll deal with the idea that any of this had to do with health or safety to start with. It was more control, politics. The following link is to a speech derived from The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry into the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition by Professor Richard J. Bonnie & Professor Charles H. Whitebread, II, and given by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School.

It is the history of non-medical use of drugs in this nation, how and why the laws developed and when. No, he's not just some activist. He had done some research on his own that impressed the Government enough that he was a part of a team given access to government archives to research the issue. That's what he was there for. It's a bit long and reads odd at times since it was meant to be spoken instead of read, but it's a good bit of history we won't see much elsewhere. It wasn't to keep the kids safe. It was politics.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

Is any of what we've got so far perfect? Probably not. What we do should be decided by research and trial studies, even when we are doing better than we're doing now we shouldn't stop looking. It should always be pursuit of a better method. Much of what we're considering today seems better than what we've done so far, and where they've been tried the fears of what could happen often turn out to be misplaced. If in some case they aren't we trash that method and try again, that's why we start in trial study instead of widespread use. That's how the Swiss went from needle park, a failure, to the maintenance program, a success. It's a process, not a simple "we do it this way" answer. We do what works, and if we're lucky we do it without politics or special interests getting in the way.

ant posted the Ryan Holt vid almost 332 days ago.

http://www.videosift.com/video/A-harmless-prank-on-the-USC-Student-Body-Vice-President-goes-horribly-wrong

"The religion / Qu'ran is not the reason for terrorism and islamism, it's just the interpretation. You won't find a word about slaying nonchristians in the bible, nevertheless the crusades and the inquisition happened." - well said pragmatick!

I urge everyone to ignore the link posted by QM and the messages of hate by QM and Gorillaman. As usual both would rather spread hate and ignorance than understanding.

It is important for everyone to note that the translation of verses of the Qur'an in QM's link are deeply flawed, very simplistic, and taken completely out of their historical, theological, and textual context. It would be just as easy to take verses from the bible out of context and go around using them to justify hate. As an example, in QM's link it translates verse 2:6 of the Qur'an as "Don't bother to warn the disbelievers. Allah has blinded them. Theirs will be an awful doom." In fact the correct translation is "As to those who reject Faith, it is the same to them whether thou warn them or do not warn them; they will not believe." - the meaning is very different. I could do the same for every verse in QM's link. One more example, QM's link translates verse 2:191 of the Qur'an as "Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kill them. Such is the reward of disbelievers." In its proper context (2:190-193) the Qur'an says:

"Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors. And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith. But if they cease, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. And fight them on until there is no more Tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those who practise oppression."

This verse was revealed at a time when the Muslim community were being oppressed and killed by people of other faiths - this historical context is important. The verses are urging Muslims to stand up for themselves if they are attacked - not to instigate attacks. Furthermore, the verses state clearly that "Let there be no hostility except to those who practise oppression" - in other words, acts of violence are only acceptable against those who choose to oppress others.

For a better translation look at the Yusuf Ali translation of the Qur'an:

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/ .

Last tag added to stress that this was added because I think it would be amusing (and in appropriate) if it were true. However, according to the amusing blog post that first showed this vid to me, it's not true - she just had what clothing experts refer to as "a major wedgie".

This is the university's fault for handing out tasers to campus police, for God's sake - which I think is a step below mall security.
We can't even get trained people to use tasers properly; when you hand them out to college kids, what did they think was going to happen?

Absolutely inexcusable. They'll be paying that kid's tuition (and more) at USC once he sues and wins. And please don't tell me that situation couldn't have been defused if those Jack Bauer-wannabes (who, I seem to need to remind everyone here, is a fictional character) weren't carrying those bug zappers.

There are no Jack Bauers in the world, kids. Let's not imbue ordinary people with the super-competence they don't possess and realize that crimes and terrorism usually don't get resolved in 24 hours. Jesus.