Ebola is very destructive to health care systems. It is silly to compare it to other viruses that do not create the panic, fear and lethality of Ebola. Ebola has the potential to get out of control because it takes a very serious toll on health care systems. Once panic is in place, it becomes very difficult to screen patients and process intake. Once a region has just a handful of cases, everyone with a simple fevers thinks they have Ebola and overwhelm the intake system - and ironically, the best place to get Ebola will probably be the waiting room. This virus can very quickly sap the resources of hospital staff, and once a few staff and patients in the waiting room get infected, panic just gets worse. Ebola is very unforgiving to mistakes by health care providers.

The media is quick to make out everyone in Africa as naive and child like. This is a mistake. Many in Africa know all about viruses and how they spread. They suffer greatly by a an absolutely dismal and bankrupt health care system, but I think it would be naive to think of our system as so superior that we would not have the same panic.

Ebola is very serious. It needs to be taken seriously. Anyone that belittles the problem is making the situation much worse.

Just as an FYI, health care workers who are exposed to HIV-infected blood at work have a 0.3% risk of becoming infected. In other words, 3 of every 1,000 such injuries, if untreated, will result in infection. : Source CDC.

Yeah, try that with Ebola.

The cereal one is simple, they add iron to the cereal and iron is attracted to the metal.

What surprised me about this is that I'd expect food additives like this to be in some kind of soluble form, just invisibly a part of the food. But when they add iron they literally just add little bits of metal, tiny iron filings. If you put the cereal in a blender a whizz it up to a fine powder and put the magnet through the powder it will come out covered in tiny iron filings.

The cane one is simple too, the finger closest to the centre of mass will always have more of the weight on it, therefore friction is greater on that finger, so the other finger moves more, until it becomes closest to the centre of mass and so on. Each finger gradually moves toward the centre of mass until your fingers are touching. Neither finger can move past the centre of mass because at the point where it lines up with the centre of mass it would take all the weight and the other finger would have no friction at all to push the centre of mass past the other finger.

The phone is a bit of a funny one. It certainly is possible, it's just that it takes more skill to do it. He just hasn't practiced enough. I'm a juggler and just gave this a try. I got clean rotations once every twenty throws or so, which I'm quite pleased with for a first attempt. It feels like something I could learn to do perfectly if I gave it the time (I'm not going to).

The instability is to do with the amount of force required to rotate the phone in each axis. The difficult one is the one that requires the most force and creates the slowest rotation. This means it's easier to add an error in the force when creating the rotation, and the slower rotation means the spin is less stable. All this makes it much harder than spinning it any other way. Harder, but not as impossible as he makes out.

More from Photography is not a crime:
First, Andrea Mears called police on a man for flying his remote control quadcopter over a public beach in Connecticut.

Then, when police didn’t respond in seconds, she attacked the man

“He’s taking pictures of people on the beach … with a helicopter plane,” she told the cops by phone.

“Can you guys hurry? I already talked to him, just come.”

Seconds later, she attacked him.

The man, who goes by Hogwit on Youtube, began recording the encounter on his iPhone as his quadcopter was flying overhead, capturing her clawing at his face and pulling at his shirt.

“You want to take pictures?” she asks him as she jams her fingers into his mouth. “Yeah, you’re going to see how it feels when police come.”

Then she has the audacity to tell him “let go of me” as she is all over him.

“If you wouldn’t be assaulting me, I wouldn’t be touching you,” he responds, remaining exceptionally calm considering the circumstances.

“He’s taking pictures of people on the beach!” she yells as she continues to rip his shirt. “I’m going to kick your ass, you little motherfucker.”

“Can someone call the cops!” the man yells. “I’m being assaulted! Help!”

Police arrived and arrested her for assault in the third degree and breach of peace. The incident took place May 12 at Hammonassett State Park in Madison.



Here are more details from the man who was flying the drone that he posted on a forum shortly after the incident:

I went to a nearby beach that is a whopping 2 miles long, set up, talked to some people that were curious what my “thing” was, demonstrated the loiter feature (pulling the quad to one direction or another), demonstrated rtl (flying it away then having it return), and make a lot of people think the quad was just awesome. I never went below 50 feet save for take off/landing, then after the end of my last flight, some crazy lady came over and started taking pictures of me…and dialed 911 for the 3rd time in 15 minutes…she said something to the effect of, “There’s a guy here taking pictures at the beach with a helicopter plane.” (I distinctly remember her saying, “with a helicopter plane,” because that just sounds hilarious.) They basically said that they’d send someone when one gets free during each of the 3 calls she made, she decided they didn’t care enough about someone obeying the law so when no one was around she assaulted me and she decided to stop when she got a phone call. I called the police to report the assault, and boy was the response big…10 or more vehicles arrived (cops, DEEP, and an ambulance)…They first listened to her story of lies (she claimed I was taking close ups of people in bikinis, and that she had asked me to stop flying before calling the police, and that I was the one that assaulted her, and and and). The police approached me very aggressively, believing her full story, and before anything else was said I brought up something that she missed… The fact that the cell phone in my hand has a camera…that was recording. I had video evidence that she went nuts completely unprovoked, and was the one that assaulted me. She was then charged with assault, and breach of peace and I gave the cops a copy of the video for their prosecution. I then also showed them my last flight where you can make out her colorful shirt getting up from the beach then following it until it lands which proved that she lied when claiming that she asked me to stop flying before calling the police.
At the end of it all, one of the officers said to me basically, “Flying that thing the way you were is fine, you’re not in any trouble. You can come back and fly, but just be aware that some people can be alarmed.”


*fail, *lies, *wtf

Ugh, edited the crap out of the landing - most crucial moment and you can barely make out what's going on.

@chingalera
i wasnt addressing the validity of the racism warning.
i was addressing the hypocrisy gundam was pointing out.

do i think your commentary was racist?
no.
but thats between you and gundam and you both seem to be working it out (make out already).

but dont you find it interesting how people perceive other cultures? other societies? thats why i think this is a pretty cool discussion.

im no expert on japan so this all fascinates me.
i would like to know how you came to such a strong opinion about the japanese.

aw fuck it.
ill make out with ya!
no tongues though..thats just gross.

nice job on that dolphin thread.
keep it classy brother!

@chingalera
@SDGundamX
you guys should just make out and get it over with.

im with gundam on this.
its the definition of hypocrisy.

in fact i will even take it a step further.
did you guys know its a federal offense to take snapshots or video the giant corporate owned slaughter farms?

now companies like IBP like to site reasons such as "privacy" and "ownership" but the real reason isnt too hard to put together.if the american public ever saw how their cheeseburger came into existence the sales of beef and pork would plummet.

so while it may be disturbing to watch flipper getting corralled and mass executed,lets be at least honest with ourselves.

we view dolphins much like we view or cats and dogs.they are considered a "pet" class and not a "dinner" class.

the japanese do not.to them the dolphin is meat for dinner.

we would react the same to country fried lassie steaks and garfield goulosh.

now if we were talking how asia destroys the shark population JUST for their fins,then i think there would be a valid argument to be had.

but this is about dinner and our perspectives on certain animals.

what do you guys think?

*promote the discussion.

That's almost exactly what I just said 17-18kg in earth terms. Do you think laid on your back you could easily throw a 17kg object 1.5-2m upwards?

He's not doing a push up he's trying to jump upright. Launching nearly 20kg of weight far enough to get to your feet would take some doing that way I'd say. Just lifting 20kg with the arms alone is an effort never mind throwing it which is effectively what's happening here.

This is part of the reason I defaulted to thinking in terms of rocketry as it's not as simple as just someone trying to lift something, they are trying to propel themselves 1-2m upwards with only a thrust from the arms. Much better to wiggle around/push up to get to your knees so one could bring one's legs muscles to bear (made very difficult by hard to bend suit).

Frankly I think it would be a total pain in the arse getting back upright. If it weren't for the suit you could easily push up to your knees and then straighten your legs but the inflation is going to make that very hard work (but doable after a struggle to one knee as other video footage proves).

The alternative however which sparked this whole argument i.e. lay on your front and push off with your arms. That I think would be considerably harder than you are making out. Throwing a 17kg weight with only your arms over 1m in height is not what I'd call effortless.

My old CRT monitor probably weighs about 20kg, it'd take everything I had to throw that over 1m up into the air. Without the power of your thigh muscles and the rigidity of your spine 20kg is quite a lot really.

How high can you "jump" with only your arms? (like those super push-ups where you clap your hands in between to show off) maybe a foot or two if your really really strong? So with the extra weight of a suit and reduced gravity multiplying the result by 6 under lunar gravity, 6feet is probably just about attainable for someone in peak physical shape. But it's defiantly not what I'd call easy!


Re: conspiracies The only one I really take at all seriously any more is the idea that 2001 (esp the book) was perhaps (very) loosely based on actual events. I have time for it simply because of Arthur C. Clarke himself who was going to give an interview (which he rarely does) on Project Camelot of all things but died about 2 weeks before it happened. If you know anything about project camelot you'll know whatever he had to say was going to be mental but then again he was very old and eccentric and plenty other people involved in the space program have "jumped the shark" so to speak. (Edgar Mitchell talks about aliens on a regualr basis, Buzz Aldrin has spoken about monoliths on Phobos, pilots being followed by "Foofighters" in WW2 etc. etc.)

But it's basically wishful thinking on my part, the story and implications are remarkably plausible for what they are but that is all they are. Combined with the whole Jack Parsons/Alastair Crowley connection to the JPL my creative juices start flowing. However the obvious counter argument i.e. that the world is largely run by genuine lunatics is never far from my mind either (look at the whole "men who stare at goats" thing).

I'll listen to anyone and some I'm even prepared to believe on their own terms but I have to defer to actual evidence where it exists (or does not exist). Consequently while I'll listen to someone like John Leer talking about stuff that would seem outlandish even in a science fiction story, people why claim the moon landing was a hoax tend to get the cold shoulder as it's pretty demonstrably not true/hard to believe.

I realise that's kind of backwards but willing suspension of disbelief is a lot easier when there's really no tangible evidence either way. (why I suspect huge incomprehensible delusions like those espoused by many religions get so much traction. It's easier to believe the big lie than the small one)

Jolly entertaining though regardless

Great song. Can't wait for my parents to start losing their hearing.

Couldn't quite make out the middle bit though. Lyrics anyone?

The lioness on the left in some of the group shots seems to have a blind right eye. Can't make out any damage around the socket, but it seems like there may be a scar on the left side of her head and a torn lip.

I had a cat that looked pretty roughed up like that after picking fights with coyotes. Tough ol' bastard. I wonder what that lion got on the bad side of?

when I see two people make out, I just avert my eyes. Hell I'd want them to do the same. It's a private moment for those 2 people. shit let them have it.
I know when I travel to Toronto and see some gay dudes on the street kissing, I just get embarrassed that I looked and glanced away. IT's like "oh shit are those two dudes ? ..... whoa it is. ... okay I'm not in my small town anymore."
seriously tho the shits weird.

Would you feel better if you watched your grandparents make out? Or two really, really ugly people? Or a straight couple but one of them has been dead for a week?
There's a difference between homophobia and simply witnessing an sexual act that is very unsexy to you. The awkwardness comes from the insecurity how to behave you have when it comes to homosexuality. It's similar with racism. Say the wrong thing, react the wrong way and suddenly you worry that you come across as a hater even if you did nothing unusual or wrong. Suddenly you are afraid to react in understandable or even appropriate ways just because you fear being percieved as a homophobic or racist.

Oh just make out and get it over with. It's ok to be Takei

I've always had this type of reaction when any two people are making out in public, straight or gay, but when it's two men I tend to feel guilty for having the reaction. What gives? Must be some kind of straight guilt.

Nothing wrong with irrational fears right? I am afraid to fly so I ride the train when I can, nothing wrong with owning a gun if your afraid of maniacs busting down the door! But it isn't as bad as the comedian is making out, he's just doing his job of being silly. To that end, I haven't owned a gun, but my roomies had...it's just not that big of a deal here in the states.

Kind of reminds me of how I thought of drinking when I was a young, conservative christian boy. Beer and drinking had this mystique in my mind. Being constantly exposed to it, now it is no big deal. Same with guns, guns are just a thing like other things. Unless you were talking about the situation being ridiculous, then I would have to agree. But when I am alone, I do worry a bit more about home invasion and lock up tight. I haven't had the idea to buy a gun, but mostly because I don't trust myself with one.