I wound up taking a short nap on the floor besides the feather. I woke up, got myself up and forgot about the feather.

Did I do it right?

"Now imagine I've dropped a feather in front of your feet and asked to pick it up," Couch says.

I would bend my knees, torso staying upright, hips over feet. But that's just me.

On My Favorite Murder, Karen Kilgariff once told a story of when she worked at the Gap circa 1990, and was a raging alcoholic, and was passed out one morning when her boss woke her up, because it was the Day to Refold All the Items, and Karen was scheduled to be there bright and early. So she stumbled down and was assigned to the wall of jeans. She took everything out of the first column of cubbies on the wall and went to sleep on them. It's much funnier when she tells it.

And she's right. My back relaxes, while my hamstrings start to stretch. And boy are they tight! . . . "Yes," Couch says, chuckling. "That's why we call it the world's best hamstring stretch.

I'm sold.

Now imagine I've dropped a feather in front of your feet and asked to pick it up," Couch says.

This is the kid-friendly version of Shane, I assume.

Jean Couch must be so very grateful not to be a Crouch.

I cried because I was a Jean named Crouch until I met a Jean who was a Crotch.

I repeatedly watched the gif of the woman picking up the tennis ball, and wondered, how are parents of little children with no concept of personal space supposed to bend that way?

Hip hinging seems like total horse hockey, but I agree it's much cheerier to think about than the destruction of the civil service. I had a lab mate back in the day who would pick something off the floor basically without her hips or legs moving, just flop into an inverted vee. It hurt me to even look at, but was comfortable for her.

I'm with minivet; keep your back straight, bend your knees until you're squatting, pick up the feather and rise back up. it's not a hamstring stretch but it's good balance practice.

My best advice for picking things up off the ground is not to get a bad ankle sprain.

That's my advice for a lot of things, I realize, but I'm not wrong!

I kind of want to hijack this thread with a sort-of-math question.

But I guess I'll stay on topic.

I can't reach the floor in a hip hinge. My hamstrings reach their limit with my torso just past a 45 degree angle--my back can't get close to flat and parallel to the ground. It would not be an effective way for me to pick up a feather.

13: Once you pique my curiosity like that, you gotta hijack.

Ok, I was away from web commenting all day. In case this thread doesn't just fall off the page/comments list, here's the problem, or at least my attempt to describe it:

I have five rectangles: A B C D E. They all have the same aspect ratio. Some of them can be the same size, but one of them has to be larger than the others because I want to fit four of the rectangles (A B C D) inside of the fifth (E).

I can easily do this by making A B C and D each one quarter of the size of E and then arranging them into a 2 x 2 grid. But I want A to be larger than B C and D. What is the largest I can make A and still fit all four rectangles inside E?

Note that the combination ABCD still needs to be a rectangle, but it doesn't need to have the same ratio as A B C D and E. As far as I can tell, this means there will need to be a border around ABCD inside of E.

I came up with one solution:

1. I made A one quarter of the size of E.
2. I made B C and D one third of the size of A.
3. I then made a rectangle with A at the top and B C D at the bottom.

This fit, but I was left with extra space along all four borders and it seems like I should be able to optimize either height or width to max out at the height or width of E.

Actually, now that I've written it out, it seems relatively straightforward: just figure out the largest A where ABCD still fits inside E and BCD are each one-third the size of A. I'm mainly curious if there are arrangements I haven't thought of.

And also I didn't feel like doing actual math yesterday. (I already had the 2X2 grid, so didn't resize A at all.)

Is there some minimum lower bound on the size of B, C, and D?

Oh, just that A, B, C, D need to themselves form a rectangle?

I can't relate to this. Can we make them rectangle-shaped lions?

And is there an upper bound on E? Is the solution to be in terms of the size of E?

At my optometrist's office, there's an upper limit on the size of E, but it's pretty high.

Do they all have to have a specific aspect ratio, or can they be any shape rectangles so long as they all match each other.

I started to get curious about the general case, but reality is they're all 16x9, with E as 1920x1080. In other words, I'm trying to combine video feeds to fit an HD screen. BCD just needs to be big enough you can still see what's going on. A has text that isn't really legible in the 2x2 grid, which led me to this question.

Semi-transparent overlays possibly? Does the text fill A completely or is the informative portion predictably localized within A? Overlays become opaque when the cursor lingers on them to allow for variable focus.

Overlay is not really an option. I'm trying to do this without having to watch all of the video. An overlay could work, but could also end up covering important stuff if there's a camera shift an hour in.