Current events

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skirtedbrit
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Re: Current events

Post by skirtedbrit »

Can the moderators step in and stop this nastiness? This forum is about men in skirts and not about gun politics. Most people this side of the pond dont want to know and I personally am sickened by guns and the vitriolic arguments that accompany them. I have been a member for many years and have enjoyed SC because of its reasonable and intelligent contributors but if discussions like this continue I will leave.

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Re: Current events

Post by Jim »

skirtedbrit wrote:Can the moderators step in and stop this nastiness? This forum is about men in skirts and not about gun politics. Most people this side of the pond dont want to know and I personally am sickened by guns and the vitriolic arguments that accompany them. I have been a member for many years and have enjoyed SC because of its reasonable and intelligent contributors but if discussions like this continue I will leave.

Dave Hughes Skirtedbrit
I appreciate hearing the different opinions (but not the nastiness). How about just not reading this thread, Dave?
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Re: Current events

Post by Big and Bashful »

Before I type this, let me just say I am not in favour of guns being available to folk in general, just my view, not going to get into a debate.
However, maybe this is related, in the UK for a while there was a spate (probably still is) of crimes involving acid or alkalis being thrown in peoples faces, pretty horrible, must be painful and disfiguring, if not often fatal. These days the British news seems to be full of knife crimes, again not nice, often fatal. I suppose for both of these they tend to be up close and personal, rather than mass genocide, but when people want to do bad things to other people they will use whatever is available, ban guns, people will choose crossbows, acid, knives, hammers, nail guns, ban knives and out come the breadknives, ban them, out will come the big sticks, rocks etc. I think the moral of this is that there are many pretty bloody horrible people out there.

A quick final thought, what we haven't had for many years is a decent, all encompassing war, where all these weapon addicts can go and legally dismember anyone who wears the wrong hat/ reads the wrong religious book/ has oil or who has the nerve to call a particular piece of mud/dust/sand home. Still, I am starting to feel, looking at the news, that we might not have had a proper war for 70 odd years, but like buses, one will be along fairly soon now!
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Re: Current events

Post by crfriend »

A relatively large percentage of the US population is appalled by what's going on here at the moment, and that that gets no press I find very unfortunate. Part of the problem is that it's become plainly evident that the "Old Thinking" on the matter has abjectly failed and is not only not bringing about any results may actually be making matters worse. This upsets many of us, at least one of the moderation staff included. It's insanity all the way 'round with lots of yelling, lots of smoke and noise, and no results.

Based on my experiences when I visited the Maritimes in Canada in the mid-1980s I feel that comparing Canada and the United States is a bit like trying to compare a rhinoceros to an orangutan. Canada seems to have a very cohesive social structure where the US's is badly fragmented and some would simply say broken. Canadians have a high level of respect for their countrymen, visitors, and their public officials including the police; in the US there is largely precious little respect for anybody, overt suspicion of anybody who looks even dimly "foreign" or "different", and a general hatred for public officials and a deep distrust and fear of the police. I've heard it reasonably succinctly put by a Canadian, "We have a gun problem. You guys live in a war zone." -- and you know, they were right, and we've largely done it to ourselves. It's likely that the thought of perpetrating mass murder simply cannot occur in the average Canadian's psyche because the entire social surroundings simply aren't conducive to it; in the US, however, not only does it occur it's become normal -- worse, the normal thought processes that would inhibit action on the thought aren't working either. In short, we in the USA need to fix our societal problems because if we don't we're doomed.
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Re: Current events

Post by oldsalt1 »

We have many problems in the US .

There is also a lot of good in the country.

I think that the media is a major problem

In their constant battle for recognition and readers they are continually looking for the shock and awe stories .they present a never ending picture of gloom and doom.

If its not gory its not a story

I don't have an answer I don't expect a happy meal every day but what we are getting is a steady stream of indigestion
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Re: Current events

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oldsalt1 wrote:We have many problems in the US .

There is also a lot of good in the country.
Indeed there is much good in the USA, but sadly that facet gets short shrift. The number of decent, honest, and entirely peaceable citizens far outweigh the overt wackos; however, the behaviour of the latter set gets all the attention and the media sets everybody's teeth on edge in a blatant attempt to get the highest ratings (so they can sell the most advertising). That said, the US does have very real and very pressing societal issues, and if those aren't cogently addressed then the place is in for a lot more trouble in the not-too-distant future.
In their constant battle for recognition and readers [the media] are continually looking for the shock and awe stories .they present a never ending picture of gloom and doom.
This has been a problem for years and is largely recognised as a problem -- but nothing gets done about it. Well, not really nothing as Don Henley wrote the wonderful ditty Dirty Laundry regarding the issue. Nothing else of note has been seen. There's too much money at stake.
I don't have an answer I don't expect a happy meal every day but what we are getting is a steady stream of indigestion
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Re: Current events

Post by Ray »

What is the US media like?

I’m aware of certain biases e.g. Fox News (and I’m assuming MSNBC?) but how does that square with hard facts? The USA has way more homicides per capita than Canada. In 2017, there were 17,284 homicides in the USA (5.5/100,000), with Canada being 660 (1.8/100,000) in the same year. How does the media report that?

Does the media contribute to the difference?
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Re: Current events

Post by oldsalt1 »

I am not pointing to any media I am saying all media. There are a lot of individuals who are tittering on the edge. A happy story may not change their outlook.

But I feel that a constant barrage of doom and gloom doesn't help

We have to be informed. but is it really necessary to hear about some body farting at a church meeting in Tumwater Iowa
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Re: Current events

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Ray wrote:What is the US media like?
In the USA, the mass media is primarily controlled by only 4 or 5 factions, and each of these has its own set of biases. Bias in reporting and delivery is well-known and well-understood, so one only needs to factor those into his interpretations and must rely on multiple diverse sources so the biases can be averaged out. This used to be easier when outside views were easier to find (e.g. via short-wave radio) and before the number of outlets and the controllers thereof collapsed in the 1980s.

Typically, the media in the US is highly sensationalistic as that's what grabs viewers/readers and fattens the advertising revenue. In-depth reporting is extraordinarily rare, and real investigative journalism is, as far as I can tell, dead. So, "if it screams, it beams". The huge drawback in this is that there is never any follow-up on stories of interest (and a proper follow-up might take weeks or months to bring to fruition -- at which time the original event has long been forgotten), and lots of stupid things make it onto the air (one classic one was a sailplane crash into a house a number of months ago where the on-air anchor stated that it was caused by "a loss of power" [0]).
I’m aware of certain biases e.g. Fox News (and I’m assuming MSNBC?) but how does that square with hard facts?
All of them have biases, and all of those must be evaluated by analysing what all of the others are saying about the same event. This is more mental; work than much of the citizenry is willing to expend, hence we wind up with the Fox Morons, the NPR Morons, the CNN Morons, &c.
The USA has way more homicides per capita than Canada. In 2017, there were 17,284 homicides in the USA (5.5/100,000), with Canada being 660 (1.8/100,000) in the same year. How does the media report that?
It doesn't get mentioned at all, nor are the underlying reasons for that ever investigated or questioned. But in every metropolitan area there are one or two murders per week and that helps bring in viewers and advertising revenue.
Does the media contribute to the difference?
I doubt that there's a direct correlation, but there is an enormous indirect one and that's the incidence of "copy-cat" trouble. The media normalises things, and mentally-unstable idiots go out and commit acts out of mimicry. The callowness of the media in its treatment of violence is definitely a problem, but whether one can consider that directly contributory is a very tenuous link.

[0] It's a SAILplane, stupid. Sailplanes do not have powerplants.
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Re: Current events

Post by Ray »

Dan, I understand the sentiment, but would the suppression of the bad stuff be right? That sounds worrying to me. In the UK, we are currently seeing the media cover economic and political gloom for the most part - but people need to know this stuff. If you have two mass shootings, should that not be reported with the subsequent debate that would ensue? Or are both sides too entrenched?

Perhaps all media outlets should - by law - have a section of their programme or newspaper devoted to “and now for something on a happy note” story?
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Re: Current events

Post by Ray »

Carl, insightful commentary. Thank you.

This link to advertising revenue is a big concern. We are, I think, lucky in the UK in that the BBC, ITN and Channel 4 News all seem to me to be reputable sources of news. I cannot say the same for the newspapers.
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Re: Current events

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Ray wrote:This link to advertising revenue is a big concern.
Yes, that is a major problem in the USA. Many countries have state-run news outlets, and whilst those will mimic the prevailing sentiments in the countries' assorted governments, those particular biases are easier to spot than the sometimes vague ones brought on by profit alone.

Part of the problem in the USA is that all of the major news outlets are for-profit businesses, and businesses exist for the sole purpose of bringing in money -- hence they will "sell what the consumer wants" (and pile it on higher and deeper if possible). There is no truly non-profit news organisation in the USA, nor is there a state-run one (although I did manage to intercept some Voice of America transmissions (illegally) back in the 1970s and remarked to my father that it was like hearing the Boston Herald (a right-wing Hearst rag) read aloud on the radio). I don't even want to contemplate what a US government run outlet would sound like in this day and age.
We are, I think, lucky in the UK in that the BBC, ITN and Channel 4 News all seem to me to be reputable sources of news. I cannot say the same for the newspapers.
I am given to understand that lots of the newspapers in the UK tend to be rags or worse, and sadly, I've begun to detect signs of overt bias in the BBC. That saddens me, because back in my real news-hound days and armed with a short-wave receiver, "The Beeb" was almost perfectly at the centre of my assorted bias filters. I miss the days of the "World Service". The BBC on the web has been badly dumbed down in recent years, and that hurts as well.

I suppose the best way to look at it is to assume that everybody's lying, and that if one gathers enough different lies about the same event then the actual facts are likely somewhere in the middle. The same holds true for history.
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Re: Current events

Post by Fred in Skirts »

Carl wrote (one classic one was a sailplane crash into a house a number of months ago where the on-air anchor stated that it was caused by "a loss of power" [0]).
[0] It's a SAILplane, stupid. Sailplanes do not have powerplants.
But Carl the sailplane does have power but it is not part of the air frame.
It is the wind and if the wind stops the sailplane losses power. :lol: And then they sometimes fall or lose a lot of altitude and that causes them to hit things like houses. :lol: :lol: :hide: :toast:
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Re: Current events

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Fred in Skirts wrote:It is the wind and if the wind stops the sailplane losses power. :lol:
Then one gently pushes the nose down to gain airspeed so one can put the craft somewhere reasonably safe. Of course if there's no altitude to speak of then there's a real problem... (But you shouldn't have been there in the first place [0].)

The same thing applies to helicopters that experience engine failure. One disengages the rotor clutch and trades altitude/velocity for rotor RPM and when the ground gets close enough flares the craft and hauls on the collective to trade rotor-inertia for lift to land the craft.


[0] This is reminiscent of the semi-frequent news story of "Man struck and killed by train!" -- which translates to, "man being where he shouldn't have been in the first place". Situations like this are trivially easy to avoid. The sailplane pilot should have realised that he had a problem and then worked that problem to get on the ground safely. Since no explanations were given as to the circumstances involved there's no way to figure the thing out. Did the tow-line part or get released accidentally just following takeoff, or did this happen "from altitude". One sees the problem in reporting and dissemination.
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Re: Current events

Post by Bikerkilt »

The media can made you look good or make you look bad.
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