My mom thinks me using facts is racist. Poor people tend to be black. Poor people tend to commit crimes. White people tend to move away from black neighborhoods. I suppose I should have spent less time studying political behavior in my state and more time making jokes.

"What's the difference between a black man and a white man?" "A job." - From the woman who calls me a racist for saying most violent crime in the US is black on black crime.

The biggest issue with the mainstream and statistics is that unless it plays into their stereotypes of behavior, they don't care. And when it does, they don't really care about the real cause.

From Wiki: (Violent Crime, UK)

"Includes all violence against the person, sexual offences, and robbery as violent crime.[8]
Rates of violent crime are in the UK are recorded by the British Crime Survey. The Home Office Statistical Bulletin on "Crime in England and Wales" summarizes the findings of this survey. For the 2010/2011 report,[9] the statistics show that violent crime continues a general downward trend observed over the last few decades as shown in the graph.
"The 2010/11 BCS showed overall violence was down 47 per cent on the level seen at its peak in 1995; representing nearly two million fewer violent offences per year."[citation needed]
Regarding murder, "increasing levels of homicide (at around 2% to 3% per year) [have been observed] from the 1960s through to the end of the twentieth century". Recently the murder rate has declined, "a fall of 19 per cent in homicides since 2001/02", as measured by The Homicide Index.
By contrast, there is a widespread belief that violent crime is on the rise, due largely to a mass media which disproportionately reports violent crime. This phenomenon is described by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature."

(Violent Crime, US)

"The United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) counts five categories of crime as violent crimes: murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. It should be noted that these crimes are taken from two separate reports, the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and that these do not look at exactly the same crimes. The UCR measures crimes reported to police, and looks at Aggravated assault, forcible rape, murder, and robbery. The NCVS measures crimes reported by households surveyed by the United States Census Bureau, and looks at assault, rape, and robbery. According to BJS figures, the rate of violent crime victimization in the United States declined by more than two thirds between the years 1994 and 2009.[10] 7.9% of sentenced prisoners in federal prisons on September 30, 2009 were in for violent crimes.[11] 52.4% of sentenced prisoners in state prisons at yearend 2008 were in for violent crimes.[11] 21.6% of convicted inmates in jails in 2002 (latest available data by type of offense) were in for violent crimes.[12]"



------------------------

If you didn't want to read that babble, quick and simple: they're one and the same. From my understanding, both countries use the Type 1 list: a crime against a person in which injury or death may occur. In some cases, just because no one was hurt, doesn't mean it wasn't a violent crime.

Which brings up the other point to be made. Is the reporting of the crimes uniform? Do the Brits report EVERYTHING, as opposed to what's somewhat routine here in the states where crimes often go unreported, even when the police show up? Domestic violence only exists if one person files charges. The victim could be bruised, bleeding, broken bones etc, but if they're not willing to file a charge, no crime occurred.

Or, more so, do street brawls get reported more often in the UK? If I punch some dude, does that go onto a record somewhere where as in the states, I've been in many fights where even if the police broke it up, no reports were ever filed.

All of this is useful information, but so far the data is pretty superficial. The comment the video makes about "put on your boots and go find out" (paraphrased) is pretty much the only solution I can think of. Then again, it's the same solution that people have been chanting for for generations and have yet to see the high and mighty Elite do it.

I won't go on about the worst as I'm just trying to forget them and it's boring.

FILMS
Dredd. Well cast, looks great, a lean story and a well wrought vision of Mega-City One. Loved it. The soundtrack is great as well.

The Avengers. More superhero films should be made like this, particularly when handling multiple characters. Better than any of the preceding films that built up to it.


GAMES
Far Cry 3. Haven't finished it but this is a wonderful open-world shooter/stalker/explore-em-up. A self-contained world that totally convinces.

X-Com. Great remake/reboot/whatever. This could have gone wrong so easily but speaking as a fan of the orginal 1994 classic, this got far more right than it got wrong.


BOOKS
Sadly, I don't recall reading much this year. In fact I may not have read a book at all. A friend is obsessed with Murakami so I may start there in 2013.


MUSIC
I'm accumulating music fairly organically and randomly from Youtube viewing, games and other sources. But I can't really recall any of the big releases this year. The one thing that made me smile though was Gangnam Style.

TV
Just Breaking Bad. TV is so bad in the UK right now I've long stopped watching it.

No. Let me help:

1) Not 2012 but 1994-1997.
2) There's no "AWD" with Audi, it's simply "Quattro".
3) It's not an A4, it's based on an A6. The first one by the way, successor to Audi's "100" series.
4) It's not a 2.0T, it's a naturally aspirated V8.
5) Above is also the reason why i wrote "based on an A6" because it's an S6 to be precise. The little badge on the trunk is a giveaway.

@notarobot "If it costs 1200 Euros (on average) to clear one mine, releasing 24 of these things to detonate ONE mine is still cheaper than other option."

Your math is based on some flawed assumptions. These things might detonate some landmines, that's it, and that's all. Mine clearance is about making safe zones where people can walk again with relative assurance that it's clear of mines.

Apples and oranges, but your apples are rotten, because they simply don't provide much practical use. Maybe it's possible one of these things might save a limb or a life, but as I pointed out earlier, it's equally possible they could cost a limb or a life. Without a dedicated research project nobody will ever know for sure whether these things effectively reduce the number of landmine related injuries.

Also, regarding the cost of mine clearance (well below your 1,200 euro spitball) http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/banmines/units/unit1c.asp I'll give the full quote because there are other sobering statistics there.

"A landmine that brings a vendor $3 in revenue, costs the international community between $300 and $1,000 to clear. At a minimum, the 110 million landmines currently buried worldwide will cost approximately $33 billion for clearance alone. In 1994, roughly 100,000 landmines were cleared. However, in that same period 2 million more landmines were laid, leaving the international community with an annual “de-mining deficit” of some 1.9 million mines, adding another $1.4 billion to the cost of clearing the world's landmines."

By the way, one of the big reasons for the wide range in clearance costs is density of the minefield, it takes almost as much work to clear one square metre of space without mines at all as it does to clear one square metre of space with a mine in it, so these doohickys will do little to bring down the cost of clearance in that regard.

I thought the following factoid was cool as shit~

"Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That's the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt — you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs, [the 1928 movie based on the novel] by Victor Hugo. [...] Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, 'Here's the Joker'. Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it, but he'll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card" ~ Bob Kane Interviewed by Frank Lovece for Entertainment Weekly, 1994. Perkowski grabbed the footage from that very flick to create his joker character for this nod to the caped crusader.

Better than Batman Returns and Forever combined iffn ya axe me!

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by BoneRemake.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Scatman-1994-Scatman-John

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by Fusionaut. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

>> ^oritteropo:

http://videosift.com/video/Scatman-1994-Scatman-John ?


yup. SOmeone must call it and replace the other embed with this one. I am lazy right now.

http://videosift.com/video/Scatman-1994-Scatman-John ?

Listen close, as life turns its pages
Makaveli here, kickin' rhymes for the ages
Seen things in stages, wise words spoken by sages
From SkyTel to BlackBerry pages
Your crew don't phase us
We'll make you bustas pay us
Run up in your spot like C.J. from San Andreas
I wrote this song a long time ago
A real long time ago
Feel me!
I wrote this song a long time ago
It was the dopest song I ever wrote... in '94

What can a nigga do
when half the people voted for George W.
It's a bitch, fuck George W.
-- can't be true --
I wanna choke him, because he's a snitch
I'm talking about George W. Smith
From city council, he ran in '93
Out in Oakland,
you probably didn't hear about him

I wrote this song a long time ago
A real long time ago
Way before Slim Shady was in demand
Way before we dropped baloney on Afghanistan
I wrote this song in '94

How am I doin' this?
Look around the club, see everyone in the place
Showing 'Pac love got a smile on my face
The girl in the miniskirt has bad taste
Because her shirt don't match
And there's a puddin' stain on the back
What the fuck is that? It might be doo-doo

And you in the back, you ain't shit
You bought a gin and tonic
but you didn't even tip
And if you hit this table one more time
then the record might skip Might skip...
I told you, stop hittin' the table

Tupac Shakur
I wrote this rhyme in 1994
I'm not alive!
Thug life!
Dave Chappelle, that ain't your wife
A married man, you've got two kids
Go home!

I wrote this song a long time ago
A real long time ago
Way before Beanie Sigel had to do a bid
Way before Dave Chappelle had two kids
(Don't give him no coochie)


DJ: 2Pac rest in peace!
2Pac: Ok, I will!



Slightly * nsfw lyrics, but what the hey.

Luckly there was no other race cars coming down the pitlane. See the snap reaction of the wheel gun guys on the far side, ran straight into the driving lane (I think this was the F1 era, before pit lane speed limiters).

After an investigation by 'Intertechnique' at Benetton's team factory, FIA (the sports ruling body) revealed that the team had been using an illegal fuel valve, without a fuel filter. This pumped fuel into the car 12.5% faster than a normal, legal fuel valve that had a filter.


Edit: Just checked that in 1994: Pit lane speed limited to 80km/h in practice, 120 km/h in the race. Fire-protective clothing for all refuelling crews Burns treatment material in each pit obligatory. Still, I wouldn't want to be hit by a F1 car at 120kph.

and then after a hard day of walking around protecting the property of other people,this minimum wage crusader walked to his 1994 honda civic only to find the tires slashed,windows busted out and his seats shredded.

mess with the skater but never his board.

>> ^NetRunner:

@jimnms I think the right lesson to take from the example of Brazil is "gun control laws need to be properly enforced to reduce homicide", not "gun control laws never reduce gun crime."
Also, you're wrong about gun shows, there's a pretty big loophole. From wikipedia:

U.S. federal law requires persons engaged in interstate firearm commerce, or those who are "engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, to hold a Federal Firearms License and perform background checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System maintained by the FBI prior to transferring a firearm. Under the terms of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, however, individuals "not engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, or who only make "occasional" sales within their state of residence, are under no requirement to conduct background checks on purchasers or maintain records of sale (although even private sellers are forbidden under federal law from selling firearms to persons they have reason to believe are felons or otherwise prohibited from purchasing firearms).

In other words, you can always just say you're a private seller, and sell guns at gunshows without doing background checks or recording the sale.
There are videos, sifted right here on Videosift, of people going and buying guns at gunshows while literally saying to the seller "I don't need a background check, right? 'Cause I probably couldn't pass one" with the seller replying with some form of "no problem, here's your gun".
But more than anecdotal video evidence, there's also a been series of studies about drug cartels moving serious amounts of guns using straw purchases at gun shows.
Yet for some reason you're calling Moyers a liar for saying the same thing.
Also, the Assault Weapons Ban set the maximum legal size of a single clip at 10 rounds. IIRC, this latest shooting featured the shooter using a barrel mag with over 100. That used to be illegal. Also, the Tuscon shooting featured a shooter using 2 guns with 30-round clips -- and he was stopped when he had to reload.
Personally, I don't quite understand the anti-gun control side of the argument. Say banning assault weapons only reduces the number of people killed by gun violence by 1.6%. That's still what, a few thousand people's lives a year? Why is having assault weapons legal for civilians worth the deaths of a thousand people a year? Why would it be worth the death of even one person a year? You can still have a pistol, a hunting rife, a shotgun, etc., you just can't have a high-velocity, large-magazine firearm. What exactly is the harm in making that illegal?


That's not a loophole in gun shows, private sales and transfer of firearms are not regulated in some states. You can't set up a booth and sell guns at a gun show unless you are a licensed gun dealer. And you certainly aren't going to walk in and buy a fully automatic assault rifle without showing ID or getting a background check. If a person legally has a fully automatic weapon, they have to have a class 3 federal firearms license and register the weapon with the ATF. If they sell that weapon, the person they are selling it to must also have a class 3 firearms license and the transfer of the weapon must be reported to the ATF.

I've seen the videos you speak of and I read the report you linked. It's good that the ATF is doing their job and cracking down on those douchbags dealers. What you said about Brazil, "gun control laws need to be properly enforced to reduce homicide", not "gun control laws never reduce gun crime.", can be said about the U.S. also.

The assault weapon ban limited pistols magazines to 10 rounds and rifles to 30 rounds. This also only applied to weapons and magazines manufactured or imported before the 1994 law went into effect. He still could purchase the high capacity magazine if it was manufactured or imported before the law went into effect, or he could have purchased it illegally.

People are still confused about what an assault rifle is. The definition of an assault rifle is a gun that can fire full auto or in bursts, and generally uses a shorter, less powerful cartridge than a battle rifle. The guns the media so ignorantly call assault rifles are NOT assault rifles. They look like their military assault rifle counterpart, fire the same round, but the internals are different. They only fire in semi-automatic and can not be modified to fire full auto.

If "assault weapons" were the least used weapons in violent crimes, why go after them when according to the DOJ the effect on crime is "too small for reliable measurement, because assault weapons are rarely used in gun crimes." The guns most preferred by criminals are small caliber (.25, .38 an 9mm) easily concealed pistols with magazines of 7 or less. So what do they do? They ban "assault rifles" and big magazines. Does that make any sense? It's just politics to appease the mass stupids by banning big scary looking guns.

Lets apply the same logic used by legalize drug crowd (which I'm all for). Pot and other drugs are illegal. There are laws against the sale and possession of these drugs, yet people still get them. Ban all guns, and people will still get them, only it will just criminals with guns. Both England and Australia have banned private ownership of guns, and their crime rates went up because the only people left with guns were criminals [1][2][3][4]. Why don't we give that a try here, because it worked so well for them.

Wow, I have just lost respect for Bill Moyers. He has stooped to flat out lying and playing a fear mongering video that is full of BS. Right at 1 minute he says "one of the guns used was an AK-47 type assault weapon that was banned in 1994." This is a flat out lie. The so called "assault weapon ban" did not actually ban any weapons, it only banned cosmetic features on semi automatic replicas, or more accurately it limited a gun to having no more than two military style features found on the real assault weapon. His "AK-47 type assault weapon" would have still been legal, it just might have looked less scary.

The 1994 Assault Weapon Ban was political stunt that banned something that people feared, but didn't do squat to prevent crime. The DOJ conducted a study on the effect of the 1994 Assault Weapon ban and found that its effects on gun violence was "too small for reliable measurement, because assault weapons are rarely used in gun crimes." The Brady Center did a study of the ban and their findings were that "assault weapons" were only used in 1.6% of gun crimes.

I can't believe he played that clip of a scary muslim instructing on how easy it is to go to a gun show and walk out with a fully automatic weapon without a background check or showing any ID, without checking the facts claimed. That is total fear mongering BS. First of all you can't buy a gun at all, even at a gun show without a background check. Second, to legally own a fully automatic weapon requires a class 3 firearms license, which isn't easy to get or cheap, and you must register your weapons with the ATF. Way to go on fact checking that video Bill.

How come you never hear about the crimes that are prevented by people lawfully carrying a gun? A NIJ and another independent study from 1993 and 1994 found that 800,000 to 2.5 million crimes per year are prevented each year most of which the victim never had to fire a shot.