Yeah, it must be jaw-dropping to be dwarfed by such majesty and power in person.

Also, *promote because this is easily the best footage of a tornado I've seen to date, and stuff like this is priceless for artists looking for reference.

Wait, how is the combination of words "Dwarf shortage" uttered within the bounds of a comedy show offensive to anyone? Why? Wtf?

Its not a joke that carries much meaning, besides the fact that it might be mocking the political correctness brigade a bit.

The second sentence might be the one that breaks the broadcast code, because basically anything you might happen to say to a dwarf can be theoretically deemed to be insulting.

Dwarves are fierce warriors, so I would definitely err on the side of caution there and cross the road if I see a dwarf coming.

It is as easy to claim being offended as it is for a soccer player to fall. How many of those offended were even real dwarves?

Presumably you are able to recognise that Ofcom's pronouncements carry the weight of statutory force.

It is impossible to conceive of a free-speech doctrine that includes government agencies issuing rulings on whether a comedian's jokes are funny or not.

The BBC is obliged to take account of Ofcom's broadcasting code, including its worthless stipulations on supposed offensive material, or suffer sanctions which include fines; they have indeed been fined for violations of the very section upon which Carr is accused of trespassing, in the trivial Andrew Sachs answerphone affair for example.

Frankly I would prefer Jimmy Carr skin a dwarf and wear its shrunken hide as a scarf in his next appearance on The One Show than have our treasured public service broadcaster at the mercy of PC crybullies and the government guns that back them.

Well, I made a genuine effort to find out exactly what Ofcom did and all I could find was a ruling that said he breached broadcasting standards. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'll happily read it. For reference, here is a list of sanction decisions made by ofcom: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/content-sanctions-adjudications/

"Punishment means fines. Fines means the threat of force. Force means abduction and false imprisonment. For the crime of sitting on a couch and having a conversation."

That slippery slope looks awesome fun! Does it go the other way too? If you can't joke about dwarfs, then pretty soon you won't be able to advocate giving those queers the beating they deserve or tell those darkies to fuck off back to africa! It's PC gone mad!

Except that is not what happened.

The complaint was that Carr (and by extension the One Show) had breached broadcasting standards. Ofcom felt that he did and gave a lengthy explanation of why they felt that way.

You are entitled to disagree, but let's be clear here: he is not being incarcerated or tortured.

He made a tasteless (and not particularly funny) joke. People called him on it.

Let's compare that to Louis CKs bit on pedophiles. His joke was definitely uncomfortable, but it had an interesting point: before you condemn someone as a monster, maybe try to understand why they do such awful things.

Whereas Carr just said "hah! dwarfs are short, geddit?!". It's exactly as Tompkins described... it's lazy and unfunny.

I disagree.

This was in England, but (from HERE):
-----
“I tried to write the shortest joke possible,” he (Jimmy Carr) said. “So, I wrote a two-word joke which was: ‘Dwarf shortage’. It’s just so I could pack more jokes into the show.”

Carr added: “If you’re a dwarf and you’re offended by that, grow up.”

Ofcom has received two complaints about the incident, which aired on 4 November, and has decided it warrants a formal investigation to see if there has been a breach of the broadcasting code.
-----

That wasn't people telling Jimmy Carr that the joke "wasn't funny". They specifically were suggesting that he shouldn't / couldn't say it, and he might have to pay a fine or face other actual legal consequences for it.

Saying "that comedian's joke offended me, so I am never going to pay to see one of his shows ever again" is a perfectly acceptable decision.

Adding "and I will encourage my friends and acquaintances to do the same" is also basically OK, as long as you accept that they don't have to listen to you.

...But calling up Momthe Government and saying "that comedian made an offensive joke, I demand that you fine (/incarcerate, /torture, /summarily execute) him!" is just insane.

Your video, The Last Star in the Universe – Red Dwarfs Explained, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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And they explained away Khan's original appearance being transformed into Khanberbatch as just futuristic cosmetic surgery in the prequel comic I think.

But yes, it's still stupid. In their defense, how else were they going to do Khan? The person would have had to have looked like Montalblan otherwise.

But going back to stupid since it was just stupid to reboot the Khan storyline. Cuz yeah, a genetic superman from the 1990s would be a really big help fighting a war in 2200s. Obviously war in the 2200s is exactly the same as it was in 1900, no leap in logic for this fossil to design a hyper advanced starship that dwarfs the flagship of the day...not at all.

I would argue that automation still isn't the job killer #1. Plain old political decisions, such as sound finance, deficit hawkery, and austerity lead by a mile in this category. Neither is being addressed properly, but I find it hard to focus on the employment effects of automation when the Eurozone, for instance, runs at >10% unemployment strictly due to policies enacted by (non-)elected officials. We don't need technology to cause mass unemployment, humans can do that all on their own.

Additionally, even the amount of work available is a matter of perspective. Within the current system, the number of jobs with a decent salary is already dwarfed by the number of people looking for one. The amount of work to be done, on the other hand, is not.

Case in point: our (read: German) national railroad company is short-staffed by about 80.000-100.000 people, last I checked; our healthcare system is short-staffed by at least 200.000 people, probably a lot more; law enforcement is short by about 50.000; education is short by at least 20.000. Let's not even talk about infrastructure or ecological maintenance/regeneration. These are not open positions though, because nobody is willing/able to pay the bill.

So while I agree that we should be discussing how to deal with technological change, a more pressing matter is either to alter the system or to at least take back control over the vast sums of dead currency floating around in the financial nirvana or on Stephen Schwarzman's bank accounts. First stop: full employment. Then, gradually, guaranteed basic income when automation does, in fact, cause mass unemployment.

Finally, I don't think automation will do as quick as sweep as some presume. The quality of software in commercial machines is quite absymal in many cases, since it was written in the normal fashion: do it now, do it quickly, here's five bucks. Efficiency improvements generally come at the price of QA, and it shows. Europe's most modern railway control center is nearby, and it never went online -- Bombardier cut corners and never had the proper railway expertise to begin with. Meanwhile, the center build in '53 is working just fine, and so are the switches put in place when Wilhelm II was running the show.

Edit: That said, I'm thrilled to see mind-numbing labour being replaced by machines. Can't happen quickly enough.

Also, there's SOOOOOOOOOOOO many little easter eggs in this that i've found, so i'll just list a few (that hopefully won't contain spoilers)

Lakeshire from Redridge Mountains is there
Dalaran is in the sky
Karazhan is there, with what appears to be an old Khadgar, or Medivh
there's a scene with a young Varian Wrynn
The scene with the alliance gathered around the table has a dwarf, and elves.
Potentially Sylvannas and Kael'thalas in it
Gul'dan is (Very VERY) briefly in this
The Dark Portal (not open, the wraith statue gate) can be seen twice


and there's a couple more very spoiler heavy ones i'll leave out.

@radx

It all comes down to the figures behind it. I'm no expert in this matter but most of the reporting I have read about advanced ageing economies like Germany suggests increasing health care and pension costs will substantially dwarf existing costs. Germany is of course much better placed than say China or Japan which have very restrictive immigration policies to begin with. This is purely looking at the cost rather the distribution of other funds and how that affects the deficit.

Germany's budget seems to be relatively well managed, but I think you will see many countries postpone the issue until the last minute or have some kind of crisis precipitate the problem (I'm comparing countries to the likes of Detroit's bankruptcy after house prices and thereby property taxes collected collapsed after 2008). When you look at immigration having very limited costs but huge potential humanitarian, cultural and economic benefits it seems to me that it's almost necessary to defend the argument to not raise it rather than vice versa (although I know you're not arguing against it).

You can see why he's called the mountain. 6' 9". None of the support crew are small guys, they'd all make a normal person look tiny but he dwarfs them.

The concept that you can go to university and learn how to cut people open and fix their heart = you do not need abstract concepts in high school... Dissecting a frog doesn't prepare you for putting it all back in working order.

The things I've learned since I left school 22 years ago dwarf the knowledge I learned at high school and have since discarded.

Core skills like literacy and numeracy, of course, but you shouldn't be doing complex maths when there are many more practical things you could be doing.

eg. The local high schools now offer MSCE and Cisco certified courses in high school as an elective. So you can study in year 11/12 and come out of high school fully papered up for a career in IT rather than doing it once you leave.

I also fully support the right for kids to drop out of school to start apprenticeships at 14-15 so that they have established a trade by the time they are at the same age as graduates. Why waste the extra 3 years doing classes that will almost certainly not assist you in any way, shape or form, when you can be working full time learning a trade and earning a wage (albeit not a great one, but you don't get paid to sit in class either ; ).

Oh cute! He high fived a fish. I used to have a Dwarf Gourami I could pet. That's almost the same thing. Right?

The tax level in Norway has fluctuated between 40 and 45% of GDP since the 1970s. The relatively high tax level is a result of the large Norwegian welfare state.

You literally dwarf the US tax rate per person, almost by double the amount.

You have a VAT tax of 25%, among the highest in the world. My equivalent is sales tax, which is 8.25% on the dollar, and it should be 2.5% lower than that, but Austin is a super-left city that taxes extra to cover all their feel good plans.

To be clear, the average Norwegian household pays roughly $70,000 per year in tax. Including the state’s oil income, government tax revenue exceeds $100,000 per household.

Discretionary spending is kept to an extreme minimum, because you don't have much left after taxes. The cost of living and recreation in Norway is through the roof compared to other countries.

Workers come to the office, punch a clock, shuffle papers, and go home. There is no cultural drive to work hard and get promoted. Norway has created a system that makes it virtually impossible to pull ahead of your peers financially. In fact, culturally, there is a thing where you are NOT supposed to do better than someone else.

What major worldwide innovations or brands do we get out of Norway? None that I can think of offhand, but here is a list of some of their more important companies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Norway.

So, you get taxed a ton, cost of living is incredibly high, there is no incentive to do better than anyone else, and in return you get to have free stuff like healthcare and education. Not that it matters really, because once you get out of school you get to become a worker bee drone. Unless of course you move to another country and get to achieve something there.

So, yeah, enjoy your hive mind country. As screwed up as mine is, at least there is a chance to become something if you work hard and invest correctly.