The Thick of It

Time Trumpet

The Armando Iannucci Shows

...I think it's becoming clear who doesn't understand comedy.

America, I'm speaking from another country, ok.
Your presidents are good, they really are; and this one is one of the best.
Looking for non-existing foreign birth certificates, aliens or fairies at the bottom of the garden, are, probably harmless, and I suppose, quite engrossing hobbies, of sorts.
What is not so endearing is for others to pick up these helpless cries and turn them into issues.
Leave these people alone, let them live with their beliefs without sounding the trumpets when they confuse a flower with Tinkerbelle.

Oh! And by the way it was Lee Harvey Oswald, on his own, from the Texas School Book Depository.
Forget conspiracies. Life is much simpler than some folk would like to believe.

I met him once in the 80s, when he was visiting my neighbour. He demonstrated how to do a wheelie on my farm motorbike... but I never managed it. I suspect that it was easier for someone heavier than I was.

I think they persuaded him to get out his trumpet, too.
>> ^kulpims:

saw him play live twice and I booked him in 2007 to play in our concert hall ... great musician, great man

3 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

3 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

thanks ponceleon!
In reply to this comment by ponceleon:
*quality

people need to vote for this. schnell.

The jazz channel is quite inclusive... it used to be jazz and blues, but even now that blues has another channel jazz still includes funk.

The tags themselves don't call it jazz.
>> ^mizume:

What about a funk song with heavy disco vibe gives this a jazz tag? C'mon now. A trio of trumpets doesn't turn any song into jazz. To be fair, at least you guys didn't tag it with dubstep.

What about a funk song with heavy disco vibe gives this a jazz tag? C'mon now. A trio of trumpets doesn't turn any song into jazz. To be fair, at least you guys didn't tag it with dubstep.

Hey thanks!

I was surprised this didn't get sifted the first time.

Jigga to the rescue!

In reply to this comment by JiggaJonson:
*promote

Haven't had a chance to watch the clip yet, but I just had to add my 2¢ on this. I wouldn't describe Moyers as liberal or fair. He's progressive and his shows are definitely agenda-driven. And that's a good thing, because he's really good at what he does. The difference between Moyers and someone like Limbaugh or Olbermann is this: Moyers has thoughtful discussions on important political and cultural topics with scholars and experts on the topic at hand, with rational, fact-based arguments (which are neither infallible nor unassailable) presented with great articulation; Limbaugh and his ilk instead offer screeching opinions based largely on emotion (usually fear and/or anger) with just enough facts laced in to make any outright lies or other deceptions believable. They're all just as motivated by an agenda as any other broadcaster. The difference is the usefulness of the content and the style with which it's presented.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Bill Moyers is about as fair as you get when it comes to media. He definitely sees the world through a prism of liberal empathy, so I can see where you might find him unbalanced. Every newsperson and newswriter is biased towards what they believe to be true, and it's not really a problem so long as you are fair about it. The problem with FOX is not that it presents a far right perspective on the news, it's that they do it in such a dishonest way, and then call it 'fair and balanced.' Do you ever think how ridiculous it is that the phrase you choose to use so often 'fair and balanced' comes from the largest and sleaziest propoganda outfit in the history of the planet? >> ^quantumushroom:
For all of you that chide Fox, Moyers's trumpeting shows are nothing close to being fair or balanced, he's a mirror for liberal vanity. At least Rush does his schtick on how own dime and creates wealth, which the Moyers's of the world then siphon away for who-knows-what.>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Probably not, but do you notice how calm, reasoned and intelligent his show is? Why is it, do you think, that publicly funded media is so vastly superior to privately funded media? >> ^quantumushroom:
Has Moyers ever had a show that taxpayers didn't have to pay for?

Bill Moyers is about as fair as you get when it comes to media. He definitely sees the world through a prism of liberal empathy, so I can see where you might find him unbalanced. Every newsperson and newswriter is biased towards what they believe to be true, and it's not really a problem so long as you are fair about it. The problem with FOX is not that it presents a far right perspective on the news, it's that they do it in such a dishonest way, and then call it 'fair and balanced.' Do you ever think how ridiculous it is that the phrase you choose to use so often 'fair and balanced' comes from the largest and sleaziest propoganda outfit in the history of the planet? >> ^quantumushroom:

For all of you that chide Fox, Moyers's trumpeting shows are nothing close to being fair or balanced, he's a mirror for liberal vanity. At least Rush does his schtick on how own dime and creates wealth, which the Moyers's of the world then siphon away for who-knows-what.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Probably not, but do you notice how calm, reasoned and intelligent his show is? Why is it, do you think, that publicly funded media is so vastly superior to privately funded media? >> ^quantumushroom:
Has Moyers ever had a show that taxpayers didn't have to pay for?

>> ^quantumushroom:

For all of you that chide Fox, Moyers's trumpeting shows are nothing close to being fair or balanced, he's a mirror for liberal vanity. At least Rush does his schtick on how own dime and creates wealth, which the Moyers's of the world then siphon away for who-knows-what.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Probably not, but do you notice how calm, reasoned and intelligent his show is? Why is it, do you think, that publicly funded media is so vastly superior to privately funded media? >> ^quantumushroom:
Has Moyers ever had a show that taxpayers didn't have to pay for?




One uses facts and respected intellectuals or authors. One is a guy with a microphone who is only there to make money.

For all of you that chide Fox, Moyers's trumpeting shows are nothing close to being fair or balanced, he's a mirror for liberal vanity. At least Rush does his schtick on how own dime and creates wealth, which the Moyers's of the world then siphon away for who-knows-what.


>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Probably not, but do you notice how calm, reasoned and intelligent his show is? Why is it, do you think, that publicly funded media is so vastly superior to privately funded media? >> ^quantumushroom:
Has Moyers ever had a show that taxpayers didn't have to pay for?

I meant exactly what I wrote; I was evoking the image of a priest being ordained in his robes.


Yeah, that sentence above doesn't parse right either. You can be ordained, and you can be in robes, but you don't really "ordain something in robes". You just don't. Maybe "shrouded in vestments"? Feel free to disagree with me on this, it obviously doesn't matter.

My point, continuing a previous conversation with gwiz, is that people put faith in science much as religious people put faith in religion.


I'd say they put way, way more faith in science than religion. And they're right to: science brings us all kinds of amazing things every day. When I get on a plane, I'm relying on all sorts of science and engineering that I don't fully understand. My three year old knows to put chocolate milk in the fridge or it will go bad. People have long histories of relying on science and things working out. They have long histories of seeing something amazing, having no idea how it works, but later using that science and technology in their own lives.

If people got anywhere near that level of positive feedback from their religions, religion wouldn't be slowly dying in the developed world.

There are no legitimate demonstrations of quantum levitation that highlighted some of the features present here...


Well, yes, there's more stuff happening here than in previous demonstrations - but that's what people are used to with science; a progression of more features.

If it steps over the line, even a micron, it becomes pseudo-science. Yet you are willing to suspend your disbelief based on other past results you may not understand.


Very few people are going to understand all of the science and technology they use. I don't know how my anti-lock brakes work, or fully understand even the (what I assume is simple) tech in an airbag (what's the gas it inflates with? I don't know). And I may one day rely on those things to save my life. Almost anyone getting medical treatment is relying on very, very shakey knowledge of how the medicine or procedure actually works, or why things are done a specific way.

And they're not fools to do so. With science and technology, you can build a web of trust based on demonstrable results in the past. I know that there's standards bodies that test airbags, and medical associations that understand and approve procedures; I don't have to confirm this kind of thing personally on a case-by-case basis, nor could any one person fully understand all the technology in their lives. Hawking has to hire some tech guy to fix his voice box.

But that doesn't mean that things aren't tested or that there's "blind faith" involved. There's faith backed by reason.

Back to this video in specific: people may have thought this video was real, but very few would have sent off a cheque to buy one without knowing a lot more, without seeing it reported on by someone they have some trust in. And look at how fast it was brought down. How many people still believed after reading all the comments? Similarly, when scientists emerge trumpeting some new unlikely discovery, they're treated by other scientists with very appropriate and high levels of skepticism until their results are independently validated.

Could you benefit from a medium-term, important scientific hoax? Yes, with some real effort. But history has a lot more examples of people seeing big success using science for their religious hoaxes (from Greek temples on down to scientology). Even if people have the "amazing science" in hand with which to try to trick, they recognize where people's real blindspots are and aim for those.

I meant exactly what I wrote; I was evoking the image of a priest being ordained in his robes.

My point, continuing a previous conversation with gwiz, is that people put faith in science much as religious people put faith in religion. Not saying people are stupid for doing so; just that people are not educated enough to discern what is truly scientifically proven and what is a hoax.

There are no legitimate demonstrations of quantum levitation that highlighted some of the features present here (e.g, angled banks, objects with limited symmetry, which could make the magnetic flux non-uniform).

If it steps over the line, even a micron, it becomes pseudo-science. Yet you are willing to suspend your disbelief based on other past results you may not understand.

This is normal. People need to truly become as skeptical of trumpeted scientific results as they are of religion.

To mangle a saying: when the high priests take over, they will come dressed in lab coats.

>> ^jmzero:

Ordain something in the raiment of science and people will believe.

Do you perhaps mean "adorn" rather than "ordain"? Or do you mean that after you put the raiment of science on something you should confer upon it some sort of priesthood? If so, that's a fairly well-mixed metaphor.
And it makes sense people would believe this. The makers here are clearly imitating previous legitimate demonstrations showing reasonably similar behavior. People weren't stupid for believing those videos (which were real) and to the extent people believed in this I don't think they're stupid or even gullible. The video doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny, but it's reasonably well made.
And of course people would have been much less likely to believe this if the makers here had credited magic or religion with powering the cars (rather than sciencey stuff). Why? Because magic and religion don't, every day, bring us cool stuff like this. Science does, and there's no reason to believe it won't deliver a real version of something similar to this in the very near future.