From the video, I also assume that Australia and Britain are very similar... but I have only been to the UK once, so I'm far from an expert.

"Some people would say" -- does not necessarily indicate future tense.
I would say (see?) it is often used to more politely present a point.
Other people would say (again..) that he is referring to what people might say to tyson if they were present in the interview, and so he is saying what they would say if they were present.

For all any of us knows, two or three people asked him to ask the question and he's completely accurate and right. As i already stated, i'm interested in that question even if you aren't, so he's completely right in his statement, other people WOULD say that. Me - and probably others. Though you don't address any of that in your reply.

I don't understand what you mean in your first paragraph about the public - i never said that you had interviewed them nor that you should (??). What we are discussing is the value of mike tyson's endorsement, and an endorsement is for the listeners, the public. So what i am referring to is the viewing public of a TV show on which mike tyson has appeared and offered his personal endorsement to.

In fact, you specifically said that he has a duty of care to his audience to explain his sources, so it seemed to me that your primary concern was the public's full understanding of the interview... is that not the case? I think you may have contradicted yourself here - i asked you what that duty of care was, and that's a hard question to answer without referring to the "public thought". Perhaps that's why you didn't bother addressing it in your reply. I'm doing my best to keep the discussion going, but i don't understand what this paragraph refers to or what it means.

Finally the legal battle that you linked to me. As i already reminded you, we are not his judges and it is not a courtroom, so it is utterly irrelevant to the case. Furthermore, the world is bigger than one country and this is an international website with a plethora of opinions. In exchange i'd like you to read the introductory paragraph about protection of sources which finishes with several particular comments about the united states, and one addressed directly about the US - the land of the free and home of the exiled whistle-blowers. Please remember as you read that this refers to a legal setting, and really has nothing to do with the example in this video about which you incorrectly assert that he has a duty to expose his sources. Which you still have not made clear. However i wanted to make clear that i think protection of sources is imperative to combating corruption which is absolutely rife in this day and age of illegal wars, illegal detention, worldwide spying and tracking of individuals by the NSA and Great Britain's intelligence agencies, expenses scandals, etc.

You haven't answered even half of the questions i posed to you in my first comment, i'm all ears. Or eyes. Whatever.

I've heard there's a nice little problem with that - at least in Britain - to let police practically do as they wish. I think over here they need to see something in your vehicle or on your person or in your behaviour that makes them suspicious and decide to search. Denying a search is considered a suspicious act and although that alone doesn't justify a search, it can count for something. The police might say well i've seen an item in your car that isn't suspicious alone, but in conjunction with your lack of consent on a search it's enough that i now need to search your car.

@ChaosEngine @Trancecoach

The bottle experiment - as far as i can find - has never been cited as experimental evidence of global warming because it's a simplistic demonstration for laymen. It's been cited only twice since 2010 (in 2012, 2014) by papers that offer up alternative gases that better represent the earth's atmosphere to be used in future demonstrations - it doesn't form any part of the scientific debate. The paper is just a criticism of a demonstration.

The paper is correct - the demonstration doesn't reflect reality. But that doesn't in any way form a basis to discredit the science of climate change - it discredits the gas-in-a-bottle demonstration. In Britain, I've never seen that demonstration live or recorded, and there will be many scientists across the world that also haven't seen it. We haven't been using it, and we're convinced. So in truth, especially with the number of references and type of references that the paper got, it is not part of the scientific investigation into climate change, and to use it as such is to completely misunderstand the discussion. The funny thing is (which the article doesn't mention) is that the paper is called "Climate change in a shoebox: Right result, wrong physics". Sadly i can't access the paper using my subscriptions to actually read it and see if it even mentions the large scale system - Earth.

@lantern53 - Did you take the time to read my comment or the sources i linked? I'm really open to discuss them with you, why you think they're not worth believing. I don't think you're doing yourself any favours though; a scientist is offering to explain things to you and taking time to write friendly and helpful (hopefully?) comments and you'd rather bait someone.

" At present, a little more than half of all Americans own the sum total of about 320 million guns, 36% of which are handguns, but fewer than 100,000 of these guns are used in violent crimes."

Per year. You don't cite your source, but this is looks to me to be an underestimate. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey there are half about half a million people claiming to be victim of a gun related crime over the course of a year. I remember being a victim of a gun crime in America (the perp was an British-born and educated woman) where the police said that they weren't going to follow things up because they were too busy with more serious crimes and they weren't confident of successful prosecution, they didn't even bother to look at the bullets or interview the perpetrator. I'd be surprised if it was even officially reported for crime statistic purposes.

"So gun ownership tends increase where violence is the least."

You didn't discuss the confounding variables.

But nevertheless, nobody is saying that owning guns makes you intrinsically more criminal. The argument here seems to be that criminals or those with criminal intent will find it much easier to acquire firearms when there are hundreds of millions of them distributed in various degrees of security across the US.

And those that have firearms, who are basically normal and moral people, may find themselves in a situation where their firearm is used, even in error, and causes harm - a situation obviously avoided in the absence of firearms and something that isn't necessarily included in crime statistics.

"In the UK, where guns are virtually banned, 43% of home burglaries occur when people are in the home"

Yes, but here's a fun fact. I've been burgled a few times, all but one of those times I was at home when it happened. You know what the burglar was armed with? Nothing. Do you know what happened when I confronted him with a wooden weapon? He pretended he knew someone that lived there and when that fell through he ran away. When the police apprehended him, there wasn't any consideration that he might be armed with a gun and the police merely put handcuffs on him and he walked to the police car. He swore and made some idle and non-specific threats, according to the police, but that's it. In any event, this isn't extraordinary. There are still too many burglaries that do involve violence, of course.
Many burglaries in Britain are actually vehicle crimes, with opportunity thrown in. That is: The primary purpose of the burglary is to acquire car keys (this is often the easiest way to steal modern vehicles), but they may grab whatever else is valuable and easy too.

"The federal ban on assault weapons from '94-'04 did not impact amount and severity of school shootings."

What impact did it have on gun prevalence? Not really enough to stop the sentence 'guns are prevalent in the US' from being true....

" So, it's likely that gun-related crimes will increase if the general population is unarmed."

I missed the part where you provided the reasoning that connects your evidence to this conclusion.

"Note retail gun sales is the only area that gun control legislation can affect, since existing laws have failed to control for illegal activity. "

This is silly. Guns don't get manufactured and then 32% of them get stolen from the manufacturers warehouse. They get bought and some get subsequently stolen. If there were less guns made and sold there would be less guns available for felons to acquire them privately, less places to steal them or buy stolen ones on the black market, less opportunity for renting or purchasing from a retailer. Thus - less felons with guns.

If times got tough, and I thought robbing a convenience store was a way out of a situation I was in - I would not be able to acquire a firearm without putting myself in considerable danger that outweighs the benefits to the degree that pretending to have a gun is a better strategy. I have 'black market contacts' so I might be able to work my way to someone with a gun, but I really don't want to get into business with someone that deals guns because they are near universally bad news.

" states with right-to-carry laws have a 30% lower homicide rate and a 46% lower robbery rate."

Almost all States have such laws, making the comparison pretty meaningless.

"In fact, it's {number of mass shootings} declined from 42 incidents in 1990 to 26 from 2000-2012. Until recently, the worst school shootings took place in the UK or Germany. "

I think 'most dead in one incident' is a poor measure. I think total dead over a reasonable time period is probably better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers:_School_massacres
The UK appears once. It is approx. 1/5 the population of the US. The US manages to have five incidents in the top 10.

Statistics can be fun, though, huh?

" In any case, do we have any evidence to believe that the regulators (presumably the police in this instance) will be competent, honest, righteous, just, and moral enough to take away the guns from private citizens"

You've done a lot of hard work to show that most gun owners are law-abiding and non-violent. As such, the police won't go door to door, citizens will go to the police.

"How will you enforce the regulation and/or remove the guns from those who resist turning over their guns?"

The same way they remove contraband from other recalcitrants. I expect most of them will ask, demand, threaten and then use force - but as usual there will be examples where it won't be pretty.

"Do the police not need guns to get those with the guns to turn over their guns?"

That's how it typically goes down here in the UK, yes.

"Does this then not presume that "gun control" is essentially an aim for only the government (i.e., the centralized political elite and their minions) to have guns at the exclusion of everyone else?"

The military has had access to weapons the citizenry is not permitted to for some considerable time. Banning most handguns etc., would just be adding to the list.

"Is the government so reliable, honest, moral, virtuous, and forward thinking as to ensure that the intentions of gun control legislation go exactly as planned?"

No, but on the other hand, can the same unreliable, dishonest, immoral and unvirtuous government ensure that allowing general access to firearms will go exactly as planned?

You see, you talk the talk of sociological examination, but you seem to have neglected any form of critical reflection.

"From a sociological perspective, it's interesting to note that those in favor of gun control tend to live in relatively safe and wealthy neighborhoods where the danger posed by violent crime is far less than in those neighborhoods where gun ownership is believed to be more acceptable if not necessary

"From a sociological perspective, it's interesting to note that those in favor of gun control tend to live in relatively safe and wealthy neighborhoods where the danger posed by violent crime is far less than in those neighborhoods where gun ownership is believed to be more acceptable if not necessary"

On the other hand, I've been mugged erm, 6 times? I've been violently assaulted without attempts to rob another half dozen or so. I don't tend to hang around in the sorts of places middle class WASPs would loiter, shall we say. I'm glad most of the people that cross my path are not armed, and have little to no idea how to get a gun.

You don't source this assertion as far as I saw - but you'll have to do better than 'it's interesting' in your analysis, I'm afraid.

No formatting, because too much typing already.

@theali Yes... but that sort of excuses the cowardly no by proxy of almost the entire EU and Britain. Shameful.

Completely back the purpose and message... but never comfortable with young children being the message-bearers.

This is one of the VERY few times i almost feel like there is no alternative... people have GOT to start paying attention to this... and in this case children are far to often the victims of the violence.

This situation is sad and ironic.

The area known as Judea was renamed Palestine during the time of Roman emperor Hadrian.
The residents of Judea/Palestine were forced to convert from Judaism to Christianity around 400 ad by the Romans, and later in the 700's ad were forced to convert to Islam.
They never left. They just changed religions. The children of the Jews of the new testament, are the Palestinians of today (now practicing Islam).

Many years passed, the Eastern Roman empire resided over much of the area, ruled out of Turkey, and the region was more or less all-right. Along the way it changed names to the Ottoman empire.

After WW1, the Ottoman empire shrank dramatically, and renamed itself to simply Turkey. However it still held some lands that were not actually Turkish (eg. ~Syria), and was still a mini-empire.
Around this general time period, Palestine became a British colony.

During WW2, there were many displaced Europeans of Jewish faith that had nowhere to go.
(*Britain didn't want them either, most places didn't. Anti-Semitism was rather common at the time. Even the Nazi eugenics policy wasn't much criticized at the time. re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Supporters_and_critics. Actually, the Nazi's strong association with anti-semitism + all the anti-Nazi propaganda during WW2, helped cure a lot of anti-semitism in Europe.).
In the late 1940's Britain split occupied Palestine into smaller-Palestine+Israel, and assisted in relocating WW2 displaced Europeans of Jewish faith to Israel. Which at face value made sense, because "the bible says Jews are from Judea". However the area from which was established Israel was more or less ~devoid of followers of the Jewish faith in the 1940's.
And that's the irony! The British creation of Israel involved taking land from Palestinians (i.e. The children of the original Jews of Judea), and giving it to Europeans of Jewish faith (foreign immigrants).

That then resulted in middle-eastern resentment and backlash over western invasion/occupation/seisure-of-land. This resentment against immigrating European Jews caused 'Jews at large' to be discriminated against throughout the middle-east, and that in turn led to a migration wave of regional-Jews from the surrounding areas into Israel.
This resulted in a concentration of Jewish-faithed immigrants of European and middle-eastern ethnicity, all in Israel - further displacing the original residents.

Basically, in the end, the original people of Judea were kicked out of their homes and their lands given to immigrants... and they really resent it. While in the mean time the immigrants acclaim to have a god given right to be there because there is some old paper that says that people of their faith are from the area.

Ta-da.

Britain could have just sent Europeans of Jewish faith to Palestine, and made it an integrated nation.
But nope, they had to displace people and create a bunch more problems.
Gee, thanks Britain.
I pretty much face-palm when I hear "this conflict is thousands of years old" (when it's only been ~66 years).


Note :
I make the distinction between ethnically Jewish and religiously Jewish.
I use the phrase "Europeans of Jewish faith" to clarify that these were displaced Europeans, who may have had an ancestor or two way way way up the family tree that was from Judea - but were otherwise European and of Jewish faith - who may have lived in an area with little mingling with outsiders, and hence a visually distinct appearance (i.e. what made it possible to make visual caricatures of their people, such as : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eternal_Jew_%281940_film%29)
You can also play semantics with "what is ethnically Jewish, when the ethnicity is labelled after the faith", etc.

There's also the geopolitical aspect. Israel is the only "Western" nation in the middle-east. Given that the area is globally significant in terms of resources, that makes Israel a critically important ally. So the rhetoric will always lean.

Personally, I wonder if the things that European Jews suffered during WW2, didn't create some mental/emotional baggage that today plays itself out with how they treat Palestinians. Sort of a "I don't care about your suffering, because I've been through worse" kind of situation.

However, I understand how Israel does not want an open integrated society with Palestinians. The Jewish population is rather small, and in an integrated society they would be such a small proportion that they would essentially be bred out of existence within a few generations. For those who wish to preserve their culture, that's 'kind of a big deal'.

-scheherazade

It's easy to cherry pick from a bygone era - bypassing the racism and sexism of post war britain, not to mention capital punishment, the lack of a national health system and terrible childhood death rates , shocking dental health and the fact that many couldn't afford glasses.

Before the U.S. invasion, Iraq had an integrated society, with different religions inter-marrying, and different religions working in government.
After the U.S. took over, people were chosen for state work according to religious quota (something new to iraq), and religion became a 'big deal' in regards to putting food on the table.
General dislikes turned into conflicts.

The "Shia v Sunni" thing is more hyperbole for western audiences, than it is a matter of recent history.
Saddam mostly oppressed areas rife with insurgent groups. Conflict festers and spreads. People die, their families/friends become militant, then they die, and their families/friends become militant, etc, etc, etc. Families/friends live near each other, so it spreads geographically. Eventually you find cities or regions that have managed to upturn.
Like any city/region, similar people tend to live together. So you in effect have groups/cultures vs government.
Hence why the internal conflict was by city/region (just like it is/was in Syria), and why it had a cultural flavor.
Granted, there is always some backlash that spills into a community at large, when a portion of it is identified as a 'problem'. Point is, there was not some eugenic ethnic/religious conflict going on.

The real 'oppression by religion' is happening today.
Neighborhoods have become mono-religious. Minorities have left their neighborhoods and fled to regions that are mostly 'of their own kind' - because nobody wants to stick around to see if they become the next target.

Best thing that can happen now is what happened to Syria after WW2 : Some other power steps in, chops up the country into smaller pieces, and populates each piece with a particular culture (eg. Syria was taken by Britain and France, split up, and became Syria + Lebanon + Jordan - granted the post ww2 split of Syria had more to do with the the last gasps of colonialism, and less to do with stabilization. 'Fun' note : It's the Syrian expulsion the French colonial rulers in the 1970's, and the subsequent French 'black eye', that set the tone for why France is so happy to support whoever wants to overthrow the Syrian government.).

-scheherazade

(Reuters) - About 30 Syrian government fighters were killed when rebels set off a bomb in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint in a northwestern province, activists said on Tuesday.

Videos and images posted by opposition supporters online showed a massive plume of smoke and earth shooting into the air near a small town as men shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest).

Rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad regularly carry out guerrilla attacks against his forces, but the size of the blast, which occurred on Monday, was unusual.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the blast took place outside the town of Ma'arat al-Nu'man in the northwestern Idlib province.

At least two officers were among those killed when insurgents from the Islamic Front and the Shields of the Revolution Council set off tons of explosives in a tunnel running from the road to the checkpoint, the group said.

First I thought that guy was pretty cool aswell until i watched his rants on global warming, melting ice caps and why great britain should leave the eu...

@shveddy

Fair enough. I guess I see things from a different perspective, but ultimately neither of us can really know how the future will eventuate.

When I see China buying up land/investing in Africa, I see a system of inter-dependence being built such as the consumer / exporter relationship that underpins US/China that acts as a stabiliser in relationships with any potential conflict threatening both parties' interests and helping to ensure stability (although some could argue trade was heavily entrenched between Britain and Germany pre-WWI).

The baby boomer generation wasn't a blip, it was very much the defining moment of world population growth. Also, by definition, growth is no longer exponential. On average, it is regressive and at the most pessimistic estimates (which I think are completely unrealistic), it is linear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

As more people come up to middle/high income levels, I think what that implies will fundamentally adjust. Just as a single income is no longer sufficient to sustain a nuclear sized family, I suspect adjustments in price will dictate that our entertainment and recreational activity will increasingly be virtual and computerized with a much smaller resource cost.

I think it's a frequent economic fallacy to assume aspects of society will remain fixed. Just like how there are not a fixed number of jobs that immigrants threaten (Lump of labour fallacy), high income lifestyles are not fixed.

@gorillaman

First paragraph is pretty much addressed above by my last two above.

I'm not denying that corporations pollute because of the competitive incentives of consumers. The alternative however, of targeting consumers to inform them of the costs of their actions (assuming that this would change their purchasing decisions) is a roundabout solution that I think we both realise would not be nearly as cost effective.

If you think tax/financial incentives are not the best way to curb environmental damage, then please suggest a more effective alternative.

It's pretty common for men to do that in comedy, for example the following jokes that have been done to death for years:
- why do women always take so long to get ready ffs!?
- why are women are so emotional/illogical
- why do women talk/gossip a lot
- why do women love to shop/spend my money

That list is long. I've seen enough routines based solely around simply talking about how women are "bitches" (for example) that haven't been seen as sexist so i'd find it hard to criticise this person (who btw is unknown to the rest of the world) for even more subtle sexism.

@chingalera it sounds like you just don't find her funny and don't like her, so maybe you find it easier to take offence to any man bashing. I don't find her funny but i can't say i found anything sexist in this video (as you also say). She certainly hasn't made an impact in britain so i don't know what else she's like - i think i saw her on the roast of charlie sheen, she wasn't funny then either. Steve-o and mike tyson were better but to credit tyson he was so good he deserved a better audience.

@robbersdog49 you'll be pleased to know that series 2 of Derek beings it air in Britain this month

I'm surprised too. In Britain we have white boards now, haven't seen a blackboard in a long time.. might be something to do with elf-n-safety over chalk dust.