BREAKING: Paris Attack 6-6-17.

[RavenSky]

...

Is Derec using your account?

 

[whichphilosophy]

A cop with a pistol at hand if faced with a madman with a hammer may have no choice. In such instances that is up to an inquiry determine the circumstances leading up to the shooting.

View attachment 11344

You're welcome any time

 

[zorq]

So, what is the theme of this thread (and the other one like it)? To minimize the impact of Islamic terrorism? These threads always kind of amuse me, in that we're constantly told that this is a non-event, more people die of the flu, people get shot every day around country, the country "can absorb it" (yes, that's been said), everyone move along....

But what if we have a different set of victims and perpertrators? Do we adopt the same sort of "meh" attitude? Let's say instead of ISIS killing random people, its white supremecists killing blacks? Or MRAs killing random women? Or some guy shooting (or maybe "only" hitting them with hammers) kids in schools, just cause he hates kids? Do we mock that? Are the lives of innocent people worth more or less just because of the race or ideology of the killers?

No, we shouldn't minimize the threat of terrorism, but we shouldn't maximize it either. Both are a problem. If an issue is ignored then no resources will be used to combat it and it is likely to get worse. If an issue is over inflated in publicity compared to its actual impact then the response to it will waste resources and other issues are more likely to go unadressed or underadressed.

Properly calibrating ourselves and the media to a more acurate perspective of the significance and impact of the issues that affect our lives is important.

 

[Elixir]

Properly calibrating ourselves and the media to a more accurate perspective of the significance and impact of the issues that affect our lives is important.

Here's a little calibration aid, for your convenience :

 

[Malintent]

nice chart, Elixir. I believe these are contemporary statistics.. do you know the scope of this data?

I heard some interesting statistics regarding death recently. firstly, for every 1 person walking the Earth today, there are 15 corpses in the ground.
If you tally every death that occurred throughout the history of time, you will find something exceptionally surprising;
50% of all human death throughout history, was due to Malaria.

 

[Elixir]

nice chart, Elixir. I believe these are contemporary statistics.. do you know the scope of this data?

Confession: I admit to laziness. I didn't either vet the source of that chart nor look up any corroborating data. It agreed with my own confirmation bias, so I posted it.
My point was more that the order seems to be completely inverted for media purposes, rather than to actually submit accurate numbers for deaths caused by "X".

 

[Derec]

To get back to the Notre Dame attack:
Algerian Notre Dame terror attacker 'was given an EU award for writing about discrimination against migrants when he was a journalist in Sweden'

I know it's Daily Mail, but if true it gives some background on Farid Ikken. He does not seem to be clinically crazy, just your garden variety Muslim crazy.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Who cares?

 

[Derec]

Who cares?

Well, you started a thread about him.

 

[blastula]

My biggest fear is to die due to undetermined events. The most extreme vetting can't stop it.

 

[funinspace]

Who cares?

Well, you started a thread about him.

The squirrel explained further in this post, for those that were lost to the sarcasm of the opening post...

The original theme of the thread was to point out an incident on reported on the front page of CNN was being played up like a full-blown threat. Not to downplay real threats, but to criticize the media. These types of incidents play out in America everyday, but are seldom newsworthy. Why was this incident chosen?

Are the lives of innocent people worth more or less just because of the race or ideology of the killers?

But no one was killed in this incident. So was this newsworthy enough to be on the front page of CNN?

A word comes to mind...

 

[thebeave]

nice chart, Elixir. I believe these are contemporary statistics.. do you know the scope of this data?

Confession: I admit to laziness. I didn't either vet the source of that chart nor look up any corroborating data. It agreed with my own confirmation bias, so I posted it.
My point was more that the order seems to be completely inverted for media purposes, rather than to actually submit accurate numbers for deaths caused by "X".

In general, I agree with the death statistics regarding terrorism. I'm certainly not worried about dying from that. I guess I'm sorta curious why we don't take the same attitude about, say, school shootings? The odds of a child dying from automatic weapon fire on school grounds is close to zero, but after each incident, no one posts an infographic like you did. Or tries to poo poo or dismiss it. Instead, we talk about banning automatic weapons. Shouldn't we be consistent with our attitudes about statistics and death?

 

[zorq]

Confession: I admit to laziness. I didn't either vet the source of that chart nor look up any corroborating data. It agreed with my own confirmation bias, so I posted it.
My point was more that the order seems to be completely inverted for media purposes, rather than to actually submit accurate numbers for deaths caused by "X".

In general, I agree with the death statistics regarding terrorism. I'm certainly not worried about dying from that. I guess I'm sorta curious why we don't take the same attitude about, say, school shootings? The odds of a child dying from automatic weapon fire on school grounds is close to zero, but after each incident, no one posts an infographic like you did. Or tries to poo poo or dismiss it. Instead, we talk about banning automatic weapons. Shouldn't we be consistent with our attitudes about statistics and death?

Well, banning weapons is such an easy fix that doesn't really hurt anyone and it is practically guaranteed to reduce fatalities in a broad range of categories (including terrorism). It's kind of a no brainer except for the 10% of people with a gun fetish or unrealistic paranoia. Don't you love how the recent terrorists in Europe are using cars and knives to achieve their ends but any punk drug pusher in the US can pick up a semi-automatic handgun on the street and shoot up a park filled with their rivals (and kids)? Don't you think the deathtoll on the London bridge might have been higher if the assholes had jumped out of their truck wielding handguns instead of knives?

Better gun control is easy and extremely productive as proven by the societies who have tried it. It comes up all the time for those reasons, Just like universal health care.