7: Called a Burmese man a "slope" (casual racism) - http://www.theguardian.com/med... 8: Described mexicans as ""a lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf with a moustache, leaning against a fence asleep". 9: Described malaysian cars as being built in the jungle by people wearing sandals. 10: Deliberately used the word N****r whilst recording a segment (rerecorded it when he realised he wouldn't get away with it) 11: Drove around India with a toilet seat in the boot of a jaguar as a comment on the sanitation 12: Drove around the american south with a car spraypainted with comments about rednecks. 13: Characterised Albania as being full of mafia dons 14: Did a fair amount of environmental damage in Botswana's Makgadikgadi salt pan 15: Nazi salutes in a BMW review along with comments that the Satnav only had directions to Poland. 16: casual racism again: Named his dog Didier Dogba (Black soccer player) 17: Ranted on prime time national TV (The One Show) that public sector workers who were on strike at the time - "should be executed in front of their families" 18: Homophobic jokes directed at George Michael (and others, various gay slurs in various programs)
etc etc etc.
A good chunk of this has happened in the last 18 months and _no one_ believes the claims about the argentinean number plate being coincidental, as it was registered to a completely different vehicle.
Without confirmation it's hard to be sure, but the current version of events is that hot meals _were_ arranged, but Clarkson held the entire crew up for several hours - which resulted in them getting back to the hotel so late the chefs had clocked off.
Shock Jocks and Faux News are on privately funded, privately run radio stations, not on TV stations funded by money forcibly extracted from the viewers.
I think even Howard Stern would draw the line at some of the comments Clarkson has made.
> "Not for profit" does not mean the company cannot hold a surplus of funds between each year. It means it cannot pay "profits"
This restriction doesn't put any restriction on paying utterly obscene amounts to various staff. The same applies to UK charities.
This results in people who hardly do any work getting six-figure (UK) take home pay (and is one of the reasons that the UK decided that "speed^H^H^H^H^Hsafety camera partnerships" could no longer keep the money they collected, as the amounts in question became more widely known)
"Top Gear has been making a lot of money for BBC that the non-profit BBC could then channel back into other productions, right?"
That's not how it works, unfortunately.
The TV license goes 100% to the BBC, who don't have to do much justification about how they spend it - and revenue collection is done by a fully owned BBC subsidiary (TV licensing Ltd), which in turn farms the actual work out to a debt collection company (Capita) and works on the assumption that every household has a TV, so any address which doesn't have a license must be watching TV illegally.
I've been getting their threatening letters for 12 years despite having a license - because my address is doubled up. It's fun to see how fast their "inspectors" can run when you point a camera at them and follow them down the street.
There have been several sources which indicated that the reason they were late back to the hotel is that Clarkson held the crew up.
The thing is, the entire crew will be under orders to stay quiet or be fired.
It was Clarkson himself who brought the assault to the BBC's attention, everyone else was keeping their mouths shut as they thought the victim had been sacked and they didn't want to be next.
The whole story may never be known. The BBC is known for being fairly vindictive when people blab.
Most networks will be looking to avoid him like the plague now:
There are reports that Clarkson is looking to sue the Beeb for defamation.
They compared the situation to Jimmy Saville - As in, they let him get away with far too much because he was a cash cow.
He's claiming they compared him with Saville (who was a kiddy fiddler)
Well he is like Saville on a couple of points (but not the kiddy fiddling).
1: He's obnoxious and was getting away with more and more as time went on (until the Saville scandal tore the nice cozy coverup culture apart) 2: He's a thin skinned bully - able to dish out nastiness but unable to take it when the criticism comes back.
I'd assumed the TV/media persona was just that - a persona for comedy value. Professional comedians don't react like that when they become the butt of the humour.
"He stated exactly what his results said. It's battery didn't last long on the track."
Wrong. They _calculated_ that its battery wouldn't last long on the track and never actually tested that hypothesis.
Top Gear was an OK car show, but it turned into a blokes' show with cars and then over the last 3-4 years into a mutual ego masturbation session. It was kind of inevitable that the circlejerk would end badly.
The franchised versions are generally more watchable and entertaining.
"It's much worse than even countries like Peru that likes to balance roads precariously on the side of mountains without any kind of safety barriers or landslide prevention"
I think you'll find that in Peru, the landslide prevention comes down with the landslide and mashes you against the safety barriers before those get swept away too.
Even where I come from, there are roads which semi-regularly get 20,000 cubic yards of "stuff" landing on them - http://www.stuff.co.nz/nationa... (bear in mind that strip of blacktop in the photo has a couple of 20 ton earthmovers on one end trying to shift what's on it - the photo at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... gives a better idea of the terrain.), but there's a better driving culture there.
Scarily, Russian road death rates aren't the highest in the world, despite the prevalant russian culture of drunk driving.
> Of course, only a tiny fraction of our DNA codes for what we would consider to be the "interesting stuff".
The hard part is tellling what's "junk" and what's useful data embedded in it. It's a bit like having a ROM dump and trying to work backwards from it without actually knowing what the CPU is. We know what some genes do, but not all of them, nor do we entirely know if they refer to offsets within the code as this changes when DNA is folded up as it is under normal operating conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
"Changing the auto pilot altimeter requires you to use a dial and then confirm the change in two separate actions."
The fact that the authorities were so definite about the altitude change raises the question: Does the system speak the change?
"They had finished filming at 10 or 11pm and the hotel cook staff had already gone home."
They apparently only finished late because Clarkson held them up - presumably by getting drunk.
"The argument was over the preparation of his dinner, not his lunch, so it was after hours."
Which, if stories are to be believed wasn't available because he spent 2 hours getting pissed instead of showing up at the booked time.
Except that the Monty Python guys knew it was an act and behaved more-or-less normally when the cameras stopped.
What it proves is that Clarkson's media persona is his real persona.
There's a difference between a comedy act and actually _being_ a Bullying Boorish Bore.
"He choose the 'Eeney Meeney Miney Moe' nursery rhyme only he supposedly used the N word instead of tiger."
He not only did it once, he re-recorded it and did it again.
7: Called a Burmese man a "slope" (casual racism) - http://www.theguardian.com/med...
8: Described mexicans as ""a lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf with a moustache, leaning against a fence asleep".
9: Described malaysian cars as being built in the jungle by people wearing sandals.
10: Deliberately used the word N****r whilst recording a segment (rerecorded it when he realised he wouldn't get away with it)
11: Drove around India with a toilet seat in the boot of a jaguar as a comment on the sanitation
12: Drove around the american south with a car spraypainted with comments about rednecks.
13: Characterised Albania as being full of mafia dons
14: Did a fair amount of environmental damage in Botswana's Makgadikgadi salt pan
15: Nazi salutes in a BMW review along with comments that the Satnav only had directions to Poland.
16: casual racism again: Named his dog Didier Dogba (Black soccer player)
17: Ranted on prime time national TV (The One Show) that public sector workers who were on strike at the time - "should be executed in front of their families"
18: Homophobic jokes directed at George Michael (and others, various gay slurs in various programs)
etc etc etc.
A good chunk of this has happened in the last 18 months and _no one_ believes the claims about the argentinean number plate being coincidental, as it was registered to a completely different vehicle.
Without confirmation it's hard to be sure, but the current version of events is that hot meals _were_ arranged, but Clarkson held the entire crew up for several hours - which resulted in them getting back to the hotel so late the chefs had clocked off.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/mot...
Shock Jocks and Faux News are on privately funded, privately run radio stations, not on TV stations funded by money forcibly extracted from the viewers.
I think even Howard Stern would draw the line at some of the comments Clarkson has made.
> "Not for profit" does not mean the company cannot hold a surplus of funds between each year. It means it cannot pay "profits"
This restriction doesn't put any restriction on paying utterly obscene amounts to various staff. The same applies to UK charities.
This results in people who hardly do any work getting six-figure (UK) take home pay (and is one of the reasons that the UK decided that "speed^H^H^H^H^Hsafety camera partnerships" could no longer keep the money they collected, as the amounts in question became more widely known)
BBC worldwide makes enough profit that the "tv license" in the UK is superfluous. They don't have to account for where that money goes and they don't.
"Top Gear has been making a lot of money for BBC that the non-profit BBC could then channel back into other productions, right?"
That's not how it works, unfortunately.
The TV license goes 100% to the BBC, who don't have to do much justification about how they spend it - and revenue collection is done by a fully owned BBC subsidiary (TV licensing Ltd), which in turn farms the actual work out to a debt collection company (Capita) and works on the assumption that every household has a TV, so any address which doesn't have a license must be watching TV illegally.
I've been getting their threatening letters for 12 years despite having a license - because my address is doubled up. It's fun to see how fast their "inspectors" can run when you point a camera at them and follow them down the street.
There have been several sources which indicated that the reason they were late back to the hotel is that Clarkson held the crew up.
The thing is, the entire crew will be under orders to stay quiet or be fired.
It was Clarkson himself who brought the assault to the BBC's attention, everyone else was keeping their mouths shut as they thought the victim had been sacked and they didn't want to be next.
The whole story may never be known. The BBC is known for being fairly vindictive when people blab.
He can't be charged if the victim won't lay a complaint - and he hasn't.
Most networks will be looking to avoid him like the plague now:
There are reports that Clarkson is looking to sue the Beeb for defamation.
They compared the situation to Jimmy Saville - As in, they let him get away with far too much because he was a cash cow.
He's claiming they compared him with Saville (who was a kiddy fiddler)
Well he is like Saville on a couple of points (but not the kiddy fiddling).
1: He's obnoxious and was getting away with more and more as time went on (until the Saville scandal tore the nice cozy coverup culture apart)
2: He's a thin skinned bully - able to dish out nastiness but unable to take it when the criticism comes back.
I'd assumed the TV/media persona was just that - a persona for comedy value. Professional comedians don't react like that when they become the butt of the humour.
So..... How's about that then?
"Also they never went on air with the comments."
I take it you missed the comment about the burmese bloke on the bridge, or the one about mexicans, or the others which were broadcast?
Apart from the stuff which ended up on TV, it wasn't the first time he'd punched someone.
"He stated exactly what his results said. It's battery didn't last long on the track."
Wrong. They _calculated_ that its battery wouldn't last long on the track and never actually tested that hypothesis.
Top Gear was an OK car show, but it turned into a blokes' show with cars and then over the last 3-4 years into a mutual ego masturbation session.
It was kind of inevitable that the circlejerk would end badly.
The franchised versions are generally more watchable and entertaining.
How's about that then?
There were already locks on the things and they were secure enough to keep passengers and crew out for quite a while on the 4th plane during 9/11
More than long enough that anyone attempting to get in these days would be subdued by the passengers.....
The hijackers gor into cockpits during 9/11 by the simple expedient of killing cabin crew one by one until the pilots opened the doors.
Because going west requires getting your feet wet.
"It's much worse than even countries like Peru that likes to balance roads precariously on the side of mountains without any kind of safety barriers or landslide prevention"
I think you'll find that in Peru, the landslide prevention comes down with the landslide and mashes you against the safety barriers before those get swept away too.
Even where I come from, there are roads which semi-regularly get 20,000 cubic yards of "stuff" landing on them - http://www.stuff.co.nz/nationa... (bear in mind that strip of blacktop in the photo has a couple of 20 ton earthmovers on one end trying to shift what's on it - the photo at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... gives a better idea of the terrain.), but there's a better driving culture there.
Scarily, Russian road death rates aren't the highest in the world, despite the prevalant russian culture of drunk driving.
"There's a reason why civilized countries have something called statutes of limitations"
There are a number of crimes so serious that there is no statute of limitations.
Artificial mangrove swamp?
> Of course, only a tiny fraction of our DNA codes for what we would consider to be the "interesting stuff".
The hard part is tellling what's "junk" and what's useful data embedded in it. It's a bit like having a ROM dump and trying to work backwards from it without actually knowing what the CPU is. We know what some genes do, but not all of them, nor do we entirely know if they refer to offsets within the code as this changes when DNA is folded up as it is under normal operating conditions.