• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - returns Feb 12th 2017

Status
Not open for further replies.
Einchy said:
That's weird, I don't like that. John Oliver has been drafted to America and isn't allowed to do anything in Britain ever again.
Click to expand...

We had our chance and we blew it. :P

I do enjoy the jokes of "Or as I'm known in Britain, who? ... that joke is more accurate than you think".
 
I saw him and Andy do a reunion at the Fringe a couple of years ago (after walking past him on the street the night before and literal double taking), and there were quite a few "You drove me away!" style jokes. Only a little bitter :P
 
Very interesting episode. If you're trying to improve your credit card rating, even if you work hard, you have an extra ant hill against you. It's another hill that favors people who have money, and punishes those who don't.
It concerns me that employers check for credit ratings. I don't think it says anything about a persons ability to be the best person for the job. Some people are born rich, others have a poor credit rating due to bad luck.

It is essentially saying that your credit rating is your worth, and your trustworthiness.
 
How the fuck is lead paint still a thing.

I quite liked the three politicians saying kids lives matter etc, then they vote to have the lead paint removal bills funding slashed.
 
This weeks topic: Lead

Absolutely amazing. I remember hearing the story on Cosmos about the scientist who fought hell itself to prove that lead was harming Americans in the gasoline and other substances but was under constant barrage from lead lobbyists and industries until he finally won.
 
bodyboarder said:
How the fuck is lead paint still a thing.

I quite liked the three politicians saying kids lives matter etc, then they vote to have the lead paint removal bills funding slashed.
Click to expand...

It's expensive to remove it, and as a homeowner if you never get it tested for you don't need to take care of it or disclose that the house has lead paint, so it's often in a homeowner's best financial interests to not check for it and know definitively.
 
But if all of this solves one mystery, it shines a high-powered klieg light on another: Why has the lead/crime connection been almost completely ignored in the criminology community? In the two big books I mentioned earlier, one has no mention of lead at all and the other has a grand total of two passing references. Nevin calls it "exasperating" that crime researchers haven't seriously engaged with lead, and Reyes told me that although the public health community was interested in her paper, criminologists have largely been AWOL. When I asked Sammy Zahran about the reaction to his paper with Howard Mielke on correlations between lead and crime at the city level, he just sighed. "I don't think criminologists have even read it," he said. All of this jibes with my own reporting. Before he died last year, James Q. Wilson—father of the broken-windows theory, and the dean of the criminology community—had begun to accept that lead probably played a meaningful role in the crime drop of the '90s. But he was apparently an outlier. None of the criminology experts I contacted showed any interest in the lead hypothesis at all.
Click to expand...

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health

Posted by another Gaffer a few days ago.



It seems that we have a real culprit in why America has so much violence. If people in ghetto and poor neighborhoods are also more likely to be exposed to lead poisoning, it further explains the connection.
Maybe they should start by checking houses in Florida. We've found Florida Mans kryptonite.
 
Oh great, of course one of our big banks is also involved. It's incredible with who much shit the UBS is getting away and we even bailed them out once.
 
Pretty good episode on Puerto Rico, although a bit disappointed that Oliver didn't really mention at all two negative aspects of Puerto Rico: the massive corruption/cronyism on the Island and the recent flight of businesses (Gamestop recently shut down all stores, Walmart is threatening the same) due to the island govt raising taxes dramatically for bigger businesses, to the point where big businesses have decided there is no way to make a profit.

The corruption is endemic and out of hand too, the place has a massive army of bureaucrats. For example there are 3.6m people on the island but it has 78 mayors (!), each with their own large staff many of whom are relatives. There is an endless parade of insane corruption on the island in every department.

So any sort of relief/bailout needs to be coupled with a reform of the government, shrinking the number of municipalities from 78 to 5-10 and cutting the govt staff by 50-75%, otherwise it seems likely a bunch of money will be raised and wasted again in the next decade.

Also not sure what exactly PR citizens themselves voted for in 2012 on whether they want to remain a commonwealth or try to lobby to become a state.
 
What a mess in Puerto Rico. They bent over backwards to try to draw business to their country and it ends up biting them in the ass. Those vulture funds are the scum of the earth.
 
Now that I have HBO, I've been going through the old episodes. Didn't realize there was stuff before the main piece. I thought that was it.


And is there a reason season 1 isn't available?
 
tearsintherain said:
Pretty good episode on Puerto Rico, although a bit disappointed that Oliver didn't really mention at all two negative aspects of Puerto Rico: the massive corruption/cronyism on the Island and the recent flight of businesses (Gamestop recently shut down all stores, Walmart is threatening the same) due to the island govt raising taxes dramatically for bigger businesses, to the point where big businesses have decided there is no way to make a profit.

The corruption is endemic and out of hand too, the place has a massive army of bureaucrats. For example there are 3.6m people on the island but it has 78 mayors (!), each with their own large staff many of whom are relatives. There is an endless parade of insane corruption on the island in every department.

So any sort of relief/bailout needs to be coupled with a reform of the government, shrinking the number of municipalities from 78 to 5-10 and cutting the govt staff by 50-75%, otherwise it seems likely a bunch of money will be raised and wasted again in the next decade.

Also not sure what exactly PR citizens themselves voted for in 2012 on whether they want to remain a commonwealth or try to lobby to become a state.
Click to expand...

Majority chose to become state. That was during the term of the party that supports statehood. The following term was from the opposing party (commonwealth) which contested the validity of the vote.

Politicians more busy with the status than the debt problem. You can see the platforms for most of the candidates and they all claim the status is their priority because that will solve everything.
 
I can't believe I've never heard of Hamilton until this episode. Lin-Manuel Miranda's performance was jaw-dropping, so much so that I went back and watched his performance from that White House clip and was floored. Astounding.
 
The biggest thought I have after watching the segment is "fuck rich people". I'm sure the fuckers who produced the anti-"baillout" ad are those vulture creditors.
 
IAmtheFMan said:
I am so fucking glad Oliver is discussing the interpretation of scientific studies.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it was a great topic for the show to cover. Unfortunately, it's ultimate statement of "if a morning news show is going to talk about a scientific study, they need to state the actual facts of the study" was pretty weak. As the show stated, those talk shows know that those types of stories are big hits, they aren't going to change a damn thing.
 
thoseAREmySHOES said:
Yeah, it was a great topic for the show to cover. Unfortunately, it's ultimate statement of "if a morning news show is going to talk about a scientific study, they need to state the actual facts of the study" was pretty weak. As the show stated, those talk shows know that those types of stories are big hits, they aren't going to change a damn thing.
Click to expand...

Of course. Good Morning America isn't going to change its sexy titles to something that's more accurate. Hell I've had some of my studies reported in the lay press where the purpose and findings were completely misrepresented and I've come to terms with the fact that it will happen. But even here on GAF, we get a "study finds... blah blah blah" topic extremely often, and I would hope that people that watch that segment will at least go in with some degree of whether the "report" is actually accurately summarizing the results.
 
IAmtheFMan said:
Of course. Good Morning America isn't going to change its sexy titles to something that's more accurate. Hell I've had some of my studies reported in the lay press where the purpose and findings were completely misrepresented and I've come to terms with the fact that it will happen. But even here on GAF, we get a "study finds... blah blah blah" topic extremely often, and I would hope that people that watch that segment will at least go in with some degree of whether the "report" is actually accurately summarizing the results.
Click to expand...
Nah man I'll just pub med and see if the abstract confirms to my view.
 
What if I told you the cure for racism....was coffee?

I'm glad to see Ted Talks get mocked because I fucking hate them with a passion.
 
I love that he's calling out these dumb studies cus they drive me insane.

Especially love that he called out the coffee example since you hear about it preventing and causing cancer every other week.
 
Great episode. As a scientist, when I see things like this pop up on the news, or even GAF, I make sure to go and check things myself. Because one bullshit study will fuck everything up. Examples:

Climate change is not man-made
Vaccines Cause Autism
GMOs are bad.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Scary Movie Trailer - In Cinemas June 12th
2
75
1K
MMaRsu replied
John Woo nearly blew up Chow Yun Fat with dynamite during the production of Hard Boiled
15
435
nush replied
Jackass: Best and Last - Official Trailer (2026)
24
475
Grildon Tundy replied
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters | Season 2 Official Teaser | Feb 27
11
482
Trogdor1123 replied
Who will drink the last beer?
41
914
Shifty1897 replied
Top Bottom