JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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3
Frungy
Frankly this article looks a lot like a lie. Japanese newspapers have never hesitated in the past to name and shame those under investigation for crimes, so why is this person only referred to as Mr. A? I'm not disputing that this sort of thing goes on, merely that it is highly irregular that the person hasn't been named.
Oh, and I completely agree. The wife must be Japanese or as an unmarried, non-working individual she'd wouldn't qualify for a visa, and as such wouldn't be able to stay in Japan.
Nope, the problem here isn't foreigners, it's the Japanese finally realising in this economic crisis that they can still live a bubble economy lifestyle if they just play the system. Frankly most foreigners can't even read the paperwork required to apply for unemployment benefits.
Posted in: Tabloid blasts growing numbers of foreign welfare chiselers
0
Frungy
Congratulations to the cops. Solid detective work, nice physical evidence. Doubtless MUCH harder work than the normal lazy, "Confess!" routine. I'd love to see more solid police work like this. ... .. . Sadly I can't help but harbor doubts about this case given the recent scandals about prosecutors faking evidence, and the slap on the wrist that the prosecutors received. It's sad that the justice system didn't administer a more harsh penalty and clear the lingering doubts.
Posted in: Four men arrested for robbery committed last year
1
Frungy
Just for the record I'm not anti-death penalty, I totally support it. I personally think it's LESS cruel to execute someone than to keep them in solitary for 40 years.
Now while I'm pro-death penalty I also think that it should have a higher standard of proof than regular penalties. I don't think that a confession without physical evidence is sufficient for even a STANDARD conviction (back home I was a shrink and the cops used to call me down regularly because there was a guy who kept coming down to confess to random crimes he'd read about in the newspaper - he wasn't guilty, just mentally ill and a bit of a nuisance but no harm to anyone). For the death penalty I'd expect to see at least conclusive physical evidence plus solid eye witness testimony.
... and consider this Tatanka, in Japan that mentally ill guy who like confessing to random crimes would be on death row right now, because the Japanese cops DO suck. I don't need any proof more convincing than the fact that they would consider his confession valid, without the brains to call a shrink.
Posted in: Court rejects retrial for man on death row over 1961 killings
4
Frungy
... and of course he was the only person in the entire village with a reason to want any of those women dead? Can't you see that you're making a MASSIVE number of assumptions in order to substantiate your just world hypothesis?
Posted in: Court rejects retrial for man on death row over 1961 killings
0
Frungy
... umm.. this guy seems to be innocent, and you want him to get hard labor? I think going free would be a better suggestion.
Posted in: Court rejects retrial for man on death row over 1961 killings
0
Frungy
So if someone has a high fever does that automatically mean they have a cold? Because the body is "far too complicated to compartmentalise into various exact conditions". Frankly it's clear that you know nothing about medicine. Diagnosis is a bit of an art, but it's a free-for-all. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean you can ignore it.
Posted in: Stress shrank brain area of tsunami survivors: study
-2
Frungy
Okay, this is complete nonsense. One either meets all the diagnostic criteria for a DSM-IV diagnosis or one does not. In medicine there is no, "You're a little bit pregnant", or "You almost have cancer". The same applies to mental disorders. Something is either severe enough to merit the diagnosis or it lies within the normal range of human behaviour and is not a disorder.
Frankly this is either an example of shockingly bad reporting or research that is so flawed that it meaningless.
Posted in: Stress shrank brain area of tsunami survivors: study
0
Frungy
Power harassment, pure and simple. This mayor has effectively shot himself in the foot. Next time anyone is turned down for promotion they'll maintain that it is an illegal sanction for some drinking they did during this period and the mayor will be in court.
Idiotic move. Rule 1 of management, never give an order that you can't enforce. A simple request for a show of solidarity to restore public confidence in civil servants would have been the right way to go.
Sheesh, I should be giving leadership courses to these idiots.
Posted in: Fukuoka mayor imposes 1-month alcohol ban for public servants
2
Frungy
Nonsense. Pure and utter nonsense. Some countries, like Germany, don't recognise degrees from a lot of other countries, and U.S. degrees from all but the top colleges have a very bad reputation in Europe (and with good reason, I've read some of the so-called "Masters theses" coming out of U.S. universities and they abound with fundamental errors in research methodology and basic logic). In some countries, like Australia, students will be required to demonstrate their competency by completing an RPL (recognition of prior learning) test, and so the quality of education is critical.
Likewise some careers, such as medicine and law, have limited transferability between countries.
I'd advise this author to be a little more cautious in making sweeping statements like this without any real inside knowledge of current developments in tertiary education. The days of people just accepting a masters or doctoral certificate as universal are long past, and universities and employers are becoming more and more critical, especially with 30-year-olds in the U.S. claiming multiple doctoral level qualifications and generally degrading any value of the qualification I don't blame overseas universities for questioning the value of these qualifications.
Posted in: Selecting the right university
0
Frungy
Coffee is a mild stimulant, and fatigue is the leading cause of traffic accidents, therefore coffee-drinking reduces accident rates.
Common sense really. Although in Japan I'd think that people probably need to main-line coffee to make up for their chronic lack of sleep.
Posted in: Coffee buzz: Study finds java drinkers live longer
5
Frungy
Easy to say with 20/20 hindsight, and yes, that would have been my call too, but there is a similarity to holding onto a belt. I expected my kid to obey instructions for the few seconds it took me to sling the garbage into the trash locker... and she didn't. I'm sure the mother felt the same way, confident that if she moved the car quickly the kid wouldn't have time to wander off to investigate a wasp nest, or run into traffic or whatever. Instead the kid (for reasons best known to herself) decided to run directly behind the car.
It's an accident that she didn't foresee, and it's easy to say afterwards, "Oh, you should have expected that!", but kids do some damned stupid things and it's impossible to foresee all the possibilities. They try and lick live electric sockets, they run with scissors, they decide to try and cut their own hair (fortunately in my case with limited success because she only has a pair of plastic scissors), they try climb EVERYTHING (no, seriously, EVERYTHING!!!), they put random things in their mouths, they stuff things in their ears/nose, they poke themselves in the eye (why? I really don't know!), they move everywhere at a mad run with no concern for anything around them. The list of potentially suicidal things that kids do is virtually endless, and it's only by constant vigilance that parents manage to prevent catastrophe on a daily basis. So, yes, this mother failed once, and that's all it takes with a kid, a single time you didn't contemplate all of the horrendous possibilities, but she probably saved her kid's life a thousand times over before that. Being a parent isn't easy or for the faint-hearted. I'm sure she's insane with grief and deserves our deepest sympathies and support, not some know-it-all on the sidelines chirping about how hypothetically they could have done a better job.
Posted in: 5-year-old girl run over, killed by mother
9
Frungy
This weekend my daughter and I were headed out to a festival. She's 4 and was super-excited about the festival, and I while I normally enforce a "otete" (hold my hand) rule but I had two bags of garbage to put in the garbage locker at the end of the apartment block, so I just told her to hold onto my belt. We walked down together and I put down the garbage to open the, and she let go of my belt. The moment I turned to pick up the garbage and throw it into the locker she dashed off towards the car... just as my neighbour was pulling out. My daughter got a nasty bump on the shin, but it really wasn't the neighbour's fault, my daughter just ran out in front of his car. It was her fault in that she had orders to hold onto my belt, which she disobeyed, but she's also 4 years old and has no idea of the consequences of her actions and is going through a "disobey every instruction" phase.
My daughter was lucky to get away with just a bump, and I'd like to say that I'll take more precautions in the future, but honestly there's a limit to what one can do. I gave her a long talking to about the danger of cars (for about the 10th time in a month) but honestly I don't think it's sinking in at this phase of her development; she's too big for harnesses, and I'm very vigilant but all it takes is a second's inattention and a 4 year old can cover a lot of ground.
I feel very sorry for this mother, it could happen to anyone, and anyone who says otherwise either clearly never has had kids or has just been insanely lucky, because anyone who's had kids knows that they sometimes deliberately disobey instructions to test their limits.
Posted in: 5-year-old girl run over, killed by mother
0
Frungy
Personally I think that humans are way too smug about our decision making processes. If we look at the latest war in Afghanistahn then the average human trooper seems to be making the wrong call a good 75% of the time (i.e. civilian casualties outnumber legitimate terrorist kills by more than 3:1). At least a computer would have definite parameters to work within and the kill would be legitimate and while there might initially be a few accidental kills these could be investigated, the programming tweaked and future accidental killings prevented. .... Unlike, for example, the average marine or fighter pilot who seems to shoot/bomb the wrong person/place pretty darned consistently.
Ummm.. in WW2 they deployed a mass of dummy tanks to fool the Germans (inflatable models), and it worked. Humans are pretty easily fooled. While computer silhoutte recognition can be fooled it is still more reliable than a human, which is why the military uses it so much. Current methods are 98.91% effective at a second, as opposed to a human, with 80% recognition at 3 seconds.
The fact remains that shooting off a few rounds or a missile at a dummy isn't the end of the world. The programmers can review the after-action footage, identify the dummy (if it is possible for a human) and tweak the programming. Again with drones you can change the "training" for a thousand drones with a bit of code and react much more quickly. Try retraining a thousand fighter pilots or marines to recognise and react appropriately for the same time and cost.
Fighter pilots, moving at 300 to 400 knots (555km/hr to 740km/hr) rely almost exclusively on radar, IFF and other computer input to make their decisions. At that speed the human eye simply can't reliably track an incoming opponent and certainly can't make an accurate recognition assessment. By the time a human pilot has got eyeballs on their opponent their radar has been screaming missile warnings for the last half second and they should have already reacted.
So, yeah, sure, computers can be fooled, but at the moment the use of drones would only be vulnerable to the same problems at computer pilots. Trade this against the fact that there doesn't need to be a cockpit (no pilot = no cockpit), the drone doesn't have to take g-force into account except for mechanical stress (no pilot at risk of blacking out) and thus can manoever more flexibly and accelerate more radically which is a critical aspect of missile avoidance, the drone also doesn't need to wait for a pilot to press a button thus cutting out a delay in the firing sequence which means faster and more accurate firing, the drone can also react faster, analyse patterns of fire in AA batteries and make an assessment faster than any human could, can be produced more cheaply, deployed more rapidly and flexibily, and of course all this with no loss of friendly human life.
I could go on, but drones are clearly superior to human pilots in every way. Any disadvantage that could currently affect a drone also applies to a human pilot, so why have a human pilot? Of course militaries tend to be old-fashioned and there are lingering (and false) concepts of the nobility of war and the warrior, but these belong in fairy tales. War is bloody, dehumanising and repugnant. If it must be conducted (and there are legitimately some times when it must, such as in self-defence) then rather let drones do it, and let's not send out brothers/sisters/fathers/kids out there to die.
Posted in: F-35 option: Produce the JACK-Fighter
0
Frungy
With all due respect, players only receive the product once the AI has been thoroughly lobotomised. If you've been a play-tester for any first person shooter games you'd have some idea just how much the AI is dumbed down between the alpha release and what the general public sees. Enemy snipers shoot you the moment you stick your head out to, standard enemy troopers never miss (because they know the equation to compensate fully for recoil), etc.
This isn't just in first person shooters. A friend of mine was a programmer on a "sandbox" type of shooter which included a helicopter enemy. When he programmed the AI initially the playtesters complained that it was simply impossible to beat, and these were professional playtesters, the type of people who win gaming tournaments and have reflexes comparable with the best fighter pilots. He was accused of letting the AI "cheat" by knowing the player's location and movements in advance, but he proved that the AI was actually playing with a handicap, a delay equal to the average person's relfexes and only reacting to what was visible from its point of view. In the end he had to follow standard industry practice and lobotomise the AI so that it only won against an "average" playtester 50% of the time, which meant programming in a huge delay and dumbing down it's predictive algorithms.
... now this was an AI programmer working for a gaming company, working on dozens of AIs for the game. Frankly everything comes down to physics, and computers can calculate all the variables faster, more efficiently and more reliably than any human.
So, with all due respect, you're incorrect. If you know anyone who works on simulation AI then just ask them. There have been flight simulators out there for a very long time, and almost every variable has already been documented and accounted for. Pilots even use these simulators for training. It would be a relatively simple process for an AI expert to upload all of the equations and develop a drone pilot that could out-fly any human.
The real problem here? Terminator. The military is terrified of a "skynet" scenario, to such an extent that even the automatically targetting guns on battleships need a human there to press the button to fire it. That's all they need to do, press the button. I know this because another friend of mine works on military software and he was complaining about how difficult it is to account for the precise reaction time of each operator when programming the targetting software, and how unnecessary it is since the computer makes less errors in selecting targets than humans (silhoutte recognition, IFF, trajectory, speed, etc).
Posted in: F-35 option: Produce the JACK-Fighter
0
Frungy
;) Darn right. If you don't learn that word really early then you'll be puzzled by a good 30% of the responses you receive, and people will be giving you odd looks when you keep saying, "Hai!" like you're a school student being scolded by a teacher.
Posted in: The grammar-translation method: Is it really all that bad?
0
Frungy
Wrong. This is where you should do a little wider reading. The AI in your average computer game has to be "dumbed down" to allow human players to win. That's AI running on home personal computer chipsets optimised for general processing. A tactical chipset optimised for strategic considerations would be unbeatable. The days of human beings being the premier strategists are long gone. Your home PC could beat the world's greatest chessplayer 90% of the time.
As such remote drones do not need continuous two-way communication, and the "weak link" is removed. Yes, ideally we'd like full control over the drones at all times, but this is no more practical than ensuring two-way communication with every grunt on the battlefield. When communication is interrupted the soldiers proceed on their last orders, and drones could do this more efficiently than your average marine.
Not only are unmanned aircraft superior in speed, efficiency, manoeverability and every other respect, but they're also potentially smarter than your average pilot. All this with no loss of life.
Anyone who is seriously proposing investing in yet more manned aircraft has absolutely no vision.
Posted in: F-35 option: Produce the JACK-Fighter
0
Frungy
Well let's compare the "average" McDonald's burger with the ones I make at home: McDonald's burger - Flat, thin, grey-looking hamburger patty with too much fat and all the flavour of old shoes. Toppings are not customisable and generally not the freshest (lettuce is a little limp, tomato has lost all firmness, etc).
My burgers - Generous, lean ground beef burger, nicely browned with lots of flavour (onions, spices, a generous dash of black pepper). Toppings are fresh (lettuce is crispy, tomato is firm, pickles have a zing), and each family member's burger is different depending on what they like.
I can overlook the lousy hamburger patty in most burgers, but there's simply no excuse for limp ingredients and no customisation. Subway sandwiches manages to offer complete customisation with relatively little fuss, what's to stop other fast food place from offer healthier food at good prices?
Posted in: What's the difference between an average burger and a great one?
2
Frungy
Umm... if you can't see the difference between someone photographing a child rape and someone drawing one rather than doing it then I would suggest that you have missed a rather critical distinction, namely that the person drawing it hasn't hurt anyone at all. It has been proven on numerous occassions that pornography reduces sexual crime rates, and if given the choice between even one child being hurt and someone jerking off in the privacy of their home to some manga then I don't think any sane person would choose to ban manga.
The simple fact is that politicians see this as an easy win and way to whip up public hysteria. Label the person as a pedophile and it turns into a witch hunt. Frankly this isn't the case here. This guy is an expert on manga, all manga, and so they went through his computer and found 39 drawings which the artist may have intended to depict underaged girls. Out of how many images? If he's an expert on manga presumably thousands.
Scientifically this doesn't make sense. Logically it makes no sense. Ethically it makes no sense. I can understand that if there was a law in place then the court had to uphold the conviction, since they don't set the laws they merely enforce them, but hopefully this will lead to a revision of the laws. Any country that prioritises prosecuting an imagined crime over actually taking any and all steps to reduce crimes against children clearly has its priorities dead wrong.
Columnist Dan Savage recently wrote a great column in response to a "good" pedophile, one who hadn't acted on their urges, and took a lot of flack for it. Why? Because the hysterical general public has demonised pedophilia to the point where it is impossible for pedophiles to seek treatment or help , and as such created a situation where crimes against children are MORE likely. Seriously people, how messed up is that? There are people out there with rape fantasies who are free to seek treatment (and they do) and this helps, but potential child rapists are excluded. And pedophilia (used in the broadest sense to include hebephilia) is not uncommon, tests conducted in the 1970's in the U.S. suggested that about 20% of the general population experienced arousal at pedophillic images, and the popularity of certain kinds of manga in Japan just reinforces this research. Frankly I'd rather see pedophiles (and other people with anti-social sexual urges) getting treatment than drive the issue further underground and see further sexual crimes.
If anyone has an ounce of common sense they'd agree with me if they wanted their children to live safer lives.
Posted in: Swedish translator of Japanese manga appeals child porn fine
1
Frungy
Hi Ken,
As usual I assume your article is tongue-in-cheek, but honestly please drop this subject, because you're wrong on so many levels it really isn't amusing.
First, there are lots of textbooks on grammar-translation method, just go to google books and you'll find hundreds. Grammar-translation method is very well defined and well understood. Subsequent theories were developed in opposition to grammar-translation method, and so where grammar-translation method is used in the modern era it is hardly ever "pure" grammar-translation method, but rather has taken on board many of the criticisms and as such is a moderated grammar-translation method that incorporates a more student-centered approach, more speaking opportunities, etc. In short it is no longer grammar-translation method, but rather merely a melange of teaching approaches that includes elements of grammar-translation method... or at least that's the situation in most Western classrooms. In Japan they use the teacher-centered, non-communicative grammar-translation method almost exclusively, which is the problem.
Finally, the lists of words memorised are largely useless. English professionals are familiar with the concept of word frequency, i.e. how often a word is used in day-to-day English, and that a good way to equip students is to match vocabulary to level and expected career, hence it would be useless to teach a Junior high student (who might leave school to start working the next year) the word "hypothesis" since it is a very low frequency word outside of academic and scientific circles, but it would be an important word to teach a student at an academic Senior High who was aiming for University since it would be used frequently in that context. Looking at the list of words used in Japanese textbooks ... well, they're mostly low frequency words and as such are a complete waste of time. This criticism has nothing to do with the grammar-translation method and lots to do with the lack of representation of native speakers at the policy-making level in the Japanese education department.
Posted in: The grammar-translation method: Is it really all that bad?
1
Frungy
Hold on a second, I think everyone so far has missed a critical element in this case. This guy was a manga expert, that's his job. I think it is unreasonable to prosecute him for doing legitimate research into his area of expertise. Child abuse experts will sometimes request permission from the police to view child pornography in the course of doing their research.
This court case undermines academic freedoms and undermines an expert's right to access material in his field. Just as someone is allowed to carry otherwise illegal items for work purposes (e.g. a farmer carrying a sickle isn't arrested under the swords and firearms control act, despite the fact that the blade exceeds the legal length), so someone who's speciality is manga shouldn't be arrested for possessing manga images.
What's next? Arresting nuclear physicists as terrorists for handling nuclear materials? Sweden might as well just kiss all academic credibility goodbye.
Posted in: Swedish translator of Japanese manga appeals child porn fine