JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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To be healthy, live in the big city
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Japan's nuclear safety standards flawed, says commission chief
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Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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From carnivores to herbivores: how men are defined in Japan
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Teacher nabbed for using miror to peek up girl's skirt
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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cleo
I used to give blood regularly both in the UK and in Japan. I gave in Japan so often I filled up several of the little red stamp cards they give you, and was given a lapel badge. Even asked to appear on local TV urging people to give blood. Then mad cow happened and a couple of trips back home meant my blood was no longer required - nor the kids', since they came with me. The man was very nice about it and even gave me a dozen eggs as a consolation prize.
Posted in: Blood donation campaign
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cleo
Newsman, I knew everything too when I was 18 :-)
It's the uncalled-for, over-the-top praise that bothers me. So many people so ready to hoot'n'holler 'cause she used her gawd-given right to own a gun. As for whether her actions are unimpeachable - as in unquestionable? No. Nothing is ever unquestionable. Ask questions, find out what really happened, then decide. Never be afraid to ask questions.
Posted in: Oklahoma woman asks 911 operator for permission to shoot intruder
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cleo
Some quotes from your link, Ossan -
(JARPA1)
there was some disagreement over the necessity for the use of lethal research methods
JARPA results were not required for management under the Revised Management Procedure
For humpback whales the abundance estimates provided useful steps towards acceptable estimates of abundance (without killing a single whale)
The estimation of natural mortality was the main initial objective of JARPA. However, the confidence limits around the current estimate spanned such a wide range that the parameter is still effectively unknown (=thousands of dead whales, and no results)
the nature of the analyses presented at the JARPA review meant that relatively little progress had been made in addressing the role of Antarctic minke whales in the ecosystem.
If a Sanctuary is in place, it can be argued that information on improving management of whaling in that region is unnecessary. On many occasions, the Commission has (by majority vote) passed a Resolution urging Japan not to issue a permit for these catches.
(JARPA2)
At the 2007 Annual meeting there was considerable disagreement over the value of this research
In 2005 a Resolution was passed (30 votes to 27 votes with 1 abstention) that strongly urged the Government of Japan to withdraw its JARPA II proposal or to revise it so that any information needed to meet the stated objectives of the proposal is obtained using non-lethal means
In 2007 the Commission passed a Resolution asking Japan to refrain from issuing a permit for JARPA II
Looks like the IWC isn't terribly impressed with the lethal 'research' programme.
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
2
cleo
Nicky is right; it is easy 'To sit here behind our computers all cosy and warm and say "She should have done X, she should have done Y".' What bothers me is how common is the knee-jerk 'yee-haw' reaction of the gun crowd sitting behind their computers and supporting the lethal use of arms without even bothering to check the facts, and even creating stories whereby a pathetic loser after prescription drugs becomes an evil monster whose sole intent 'obviously' is to kill the young mother and her baby. No one is saying that the young thug didn't deserve what he got. But to crow about a death - any death - is surely wrong. It's not a triumph for the gun laws that she shot him/saved herself and her baby; it's an indictment of the protection services that she was put in this situation in the first place (she had complained before about painkilling drugs going missing from her home, so the police knew she was vulnerable) and a huge blot on American society that this kind of crime is common enough to make people feel they need to protect themselves with deadly force. This is not a good news story. It's an embarrassment.
(The woman herself doesn't make things any better by posing for pictures with a gun, and popping off one-liners like, ‘There’s nothing more dangerous than a woman with a child.’)
Posted in: Oklahoma woman asks 911 operator for permission to shoot intruder
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cleo
While Google raises more questions, it also answers some of the ifs.
The daily mail reports that she shut herself in the bedroom - only one door to worry about.
Terrified, I'll give you (though she sounds remarkably calm on the 911 recording). But dark? at 2pm?
It took longer than 21 minutes. Doesn't seems to have been that easy.
I'm unclear why so many - I'm not concerned what bent you are - have this mentality that asking questions and wanting to know the whole story somehow means you're, as smitty puts it, 'condemning her and praising the bad guys.'
With all these evil crazy drug addicts apparently on the loose, you'd think they couldn't afford not to have the required number of officers.
Posted in: Oklahoma woman asks 911 operator for permission to shoot intruder
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cleo
Not at all. At least not any kind of research that is meaningful, or necessary, or justifies the deaths of thousands of whales and the wasting of billions of tax yen.
I could spend an afternoon pulling the legs off spiders then write papers about how many legs a spider needs to get around, what happens when you mix spider legs with hot coffee, stick them into marshmallows, freeze them, mince them up and feed them to the cat, and my 'research' would be no less deserving of recognition and public funding than the whaling 'research'. And about on a level in terms of meaningless cruelty and bloody-mindedness.
The whales are not being killed for research (the icr claim); the faux 'research' is being done as an excuse to kill whales. It fools no one except those who want to be fooled.
Absolute rubbish. I've lived in Japan for over 35 years and not once has this so-called 'staple food' ever appeared on any dining table I have shared with Japanese people eating their daily fare. It's about as 'staple' here as grilled sheep's eyeballs.
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
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cleo
At 18 I doubt she would have the financial wherewithal to hire a guard (she apparently had to sell most of her guns to pay for the funeral), but in addition to the picture of her posing with the gun there is a picture of her posing with the baby and a huge German Shepherd. I wonder what the dog was doing during the drama.
The 911 dispatcher confirmed that all the doors were locked, so she did have time to do that even though 'it is not customary to lock one’s doors in the rural community of Blanchard, Oklahoma.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082716/Sarah-McKinley-Teen-mom-shoots-dead-intruder-Justin-Shane-Martin-looking-prescription-drugs.html
Does shooting out of the window necessarily mean shooting at people? or even in their direction?
Posted in: Oklahoma woman asks 911 operator for permission to shoot intruder
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cleo
Well, she did ask first. She asked if she could get away with it.
Posted in: Oklahoma woman asks 911 operator for permission to shoot intruder
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cleo
No, it simply puts a question mark on Dictator's capitalised assertions.
No one is claiming they were not doing wrong in breaking in. Of course they were doing wrong, though pathetic is probably a more accurate description than evil for low-lifers after prescription drugs. That doesn't necessarily mean she should be taken at her word, or feted like a hero.
If guns are as effective at deterring crime as the gun crowd claims, surely simply shouting 'I have a gun!' through the door or out of a window - or firing a shot out of the window to show she wasn't bluffing - would have been enough to deter them. If they still came on after that, then fair enough.
Posted in: Oklahoma woman asks 911 operator for permission to shoot intruder
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cleo
All the reports say he wanted the drugs. I agree with smitty - it isn't clear that he knew she was armed, that she warned him, or even if she was whispering on the phone, that he even knew she was in there. Simply, all we have is the word of a lady who is now posing for the cameras with firearm in hand and what looks like a bit of a smirk on her face. I hope that's just the camera angle.
Posted in: Oklahoma woman asks 911 operator for permission to shoot intruder
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cleo
Careful Smitty, you might give them ideas - not even Watson could withstand that!
Then again, it would also scare all the whales away.....
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
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cleo
True, the icr page does list more than 43 'papers published in peer-reviewed papers'. A quick glance shows that they include such titles as 'The Case for Scientific Whaling' (nice unbiased report, I'm sure), 'A sighting of a large school of the pygmy right whale' (requiring the deaths of how many minke and fin whales?), 'First record of movement of a southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) between warm water breeding grounds and the Antarctic ocean' (ditto), 'A note on East Australia Group V Stock humpback whale movement between feeding and breeding areas based on photo-identification' (ditto),'Distribution of seabirds in the Ross Sea, Antarctica' (ditto), 'Factors affecting in vitro maturation of minke whale' (those very large test-tubes, again), 'Fertilizability of ovine, bovine or minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) spermatozoa intracytoplasmically injected into bovine oocytes' (in collaboration with Dr. Moreau, no doubt), 'Interspecies Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer for In Vitro Production of Antarctic Minke Whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis) Embryos' (ditto).
Lots of the papers listed bear no relation to the killing of minke or fin whales. Of those that do, (leaving aside the crazy-scientist interspecies breeding programmes) there is a world of difference between 'we needed to do this research, and had to kill 7000 whales to do it' (what the icr want you to believe) and 'we needed to justify the killing of 7,000 tasty whales and coincidentally happened to have lots of specimens to hand from the hunt, and so came up with these make-do/make-beleive research programmes' (what the icr are really doing). Surely only those who are desperate to believe would be taken in by this blatant example of sutra-copying.
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
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cleo
1 slightly scientific paper the conclusions from which surely did not require the deaths of 7,000 animals.
42 useless and/or weird papers that do not justify the death of a single animal.
You do understand that one possible※ valid result does not negate the research in its entirety being 'mostly' weird? I do not make false claims.
(※I'm not saying it is valid, merely recognising that you want it to be. If you have any more 'valid' research that justifies the killing of 7,000 animals and the waste of billions of tax yen at a time when the country's finances are in dire straits, by all means tell us about it.)
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
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cleo
Then why bring up that particular one? Where are the peer-reviewed research papers that justify the deaths of 7,000 whales?
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
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cleo
It takes 7,000 dead whales to find a correlation between warmer temperatures and less body fat?
I can find the papers; I'm unable to find any papers that justify (1) the killing of whales in their thousands and (2) the injection of large amounts of my tax money.
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
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cleo
Stop plundering the oceans.
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
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cleo
Perhaps the thumbs-downers would like to show that the research has produced more than 43 papers, or has not sacrificed (that's the fluffy term 'researchers' like to use) over 7,000 animals, that the research is not mostly useless and very weird, and does not involve trying to cross-breed whales with land mammals?
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
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cleo
Elvensilvan - I have PR, so no need to ever get a visa. Up until now I've been able to do everything including renew the ARC (every 5 years, is it? I forget...) at the yakuba. This new system appears to mean I have to waste a day making at least one trip up to Utsunomiya to get this new IC card which brings me no benefits at all but does involve expense and inconvenience. I've never changed my gender or spouse, but a couple of years ago the bank insisted I use my full official name instead of the shortened name they'd been quite happy with for the past 20 years. The yakuba sorted that out in no time, but under the new system that would mean another day off work to stand in line to speak to people who don't know me from Adam, no?
Posted in: Changes coming to foreign registration, visa system
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cleo
How many they can kill before SS stops them.
Then they take 'samples' home, most of them to go into deep freeze and eventually on the table. Other bits get used to research - I kid you not - what happens when you inject whale sperm into cow's and pig's eggs. There are also attempts to produce test-tube whale babies, presumably using really large test-tubes.http://www.newser.com/story/21056/japanese-frankenwhale-experiments-slammed.html
Japanese researchers took 18 years and 7,000 dead whales to produce just 43 research papers, most of them 'mostly useless—and very weird'. In an ordinary university lab, any professor planning to use 7,000 lab rats in a similar way would have his tenure taken away.
Posted in: Japan whaling fleet obstructed by Sea Shepherd
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cleo
Because it's a godforsaken place populated with murderous young men, unsafe for ordinary law-abiding folk and essentially outside the reach of the law? (or so the pro-gun folk would have us believe...heck, they would have us believe the whole of the country is like that).
Presumably the lady in question does comprehend the distances - yet still choose to live in the back of beyond.
America thinks it can police the world, yet can't police it's own inaka? Maybe there's a need for fewer soldiers overseas and more police at home.
Posted in: Oklahoma woman asks 911 operator for permission to shoot intruder