JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
-
- 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
-
- 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*
-
- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
0
ronindave
If you like the pic, check out the vid that goes with this on youtube - just check my handle name - the same as it is here - and the title "Giant Gundam Gathers Gawking Geeks"
Posted in: Gundam
0
ronindave
WTF!? HA! HA! HA! HA! Seriously, how can anyone honestly debate with people who dare to make such laughable ridiculous comparisons?
Posted in: Should Holocaust denial be a crime?
0
ronindave
well, was I right or was I right? I said way up near the top something like this would happen.
It's typical with Holocaust Deniers. They are not out to win an argument. They desperately want to try and give their hatefilled tinfoil-hat conspiracy some ounce of validity. They'll try to mask this by claiming ennobled causes like freedom of speech and the quest for truth but the reality is that they are far removed from both.
Posted in: Should Holocaust denial be a crime?
0
ronindave
Bigs, you've practically ennobled Holocaust Denial under the ideal of freedom of speech. And using the poem in this context is rather distasteful.
Your arguments read as a "just add water" insta-argument. You have to look at the situation and not just blindly lead a crusade for the holy sanctity of the freedom of speech. You could have just easily wrote the same for the right to shout "Fire" in a crowded theater. Both your argument and the fire in the theater arguments are cliches that people lazily use so as to avoid real thinking.
I voted no but for a very different reason - I don't want to give those nutters any sense of validity or that underground conspiritorial complex. As I said before they should be harshly ignored or harshly ridiculed.
Posted in: Should Holocaust denial be a crime?
0
ronindave
Also be careful with Holocaust Denial Deniers - ie people who seem to be arguing against Holocaust Deniers when in fact they are enabling them and making the issue appear to have validity.
The most basic tactic in this is to set up a counter-argument which sounds overly-emotional and filled with inaccurate details. Then the HDer steps in to cooly and easily defeat their counterpart's argument in the hopes that it will give them and their argument some clout. Their opponent of course is really that person or one of their cronies.
A forum I frequent was awashed with Holocaust Denial debates a few years ago. Our forum had attracted attention from a StormFront-esque site and they came over with their ridiculous arguments. After a while, the regular forum members generally ignored them and their topics got buried.
Then what one member later dubbed "Holocaust Denial Deniers" started appearing to argue against the Holocaust Deniers. At first, it seem as though this new group was earnest in their arguments until it was noticed that all these arguments did was make sure all the Holocaust posts were kept on the front page. Soon after the "debates" began spilling into unrelated threads.
The members went thru the pangs of freedom of speech issues until it just got way out of hand (as this page probably will as well). Finally our mods took action and banned both groups making the topic bannable because it had literally overrun what was a political/travel/social forum.
Posted in: Should Holocaust denial be a crime?
0
ronindave
And here we go ---- into Insanity! HDers will have you down to the point of the discussing the dust bunnies of Dachau while ignoring the elephant in the room. Don't fall for their tricks - many of them are prepared to lure a person in by a seemingly innocuous statement/counter-statement then out comes the so-called evidence by discredited scholars or scholars who don't have any cred to begin with and voila! suddenly there's an honest-to-gosh debate going on as though Holocaust Denial were a serious topic worthy of discussion and not the equivalent of arguing that the moon is made of bleu cheese.
And all the while the "debate" is smothered with a cool condescending arrogance of some HDer who thinks/pretends they know something that others don't. I have rarely encountered an HDer (online - never face to face as they are generally cowards who hide behind anonymity) who did not have the same smarmy oily charm that just oozes arrogance and creepiness. The cold arrogance is a tactic designed to make it look like they are knowledgable when in fact they are embittered hatefilled ignorant individuals parroting rhetoric they have read which fits with their askewed perceptions of the world. The aura of creepiness which surrounds such indivifuals is just a natural byproduct that they cannot mask.
Posted in: Should Holocaust denial be a crime?
0
ronindave
I say NO for the sake of the freedom of speech and to make it a crime would give Holocaust Deniers a persecution/martyr complex and gives it a form of seriousness. They would think their theories are criminal because the "truth" needs to be suppressed. These nutters would use this to their advantage.
The way to deal with Holocaust Denial is either to ignore it completely or ridicule it. If you truly dislike Holocaust Denial, DO NOT indulge in a rational debate because many of them are not seeking any kind of meeting of the minds. You cannot persuade them to see logic or show compassion or even tact. What they want is their theories to have some kind of legitimacy and people who argue with them just enable them. They should be treated like the tinfoil-hat-wearing nutters that they are and kept in the outer wasteland of Lunancy.
Posted in: Should Holocaust denial be a crime?
0
ronindave
No you assume that. What I want to do is to seperate the perverted from the truly abhorrent. The reason I don't condemn a 27 year old man and 14 woman on face value as harshly as say a 27 year old and an 8 year old is because the former is a society moral - one that has changed in certain cultures but not all. The desire is not abnormal but the action is. However the later is considered abnormal pretty much in all cultures past and present. In this case the desire alone is abnormal.
Basically when it comes to dishing out punishment, IMHO the former should be sentenced to several years in prison and counseling. The latter though should just be taken out behind the wood shed and shot.
Posted in: 27-yr-old police sergeant arrested for having sex with 14-yr-old girl
0
ronindave
I call you puritanical for your indignant self-righteous tone and your argument which hinges more on emotion than logic
Posted in: 27-yr-old police sergeant arrested for having sex with 14-yr-old girl
0
ronindave
Folks used to do it all the time without batting an eye until relatively recently and in some countries, they still do. Will you be imposing your cultural timeset morality on them too?
Personally I don't think in today's modern western society a 27 and 14 year old should "hook up" because of the differences in maturity. In the past a 14 year was treated differently and they thought of themselves differently. Now they belong to that second childhood of teenage-hood and a vast gulf seperates them from someone who is even 5 years older than them. But it's not sick in the same sense of someone who lusts after a prepubscent youth which is far more abnormal as I mentioned before both psychologically and biologically.
Posted in: 27-yr-old police sergeant arrested for having sex with 14-yr-old girl
0
ronindave
likeitis is correct more so than puritanical by-the-book molenir. They use to marry girls off at 14 in the past in just about every society on the planet and thought nothing unnatural about. In medieval times, for the purposes of alliances even children could be married but the keypoint was that such marriages could not legally or morally be consummated until 13 - by which time they could biologically reproduce and by this time have feminine attributes.
In modern times, childhood has been legally and societally extended into "teenage-hood" a concept which until relatively recently in the history of human society did not exist before - and it started in the west.
In old Japan, 15 year old boys were expected to fight in their first battles. Tokugawa Ieyasu's mother was 14-15 when she had him.
But in all of this both in Japan and in the West in the past, nowhere was it acceptable to have sex with children - probably because physically such an attraction is abnormal. A child has no sexual attributes of any sort so to find attraction there is again abnormal.
This is why there IS a difference between someone lusting after a 14 year old and someone lusting after an 8 year old. It's simple biology.
The first is wrong both legally by today's laws and morally by today's standards in taking advantage of someone's naivity and presumed innocence. But we are dealing with an attraction that as some have said is with youth who can pass for older because they have attributes which can be considered attractive.
The second though is far more disturbing because it's an attraction that is pyscologically and biologically abnormal. It's an act that is against nature because you don't have animals trying to reproduce with it's young until it reaches the proper biological stage.
So trying to equate an attraction towards an underage girl to that of an attraction to that of a prepubscent one is fallible regardless of what some modern mindsetted law says. Laws and morality change - but there are certain truths about nature that do not.
Anyway, gents going after 14 year olds are perverted but gents going after 8 year olds are truly sick.
Posted in: 27-yr-old police sergeant arrested for having sex with 14-yr-old girl
0
ronindave
I think tmarie has it right more so than the "girls are innocent lambs" commentators. Sounds more like misplaced Victorian ideals of female purity. Sure these guys are predatorial but a number of girls do know the score. I knew of co-worker whose former host family's 17 year old daughter came to stay with her in Tokyo. she lost money so she went out and picked herself up some oyaji-san and came back with money to spare not too mention the odor of smoke, sake, and coffee. She didn't think a thing about and even had photos of her and the dude before they did the deed.
However she was 17 not 14. Only 3 years but at this time in life that is a big difference mentally and physically.
Posted in: 27-yr-old police sergeant arrested for having sex with 14-yr-old girl
0
ronindave
and all those office workers playing solitaire late into the night while waiting to go home - is that part of the work ethic?
Posted in: Aso says world religions can learn from Japan
0
ronindave
the big ones at Tachi Neputa are 22 meters high. Nice photo!
Posted in: Furusato Fair 2009
0
ronindave
great photo! I've been lucky to catch to a few times over the years.
check out my vid from last year - not as many acrobats then though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo637rLM0n4&feature=channel_page
Posted in: Firefighting drills
0
ronindave
hey, this is the photographer here! I just wanted to chime in and say chestnutroastin and cliffworks are correct in that falconry in japan goes way back. Falconry was one of Tokugawa Ieyasu favorite sports and the earliest written account is in the Nihon Shoki (early 8th Century) which claims falconry goes back to the Fourth Century. while that might be debatable, it's obvious that by the 8th century at least, falconry was a well established custom in Japan.
Posted in: Falconry