Yuki_51 comments

I think it's not a fear of open minds, but a fear of change. Ignorantly and fearfully, authorities feel that Japanese culture will somehow change in some major and negative way if a significant number of people start smoking pot. I believe this is highly unlikely. I actually don't think that pot is psycho-active enough to radically change behavior at all. Therefore, I tend to ridicule the claims of adherents about pot's beneficial attributes (for example, that it produces enlightened thinking) as much as I ridicule the claims of Japanese authorities that pot is some incredibly dangerous substance.

Japanese authorities are making exactly the same mistakes American authorities made, and the results will undoubtedly be the same.

For starters, they grossly, horribly, overstate the problem. They make claims about usage that are simply rubbish. Inevitably, a small group of experimenters will come to understand the scope of official ignorance and disinformation, they will spread that understanding to others, and respect for authority will begin to rot.

The problem then becomes serious, because since authority has chosen to take an unwise stand, and to support that stand using unwise techniques, respect for authority begins to crumble in many directions, not simply about pot. Eventually, authority has little clout left -- even in areas where it doesn't take absurd positions based on ignorance and fear, and doesn't attempt to spread disinformation.

When authority presumes to tell individuals how to run their own lives, authority had better pick and choose its fights wisely, and it had better conduct such fights, once picked, wisely. Otherwise, authority will discover that it no longer carries much authority.

What government needs to do is something a bit radical, but not so radical when you get right down to it. At a point where any business, be it a bank, an automaker, or any other enterprise, gets so large that its failure poses a systemic risk to the entire economy, government should then impose some level of control on how that business is operated in an attempt to diminish or eliminate that risk.

The problems of such an approach are serious of course. For starters, one needs to determine how to evaluate the point at which enterprise size becomes problematic in the event of bad corporate decision-making. It's no easy call. And whether government can coerce a business into behavior that ultimately saves it is another open question.

But such a paradigm might inhibit needless mergers and acquisitions. Perhaps there is a size limit beyond which we might want to consider whether we even allow mergers. Perhaps we should let them go unchecked, but regulate more if . Ultimately, I could see the choice being theirs: Get as large as you want, but at some point you are going to have to surrender some of your autonomy if you continue to get even larger, or stay below the size level that ultimately poses systemic risk should your decisions come back to haunt you.

I'm bored by stubborn ignorance posing as something else. There is nothing I can write, nor nothing I can reference, that is going to change your closed mind. You believe a giant hoax was pulled on millions of intelligence folks because that is exactly what you want to believe. No one is going to change it, including me.

Sayounara from this ridiculous thread.

I'm not into doing homework for other people, sorry. It's out there; it's mountainous; it's incontrovertible. Spend some time on it.

As for the steel building collapses ...

It's all quite well documented. Architects now understand exactly what temperatures were reached, and the precise dynamics of the falls. There is absolutely nothing mysterious or unknown about it, nothing that would suggest anything other than exactly what appeared to have happened, and what indeed did happen. Only those who want to believe something else persist in their folly. And they do so in spite of vast evidence that absolutely buries their pet point of attack (the steel melting in this case) under a mountain of logic and fact.

For your information, I'm a licensed commercial pilot, and I suspect you wouldn't know Jet A-1 (it's a fuel) from Jet B. I also wonder if you can visual 5,000 gallons of fuel in one location -- I mean the size of it. Now take that by almost a factor of FIVE (nearly 25,000 gallons), and light a match to it.

Odd that the steel melted? Sheesh. Go get a degree in some physical science, please.

and that they're alive and well! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm

C'mon. The date of that article is Sunday, 23 September, 2001. Of course there was still confusion at that early time. The only confusion that remains consists of confused minds and those who want to be confused, or who want to try to confuse others.

Indeed, grafton. Twelve men landed on the moon, two each in six separate flights. The number of people involved in the project probably runs not merely into the thousands, but the tens of thousands. It is probably the most remarkable engineering achievement in human history. So daunting a task is it that no one since has even attempted it. Someday of course, providing we don't decide to knock our civilization back into the dark ages, somebody will do it again. The math has all been done, the engineering rather old hat; it's just going to take a ton of disposable money and a lot of will. And when the next visitors get there, if they look in the right places, they will find footprints. Those footprints are going to be there for a long, long time.

And as for the guys with the boxcutters, sabiwabi, you overlook the dozens of telephone calls from people on the planes describing exactly that -- guys with boxcutters using violence to take over the planes. What, they weren't Arabs? What planet do you live on? We have video of these guys. We know their names, the villages where they were born, and how they paid for their one-way tickets. There is simply no doubt about what happened that day in the minds of sane people.

It's amazing to me that, by and large, people who buy into one of these conspiracy theories invariably buy into most of them, if not all of them.

It seems to be a group of people who are simply rebelling against all authority. I don't know if it's because they feel powerless in this world, and their "they are all lying to us" attitude makes them feel somehow empowered, or exactly what the underlying pathology is. But assuming people are not just writing garbage for the fun of it, assuming that they actually believe what they write, it's truly scary.

@Brunobear: Would it matter if someone could produce a number like, say, 5,261,347?

You realize of course that pretty much the entire continent of Europe (particularly central and eastern Europe) was a wasteland by May of '45, right? Public records were, in so many countries, simply incinerated by bombing and general warfare, as the Germans stormed through on their way east, only to have the Russians storm through in the opposite direction later.

The German government, to my knowledge, has never tried to come up with a number, and they probably couldn't if they wanted to. But they make no qualms about what happened, particularly the general scale of it.

Do you think it was inflated by several hundred percent? As usual, there are professorships, Nobel Prizes, fame and monetary rewards for anyone who can prove a great conspiracy. So far, no one seems to have been able to do it. Can you imagine that competent people haven't tried?

@mistersmarmy: Can you spell ad hominem? I didn't think so.

I guess this "survey" is an attempt by JT to find out the general IQ level of its English language readership. Let's see if it nudges the century mark.

@mistersmarmy seems to be completely unaware that they DID go back. Five times, in fact, after the first landing. Why don't they continue to go back and forth? It's an AIRLESS ROCK that is HIDEOUSLY EXPENSIVE to get to and from, and there just isn't much you can do once you get there except to collect a few souvenirs. Going there, and staying there, involves money that most people simply don't want to spend. Enormous money, with very, very, little possibility of any return on the investment, other than pure knowledge. Going there was pretty much a stunt, but it was a real stunt, not a faked stunt. People who believe otherwise probably believe in the Tooth Fairy, too.

They pitched to Ichiro with 1st base open and the game on the line in extra innings. You are not going to win too many baseball games with that kind of strategy.

"Ryoko Hirosue of the Oscar-winning film ‘Okuribito’" ...

Yeah, just about everyone in the film carted off a justly deserved award, except Ryoko. As usual, she overacted to the hilt, and didn't deserve one. Her appearance fees should definitely be discounted.

In this society, it's very, very hard to imagine someone suspected of a well publicized murder getting along without any support. Someone is supporting him, actively or passively, or both. If it's organized crime, the police should try putting unbearable heat on them, with the clear message that the status quo won't return until the suspect is in custody. "If you don't have him, find him," should be the message. This type of tactic usually produces results. Interrupt all revenue streams that you normally don't pay much attention to. Squeeze them. They won't like it, and the guy will turn up -- dead or alive.

How anyone can have a strong opinion on this question either way is simply beyond me. I can understand hope, and faith to an extent, but conviction about things we obviously know little about mystifies me.

There was no plan for a full invasion. It was a carrier-based raid, and all 4 of the carriers that raided Darwin were lost a few months later at Midway.

donkusai is correct. Troops landed on a few islands, but not on the mainland.

Sarge ... it's called sekigaisen (infrared). It works, particularly at close range, no matter inside or outside.

I remember waiting for a train in Hokkaido. It was January, and must have been about -30. My jeans were slightly wet from snow, but the sun was shining on them, and steam was coming off.

Sekigaisen, folks.

No one can judge another person's life? What rubbish. One needs to judge with care and compassion, but certainly judgments can be made.

Either Japan should say, "Yes, we are hunting whales," or Japan should stop the kabuki. Research doesn't end up in restaurants or on diner tables. Either stand by your guns (harpoons?), or stop it.

For memyselfl:

It's obvious that you are ignorant about Japanese traffic laws. Let me (try to) enlighten you.

The LEGAL SPEED LIMIT (means the legal speed limit on ANY unmarked road) is 60 KPH. So "speeding" wasn't "speeding" on a narrow, (unmarked) road. I don't care where it is. Unless the speed is marked otherwise by sign, the legal limit for motor vehicles other than mopeds is 60 KPH. Pure and simple, and widely known. (Not that 60 KPH will set any land speed records of course.)

Now be a good gaijin and go to driving school so that you know what you are writing/talking about.