I've seen all of those except for Dead or Alive, and can also add Battle Royale II, Audition, Ichi the Killer (Anime and film) and can definitely say that the Japanese can do violence exceptionally well. They can also add far more atmosphere to their films and don't usualy feel the need to fill every moment with sacrine music, which can add more tension. Tarrantino is quoted as saying he released the Kill Bill film with the major fight scene in black and white for the US audience because they can't handle the same level of violence that a Japanese audience can.
The main difference I suspect is that the Japanese movies are not simply about kill counts. They have storylines, deep characters, and are often more insightful into the people they portray. US films on the other hand seem to me like they spent all the budget on explosions and special effects and forgot to pay the script writers to put in a plot. This is telling to me of the cultural differences between the two nations. Both enjoy a spot of violence, with Japanese violence being the more horrifying for me personally, but the Japanese want a story to go with it and some characters to play the story.
Spirited Away, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, Hellsing, Akira, and many many others. Urutsokidoji was one of the worst Animes I've seen so it would be a pity if that was the only one that many westerners saw.
It can be difficult to shake the early programming we receive in life. I was lucky enough to be born to parents who never preached any form of religion to me, ever. I was left entirely to think for myself about the various choices, and as you can see, am still mulling over the decision:-) I would personally favour Bhuddism or a similar religion due to it tolerance of other faiths and general alignment with my usual temper (as opposed to SlashDot temper). Also, I like the philosophy of Bhuddism that I have been exposed to thus far. Lucky for me Bhuddism is a reincarnation based faith so I can spend a few lifetimes thinking over whether I am ready to embrace it before making a final decision.
It would also have blocked out enough light to kill all life on planet Earth. If light is vastly diminished through having a raincloud cover, how much light would pass through this airborne canopy. You don't have to dive too deep in the ocean to notice the light diminishing.
That's a very interesting link, especially the Sumurian tale because it states "the seed of all living creatures". If by this they meant the DNA or semen and egg samples of all creatures then you might be able to fit that within a boat that was an acre in size. The only problem is that we then have to believe in either Atlantean style technology that was lost to all or aliens, since this science was unknown at the time.
A classic in Archeology about how outsiders try hard to ignore the locals occurred in the research on Easter Island. (AKU AKU the secret of Easter Island is the book) The investigation went on for about 2 years and about the time they were going to leave, with many puzzles in mind, the head researcher asked the mayor of the Island if he knew anything about these statues etc. Then the story came out. The Mayor was a direct decendant of those who made the statues and he even knew how to make them, move them etc. He then showed them how! All over the world arrogant academics have tried to explain things any way but how the locals say and they end up finding out that the people know!Please post a link, I love those statues out there and would be quite interested in how they were carved and placed there.
They may well find a boat up there too, I don't consider that part of the story to be impossible, but I do find it more likely they will find it in the foothills. Heck, building a boat that big and stuffing it full of animals is only more extreme than case modding in the scope of what you are trying to do. I'm not even amoungst the crowd who will decry the discovery and say it means nothing without carbon dating, a boat of the right size and roughly the right sort of age that high up that mountain would be enough proof for me that it was the Ark. The issue I have has been expounded a few times tonight, but once more for the road: that the flood didn't kill all life on the planet, that the Ark held 2 of each species, and that we subsequently, in the time frame available, got the biodiversity we have now from that genetic pool.
I'm not an evolutionist or big bang theorist either so there'll be no missing link from me as I don't believe in Darwinism...and now I suspect the other half of SlashDot will be looking to educate me;-> I simply don't think we have the answer yet and am patient enough to wait until we do.
Thank you for providing the voice of Christian sanity. Believing in a massive flood is no problem for me, especially considering the many sources of evidence to back it up. Believing that some people who live in the low costal areas of that region considered the whole world to be flooded, since forty square kilometers would have been their whole world is no problem for me. Beliving a guy heard the word of his God and built a great big boat is also not a problem for me. Believing he and his immediate family gathered up a pair of all the major animals in the region would also not present a problem for me. How many species would they have encountered in that region, a few hundred...a few thousand. The 150 years it took him to build the boat is one I am willing to let slide based on lack of knowledge on lifespans of the time. That it belted down rain for "40 days and 40 nights" is questionable since the bible uses the number 40 to mean a long time, not necessarily an exact time e.g. 40 years in the desert, 40 days and 40 nights of rain, etc. See link for quick discussion of this, but there are doubtless many more better discussions forty.
It's the need for people to take the story literally that surprises me and the issue of the time frame. If the story is literally true then the event happened within the last 6000 years. That's quite simply not enough time to get the genetic diversity we have now. We can attribute this to one of two things, a miracle, or a faulty interpretation of the scriptures. I'm more inclined to believe that men are reading the scriptures wrong, others are backing the miracle option.
Well said. This here is the crux of the problem for this argument. I and others can argue till we are blue in the face that there is proof positive that the stories could not have occurred without divine intervention, which we don't believe in. Christians simply have to wave that aside and say that you have to have faith to believe in God and that all things are possible. But where does one obtain that faith from? How do you start to believe in an omnipotent being that refuses all proof...and why?
Well, the how I can't address, and I thought I could give a little on the subject of why, but I can't really, since all I can explain is the "why" for me. How about instead, you tell me why you believe in a deity, if you are currently doing so.
As for faith...the Christian God has stated in his book "I am the one true god, you shall have no god before me". Christians themselves claim that all other gods are false gods or demons. This, by it's very assetion puts them at odds with every other religion on the planet. They are saying that all other religions are false. Now, I am not a Christian, not actually anything right now, not even atheist, but this directly implies that all other religions are simple fairy tales. What goes around comes around.
This is true. The basic premise of the bible is quite more than reasonably carried from one version to the other. Even the occassional literal translation errors in the basic text should not be bothersome to someone who is reading the message of the bible. What get's me however is the section of Christianity that claims it is impossible to mis-translate it (a church I attended made this absurd claim, yes, I have been a Christian in the past...) and the people who claim it is a literal writing of the events that occured rather than parables and guiding stories.
It is when people start to presume that all the stories in it are the word of God and absolute truth in their literal form that I feel people have lost the path of the Christian faith. How can it be so when the individual churches can't even agree on which scriptures are allowed in the bible? The catholic bible has some extra books, and others that are missing from the more mainstream Christian editions. Here's how I see the bible: it is a useful guide book on how to live a decent life. Don't kill, steal, or go around making out with your neighboors wife. All good solid advice. In addition it has the *most* important information of the times in it. This is, in rough order of importance
who your God is
who you're king is
the laws of the land
the wars you have fought and who won
hygenic food practises
All that stuff is in the bible, it was the most important information of it's time, and thus worth the enormous task of writing it down and passing it from person to person. If you can manage to take the lessons from the book and use them to enhance your life, well then, good for you - that's what the book is for. If you want to use it to justify holy crusades, inquisitions, the burning of witches, and many of the other attrocities carried out in the name of Christianity, then you've missed the point of the book.
It's not a really big boat they are searching for since any decent sized harbour has one of those. It is the Ark they are claiming is up Mount Arafat. Further, they claim that it is big enough to hold all the animals in creation, and that the flood (which I am not disputing) killed every living person except for one family (which I am disputing).
These are conjectures and allegations you are making, not facts. If you're aware of the article that talks about underwater springs then why not provide a reference link that supports it and tells us how much water is under there. See the calculation further up this page to see how much would be required to flood the earth to the biblical level, and then see if your theory is enough to cover it. Report back on your findings.
Nothing, as long as you don't try to interpolate from finding a boat on a hill to the existance of an all knowing all powerful God. So, once they do actually find this boat, who's up for trying to push two of every animal onto it to see if they all fit? Any takers?
Did those same creation scientists bother to mention the list of animals that did contain all the DNA needed to produce the offspring we have now? Please explain to me how only a pair of dogs is able to father the complete dog genus as we know it now, and make sure you take into account the age of the Noah story being ~6000 years ago.
So, what I should do is suspend all reason, ignore my senses and the observations of all around me (including you, who have not personally witnessed this event or I dare say anything that would qualify as a miracle) ignore the scientific work done over the last few millenia, and simply believe something that flies in the face of all known fact because...of faith. How about this instead, you have faith that I am the one true God and for some weird reason need you to put millions of dollars in my PayPal account. And to prove I am your savior I performed a few miracles the other day, pity you weren't around to see them but a friend of a friend will probably mention them cause they were pretty miraculous. Anyway, get depositing, cause God needs your money^H^H^H^H^Hlove and faith now.
When your religion is based on belief in fairy stories that are clearly provable as being impossible, but require some leap of "faith" to believe in then you really do deserve some ridiculing. If respect for faith is based on numbers then I'm going to have to back Hinduism, Islam or some other popular one, not the half baked mish-mash or myths and other religions that form the core of the Christian faith.
Yep, I find fairy stories very hard to believe in now I am an adult. Show me the ruins of Noahs ark and I will fall down and worship this one god of yours, but until even the slightest shred of evidence is shown I will remain a doubter. Even a clear satelite photo would do. That's a desert region and will show up nice and clear on satelite photos. If the same technology used to bomb the living crap out of the Iraq people can't be used to spot a boat 150m long and big enough to hold every animal in the world then I'll be amazed...truly amazed.
The Krupps people will be so excited to hear you can now take two purebred Great British Bulldogs and breed them to obtain a purebred Great Dane. This is going to save them a fortune since they no longer need to maintain pure bloods line, the dogs can simply mate and create a brand new species.
But this position you are taking is a complete reversal of the previous position on the word of God. Either the world of God is immutable and cannot be changed even by the hands of the foolish when written down, or it is not. Now, which is it?
Thanks for the offer on discussing verses, but I'd rather read up on Bhuddism, paganism and some of the other fine religions before devoting more of my time to the Christian faith. My studies thus far have been enough to convince me Christianity is not the faith for me.
Aiiie, mighty Cthulhu is coming...harken to his ways or be crushed by his enormous tentacles and thrown to the she goat of the woods with a thousand young.
Lucky a little math can get us through this mystery. Ignoring the fact that the Ark would have been boat shaped and assuming it is a nice neat Borg cube instead we get an area of 450x75x25 feet = 136m x 22m x 7.5m = 22440 cubic meters. So, if there are in fact *only* 20,000 species, and let's face it, a biology guy is going to write back and dispute this small number, we get an average 1.122 cubic meters for every pair of animals, including the humans. So, what this story tells us is that even if we only consider a tiny number of the land dwelling animals, and they can be squashed into a tiny little cube, and can survive in what is effectively a cage the size of a battery hen's cage, and that the cage also contains food for 40 days, then there is no reason to call Noah a bald faced liar. Even a rabbit would have a hard time living in a cage that size for 40 days alongside all of it's food supply and execrement.
If anyone can give us the average size and weight of all the animals of the land dwelling kingdom then this myth can be put to rest once and for all.
The King James bible, which is a foundation stone for many sects of Christianity contains a common mistranslation which has at times be attributed to King James (IIRC) or some other party with an agenda. The passage in question is regarding witches and goes "Do not suffer a poisoner to live", which for various reasons is often translated into "Do not suffer a witch to live". How does this fit in with your "consitent word of God" theory?
Slashdot Mirror
From what I hear OSS is thriving on Apple machines now they are BSD based.
The main difference I suspect is that the Japanese movies are not simply about kill counts. They have storylines, deep characters, and are often more insightful into the people they portray. US films on the other hand seem to me like they spent all the budget on explosions and special effects and forgot to pay the script writers to put in a plot. This is telling to me of the cultural differences between the two nations. Both enjoy a spot of violence, with Japanese violence being the more horrifying for me personally, but the Japanese want a story to go with it and some characters to play the story.
Spirited Away, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, Hellsing, Akira, and many many others. Urutsokidoji was one of the worst Animes I've seen so it would be a pity if that was the only one that many westerners saw.
It can be difficult to shake the early programming we receive in life. I was lucky enough to be born to parents who never preached any form of religion to me, ever. I was left entirely to think for myself about the various choices, and as you can see, am still mulling over the decision :-) I would personally favour Bhuddism or a similar religion due to it tolerance of other faiths and general alignment with my usual temper (as opposed to SlashDot temper). Also, I like the philosophy of Bhuddism that I have been exposed to thus far. Lucky for me Bhuddism is a reincarnation based faith so I can spend a few lifetimes thinking over whether I am ready to embrace it before making a final decision.
Wow, you're quite a douchebag for a tolerant bible loving guy. I'd hate to meet an intolerant Christian, they'd be likely to get medievil on my ass.
It would also have blocked out enough light to kill all life on planet Earth. If light is vastly diminished through having a raincloud cover, how much light would pass through this airborne canopy. You don't have to dive too deep in the ocean to notice the light diminishing.
That's a very interesting link, especially the Sumurian tale because it states "the seed of all living creatures". If by this they meant the DNA or semen and egg samples of all creatures then you might be able to fit that within a boat that was an acre in size. The only problem is that we then have to believe in either Atlantean style technology that was lost to all or aliens, since this science was unknown at the time.
A classic in Archeology about how outsiders try hard to ignore the locals occurred in the research on Easter Island. (AKU AKU the secret of Easter Island is the book) The investigation went on for about 2 years and about the time they were going to leave, with many puzzles in mind, the head researcher asked the mayor of the Island if he knew anything about these statues etc. Then the story came out. The Mayor was a direct decendant of those who made the statues and he even knew how to make them, move them etc. He then showed them how! All over the world arrogant academics have tried to explain things any way but how the locals say and they end up finding out that the people know!Please post a link, I love those statues out there and would be quite interested in how they were carved and placed there.
They may well find a boat up there too, I don't consider that part of the story to be impossible, but I do find it more likely they will find it in the foothills. Heck, building a boat that big and stuffing it full of animals is only more extreme than case modding in the scope of what you are trying to do. I'm not even amoungst the crowd who will decry the discovery and say it means nothing without carbon dating, a boat of the right size and roughly the right sort of age that high up that mountain would be enough proof for me that it was the Ark. The issue I have has been expounded a few times tonight, but once more for the road: that the flood didn't kill all life on the planet, that the Ark held 2 of each species, and that we subsequently, in the time frame available, got the biodiversity we have now from that genetic pool.
I'm not an evolutionist or big bang theorist either so there'll be no missing link from me as I don't believe in Darwinism...and now I suspect the other half of SlashDot will be looking to educate me ;-> I simply don't think we have the answer yet and am patient enough to wait until we do.
It's the need for people to take the story literally that surprises me and the issue of the time frame. If the story is literally true then the event happened within the last 6000 years. That's quite simply not enough time to get the genetic diversity we have now. We can attribute this to one of two things, a miracle, or a faulty interpretation of the scriptures. I'm more inclined to believe that men are reading the scriptures wrong, others are backing the miracle option.
Well, the how I can't address, and I thought I could give a little on the subject of why, but I can't really, since all I can explain is the "why" for me. How about instead, you tell me why you believe in a deity, if you are currently doing so.
As for faith...the Christian God has stated in his book "I am the one true god, you shall have no god before me". Christians themselves claim that all other gods are false gods or demons. This, by it's very assetion puts them at odds with every other religion on the planet. They are saying that all other religions are false. Now, I am not a Christian, not actually anything right now, not even atheist, but this directly implies that all other religions are simple fairy tales. What goes around comes around.
It is when people start to presume that all the stories in it are the word of God and absolute truth in their literal form that I feel people have lost the path of the Christian faith. How can it be so when the individual churches can't even agree on which scriptures are allowed in the bible? The catholic bible has some extra books, and others that are missing from the more mainstream Christian editions. Here's how I see the bible: it is a useful guide book on how to live a decent life. Don't kill, steal, or go around making out with your neighboors wife. All good solid advice. In addition it has the *most* important information of the times in it. This is, in rough order of importance
who your God is
who you're king is
the laws of the land
the wars you have fought and who won
hygenic food practises
All that stuff is in the bible, it was the most important information of it's time, and thus worth the enormous task of writing it down and passing it from person to person. If you can manage to take the lessons from the book and use them to enhance your life, well then, good for you - that's what the book is for. If you want to use it to justify holy crusades, inquisitions, the burning of witches, and many of the other attrocities carried out in the name of Christianity, then you've missed the point of the book.
It's not a really big boat they are searching for since any decent sized harbour has one of those. It is the Ark they are claiming is up Mount Arafat. Further, they claim that it is big enough to hold all the animals in creation, and that the flood (which I am not disputing) killed every living person except for one family (which I am disputing).
These are conjectures and allegations you are making, not facts. If you're aware of the article that talks about underwater springs then why not provide a reference link that supports it and tells us how much water is under there. See the calculation further up this page to see how much would be required to flood the earth to the biblical level, and then see if your theory is enough to cover it. Report back on your findings.
Nothing, as long as you don't try to interpolate from finding a boat on a hill to the existance of an all knowing all powerful God. So, once they do actually find this boat, who's up for trying to push two of every animal onto it to see if they all fit? Any takers?
Did those same creation scientists bother to mention the list of animals that did contain all the DNA needed to produce the offspring we have now? Please explain to me how only a pair of dogs is able to father the complete dog genus as we know it now, and make sure you take into account the age of the Noah story being ~6000 years ago.
And the power to turn your wife into a pillar of salt? I'll be wanting that power if I ever run out of salt in the house.
When your religion is based on belief in fairy stories that are clearly provable as being impossible, but require some leap of "faith" to believe in then you really do deserve some ridiculing. If respect for faith is based on numbers then I'm going to have to back Hinduism, Islam or some other popular one, not the half baked mish-mash or myths and other religions that form the core of the Christian faith.
Yep, I find fairy stories very hard to believe in now I am an adult. Show me the ruins of Noahs ark and I will fall down and worship this one god of yours, but until even the slightest shred of evidence is shown I will remain a doubter. Even a clear satelite photo would do. That's a desert region and will show up nice and clear on satelite photos. If the same technology used to bomb the living crap out of the Iraq people can't be used to spot a boat 150m long and big enough to hold every animal in the world then I'll be amazed...truly amazed.
The Krupps people will be so excited to hear you can now take two purebred Great British Bulldogs and breed them to obtain a purebred Great Dane. This is going to save them a fortune since they no longer need to maintain pure bloods line, the dogs can simply mate and create a brand new species.
Thanks for the offer on discussing verses, but I'd rather read up on Bhuddism, paganism and some of the other fine religions before devoting more of my time to the Christian faith. My studies thus far have been enough to convince me Christianity is not the faith for me.
Aiiie, mighty Cthulhu is coming...harken to his ways or be crushed by his enormous tentacles and thrown to the she goat of the woods with a thousand young.
If anyone can give us the average size and weight of all the animals of the land dwelling kingdom then this myth can be put to rest once and for all.
wicca google links