News & Not News Megathread

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-03-21/yamato-macross-director-noboru-ishiguro-passes-away

Studio Nue co-founder Haruka Takachiho reported on Wednesday that Noboru Ishiguro, the veteran director of such works as Space Battleship Yamato, the first color Astro Boy anime series (1980), The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, has passed away. He was 73.

Ishiguro directed some of the most highly regarded anime classics of the last five decades, including those listed above as well as Megazone 23, The Super Dimension Century Orguss, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? film, and Yōkai Ningen Bem. Ishiguro also conceived of Megazone 23's story and founded Artland in 1978, the studio that co-produced Macross, Orguss and Galactic Heroes, and animated more recent titles such as Mushi-Shi, Demon King Daimao, and Katekyo Hitman Reborn!

Most recently, Ishiguro directed the 2008-2009 television anime series Tytania, which was based on a series of novels by Galactic Heroes author Yoshiki Tanaka, and Pattenrai!! - Minami no Shima no Mizu Monogatari, a 2009 film based on the life of Yoichi Hatta, the Japanese engineer that helped modernize Taiwan when it was a colony of Japan.

Ishiguro was scheduled to attend North Carolina's Animazement convention on May 25-27. He attended past U.S. conventions such as several Anime Expo events, Anime Weekend Atlanta in 2007, and Otakon in 2009.
RIP. I was at the Otakon panel back in 2009.
 

Dar_Klink

Last Guardian when? - CyberKlink 20XX before dying
I just came here to post that IncantatioN, this is depressing as hell, the guy directed some of the most amazing and influential anime out there and my favorite, Legend of the Galactic Heroes. He also seems like a really cool guy:
I'm just happy I was able to meet him before he died. He's such a cool guy.

At his panel at Otakon '09, he told the entire audience to stand up and play rock-paper-scissors with him, where anyone who lost had to sit down, and the winner won a T-shirt or something. It came down to myself and two other people, whom he invited up on stage for the final round. I ended up coming in second place, but I still ended up winning a prize from him: his used, Dorito-encrusted LoGH mousepad, which he randomly pulled from his laptop bag. He even autographed it for me. I'll never forget that.

I was at Anime Expo 2002 with a friend of mine. Were chatting about Giant Robo etc and suddenly, a wild Noburo Ishiguro appears and walks by. No handlers, no nothing, just strolling through the lobby. My friend walks over and says hi, points at Ishiguro, points at his back, and surprisingly, Ishiguro nods enthusiastically and suddenly hops on my friends back, who proceeds to run around the lobby with Noburo Ishiguro on his back for a good 2 minutes.

Dysi9.jpg


RIP one of the greats of anime, I think it's time to watch some Macross: Do You Remember Love? in his memory.
 
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57400837-501465/video-games-scrutinized-new-bill-seeks-violent-warning-labels/

Congressmen Joe Baca and Frank Wolf want to introduce a law to require all video games rated 'E' or higher to carry the label "WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior."

A politician is a crowd pleaser who pisses everyone off. I would explain why this bill sucks but that would feel like explaining why you shouldn't click on an ad saying you won a free ipod.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
Groovy Metal Fist said:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57400837-501465/video-games-scrutinized-new-bill-seeks-violent-warning-labels/

Congressmen Joe Baca and Frank Wolf want to introduce a law to require all video games rated 'E' or higher to carry the label "WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior."

A politician is a crowd pleaser who pisses everyone off. I would explain why this bill sucks but that would feel like explaining why you shouldn't click on an ad saying you won a free ipod.

No big deal, it won't pass. If it does, it'll lose in court.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/opinion/please-stop-apologizing.html?_r=4

A brisk read. I much prefer the man in print.
 
Vampire_Hunter_Bob said:
No big deal, it won't pass. If it does, it'll lose in court.

I'm optimistic it won't pass; the video game industry has lobbyists now and the Supreme Court acknowledges video games as free speech.

It just bothers me when politicians say things that are intentionally inflammatory or false. If a forum user spoke the way a politician spoke, he would be banned for trolling.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
NightCrawler said:
I have to register to read this?

Sorry, must be a regional thing. Here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/opinion/please-stop-apologizing.html?_r=4 said:
Please Stop Apologizing
By BILL MAHER
Published: March 21, 2012

THIS week, Robert De Niro made a joke about first ladies, and Newt Gingrich said it was “inexcusable and the president should apologize for him.” Of course, if something is “inexcusable,” an apology doesn’t make any difference, but then again, neither does Newt Gingrich.

Mr. De Niro was speaking at a fund-raiser with the first lady, Michelle Obama. Here’s the joke: “Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?”

The first lady’s press secretary declared the joke “inappropriate,” and Mr. De Niro said his remarks were “not meant to offend.” So, as these things go, even if the terrible damage can never be undone, at least the healing can begin. And we can move on to the next time we choose sides and pretend to be outraged about nothing.

When did we get it in our heads that we have the right to never hear anything we don’t like? In the last year, we’ve been shocked and appalled by the unbelievable insensitivity of Nike shoes, the Fighting Sioux, Hank Williams Jr., Cee Lo Green, Ashton Kutcher, Tracy Morgan, Don Imus, Kirk Cameron, Gilbert Gottfried, the Super Bowl halftime show and the ESPN guys who used the wrong cliché for Jeremy Lin after everyone else used all the others. Who can keep up?

This week, President Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, described Mitt Romney’s constant advertising barrage in Illinois as a “Mittzkrieg,” and instantly the Republican Jewish Coalition was outraged and called out Mr. Axelrod’s “Holocaust and Nazi imagery” as “disturbing.” Because the message of “Mittzkrieg” was clear: Kill all the Jews. Then the coalition demanded not only that Mr. Axelrod apologize immediately but also that Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz “publicly rebuke” him. For a pun! For punning against humanity!

The right side of America is mad at President Obama because he hugged the late Derrick Bell, a law professor who believed we live in a racist country, 22 years ago; the left side of America is mad at Rush Limbaugh for seemingly proving him right.

If it weren’t for throwing conniption fits, we wouldn’t get any exercise at all.

I have a better idea. Let’s have an amnesty — from the left and the right — on every made-up, fake, totally insincere, playacted hurt, insult, slight and affront. Let’s make this Sunday the National Day of No Outrage. One day a year when you will not find some tiny thing someone did or said and pretend you can barely continue functioning until they apologize.

If that doesn’t work, what about this: If you see or hear something you don’t like in the media, just go on with your life. Turn the page or flip the dial or pick up your roll of quarters and leave the booth.

The answer to whenever another human being annoys you is not “make them go away forever.” We need to learn to coexist, and it’s actually pretty easy to do. For example, I find Rush Limbaugh obnoxious, but I’ve been able to coexist comfortably with him for 20 years by using this simple method: I never listen to his program. The only time I hear him is when I’m at a stoplight next to a pickup truck.

When the lady at Costco gives you a free sample of its new ham pudding and you don’t like it, you spit it into a napkin and keep shopping. You don’t declare a holy war on ham.

I don’t want to live in a country where no one ever says anything that offends anyone. That’s why we have Canada. That’s not us. If we sand down our rough edges and drain all the color, emotion and spontaneity out of our discourse, we’ll end up with political candidates who never say anything but the safest, blandest, emptiest, most unctuous focus-grouped platitudes and cant. In other words, we’ll get Mitt Romney.
 
People should be held accountable and they should be prepared to defend what they say.

I partially agree with Bill Maher because the mainstream is often times a horrible judge if what is and what is not acceptable to say. I also agree that politics is a place where people are unbelievably hostile to each other over differing opinions. But even when we have bitterly divisive opinions, we can learn from each other when we're forced to defend ourselves.

He's also right to point at that some of these reactions are completely ridiculous. Robert Deniro was mimicking CNN when they were seriously asking 'Is America ready for a black president?'. I'm shocked anyone could see it as a racial jab toward anyone else. Blitzkrieg has frequently been used outside a WWII context and Mitt Romney was obviously not referring to Hitler.

I partially disagree with Bill Maher because there are some people who don't do anyone any good. Do any of us really benefit from giving air time to birthers? Shouldn't we either confront these people or sever ties with them? If no producer ever puts them another television set or radio station, we would all be better for it.

I'm glad we live in a free country. It means someone has the right to express what's on his mind. It also means another person has the right to say when he thinks the first person's full of shit and should go away.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
And we are now in the "blame-the-victim" phase of the Trayvon Martin shooting: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/trayvon-martin-shooting-details-emerge-facebook-twitter-accounts-180103647.html
 
"Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer ... climbed on top of [him] and slammed his head into the sidewalk several times, leaving him bloody and battered."

"That is the account Zimmerman gave police," the paper said, "and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say."

That's an important detail. The other stuff isn't.

Trayvon Martin once put on fake grills to make a gangsta pose on Facebook and had weed in his bag at one point. Therefore he obviously deserved to be shot in the chest.

I don't believe this should have become a national media circus given that not all of the details of the case have come out; It's hard to point to something systematic if you're missing so much information.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Didn't Zimmerman pursue Martin while he was trying to get away? If so, I can understand why Martin would have fought. He was getting harassed by a stranger. Haven't really followed this whole thing but the way it's been portrayed, it looks like Zimmerman was looking for trouble. Trying to be a vigilante? Either way he shot an innocent man.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
Aazealh said:
Didn't Zimmerman pursue Martin while he was trying to get away? If so, I can understand why Martin would have fought. He was getting harassed by a stranger. Haven't really followed this whole thing but the way it's been portrayed, it looks like Zimmerman was looking for trouble. Trying to be a vigilante? Either way he shot an innocent man.

Well some of the 'eye witnesses' are saying Martin was beating Zimmerman senseless (I would too if I felt someone was going to shoot me). That isn't a good enough excuse for what lead up to Zimmerman chasing the kid, fighting him, and then shooting him dead. The guy had no business doing what he did, literally no one was threatened by the Martin walking around. Even if Martin started the fight, Zimmerman instigated the entire thing by being present with a deadly weapon.
 

Lithrael

Remember, always hold your apple tight
Yeah. It's generally against all official/semi-official neighborhood watch rules/guidelines to have a gun with you even if you do have a concealed carry permit. Generally because of the possibility of encouraging stuff like this to happen.

Now, I can respect a gun owner that respects his gun. But this guy seems to be one of those yahoos who is using his gun as a big ol' set of balls, and predictably this does not end well.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Vampire_Hunter_Bob said:
That isn't a good enough excuse for what lead up to Zimmerman chasing the kid, fighting him, and then shooting him dead. The guy had no business doing what he did, literally no one was threatened by the Martin walking around.

My point exactly. I mean if I'm walking down the street and some idiot follows me while aggressively demanding that I tell him what I'm doing, you bet I'd eventually punch him in the face.
 
H

hellrasinbrasin

Guest
The US Military Wants to Hack Foreign Game Consoles, Steal User’s Information

The Department of the Navy is looking very closely at used video game consoles. Only, they don't want to play them. They want to crack them open and steal all the information on overseas users they can get their hands on. To that end, the Department has contracted a company called Obscure Technologies to go overseas, buy a mountain of pre-owned video game consoles and obtain as much "significant and sensitive information from previous users" as it's possible to get.

Why overseas? Because of the nature of the work, they're not allowed to target any "US persons".
Obscure will be given just under USD$200,000 to undertake the work, mostly aimed at developing tools for getting the data and determining just how feasible such a process is. Attempts will then be made to gather the information both from the storage of the console itself, as well as "analyzing network traffic".

The company was awarded the contract because "its lead scientist [has] previously reverse engineered the Microsoft XBOX". To recap, in case you haven't really caught the gist of this yet, if you live outside the USA and have ever traded in a current-gen video game console, you're now at risk - a remote risk, but a risk nonetheless - of having your "significant and sensitive information" obtained by the US military.

Perhaps most interesting/terrifying is that, at the conclusion of the research, some of the software developed for extracting this data will be released as open source and made "freely available".

Source: http://kotaku.com/5896948/the-us-military-wants-to-hack-foreign-game-consoles-to-steal-user-data
 
H

hellrasinbrasin

Guest
New York city schools want to ban 'loaded words' from tests
By Brian Vitagliano, CNN

New York (CNN) – Divorce. Dinosaurs, Birthdays. Religion. Halloween. Christmas. Television. These are a few of the 50-plus words and references the New York City Department of Education is hoping to ban from the city’s standardized tests.

The banned word list was made public – and attracted considerable criticism – when the city’s education department recently released this year’s "request for proposal" The request for proposal is sent to test publishers around the country trying to get the job of revamping math and English tests for the City of New York.

The Department of Education's says that avoiding sensitive words on tests is nothing new, and that New York City is not the only locale to do so. California avoids the use of the word "weed" on tests and Florida avoids the phrases that use "Hurricane" or "Wildfires," according to a statement by the New York City Department of Education.

In its request for proposal, the NYC Department of Education explained it wanted to avoid certain words if the "the topic is controversial among the adult population and might not be acceptable in a state-mandated testing situation; the topic has been overused in standardized tests or textbooks and is thus overly familiar and/or boring to students; the topic appears biased against (or toward) some group of people."

CNN's Belief Blog – all the faith angles to the day's top stories

Matthew Mittenthal, a spokesman for the NYC Department of Education, said this is the fifth year they have created such a list. He said such topics "could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students."

"Dinosaurs" evoking unpleasant emotions? The New York Post speculated that the "dinosaurs" could "call to mind evolution, which might upset fundamentalists.”

But what the tabloid failed to realize is that those "fundamentalists" who oppose evolution on religious grounds, believe wholeheartedly in dinosaurs.
Young Earth creationists, or Biblical creationists as they prefer to be called, often point to dinosaurs in making their arguments. They say dinosaurs and humans roamed Earth together, citing legends of dragons and say the fossil record shows the earth is 6,000 years old, though few paleontologists and geologists share this theory.

At the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, the heart of the Young Earth Creationism movement, dinosaur models and exhibits fill the museum displays and gift shop.

Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter

Apparently many of the words on New York’s list were avoided because of faith-based concerns.

For instance, the use of the word "birthday" or the phrase "birthday celebrations" may offend Jehovah's Witnesses, who do not celebrate birthdays. A spokesperson for the Jehovah's Witnesses declined to comment on the use of the word "birthday."

The Department of Education would not go on the record to explain the specific reasons for each word, which has left many to speculate and draw their own conclusions.

Halloween may suggest paganism; divorce may conjure up uneasy feelings for children in the midst of a divorce within their family. One phrase that may surprise many, the term "Rock 'n' Roll" was on the "avoid" list.

Piers Morgan's "Only in America": 50 banned words
And not good news for Italians: the Department of Education also advised avoiding references to types of food, such as pepperoni, products they said "persons of some religions or cultures may not indulge in."
The Department of Education said, "This is standard language that has been used by test publishers for many years and allows our students to complete practice exams without distraction."

Stanford University Professor Sam Wineburg is an expert in the field of education and director of the Stanford History Education Group.
When reached by phone said Wineburg, after a brief pause on the line, "the purpose of education is to create unpleasant experiences in us. ... The Latin meaning if education is 'to go out.' Education is not about making us feel warm and fuzzy inside."

Wineburg questioned the idea that the New York City Department of Education would want to "shield kids from these types of encounters." He said the goal of education is to "prepare them," adding "this is how we dumb down public schools."

Source: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/28/new-york-city-schools-ban-loaded-words-from-tests/?hpt=hp_c3

... Hmm I wonder how long before books start getting banned.
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
I couldn't bear not posting this story:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/man-attacked-mountain-lion-saved-bear-213015363--abc-news-topstories.html
A northern California man who says he was attacked by a mountain lion while out on a hike has a helpful hand - or claw - to thank for his life.
Robert Biggs, 69, of Paradise, Calif., says he was saved by a helpful bear.
Biggs set out Monday morning for one of his usual hiking and gold-panning trips near Whiskey Flats when he came across a mother bear, yearling, and cub sitting on a stream bank. Biggs said he stopped to watch the bears for a few moments, but, as he turned to leave, something jumped on his back and knocked him to his knees.
"My backpack raises up over my head and a mountain lion latched on to it," Biggs said.
Biggs hit the lion on the head with a rock pick he was carrying when he saw the bear grab the lion by the neck, Biggs said. The two animals struggled on the ground for a few seconds before the lion got free and ran away, he added.
"I think the lion was stalking the bear's cub and I got in the way," Biggs said. "The bear walked calmly back to her cub after, and I wrapped my arm up with a T-shirt and went gold panning before I went home."
Biggs returned home to his shocked wife, Suzanne, who said she tried to convince him to go to the doctor, but has still had no luck.
"I was pretty worried when I saw all of the blood on his clothes, but he's being very stubborn," Suzanne Biggs said. "I thought he should go in case of rabies, but Bob isn't worried."
Biggs has returned to the site of the attack four times this week. The couple has never worried about encountering large animals in the area before.
"I am going to think twice about going down there now," Suzanne Biggs said, "but I'm more cautious than Bob."
Biggs said he has no problem returning to the area, and is recovering.
"I poured some hydrogen peroxide on my arm, and it feels fine," Biggs said. "It's black and blue from the wrist to the elbow and you can still see the puncture wounds, but it feels fine."
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
"It's black and blue from the wrist to the elbow and you can still see the puncture wounds, but it feels fine."

Lol, yeah it's fine man, no problem here!

*2 weeks later*

"Sorry sir, we have to amputate."
 

Vampire_Hunter_Bob

Cats are great
Aazealh said:
Lol, yeah it's fine man, no problem here!

*2 weeks later*

"Sorry sir, we have to amputate."

Ha! :ubik:

Speaking of horrific infections, I had a friend that nearly needed to have her arm amputated because of a bite from a small dog (in a relatively short amount of time as well: 1-2 days [I don't know how infections work, please don't make fun of me]). They saved her arm, but well hopefully this guy turns out alright.
 
Vampire_Hunter_Bob said:
Speaking of horrific infections, I had a friend that nearly needed to have her arm amputated because of a bite from a small dog (in a relatively short amount of time as well: 1-2 days [I don't know how infections work, please don't make fun of me]). They saved her arm, but well hopefully this guy turns out alright.
Yeah, dog bites are very serious, a dog's saliva has a lot of bacteria, if a bite is left untreated it can even lead to death. You should always wash the wound and look for swelling. A bit of googling led me to this article, give it a read !
http://www.oxfordleader.com/Articles-i-2009-06-17-229810.113121-sub-Dog-bite-led-to-amputations.html
 
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