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Hey, Answerman! [2010-01-15]


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SalarymanJoe



Joined: 03 Feb 2005
Posts: 468
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 12:42 pm Reply with quote
Am I noticing a shortening of Answerman questions? I can't complain too much because I thought these questions were actually really good. It'd be nice if every week could be like this. In no particular order:

@Miller Test:
Brian Hanson wrote:
As you might suspect, it's kind of hard to legally enforce something so vague and all-inclusive. Especially when, in the age of the internet, "Community Standards" are impossible to define in a globally wired society.


Brian, I think you're missing the point. The reason why the law is written so vaguely is to permit evidence and charges to be treated on a case by case basis and to not have stipulations involving a legislative review of the law within a defined period of time because "community standards" do not change within defined measurements. And, in all honesty, I think that is exactly how any law dealing with subjective material should be defined. I think it would be nice to note, while I don't have a statistical figure on it, most things put up against the test fail to meet all of the criteria thus, there is a rarity that something is considered legally obscene.

CCSYueh wrote:
THe Protect Act thing is horrifying. I hoped with the last Administration leaving we'd see some return to sanity, but it hasn't happened.


It's pretty much a reactionary measure. Parents are terrified for children because mass media has turned sensationalist regarding anything with a child abduction or teachers having sex with students. Children are abused by an educational system that doesn't teach people to exercise skills like critical thinking. Overall, society's obsession with youth. Politicians are looking for an easy-in for re-election. The thing is, it's not a loss of sanity over the past nine years, its an erosion of sanity over the past seventy or eighty.

Fortunately, the Miller Test is a SCotUS precedent and as I noted above, is vague enough that if something does not meet it for obscenity but might violate the PROTECT Act, it is possible for an appeal to overturn the law or, at least, send it back to the legislature that wrote it.

The E-mail wrote:
I took a Legislation in the Media course last semester, which, as a side note, I'd like to recommend to anyone. Taking at least a basic law course, while hard, is a decent way of learning how to avoid several annoying headaches in life. Remember what G.I. Joe always said!


I agree wholeheartedly. I had to do a business law class at University and while it dealt mostly with business issues (civil law), it had a solid foundation of what constituted civil and criminal cases and how court systems worked. Much better than that criminal justice elective. Wish we would have had an upper level elective dealing with legal and auditing issues within technology but we did that a bit of that sprinkled in with some of our core upper levels.

@Conventions:
As a matter of full disclosure, I would like to note that as a director for a new anime convention and a panelist and attendee for others over the years, I am speaking from my experiences to form a purely personal opinion and response. This does not, nor is not, the opinion of any convention with which I am associated.

Now, I don't know the full working relationship behind SPJA and Anime Expo nor, am I up on all of the news about it; however, there is one thing to be asked: Is there a for-profit venture involved in running Anime Expo? If so, then any "complaint" concerning attendance drops are valid concerns from a board to management. It is, pure and simple, a loss of revenue.

The E-mail wrote:
In my view...these fans who've been running these things since the 90's think that the sky is the limit, and that the same half-dozen cons will always keep expanding...ALWAYS.


I honestly think it is a case of "too famous, too fast", like when we hear about child stars and their eventual drug abuse. I don't think that the folks who started Anime Expo in the mid-90s expected it to get anywhere near as large as it did. They were probably most concerned about not losing their shirts. The rise of Japanese animation fandom between 1994 and 2004 started slow and progressive and then hit a meteoric rise. Conventions have gone from having a very meager, if any, industry backing, to in Anime Expo's case, a full-blown trade show with concerts by popular and successful big name acts. Now that things are contracting all over, there might be staff and management who have only been around during the boom and do not know how to cope with the bust.

The E-mail wrote:
I think it's just a mentality ingrained into these people that "the big convention is Anime Expo/Otakon/Fanime" etc. 10 years ago, EVERYONE on the east coast went to Otakon, it was *the* East Coast convention. Now...why would I go there? Much less, Anime Expo? I live in the northeastern USA, and everyone I know can now travel to CLOSER conventions like in Boston or New York. If a "convention" is just a "gathering of fans"...why not just run our panels closer to home? Have our costume contest closer to home?


Yes, but the problem of this trifecta of "big conventions" that you mentioned is that while anime conventions have grown in quantity in the past decade, those individual conventions grew exponentially as well because of a larger financial base to operate from, they had guests which would attract people from far and away. There have been a few guests at Otakon or Anime Expo I would have like to have seen and probably will not at any of my local conventions; however, due to other obligations, I was not able to. Meeting someone live, providing the criteria of a free schedule and financial means to do so, is enough to get people to travel cross country for a convention. While Brian is very right that social interaction plays a huge part in conventions, guest lists really tend to be a big thing that draws people in.

Yuki_Kun45 wrote:
If anime companies are going to pour money into 3D then they really better be damn good. Avatar I was so disappointed with on it's 3D Level. (The rest of the film was fine). Really are people really impressed by small subtle 3D Graphics? If I'm going to shell out any extra cash for admission I'd better be engulfed by 3D flames or something.


See, I'm pretty much the opposite - I saw the film not just in 3-D but also in IMAX and I thought the touches were nice and the film, from a technology standpoint, was fantastic. It was everything at its core - writing, pacing, semi-predictable plot, acting - that made the film terrible producing an overall mediocre product. Without all of the technology hyping the film, it would have been much, much more horrible. Plus, we would have missed out on the greatest irony of all - all of that technology and money used to make a film that was
itself anti-technology and anti-corporatism.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 1:50 pm Reply with quote
Don'y know about all of you, but my local library carries its light novels outside of the comic book/graphic novel sections. Haruhi and Twelve Kingdoms are in teen fiction, Guin Saga is in adult fantasy/sci-fi. And for literary merit, the Twelve Kingdoms series are fantastic books for teens/young adults.

And yes - bring on Baccano! please! I hate reading it online, it's annoying.
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DJStarstryker



Joined: 16 Jan 2010
Posts: 140
PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 5:07 pm Reply with quote
About overcrowding versus Anime Expo and Otakon:

I've been to both. I've been to Anime Expo twice and Otakon about 7 times. I went to BOTH last year (yes, I'm crazy). While Anime Expo technically has a bit more people than Otakon, Otakon I'd call overcrowded while I wouldn't say the same about Anime Expo.

The issue is the Baltimore Convention Center. It's not too small for Otakon, the BCC was just not really designed for Otakon. Or maybe Otakon doesn't use it properly. The heavily trafficked areas are the surrounded by too many non-showered otaku, feel like you're going to die moments where the A/C can't keep up and the cosplayers with the picture takers put huge issues into already clogged hallways. But then there's other parts of the convention center that are cold and quiet from hardly anyone going there. Oh, and Otakon seems to like making their long lines go through these areas, so line cutting ends up a huge issue.

Anime Expo, on the other hand, doesn't have any of those problems. They use the LA Convention Center better, line cutting problems feel practically non-existent, and it's overall a much better experience.
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Weazul-chan



Joined: 10 May 2005
Posts: 625
Location: Michigan
PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 5:52 pm Reply with quote
nice to know I'm not the only one who has had a bad experience with food drops. I never even thought of trying the ramen drops, but I ordered takoyaki, ika-meshi, okonomiyaki, Goya champloo, and yakisoba drops. all of which I loved... except for the yakisoba drops. it tasted like good yakisoba, but my mind kept screaming at me "candy shouldn't taste like this!" and I had a terrible time even finishing one. seriously, I'd rather drink a 6 pack of octopus ramune than get that again. I could actually see octopus ramune (which I tried at a convention last year) becoming an acquired taste, but I can't see myself getting use to yakisoba drops.
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teh*darkness



Joined: 16 Feb 2007
Posts: 901
PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 6:31 pm Reply with quote
Meh, short answer to the new question, since I don't feel like writing an essay. 3D anime? Only in theatres. I won't say I find 3D gimmicky, as I do enjoy it, but only for movies. There's no way I would start watching all television shows with 3D glasses on. I already wear glasses. That would get uncomfortable after a while. And it would also lose its uniqueness. If they want to make the occasional movie in 3D, like is happening with Hollywood, that would be one thing. But if I were ever to encounter something like Ladies vs Butlers in 3D, I'd probably run screaming in the opposite direction.
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CCSYueh



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 2707
Location: San Diego, CA
PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 6:53 pm Reply with quote
SalarymanJoe wrote:
It's pretty much a reactionary measure. Parents are terrified for children because mass media has turned sensationalist regarding anything with a child abduction or teachers having sex with students.

It's more laziness. Like the record ratings in the 80's when Al Gore asked if it was reasonable to expect parents (implication-busy, working parents with lots of things to do) to listen to every record their child had & Dee Snyder replied "Being a parent isn't a reasonable thing". (Wholeheartedly agree. I became a parent a few yrs after that & that line got me thru so much such as meltdowns in public places where I reminded myself the eyes of all the adults meant nothing-dealing with a tired/cranky/hungry child was what mattered)
I'd listen to parent chapparones talk about totally unimportant stuff when my child was 4-8 on field trips about how awful goth kids were, etc. when it's not the goth kids they needed to worry about. I worked in Juvenile Justice at the time & I saw very few goth/blue/green/etc colored hair. The vast majority of kids in trouble looked absolutley normal.

SalarymanJoe wrote:
Children are abused by an educational system that doesn't teach people to exercise skills like critical thinking.

Isn't that the parent's job? I really can't see schools doing more than refining the skills a child has learned at home.
It was funny to laugh at it in Better Off Dead (wasn't it?) when the kid says he knows about sex from school & the dad's glad his tax dollars were at work.
One can't leave everything up to schools. If you want to teach your child creationis,, that's your place, not the school's. Morals are the job of parents to teach, not school.
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Odross



Joined: 02 Jan 2008
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 7:23 pm Reply with quote
GATSU wrote:
While the ero-doujin issue remains unresolved, there's currently an interesting case about whether or not underage teen "sexting" is a form of child porn. If the "sexters" lose the case, I'm wondering if the decision would be used to prosecute the doujin online, too.


i just cant believe it! im from middle europe and all my youth i thought that the us is land of freedom. but last few years made me think otherwise.

i mean girls take picture of themselves and they are charged? thats just insane Smile and after hearing that there are laws in some states about what you can and cant do in sex im just glad i live in the old continent.

im just afraid, that us will force their protect act all the way here. man, even japan had to stop making simple raping games because of the us...
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PlatinumHawke



Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Posts: 204
PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 10:35 pm Reply with quote
Odross wrote:
i just can't believe it! im from middle europe and all my youth i thought that the us is land of freedom. but last few years made me think otherwise.


Tangently related to the topic of discussion...
If you ever get the chance, watch a documentary about the film rating board, "This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated." It's amusing -- and in some cases, pretty sad -- about the differences between European and American perceptions of sexuality and violence in media.

I know someone on /a/, who was from Germany, mentioned that police looked through a pile of doujinshi at some event and basically shrugged their shoulders; "It's not real," and left it at that. I really don't get why you can have an endless flood of violent anything -- video games, movies, etc etc -- but show a bit of nudity? God help your unclean soul. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

And I don't get the argument that any kind of drawn porn could be based off actual child porn. I doubt that's something you can conclusively prove. Plus, if you're making charges for one form of thought crime, then why not go around making charges for all the genocidal maniacs playing Grand Theft Auto?

Don't get me started on banning things because they "lead" to sexual assaults/murder/vice-of-the-month, because that offends me in more ways than I'd care to list.

Also, charging minors with distributing child porn of themselves to other minors strikes me a rather obtuse and rediculous law. Teenagers do dumb things, and young couples almost always send naughty pics back and forth.
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wOrLdIsMiNe



Joined: 04 Oct 2009
Posts: 7
PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:49 am Reply with quote
I find umeboshi to be delicious xDDD (and I'm white)
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 7:09 am Reply with quote
Funny that Germany would get mentioned, as Germany's policy on media is the opposite of the United States': All the sexual content in the world is okay, but if you have even so much as a drop of blood, the parents will go into an outrage. A lot of video games that have blood everywhere else need to get changed outright to remove any blood, or at least replace the blood with something else.

I'm really at a loss for a completely satisfactory reason as to why the moral guardians of the USA are so caught up in sexual content. I can think of parents wanting to make sure their children learn what they want them to learn, but that contradicts the school dominating American childhood. I can think of it being a vestige of Puritanism, which was most definitely not a pacifist sect but considered sex for pleasure as a major sin, and while America has a lot of vocal religious people, Puritanism died out long ago. I can think of the news constantly talking about rapes, attempted rapes, and how the youth are always acting so base, but that's just the dim view on sex perpetuating itself--an effect, not a cause.

The best reason I can think of is that culture in the United States tries to make as sharp a line between "child" and "adult" as possible. Sex is an adult thing, physically speaking, and parents may feel uncomfortable that their children are being entertained by something that's supposed to be strictly in the domain of adults. Mild violence is a different matter as inflicting harm is considered wrong in both children AND adults, and it wouldn't feel like an intrusion into another social group.

The reverse of this reason would explain the Animation Age Ghetto and why it only seems to appear in North America: An adult watching cartoons is seen with similar scorn. This is because cartoons are considered in the realm of children, and adults are supposed to dissociate from anything perceived as for kids. It's just not as much of an uproar as adults are seen as a guide for children. It's one thing for an adult to get entertained by kids' stuff, but for kids to be entertained by adults' stuff causes adults to feel like their role of mentorship and guidance is eroding.

Wow, it looks like I DID come up with an explanation I was satisfied with.

(I want to see This Film Is Not Yet Rated, though I thought that dealt with corruption within the MPAA.)
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SalarymanJoe



Joined: 03 Feb 2005
Posts: 468
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 9:59 am Reply with quote
CCSYueh wrote:

It's more laziness. Like the record ratings in the 80's when Al Gore asked if it was reasonable to expect parents (implication-busy, working parents with lots of things to do) to listen to every record their child had & Dee Snyder replied "Being a parent isn't a reasonable thing". (Wholeheartedly agree. I became a parent a few yrs after that & that line got me thru so much such as meltdowns in public places where I reminded myself the eyes of all the adults meant nothing-dealing with a tired/cranky/hungry child was what mattered)
I'd listen to parent chapparones talk about totally unimportant stuff when my child was 4-8 on field trips about how awful goth kids were, etc. when it's not the goth kids they needed to worry about. I worked in Juvenile Justice at the time & I saw very few goth/blue/green/etc colored hair. The vast majority of kids in trouble looked absolutley normal.

Isn't that the parent's job? I really can't see schools doing more than refining the skills a child has learned at home.
It was funny to laugh at it in Better Off Dead (wasn't it?) when the kid says he knows about sex from school & the dad's glad his tax dollars were at work.
One can't leave everything up to schools. If you want to teach your child creationis,, that's your place, not the school's. Morals are the job of parents to teach, not school.


I could agree that parental laziness has a root cause for it but I was merely attempting to illustrate that the implementation of legislation and a lot of this wild hysteria isn't simply related to an unpopular presidency and the failure of his successor. And yes, I agree with your finer points, too.

Completely off topic and forgot to mention in my first post - I think the reason I find natto so disgusting is that it seems to have the consistency of snot.
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Kyogissun



Joined: 17 Aug 2007
Posts: 676
PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 11:22 am Reply with quote
Eh, I don't see a point to the 3-D movies yet...

And concerning the convention crowding things, I too can confirm that my experience with Otakon was a very good one. Nobody was crowding, rarely did I have any problems navigating the place and it didn't smell god awful (except for the few idiots who chose purposely not to shower) so they are good social experiences and... they seem to have reached their limits.

Quick comment on the ADV/Section 23 visiting smaller cons thing though, they've been doing that for years, that's nothing new. They've frequently attended Tekkoshocon.

Back on the first question, to add to that whole comment about lines, I tend to think it's a little more than that though. That's maybe where the crowding thing comes in. While it's true that they can't turn the guests into omnipotent beings who can teleport from place to place, conventions suck up huge guests like these and end up causing a cloging. Essentially, if you aren't at the lines within the 5-15 minute window of advanced arrival for lines for a panel, autograph session, etc, you're screwed and will have no chance at getting in.

But it doesn't help that on top of that, **** happens. Concerning the Crispin Freeman autograph times at Otakon 09, they opened the doors earlier than the listed time, so people who came expecting to get in within the listed time frame were screwed over by a poor staff decision and fans taking advantage of that situation. Those fans who were aiming for that time and missed out, ended up waiting a good 5 more hours before finally getting in.

It's fine that these conventions have the massive crowds they do, but I do think maybe something that could be handy at these bigger conventions is maybe some better handling of these situations where the number of guests admitted is limited. A sign up list is not a good idea, nor is something online, but a system where say, attending a panel for a guest and grabbing a pass or token of some form for admittance to the autograph session is something these things need.

But that's just a personal rant about a minor problem with those conventions. On the topic of the cons reaching their limits, well it basically was already said. I think that with these events, there need to be realistic numbers and limits put on there. I don't see a major shift going on...

And to add, people still go to those conventions for the very reasons you said that they wouldn't want to. I love the trip there, I love waiting for an hour or two at pre-reg, I love the massiveness in comparison to the 1/4th or 1/5th the size conventions... The big ones are an experience that, to me, kind of can't compare to the smaller conventions.

Shouldn't have rambled/repeated so much there... In retrospect.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:18 pm Reply with quote
Odross wrote:
im just afraid, that us will force their protect act all the way here.

A causal link between American obscenity laws and those of one's own country needn't be the only means by which one ends up having the same restrictions imposed upon local doujinishi fans.
The summary of the relevant section of the PROTECT act, as provided by the original article correspondent, is notably similar to a separate bill recently introduced to my country's legislation (Coroners and Justice Bill 2008-09, Chapter 2). I believe something similar exists in Australia and also New Zealand.
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Odross



Joined: 02 Jan 2008
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 1:00 pm Reply with quote
damn, so its happening right now...
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 6:28 pm Reply with quote
PlatinumHawke wrote:
I really don't get why you can have an endless flood of violent anything -- video games, movies, etc etc -- but show a bit of nudity? God help your unclean soul. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Actually, why should it be the other way around? Why is violence somehow innately less child-appropriate than nudity? Who gets to decide these standards? Aren't they culturally defined and not necessarily absolute?

While I personally feel that many of my fellow Americans need to get over their shock at a little non-sexual nudity, I also get incredibly tired of the self-righteous attitudes of other nations against us for simply considering different things to be appropriate or inappropriate. Show a little cultural tolerances towards Americans and their different standards. We all seem able to muster it towards the Japanese, why can't we do it for people we might consider prudes or puritans?

And remember that Americans disagree on what ought to be appropriate or not - there are more than 300 million of us, after all. Our systems may be flawed, and probably only representative of the most vocal among us and not the majority, but they mean well, even if they sometimes misapply those good intentions (with which the road to hell is paved, after all). Cut us a little slack and stop looking down your noses at us for not being just like you.
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