Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - Predatory Lending
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8459 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Bulma probably wasn't thinking clearly after spending so much time around Goku. |
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ultimafullmetal
 Posts: 70 Location: Fredericksburg, Ohio |
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I use libraries as my primary source of entertainment. I get manga, anime, comics/graphic novels, books, Cd's, movies, TV shows etc. Nobody should feel the slightest bit of guilt using libraries.
I encourage everyone to check their library for material. Right now I'm going back and forth between reading School Rumble, Y: The Last Man, Towers of Midnight, Spice and wolf, and watching Case Closed and Doctor Who. I've also seen Millennium actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Perfect Blue because of my library. If you look, you might be surprised what you find. |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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So many bases to cover.
Not unlike some people wearing shirts, getting tattoos, etc of Japanese or Chinese characters without actually knowing what they say because it seems cool, Japanese like English words in that same mode. There's also the alien aspect of it. Toriyama stated when he went to name Vegeta's attacks he reasoned Vegeta would name them in his own language so they should sound alien. To Toriyama, English sounded pretty alien. So they might use English to seem cool, or they may also use it to denote strangeness-something not naturally Japanese. On to DB! 1-DB is Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn at a certain level--pure unadulterated boyhood. Skinnydipping appears in both, doesn't it? 2-However Goku had a strange upbringing. He grew up away from other people only around his Grandfather. IE-no girls. It's pointed out in the story Goku thinks everyone is like him, thus he's horrified Bulma is missing something he has because he's never seen a naked girl & apparently that wasn't one of the things Grandpa went into. Once he learns boys have schlongs & girls don't, he commonly performs a "pat-pat" test which usually elicits a strong reaction. He is amazed Krillin can tell Lunch is a girl just by looking because he hasn't figured it out. It's part of his innocence as is his gullibility. Yes-Bulma not noticing she's drafty down there was a means to a fan service end. She's portrayed as damned intelligent--an inventor of several devices the fighters use. There is nothing wrong with showing DB to 3 yr olds. Sorry. Take an hour or 3 to watch some of the old Looney Tunes from the 30's & 40's. These cartoons were made like DB to appeal to the children, but also the adults who may also be in the audience. Problem is we're getting to be a paranoid lot. Even though we all grew up on Looney Tunes, they're too violent for our children! Think about it, people. I don't know if any of you have watched a show you haven't seen since childhood, but if you have, I'm sure you'll see stuff you didn't notice before. When I was small I loved the Addams Family on tv but as a teen I read some Time & Newsweek articles in the archives that indicated there was a parent group called something like Nafbrat & couldn't believe they deemed Addams Family as harmful for its suggestive humor & double-meaning dialogue. Years later when I was in my 20's I saw Addams Family again & I was shocked the group was right-there were suggestive jokes in Addams Family However when I was 4 & 5, they went over my head. I enjoyed the show for what I understood it to be-a monster family. Your 8 yr old will get what s/he understands in DB. Your child will probably enjoy the body humor way more than you do. There are lots of urine & other such jokes in DB & kids love body jokes |
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Imperial_Commander
 Posts: 44 |
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WOW I guess last week's Flake really traumatized Brian there
Also the local library is where I get almost all of my manga from. In fact it's where I discovered that they have anime books and I've been reading the Moribito series lately. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I don't know. To me, this seems like the most contradictory stance on piracy. If you think it's wrong and so you don't pirate then fine. Alternatively if you think it's okay and so you do, then fine. Both those stances make sense to me. However what makes no sense to me is this attitude where one admits it is wrong and yet does it anyway. If you think that it's not morally right then you shouldn't do it. Doesn't that go without saying? I mean, I understand that nobody's perfect and sometimes people do stuff that they know is wrong (in which case you should feel guilty) but I'd assume that in such a situation the person is at least trying to resist. Yet that doesn't seem to be what you're suggesting here. You seem to be saying: "Go ahead and pirate in some cases if you want, even though it's wrong." Again, that makes no sense to me. |
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Sailor S
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The tryptophan theory has turned out to be false. Tryptophan breaks down when the turkey is cooked to the proper temperature, so unless you're eating a raw bird, the sleepy feeling isn't from tryptophan. The more likely scenario is your body reacting to the carb overload that typically accompanies the turkey.
Anyways, I haven't really had any use for libraries. As a collector, I like to own things, and I certainly don't want something that god knows how many people have been pawing through. Too many people have no respect for things that they haven't paid for. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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I definitely prefer to own stuff too, but I'm also underemployed with limited income, and so I tend to be careful about buying things sight-unseen. Libraries are a great resource to do that while still supporting the industry (libraries buy books) and also ensuring you know what you're getting (as opposed to scanlations, which may bear little relation to the official release). |
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Bored_Ming
 Posts: 242 Location: The Edge of ...... |
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Anime Remix
Posts: 354 |
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EDIT - I found the link about it! 
Last edited by Anime Remix on Sat Nov 20, 2010 1:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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I don't mean to divert the whole thing here (I do want to show there is a totally different point of view), so I intend this to be my only response, if you want to go further please PM me about it.
Yes, because not everyone agrees with the laws. What makes your majority magic? Why is it not ok for me to personally steal but if I join the majority of some group in asking for some farm subsidy or what-not that it's now ok for me to steal?
Were computers made by governments? Was medicine discovered by governments? In some cases perhaps but not in all cases. There is something called the division of labor that is possible through trade and the market. It works much better than the government will ever work towards achieving goals and it doesn't require a monopoly of coercive force and the theft of people's income. Nor does it require any redistributionary policies that favor consumption over production.
Please read about the "Wild West" (it wasn't that wild at all) of mid and late 19th century US. There absolutely have been private solutions to your police, firefighters, roads, etc. Generally they were not needed nearly so much as you would imagine. The reasons for many of the ills of society is in fact due to the perverse incentive structure created by governments. On the matter of fire/police/etc. everyone pays for some kind of insurance in modern society. Insurance companies would probably either pay for those services in accordance with need for them or perhaps run their own internal outfit (for a lot of reasons that would probably be out-sourced).
Well, first, as a voluntarist I don't think society without a monopoly on force is a utopia. There will still be problems because ultimately humans are the source of problems in governments. However, the structure and incentives created by monopoly-mafia-based society are corrupting influences from the outset. Even the best of people do terrible things with power they gain only by being able to threaten force against others. |
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Dessa
 Posts: 4438 |
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I've never had problems with borrowing from the library (let's not mention the time I had almost 40 CLAMP books checked out at once... or a couple weeks ago when I had all of GetBackers), but I'm curious as to how libraries work in Japan (if at all, outside of school libraries).
The reason I ask, is because at least some mangaka do see borrowing manga perhaps not as piracy, but as less-than-desirable. I can't remember what series it was off the top of my head (the most recent stuff I've been reading is GetBackers 1-27, and Shaman King 21-25), but one of the author's notes pages had a comment along the lines of "Thank you for supporting me by buying this book. If you're borrowing this from a friend, shame on you and go buy it for yourself." "From a friend" isn't the same as a library, but, in the end, it comes down to the same thing in the mangaka's eyes: multiple people are getting enjoyment from something only one person bought. I know in the US, many authors love libraries and support them heavily, so how different is it in Japan? |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Note that there is a difference between the question, "are libraries good or bad for the industry" and the question, "do authors consider libraries to be good or bad for the industry". Publishers in the US clearly find libraries to be beneficial. But there are also differences between library borrowing and personal borrowing. One thing is that library borrowing is better at publicizing a work, and another is that if a large number of people borrow a title from a public library, the public library buys additional copies. Also for the US manga market vs the Japanese manga market in particular, manga in Japan is pretty much universally available, more like the Bestsellers in the US that you can find in drug stores and supermarkets as well as in bookstores. Providing library circulation for manga in the US helps ensure that the libraries buy more which increases the exposure of the manga, and that exposure is more critical for a niche market like manga in the US than it is for a mass market like manga in Japan.
So, you disagree with the rule in democratic societies that when a collective decision has to be made, there are some things that are ruled out of bounds, and for other things the representatives selected by majority vote get to decide. Then opt out. Stop using roads, because without the rule of law they can not function. Stop eating any food that is not grown within transport distance of a mule train from where you live, because without the rule of law moving food across continents and oceans is not feasible. Stop using electricity from the grid, natural gas from natural gas pipelines, gasoline diesel or propane from oil refineries, etc. But first and foremost, stop using the internet, because without the rule of law the internet cannot function (cf, electrical grid, above), so using the internet is making use of the rule of law which you are arguing on an internet forum is wrong. Last edited by agila61 on Sat Nov 20, 2010 3:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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To play Devil's Advocate a little, it does not seem implausible that a person may not be motivated by moral facts, even if they consciously believe in them. For such a person, it would be the case that some of their beliefs do not have an effect upon their actions: their actions may be motivated by something aside their moral beliefs, such as desires. Note that this doesn't indicate that this person's set of relevant beliefs is inconsistent, for it only suggests that they are not disposed to act upon them. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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Rule of law doesn't require a monopoly-mafia (ie: government). Roads have been made much longer than governments have been involved in their construction. Electricity was possible before government had it's hand in creating (and then somewhat-deregulating) utility monopolies. It's still got a heavy hand throughout the process which is entirely unnecessary and in many places in the world causes shortages of power (research topic: Venezuela, why does it have power shortages when it produces and exports a lot of oil, it isn't because of private industry screwups but government price controls). Please PM me if you want to discuss this further. |
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vashfanatic
Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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re: The "Wild West," Xanas, if you truly imagine that the late 1800s frontier was better place to live than it is now, please feel free to move back there. I personally prefer the present. Maybe it helps that I'm a woman...
And actually, I think a better image for the world you're imagining is the Gilded Age prior to the income tax, where without government regulation Robber Barons held monopolies making enormous sums of money that when adjusted for inflation far exceed those of any modern billionaire. And they did it by basically exploiting the hell out of workers, giving them as little as possible in wages and benefits. Oh, sure, they "volunteered" their money at the end of their lives, usually to cultural institutions, but it was too little too late. And no, the government didn't "discover" medicine in all cases, but government funding of medical research has been vital to its success, as has government regulation. Back in your glorious Wild West, scam artists created fake medicine consisting mostly of booze and stole hordes of money from innocent people. Thank God for the FDA! Oh, and for OSHA, and for laws against the rampant exploitation of women via prostitution that went on back in the good ol' days. But I suppose people might volunteer to do these things out of the goodness of their hearts. 
You know, every once in a while I think I've heard the silliest thing possible on these forums. The last was the person who imagined a society without copyrights where artists simply created works for free. But you, my dear, have topped it. And I'm not going to IM, because you're clearly convinced of your argument beyond any reason. It's a naive, absurd argument that would undo 90% of the social progress we've seen over the years. |
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