On a side note, one of the stupid rumors circulated by the McCain campaign was that Obama's campaign was being funded by Hugo Chavez. The Republicans got desperate to the point of hilarity in that election.
:tmyk:
Well, while I highly doubt that this is true, Chavez is known for donating money to leaders around the world in order to gain their support. And Chavez definitely wanted Obama to win the election.
In a related note, during the presidential campaign in '06 here, there was a rumor that the FARC (Colombian Guerilla) were funding our now President. I dismissed it as a mere rumor, however a year later a guerilla camp was found near the northern frontier, with the group's second-in-command sleeping there. The Colombian army bombed the camp, and took the guy's computer and several documents that point out the close relation between FARC and the current government were found.
I still have no absolute proof that they were actually funding the campaign, but I firmly believe that there does exist some sort of relation between the two.
It probably wasn't true. THe Republicans (The incumbent party) were incredibly desperate to hold on to the presidency. They circulated false rumors such as this in order to degrade Obama's position. A rumor such as this would implant the thought that Obama would turn America into a communist-socialist nation. For a full list of the stupid rumors about Obama, check this link out. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp#50lies
Next thing you know, when Obama is being sworn in for the presidency, he'll rip off his mask, revealing himself to be Rick Astley all along, and then he'll Rickroll the nation for 4 years.
You say that like it isn't what EVERYONE SECRETLY HOPES.
The new biometric system that fingerprints and photographs all incoming foreigners at airports and seaports prevented 846 undesirables from entering the country over the past year, the Immigration Bureau said Friday.
All were forced to leave Japan immediately, immigration official Aiko Oumi said.
The number accounts for 8.5 percent of about 10,000 foreigners whom immigration officers at airports and seaports expel every year after learning, through questioning and other measures, they had criminal records or were involved in illegal acts.
Despite complaints from foreigners who say mandatory fingerprinting, which resumed in November last year, makes them feel like they are being treated as criminals and violates their human rights, Justice Minister Eisuke Mori praised the system for helping to block illegal entries.
"As we can see, the new monitoring system can stop those with fake passports from entering," Mori said at a news conference. "I think it is very efficient."
The new system was launched on Nov. 20, 2007, after the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law was revised to require all non-Japanese aged 16 and older, including those with permanent resident status, to provide biometric data upon entering the country to help keep terrorists out of Japan.
Incoming foreigners must place their index fingers on a scanner at the immigration booth, where the biometric data are checked against the Justice Ministry's list of international terrorists and foreigners with criminal records.
Of the 846, 748 were ordered to leave Japan and 98, most of whom used fake passports, were expelled from Japan and banned from entering the country for the next five years.
Of the 748, 290 were South Koreans, 137 were Filipinos and 83 were Chinese. The other 98 included 18 Filipinos, 16 Iranians, 10 Sri Lankans and 54 others.
The number of foreigners who entered Japan for the one-year period ending Nov. 19 rose 3.6 percent to 9.37 million from the previous year.
The Immigration Bureau, which is run by the Justice Ministry, also said the system reduced waiting times at airport immigration booths.
The article makes brief mention of the reason for some people's objections. Personally, I never thought this was a bad idea. That's why it's in this thread. I'm actually to see what other people think about it.
It is a gigantic pain in the ass, I'll give them that. When I went to Japan last October for vacation, I got stuck in that fingerprinting line with all the other foreigners. It's very calm, orderly, and Japanese, really. It just takes really damn long. Masumi looked very bored after waiting for me in the terminal for over 90 minutes.
Violation of human rights? Please, that's fucking stupid. There aren't armed guards keeping guns aimed at the lines. No one gets beaten, no one is starved or tortured. You just stand in line for an hour. It sucks, but they're doing it to everyone. Deal with it.
Of course it lowered the time waiting at immigration booths! It made everything after the security checkpoints less crowded, as there was a 20 second interval between people. A family of four creates a little less than a minute and a half gap between people in the area after the checkpoint.
Violation of human rights? Please, that's fucking stupid. There aren't armed guards keeping guns aimed at the lines. No one gets beaten, no one is starved or tortured. You just stand in line for an hour. It sucks, but they're doing it to everyone. Deal with it.
Well, not being discriminated against is a human right, after all.These people are being discriminated because of their personal past and being damaged by it.
Holy shit that's amazing. Too bad I don't like Dr. Pepper
Yeah, um, the Dr. Pepper website malfunctioned during the 24 hours they were giving away the soda coupons. Look up Chinese Democracy on Google. This is probably effed-up, but all the news information is on this thread.
Yeah, I wasn't able to get mine. You had to have an account (who has a Dr. Pepper account? Seriously.) in order to print it out, and whenever the site was actually up it went back down before I could register.
Well, not being discriminated against is a human right, after all.These people are being discriminated because of their personal past and being damaged by it.
But is it really discrimination? They're not treating people like criminals. The system is slow, yes, but there are lots of officials trying to help, and when I went through it there was a lovable Japanese grandma working there who was going through the line and checking everyone's passport and entry cards to make sure people understood how to fill them out correctly.
If they singled out Chinese people because of poor political reasons, yes that would be discrimination. If they took extra precautions against Middle Eastern people, yes that would be discrimination. But in the end they are simply taking everyone's fingerprints, regardless of what nationality you are. (Okay, maybe they're not doing it to Japanese, so it might be a little discriminatory, but one could argue they already have Japanese national's data on file anyway)
The key here is being "damaged" by it. Are we so far up our own asses these days, spoiled by the advances in technology to span half the world in half a freaking day's time, that we actually call waiting in line for an hour a violation of our rights? It's damaging us? I have to disagree, a line has to be drawn somewhere, and it's here.
You have to stand in a well organized line staffed with helpful, well trained employees in a well ventilated, well heated (or air conditioned, depending on the season) hallway to wait for someone at a counter, whom you are allowed to rate their service accordingly, to take your fingerprint and take a digital photo of you. Quick, call the fucking UN.
I wasn't being sarcastic, but I wasn't referring to the standing in line. Standing in line /= human right violation.
It's what you are standing in line for that can be considered discriminating. Basically, they're saying, the whole lot of you have to stand here in a line so that you can prove that you are not criminals. And then, if you do have a personal record, you are being effectively discriminated against by not being let into the country. This, when you have already served your sentence and (at least theoretically) become a reformed member of society.
If they didn't disclose that information ahead of time, then they are a criminal again. They have committed fraud. They are only being turned away if they are currently a criminal. If the law says no one with a criminal record may enter and you try to sneak in, you did something wrong. This new system is just a more thorough check for the same criminals.
I'd need to see what constitutes being an "undesirable" before I have an opinion on it. This:
The number accounts for 8.5 percent of about 10,000 foreigners whom immigration officers at airports and seaports expel every year after learning, through questioning and other measures, they had criminal records or were involved in illegal acts.
makes it sound like they were just kicking out people with criminal records, and I do disagree with that, but it may be more complex than that.
Happy New Year! 2009 is here! If anybody has any pictures or resolutions, they'd like to share, throw em up! I believe we got some members who already are a year ahead! Describe to us how you celebrated.
LONDON — The advertisement on the bus was fairly mild, just a passage from the Bible and the address of a Christian Web site. But when Ariane Sherine, a comedy writer, looked on the Web site in June, she was startled to learn that she and her nonbelieving friends were headed straight to hell, to “spend all eternity in torment.”
That’s a bit extreme, she thought, as well as hard to prove. “If I wanted to run a bus ad saying ‘Beware — there is a giant lion from London Zoo on the loose!’ or ‘The “bits” in orange juice aren’t orange but plastic — don’t drink them or you’ll die!’ I think I might be asked to show my working and back up my claims,” Ms. Sherine wrote in a commentary on the Web site of The Guardian.
And then she thought, how about putting some atheist messages on the bus, as a corrective to the religious ones?
And so were planted the seeds of the Atheist Bus Campaign, an effort to disseminate a godless message to the greater public. When the organizers announced the effort in October, they said they hoped to raise a modest $8,000 or so.
But something seized people’s imagination. Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and last Wednesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.
“There’s probably no God,” the advertisements say. “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
Spotting one of the buses on display at a news conference in Kensington, passers-by were struck by the unusual message.
Not always positively. “I think it’s dreadful,” said Sandra Lafaire, 76, a tourist from Los Angeles, who said she believed in God and still enjoyed her life, thank you very much. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don’t like it in my face.”
But Sarah Hall, 28, a visitor from Australia, said she was happy to see such a robust example of freedom of speech. “Whatever floats your boat,” she said.
Inspired by the London campaign, the American Humanist Association started running bus advertisements in Washington in November, with a more muted message. “Why believe in a god?” the ads read, over a picture of a man in a Santa suit. “Just be good for goodness’ sake.”
Although Australian atheists were refused permission to place advertisements on buses saying, “Atheism: Sleep in on Sunday mornings,” the British effort has been striking in the lack of outrage it has generated. The Methodist Church, for instance, said it welcomed the campaign as a way to get people to talk about God.
Although Queen Elizabeth is the head of the Church of England, Britain is a deeply secular country with a dwindling number of regular churchgoers, and with politicians who seem to go out of their way to play down their religious beliefs.
In 2003, when an interviewer asked Tony Blair, then the prime minister, about religion, his spokesman, Alastair Campbell, interjected, snapping, “We don’t do God.” After leaving office, Mr. Blair became a Roman Catholic.
More recently, Nick Clegg, a member of Parliament and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, announced that he was an atheist. (He later downgraded himself to agnostic.)
David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, alluded to a popular radio station when he joked that his religious belief was like “the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes.”
Still, since Sept. 11, 2001, religion has played an ever more important role in public discussions, said Mr. Dawkins, the best-selling author of “The God Delusion,” with the government increasingly seeking religious viewpoints and Anglican bishops still having the automatic right to sit in the House of Lords.
“Across Britain, we are used to being bombarded by religious interests,” he said, “not just Christians, but other religions as well, who seem to think that they have got a God-given right to propagandize.”
Next week, the Atheist Bus Campaign plans to place 1,000 advertisements in the subway system, featuring enthusiastic quotations from Emily Dickinson, Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn.
An interesting element of the bus slogan is the word “probably,” which would seem to be more suited to an Agnostic Bus Campaign than to an atheist one. Mr. Dawkins, for one, argued that the word should not be there at all.
But the element of doubt was necessary to meet British advertising guidelines, said Tim Bleakley, managing director for sales and marketing at CBS Outdoor in London, which handles advertising for the bus system.
For religious people, advertisements saying there is no God “would have been misleading,” Mr. Bleakley said.
“So as not to fall foul of the code, you have to acknowledge that there is a gray area,” he said.
He said that potential ads were rejected all the time. “We wouldn’t, for example, run an ad for an action movie where the gun was pointing toward the commuter,” he said.
But Mr. Bleakley said he had no problem with the atheist bus ads. “We do have religious organizations that promote themselves,” he said. “If somebody doesn’t believe in religion, why wouldn’t we carry an ad that promotes the opposite view? To coin a phrase, it’s not for us to play God.”
Not always positively. “I think it’s dreadful,” said Sandra Lafaire, 76, a tourist from Los Angeles, who said she believed in God and still enjoyed her life, thank you very much. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don’t like it in my face.”
Haha, awesome. I think if I saw an advertisement like that, I would have to do a double-take, and then I would laugh at the audacity of the advertisement being placed out into the public. Glad to hear the advertising agencies will accept something that goes against religion! Maybe it'll help stop the crazy religious folks to stop preaching so loud. That, or it will just make them preach louder... ah well. Nice to see that advertising companies are at least giving it a try I always enjoy seeing open-minds.
Justin Timberlake is honored with GQ’s Most Stylish Man Award in the mag’s March 2009 issue.
The 28-year-old triple threat dishes fashion advice to GQ and talked about who is his style icon was. He shared, “Kate Moss. She looks good in anything. She would look good in one of your T-shirts, in her T-shirt, in a man’s suit, in a huge gown. She looks amazing naked. She even makes nude look stylish. That, to me, is a style icon. She could put a barrel on and it would be some sort of statement.”
The article ends by saying that Justin always hits the right notes in fashion: “The
guy is the King of Pop—he can wear whatever the hell he wants.”
Check out the other honorees at GQ.com, which includes Mark Ronson, Kanye West, T.I., Jason Schwartzman and Andre Balazs (Uma Thurman’s ex).
Global sales of the Nintendo DS hand-held topped 100 million in four years and three months — a milestone reached at the quickest pace for any video game console — the manufacturer said Thursday.
News photo
Milestone: A model shows a Nintendo DS Lite during a news conference in Tokyo in 2006. AP PHOTO
Worldwide sales of the DS, which hit stores in November 2004, topped 100 million on March 6, Kyoto-based Nintendo Co. said.
The number combines sales for the original DS, the improved DS Lite, and the third-generation Nintendo DSi, already on sale in Japan and planned for overseas markets next month.
"We are hoping to be accepted and loved by everyone by delivering novel entertainment and surprises so that there will be not only a Nintendo for every household but a Nintendo for every person," said the company, which also makes the Wii home console.
Nintendo said it took 11 years and two months for the GameBoy, the predecessor to the DS, to reach 100 million in global sales.
The Game Boy series was introduced in 1989 and reached global cumulative sales of 118 million. The Game Boy Advance, which followed, sold another 81 million, according to Nintendo.
The other big name in portable gaming, the PlayStation Portable from Sony Corp., has also sold relatively briskly, but nowhere close to the DS numbers.
Sony Computer Entertainment, the company's gaming unit, said the PSP's cumulative global sales totaled 50 million as of February. The PSP first went on sale in 2004.
Compared with Sony, which has long appealed to hard-core gamers, Nintendo has scored a hit with easier games that appeal to newcomers, including the elderly and women, such as physical fitness and music-making games.
The DS comes with a touch panel, making it possible to play some games without dealing with complex button-pushing.
Yeah they sold so many because they break really fast but they're cheap. I'm on my 3rd one now and my L button's already shot, and I refuse to deal with Nintendo's lethargic customer service anymore.
Comments
He would be the first Rock'n/American president.
Well, while I highly doubt that this is true, Chavez is known for donating money to leaders around the world in order to gain their support. And Chavez definitely wanted Obama to win the election.
In a related note, during the presidential campaign in '06 here, there was a rumor that the FARC (Colombian Guerilla) were funding our now President. I dismissed it as a mere rumor, however a year later a guerilla camp was found near the northern frontier, with the group's second-in-command sleeping there. The Colombian army bombed the camp, and took the guy's computer and several documents that point out the close relation between FARC and the current government were found.
I still have no absolute proof that they were actually funding the campaign, but I firmly believe that there does exist some sort of relation between the two.
You say that like it isn't what EVERYONE SECRETLY HOPES.
The article makes brief mention of the reason for some people's objections. Personally, I never thought this was a bad idea. That's why it's in this thread. I'm actually to see what other people think about it.
Violation of human rights? Please, that's fucking stupid. There aren't armed guards keeping guns aimed at the lines. No one gets beaten, no one is starved or tortured. You just stand in line for an hour. It sucks, but they're doing it to everyone. Deal with it.
Of course it lowered the time waiting at immigration booths! It made everything after the security checkpoints less crowded, as there was a 20 second interval between people. A family of four creates a little less than a minute and a half gap between people in the area after the checkpoint.
Well, not being discriminated against is a human right, after all.These people are being discriminated because of their personal past and being damaged by it.
Yeah, um, the Dr. Pepper website malfunctioned during the 24 hours they were giving away the soda coupons. Look up Chinese Democracy on Google. This is probably effed-up, but all the news information is on this thread.
But is it really discrimination? They're not treating people like criminals. The system is slow, yes, but there are lots of officials trying to help, and when I went through it there was a lovable Japanese grandma working there who was going through the line and checking everyone's passport and entry cards to make sure people understood how to fill them out correctly.
If they singled out Chinese people because of poor political reasons, yes that would be discrimination. If they took extra precautions against Middle Eastern people, yes that would be discrimination. But in the end they are simply taking everyone's fingerprints, regardless of what nationality you are. (Okay, maybe they're not doing it to Japanese, so it might be a little discriminatory, but one could argue they already have Japanese national's data on file anyway)
The key here is being "damaged" by it. Are we so far up our own asses these days, spoiled by the advances in technology to span half the world in half a freaking day's time, that we actually call waiting in line for an hour a violation of our rights? It's damaging us? I have to disagree, a line has to be drawn somewhere, and it's here.
You have to stand in a well organized line staffed with helpful, well trained employees in a well ventilated, well heated (or air conditioned, depending on the season) hallway to wait for someone at a counter, whom you are allowed to rate their service accordingly, to take your fingerprint and take a digital photo of you. Quick, call the fucking UN.
It's what you are standing in line for that can be considered discriminating. Basically, they're saying, the whole lot of you have to stand here in a line so that you can prove that you are not criminals. And then, if you do have a personal record, you are being effectively discriminated against by not being let into the country. This, when you have already served your sentence and (at least theoretically) become a reformed member of society.
makes it sound like they were just kicking out people with criminal records, and I do disagree with that, but it may be more complex than that.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/31/new.year.videos/index.html?iref=24hours
Happy New Year! 2009 is here! If anybody has any pictures or resolutions, they'd like to share, throw em up! I believe we got some members who already are a year ahead! Describe to us how you celebrated.
There's the human right violation.
Justin Timberlake is Most Stylish Man
That last line made me laugh.