Right now there are serious problems between China and Japan, some of the highest tension in years.  Given the domestic problems in each country, war looks like a great political maneuver--especially for China.  As you guys may know, war is the perfect political tool to unify an otherwise internally conflicted country.  And given economic woes and other impending problems, the same goes for Japan.

There has recently been a lot of violence in China against Japanese living in China, as well as vandalism and destruction of Japanese cars.  Chinese friend of mine, his parents have hidden their Japanese cars in their garages--they won't drive them--because if they do, they risk being mugged and their cars destroyed.  My friend told me that he hated the Japanese before he came to the US and met Japanese people for the first time--and that they were frequently taught in China a lot of bad things about the Japanese.

So here are a couple of articles that are relevant, first a recent news article, second an article about Japanese history textbooks.

First article, about the rising tensions and the arms race currently going on between China and Japan:

http://rt.com/news/japan-china-drone-race-649/

Second, there's this widespread notion that Japanese textbooks are somehow biased, nationalistic, they deny war crimes, etc.  But, a study done at Stanford actually debunked what is basically a myth based on a selective reading of marginal, revisionist textbooks that were written in response to mainstream textbooks used in most schools--which, from a comparative point of view, are actually much tamer than the textbooks of most other world powers.  Article looks like it was written by a Jew and a Korean, so if anything, authorial bias should be against Japan:

http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00703/

can u restore delete function pls, editing all of these obnoxious old posts of mine with x's is extremely tedious

as im editing them anyway, i figure it makes no difference whether theres a post there or not

because, right after i ahve a post, about 5 people respond with "ur insane" or "take ur medication" etc

so everyone knows there was a synth post there either way, so in the name of history its functionally equivalent

because it makes no difference, id like to have the delete function

（　ﾟ Дﾟ）

in this thread u r free to ask any questions u like, about my social lidfe or philsosphical syshtem.  i reserve the right to respond ironically or completely untruthfully

u may also troll big synth, denouncing his apparent tendency to objectify women while u collect internet porn and pretend that u have a deep connection with ur girl since u give her things everytime she is upset

i will begin with a moment of self-disclosure.  i believe i have a deepr and closer relationship w my gf than most... she is something of a muse to me, inspiring me and teaching me from her herat, what i can only call as something of a book of life.  however i must admit when she behaves dog-like, i must treat her correspodingly.  what is the alternative.... nooo shes reading this welp i must end this thread as i slap her in the face

i will soon begin putting up my first youtube posts if thist hread is sufficiently popular, in any case i will post my first youtube vidoes in my book thread if not

bye and see u soon

well do they?

tonight i was talking about my gifrleidn with my mom on the phone and my girlfriend basiclsly glared at me later and said she heard everything

i looked shocked and embarrassed since i had said way too many nice things, like extremely nice things, about my girlfriend and didnt want her to know ;o

then she starts accusing me of talking shit about her to my mom lol

im like what the fuck, did i say anything bad?  and my girlfriend is claiming i did

then i figure out shes bluffing and tell her a few things about the conversation, then she goes into attack mode again

at that point i just stand up and explain to her to calm down, that im leaving, and definitely dont text me, just calm the fuck down and call me tomorrow



i honestly feel like this shit happens way too much, sometimes the smallest thing will trigger her, shes honestly not smart enough to be a crazy neurotic so i just assume this is what girls are like?

honestly just being honest sometimes isnt worth anything, sometimes you just have to keep your cool and talk to them and just walk away

im getting to the point where i honestly dont give a fuck if she leaves or stays anymore, i can only imagine that that was her goal all along

and you know how this turns out, when i stop giving a fuck, shes going to make a huge deal out of that too and act like she cares so much

is the goal of women just to constantly do the opposite thing that you want, so that youre eventually cowed into following her around?  well ladies u cant do that to big synth, u can try all ur life but its impossible

vlaara ive said it once and ill say it again, why thefuck are you such a hotdog about domestic violence, u dont think women ever deserve it, i mean my god, i wouldnt ever hit my girlfriend because i was raised by set of nice (passive aggressive) parents, but my god the idea of domestic violence sometimes seems utopian to me, kind of like communism, yes we know it doesnt work in practice, but in theory lets talk about the theory

the most poetic nigga ever to exist, id easily put him over biggie and pac

Scarface - Hand Of The Dead Body

Scarface - The Wall

Scarface - Diary Of A Madman

Considering bringing yellow people the great gift of English-speaking civilization.

Wondering if anyone has taken an online TEFL/TESL course?

Thanks.

I will be posting here what are in my view the best reviews and analyses of various movies.  I will start with Pulp Fiction and the Dark Knight.

Pulp Fiction
http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=178_0_2_0_M

I consider this basically the canonical interpretation of the film.  One exception is calling the watch meaningless.  It is not.  The watch is the physical object that connects Butch to his history and tradition, and therefore the physical representation of his moral groundedness.

A brilliant discussion of the gold watch story can be found here:
http://www.pulpfiction.com/news-the-gold-watch-story.html

I will only add, in addition to what was said in the first article, this:

1. Butch's morality and success as a character is grounded his family's tradition of action, which is the tradition of the positive values of civilization

2. Whereas Jules's morality and success as a character is grounded in the Biblical tradition of revelation, which is the spiritual/intellectual aspect of the same basic values.

It comes across to me pretty strongly that Tarantino is a lot like Nolan in a certain regard.  While Pulp Fiction is often upheld (or denounced) as a sort of chaotic and meaningless melange of images and base indulgences, actually the fact is that the most positive outcomes (Butch and Jules) were the direct result of a harkening back to traditional values.  In this sense, while Pulp Fiction ostensibly celebrates a kind of postmodern embrace of unlimited possibility and openness, or at its worst, the overwhelming influence of considerations of power and personal advantage in determining the course of actions of the characters--the conclusions for the movie actually result in a kind of reversal in this perspective.  So while the mass can, on the one hand, celebrate the carnage and visceral character of the film, a closer, more thoughtful look really reveals closure of the plot(s) in the reaffirmation of tradition.

An aside.  Remember how, when Jules was reciting the passage from Ezekiel, how the man who came out to shoot him right afterward?  The man looked distinctly Jewish.  As Jules later noted, his use of the passage was perverted.  And if we understand that it is Jewish literature that he is citing, the irony and perversion of the Jew trying to kill him, and being slain by him is pronounced.  This use of contrast and perverse irony is used to highlight the perversion of his vapid interpretation of Ezekiel and of his notion of the good life.  That Jules lives, and Vincent dies, is of course definitive in showing that Jules interpretation of the passage is correct---that Jules lived because he learned the moral lesson.

But to cast doubt on film as a moral lesson is this simple fact.  The bullets missed Jules and Vincent because Tarantino made them so.  Tarantino was, in fact, the God that intervened divinely.  The God of Pulp Fiction can really be no other than Tarantino--than the movie he constructed.  Therefore, that a return to tradition is the right decision to make is indeed the necessary outcome order of the world that the movie purports to represent--whether a natural order (for Butch) or a divine one (for Jules).  But this order of the world is the order of the world according to Tarantino's mind--the God and constructor the movie.  Therefore we must ask whether this order of Tarantino's mind is correct.  But this requires philosophy: a philosophical engagement with Tarantino, not a philosophical interpretation with Tarantino's intuition of the world.  This ultimately seems to reduce Tarantino's claims to truth to nothing more than a mere assertion of Tarantino's creative imagination.  As Plato said, only philosophy, not poetry (film), can definitively establish truth; poetry only offers compelling possibilities.

The Dark Knight
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc51.2009/darkKnightKant/index.html

One can see pretty clearly that the most interesting parts of Zizek's analysis of the trilogy is actually adapted from McGowan's.



I will be posting additional such articles in this thread.  If I feel I have anything to say beyond a few paragraphs on any particular film, I will make a separate, individual thread.

ChristianU2uber - "I am not a homo" ORIGINAL

http://store.japan-zone.com/ocha-green-powder-p-252.html

i have like 2 pounds of powder in my room now its awesome

i just toss it in bottled water and wa la green tea

ive completely stopped drinking coffee and replaced it w green tea completely

every day i age backwards similar japanese society

only problem is sometimes i bring it to my gfs room and sometimes there are girls in her suites bathroom (shared bathrooms, dorm style), and well ill pee in a used bottle so that the girls wont scream when i enter the bathroom (happened once)

and once i mistook one of these bottles for green tea (pee was very light color)

lol!

but USUALLY its good

so anyway, IF you want the real elixir of life (according to science), which will shed the pounds and keep ur daily hamburger meat fat from accumulating in ur carotid artery and eventually slamming into ur brain in ur 40s

buy this

The purpose of this thread is to encourage a discussion about feminism--whether this happens this week or sometime within several years, whether this discussion occurs on this thread or elsewhere.  In any case, even if there is often an ostensible insouciance, issues, concerns, and memes also spread in sometime unpredictable ways; on TZT, things occur spontaneously, and spontaneity produces the best results.

As I have navigated dating and relationships, I have become increasingly interested in gender issues--from a practical perspective.  This interest includes an interest in the history of gender construction, since gender construction today is the result of a historical process wherefrom modern gender has taken its present form.

I have not even read my most recent thread--my recent exposition on Marx embarrasses me, and I don't have time to correct it now.  Given these time constraints, I will only direct those interested to read a wikipedia article that I found recently--by who is both well-credentialed (by his committed involvement in the second-wave feminist movement) and moderate in his views on gender--from a male perspective:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Farrell

I will share other articles and thoughts in this thread, as I find time, or as some hopeful (eventual) discussion prompts it.

Ali McWeeny's left leg was amputated after a horrible boating accident. Doctors told her to find a new hobby. She ignored them, and began lifting 8 pound dumbbells in her hospital bed. The rest is history...

Antonin Scalia: Judge Richard Posner Lied In Judicial Philosophy Criticism

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/antonin-scalia-richard-posner_n_1892286.html

Here's a quote:

The book has sparked a heated debate in legal circles after Posner accused the authors of making flawed arguments based on sloppy research. Posner said numerous cases that the authors held up as models of text-based decisions were influenced by other factors, including judges' personal views.

Scalia fanned that debate on Monday, saying Posner was only able to make such an assertion because he was writing in a non-legal publication, The New Republic. "You can get away with it in The New Republic, I suppose, but not to a legal audience."

Here is the original article:
The Incoherence of Antonin Scalia
http://www.tnr.com/article/magazine/books-and-arts/106441/scalia-garner-reading-the-law-textual-originalism

Here is the thread where I destroy only a small part of the article, line for line.  It doesn't take a lawyer to know that the article is bullshit.
http://tallonzektimes.org/bb/index.php/topic,49396.msg1130217.html

Again, I don't know anything about law, and I've never been interested in the interpretation issue of the SCOTUS.  I was just subjected to this bullshit article in Spamalot, and after reading only a little bit, was struck at how absurdly fallacious the article was, line for line.



The big question, I suppose:

Is Posner the best that liberals have?

http://www.spankingforwellness.com/Women_and_Spanking.html

big synth is gearing up to be a fag in a white cote

concordantly he is interested in teh following texts:

the german ideology by karl marx
civilization and its discontents by sigmund freud
eros and civilization by herbert marcuse
life against death by norman o brown
for marx by louis althusser
history of madness by michel foucault

and many other historical texts on the 1960s

my oh my

a critical theory, freudo-marxist extravaganza

now what does this have to do w being a fag in a white cote?  well these books are more directly relevant to the problems in society, and in medicine, than what i have been reading previously

this material is quite simply a foundation for all that is thought, and all to come in thought

my practical reason for this is that i am reading htem with the gf, to catch her up to speed, to indoctrinate her and alienate her against everything in society, and to bring her around to intellectual gatherings--so as to be less embarrassed than i would be at such gatherings, apart from the simple fact that i am taking part in them and associating with such people in the first place

grandiose dicsussions of plato, aristotle, freud, the orient, shame cultures versus guilt cultures, psychiatry and economics, marxism, advertising, the postindustrial society and postmodernism, the history and philosophy of science, the idiocy of liberals, and the repugnance of gays will feature in this thread

grandiose however for a reason

because im more right than most

catch some reflections, perhaps inchoate (depends mostly on whether you like them), in the coming months