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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.158 - Robotech mailing list: a mailing list for the (in)famous Harmony Gold series from the mid-80's. To subscribe, send e-mail to LISTSERV@USCVM.BITNET. The mail should have the following text in the first line: subscribe robotech yourlogin@youraddress Firstname Lastname - Shampoo mailing list: a mailing list for fans of the animated character Shampoo from the Ranma 1/2 manga & TV series. To subscribe, send e-mail to shampoo-request@calvin.sfasu.edu. To post, send e-mail to shampoo-l@calvin.sfasu.edu. - Urusei Yatsura mailing list: a mailing list for fans of Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku and of the works of Rumiko Takahashi in general. To subscribe, send e-mail to urusei-yatsura-request@panda.panda.com. The mail should have the following text in the first line: subscribe urusei-yatsura yourlogin@youraddress Firstname Lastname <> Xref: bloom-picayune.mit.edu rec.arts.anime:44539 news.answers:3985 Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!uw-beaver!cs.ubc.ca!destroyer!uunet!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!gandalf.rutgers.edu!pearl From: pearl@gandalf.rutgers.edu (Starbuck) Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime,news.answers Subject: rec.arts.anime: Welcome to rec.arts.anime! Keywords: monthly informative posting Message-ID: <Nov.11.15.45.15.1992.7510@gandalf.rutgers.edu> Date: 11 Nov 92 20:45:15 GMT Followup-To: rec.arts.anime Organization: the Worlds Welfare Work Association, Rutgers Anime division Lines: 270 Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu Archive-name: anime/welcome WELCOME TO REC.ARTS.ANIME ========================= Edited by Steve Pearl October 3, 1992 This is a monthly posting to familiarize new readers with the rec.arts.anime newsgroup. If you have any questions, additions or corrections, send your stuff to: Internet: pearl@remus.rutgers.edu or Steve Pearl CI$: >internet: pearl@remus.rutgers.edu 359 Lloyd Rd GEnie: S.PEARL6 Aberdeen, NJ 07747-1826 Changes to this posting since August, 1992: - added a pointer to Bob Niland's LD articles under the LD definition entry. DISCLAIMER 1: To the best of our knowledge, the editor is not associated with ANY of the companies or organizations mentioned below. DISCLAIMER 2: The opinions expressed on this post do not necessarily represent the opinions held either by the editor or any organization he's affiliated with. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- o WHAT IS REC.ARTS.ANIME? The NetNews charter list has this entry for rec.arts.anime: rec.arts.anime Japanese animation fen discussion. The charter reflects the nature of the group, which is discussion of Japanese animation (and related subjects). Until recently, this was the only NetNews group for animation, until a split in 1990 created the rec.arts.animation newsgroup for general animation discussions. But why is Japanese animation singled out? Why not American animation, or French animation, or Swazilandian animation? Because the Japanese currently produce some of the best animation in the world, in terms of story and technical quality. Note that although the animation for most American cartoons is done in Asian countries these days, rec.arts.anime only concerns itself with animation originated in Japan. o HOW TO USE REC.ARTS.ANIME (For NEW UseNet users) If you're a new NetNews reader and don't know the correct protocol and etiquette for posting messages, the following files accessible in the news.announce.newusers newsgroup are recommended reading: - "A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet" - "Rules for posting to Usenet" - "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions" Some basic tips to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio: - If you don't see postings about a subject you're interested in (and which is related to this newsgroup), don't gripe, POST AN ARTICLE ABOUT THAT SUBJECT! If you receive no reply in a week, TRY AGAIN! Fires don't always start with the first spark. - If you feel the need to insult someone, do it by electronic mail, or better yet, write a scathing message and then throw it away. Please don't do it here. It's irritating to the bystanders, and harmful to your public image. - Before you submit a follow-up to a message, read the rest of the messages in the newsgroup to see whether someone has already said what you want to say. If someone has, don't repeat it. If you're answering a question, mail your answer to the person and suggest that they summarize to the network. This way the net will only see a single copy of the answers, no matter how many people answer the question. - If you post a question, please remind people to send you the answers by mail and at least offer to summarize them to the network. o DEFINITIONS The following are short descriptions of terms and abbreviations common in this newsgroup. .Z: Suffix for compressed text files. See Compressed Text. Anime: Japanese word for animation, pronounced "ah-nee-may" The term "anime" is preferred in this newsgroup over "japanimation" (a term used by Americans to refer to Japanese animation), as the latter seems to be offensive to some people. Anonymous FTP: A method to log into a remote machine without needing an account, and extracting software from it. A list of machines with anime resources available through anonymous FTP is given later on. If you want to use anonymous FTP but don't know how, ask your local System Administrator. APA: Amateur Publication Association, a generic term for a kind of "members only" fanzine in which the members of the association send art or text contributions (known as "tribs") to the fanzine editor, who then compiles all the tribs into a magazine which is sent back to the contributing members. Note that a member of an APA is expected to contribute something (i.e., no passive members). [For more information, and a list of Anime APAs, send me e-mail] Aspect Ratio: The proportions of the image rectangle. Most theatrical anime uses an aspect ratio of 1.66:1, with some exceptions. For example, WINGS OF HONNEAMISE uses an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. This means that the image is 1.85 times wide as it is tall. BGC: Bubble Gum Crisis, a popular SF OVA series. The name is a slang for a situation which is ready to blow up at any time. BGM: Background music, expanded here to include songs. CD: Compact Disc. There are four major types of anime CDs: soundtrack - Contains the musical score for the anime. An exception is the soundtrack for Akira, which includes the voices and sound effects! If you just want the music, get the Akira Symphonic Suite instead. symphonic - A full-symphony rendition of the music in the anime. image - Contains music that "evokes the memory (or mood) of the film". This includes new versions of music on the anime, music written for the film but not included in it, and other (maybe new) music somehow related to the film. high-tech - A synthetizer rendition of the music in the anime. CD-V: CD-Video. A five-inch disc that has one track of audio-and-video, and three or four additional tracks of audio-only. It looks exactly like a CD, only with gold foil instead of aluminum used for the data surface. CAV: Constant Angular Velocity. The name used for a method of encoding images in a LD which can retrieve individual image frames from a video. This mode allows such special effects as "perfect" freeze frame, "perfect" slow motion, and frame-by-frame stepping. A LD using CAV can only store 30 minutes of video per side. CLV: Constant Linear Velocity. The name used for a method of encoding images in a laserdisc which provides twice the capacity of CAV disks (up to 60 minutes of video per side). The special effects available in CAV disks are not supported in CLV disks, but some high-scale LD players use special electronics to simulate those features. Compressed text: Text files compressed with the Unix compress(1) program. This is done to long text files (like anime scripts) to save disk storage space. In order to view such a file, you must first run uncompress(1) or an equivalent program in order to convert it back to its original form. You could also use zcat(1) to view the contents of the file without decompressing it. Dubbing: Translating an anime film into another language, using voice actors to provide the voices in that language. Dubbing: Copying video/audio tapes. Dubbing anime tapes for purposes other than having a backup copy is illegal according to the US and Japanese copyright laws. ED: Ending credits. A good place to find good animation and BGM. FAQ: Frequently Asked Question. A question which is frequently asked by new (or casual) users of a newsgroup. In order to increase the Signal-to-Noise ratio, some newsgroups have a person in charge of posting a monthly list of FAQs and the correct answers. The Anime FAQL consists of four postings which (hopefully) cover most things new rec.arts.anime users look for: 1) An introduction to the newsgroup and its slang. 2) Answers to common questions. 3) Anime Resources, both electronic and commercial. 4) Recommendations for good anime. This list is posted here the first week of every month. You're looking at it. FTP: See Anonymous FTP. GIF: GIF is a format developed at CompuServe to store color computer graphics in a compact, machine independent format. To view a GIF file you need a program that reads the GIF file and produces an image in the format used by your computer system. The /gifstuff directory in the ix3.ucc.utexas.edu anonymous FTP site contains GIF viewers for Amiga, Apple II and IIgs, Macintosh, MS-DOS, Sun, and X. If you can't find what you're looking for, you can ask in the appropriate newsgroup for your computer, or in alt.graphics.pixutils. IMHO: In My (Humble, Honest) Opinion. KOR: Kigumare Orange Road, an old romantic fantasy/comedy TV series popular in this newsgroup. LD: Full-sized (twelve inch) laserdisc. There is also an eight-inch format, usually known as "LD8". Bob Niland has written a variety of general articles on LaserDiscs. They can be requested from him via email at rjn@hpfcjn.fc.hp.com or via ftp from princeton.edu (128.112.128.1, in directory pub/Video/Niland) See the FAQ for more information on ftp. Letterbox: The term used to describe the method on which a film with an aspect ratio grater than 1.33:1 (the aspect ratio of a TV screen) is shrunk so that the image fits in a TV screen. This will cause black bands at the top and bottom of the screen; the greater the aspect ratio, the more pronounced the bars. The word comes from an analogy of looking at the screen through a letter-box slot. Manga: Pronounced "man-gah". A type of Japanese artform which has it's roots in Ukiyo-e wood prints and other traditional art. In it's popular culture form of Asian sequential art and graphic storytelling, features, manga can be found in most Japanese bookstores. Many popular anime were adapted from original manga. Recently, a newsgroup rec.arts.manga, was created to discuss manga in it's many incarnations. Mailing list: A method of communication between fans of a given subject without the need of a newsgroup. A member of a mailing list sends e-mail to a machine called a "mailing list server", which in turn sends copies of the e-mail to all the members of the mailing list. To subscribe to the mailing list, send e-mail to the mailing list server. The first line of the e-mail should look like this: subscribe list-name yourlogin@youraddress Firstname Lastname Mecha: Roughly, Japanese for "mechanicals". Most of the so-called "giant robot" anime features are known as mecha features. Model kit: Scale model. The most popular varieties of these are: injection-molded - this is the typical polyestyrene scale model most people are familiar with. garage kits - usually done from plastic resin (for mecha) or vinyl (for character models). These tend to have smaller production runs and be VERY expensive (up to $100.00!). OAV: Original Animation Video. An anime feature released directly to video without a previous theatrical or broadcast release. The US equivalent would be "made-for-video". In terms of quality, theatrical movies are usually the best, followed by OAVs, and network TV shows at the end. Also known as OVA (Original Video Animation). OP: Opening credits. Another good place to find good animation/BGM. Otaku: Japanese for "obsessed fan" (a term which applies to many people in rec.arts.anime :-) ). See The Frequently Asked Questions list for a more detailed definition. OVA: Original Video Animation. Same thing as an OAV. Script: An English-text script for a particular anime feature. Very useful for Japanese-impaired anime fans. Subbing: Slang for subtitling. Subtitling: Translating an anime film into another language, using text at the bottom of the screen as a running translation of what the characters are saying. Synopsis: A text description of an anime feature, possibly with some snippets of dialogue thrown in. Unlike dubbing, subtitling, and scripts, a synopsis does not require the approval of the legal owner of the feature before it is made publicly available. UY: Urusei Yatsura, a famous comedy SF series. WotW: WARRIORS OF THE WIND. See the Frequently Asked Questions List for the NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND vs. WARRIORS OF THE WIND entry. <> Xref: bloom-picayune.mit.edu alt.atheism:40524 alt.atheism.moderated:465 news.answers:4652 Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.bbn.com!olivea!uunet!pipex!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) Newsgroups: alt.atheism,alt.atheism.moderated,news.answers Subject: Alt.Atheism FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Summary: Please read this file before posting to alt.atheism Keywords: FAQ, atheism Message-ID: <19921216111042@mantis.co.uk> Date: 16 Dec 92 11:10:42 GMT Expires: Sat, 16 Jan 1993 11:10:42 GMT Followup-To: alt.atheism Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK. Lines: 613 Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu Supersedes: <19921130191303@mantis.co.uk> Archive-name: atheism/faq Alt-atheism-archive-name: faq Last-modified: 11 December 1992 Version: 1.0 Alt.Atheism Frequently-Asked Questions This file contains responses to articles which occur repeatedly in alt.atheism. Points covered here are ones which are not covered in the "Introduction to Atheism"; you are advised to read that article as well before posting. These answers are not intended to be exhaustive or definitive. The purpose of the periodic FAQ postings is not to stifle debate, but to raise its level. If you have something to say concerning one of these questions and which isn't covered by the answer given, please feel free to make your point. Overview of contents: "Hitler was an atheist!" "The Bible proves it" "Pascal's Wager" "Why it's good to believe in Jesus" "Why I know that God exists" "Einstein and "God does not play dice"" "Everyone worships something" "Why there must be a causeless cause" "The universe is so complex it must have been designed" "Independent evidence that the Bible is true" "Godel's Incompleteness Theorem" "George Bush on atheism and patriotism" "I know where hell is!" "Biblical contradictions wanted" "The USA is a Christian nation" "The USA is not a Christian nation" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Hitler was an atheist! Typical posting: Hitler was an atheist, and look at what he did! Response: Adolf Hitler was emphatically not an atheist. As he said himself: The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making _people_stop_just_talking_ superficially_of_God's_will,_and_actually_fulfill_God's_will,_and_ not_let_God's_word_be_desecrated._[orig. ital.] For God's will gave men their form, their essence, and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will. Therefore, let every man be active, each in his own denomination if you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other. [...] Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: _by_defending_myself_against_the_Jew,_I_am_ fighting_for_the_work_of_the_Lord._[orig. ital.] -- Adolf Hitler, from "Mein Kampf", trans. Ralph Mannheim. Of course, someone bad believing something does not make that belief wrong. ------------------------------ Subject: The Bible proves it Typical posting: In the Bible it says that... Response: Most of the readers of alt.atheism feel that the Bible is of questionable accuracy, as it was written thousands of years ago by many authors who were recording oral tradition that existed many years before. Thus, any claimed 'truth' in it is of questionable legitimacy. This isn't to say that The Bible has no truth in it; simply that any truth must be examined before being accepted. Many of the readers of this group also feel that because any passage is subject to "interpretation", any claim that a passage 'means' one thing and one thing only is not legitimate. Note that this feeling tends to extend to other books. It is also remarkable to many atheists that theists tend to ignore other equally plausible religious books in favour of those of their own religion. ------------------------------ Subject: Pascal's Wager Typical posting: If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing -- but if you don't believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you will go to hell. Therefore it is foolish to be an atheist. Response: This argument is known as Pascal's Wager. It has several flaws. Firstly, it does not indicate which religion to follow. Indeed, there are many mutually exclusive and contradictory religions out there. This is often described as the "avoiding the wrong hell" problem. If a person is a follower of religion X, he may end up in religion Y's version of hell. Secondly, the statement that "If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing" is not true. Suppose you're believing in the wrong God -- the true God might punish you for your foolishness. Consider also the deaths that have resulted from people rejecting medicine in favour of prayer. Many feel that for intellectually honest people, belief is based on evidence, with some amount of intuition. It is not a matter of will or cost-benefit analysis. Formally speaking, the argument consists of four statements: 1. One does not know whether God exists. 2. Not believing in God is bad for one's eternal soul if God does exist. 3. Believing in God is of no consequence if God does not exist. 4. Therefore it is in one's interest to believe in God. There are two approaches to the argument. The first is to view 1 as an assumption, and 2 as a consequence of it. One problem with this approach, in the abstract, is that it creates information from no information. This is considered invalid in information theory. Statement 1 indicates one has no information about God -- but statement 2 indicates that beneficial information can be gained from the absolute lack of information about God. This violates information entropy -- information has been extracted from no information, at no "cost". The alternative approach is to claim that 1 and 2 are both assumptions. The problem with this is that 2 is then basically an assumption which states the Christian position, and only a Christian will agree with that assumption. The argument thus collapses to "If you are a Christian, it is in your interests to believe in God" -- a rather vacuous tautology, and not the way Pascal intended the argument to be viewed. The biggest reason why Pascal's wager is a failure is that if God is omniscient he will certainly know who really believes and who believes as a wager. He will spurn the latter... assuming he actually cares at all whether people believe in him. ------------------------------ Subject: Why it's good to believe in Jesus Typical posting: I want to tell people about the virtues and benefits of my religion. Response: Preaching is not appreciated. Feel free to talk about your religion, but please do not write postings that are on a "conversion" theme. Such postings do not belong on alt.atheism and will be rejected from alt.atheism.moderated (try the newsgroup talk.religion.misc). You would doubtless not welcome postings from atheists to your favourite newsgroup in an attempt to convert you; please do unto others as you would have them do unto you! Often theists make their basic claims about God in the form of lengthy analogies or parables. Be aware that atheists have heard of God and know the basic claims about him; if the sole purpose of your parable is to tell atheists that God exists and brings salvation, you may as well not post it, since it tells us nothing we have not been told before. ------------------------------ Subject: Why I know that God exists Typical posting: I *know* from personal experience and prayer that God exists. Response: Just as many theists have personal evidence that the being they worship exists, so many atheists have personal evidence that such beings do not exist. That evidence varies from person to person. Furthermore, without wishing to dismiss your evidence out of hand, many people have claimed all kinds of unlikely things -- that they have been abducted by UFOs, visited by the ghost of Elvis, and so on. ------------------------------ Subject: Einstein and "God does not play dice" Typical posting: Albert Einstein believed in God. Do you think you're cleverer than him? Response: Einstein did once comment that "God does not play dice [with the universe]". This quotation is commonly mentioned to show that Einstein believed in the Christian God. Used this way, it is out of context; it refers to Einstein's refusal to accept the uncertainties indicated by quantum theory. Furthermore, Einstein's religious background was Jewish rather than Christian. A better quotation showing what Einstein thought about God is the following: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." Einstein was unable to accept Quantum Theory because of his belief in an objective, orderly reality; a reality which would not be subject to random events and which would not be dependent upon the observer. He believed that QM was incomplete, and that a better theory would have no need for statistical interpretations. So far no such better theory has been found, and much evidence suggests that it never will be. A longer quote from Einstein appears in "Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium", published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941. In it he says: "The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be *refuted* [italics his], in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task..." Einstein has also said: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religous convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." ------------------------------ Subject: Everyone worships something Typical posting: Everyone worships something, whether it's money, power or God. Response: If that is true, everyone is a polytheist. Theists care just as much about those things that atheists care about. If the atheists' reactions to (for example) their families amount to worship then so do the theists'. ------------------------------ Subject: Why there must be a causeless cause Typical posting: Sets of integers that have a lower bound each have a smallest member, so chains of causes must all have a first element, a causeless cause. Response: The set of real numbers greater than zero has a definite lower bound, but has no smallest member. Further, even if it is true that there must be a causeless cause, that does not imply that that cause must be a conscious supernatural entity, and especially not that any such entity must match the description favoured by any particular religion. ------------------------------ Subject: The universe is so complex it must have been designed Typical posting: The presence of design in the universe proves there is a God. Surely you don't think all this appeared here just by chance? Response: This is known as the Argument By Design. It is a matter of dispute whether there is any element of design in the universe. Those who believe that the complexity and diversity of living creatures on the earth is evidence of a creator are best advised to read the newsgroup talk.origins for a while. There is insufficient space to summarize both sides of that debate here. However, the conclusion is that there is no scientific evidence in favour of so-called Scientific Creationism. Furthermore, there is much evidence, observation and theory that can explain many of the complexities of the universe and life on earth. The origin of the Argument by Design is a feeling that the existence of something as incredibly intricate as, say, a human is so improbable that surely it can't have come about by chance; that surely there must be some external intelligence directing things so that humans come from the chaos deliberately. But if human intelligence is so improbable, surely the existence of a mind capable of fashioning an entire universe complete with conscious beings must be immeasurably more unlikely? The approach used to argue in favour of the existence of a creator can be turned around and applied to the Creationist position. This leads us to the familiar theme of "If a creator created the universe, what created the creator?", but with the addition of spiralling improbability. The only way out is to declare that the creator was not created and just "is" (or "was"). From here we might as well ask what is wrong with saying that the universe just "is" without introducing a creator? Indeed Stephen Hawking, in his book "A Brief History of Time", explains his theory that the universe is closed and finite in extent, with no beginning or end.