Slashdot Mirror
Uncensored Media Considered Harmless
"Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line we begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and have their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody else's life."
- George W. Bush, presidential debate, October 11, 2000
The term we're looking for is "manufactured crisis." That's what we need to start calling it, this supposed violence in our schools.
I don't need to provide you with more quotes from Bush, Gore, Cheney and especially Lieberman about how disgustingly violent our culture has become. You can't pick up a paper without seeing at least three people moaning about violent movies, the violent internet, and worst of all violent video games. They're infecting the minds of our children, don't'cha know. It'd be the new national pastime if it weren't 200 years old: grumping about those damn kids.
Let's counter disinformation with some real numbers. Here's an annotated timeline showing the increase in violent imagery, and the corresponding decrease in actual violence.
1993
Students' nonfatal violent crimes:
1,438,200.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages:
49.1.
Let's consider 1993 our baseline year, the pre-Doom year. That blockbuster was not released until December 1993, so I think we are safe to assume that it did not begin darkening hearts until 1994 or later. By the end of 1993, the internet's two million host machines include 500 webservers.
Demolition Man, Kalifornia and Falling Down are in the theaters.
1994
Students' nonfatal violent crimes:
1,424,200:
a 1% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages:
51.2:
a 4% increase from the previous year.
In 1994, shareware Doom, downloadable from the evil internet, shatters existing gaming records. Its bloody graphics and Satanic imagery shock and offend many who are easily shocked and offended. In an era where 200,000 is a great-selling title, 1994 sees the first of fifteen million gamers who download and play Doom.
Meanwhile, the web grows at an annual rate of 341,000%, becoming the 2nd-most popular type of data; among the three million machines on the net, there are too many webservers to count.
The movies Pulp Fiction, Timecop, True Lies, Children of the CornIII, and the politicans' favorite Natural Born Killers are all released in 1994.
1995
Students' nonfatal violent crimes:
1,290,000:
a 9% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers:
2,169.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages:
46.1:
a 10% decrease from the previous year.
In 1995, the web becomes the most popular internet service among the net's four million machines. Shareware Doom continues to rack up downloads. Doom II: Hell On Earth, released last October, takes over as the violentest game ever, with an initial release of half a million units.
The Basketball Diaries, Braveheart, Se7en, and Die Hard3 are released.
1996
Students' nonfatal violent crimes:
1,134,400:
a 12% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers:
1,683:
a 22% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages:
41.6:
a 10% decrease from the previous year.
1996 is a banner year for violent images. Doom II continues on its track to eventually sell two million copies. Duke Nukem 3D, aimed at the young teenage male market, gives our nation's young boys a healthy mix of strippers, jokes, and mass slaughter with machine guns. Soon after, the breakthrough title Quake offers unprecedented visual accuracy: blood, gore, and murder are now illustrated with detail that makes Doom and Duke Nukem look cartoony.
Scream is released in theaters to tremendous success, along with Broken Arrow, CrowII, Sling Blade, and the excellent Fargo. Meanwhile, there are now 9 million hosts on the net.
The effects of all that horrible media violence in 1996 appear in 1997's statistics...
1997
Students' nonfatal violent crimes:
1,055,200:
a 7% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers:
1,457:
a 13% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages:
38.8:
a 7% decrease from the previous year.
In 1997, there are 16 million hosts on the net. At year's end, QuakeII is released, and is quickly banned in Germany for its even-more-realistic violence. And Con Air, Face/Off, Starship Troopers, and Scream2 are released in theaters.
1998
Total under-18 murderers:
1,169:
a 20% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages:
36.0:
a 7% decrease from the previous year.
In 1998, Quake II hits its sales stride and begins corrupting young minds. Grand Theft Auto, one of the more vilified and censored video games, is released. The web crosses the 300-million-page mark.
Brace yourself for the movie list: Lethal Weapon4, Saving Private Ryan, American HistoryX, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Ronin, Urban Legend, Blade, and the crappy remake of Psycho hit the theaters.
The result?
1999
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages:
32.1:
an 11% decrease from the previous year.
There it is. In the four years between the release of Doom and Quake II, the number of killers under the age of 18 in this country plummeted. A drop of 46% in just four years is nothing short of astonishing.
Long-term graphs are even more valuable. Click through to these, they're small and quick:
- The homicide rate, 1900-1998. We are experiencing the longest and steepest sustained dropoff in violence since the Great Depression.
- Homicide offenders grouped by age, 1976-1998. The number of teenage killers is steadily falling.
- Average age of homicide offenders, 1976-1998. The average age of the American killer has been rising since 1993.
Last month, I watched CNN as my friend Bennett Haselton got grilled opposite Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). After CNN's introduction telling us what to think - cutting straight from footage of Doom to footage of crying Columbine students - the Senator explained how violent games cause children to commit violent actions. He wants to keep dangerous weapons like Quake away from our kids.
That's how the Senator - who voted against secure handgun storage, and twice against child safety locks - positioned himself as our noble defender of children.
How do the posturing panderers justify their crisis-du-jour? How'd we end up with the phantom of media-created child violence as a major election issue, while violence plummets?
The facts speak for themselves. If seeing violence has any effect on children's actions, it obviously makes them calm and peaceful.
So here's the slogan for my campaign: our kids deserve the best in first-person shooters. In my America, every family will have free movie tickets, 300 megatexels, and low-ping broadband. Let's put an end to frame rates under 30Hz. For our country - for our safety - we can leave no child behind.
(Sources: US DOJ 1, 2, 3; OJJDP 1, 2, 3; FBI UCR; Blues News; crime.org; poynter.org.)
FWIW, he kept them unloaded in a gun rack (which did have a lock but he usually didn't bother). It was his choice to do so just like it was your dad's choice to keep his (presumably loaded) locked in a drawer. The problem with a lot of these gun mandates are they're exactly that - mandates. You have to keep a gun lock on when you're not using it. You have to keep it locked in a gun safe when you're not using it. There are situations where that may not be good for someone, especially if they feel threatened or don't have kids running around. I don't think the government should have the ability to determine what steps you have to take to protect yourself because they vary too greatly between individuals. I certainly don't know what's best for my neighbor so how could the some bureaucrat in DC know what's good for him?
But kids, especially little ones, don't always listen, no matter how much you tell them. I think your dad took a pretty big risk that you would listen, even with the education he gave you.
Again, this is something best left up for a parent to decide rather than a government. I was mature enough at 7 to have my own gun. Little Joey may be mature enough to watch a scary movie at 10. Franky may not be trustworthy enough to play down at the playground without supervision at 12. Suzy may not be stable enough to use a knife at age 15. I don't think the government can effectively determine what's best for everyone because everyone is GREATLY different. The best we can hope to do is give parents the education they need to help make decisions for their children. I don't have a problem with the movie rating system being used as a rough guideline to let parents know the severity of the flick. I don't have a problem with a violence rating on games. I don't have a problem with minors not being able to buy their own firearms. I do have a problem with a government that would say "Children are not allowed to see x until age y else their parents will be prosecuted and face z years in prison" or "Parents who give their children (some type of) access to guns are psychopaths who need to be locked up to protect their children from their harmful influences." I believe individuals are the ones who can best determine their own needs and that government is too broad and distant to effectively mandate those needs.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
First, I'd like to state that I found this article to be rather good on the whole, and exactly the type of thing that *needs* to be written if this whole issue is to be exposed for the fraud that it is.
However, it contains one irritating grain of hypocrisy that for various reasons I feel I MUST point out.
quote:
"...After CNN's introduction telling us what to think - cutting straight from footage of Doom to footage of crying Columbine students - the Senator explained how violent games cause children to commit violent actions. He wants to keep dangerous weapons like Quake away from our kids.
That's how the Senator - who voted against secure handgun storage, and twice against child safety locks - positioned himself as our noble defender of children."
I agree that the introduction you describe, cutting from Doom to Columbine, was indeed designed to "tell us what to think". But in your very next paragraph you commit the same crime. By pointint out how the senator voted on these gun control issues, you have implied that voting against gun locks is as wrong-headed as censoring violent media. Regardless of how one feels about gun control, the implication that it protects children better than censorship is every bit as much "telling us what to think" as CNN's combination of imagery.
And, correlation of statistics aside, isn't this really about freedom? Content creators have an inalienable right to depict violence, and content consumers have an inalienable right to... well, consume that content, yes? Saying that you support the freedom of expression and reception of that expression while at the same time opposing the freedom of self-defense (which includes storing firearms in a way that knee-jerkers consider "unsafe" but that actually allows you rapid and sure enough access) is like saying you want more government programs with less taxes, or dry water, or any other silly example you could think of. It contains an internal contradiction.
But that's only if you take a principled look at it. But even if your perspective is purely pragmatic, it still doesn't hold water. Consider a lock with a key. To be able to access the gun when you need it, you'll need to have the key close at hand. That means either wearing it around your neck while you sleep (or similar measuers) or leaving it in a place where it could be stolen (by your gun-obsessed child, I suppose) or lost. Consider a lock with a combination. If your child has enough resolve and unsupervised time to find the gun in the first place, he has the time to go through all 1000 combinations. And if you've done the horribly irresponsible thing and not taught your child proper gun handling and firearm ethics (indeed this lack of proper training and respect is what causes most children to become fascinated with guns to the point of a fatal accident), it's likely that your child *will* either acquire the key or the combination, and cause an accident. But assuming either type of lock keeps your kid(s) from using it, it keeps *you* from using it as well. And what's the point of having a gun for self defense if when you need it, you're unable to use it?
At any rate, views and even facts about gun locks and (un)safe storage aside, my real point is that Slashdot and its authors should not condemn another media outlet, be it CNN, the NYT, or the Podunk Post for "telling us what to think", then turn around and to the exact same thing.
MoNsTeR
Kid 1: I'm here because my parents were too lax. They never paid any attention to me. They let me do whatever I wanted. When people complained about me, they'd say "that's too bad". It didn't matter what I'd done. . . . .
Kid 2: I'm here because my parents were too strict. They wouldn't let me do anything. Whenever I went out, they wanted to know exactly what I was doing and where I was going. I felt smothered. I had no freedom whatsoever . . . .
____________________
Yeah. Go ahead. Blame the parents. Blame the internet. Blame the kids. The main purpose in blaming is to avoid looking for where you can take responsibility for your part in the problem. As long as you're unwilling to look at your part in the situation, there's no power to really affect the end result.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
People keep attributing crime to one thing or another willy-nilly, but the only thing that crime has ever been reliably attributed to is the ratio of the median income for the majority of the population to the median income of the rich. When this gets too wide, crime goes up. When it narrows, crime goes down. It's been narrowing. Crime has been going down. It was very narrow in the fifties. Crime was low. In the eighties, with inner-city blight and practically no means of employment for inner-city youths, crime went sky-high.
Crime isn't caused by guns; it isn't caused by violence in the media; it isn't caused by bad parenting; it isn't caused by lack of government or increase in police patrol; it isn't caused by war or peace. There are criminal tendencies in all of us, and when desparation gets high enough, the crime line on the bell curve moves and we get more criminals. When there is readily available employment everywhere, the line moves away from the center, and fewer and fewer people excersize their criminal tendencies.
That is the only reason anyone has ever been able to prove. The correlation between personal wealth and crime is extremely easy to demonstrate, whereas even parenting is hard. In Columbine, it is obvious that bad parenting had something to do with it, but there are plenty of situations where good people come from bad homes. Statistically, bad parenting isn't significant anymore than violent movies and games are. And availability of guns has nothing at all to do with crime rates except to act as a deterrant to petty crime, so a high saturation of guns in a society will reduce the instances of burglary and robbery and a certain decrease in homicide, but will certainly not increase these things unless they are in the hands of criminals only.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
"Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that
somewhere along the line we begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and have their
heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody
else's life."
Perhaps you should read that again. It has nothing to do with the internet, it has to do with the responsibility of people. The point being, if children were raised properly, and supervised properly while they were in their formitive years, the internet wouldn't turn a child's heart dark, nor would anything else.
However, when the internet is used as a babysitter for children who's parents aren't interested in making the time to actually raise them, then the chances are increasingly good they're going to turn out screwed up, whether its the internet that does it, TV, gangs, or whatever else the current media crisis is.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
However, the actual truth of the matter is that these politicians do not see a problem in search of a solution. They see opportunities.
The first is to get the "soccer mom's." The soccer mom's don't like those video games, but buy them for their kids when the kids whine. They don't really believe that they are going to turn their kids into killers, they just think theses games are "icky." (And they think that that kid up the street, with the permissive freethinking parents needs more restrictions. If his parents won't do it, then by Gum, the government will have to.)
The second is to get the grumpy old people's vote. These people don't like teenagers, period, and anything that makes the kids miserable is fine by them. "Lousy longhaired kids, they think they're so smart. Well, when I was a kid they had a shortage of rubber, and I had crummy toys. Why should those punks have it better than me."
The third are the Religious Right. These people vote reliably, but their mentality resembles that of Carry's Mom in the movie Carry. In other words they're nuts, but the politicians want their votes.
The movie and TV industry would probably like to duck for cover, "Get those video games, they're to blame." Besides, if the kids can't play video games, they might sell a few more tickets to Scream XXIV.
Politicians also like power, and the ability to wipe their feet on the US Constitution. This gives them a chance to further suppress the First Amendment. Heck, it might just be video games, but it's a start!
So, politicians will always want to keep this issue around. It's not something the vide game industry could fix by self-censoring, politicians will always want to flog this issue, and they'll always find an excuse to do it.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Yeah, and I wish that not everybody believed every single thing they read on web. Take this criticism with just as large a grain of salt as you have apparently taken the third parties' candidates' legitimacy in the first place.
realchange.org is the ONLY site on the web that I have found that has bad things to say about Nader (other sites just paraphrase this site). For the large part, this site seems to be out to just criticize and slander candidates because it feels like it, for the sake of criticism itself. Most of what is there about Nader is out of context, and I don't really put much credibility in it.
Please, be at least as skeptical of your sources of criticism than of the subjects of the criticisms.
In the grand scheme of things, yes, Nader is head and shoulders above most of the other candidates. And if that just means the other candidates are sleazier than you thought, well, so be it.
I dare you to find a SECOND source to qualify, put in context, and legitimize the statements on this site. If you do, come back then...if not you're just propaganting unsubstantiated criticism.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
There was nothing in the original constitution that was prohibitive of slavery, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea.
I would be all in favor of an amendment making it illegal to transfer wealth from one individual to another without voluntary consent. It's called "freedom".
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
That there is a correlation between my access to my firearm and my child's was exactly my point, but you took it in the opposite way as it was intended. I see it as "a gun lock may keep my child from having an accident, but it also prevents my from defending myself", you took it as "an unlocked firearm may allow you to defend yourself, but your kid might kill himself with it". Which brings me back to what I said about firearms education for your children. I was how to shoot and properly handle rifles and pistols when I was seven years old, and got my first gun for xmas when I was 12. Needless to say, I've never killed anyone or accidentally discharged a firearm in any way. I was smart enough to never say to my friends, "I know where daddy keeps his guns!", because I knew that guns were tools and not toys.
You also *presume* that gun locks actually do reduce accidents, which is far from proven. I was a smart kid, and you probably were too. If knowing it was wrong didn't stop you or I, we could have gotten the locks off those guns no question about it, and we would have had the same chance of accidentally discharging the supposedly "safely stored" weapon. No accident prevented.
I'm not saying that exactly 0 accidents will be prevented, or even that more people will die because they couldn't defend themselves than children will be saved (though I believe the latter would be true). Regardless of that, my firearm is my property, and I have an absolute right to use it in any way that is not an INITIATION of force. Simply storing it a certain way is not a willful act of force, and thus cannot be legitimately prohibited. (also note that using it in self-defense is RETALIATORY force, which is not only a right, but considered by many to be a duty)
MoNsTeR
"What violence is in a dictatorship, propaganda is in a democracy." During war time, the information available was deliberately limited to pre-edited propaganda reels and edited front-line reels. Then, came Vietnam. The Television media was somewhat edited, but was raw. This swayed public opinion against the war. Watergate as well brought the people against the government and made people believe the media more redily. Then, you have Reagan, an actor who knew how to play the cameras. He was trustworthy, because he knew how to be. And Bush showed The Perfect Political War, the Iraqi Attacks. 90+% opinion polls. Now, we have the Internet. A technology which crosses boundries, which crosses nations with a dot-uk, dot-gr, dot-iq, dot-cn, dot-ru, dot-cd, dot-whatever-two-letter-ISO-code. You can see the rest of the world through a different nation's set(s) of eyes, and in a nation like ours where the media is highly controlled and pro-gorment and pro-megacorp, this is dangerous. China's solution was the Great Firewall, one of whose major crackers I had the priviledge of seeing a few months ago. However, in a nation of free-speech and free-media guaranteed by law, this is impossible. So what's the solution? Condemnation. The internet's bad, and naughty, and rotten, and filled with violence, and lies, and porn. And because people still believe the megacorporate media, they believe the lies more readily than the truth because of the infallibility of the source. Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys said that the best way to combat the media is to becaome the media. I guess that's one of the purposes of Slashdot.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
As someone who pretends to be at least semi-intelligent, I know that video games, the media, and the internet do not cause violence, nor do they promote crime.
This is my opinion.
However, if these things don't cause crime or violence, I must ask myself - what does?
Actually, I must not ask myself what causes violence and crime, I must instead ask myself "Why am I not violent and/or a criminal?"...
This is the root question. I am not saying I don't get angry, that I never throw things out of anger, that I don't ever yell - indeed, I have done all of these things, and will probably do them again in the future. However, overall, I am not a criminal, nor am I violent. So, why not?
I think (personally) it comes down to one thing, and one thing only:
Respect.
I am not violent because I respect myself and others. I am not criminal because I respect others and their property.
One thing I have noticed, growing up, is that respect seems (for a lot of people - not all) to come with age and wisdom. It is also something that can be taught. In fact, I would argue that even if respect is instilled at an early age, you still gain more respect as grow older. What makes me say this?
I have seen interviews on TV done with older individuals who, as younger teens and adults, commited various attrocious crimes (murder, rape, etc), but now see the error of what they have done (many times after spending long amounts of time in prison), and are trying to get youths around their neighborhoods to change, to be better individuals. I have also personally seen individuals who, as they got older, gained more respect.
Recently, I got my first driving ticket, for speeding. I was doing 85 in a 75 mph zone. What does this have to do with anything? Well, when the cop hit his lights, I looked at my speed, saw that I was speeding - and thus rightfully deserved the ticket. No prob there. After I got home (knowing that I typically speeded all the time, even going 15 miles to/from work), I decided to do an experiment:
For one week, I would try going the speed limit, and see how it was. I would respect my fellow drivers, and drive more safely. So, what did I find?
First, I found that speeding didn't help me any in the first place at such short distances - and extra 10-15 mph only saves a few minutes, if that, on trips of such short distances.
But most intriguingly (perhaps because before, I was one among many), was the blatent display of lack of respect of other drivers. Now, these same drivers would "get on my tail", urging me to go faster, plus I tended to notice more of the "insane" drivers on the road. I also noticed the ones who gave the same respect as I was now giving.
After the week was up, I continued driving at the more conservative speed. I have since found (it has been over a month now) that I find it less stressful driving to and from work - less stressful driving everywhere, in fact - since I am not having to concentrate as hard as I did driving at major speeds. I can also spot the less respectful drivers on the road quicker, and get out of their way, as well.
Lack of respect - this is what causes the majority of violence and crime in America.
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Voting against gun locks makes sense, for a number of reasons.
1. A lock on my gun will at the very least make it difficult to ready my weapon to defend my life, family, and home. At the worst, it will outright *prevent* me from doing so, say because I lost the key or forgot the combination. And if on top of that I don't have kids, then there's no chance of an accident being prevented, and thus no possible positive value whatsoever.
2. It is my absolute right to use my property (here, my gun) in any way that is not an INITIATION of force. Simply storing it in a certain way is not a willful act of violence, and thus cannot be legitimately prohibited. (note that use of my firearm in self-defense is RETALIATORY force, another absolute right).
3. Kids are smart. Could you have gotten the lock off of a gun when you were a kid if you didn't know any better? I could have, no doubt. All a kid would have to do is sit around guessing combinations, or just find the key, and the lock's as good as non-existant. The kid's also smart enough to pick a time when daddy's away, so he has a bunch of time to guess numbers or hunt for the key, whereas when your house is being broken into you have mere seconds to ready your firearm.
4. An irresponsible gun owner, who has children, and puts a lock on his gun creates for himself a false sense of safety. What a responsible gun owner does is take his kid to the range and teaches him how to properly handle and shoot a gun, and to respect it for the dangerous tool that it is, like my Uncle Marc did with me when I was 7. And because I knew proper gun safety that young, I got my first gun for xmas when I was 12, a beautiful Ruger 10/22 that I still have and love (I'm 19). Because I've known proper firearms ethics, I've never shown my friends where the guns are, or played with a loaded gun, or anything of that foolish nature. For the irresponsible gun owner who doesn't teach his kids about guns, that lock is indeed ALL that insures against an accident, and it is flimsy insurance indeed.
5. Laws mandating "safe storage" are unenforceable, unless we really do repeal the 4th Amendment (remember when we had protection from unreasonable searches and siezures? I don't, we lost it before I was born). The police would have to knock on your door, ask you if you own any firearms (this is already a hideous violation of your rights), and then if you say yes, you'll have to show them where and how your guns are stored, and the police will have to decide if it's "safe" or not. Of course, to even show up, they'd either need no 4th Amendment restrictions, or a proper warrant (and how would they get a warrant if the only evidence are the guns themselves?).
So, to summarize why no intelligent person should vote FOR gun lock laws:
1. They're counterproductive.
2. They violate our rights.
3. They don't work.
4. They're counterproductive.
5. They're unenforceable.
MoNsTeR
This is still worlds apart from guns, which have no other use other than the one they are designed for: to kill, maim, incapacitate or otherwise cause damage to people or objects.
If you want to make the purpose of a car that basic, do the same with guns. Firearms are designed to launch projectiles. No more, no less. What you do with that from there is up to you. It is impossible to design a firearm that can do that if it is inappropriately misused.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
America hasn't been a "free country" in a long time, if you're referring to the right to do whatever you want and damn the consequences. America hasn't been a "free country" this century if you're referring to children's rights. Children don't have rights. Children are frighteningly close to property of the country and their parents. Their parents have the right to raise them however they wish, unless and until they begin a narrow category of action known as "abuse" (which I won't even get into the hypocrisy regarding), at which point the govenment can take away the kids and raise them however the government wants.
Children are a perpetual, self-sustaning second class. They have effectively no rights, and no voice to complain about it. Get used to it. It's been going on since forever.
Your "draconian laws" are there to "protect" children, who are obviously impressionable in their youth and thus need protection. They're also there to aid parents in preventing kids from violating their will. Because, after all, children must never ever think for themselves. Until of course they become adults.
Yes, some of the above is sarcastic. Some of it is real. No I didn't bother to separate it out. Why? Because you're going to read it through your understanding of the world, and take from it whatever your brain feels like taking from it. So why should I bother with the effort to make it easier for you to disagree with me?
Jeff
jamie, as usual, is hyperventilating as only an earnest and idealistic youngster can do. Bush did not blame Columbine on the internet. Think of it this way: Bush could have said that those boys had their hearts turned dark by hanging out on the street corner. If he had said that, would he have been blaming "street corners"? No. He would have been using "street corner" as a shorthand to describe a social phenomenon that is known to or is easy to imagine foments anti-social attitudes. Such forums exist on the internet also. You can argue whether he's right or wrong, but you'd do better to stick to what he meant and not some bogeyman you've invented.
>I am saying that guns can safely co-exist with an advanced first-world society without causing extreme violence. How can you say that I am incorrectly inferring a causal link and then go on to assert that there is a causal link (asserting that removing a will remove B is basically the same as saying A causes B)? Also causal links are never as simple as just A=>B. The engine is what makes a car go. But if someone doesn't put their foot on the gas the car goes nowhere. That doesn't imply that the engine is heavily implicated in the going of the car. You can pretty well guarantee if you free up guns in most Western countries you will end up with a significantly increased homicide rate. There may be some unusual countries where this won't be the case but they will be the minority. There are many interesting reasons why both Switzerland and Israel are highly atypical developed countries. And I'm not sure that any country wants to learn anything from the case of Israel.
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-- SIGFPE
"We need a more intelligent, better-educated populace!"
o nferences/testing98/drafts/mcneil_valenzue la.html
I agree, in part...
The REAL problem is HOW we educate. Do we model a system of top down coercion, where the teacher plays the role of an authority figure, more interested in compliance training than learning?
Do we focus kids on competition by making it implicit in all the games they play and everything they do?
Or do we try a more democratic approach to education where genuine collaboration is at least as important as competition?
Competition means keeping secrets. Kids want to win, so they don't communicate. See how this breaks down collaborative learning? See how this isolates?
Same thing with authority. Should we coerce children into following rules, or should we show them the role they play in a democracy so that they develop a vested interest in following the rules that they helped create? We should teach kids from day one how to govern as a citizen in a democracy.
Why isn't critical thinking on the curriculum? Well, it would be disasterous. They'd see right through the stupid things they are being asked to do everyday in school. I don't know about you, but I would never deliberately put myself into a situation like I experienced in school. And I sure as hell wouldn't put a child through that experience!
RE Higher standards, we should ask for higher standards in terms of quality, not test scores. They are two very different things. Asking for higher test scores alone is asking for WORSE SCHOOLS! Don't believe me? We should all learn from Texas:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/groups/civilrights/c
and
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/
So in closing, you can spend all the money you want. But it won't make a difference unless you spend it wisely.
James.
Would it make it sound any better if I said that Rush Limbaugh also think the same way that I do about them?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
> > That's how the Senator - who voted against secure handgun storage, and twice against child safety locks - positioned himself as our noble defender of children.
> If you think Handgun Control Inc. has anything to do with gun safety, you have been smoking too much weed.
While I don't agree with your general sentiments, I do agree that there is an enormous crock of stinky stuff involved.
For instance, who actually uses locks on their handguns?
Scenario #1 -
Dope dealer: Hold on a sec, G-man. We'll shoot it out as soon as I wake up enough to find the key to my gun lock.
Scenarion #2 -
Honest resident of bad neighborhood: Hold on a second, burgler man. Let me take the lock off my gun so I can defend my family and possessions.
Frankly, I think the gun lock issue was a content-free PR move on both sides of the issue. For one side, it was a meaningless "concession" that helped prevent more serious concessions. For the other, it was a meaningless "triumph" that lets them claim progress where none is actually being made.
I suspect a few people will actually use their gun locks. More power to them. But I seriously doubt that enough people will use them to have any measurable effect on the rates of accidental or deliberate shootings.
--
Give me a candidate who speaks out against the war on drugs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And don't forget the current sentacing dispairities between powder cocaine (primarily used by whites) and "crack" cocaine (primarily used by blacks), and other laws which, while technically colorblind, have resulted in a fantastic number of black persons being convicted of felonies instead of misdemeanors and thus being stripped of the vote.
Maybe it is already too late. Who was it that said that the US is at that awkward stage, too late to work within the system but too early to shoot the bastards?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I used to believe that. Then I reconsidered. The problem is not that religion (an outside influence) causes one to become less intelligent. The problem is that less intelligent people are drawn to religion. In the 1st century AD or CE, the Greeks had proven that the world was round and they had a number for the circumference off by about one or two percent. They had logically discerned the world rotated about the sun and had even come up with atomic theory, the idea that matter has a smallest point at which point it was indivisible without changing what the matter was. The concept of using steam as a source for work was proposed, but rejected because "we have slaves to do that." (The idea was that, by lighting a fire by the doors of a temple, water in pipes would boil, the steam would expand, and the doors would open.) Then, Christianity rolled in. By the 4th century AD, the universe rotated about a plate of the earth, which one could fall off. The Western Roman Empire fell apart after Theodoric tried valiantly to salvage it. The Dark Ages in the West lasted for centuries. In the East, in the Byzantine Empire, the intellectuals were all but drafted to the service of the Church. From philosophy, which was condemned as a pagan outbranch, they turned to theosophy. Some new research continued, and some impressive things came out of it (look at Ayia Sophia, a church about 150 meters square, built in an earthquake zone, and lasting one and a half millenia!) However, Europe was thrown back for 1500 years after Christianity, until brilliant people like Gallileo, Newton, Copernicus, and their ilk came up and said, No, this is how the universe works, with numbers and not vaguaries.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I believe in God. I do not however believe in religion.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Hitler was elected. It doesn't make much difference when the majority of the people are sheep who are easily deceived.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
That's a load of BS. It's only true if you include suicides, which is a stupid thing to include because it's intentional and self-inflicted. If there wasn't a gun handy, the person would prolly just down a bottle of pills or something.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Secure handgun storage? Child safety locks? These aren't gun bans.
No, but they do effectively render the gun useless in the event of an emergency in which you need it (i.e. someone breaks into your house or your ex-spouse is trying to break in the door to kill you). Not much better than a ban really.
These two bills are intended solely to prevent children from reaching guns and hurting themselves/others with them.
While I can appreciate the intent, I can't condone their tactics. Education, training, and enforcement of existing laws would be a lot more likely to prevent such things from happening and we'd still have a means of self-defense that was worth a damn when we need it. Look at the situations where a kid gets ahold of a gun. Often the parents or others are fscked up beyond belief and leave the guns laying around for the kids to pick up and walk off with. Think more laws are gonna fix that problem?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Overall this is an excelently researched and written article. I think that it is wasted if it is 'only' posted on slashdot (preaching to the converted). It should be submited to more 'mainstream' media.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Take a look at states with concealed carry laws. Violent crime has gone down even further in those states precesely because a criminal doesn't know if his next victim may kill him. Where do we see some of the most violent crimes today? Airports... because the criminals know that their victims are unarmed. How often do you hear stories out of major tourism places like Florida regarding foreigners being targetted? Criminals have to think twice before they go after someone who's armed
Where shall this end? Is some property really more worth than a life?
When criminals realize they will either spend the rest of their life in prison doing hard time or be killed by attacking an armed victim. Crime persists today because the penalties for committing them are too light. If a criminal is forced into hard labor in a system that supports PENANCE, he'll think twice before committing some crime against another human or society at large. If they think they're going to get their wrists slapped or suffer a mild punishment of 3 meals a day, cable tv, free college education, free weight room, etc, what provides the impetus for them to act in a legal manner? It sounds nice to think we can rehabilitate people but something like 75% of all parolees violate their parole and go back to prison... we need to tell them "If you commit a crime, you will be punished for it... and you can't blame society or your parents. You're not a victim... you committed a crime of your own will." Is property worth more than life? Certainly not... but only some violent crimes are caused by desire of property - many are the result of a desire to hurt another human (see rape, serial killing, bombings, etc). Would you want your mother to be able to have some amount of self protection from a rapist or would you rather her tell the attacker "but you're only supposed to want my property"?
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Forced contributions to his college PIRG groups:
College PIRG groups, which Nader founded and leads despite his denials of control, use an astonishingly undemocratic, even coercive funding mechanism that Ralph designed. Once a college approves, all students are automatically billed a few dollars out of their student fees to support the local PIRG. To avoid paying, students must make a special trip to the Registrar and fill out a form so they can get their $2-6 back. Most don't of course, out of inertia or because they aren't even aware they're funding Ralph. That's why record and book clubs use the same mechanism. Nader, like most consumer advocates, opposes these billing methods as a rip-off - unless they fund his own groups. One PIRG worker estimated that at Penn State alone, forced payments would have brought in $270,000 a year, while a voluntary checkoff would only have raised $30,000
There's much more. I wish people would apply the the same level of suspicion to third-party candidates that they apply to popular candidates.
-$20? I wanted a peanut.
Sarchasm: The distance in understanding between a person who makes a sarcastic remark, and the person who completely fails to grasp the slightest clue of what the speaker meant.
I don't usually flame Slashdot commenters en masse.
I'll make an exception for every single one of you who paid way too much attention in Stats class and far too little attention in English.
Jamie's point wasn't that we need more violence. I don't care what he said; it doesn't take more than a few moments of reflection to realize Jamie's point was to brutally shred the conjecture that A) Video games have turned our kids into bloodthirsty murderous beasts and B) The people wishing to blame everything on violent games have any legitimate intention of truly protecting our children(as opposed to just trying to make a quick political buck).
Seriously, folks. Figure it out.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
If so, sign the pet ition @ e-thepeople.com: "We, the undersigned, hereby state that each of us is the child whose heart was turned dark by time on the Internet, as mentioned by the Governor during the second Presidential debate.
Further, we hereby declare the Governor to be a big smirky doofus."
we come in peace for all online
The facts speak for themselves. If seeing violence has any effect on children's actions, it obviously makes them calm and peaceful.
:)
I think this is inaccurate. The effect of the Internet and video games is that kids are at home surfing the net and playing games. They have something to captivate their interest enough that they aren't blowing each other's heads off.
--josh
--sysadmin for ibm's ebusiness web farm
The genie is already out of the bottle... there is no way you're going to eliminate guns from the hands of criminals in the US so the best thing to do is to have an educated and armed populace to defend themselves. If a criminal thinks he may die in the commission of his crime, chances are he'll think twice about doing it.
What lots of people don't realize is that jail doesn't rehabilitate anyone.
Jail isn't about rehabilitation. It's about paying back society for your crime. The root of the word "penitentiary" is penance... which is defined as punishment to show repent for wrongdoing. We're too easy on criminals today... instead of making them pay for committing a crime, we treat them like they're the victim. They aren't. The chose to commit an act against society and deserve to pay the price for that willful violation of the law.
If you want to fight do something about society, take care that there is no reason to commit a crime.
You're living in some socialist utopian fallacy if you think this is even possible. Humans have shown time and time again the willingness to commit a crime even if there is no reason to commit one. Nobody's desires are the same as everyone else's... Some people are simply wired wrong... even rich people commit heinous crimes despite the fact they have everything they could ever need. Make someone think twice about having to do hard time for committing a crime and keep the prisoners locked up for the full term of their sentence and suddenly the desire to commit crime will plummet.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
I've come to the conclusion that the whole gun debate in the US, and the pot debate in Europe represent 2 very different views of governments:
:)
Europe: We don't care much about what you can do to yourself, that's your business. However we will restrict stuff made to harm others.
US: We don't care what you can do to others. But we will restrict stuff made(or grown) that might harm you.
ok.. I havent worked it out completely yet, but feel free to comment
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I grew up in NYC where contrary to what most people think they know, most of the people killed by guns are in fact not killed randomly by criminals but instead by someone they know or live with. And most people killed by gun in their own home are killed by their own gun or by one kept in their home by somebody else.
Good or bad these are the facts; in NYC the boogie man theory just doesn't play out.
we need better parents!
You'll never get anywhere in politics by blaming the people who vote for you. Even if you're absolutely 100% right. You will never see a politician with this position get elected, which is a shame, since I firmly believe you're right.
People don't pay attn to the mod strings, mostly to just "+1" or "-1".
And there's no way to mod "Funny but true".
--
we need better parents!
I think the Onion said it best:
FBI to Require Background Checks On Child-Care Providers; Child-Havers Unaffected.
--
Kudos to jamie for actually going out and doing the research. Mainstream media is so preoccupied with declaring everything a "crises" they pay no attention to actual facts.
Given those numbers and the supposed "increase" in exposure to violent entertainment, one could logically conclude that violent entertainment actually LESSENS crime.
It seems like such a simple, logical, obvious contradiction -- leaders take credit for decreases in crime rates, while at the same time demanding greater restrictions on personal freedoms in order to combat the "crises". Well, which is it?
The fundamental problem is that Americans get their impression of the rest of the country through their televisions. One horrible incident (such as Columbine) creates the impression that the same thing is happening all over the place. "We have to act!"
Result -- Absurd zero-tolerance policies that get kids suspended for carrying keychains with 1" models of guns.
Geez America. Grow up.
-- In the future, everyone will code Perl for 15 minutes. --
Good luck getting the general population of Slashdot to agree on a candidate. If you picked five Slashdotters at random and asked them who they supported for President, you'd get at least six different answers. The only things we even come close to agreeing on are that Linux is good and CmdrTaco can't spell, and you could probably get quite a few dissenting opinions on both of those points.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
This was the most insightful and best researched bit of social commentary I've ever read on Slashdot.
I don't fully blame Congress or the candidates in the US for this situation. I hesitate to say this next bit: I blame the competition among the local news programs. I believe that in the competition for viewers, the major networks and their local affiliates learned that highlighting local stories involving violence, sex, and preferably both attracted viewers. The teasers like "see how this ordinary housewife obsession led her to kill her lover, after these messages" wouldn't be used unless they worked. Just as websites are judged by advertisers for their 'stickiness', TV news programs fight to keep viewers glued to the channel. The resulting coverage becomes more focused on violence than the statistics alone would justify.
A second important point is one of perception. The media may run one two minute spot discussing the "drop of violence according to a recent government report" and 200 stories about individual violent acts. To the viewer, the repetition will win out.
I'd like to conclude by saying that we also have ourselves to blame. As the viewing audience, we could select alternate news sources like Public Television (US) or the BBC. But we don't. Instead we gossip around the proverbial water cooler about the horrible carnage on last night's news. Maybe today's news is yesterday's gladiatorial combat.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
I do not support Bush. I think he is an idiot. I don't particularly like Gore, either. I don't think violent media contribute significantly to violent children (they may be related, though). But Jamie is being just as slippery as either one if he's claiming these numbers prove anything.
Example 1:
1993: Students' violent crimes: 1,438,200.
1994: Students' violent crimes: 1,424,200: a 1% decrease from the previous year.
1995: Students' violent crimes: 1,290,000: a 9% decrease from the previous year.
1996: Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,134,400: a 12% decrease from the previous year.
1997: Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,055,200: a 7% decrease from the previous year
First of all, how did the word "nonfatal" get in there in 1996? Are we still measuring the same thing with different terms or are they apples and oranges?
Second, I notice that student information from 1998/1999 is not given. Why not?
Third, why did you start in 1993? Why not start way back BEFORE violent video games made an appearance to get a baseline? If there was a big jump when gaming started, then recent fluctuations are moot.
All in all, poorly presented--especially since this is a technical forum, you damned idiot, not a pulpit for you to expound your personal political views..
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
To be honest, I don't know if the last part is true or not. It seemed likely that proportion of orphans executed compared with the general executee population is pretty constant from state to state. I thus base my claim on the fact that Texas executes more people than any other state.
--
--
E_NOSIG
I didn't interpret that as an attack on someone else's rights; rather pointing out that while the senator wants to regulate something that has, at best, a tenuous association with violence, in the form of depiction, the senator opposes any attempt to regulate a tool which is favoured as an actual method of delivering violence.
Since both gun ownership and free speech are protected by the US Constitution[1], it seems intellectually incoherant to attack depict tools of violence while defending the tools thereof.
[1] I'll let others argue to what degrees.
Correlation does NOT imply causation. You are guilty of exactly the same crime you are accusing GW of.
Just because computer games were on the rise in the 90's and violence among teens was on the decline DOES NOT mean that one caused the other, or vice versa.
Please go read some Richard Fenyman - he had the right idea - what you are doing is pseudoscience, and in the end it will only cloud things up and push us away from the real causes and solutions.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
I'm sorry, but I have to take exception to this. His article wasn't well presented at all.
He gives great quotes and statistics and backs them up with links to reputable places. But correlation does not imply causation.
There is no attempt to make a direct link between teen violence and video games anywhere in his argument.
Who knows, maybe there was a similar increase in the sales of bananas since 1993; does that mean that bananas are responsible for the decrease in teen violence? Of course not! Likewise, video game usage may or may not have have been a cause (or effect) of teen violence, but no good evidence for that is found in his argument.
This method of saying "look at this graph! this is going up and this is also going up so this must be the cause of that" is really bad science.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
Nothing new really.
Kids ignored by their parents? Yes of course current generations invented these things didn't we?
I think the real problem is that this is just a large example of what I cold "golden age syndrome" (social psycology probably has a better term but I only had one class in it). Which is the tendancy of people to think "Things were better back when..."
There seems to be a general sense of "things are getting worst". and of course "this didn't happen back when I was a kid".
I am pretty sure that people have been saying this for the past few thousand years, and with the exception of changes caused by technological advances, they have almost always been wrong.
Kids doing violent things? How about Leopold and Loeb? They were teenagers who killed kidnaped and killed a classmate of theirs, back in the 1920s or so.
Ok, maybe prior to the past 40 years or so, semi-automatic guns were not as available. Better weapons certainly allows violence to be scaled up (like columbine) but seriously, its nothing new, just more of the same.
The only real change that I see, over the past 50 years, is the end of the cold war. Now there is no "Big bad enemy" that our media can focus on. So what happens? We hear more about bad things going on at home. Its not the big bad russians who want to kill nuke our children - its the guy next door.
Serial killers, sociopaths, and people who just like being violent, have existed since the dawn of time. The only thing that has changed is our ability to find out about them (and find out about them and find out about them).
Of course, being a MA native, I would be lax to not throw good old Lizzy Borden into the mix. wasn't that over a hundred years or so ago that she felt the need to axe her parents about a few things? (so what if she wasn't convicted - its pretty widely believed that she did it)
To bring out the old cliche "the more things change, the more they stay the same".
Human: Same animal - new toys.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The problem I have with this is that you're basically doing the same thing that the people who blame the internet for violence are doing: spouting off statistics without proving a relationship between them.
Is it really Doom that caused the drop in crime rates? Or is it better law enforcement at the state and local levels? Is it mandatory sentencing? Was it caused by things that happened 15 years ago? PROVE IT, or you are as bad as they are.
I have to say that Bush's quote about the Columbine shootings being related to the internet was weak. It certainly sounded like he was blaming the net, at least in the sound bite that got picked up on the radio this morning.
(On the other hand, I have to point out that Gore's assertion that more gun control would have prevented Columbine is absurd. The killers broke something like 19 different laws getting their guns, the problem was that they didn't get CAUGHT doing it. It was a failure of enforcement, by the police, and the schools, and the families, not a problem of not having enough laws on the books. But with Gore, as with all gun control types, all it will take is just one more little law, and one more little right surrendered. Then everything will be fine and the sun will shine 24 hours a day. And when that doesn't work, they'll do it again. This is off-topic, I know, but I had to say it.)
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
vote libertarian. they know how you feel.
You'r right. I turned out ok becasue of my parents. We had guns, and my father taught me how to shoot. HE took responsiblity for my upbringing and taught me right from wrong. I've played all those violent games and I'm ok. Plus, everybody is too woried about upsetting someone and not speaking their true views. God forbid if someone wouldn't get elected if they pissed someone off. I like Bush, I don't agree with his views on the internet, but moraly he's a good guy. Gore, I can't trust what he says. If he invented the Internet, maybe we should bring him up on charges because his Internet indirectly killed all those kids. (And watch how fast he back paddles) :)
It is well know that crime rates follow econimic trends. We are currently in the bigest economic boom this side of the 60's. Let's face it.. in the 80's the economy was in a depression. Crime rates rose as a result. Now we are in an economic boom, there is less stress in the general population.. and the crime rates are falling.
Now violance in schools.. that's a good question. Why do kids come in to school with guns and start shooting? It might have something to do with opression.
You cannot effectively defend your own rights by attacking someone else's.
You can defend your safety (your right to life, if you will) by attacking someone else's rights. You are most likely alive right now because everyone else's right to kill you has been taken away by the government, while this does not prevent every murder, it prevents a whole lot. I know there are plenty of people I would have killed in the heat of the moment if I knew there would be no repercussions from law enforcement, I would drive much faster if the government didn't take that right away, and I would steal food from the grocery store if the government didn't take that right away.
You do obtain security by taking freedom away. In a truly free socity, anyone would be free to take your freedom away.
I don't know why you're singling Bush out as being opposed to free speech. Gore and Lieberman are the ones running around announcing their plans to censor all entertainment media (that is, when they're not attending fundraisers in Hollywood). Also remember that Clinton and Gore enthusiastically supported the Communications Decency Act (unanimously struck down by a mostly Republican-appointed Supreme Court) and the Clipper chip. Censorship is not really a Democrat vs Republican issue; neither party has any objection to abridging freedom if they think it will help them win votes from soccer moms or bible-thumpers. One of many reasons I'm voting Libertarian.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
>This was the most insightful and best researched bit of social commentary I've ever read on Slashdot.
Repeat after me: CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION.
His argument has great numbers, but he doesn't establish a single link between the two. He might as well have put up the number of bananas shipped each year and tried to correlate that with teen violence.
Wake up people, his method of argument is just as bad as the people who claim that video games DO cause violence in teens. You all just happen to like his conclusion better, so you are ignoring that it is pseudoscience.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
Kids kill themselves with guns 1/10 as often as they kill themselves with a swimming pool. Where's the hue and cry to ban those?
Here in MA, many towns have laws regarding pool safety, mostly so that kids don't get into your yard and drown in your pool. There has to be a fence X feet high, with no gap larger than Y (meaning usually picket fences). Locked (padlocked) gates to access the pool area. Plus you're still responsible even if someone gets around all that and still drowns in your pool. Homeowner insurance is typically higher as a result of this.
I don't recall hearing that homeowner insurance is more expensive if you have firearms - maybe it is.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
But I also disagree with Slashdot's statement: "If we really want less violence in our schools, we obviously need more violence on our Internet.
Do you really believe there is some kind of Human Violence Quotient that all humans must maintain? I hope not.
I think the real problem is that the entertainment industry is taking advantage of this lack of supervision to groom super-impulse-consumers.
Ask any parent if they think they're at war with the entertainment industry for the minds of their children -- they'll say YES!! The entertainment industry preys specifically upon people (and especially children) with low self-esteem and brainwashes them into becoming lifelong impulse shoppers.
The more low-self-esteem people out there, the better! One of the most common advertising messages out there is, "You didn't buy a Widget? Now everyone thinks you're weird!!" Unfortunately, many low-self-esteem people find violence and violent video games as a way to feel in control.
If Al Gore created the internet, and the internet causes violent crime, then logically Al Gore causes violent crime!
Come to think of it, I don't really remember to many school shootings before Clinton and Gore came to power.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
...The facts speak for themselves. If seeing violence has any effect on children's actions, it obviously makes them calm and peaceful...
Correlation does not imply causation. This article correlates an increase in violent movies & video games with an overall decrease in violent crimes. The claim that exposing a child to violent media makes them "calm and peaceful" is absolutely outrageous. I'm not saying the claim is necessarily false, but you have no direct evidence for this. Only controlled studies with repeatable results can suggest causation.
Here's an example:
Children with large feet tend to be better readers. Does this mean that large feet facilitate reading, or that the language center of the brain somehow influences our growth? No. All it means is that older children (who generally have larger feet) tend to be able to read better than younger ones.
While you accuse politicians of spreading disinformation, you're doing the same yourself. The only difference is that your disinformation conforms to your value system.
how long have we been hearing that solution? if no other cause for the crisis du jour seems immediately relevant: blame parents.
Are parents not legally and morally responsible for their children until their children reach adult age?
The reason that particular solution hasn't gone away yet is because as a general rule parents aren't taking responsibility for their children's upbringing. They pop 'em out, plunk them in front of the TV/computer/N64 and then blame everyone else when their kid turns out to be the next psychopath.
As a parent of two (soon three) children myself, I know damn well how much hard work it is to raise kids (and these kids aren't even old enough to cause real trouble yet!) -- many parents just don't realize how much effort is required and when they do, they slough it off since it's "too much".
So yes, better parents is the answer.
I say that and get flamed,but you get modded up...hmmm :) At any rate, i grew up playing doom, mortal kombat, quake, etc etc and i haven't killed anyone. I can't even bring myself to litter...so i really have a hard time buying its the video games. Maybe its possible if you sit your kid in front of them instead of raising them, but thats not the game's fault the parent is negligent.
i proposed this more than a year ago on mentalhygiene
well, something like this. more violence on the internet==less violence in reality, more porn in school==less violence in school. it's a similar tack, anyway.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I appreciate the tongue-in-cheek commentary on political hype, but correllating an increase in violent games and movies to a decrease in violent statistics is just as bad as what the politicians are claiming.
(Emphasis mine.)
If you realize it is tongue in cheek, then why do you say it is just as bad? It's not. It's tongue in cheek! Is he really saying that increasing the amount of violence on the internet and movies causes a decrease of violence amoung the young in real life? No.
Actually, they should look at what happened when some countries banned violent games. The graphs of ciminal age for those countries durring those years should not be falling as fast as prior to banning games (or should be increasing). This is still just corrolational evidence, but it's more convincing.
Also, it's possible that the "training" and desencitisation kids get from violent video games is exactly what they need to prevent violence. Simply, practice improves your critical thinking during violent situations which leads to a better understanding of the advantages of a nonviolent solution, i.e. kids learn to minimize the effects of adrinolin and/or the violent situation on their judgement processes.
Actually, that would be an interesting studdy. Do kids who play violent video games manage to get out of more fights without violence. If the result's were positive then it would go a long way towards showing that violent video games really do decrease violence among kids.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
She was satirizing their comments more then making her own point. She was showing that if Bush or Gore want to point to the Internet or the Movies as the cause of violence, she can be just as ridiculous in showing that they are the solution to violence.
I'm 100% certain that if you sat down jamie and asked her (I'm assuming it's a female jamie, and if I'm wrong I'm sorry) she would tell you that she doesn't really believe that Doom is directly lowering the rate of violence in this country.
--
RumorsDaily
You'd think so, wouldn't you? My wife is a nanny for 3 boys between ages 2 and 10. Both of their parents are Ph.D.s and are tenured university professors. I think they qualify as "intelligent" and "well-educated".
However, these people are about the worst parents I've ever heard of. The mother has no clue about nutrition (gives her kids cookies or even a bowl of bacon bits for breakfast - I kid you not). The father will leave the kids alone in the house while he goes out for coffee. Both of them let the youngest stay up until nearly midnight. Discipline is non-existent, and each child knows how to push the parent's buttons just so. To wit, the 3 year-old was getting HARD CANDIES for BREAKFAST when he was less than 2. Stupid, AND dangerous.
So, a clarification: We need intelligent people who are well-educated about being parents. Frankly, intelligence and higher learning do not a good parent make.
Mr. Ska
Of course, after that we'd no doubt see a five day waiting period to buy a gallon of gasoline, and federally mandated gas cap locks.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The truth is that the Republicans decide, after the string of school shootings that the best way for them to defend their positions on guns was to ratchet up the Culture War. The Democratic presidential ticket is just as right wing on the Culture War as the Republicans are, there is no significant difference between the two tickets on the First Amendment.
I'm probably tilting at windmills with my Libertarian vote, but as far as I'm concerned a vote for the two party system is a wasted vote, and I don't feel like sitting home on election day feeling irrelevant as the Democratic and Republican sharks circle around the US Constitution deciding with part to chomp off next.
As a game developer recently wrote in Computer Gaming monthly, games are going to take the fall for Hollywood, because Hollywood has more clout with the old men than the Gaming Industry. The studies which supposedly "prove" that violent video-games lead to violence in real life are junk science (see my sig), but that won't matter to people who believe that creation science is not an oxymoron. (Or even to some others, who may scoff at people who believe in creation science but will choose to believe the nonsense behind these studies because it fits in with their world view, or gets them money and political power.)
America is not a free country, it is only free compared to worse places. When you go to a movie, you don't see the same one they can show unedited in Europe. When you play a game, you play a different version than they play in Japan. It's a new age of censorship, with the government putting legal muscle behind region based censorship.
We will continue to hear, from the fascists who now populate the Republican and Democratic parties that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." If you can put aside the reality of life in modern America and believe that, I envy you. Unfortunately, I am incapable of destroying my powers of reason to the point where I can agree with such a statement.
We are heading into a new dark age, and no one is putting on the brakes. Where is a public voice against censorship? Where is a cry for reason over emotion?
Not in American political life, that's for sure!
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The problem is not the growing number of school shootings, but the growing number of school shootings of white teenagers against other white teenagers.
I lived in Philly most of my life growing up, and there were always lots of shootings and incidents in the city schools. But they were predominately in the black schools, and so nobody put up much of a fuss about it. I think it just goes to show how the media is still an ethnocentric device of the majority race of this country.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
As others have pointed out that Jamie is the author of this one, not Katz.
Aside from that, despite its name, fuzzy math and its accompanying multi-valented logic (correctly used) is typically much more accurate than traditional math with its bi-valented logic.
I cracked up while watching the first presidential debate when George W. Bush tried to condemn Al Gore's numbers with allegations of fuzzy math. It became quite apparent that Mr. Bush has no comprehension of advance mathematics. The same can likely be said for Mr. Gore, but I don't have any firsthand evidence of that.
have a day,
-l
What's really funny about this is that you'll get a lot of people nodding their head in agreement, and then they'll go out and vote for the most socialistic candidate.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This is not a flaimbait or a troll but honestly how can anyone with a frontal lobe, let alone a techno geek, vote for Bush?
Because out of the only two with a real chance of winning, Bush is the one who is more like me on issues that I consider to be important. Bush may not be the brightest bulb on the string, but he feels the way I do about Second Amendment rights, he feels the same way I do about abortion. He feels the same way I do about taxes. Ditto for the death penalty. And he is in no way beholden to the eco-whackos.
There should be an IQ test for gun ownership in this country.
People who think like you are precisely the reason why I'm voting for Bush.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You can always vote for me as a write-in vote. As president, I promise I will:
I'll remind you that it was the present administration, with Al Gore's vocal approval, that signed into law the Child Online Protection Act, later found unconstitutional. After it was overturned, the Clinton administration said it wanted to enact a new law that would pass muster with the Supreme Court. Plenty of Democrats in Congress voted in favor of that bill. Even more recently, Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman has threatened the movie industry with legislation if it doesn't do more to keep its more violent/sexy material away from young people. Blaming the net for social decay isn't an activity limited to Republicans, nor is the desire to censor what people see.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
There is absolutely no correlation between the two. In both games you aim (usually with a mouse) and click. All that teaches you is quick motor-reflexes and how to anticipate actions. And, of course, how to predict the blast radius of the ever changing rocket launcher.
When firing a rifle/pistol, there is actual body control involved. Using a scope or raw sights means your brother has very some level of control over his body. He is smooth, doesn't shake munch, and is a very precise shot.
It's not as if pointing a mouse and being able to rest a rifle in your shoulder are similar. Besides, in many cases, video games have lax physical rules about the exact spot to hit someone and produce damage.
It's just silly to say that learning how to gib someone in your favorite game means you're going to be able to go out and fire a pistol, or rifle, like the best marksmans out there.
piffy
www.piffy.org -- me.
It might be the oppression that comes with the peer system that's triggering the violence. But just straight up normal oppression? nah. that's crap.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Good piece, thank you! You listen to NPR, and appreciate good logic. Did you catch that story a few days ago when the Milosevic government fell? An NPR story spun the story about how "good" the Serbian people are because they are to a man armed, and yet had a revolution with no bloodshed. See the logic? The US has too many murders, therefore too many guns. Serbia has little killing, therefore... good people.
Anybody care to notice that the drop in the crime rate seems to mirror the economic prosperity that started circa 1992? This, by co-incidence, happens to be "due to the Internet", if you believe Gore and Bush. Just asking...
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
What to do? Well, I'm voting for a candidate who supports my right to buy whatever games I want, play then whenever I want, send or receive any form of communication via the Internet or any other medium without being intercepted by government agents, rent or buy any film I want, and do all of this without paying any federal income or sales taxes. Sound good? If so, then check out Harry Browne. He's on the ballot in all 50 states and - I'm not 100% sure, but - hold your breath - I think he's actually read the Constitution at some point in time!
If you don't want your Net to be taxed (Gore) or censored (Bush), vote for the candidate who actually supports your views, not just the lesser evil of the two drones you may have watched last night. Blatant plug? Sure. Offtopic? No damn way. If you vote for Gore, you're saying that you support higher taxes (and censorship - Lieberman, anyone?). If you vote for Bush, you're saying that you support censorship (and higher taxes - come on, do you really see this guy resisting money coming his way?). Well...do you?
games are so good at training individuals to use real weapons that the Army now uses the same technology toward the same goal.
And yet the DoD, the Army, and the Marines say otherwise. The only individual saying they use any video game in this way is a highly paid 'consultant' who makes his money testifying in 'Oh my! Little Johnny has been corrupted by Doom!' cases.
This said, the Army does make use of battle simulators, but the emphasis is on teamwork and battlefield tactics and not on 'Gee, lets get these guys softened up to killing'.
.sig: Now legally binding!
One of the first things you should learn (in any social science class, anyway) is that correlation does not imply causality. Wait a minute. Apparently someone doesn't get that. I'll say it again.
Correlation does not imply causality.
Saying "what we really need is more violence in the media" is a lot like Herrstein and Murray's conclusion in the Bell Curve that non-white people really *are* less intelligent. They conveniently forgot, as apparently you have as well, to look at confounding factors, and so they assigned race as a causative factor of low intellligence.
Now, I'm not accusing you of being a racist. I understand that what you probably MEANT was that "hey, the increase in media violence has not caused a corresponding increase in actual violence." I just wish you'd SAID that. Because what you DID say is that media violence somehow decreases actual violence. Which is preposterous, and not supported by anything.
(Interlude: Sigh... It appears that www.algore.com, and not www.algore.org, is the Gore campaign homepage. I guess that's appropriate, since politicians are basically commercial organizations these days...)
Here are some quotes from a 1998 Gore speech:This speech was given long before the Columbine incident, and (creepily) a few hours before the Jonesboro shooting. The fact that Gore came up with his position on his own, before all the hype started, is in some ways even more disturbing.
On balance, Gore-Lieberman would probably do slightly less damage to our freedom of speech than Bush-Cheney would, but the difference is insignificant. Blaming the movement on the Republicans only reduces your credibility as an activist.
As you might have guessed by now, I'll be voting for Harry Browne. At least he uses TLD's properly.
MSK
Sick of joyless fanatics who claim, "since this is a technical forum, you damned idiot, not a pulpit for you to expound your personal political views" when it is clearly not, as the point has often been made that it is "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters?"
Would you like to look up from your monitor once in a while, and talk about issues in the wide world that are destroying your Liberty, without having to focus in on computers all the time?
Well, try Libertyboard.
Of course, since it's an open board, I can't promise you'll never see a joyless, unhappy poster trying to silence political views that he disagrees with. However, he would have to come up with a better excuse for his desire to silence opposing views than "it's a technical forum."
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Well I do think a politician could get away with blaming the parents. Afterall, this is the USA where nobody would believe the politician could possibly be refering to them. It's always that dumbass nextdoor that's the problem.
Hey all, we have power, we take down servers by our sheer numbers. We are many. Let's pick a candidate and /. the vote.
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How is it regulating the right to own them?
Imposing criminal penalties based upon how you store your firearms is regulating that right.
I'm in favor of civil penalties under certain circumstances but not criminal.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
we need better parents!
now, I am not blaiming anyone here, but where are the parents at in all of these instances? violence prevention starts at home, with the morals and values that are instilled by our parents and peers.
people need to leave our internet, video games, literature, etc. alone and be responsible for the life they bring into this world.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
This campaign speaks to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line, we have begun to disrespect the Constitution, where a "public servant" can walk in and have their heart turn dark as a result of being in Washington, and walk in and decide to take over everybody else's life.
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/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Why is that such an unreasonable course of action, as compared trying to hide and hoping that the gunman kills someone else instead of you? Here is a report (original source here) on a student who did exactly that, and was aided by his experience with guns:
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Does any one believe we'd have the internet if Regan and his buddies were still running the show? I think not.
Then you're a fool. The internet existed before Reagan took the office of President.
Be afraid folks, Bush Jr. will take away all the fun we've enjoyed in the past 8 years. How long before we need a license to run a website?
How long before will we need a license to exersize a constitutionally protected right if Gore wins?
Bush has already stated "There should be limits to free speech" over a gag website of him. His intentions seem pretty clear to me.
ALGORE'S boss had a woman arrested for saying "You Suck" to him.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"we need better parents!"
Yes, we do. But you can't just make that happen by saying it. Here's the REAL issue:
We need a more intelligent, better-educated populace!
Education is known to increase IQ plus it is a lot easier to control the quality of (unless you want to have a Genetic Screening Board) so that is the area we need to focus on. Intelligent, educated people will make smart choices, including raising intelligent children intelligently.
I'm all for defense and "military readiness"--but can't we take 3% of the defence budget in order to triple (or more?) our education spending? More teachers, higher standards (for both teachers AND students), public involvement, PR work to counter anti-intellectualism, etc. Get smart, the rest will follow.
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An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
While I do agree that to draw a link between the presence of violent movies, games, music etc, and real violence is absurd. It is just as absurd to say that the presence of violence in games and movies caused the drop in real world violence.
With 2 million convicts in our prisons, an increase of 1 million from a decade ago, and the proliferation of firearms in the hands of honest citizens, I can't see how violent crime can do anything but go down. Those most likely to commit violent crimes are either in prison or smart enough to refrain so they don't get shot. Those who are neither are dead.
Youth have always been a great convenience for those who want to manipulate the public. Talk about how much something or another is going to hurt someone's kids and how you plan to stop it and you've got their attention if not their outright support. Whether or not that something is harmful to anyone at all is irrelevant if you can paint a dark enough picture of it. The internet is merely another "new threat" in a long list of other supposed threats that have been used over the years to dupe the stupid among our nations voters.
As someone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground, I'm really quite angered by Bush's comment about someone having "their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet." What planet is he on? Or a better question might be what planet are the people on who he is obviously pandering to? Politicians repeat back what they think the public believes, not what they themselves believe. He's pandering to people who vote and who are not online. As a group, the elderly vote more than anyone else. They are also least likely to be online and most distrustful of new technologies and social change. So whats that add up to? Attacking the internet makes grandpa more likely to vote for you instead of Gore.
A new technology which has social impact will always demonized by those who don't understand it. The more quickly a new technology is adopted, the more vigorously it will be attacked.
The internet is simply the latest victim of this mentality. These attacks remind me very much of what happened when television became popular, or rock music. In both cases there was a "moral outcry" from people who didn't have a clue about either one. Television was figuratively demonized, and rock music was literally demonized. Television expanded our horizons, even if most people did watch the Gong show instead of Nova. Today very few people believe that television is inherently harmful to anyone, yet at one time many people believed just that.
The simple truth is that those guys in Colorado didn't kill anyone because of the internet. One was crazy, the other easily led. Psychologists have been working and trying for a very long time to understand the nature and causes of psychosis and other dangerous mental disorders. Last time I checked use of the internet wasn't among their leading theories.
Things like this just go to show you that quite a few people in this world are truly not very bright. I never used to believe that. I liked to think that most people were intelligent. I'd still like to believe that, but I can't. If the average IQ is 100, then close to 50% of the population has a double digit IQ. I don't think the IQ tests have been recalibrated anytime recently, so the average may be 110 for all I know. I do know that for every intelligent person out there, there is another person who is not too bright. It seems to me that our only real hope in the long run is genetic engineering. Imagine if the average IQ were 150 and pretty much no one had an IQ below 125. How much better the world would be without cretins dragging the rest of us down. I think it would be a very good world indeed.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
You know, it's funny, but most of the people shooting each other over heroin and cocaine prohibition don't have computers.
I'm going to make a social observation. Normally, one prefaces social observations with, "I am not a racist; these are just the facts." However, what I'm going to say is probably somehow racist, so I will make no such disclaimer.
Anyone who's read the numbers know that upper-middle class kids with internet access do not commit the majority of crimes. The majority of crimes, actually, are committed by underclass minorities who do not have internet access.
Occasionally, a fairly well-to-do kid will snap after being picked on for long enough, and will pump bullets into everyone he sees. In 1991, two years before Doom, when the most violent game I had was probably either SPACEWAR.EXE or Pool of Radiance, I was actively plotting to drive my mom's SUV through my middle school playground at 80 MPH. You beat a kid up every day for long enough, and he's going to want to kill you. I don't think his cultural influences matter one bit.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Television was rife with cowboy and police show violence: Paladin, The Rory Calhoun Show, Wagon Train, Rawhide, Sky King, and The Rough Riders, Naked City...
Actually, I find the presentation of "clean" violence (bad guy neatly falls down dead without making a mess) more worrisome than Quake-style gore, because it presents violence as unrealistically attractive.
EC comic books were burned by in-bred bible thumpers to save "our youth from corruption."
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
If the hoplophobe lobby hadn't handcuffed them, the school's security guards could have been adequately armed to quell the violence.
Al Gore controls one half million dollars worth of Oil Stock. Who's soul has been sold?
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What if we lived in a world where violence was a good thing because it increased survival rates and was seen as the most Darwinian approach? How would we encourage more violence? How would we refine violence?
I suspect that we would have children practice violent acts with video games. We would also probably have them watch violent movies too.
If we think of violence as a transfer of energy, physical and psychological, then things get very interesting. Then it starts to seem that the more we expose people to violence, in meat space or in a virtual space, the better off they would be in this world.
Who would be the violent role models? I'm not talking about mass murder, instead I am talking about strict beat-you-up violence. This is all hypothetical, of course, but I hope it gets you thinking.
- John
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com
How to Download YouTube Videos
Secure handgun storage and trigger locks are not the answers either. A kid who really wants to shoot up his school will always find a way to get his hands on firearms. The real answer, as has been posted on Slashdot many times, is to make our schools a place no kid would dream of shooting up.
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Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Would this be an example of what Shrub calls "fuzzy numbers", i.e. any statistic that counters the Republican world-view? Like the fact that Texas executes more orphans than any other state in the nation?
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E_NOSIG
I think Canada is an even better comparison. They get virtually the same movies/TV/video games/web sites and their juvenile crime rate is considerably lower.
-B
So, lets break this down: In '95 it went unspecified as to weather or not the "violent crimes" included fatal ones. If it does not, then it would be the same as the '96 guidlines. But if it does, then the '96 numbers would be higher than '95, and that is not an accurate statistic. Further, in '94, the number of fatal murders under 18 isn't specified, so is that included in the "student violent crime" figure?
It is kind of hard to explain, but what I'm trying to say is that if it is starting with the same source of numbers, than by constantly subdividing it into catagories that in part equal less than the previous year, although the sum of the parts is higher than the baseline, it does not make for an acurate statistic.
OTOH, I support what the author is trying to say, I do not think violent games or movies really make a difference in violent crime. But without rock-solid numbers to stand on, the only person you will convince is someone who already supports your beliefs.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
sounds like Are you a Red Dupe? from the fifties. (Although I should point out that the communist quotes in the AD are self-contradictory... you have to read all of them.)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Note that Japan, which has an extremely low rate of violent crime is one of the richest in cultural violence. Gore and sex filled movies, anime, manga (comic books), and tv series are quite prevalent in Japan. Of course, there is significant social conditioning to repress your feelings as well, but it is an interesting correlation. On a slightly different note my brother recently got the opportunity to shoot a real rifle for the first time. Considering that none of my friends or his friends have shot anything more than an bb gun he did pretty well. Bullseye's with a scope and inner diamond using raw sights. He attributes it largely to playing hundreds of hours of Action Quake and Counterstrike. So there are two correlations that would be interesting to see. If the more violent outlets you have the less likely society as a whole is to have occurences of violent crime. And if practicing 'murder simulators' translates to improvments in real world firearms/tactical situations.
On a practical level, when firearms ownership is understood as a defense against an oppressive government, gun licencing runs into the same problems as literacy tests for voting (another defense against an oppressive government). They provide a convenient means for the state to deprive of basic right those it would oppress.
It would be very, very easy to rig tests so that members of racial, political, or religious minorities would not be permitted to pass, just as blacks were set up to fail literacy exams required for voting under Jim Crow laws.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Take a peek at the graph of homicide rates across the world in this month's Scientific American. To everyone on this planet outside of the US it's completely and totally obvious that the constitutional right to weaponry is the biggest cause. Are parents in the US *that* much worse than parents elsewhere? Of course not. Is there more violence on US TV? The rest of the world watches US TV. The cause is gun law. Why do Americans find this so difficult to see? By the way - I'm not making any value judgement about gun laws. If you Americans like guns that's all well and good. Just don't be surprised that this pleasure comes with a price. On the other hand it's interesting to compare with a country that doesn't seem to have laws any more. The homicide rate in Russia is incredible.
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-- SIGFPE
I'm 25. In fact I wasn't of voting age until after William Jefferson Clinton was elected to his first term. What difference does that make?
Reagan is also the father of high technology export laws. Those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it.
I feel the same way about the democrats who are trying like hell to give socialism a chance here.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
As a Brit, we have had similar tragedies, but not to the extent that the US has. True, we have had Dunblane, but that was due to a lunatic with several unregistered firearms.
I _is_ interesting that the two people that the US is planning on letting run the country have chosen to tie the internet to teenage violence. Ok, so there is a possiblity that people who can't distinguish reality from games like Quake might get carried away, but there is a substantial chunk of evidence that shows that games of that nature actually aid reaction times and concentration. Who amongst us has sat down for a quick five minute game of AvP and stood up four hours later? I certainly have.
After a couple of hours playing Gran Turismo on the PSX my driving is pretty ropey, but if I sit down for an hour and talk with my friends before I drive, it isn't a problem. When I get in my car, It actually feels more responsive and I certainly notice more of what is happening around me. In some ways, I concentrate more on what I am doing simply because I _know_ it is not a game.
I totally disagree that the internet is to blame for violence and subversion. The internet simply _is_, it is the people that choose to use the information or can't handle that volume of information that are to blame. In some case, it may be the people that let them use it, but as it's free, who can say where to draw the line? I'm not going to.
Teamwork is essential. It gives the enemy someone else to shoot at
Not too keen on following your own advice, hm?
immediately followed by your sig:
I'm voting for Nader because I'd rather be right than win.,
and topped with your introduction,
I do not support Bush. I think he is an idiot. I don't particularly like Gore, either.
The only official claims to Slashdot's topic that anyone within the organization has made are,
Adding the word 'idiot' to the beginning and end of your post took away all the teeth to your argument. You turned it from a reasoned rebuttal into a flame. Flames are juvenile, and don't lend credence to your point of view.
'Flames' are not synonymous with 'Devil's Advocate'. The Devil's Advocate strategy of debate is to bring up a socratic hypothetical, usually using the other party's own stated reasoning, to show how the opposite conclusion may be reached.
[
Why are there some stats missing from the yearly breakdown? The only stats shown are ones that have a decrease. Were the other stats not shown because they increased or because they were not available?
Jordan
If you have a child that can not tell the difference between a pixel and real life then you need to get your kid into some special schooling and take a serious look on how your raising your kid. Parents these day rely too much on TV to raise their kids instead of doing it themselves. A person psych is influenced the most by their real world environment. If you tell your kids the differnce between "make believe" and the real world and that you shouldn't act your violence out on other people and you re-enforce this on them then there is a high probability that they will not go out and shoot-up their school, the small percentage that would should be in a mental instituion getting some serious help because their mind would be seriously fucked up.
look at the statistics reported. They change as the timeline progresses. IANAS (I am not a statistitian) but this doesn't seem like a good way to prove a point. If you don't report the same data over time, can any real correlation be suggested from the data?
You have no right to keep and bear garbage.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
How about a voter who doesn't fall for political propaganda from EITHER major party.
Political parties pander to those who they want to vote for them. I'm sorry but %1 of the population isn't going to get anyone elected to anything.
Its nothing but propaganda.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
While Bush's comments are groundless, naive, and a smear on technophiles, I really must raise my objections to the idea that participating in virtual violence is some sort of safety valve. It's not. Just like artificial neural nets, our brains pathways become reinforced with activity. Could it be that playing violent video games reinforces pathways that equate violent responses to tense situations? Afterall, the military uses video games desensitize infantrymen to pulling the trigger (without such training, some significant percentage of soldiers in combat will not pull the trigger or will shoot over the heads of the enemy).
Correlation is not causation. Crying censorship is not a convincing argument.
To address some other points made. Good parenting is important. As a parent, I know (or think I know) that the great majority of parents will do just about anything for their children. Parents routinely go to great lengths to secure income while at the same time providing a safe environment, nourishment, and education for their children.
IMHO, it is our society's reward system that is doing great harm to many children's value systems. As a society, we often reward the dishonest and deceitful with great wealth. Specifically, I am speaking of CEO's who use unfair business practices but command incredible compensation, the politicians who abuse the campaign financing laws, and the athelete who justifies his narcistic behaviour with his talent. Don't underestimate a child's ability to cut through crap. It is difficult for a parent to teach honesty and civility when as a nation we (seem to) value treachery and bad behaviour.
So, let's gives parents some credit. Afterall, it's our children that will be financing our retirement. We don't want to save in IRAs only to find the dollar to have no purchasing power by the time we go liquid.
That all said, Bush is absolutely wrong. His comments are very unresponsible. Unfortunately, they will have currency with too large a segment of our population.
Perhaps the best response is to point out the great of achievements of computer science history. Allan Turing cracking Enigma. Medical modelling. Etc.
The reason is not that I'm leaving out numbers to make my argument stronger. That'd be a pretty lousy thing to do! The missing numbers are just not available.
The one crime figure that did increase, 1993-4, as you can see, I left in.
There are many, many sources to pick from but I was mainly looking for figures specifically about teenagers and violent crime. The categories I included are the ones I thought were most appropriate, but unfortunately they aren't all available over the entire Doom/Quake time period.
If you have questions about the numbers, please just click on them; they'll take you to the source (though you might have to search in those PDF files a bit).
And if you find additional numbers of interest, please post them. From what I saw, all violent crime in our country has been decreasing pretty consistently since Clinton took office. The news is all good; picking which figures to use is just a matter of finding your favorite dishes at the buffet.
P.S. Satire. It's a word. Look it up.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
... to leave your guns lying around on the kitchen table, for your kids to shoot themselves with.
Very important right, that.
Does my bum look big in this?
I'm curious if this kind of internet-blaming is a curiosity limited to the U.S., or if it exists elsewhere. I'm sure everyone either read about or at least glanced at the headline earlier about the banning of arcades in Malaysia, so I think this kind of attitude exists elsewhere. Anyone have any examples?
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
You cannot effectively defend your own rights by attacking someone else's.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The truth is, this crusade was created by the big media for two reasons:
1. Encouraging public hysteria always brings ratings.
2. Anything which might cause a person to go to the movies less or watch TV less, which is not also a profit generator for big media, is the enemy.
Think about it.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
He doesn't need to prove causation. It's enough he shows that the violence hasn't RISED during this time. Especially since it such a notable drop, you can be quite sure, that at least the games causes no bigger effect on violence, becuase then the drop wouldn't have existed as is thus.
I knew that my father's rifle was right behind the front door and I often was in fights with the bullies at school. Never did the thought cross my mind to pick up that weapon and shoot my tormentors. See a fox after the chickens or something like that and it was a very dead fox, but you settled your problems with other boys through a manly exchange of fists.
Perhaps we are restricting the kids too much these days? I mean, get in a fight and you are looking at a week's suspension - not the detention (or in the case of very violent scuffles - one day of suspension) of my high school days.
So could a kid get the idea of running through school with a firearm and shooting people from a video game? Sure, but I think someone brought up to cherish certain values (and friends can be just as important as family) can make all the difference.
Just my thoughts, I haven't the slightest bit of higher learning in human behavior. This is coming from someone who started playing first person shooters with Wolfenstein, though mom and dad taught me this: Try to avoid fights, but if you can not - knock their block off.
Andrew Borntreger
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
If you think Handgun Control Inc. has anything to do with gun safety, you have been smoking too much weed. Anyone who opposes their gun ban agenda is branded as being "against the children". The one program that has been proven to work, the NRA's "Eddie Eagle" program, has faced bitter opposition from the so-called gun safety advocates.
I appreciate the tongue-in-cheek commentary on political hype, but correllating an increase in violent games and movies to a decrease in violent statistics is just as bad as what the politicians are claiming. I just fundamentally dislike using bad statistics to back up any argument.
I listen to NPR just about every morning and evening, and violent gaming seems to have a surprisingly objective review there. Just yesterday was an interview with one family on why Diablo II is so popular, with audio quotes from two young boys maintaining that "It's just a game!", and that they can distinguish cartoon/videogame violence from the real thing.
But then, a couple of months ago, they had another discussion about a pre-teen kid esperienced with first-person shooters, and his first experience with shooting a real handgun. The adult observer commented on how steady his hand was, how careful his eyes, how his hesitation at shooting a target was nonexistent -- and then pointed out that these games are so good at training individuals to use real weapons that the Army now uses the same technology toward the same goal.
Do realistically violent games and movies desensitize kids to the real thing? No doubt. Does it do so to the point where actual violence is much, much easier to commit? Unprovable. There are plenty of things that can cause a decrease in crime statistics, from better policing to bad reporting. But claming that there's no correlation at all between virtual and actual violence, even in sarcasm, is just dodging the issue and irresponsible in the extreme.
Best article in weeks. If we had article moderation this would get a 10. Amazing, really: real facts to counter the crap coming out of the politicians...
sulli
RTFJ.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
It works so well. If you took 3% of the defence budget and tripled the education spending, do you know what you'd get? More administrators. More education foundations like the NEA. More stuff....
BUT LESS LEARNING!
Money isn't the problem. Oh, sure there are some schools with money problems, mostly inner-city, predominately black/hispanic schools. Do you know why they aren't getting money? I don't know -- maybe because the money is regulated from Washington?
Many public schools are flush with cash -- and they don't know how to spend it, so they spend it badly.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
A crime is down because people have built jails to cage criminals and the drug of choice (due to higher profit margins for the loosers who sell poison) has shifted from cocaine to heroine. It's just that simple. More animals in jail means less crime outside. Those same people will be sedated by their favorite recreation and motivation for their other crimes. Result, less crime.
The decline in crime is no reason to keep quiet about other repulsive behavior. Music which routinely refers to women as bitches, recomends shooting people, and generally represents the paranoid worldview of complete loosers deserves it's loathing. Video games that take a similar disrespect of human life also deserve criticism. It is wrong to promote murder! It is wrong to glamorize killing and make it look like fun!
Bad attitudes lead to bad behavior. It's not just murder, it's all around selfishness and inconsiderate behavior that is being pushed. Compare TV adverts today to those of just 20 years ago. They have all become "edgier", angrier, and more indignant. "Please me, Please me, Please me!" Barf. Do you have "Battitude" asks Dodge? Just look at how people drive these days. A whole new phrase was invented for being angry while driving. Less consideration for the person next to you is the basis of crime. Expect it to get worse or for incarceration rates to continue to rise.
Can you get warped looking at the web? Well sure you can, just as easily as you could if you checked out a bunch of twisted books and molded in a dark corner by yourself for your entire adolescence. The difference is that there is far more twisted stuff available on the net than I've ever seen in a library or in the real world. No not even friend's drug enhanced voodoo (yes, real religious experiences) adventures in New Orleans were as screwed up as stuff that gets posted to the web. The orignial Dirty Hary was condemed as being too violent. Pulp fiction put it to shame, but the web will take you up close to all that shocked you. As close as you get, it's still glamorized until you can smell it. What is this? The foulest of cruelty glamorized, canned, sold to you and used to sell you other shit. Momma, watch your eight year old. Anti-social habbits can form anti-social behavior. SAVE YOURSELF, GET OUT and LIVE!
Is censorship the answer? NO. Free and open speech can do the job of making evil things repulsive to most people and thereby reduce demand for such garbage. Strong enforcement of state and local obscenity laws can keep these things out of your hair. Parenting your kids can keep them from getting into trouble in the first place.
We should not be slamming George Bush for speaking his mind. He NEVER mentioned censorship, and I've never heard anyone in his party say anything like that. Mostly, they recomend parenting your children, tax cuts over credits for daycare end of the marriage penalty, MOTHERHOOD, wow. Other people have recomended censorship of one form or another and should be beaten accordingly.
Article is a real knee-jerk and writing this has been unpleasent. I have not seen much better from Jamie, who seems to be going for the John Katz award. No, I just have to take him off my reading list. Poster exercises proper censorship of his world, Bye!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'd love to believe that it is true, that's for sure!
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Bush was using the "Dark heart" coment as a scare tactic, to make a point, But he never actualy balmed the internet for the increase in violence in our culture. Instead he imidiately turned around and stressed that we need parents to be (rightly so..) more responsible in the upbringing of their kids. Some parents are, some are not. Gore didn't adress the issue, but just agreed in some vauge fasion. Taking his stance on the enviorment (cars are the greatest threat humanity and the enviorment have seen ect ect...)and the wishy washy government-should-fix-everything-for-you attitude, I can guess where he realy stands.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
Politicians will be politicians. They present us with FUD and then tell us how they'll fix it. Such is the state of campaigning within the US these days. "What have you done for me lately and what will you do for me in the near future." Unfortunately I don't foresee an end to that anytime in the near future.
The answer to your question is that they can't justify it. They bank on the assumption that no one will check the figures like you did. Candidates want to take the moral high ground whenever they can. And they will. Publicly at least.
Like I've always said since this sort of debate started, the real influence on teaching kids right from wrong isn't the entertainment media that they're provided with. It's their parents. My 11 yo son kicks ASCII at TFC but wouldn't hurt a fly IRL. He knows the difference.
Why? Because that's what I taught him.
While Jamie's numbers are correct, he makes the same logical fallacy that Bush did by suggesting that violence in the media and violence in society can be directly correlated.
More likely, other contributing factors (such as unprecendented economic prosperity) had a lot more to do with the reduction in youth violence. Jamie's numbers do not distinguish between violent acts committed by middle-class suburban students (such as Columbine) and those committed by students in impoverished urban areas.
The rest of the games I've played (Total Anhilation, Command and Conquer, etc.) were of lesser help to me, but all served as great way to relieve stress and blow off excess steam. Given that, like most /. readers, I am a software developer/sysadmin, I can accumulate quite a bit of stress at times.
I wish that politicians, religious folks, etc. would lighten up about violence in video games, as I think they are the best thing to happen to geeks like me, in that they give us a harmless way to relieve stress.
I'll shut up now.
Back in 1991 (I was the ripe old age of 14), my mom's new husband raped her, grabbed a gun and told her he was coming to kill my dad, sister and me. Upon notifying he cops of his threat, they said they couldn't do anything until he actually came after us. My Dad and I loaded our shotguns, turned off the lights and waited for him to show up (which he never did since my mom filed charges and he was picked up on the rape count on the way here). Sure, we ended up not needing the gun in this case when our lives were threatened but what about people who've received anonymous death threats and the police refuse to help? Should they be forced to keep their gun locked away where they can't get to it? What happens when a (illegally obtained) gun-wielding thug breaks into your house at night to rob you? "hold on Mr. Robber, let me take my gunlock off before you shoot me." Even if the crook didn't have a gun, he could just as likely have a knife, baseball bat, pipe, whatever. Millions of crimes are PREVENTED each year because of the threat of a gun wielding defender.
I'm all for the 2nd amendment, and i think by law all head of households should be required to take a gun saftey course, and own a gun w/ammo.
Take this a step further. Teach kids in schools what guns actually do. We have fire prevention week in most schools and one day the fire department will come in and explain fire escape techniques. Why can't we have an officer come in and talk about gun safety one day a year? He doesn't need to teach kids how to clean a gun, aim effectively, etc... just teach them that guns kill and when you kill someone, they don't come back - EVER. One of the most effective things you can do is set a watermelon out in a field and shoot it to show what happens when a bullet hits someone's head.
But requiring that they be locked in a closet? That would only seem to be the common sense thing to do if you have guns and kids....my dad did it so i wouldn't play with something i didn't understand.
I grew up with guns in the house. My earliest memories of them were my dad telling me to NEVER touch them unless he was around and gave me permission. I was taught exactly what they did and how they worked. I learned to respect the awesome amount of damage they can do. I saw first-hand what a 12 gauge slug can do to a living body (deer). He gave me my first gun( a 22 rifle ) at age 7. I respected it as a tool of death and didn't screw with it like it was a toy. Why? I knew better. I was brought up in a culture that respected guns and educated me about them. Locking something away and pretending they don't exist(security by obscurity) NEVER really works... education(open review) is the best answer.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
What????
Violent crime among teens is not primarily due to lone crazies. Geeks as a group are not dangerous, they never have been.
Which person is more likely to be violent, a socially inept person who may or may not be into computers, or a member of a street gang involved in criminal activity?
It seems to me like you've bought into the post-columbine mob mentality that says anyone who doesn't fit in is a potential threat. Sorry charlie, but the real world just doesn't work that way.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
You should run for office. Oh wait.. Damn! It looks like you failed the IQ test by scoring too high. You're too intelligent to set public policy I'm afraid.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Federal judge dismisses lawsuit against movie, video game makers
But the times, they are a changin' Judge Upholds Video Game Ban
To quote the judge:
Superstition has won the day, and the arcade business in Indianapolis will suffer for it. Let's say you are one of those people who believe in this fascist law. Can you argue, with a straight face, that this is a fair way to handle arcades, when movie theaters and Blockbuster (which does rent R-Rated tapes, after all) aren't subject to the same Draconian laws?No what's really happening here is the arcade industry is being deliberately targetted for destruction by the forces of ignorance.
America, a Free Country? Not anymore.
Vote Libertarian!
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Don't make me laugh.
Sin is JUST A BRAIN-DAMAGED CONCEPT brought up by some ancient people to explain why people would break perfectly easy to follow anti-murder and anti-adultry laws. There is no such thing in this reality.
It's a CRIMINAL thought that causes criminal behavior. Now you may be all in favor of destroying sinful or criminal thought, but I'd rather live in a world of free-will. Besides, it's not criminal to play Quake, but it would be considerred a sin by the religious right. I think such control over us is and should remain CRIMINAL.
-Ben
"Have their hearts turned dark by being on the Internet" was not an attack on the Internt? Come on get real. Bush does *not* want to blame bad parents he would like to shift the blame to something else. For you see the people who are voting for Bush don't want to feel that it is the fact that they don't spend anytime wiht their kids that is the problem they want to feel that their hearts have been turned dark by the big bad internet. Not my fault now back to ignoring the kid. Don't kid yourself look at his whole history of comments on the Internet he blames it and us to make bad parents feel better.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I've read that the actual reason for the decrease in violence is a decrease in the number of people in the most violent demographics - that is, there are fewer teenagers than before due to the "baby bust" following the "baby boom". I know we now have a "mini-boom" again, but it will be a while before our adolescent population catches up again and starts breeding more crime.
I've never been comfortable with first-person shooters myself, but I think banning them would simply make them more attractive to kids. I see a heck of a lot of smoking around me despite the fact that smoking has proven to be a highly dangerous habit for as long as I can remember.
(I don't smoke or play first-person shooter games, simply because they don't appeal to me).
D
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Consider this: Nearly half of all murder victims have detectable amounts of cocaine in their bloodstream.
In some cities like LA and DC it's an even higher percentage.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Who do you think sponsers your elections? All the campaign money is from corporations and candidates have an obligation to keep their underhanded promises when they get in office.
I may be able to avoid buying Nike, but everyone on the ballot who has a chance of winning has already been bought by the Nikes and others. Publicly funded campaigns are needed to avoid monied interests. Browne isn't against accepting gobs of soft-money just like everyone else on the hill.
Do you seriously think corporations don't have any control over you? You must live in on a planet free of monopolies and corporate abuse. Think Microsoft is bad now? Give them a dose of Browne-style "liberty" and we'll really have something to complain about.
Believe me, guns are WAY more regulated than cars (which ironically kill many times more people daily). I also believe accountibility is important, but some things frightend me about Gore's plan.
Specifically, a national database and registration of all gun owners is resisted by many on the "gun community". Sheer wacko, conspiricy theory types with no grasp on reality? Perhaps, but understand that NEVER before in history has manditory firearm registration NOT led to confiscation. I encourage you to look it up for yourself.
Finkployd
So I don't expect anyone to read this but has it occured to anyone that inner city schools solved this problem long ago - by putting metal detectors in all the doors. Yes? Can't get into the building with a gun. Doesn't that sort of solve the problem? Oh yeah you could go Charles Whitman on everyone, hole up in the clock tower and fire away but I'm not sure if anything can prevent or predict the proverbial American Lone Crazed Gunman Syndrome.
I must be out of step with the rest of the country. I naively think that if a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun and puncturing someone else's head is the problem then perhaps at least part of the solution is to either keep guns away from people or make it harder to bring guns to where other people are, other unarmed people that is.
Yah know I hear all this "guns make us safe" rhetoric whenever somebody talks about making it harder to own one or at least requiring an owner to demonstrate that they are at least minimally responsible. But I have to wonder how victims of crime are made safer when their assailants have a gun.
Ok enough of that it isn't going to change anyone's mind....
Now on to the other issue the Net. Ok let's say for the sake of argument that all the do-gooders are right, there is a predictable correlation between the Net and violence. Ok let's say that's true. Now, how many people are on the net? About a hundred zillion? Now how many people go Lee Harvey on their class mates? 2 dozen? 3? Sounds like pretty good product reliability to me. Actually sounds like the same kind of argument that Chuck "Moses" Heston uses about guns. No? I mean its got to approach commercial airline kind of stats and I don't see anyone suddenly deciding that air travel is so unacceptably dangerous that minors should not be allowed to ride on planes.
And oh yeah - I forgot. Apparently the thousands of hate groups springing up on the net preaching REAL violence and REAL hatred and REAL action against people and against the government is something to be glossed over. Not real important and even if it was the 1st ammendment should protect them. Well not really because the 1st ammendment is NOT unlimited. If anyone doubts this go all the way back to US v. Debs and read the decision. But what the hey pick an imaginary threat and apply it to a generally voiceless group. Lemme see who used that most effectively... oh yeah it was Hitler and then Milosevic, slap on head, silly me I keep forgetting about those wacky guys.....
Since man first made his own spears, the main outlet for anger and violence has been through the art of warfare. You got a kid who likes to destroy and cause violence? Send him to the army! That way he can persue his violent tendencies and promote the interests of the nation at the same time, everyone wins!
Now, with the advent of violent media/games, most of these aspiring killing machines have been pacified by the realistic killing environments that have been created for them in movies/games/comic books/etc, and have no interest in becoming professional 'real-life' killers, they just want to become another Quake World Champion!
The United States, being a military superpower, realizes that it's next generation of soldiers are quickly dwindling due to lost interest in serving in the armed forces. So in the end, the new political agenda isn't about children causing violence, it's about the upcoming lack of violent children enrolling in the armed forces!
UBU
As for closed borders, read more carefully. You'll find that Mr. Browne in fact advocates completely open borders in both directions.
The idea that 3D shooters are some form of katharsis for America's youth is ludicrous. It has been psychologically disproven, you cannot compartmentalize violence in this way. Embracing violent behavior in one location tends to create violent behavior everywhere else as well.
Why is adolescent violence going down then? Because most adolescent violence is caused by people who don't have a sense of "belonging". This is not to say that being a loner means you are a killer, but a common thread in a lot of these teen shootings is that the shooter didn't have many/any close friends. Interviews with the other students go like this "I didn't know him very well but he was always very nice." Getting the picture. The internet changed all that because now, while a young geek can't find people like him at school, he can find them on the net. He "belongs" somewhere in cyberspace. Hence the drop in violence.
Note I am not advocating geek profiling or anything like that. I am saying most school shootings involve loners. It is an observable trend. Thanks to the internet non-social loners in meatspace are much more likely to have a social life in cyberspace.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Actually the decline in violent crimes (and most other crimes as well) over the past decade has widely been attributed to the booming economy. Statistics show that during times of economic boom crime rates decline and during recessions and depressions crime rates increase. However, even though crime rates are as low as they have been in over a decade, they are still much higher than they were 50 to 100 years ago. The biggest increase in crime rates actually began in the 1960's and for the most part kept going up until the economy got fired up with the technology revolution of the 1990's. Here's where my opinion kicks in: I doubt very highly there is one single cause for the large increase in violent crimes since the 1960's. It is probably a combination of increased violence in films and video games (and yes most likely the internet too), pushing Judeo-Christian values out of the public schools and replacing them with relativism, not disciplining our children to teach them right from wrong because we don't want to hurt their self-esteem and not really caring enough about our kids to find out what their problems really are because we're so busy with our careers that we don't have time for them anyway. I've been a Bush supporter up to this point and I really wish he'd of said something like the above instead. The internet, guns and bombs wouldn't have been a problem with Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris if their parents would have involved enough in their lives to know that they had guns and bombs in plain view site in their bedrooms. Being a parent is not easy - I know I have two of my own - but it is a big responsibility and the reason so many kids these days are so messed up is because so many parents are taking this responsibility way too lightly.
Correlation doesn't prove causality, but it certainly suggests it.
-------------------
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Politicians must think we are idiots. There is no other reason to explain why they keep pushing ideas like "Media violence causes real-life violence". And yes, I think both candidates are to blame.
Let us assume that media violence does cause real life violence. There are then three logical solutions: self-censorship, targeted censorship, and broad censorship.
For self-censorship, the media providers would self-regulate, and not release products with a certain level of violence. The ratings system is a good example, but it primarily works for sex (in the US). If a filmmaker puts in a scene that it too "sexual", the ratings board threatens an NC-17 rating, and the film-makers self-censor for the R rating (with perhaps an unrated DVD for later release). In the UK, they have a similar scheme for violent films. Hollywood could promise to link ratings more closely to violence levels, but it seems doubtful they will do this, since violent flicks are fairly profitable.
In targeted censorship, the film industry would have to actively enforce ratings. This means you would have to show an ID at the movie theater and at Blockbuster to prove you are able to see a rated R or NC-17 movie. But it also means an ID system for kids, to prove the PG-13 level. To really enforce the ratings, they would have to be made law, which brings up all sorts of censorship problems (ACLU, anyone?). It wouldn't change much, since parents who care about rating wouldn't let their children see the movie anyway. For the parents that don't care, they would simply be annoyed when security calls them and says their kid was trying to sneak into the latest teen flick. Not to mention the strain on the juvenile justice system, if it has to handle cases of kids trying to get into rated R movies.
In broad censorship, the government would ban movies deemed too violent. If a federal ratings system is enacted, and violent movies were expanded to "X" ratings, so they could only be shown at "adult" theaters, then this would be effective censorship. Again, I doubt it will come to this, and I'd hate to see what kind of movies get made with this kind of system. I doubt it would survive a Supreme Court review.
Now, let's assume for a moment, that our president wants to pursue one of these options. He can't pass laws without Congress's approval, and, with the Democratic party getting a lot of money from the entertainment industry, I doubt a bill would even pass his desk. They wouldn't come out and say that they are doing it for money, but instead that they are doing it for Free Speech, and because of the weak statistical correlations. They might be right, but not for honest reasons.
He can't really pressure the industry into self-censorship or targeted censorship either, without the threat of law as an alternative.
So, it is A COMPLETELY SAFE ISSUE TO CAMPAIGN ON!!! It gets the voter riled up, makes people think you are the moral candidate, gets you points with the anti-media types, but with ZERO risk of having to fight for the issue! You can "fight" all day, taking the moral high road, knowing that you will never really have to put your ass on the line, or live with the consequences.
The other thing that really pisses me off is gun control. The one thing the executive office can do is enforce the laws on the books, and most gun control laws don't get enforced. This is the one thing Clinton could have done, but instead he attempts to pass new ones. Why? You pass a new law, you can claim credit for any larger society trends. You simply enforce laws, and, while there may be results, your opponents can claim you are taking credit for societal trends. So instead, choose visible signs, such as X thousand more cops, sign laws to close loopholes and enforce them for only 4 or 8 years, yada yada. End result - gun control issue of the day, but never real gun control.
As I said, I'm pretty sure that politicians assume we're idiots, and campaign on issues that they don't have to take risk on (Medicare / Social Security Good, Guns/Media Bad, Moral Values, Character, Rhetoric style), instead of coming up with the best solutions for the problem.
When will an engineer / computer science guy get elected president, rather than these marketing / legal / pointy-haired types?
(Sorry, had to rant)
There are /. readers are from every political persuasion. Most of the /. readers (excluding trolls) are intelligent, free-thinking individuals that will decide who to vote for based on their own values and philosophy. They aren't going to blindly vote for whoever CmdrTaco endorses.
I still don't understand why everyone is harping about violence on TV and video games. They seem to think that these are the root of all evil, and that kids will suddenly play these games and become a violent murderer. If this were the case, then anyone who played Civilization would immediatly become a meglomaniac with goals of ruling the world (well, don't we all?). A correlation of violent media and violent culture does not prove that the cause of the violent culture is the media, it just proves that both of them exist at the same time.
Literature, both through film and through video games are not causes of this violence, but rather they are indications of the violent nature of our culture. You will not solve any problems by curbing violence on TV and stuff like that, you will solve it by attacking the root of the problem (which Bush actually touched on, but was too much of a dumbass to realize where he should have gone with it).
The big problem that how children are brought up and what values are given to them. If you are worried that your children have values that are rather skewed, then you have yourself to blame. Either your values are so screwed up that your children could not help but run away from them, or you did not do a proper job of bringing your children up with the values you wished them to have. I realize that I'm treading on thin ice here, but I'm going forward anyway. If you want your children to behave in a certain way, and hold certain things valuable and push others away, you have to instill these thoughts in them (that is a bad word, but I can't think of another one at this point).
If a culture would instill the values that it wants in a child, then it doesn't matter how many violent movies or video games they play, they really won't change all that much. While you can make the argument that everytime you see something violent on TV your character will be affected in some way, I can tell you that most likely that amount is so insignificant that it really doesn't matter.
That's what Harry Browne stands for, eliminating social programs and social progress. Remember one of the individuals who will be suddenly empowered will be corporations. Think big-business is out of control now, wait till Browne gets his turn in office. Make no mistake about it, Libertarianism is the new Republicanism, just less Jesus. Just look at his views on abortion. He should just become Buchanan's VP.
Back to the real issue, the problem is in a debate when one person says something especially stupid (anti-net propaganda) its the other person's job to jump right on it. But Gore just smiled showing agreement. If this isn't the best reason to open up the debates to third party candidates I don't know what is. Toss the Lib, Green, and the Socialist and we'll have a real debate.
Info on 3rd party candidates can be found here:
Nader
Browne
McReynolds
Buchanan
Read up before you vote, please. show is hardly a place to find facts.
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I must disagree with your synopsis. Here is my argument in a nutshell:
1. As a parent, I *will* give my son video games as I deem appropriate, and set limits on their use.
2. Claiming that Libertarianism is more logical than than our current government has no basis in fact, and no proof. However, I am voting libertarian for congress sometimes, as I believe it could be increased.
3. Sometimes I believed anarchism is better than government, because government does bad things. Or that atheism was better than religion. But are people in anarchies or atheistic governments better off? No.
What matters is freedoms. Such as the freedom of parents to raise their kids in a manner they choose. That freedom (which I believe as a corolary to this argument to be more important than the kids freedom to do whatever the want) is what is upheld by laws such as this.
Freedom to BE ABLE to censor the internet and to BE ABLE to use the internet for an affordable price are what I'm interested in. Freedom to turn down censorship is equally important.
-Ben
I'm voting for Ralph Nader, even though he won't "win" the election. However, your vote will win an important smaller victory! If Ralph Nader receives >= 5% of the popular vote, the Green Party will qualify for federal campaign money for the 2004 election. The Reform Party received $12 million in federal campaign money this year because Ross Perot won enough popular votes in the previous elections. Even if the Green Party isn't perfect, having a louder alternative voice (especially in the televised debates!) is crucial for breaking our "Republicrat" deadlock.
VoteNader.org
cpeterso
Premise 1: Internet and violent video game usage has increased in The United States in the past 7 years.
Premise 2: Violence (among minors) has decreased in the past 7 years.
Conclusion: The Internet and violent video games lower violence (among minors). QED.
But wait! Barney and Teletubbies viewing has gone up during the past seven years too! Not only that but NON-VIOLENT video game usage ALSO has increased! THOSE must be the cause!
In fact, thousands of things have changed, both in parenting methods and schooling methods. Saying that violent video games caused the decline in violence among minors is completely arbitrary without any evidence to back it up.
Consider it done. I'll even create legislation where karma can be traded for frequent flyer miles.
Hmmm. I might be on to something here.