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Hillary, GTA, and High School Football
The LA Times is running a really worthwhile story discussing the recent attack on video games in congress. It talks about GTA, the decline in youth violence, and mentions that football actually encourages real aggression, causes real injuries, and is treated totally differently. It's worth a read. Unfortunately I'm fairly certain that very few U.S. Senators are listening over the sound of hype.
Hillary is doing what do-gooders always do. She's saying: "I'm smart enough to handle this and you're not." (Paraphrase of Penn Jillette)
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
I was wondering this same thing. Could this be a conceivable conclusion? Could it be possible that kids these days are actually getting their adrenaline fix from these games instead of causing real-life crimes (or vandalism)?
When I was a kid the games were much mellower, and less realistic, and I was a hoodlum. I could speculate that if I had these games I would have caused much less trouble when I was a kid.
I've read so many stories on the (unjustified) outcry over GTA:SA. What I haven't read are any stories asking the readers to Write their public officials in an effort to stop this political witch-hunt.
The GTA brouhaha to me is about video games coming of age. They're no longer just about kids and teenagers, but for adults of all ages...it's a $25 billion business, and bigger than the movie industry...and it's just beginning. Sure, more grown-up ratings might shrink the market a bit, but the industry needs to be more creative about expanding the market. Besides figuring how to handle Easter Eggs, and adult content within games, the industry also needs to figure out how to meet the time constraints that adults have in playing games. Yet, most games are in a time warp, with limited ability to save, locked levels (you gotta earn it mentality!). It takes 2-3 hours to see a movie on a DVD and at least 20 hours to play a game. As a decades long gamer, I know it's there's fundamental difference between the two forms, and a totally different experience, but... If I'm springing close to $50 for a game (vs. say $20-25 for a movie DVD), and I don't feel like investing the 50 plus hours to play/replay segments to earn the right to see all the levels, and understand the story, I should be able to have an "auto-play" or "fast-forward to the next level" feature. This could significantly expand the market for games of all types, as more grown-ups can fit a game into their lives in terms of time. More here: http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/05/on_playing_pcco.htm l
Mrs. Clinton is attempting to put herself in a position to be the democratic candidate for the 2008 Presidential election. This has nothing to do with GTA and everything to do with her attempting to strengthen how she is percieved with respect to traditional family values. I am not a fan of Bush and consider much of what he does to be fascist, but Hilary makes Bush look like a libertarian.
Ahhh fun times!
Here's a nice article, neatly summarised by its headline -- "There's Sex In My Violence!
What's this lame soft-core porn doing in my ultraviolent "Grand Theft Auto"?".
This reminds me of one of my first experience of US TV. I was watching "The Godfather" on TBS, in the middle of the day. When Santino beat the living Bejeesus out of his sister's husband on the street, they showed every frame of the violence. 5 minutes later, they pixelated the 3.5 seconds of nude breast (the only nudity in the entire film) in Michael's wedding night scene.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The more she does stupid things like this, the easier it will be to defeat her when she runs for President. It's funny how the most leftist of politicians do exactly the sorts of things that they accuse the right of.
Hillary specifically, and Democrats in general, have a long history of blaiming _things_ for the actions of people. I think it's a case of them not wanting to offend someone who might vote for them someday. "Oh, we can't blame the criminal for doing that, we should blame society/the gun/the judicial system/anybody but the bad guy". Just like this case - let's blame the game manufacturer/reviewing organization, instead of the kid who goes out, downloads a program that adds this functionality to an existing product, and chooses to install it. The kid is making this happen, but she's blaming anyone but the kid.
Yes, I'm sure I'll be modded into oblivion for this, but this is politics.slashdot.org. Before you mod this down as "flamebait" or something, consider that disagreeing with someone doesn't mean they're posting flamebait, or off topic, or whatever.
Not to mention that most of the people who will support such action from the government is the same parents who want the government to raise their kids. I guess the fact that "GTA:SA" comes with an "M" rating on it (well, now "AO") didn't deter mommy and daddy from buying the game. Then they're "shocked, SHOCKED!" (to quote "Casablanca") that there's sex and violence in video games. Too bad responsible parenting has gone out the window.
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
I think Taco failed to read into the author's sarcasm regarding football, but that's ok.
The author of the article seems to have taken some of their ideas from the recent Discover Magazine article titled Your Brain on Video Games. A very interesting read, a lot of which I agree with.
I'm a parent, a geek, and a former athelete (yes, it's possible). Our children (ages 8-15 now) have their homework time and we (they?) split their entertainment up between going outside to play, video games, nonsensical tv, and educational tv (of course, with a few random things thrown in to boot). On top of that, we ask that they play one sport of their choosing, and one instrument of their choosing. The mention of football in the description is a bit misleading. Some of the good things football teaches are
- How to work with other people
- How to get along with people you may not like
- Discipline and focus, with regard to achieving a goal
- Planning and stragety
- Competitiveness, which certainly can help later in life if applied correctly
Other things are learned by playing instruments such as math (in different bases), appreciation for different cultures, etc... but that's a bit off topic here.Video games can actually teach children as well. However, when they start to focus all of their freetime on video games, rather than other forms of entertainment, I think they're mission out on quite a bit. Everything in moderation.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
To be fair, there was a backlash for the violence in the game. And honestly, I don't think kids should be playing it. I am by no means conservative, but I think the game is just in bad taste for impressionable youth. But whatever. The game was given a rating, I don't think it should be outlawed.
What pisses me off is that all the recent uproar is because there was sex in there. You can beat a cop to death, but for Jebus' sake don't show animated boobs! Oh the humanity! Violence is OK, but sex, something natural and essential to our very existence of the human race, is taboo. Superbowl? OK. Boob at the Superbowl? Congressional hearings. Unjustified War? Hmm, OK. The F word is uttered in public? the decline of our moral civilization.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Football doesn't cause aggression anymore than video games causes violence. It's all crap. You might want to think football is the problem because you don't play football but you do play videogames. You are committing the same crime as the members of Congress. You are scapegoating an activity that you dislike.
This is an opinion piece. I happen to agree with it, but calling it a 'story' has different implications about the intended objectivity of the writer.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
This is stupid. Why are all you idiots pinning the blame on Clinton, when plenty of other government representatives are involved, including Republicans.
Congressman Upton, a Republican from Michigan, introduced the bill to congress. It passed 355 for, 21 against, 56 abstain.
Yet nobody here is saying "Oh fuck those Congressional Republicans for introducing the supid bill", or fuck those Democrats and Republicans for passing the bill. You're saying "Fuck that Senator Clinton".
It's true, Senator Clinton also asked the FTC to investigate Rockstar, and it's a stupid waste of time-- ala the Janet Jackson breast exposure.
A male congressmember can be an asshole and nobody complains, but as soon as Senator Clinton gets uppity, you all call her a bitch. Where the even-handedness here?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Is he joking? I mean, does he seriously believe what he wrote there? For one thing, if scores have gone up at all it's because the standard has been lowered over the years. For another, kids in the US, as a whole, are far from "all right" these days. If you don't see that, you're not taking an honest look at the state of today's younger generation.
...because what I've gotten from talking to my parents, grandparents, etc. is that it's ALWAYS been like this. Welcome to old age.
Is this based on anything but a gut-level, kids-these-days, knee-jerk reaction? Just wondering.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
People who use the crazy straw man arguments of Ayn Rand tend to be the type of people who want an excuse to feel good about doing nothing. Her philiosophy is the ultimate sop for the supremely egotistical. It's a short sighted kind of selfishness, though, the same kind of selfishness that leads to things like procrastination. "If it feels good now, do it! " is not a great philosophy.
Sure, in the end everything we do, we do for selfish reasons, but I like helping people. Not because I like them to bow or scrape, not because I feel better than them, but because I feel like I am building a world where people help each other, a world where, if the situation were reversed I would be helped. I also feel good about not having desperate miserable people around me.
The irony is that Ayn Rand's philosophy is, " To hell with everybody, as long as you're feeling virtuous about it. And I'll tell you how to feel virtuous about ANY damn thing you want to feel virtuous about, as long as it isn't helping someone else! Remember: Helping is Hurting, Charity is Theft, a Hand Up is a Slap in the Face, Sharing is Selfish, Only Egotism is True Loving Compassion."
Ayn Rand and people like her who consider any kind of charity or compassion as selfish egotism are the laziest type of self involved, egotistical, idiots. I will defend their right to spout their crazy nonsense, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or that I have to say it isn't B.S.
You don't want to help others? Fine. Don't, see if I care, but if you are going to mock me for caring and for acting out of compassion and assign to me the basest of motives, I am for sure going to point out how selfish, egotistical, and short sighted you are. There are plenty of good reasons for wanting to help others that don't revolve around being a self important prick.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Lt. Col Dave Grossman "On Killing" - great book.
Don't forget the other part. Getting back from WW2 took a nice slow ship in the company of your comrades, where you had plenty of time to talk through a lot of what you had seen and done, and generally had an opportunity to "come down" from battlefield conditions.
Whereas in Vietnam, you could be in the bush on Sunday, and back home a civillian on Monday. No chance to adapt to the new surroundings, no suport network, and just to rub salt in the wound, a rather unsympathetic populace.
I don't think you can hang Mai Lai on traning tactics though. A better source of blame is an unprofessional (in the literal sense) and undertrained soldiery who got all the technical training but little of the ethics and ethos.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Yeah, the whole violence/sex thing is important. But what I really wish the ESRB would focus on is the character of the people in the video games.
Come on, despite being a cold blooded killer, CJ is pretty much a pussy. He does whatever anyone tells him to. Heck, he killed and maimed just to help some poseur gangster rapper called Og Loc working at the burger shack. He listens to his idiot brother who would rather live in some crime infested filth hole then any one of CJ's luxury homes.
CJ has killed hundreds of cops, yet he does whatever Samuel Jackson tells him to because of a trumped up vague threat of going to prison on a cop killer charge. (If CJ was a man of real character, he would have iced Officer Tenpenny in the first five minutes of the game.)
Do you think Tommy Verceti would put up with this crap? No way.
I for one wish the ESRB would alert parents like me to the questionable character presented in the game, not this whole 'sex' things.
The Internet is generally stupid
On the other hand, if you said that Iraq was in violation of its UN mandated disarmament requirements, that Iraq was supporting terrorists, and that Iraq posed a threat to our national security, those were not lies because they are all true.
Are you aware that the United States is in violation of UN mandate?
Are you aware that the United States has recently supported (perhaps currently supporting) terrorists?
Did you know that to some degree, every nation on the face of the earth is a threat to every other nation's national security?
Isn't amaizing how pointless and misleading true statments can be?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Though come to think of it, playing football can cause you to get laid, while playing videos most certainly will not.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
....defend themselves against a goverment that had spun out of control....
The military is still composed of PEOPLE, ordinary Americans who would have to be somehow be persuaded to use that awesome weaponry against their fellow citizens. If a significant number of the military pople were NOT persuaded that it was good to kill their fellow Americans, any people in Government would that would like to exterminate a sizeable number of Americans for whatever reasons would preciptate a civil war. Americans are not the obedient kind of lemmings that the Germans were under Hitler.
All theory is gray