If the censorship continues unabated, I believe Australians will fall behind the rest of the world in useful computer knowledge:
a. ) Because computers will be less fun to use, unless you happen to be Ned Flanders ("500 channels, locked out!")
b. ) Useful computer information will end up being on pages that get banned if the filters are shockingly primative and block out large numbers of sites. People will have less pages to look at, and since I don't trust filters (would I be able to get to freedomforum.org, which occaisionally has stories about First Amendment cases involving lewd and lascivious content? How about any other sites with storis like that, what triggers the filters?) I'm assuming useful pages will be chucked out with porn.
I feel sorry for the people in Australia, I hope they vote for a less authoritarian government next chance they get... while they still have the right to vote, that is.
..it seems to me he plays his audience. Here he has an audience that know video games really well and have a deep understanding of them. He can't say stuff that just isn't true (like his line during the Senate hearings about Nintendo having designed a military simulator) so he goes for stuff about psychology and history that is more difficult to refute. He also talks about this in terms of a right-left polemic:
The lawyers in this case have hired some of the nation's leading Constitutional experts, including the man who will probably be the next DEMOCRATIC nominee for the Supreme Court, and these people have no doubt of the Constitutionality of the case, and I have no doubt how the jury will react.-- Grossman quote
I should point out that the above may well be a lie, but even if not why does he assume that I'll be impressed that someone from the Democratic party is on this side? Considering that if a Democrat gets to be president it will likely be Al Gore, and his pro-censorship wife may have an influence on his decisions as to who to nominate for the Supreme Court, I say "So what?" Wrong is wrong, I don't care what party the wrong-headedness comes from. (This is the old "if the Democrats and the Republicans agree on something, then it must be the right thing." I think there were a few people gathered in Seattle recently who would disagree with that premise.)
Oh, and I happen to think that seat belt laws are an unneccessary intrusion of government into people's personal lives and a revenue generator for the police rather than a useful safety measure. I don't know why he believes that just because something is the law that everyone is going to agree with it, except that he has a dangerous, authoritarian point of view. (Which dovetails nicely with his thesis that its OK for the military to brainwash soldiers.)
NOW, the Surgeon General, the AMA, the APA and the President (Ha!) have ALL made definitive statements about violent video games and the need to enforce the industry's rating system. -- Grossman quote
This comes from the part of the article where Grossman really starts to rave, although out of context it isn't as bad as the rest of the quote. I bring it up though because I'm not sure what the Ha! in parenthesis next to the President is supposed to mean. Is it "Ha! Even your beloved Democratic president insists that police must prevent kids from getting bad games" or "Ha! the president agrees with me, you have no choice but to do so as well" ?
One final quote, taken out of context from this page:
How many lives, how many shattered families, how much blood is it worth to YOU to be able to have kids rehearse murder and killing and maiming in the comfort of their own homes? -- Grossman quote
I put this statement in to let it stand for itself. It is not an appeal to reason, it is demagoguery, and it also sounds like raving. Let's take it apart:
How many lives, how many shattered families, how much blood is it worth to YOU
If we put, to let people pick posies or grow corn as the next part of this statement, I think the answer still has to be "none." I just don't happen to believe that Doom causes any of these things, but Grossman is setting it up that "If you don't believe that video games cause violence, if you don't agree with my solution, your a monster who is willing to see people murdered for your own enjoyment." Nope, since Grossman's solution will stop 0% of the violence, I'm not risking anyone's life.
have kids rehearse murder and killing and maiming
This is the way children talk when they want to impress you with what they are saying, it is redundant and uses the word and too many times as a way to emphasize something. What's the difference between murder and killing? No need to use two synonyms in the same sentence to argue the same thing if you are arguing from reason.
in the comfort of their own homes
Sooo, if the kids were practicing murder and killing and maiming in the alley behind some bar, that would be acceptable? What does the "comfort of their own homes" have to do with anything? Oh, I see, "those sick violent video game playing murderers get to be comfortable as they plan their atrocities."
Incidentally, Quake and Doom don't teach murder but defensive combat. i.e. if a hideous demon is trying to kill you, and you have a weapon, you try to take him out. No different than what I'd train my kid to do if he were being threatened by a mass murderer with a gun. (Ok, I tell him to try to get out of there and call the police, but if the only option were to fight for his life I'd want him to try to take the bad guy out rather than just lay down and die. Murder and self-defense are two different things, Grossman attempts to make them morally equivalent.)
I don't care if a kid has never played a game in his entire life. You give a good kid access to guns with no parental supervision, and something bad is very likely to happen. (Even if it's only him accidentally shooting himself because he tries to twirl it like a TV cowboy.) And, just so I don't give anyone the idea that this is a pro gun control issue, you leave an unsupervised kid in a car with the keys in the ignition, and something terrible may also happen, and it also may happen if you leave him with matches and kerosene. Kids who are raised properly and are watched by caring adults don't do these things. Kids in a Lord of the Flies situation will always end up doing damage. Instead of trying to restrict the freedom of a 30 year old guy like me who happens to enjoy System Shock II you might want to consider finding a way to reduce class sizes in our public schools so kids don't get lost in the shuffle.
Good point, and here's another point. Say there exists in this world someone who is completely incapable of determining what part of the body he has to shoot to kill me. Should I then invite him to take a shot at me, confident that I'll escape unharmed? Would I invite a blind man to take a shot at the general direction my voice was coming from with any weapon? (Certainly, he might kill me with a pistol, and I'd be really worried if he had a sawed off shotgun like those kids at Columbine had.)
The "increased accuracy" arguements are just a way to "get" those eeevil video games, I don't want kids shooting at other kids with guns whether they know what they are doing or not. And they'd get far more accuracy from hunting white tails or shooting paper targets than they ever would from Quake, anyway. As to why kids are shooting more kids with guns? (if they are) Lack of supervision, how did these kids get guns? I wouldn't give the most mild mannered, easiest going teenager I know a loaded gun, because something bad will happen (just as I wouldn't give him my car keys, or a blowtorch.) If kids are left completely unsupervised, bad things will happen.
...our dear raving lunatic friend, Grossman. It's interesting that Col. Ron Krisak makes the same point I often make about Grossman, that the Grossman Thesis that the military uses video games to 'desensitize' soldiers psychologically for combat, is sick. It's also not true, but Grossman doesn't seem to be bothered by it if it were true. I.e. it would be alright for the government to psychologically damage soldiers so they'll be more efficient killers since they'll be used in combat, it's only when these games are released to the general public that he has a problem with it.
If his arguement in this case made sense we would need to have a full investigation of the military, people would end up court marshalled and it would cause a huge shake up of the simulator using part of the military. Of course, if you told anyone with a brain in the military this thesis, they would laugh at you. Simulators in the military are designed to teach soldiers to use things like tanks and fighter planes more effectively, not to brainwash them. Games like Quake are not even realistic simulators, unless there is some other dimension where getting shot in the head doesn't kill you and ogres and other monsters exist. Quake and the rest are designed for having fun, it is true that some (Rainbow Six or Medal of Honor ) do attempt to include a certain amount or realism. But even then, I do not believe anyone ever learned how to shoot a gun with a mouse (besides, the realism in these games and the lack of "Satanic" imagery means they'll be less likely targets than scary looking games like Quake. This isn't about logic, or science, it's about image. The politicians want to look like they are going after the evil game makers who are hurting our children, and going after a game called Medal of Honor or one based on Tom Clancy's novels won't do it.) Besides, if I have a gun, and the person I want to kill is completely unarmed and untrained in combat situations, the other person is probably going to die even if I lived in a box for the last twenty years and never saw a gun in my life. Guns are powerful killing machines, extensive training with them is needed only when you are facing an armed and trained opponent. My Dad was a cop for twenty years, and I still wouldn't want him to face a teenage kid with a gun if he was unarmed and not wearing his vest. An even worse situation is if you take a bunch of school kids who are more likely to freeze up when scared than react in the way a person trained in combat is, and the situation will definitely turn out tragically. (I think movies do give us a distorted view of combat, they make us think that completely unarmed people stand a chance against a well armed foe. But I don't blame the movies, I blame people for being naive enough to believe it!)
But if you want to really understand how open minded and enlightened the government (and Grossman) are about video games, you need only read this, a letter from a professor of media studies at MIT.
Incidentally, I found the MSNBC article to be touchy-feely gobbledygook. Sure it takes on Grossman (Grossman is an obvious crackpot) but it seems to punctuate every sentence with "but then again, he may have a point." It's because of guys like the articles author that while I can easily get a real.357 Magnum anytime I want (and probably could have stolen my Dad's when I was still in grade school, if I'd had a mind to), if I want to get a plastic lightgun to play House of the Dead II on my American Dreamcast, I'll have to rewire it so it will no longer block out the Japanese light guns. Incidentally, I believe in the Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms. (Sorry, I know the stuff about guns in this post will certainly be picked up by gun control people on this forum, but gun control is a seperate issue. Guns are dangerous, the arguement comes down to whether you think they are more dangerous than having an armed government and an unarmed populace. I just don't want to get sidetracked into this issue.) However, I also think it is incredibly naive for people to think that restricting plastic lightguns is going to stop any crimes other than the many that are actually committed with plastic lightguns (against photon-based life forms, no doubt) when real guns are available.
There was a story, I believe it was "The Guided Man" by L. Sprague DeCamp. It was about a company that would take remote control of people's bodies so that they could be controlled by 'experts' when they wanted to do certain things. The guy in the story wanted to win over a certain girl, but he was painfully shy... well, it was a pretty good story.
This scares me. I remember learning about the first bubble, I think it was in the 18th century shortly after the introduction of paper money and involved all the hype over the new world. Well, things got over inflated and the bank of England collapsed.
A similar bubble was around before 1929 in America. That bubble burst and we had the Great Depression.
If this is a bubble, what's going to collapse when it bursts?
I'm going to hide under my bed now. (I wish I could figure out how to make money out of being a bear. I'm supposed to invest in gold I think, is that what bears do?)
Hrm, but you see in the future, when you connect your printer to a Windows or Mac Box at least, your printer will automatically send all the information on your computer off to the company without your consent. If you complain they'll probably say something about the Secret Service or the Treasury dept. requiring it. This, of course, is the real reason for opposing unnecessary "phantom" regulations i.e. regulations that the government imposes on everyone Mafia style, as the article says by "leaning" on people, rather than having to get their hands dirty through the legislative. If the government wants this, they should pass a law (which can be tested by the courts). Far to much stuff gets done by Washington by "leaning" on people, these days.
Actually, that was the most disturbing thing about the article to me. Not all this watermarking, etc. but the fact that the government did it by "leaning" on the people at Xerox, Canon, and the rest. In other words, "you've got a nice business here... shame if something had to happen to it."
I loved Sleepy Hollow, one of the things I loved best was the dialogue. Not just the accents but the words they used. I'm a sucker for this kind of 18th Century rhetoric, and I just thought they stuck with it really well (no lapses into 20th century vernacular). Of course, the movie was beautiful, what with the great costumes and sets. Some of the tableau's created by the actors just standing around in dramatic scenery were really cool.
Oh, and I'm surprised that there hasn't been more about this movie since the hero, Ichabod Crane, would seem to be a perfect type for the Slashdot set. In this movie, he's a scientific detective sent to investigate a supernatural event (similar to Van Helsing in Dracula, they even put Christopher Lee in the movie as a sort of homage to the old Hammer Dracula films), not a tremendously physical hero (he tends to faint a lot), and he ends up solving the case and getting the girl!
I'm humbled by this intelligent and well written post. The truth is, I've been pretty knee-jerk in my assesment of Christians (of faiths other than the Christian faith I profess) lately, but only because the ones I know won't let me alone in my beliefs. If I'm not hearing from my boss how her neighbors are telling her about Ishtar (i.e. the way we Catholics celebrate Easter is an evil pagan right, this was just at lunch yesterday that she was telling me about this), or having people come to the door of my apartment trying to get me to come to their church and not leaving me be when I tell them I've already got one, then I'm having to deal with articles in the college paper about insane campus preacher Rudy Lopez, whose idea about converting people to the Christian faith is yelling at women as they go to class in Cooper Hall that they are "whores." (Hey, it was a big First Amendment controversy at University of South Florida.) I even have to hear from my brother (an intensely religious person, and a far better person than I am) how he dare not tell this one "End-Time" believer he has classes with (or rooms with, I'd have to check) that he's a Catholic for fear he'll be accused of worshipping "the Whore of Babylon" any time I go home for a weekend.
These people are a serious problem, and I just wish sometimes that other Christians would realize that the biggest threat to Christianity is not attacks from without (if Christians behave as decent people, other people will like them and not buy such slanders) but this kind of behaviour within. It is a real, serious problem and it needs to be addressed. Back when I lived up north (in a mostly Catholic suburb) I tended to believe that this was media bias against Christians and that they just showed a few crazies who were spoiling things for everyone else. But, and my personal experiences may indeed be just a nasty series of coincidences, I've become convinced that the crazies are a serious problem. You don't understand, I'm afraid of some of these people on my campus, afraid of physical violence if I draw their attention in the wrong way. And no one called a Christian should ever inspire that kind of feeling in others.
Amphigory, I apologize for lumping you in with them (in some of my previous posts), but things have been seriously bad lately. I can't pretend I'm as religious as my brother (I was an altar boy, but that was long ago), but I do still take my faith seriously.
P.S. I never read the E-mail you sent me, I was afraid.
I've never seen any evidence that there is such a thing as an economic system other than capitolism. It seems to me that in non-capitolist countries, the only difference is that corporate interests and government interests are merged in such a way as to stifle Liberty.
I can't even imagine a society that didn't operate on some having more political power than the majority. I think those people will always have the nicest houses and cars, whatever they call the economic system.
Since I believe this, I think the redistribution of political power is a real and worthwhile goal, as it will improve the economic conditions of those who get it, too. I think that the desire to redistribute economic power directly, which inevitably looks to giving a small group of people incredible political power, will never succeed in granting the majority either economic or political power.
I'm not sure of my position on the WTO, I tend to think of it as a distraction from the real problems in the US and worldwide.
My Dad was a cop for many years, including situations where riots were expected to occur. When he went to a High School to protect the teachers there, one of the teachers said something about how, "You people just become cops because you like to beat people with clubs." My Dad just ignored him, and if any of the officers below him hadn't my Dad would've been particularly angry with them.
If cops behave vengefully, it hurts the police force and it makes the public see them as less than heroic. They are supposed to be trained to understand their mission, which is to maintain law and order in a situation which may turn violent. Just as people who are physical cowards should not become cops (though I make an exception for Ichabod Crane in the new Sleepy Hollow movie;-) people with short fuses who desire revenge over "hotheaded fools" also don't make good cops. This is not because of morality or anything like that, it is because they make it more difficult for the police to do their tasks.
It's hard work to be a good cop, harder than most other jobs, I think.
I think this is a good point. I'm curious as to what army the anti-WTO protestors think the WTO will use to enforce its policies if the US won't go along.
If they think the WTO has its own army, I'd like to see some evidence.
If they think it is the US army, then why does the existance of the WTO matter? If the US government is willing to use the army against civilians, they don't need the excuse of the WTO to do it.
Then how do you account for all the governments that have been overthrown by violent revolution?
(Incidentally, including the very Nazi's you mention in your post. Many people think that the Reichstag fire was an essential part of their rise to power. This is not a question of right or wrong, just of effective political tactics.)
I have no strong feelings about the WTO, though it seems to be getting a black eye here.
It was also an attempt to peacefully protest (i.e. no killing) without having a war.
To delmoi: Incidentally, as the entire American Revolution was a protest against oppressive British rule, at some point you have to say, "the American Revolution was a protest that was:"
a. Successful
b. Unsuccessful
Now, it is possible that you are saying that only violent protests can have an effect.
Hrm... actually, I think running for school board might help. Or maybe getting together with a group of other parents who are also feeling disatisfied and backing some people for school board.
I'm serious, here. Local politics is incredibly important in dealing with things like that. As long as "they" control the schools, things will continue to get worse.
Home schooling is another option, it's a good way to keep your kid out of these riduculous anti-educational institutions and get them some real learning.
Um... also if the religion your family practices has a school, and you can afford the $$$, maybe it would be an improvement. My brother was always happier in Catholic school than in State-Religion school.
Honestly, I don't have an answer for you (except my standard answer for everything vote Libertarian;-)
You know how when they select juries, they get to dismiss certain jurors without cause (in New Jersey, at least) because they have a view, possible predjudiced, that these jurors will be pro-defense or pro-prosecution? Well, by dismissing the juror without cause, they escape the label of bias that they might have to live with if they said, "I'm dismissing this juror because he is a Movementarian. As we all know, Movementarians are a fanatical cult following someone known as 'the Leader.' I therefore think that these people will take the word of authority figures at face value, and will tend to favor the prosecution." Think of the slander suit the Movementarians would bring against a lawyer who said that in open court!
This works the same way, almost anyone can fit the profile, so it's great for getting at people you find undesirable for other reasons. If they fit the profile, you can just say, "I have no problem with Movementarians, I don't consider them scary religious fanatics following a morally wrong religion. But heck, Sam here fits the profile, that's why I'm sending him of to student re-education camp 11131. If he happens to decide to give up his heathen ways... well..."
*Movementarian references courtesy of Matt Groening, insert any "undesirable" group in their place to get full effect...
Hmm, I think it depends on the teachers at the school. You might point out that all the "occult" stuff is being used to label Catholics in other parts of the country for not conforming to the local fundementalist cults. Here in FL, members of the Catholic and Jewish faiths are involved in a religious harrassment suit against the University of South Florida, where they were deliberately discriminated against by a senior opthamologist for not conforming to his fundamentalist religious beliefs. Mention that you believe that this is something going hand in hand with that, yet another example enforced religious conformity in public schools. Refuse to answer it on the basis that to do so would be to cave into a religious beliefs which are not supported by your school, just don't fill out any of the answers. (This will work especially well if you are an active Catholic, but even if your an atheist it should give the school teachers and administration pause if you explain that you think they are becoming enforcers for someone else's religion.) On the other hand, if you think the above information will get you in to trouble, feel free to dissemble (i.e. withhold the truth without writing provable lies) a technique used by Catholic priests in England in Elizabethan times.;-)
*Shrug* It's the same exact thing as racial profiling. The people just put down their prejudices on paper and said, "Use this to find bad kids." The fact is, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had criminal records before they massacred those kids. Please see the Washington Post article on the matter:
That January, during one of their nocturnal pranks, Harris and Klebold were arrested on juvenile charges of felony burglary for stealing from a van. They got the lightest sentence available: a diversion program, with the charges expunged after 10 months of counseling and community service. -- quote from the linked article
Law Enforcement's blunder here, that tougher enforcement could've stopped this crime, is never mentioned when the subject comes up. We are led to believe that it was just two morbid, non-violent kids who secretly planned this and never let on. The police could've stopped them, but didn't. These are the incompetents we trust to "profile" our kids? Maybe if we were paid more attention to the kids who actually commit crimes rather than lumping the law abiding kids in with them, we'd have even better luck picking the kids who are likely to run amock.
Well, that's not really new, though. When I was a kid, D&D players got the same bad rap. It does give some insight into the mindset of the people who created the profile, though. I don't think they have actual data to back it up, I think they just wrote down their own predjudices and made it into a "profile." (Predjudice, unfortunately, is behind a lot of such "profiles," such as the ones used to decide who to pull over on a freeway.)
My Science Fiction professor at Rutgers included Frankenstien on our required reading list, even though he rejected anything which he didn't concieve of as Science Fiction. His reasoning is that Frankenstien was scientific as far as people in the early 19th century knew, and therefore was about the possibility. (Mary Shelley came up with her ideas about raising a person from the dead with electricity because of the discovery that it could be used to stimulate muscular movement in the limbs of dead animals. In fact, this is why electricity is used today to restart the hearts of people who would have been considered dead in Shelley's time, so there is even some sustained science in the idea.)
Actually, I can see the logic behind this now, "If you can ban the books, give the school the authority to persecute the people who read them." In fact this will probably be more readily applied to books like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ("Ooh, the evil occult! Like those twisted Chronicles of Narnia or JRR Tolkien. We may not be able to ban the books (damn First Amendment) but we can send the kids who read them in for so much counciling that no one else will dare pick them up!")
Yes, Amphigory has an agenda, but that doesn't mean that what he says isn't true. Remember the way that in Animal Farm after the animals had been living under the tyrant pigs for many years they started listening to that bird who tried to sell them the "Rock Candy Mountain" idea again. (Their reason being that after suffering all their lives and dying miserable, surely there had to be something afterwards.) Amphigory would probably love to see us all forced into church (his church, not the one I attend) at gun-point, "for our own good." Of course, it is also quite possible that he is lying, people in the biggest cult we've got going in this country (They call themselves Christians, but seem to find the actual text of the New Testament to be decidedly inconvenient.) are quite capable of lying to achieve their ends, despite the Ten Commandments. So you are right to question it, but I tend to think that behind all unreasoning religious fanaticism lies a foundation of severe emotional scarring. To be fair, I may send my own children to a religious school (of my own choosing) rather than a public school, if they are going to get religion at school, I'd prefer it to be the religion I was raised in and not some wierd dogma that I find to be "cultish" in its application. (Remember Reverend Jim of the People's Temple claimed to be a Christian.) This is actually happening at some schools in this country, see this article. This is what happens when educated people don't pay attention to local politics.
Slashdot Mirror
a. ) Because computers will be less fun to use, unless you happen to be Ned Flanders ("500 channels, locked out!")
b. ) Useful computer information will end up being on pages that get banned if the filters are shockingly primative and block out large numbers of sites. People will have less pages to look at, and since I don't trust filters (would I be able to get to freedomforum.org, which occaisionally has stories about First Amendment cases involving lewd and lascivious content? How about any other sites with storis like that, what triggers the filters?) I'm assuming useful pages will be chucked out with porn.
I feel sorry for the people in Australia, I hope they vote for a less authoritarian government next chance they get... while they still have the right to vote, that is.
I meant to put a link to this page above where it says "this page."
Oh, and I happen to think that seat belt laws are an unneccessary intrusion of government into people's personal lives and a revenue generator for the police rather than a useful safety measure. I don't know why he believes that just because something is the law that everyone is going to agree with it, except that he has a dangerous, authoritarian point of view. (Which dovetails nicely with his thesis that its OK for the military to brainwash soldiers.)
This comes from the part of the article where Grossman really starts to rave, although out of context it isn't as bad as the rest of the quote. I bring it up though because I'm not sure what the Ha! in parenthesis next to the President is supposed to mean. Is it "Ha! Even your beloved Democratic president insists that police must prevent kids from getting bad games" or "Ha! the president agrees with me, you have no choice but to do so as well" ?One final quote, taken out of context from this page:
I put this statement in to let it stand for itself. It is not an appeal to reason, it is demagoguery, and it also sounds like raving. Let's take it apart:How many lives, how many shattered families, how much blood is it worth to YOU
If we put, to let people pick posies or grow corn as the next part of this statement, I think the answer still has to be "none." I just don't happen to believe that Doom causes any of these things, but Grossman is setting it up that "If you don't believe that video games cause violence, if you don't agree with my solution, your a monster who is willing to see people murdered for your own enjoyment." Nope, since Grossman's solution will stop 0% of the violence, I'm not risking anyone's life.
have kids rehearse murder and killing and maiming
This is the way children talk when they want to impress you with what they are saying, it is redundant and uses the word and too many times as a way to emphasize something. What's the difference between murder and killing? No need to use two synonyms in the same sentence to argue the same thing if you are arguing from reason.
in the comfort of their own homes
Sooo, if the kids were practicing murder and killing and maiming in the alley behind some bar, that would be acceptable? What does the "comfort of their own homes" have to do with anything? Oh, I see, "those sick violent video game playing murderers get to be comfortable as they plan their atrocities."
Incidentally, Quake and Doom don't teach murder but defensive combat. i.e. if a hideous demon is trying to kill you, and you have a weapon, you try to take him out. No different than what I'd train my kid to do if he were being threatened by a mass murderer with a gun. (Ok, I tell him to try to get out of there and call the police, but if the only option were to fight for his life I'd want him to try to take the bad guy out rather than just lay down and die. Murder and self-defense are two different things, Grossman attempts to make them morally equivalent.)
I don't care if a kid has never played a game in his entire life. You give a good kid access to guns with no parental supervision, and something bad is very likely to happen. (Even if it's only him accidentally shooting himself because he tries to twirl it like a TV cowboy.) And, just so I don't give anyone the idea that this is a pro gun control issue, you leave an unsupervised kid in a car with the keys in the ignition, and something terrible may also happen, and it also may happen if you leave him with matches and kerosene. Kids who are raised properly and are watched by caring adults don't do these things. Kids in a Lord of the Flies situation will always end up doing damage. Instead of trying to restrict the freedom of a 30 year old guy like me who happens to enjoy System Shock II you might want to consider finding a way to reduce class sizes in our public schools so kids don't get lost in the shuffle.
The "increased accuracy" arguements are just a way to "get" those eeevil video games, I don't want kids shooting at other kids with guns whether they know what they are doing or not. And they'd get far more accuracy from hunting white tails or shooting paper targets than they ever would from Quake, anyway. As to why kids are shooting more kids with guns? (if they are) Lack of supervision, how did these kids get guns? I wouldn't give the most mild mannered, easiest going teenager I know a loaded gun, because something bad will happen (just as I wouldn't give him my car keys, or a blowtorch.) If kids are left completely unsupervised, bad things will happen.
If his arguement in this case made sense we would need to have a full investigation of the military, people would end up court marshalled and it would cause a huge shake up of the simulator using part of the military. Of course, if you told anyone with a brain in the military this thesis, they would laugh at you. Simulators in the military are designed to teach soldiers to use things like tanks and fighter planes more effectively, not to brainwash them. Games like Quake are not even realistic simulators, unless there is some other dimension where getting shot in the head doesn't kill you and ogres and other monsters exist. Quake and the rest are designed for having fun, it is true that some (Rainbow Six or Medal of Honor ) do attempt to include a certain amount or realism. But even then, I do not believe anyone ever learned how to shoot a gun with a mouse (besides, the realism in these games and the lack of "Satanic" imagery means they'll be less likely targets than scary looking games like Quake. This isn't about logic, or science, it's about image. The politicians want to look like they are going after the evil game makers who are hurting our children, and going after a game called Medal of Honor or one based on Tom Clancy's novels won't do it.) Besides, if I have a gun, and the person I want to kill is completely unarmed and untrained in combat situations, the other person is probably going to die even if I lived in a box for the last twenty years and never saw a gun in my life. Guns are powerful killing machines, extensive training with them is needed only when you are facing an armed and trained opponent. My Dad was a cop for twenty years, and I still wouldn't want him to face a teenage kid with a gun if he was unarmed and not wearing his vest. An even worse situation is if you take a bunch of school kids who are more likely to freeze up when scared than react in the way a person trained in combat is, and the situation will definitely turn out tragically. (I think movies do give us a distorted view of combat, they make us think that completely unarmed people stand a chance against a well armed foe. But I don't blame the movies, I blame people for being naive enough to believe it!)
But if you want to really understand how open minded and enlightened the government (and Grossman) are about video games, you need only read this, a letter from a professor of media studies at MIT.
Incidentally, I found the MSNBC article to be touchy-feely gobbledygook. Sure it takes on Grossman (Grossman is an obvious crackpot) but it seems to punctuate every sentence with "but then again, he may have a point." It's because of guys like the articles author that while I can easily get a real .357 Magnum anytime I want (and probably could have stolen my Dad's when I was still in grade school, if I'd had a mind to), if I want to get a plastic lightgun to play House of the Dead II on my American Dreamcast, I'll have to rewire it so it will no longer block out the Japanese light guns. Incidentally, I believe in the Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms. (Sorry, I know the stuff about guns in this post will certainly be picked up by gun control people on this forum, but gun control is a seperate issue. Guns are dangerous, the arguement comes down to whether you think they are more dangerous than having an armed government and an unarmed populace. I just don't want to get sidetracked into this issue.) However, I also think it is incredibly naive for people to think that restricting plastic lightguns is going to stop any crimes other than the many that are actually committed with plastic lightguns (against photon-based life forms, no doubt) when real guns are available.
There was a story, I believe it was "The Guided Man" by L. Sprague DeCamp. It was about a company that would take remote control of people's bodies so that they could be controlled by 'experts' when they wanted to do certain things. The guy in the story wanted to win over a certain girl, but he was painfully shy... well, it was a pretty good story.
A similar bubble was around before 1929 in America. That bubble burst and we had the Great Depression.
If this is a bubble, what's going to collapse when it bursts?
I'm going to hide under my bed now. (I wish I could figure out how to make money out of being a bear. I'm supposed to invest in gold I think, is that what bears do?)
Actually, that was the most disturbing thing about the article to me. Not all this watermarking, etc. but the fact that the government did it by "leaning" on the people at Xerox, Canon, and the rest. In other words, "you've got a nice business here... shame if something had to happen to it."
Oh, and I'm surprised that there hasn't been more about this movie since the hero, Ichabod Crane, would seem to be a perfect type for the Slashdot set. In this movie, he's a scientific detective sent to investigate a supernatural event (similar to Van Helsing in Dracula, they even put Christopher Lee in the movie as a sort of homage to the old Hammer Dracula films), not a tremendously physical hero (he tends to faint a lot), and he ends up solving the case and getting the girl!
Well, I liked it.
These people are a serious problem, and I just wish sometimes that other Christians would realize that the biggest threat to Christianity is not attacks from without (if Christians behave as decent people, other people will like them and not buy such slanders) but this kind of behaviour within. It is a real, serious problem and it needs to be addressed. Back when I lived up north (in a mostly Catholic suburb) I tended to believe that this was media bias against Christians and that they just showed a few crazies who were spoiling things for everyone else. But, and my personal experiences may indeed be just a nasty series of coincidences, I've become convinced that the crazies are a serious problem. You don't understand, I'm afraid of some of these people on my campus, afraid of physical violence if I draw their attention in the wrong way. And no one called a Christian should ever inspire that kind of feeling in others.
Amphigory, I apologize for lumping you in with them (in some of my previous posts), but things have been seriously bad lately. I can't pretend I'm as religious as my brother (I was an altar boy, but that was long ago), but I do still take my faith seriously.
P.S. I never read the E-mail you sent me, I was afraid.
I can't even imagine a society that didn't operate on some having more political power than the majority. I think those people will always have the nicest houses and cars, whatever they call the economic system.
Since I believe this, I think the redistribution of political power is a real and worthwhile goal, as it will improve the economic conditions of those who get it, too. I think that the desire to redistribute economic power directly, which inevitably looks to giving a small group of people incredible political power, will never succeed in granting the majority either economic or political power.
I'm not sure of my position on the WTO, I tend to think of it as a distraction from the real problems in the US and worldwide.
If cops behave vengefully, it hurts the police force and it makes the public see them as less than heroic. They are supposed to be trained to understand their mission, which is to maintain law and order in a situation which may turn violent. Just as people who are physical cowards should not become cops (though I make an exception for Ichabod Crane in the new Sleepy Hollow movie ;-) people with short fuses who desire revenge over "hotheaded fools" also don't make good cops. This is not because of morality or anything like that, it is because they make it more difficult for the police to do their tasks.
It's hard work to be a good cop, harder than most other jobs, I think.
If they think the WTO has its own army, I'd like to see some evidence.
If they think it is the US army, then why does the existance of the WTO matter? If the US government is willing to use the army against civilians, they don't need the excuse of the WTO to do it.
I'm just curious about these points.
Then how do you account for all the governments that have been overthrown by violent revolution?
(Incidentally, including the very Nazi's you mention in your post. Many people think that the Reichstag fire was an essential part of their rise to power. This is not a question of right or wrong, just of effective political tactics.)
I have no strong feelings about the WTO, though it seems to be getting a black eye here.
To delmoi: Incidentally, as the entire American Revolution was a protest against oppressive British rule, at some point you have to say, "the American Revolution was a protest that was:"
a. Successful
b. Unsuccessful
Now, it is possible that you are saying that only violent protests can have an effect.
Among those protests that you feel did not lead to constructive change, do you include the Boston Tea Party?
I think we have a Tory spy here.... ;-)
I'm serious, here. Local politics is incredibly important in dealing with things like that. As long as "they" control the schools, things will continue to get worse.
Home schooling is another option, it's a good way to keep your kid out of these riduculous anti-educational institutions and get them some real learning.
Um... also if the religion your family practices has a school, and you can afford the $$$, maybe it would be an improvement. My brother was always happier in Catholic school than in State-Religion school.
Honestly, I don't have an answer for you (except my standard answer for everything vote Libertarian ;-)
Amigas are so cool...
This works the same way, almost anyone can fit the profile, so it's great for getting at people you find undesirable for other reasons. If they fit the profile, you can just say, "I have no problem with Movementarians, I don't consider them scary religious fanatics following a morally wrong religion. But heck, Sam here fits the profile, that's why I'm sending him of to student re-education camp 11131. If he happens to decide to give up his heathen ways... well..."
*Movementarian references courtesy of Matt Groening, insert any "undesirable" group in their place to get full effect...
Hmm, I think it depends on the teachers at the school. You might point out that all the "occult" stuff is being used to label Catholics in other parts of the country for not conforming to the local fundementalist cults. Here in FL, members of the Catholic and Jewish faiths are involved in a religious harrassment suit against the University of South Florida, where they were deliberately discriminated against by a senior opthamologist for not conforming to his fundamentalist religious beliefs. Mention that you believe that this is something going hand in hand with that, yet another example enforced religious conformity in public schools. ;-)
Refuse to answer it on the basis that to do so would be to cave into a religious beliefs which are not supported by your school, just don't fill out any of the answers. (This will work especially well if you are an active Catholic, but even if your an atheist it should give the school teachers and administration pause if you explain that you think they are becoming enforcers for someone else's religion.)
On the other hand, if you think the above information will get you in to trouble, feel free to dissemble (i.e. withhold the truth without writing provable lies) a technique used by Catholic priests in England in Elizabethan times.
Dissecti ng Columbine's Cult of the Athlete
Law Enforcement's blunder here, that tougher enforcement could've stopped this crime, is never mentioned when the subject comes up. We are led to believe that it was just two morbid, non-violent kids who secretly planned this and never let on. The police could've stopped them, but didn't. These are the incompetents we trust to "profile" our kids? Maybe if we were paid more attention to the kids who actually commit crimes rather than lumping the law abiding kids in with them, we'd have even better luck picking the kids who are likely to run amock.
Well, that's not really new, though. When I was a kid, D&D players got the same bad rap. It does give some insight into the mindset of the people who created the profile, though. I don't think they have actual data to back it up, I think they just wrote down their own predjudices and made it into a "profile." (Predjudice, unfortunately, is behind a lot of such "profiles," such as the ones used to decide who to pull over on a freeway.)
My Science Fiction professor at Rutgers included Frankenstien on our required reading list, even though he rejected anything which he didn't concieve of as Science Fiction. His reasoning is that Frankenstien was scientific as far as people in the early 19th century knew, and therefore was about the possibility. (Mary Shelley came up with her ideas about raising a person from the dead with electricity because of the discovery that it could be used to stimulate muscular movement in the limbs of dead animals. In fact, this is why electricity is used today to restart the hearts of people who would have been considered dead in Shelley's time, so there is even some sustained science in the idea.)
Actually, I can see the logic behind this now, "If you can ban the books, give the school the authority to persecute the people who read them."
In fact this will probably be more readily applied to books like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ("Ooh, the evil occult! Like those twisted Chronicles of Narnia or JRR Tolkien. We may not be able to ban the books (damn First Amendment) but we can send the kids who read them in for so much counciling that no one else will dare pick them up!")
Yes, Amphigory has an agenda, but that doesn't mean that what he says isn't true. Remember the way that in Animal Farm after the animals had been living under the tyrant pigs for many years they started listening to that bird who tried to sell them the "Rock Candy Mountain" idea again. (Their reason being that after suffering all their lives and dying miserable, surely there had to be something afterwards.)
Amphigory would probably love to see us all forced into church (his church, not the one I attend) at gun-point, "for our own good."
Of course, it is also quite possible that he is lying, people in the biggest cult we've got going in this country (They call themselves Christians, but seem to find the actual text of the New Testament to be decidedly inconvenient.) are quite capable of lying to achieve their ends, despite the Ten Commandments.
So you are right to question it, but I tend to think that behind all unreasoning religious fanaticism lies a foundation of severe emotional scarring.
To be fair, I may send my own children to a religious school (of my own choosing) rather than a public school, if they are going to get religion at school, I'd prefer it to be the religion I was raised in and not some wierd dogma that I find to be "cultish" in its application. (Remember Reverend Jim of the People's Temple claimed to be a Christian.) This is actually happening at some schools in this country, see this article. This is what happens when educated people don't pay attention to local politics.