Quote: "For starters my post was deliberately simplistic to illustrate the hypocracy of the US attempting to project standards on others that it does not itself conform to."
What standards? Nuclear disarmament? Stability? I'm not sure what point you are trying to argue with me.
Quote: "I was using the term loosely to describe the stupidity of the comment that went before."
Stupidity of what comment?
You claimed calling the US stable was "BS", in response to my post about the logical reasons for a dictator wanting nukes as a deterrant.
My point has been that Iran has no logical reason to give up their nukes. No more, no less. The person before me stated that Iran is run by religious zealots - which I do not disgree with - and that America, China, Et al are stable, while Iran is not.
I pointed out that the relative stability of the US and Iran is not in question, and that the fact that Iran is a theocracy doesn't mean they don't have rational reasons for wanting a nuclear deterrance. I hardly call that "stupid".
If you want to use your own definition of the word stable, go right ahead. But don't claim I'm stupid for counting the US as a politically stable country.
"I thought "stable" meant something along the lines of "does not cause disruption"."
You thought wrong. "Stable" in a geopolitical context means more along the lines of "not likely to undergo a violent uprising or civil war, or undergo massive domestic upheavals, or change from one form of government to another in the forseeable future". It also implies that the "stable" government has a reasonable amount of control over its military. It has nothing to do with morality.
The US today is stable. In the 1860s it wasn't - America was in the midst of civil war. You might well argue that Licoln was a much better president than Bush (I certainly think so), but Lincoln commanded a country that was plagued by instability, whereas Dubya has control over a country that's relatively stable.
Stability has nothing to do with how warlike, how democratic, or how well governed a country is. Pretending that the US isn't politically stable because it's warlike is like pretending Benzene isn't chemically stable because it's toxic - both are taking "stability" to mean something completely different from what people who study political science or chemistry mean when they use the word. A chemist would tell you that a stable chemical can still hurt you, and a polysci major would tell you that a stable country can still make war.
And you missed out on some of the factual arguements presented.
The old bombs have a lifespan. That isn't doublespeak - it's FACT. New bombs will have to be built if we wish to keep them as a deterrant - and convincing politicians and generals that there is no need for such a deterrant is futile, so that's right out. The US no longer has bomb production capability, so the new bombs will need to be made in new factories. And they might as well update the elderly designs while they're at it, since there's no reason to build a new factory to build from bomb designes that are 20+ years old.
Nothing about this is illogical, or contrary to known facts.
The only way developing new bombs will lead to more bombs total if: A) The new bombs are deployed before the old ones expire (unlikely) Or B) More new bombs are built than currently exist. This is expensive, and probably unecesarry, given that nukes aren't needed in massive numbers. A hundred might be enough of a deterrant.
What possible need do they have for doublespeak? The only possible point you might argue is that we shouldn't be building new bombs at all, and that we should give up the ones we have. Good luck convincing the rest of the world about that though.
Actually, yes - in the example you give, the hypothetical nation would be less armed with a few missiles than with hundreds of soldiers, assuming no other weapons were taken into consideration.
Missiles are more destructive than soldiers, but also less versatile. There's a military saying that all the bombs/tanks/ships in the world are meaningless to victory unless you can put a grunt on the patch of land you mean to hold.
And anyway, your example is exchanging one type of weapon for another. The article is about exchanging one generation of the same weapon for another - the metaphor might work better if you were talking about exchanging a battalion of WW2 era riflemen for a single squad of soldiers armed with modern assault rifles.
America doesn't reprocess waste because of the fear that reprocessing technology could aid in nuclear proliferation. Other countries already do this however, so it isn't a question of R&D. In fact, IIRC, American nuclear fuel is partly (mostly?) derived from decomissioned bombs.
Existing fission reactor designs are already as safe as they're likely to get. The safety concerns have more to do with the fact that most of the current reactors are older designs dating back 30 years or more. The reason for this is - wait for it - people think nuclear plants aren't safe, and therefor don't want new plants build (I'll let you try and puzzle out the logic of this). So we don't need R&D so much as a chance to build newer reactors and take the older, less safe ones offline.
Fusion reactors are another story; they do need more R&D money, and would be FAR safer than fission reactors, not to mention cleaner. However, fusion tech is going to take another few decades at least, so it's along term investment, something politicians are loath to make.
None of those wars involved an invaded country possessing nukes of their own. Korea couldn't threaten the US with nukes, nor could Vietnam. Afghanistan couldn't nuke the USSR. In each case the country on whose soil the war was fought wasn't a nuclear power.
And realistically, those are examples of war-by-proxy; minor conflicts fought between two major powers by way of of a third party government. The US and the USSR didn't fight each other directly, and the reason is nuclear deterrance.
Dunno if you were replying to the wrong person, or misinterpreted what I said, but reread my post.
There is no question that the US is stable (as is China, and the USSR back in the day). Nor is there any question that Iran is a dangerous theocracy. Under no circumstances am I defending Iran, or attacking the US.
However, the US has already acted with military force in the middle east, on the pretext of preventing a dictator from aquiring weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, America considers Iran to be its enemy, both geopolitically and ideologically.
Given those two facts, why would Iran give up its nuclear program? Even if the country was run by secular moderates, they'd have no logical reason to get rid of their nukes, and every reason to want to keep them as insurance. The fact that the people in power there are neither logical nor moderate just makes it even harder to convince them. Even a treaty assuring the Iranians that they will not be invaded is not enough - treaties are just words on paper, whereas nukes are a tangible and frightingly effective deterrant.
Like I said, I'm not defending them, only their logic.
You'd want to build underground anyway. The lunar surface isn't shielded from sunlight, radiation, or anything else. There's no atmosphere, no magnetic field, nada. Sunlight would kill lunar crops if it wan't filtered, so no glass dome greenhouses either.
Underground we'd get our radiation shielding for free. We could put solar panels on the surface, though a power plant would still be needed for lunar night (which is about 2 weeks long). Or we could think big and put the solar panels in a line going all ther way around the lunar equator. Plants could get sunlight redirected and lessened in intensity by mirrors during the lunar day, and lighted by lamps during the night.
Sure, and the next thing you know, Bubba the security guard puts a fridge magnet on the bomb for kicks, and KABOOM!
Plus, the bombs would presumably chain react if they exploded near each other. Bomb 1 goes boom, causing bomb 2 to vapurize, letting the anti-matter out, and also going kaboom - repeat as needed til all bombs are gone. Unless we build them out of explosion-proof Unobtainium, and I hear that stuff is in short supply.
If they retire their old weapons and build new ones, isn't that reducing their armaments? If I get rid of a dozen old guns and buy a single new rifle, am I not reducing the number of weapons I have?
I can see why people would want them to get rid of all nukes, and not just some, but you'd never convince a military-minded government to do that. It's probably better that they keep a smaller, less destructive arsenal purely as a deterant.
And I don't see why this article would neccesarily mean more nuclear weapons yet. If the labs develop better bombs, and those bombs are built while the old ones are taken out of storage and dismantled, that at least accomplishes something (since old bombs lying around in storage are probably more of a safety hazard than new ones). Plus, there is no guarantee that the next administration will be as military focused as the current one, so even if they do build a better moustrap, it may not be deployed.
As long as the total number of nukes is decreasing, there is progess.
Eh, Iran was told all they need to be when the US invaded Iraq.
It's simple - if you have the bomb, you're safe. If you don't have it, you'll be invaded. Given that the US seems fully ready to use military force in the middle east, what possible reason would Iran have for NOT building nukes? Nukes make a wonderful deterrant after all.
I'm not saying I agree with them, but they're certainly being logical. Given a choice between, say, a non-agression pact and a stockpile of nuclear weapons that can make the other guy think twice about declaring war, I'd take the nukes. Assurances that you won't be invaded are just words on paper after all.
Antimatter is so old fashioned. Bring on the singularity weapons and matter-energy conversion beams, I say!
Actually, can you imagine what a pain in the ass antimatter weapons would be? One power failure, and BOOM - say goodbye to your stockpile, and most of the continent you were storing it on.
Actually, I'll bet Jackass T could spin this the right way. Ahem:
"Games are teaching our children to find love (well, ok, teenagers. Actually adults, ah screw it, we'll just say children and hope they don't notice the age range). This must be stopped at once! Think people - your children could be FALLING IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE RIGHT NOW! It's sickening. Games must be banned before more people find happiness!"
Oh, and the real JT could probably work something in there about child predators. You know, just because he can, not because that's what the study says.
What exactly do you call kids playing with toys? Or playing outdoor games (sports or otherwise)? I'd call those role playing, of a sort. Imagination and roleplaying don't seem that different to me, except that the former only requires thought, not action. Children do plenty of both with or without any complicated equiptment.
In an RTS game, you might be cast as a medieval ruler. How is that different from children building snow forts and declaring themselvs king? Or commanding mock battles with toy soldiers?
In a FPS game you might play capture the flag. In RL, children... well, play capture the flag. The only difference is virtual vs. real environments. And the RL ping is better, though finding enough people without a server is harder.
In sports, there are rigidly defined rules, objectives, teamwork, coordination. Sounds an awful lot like computer game rules/logic to me. And there is certainly teamwork, as well as other social elements, in almost every multiplayer RPG and coop type game.
Nowdays you can't even argue that the RL stuff is social and the games solitary - every new game now seems to either include multiplayer or even require other players, and come to that, there are plenty of RL childrens games that don't require a group. The only signifigant difference is that games aren't physical activity, and that's a exercise/health issue, not a psychological one.
There is nothing special about games to set them apart. For children, games are merely an extension of what they do already - roleplay and imagination. You could argue that violent visuals are inappropriate for children - but if that is the case, then the same regulations should apply to all visual media. If you must ban one from minors, then fine, ban all visual violence and be done with it. Anything less is hypocritical.
And no, the MPAA does NOT count as a reason why movies shouldn't be regulated - games have the ESRB, and most major stores already self regulate. Moreover, it is quite easy enough for children to get access to R-rated movies. Your anecdotal evidence means absolutly nothing, since my own equally anecdotal evidence is the exact opposite (I have to assume that means the places that we live are quite different), and because there have been uproars in the past when it was found that the restrictions were easy to bypass.
Every few years we get another story about how 8 out of 10 kids could get an R movie from blockbuster, or how 16 year olds got into the theater for the latest hollywood gorefest. These stories are alarmist nonsense, but they illustrate the fact that MPAA self-regulation is flimsy at best. Why should games alone bear the burden of censorship in the name of the children?
That, my friend, is a strawman. And a pretty poor one at that.
My arguement was not "lets protect them from nothing". My arguement was "X and Y have the same effect on children. If we regulate X, shouldn't we also regulate Y?" Unless you can show me that X and Y (games and any of the other things I listed) do not have the same impact upon children, then your entire rebuttal is baseless.
Do games, and for example movies, have the same impact upon children? Probably. Are we regulating movies as tightly as games? Nope, at least not in Oklahoma. So where's the rational behind this law?
As for the second part, GTA is fundamentally no different from any other form of fiction that focuses on the evils of the world. There are plenty of movies/shows/stories that feature the villain, often doing things just as evil as the nameless GTA goon. The fact that kids play the game doesn't matter; imagination is a powerful force when you're young, and passive entertainment does a fine job of giving kids ideas about the world already. The arguement that interactivity somehow elevates games above the rest is ludecrous to anyone young enough to remember their childhood - we ALL "roleplayed" heros and monsters at some age, whether with games, or with stuff as simple as legos and toy soldiers.
It is better for the kid to be taught right from wrong, and what reality is like, and that people do wrong to each other. If a kid can distinguish fantasy from reality and can tell what's right and what isn't, then GTA won't be a problem (though I'd still leave the choice as to whether to let a child play that up to the parent). If the kid can't tell right from wrong, or real from imaginary, then whose fault is that?
"Kids need oversight, yes. Does everyone else not involved in raising kids need this law? Nope. How about passing a bad parenting law, to get these morons to raise their kids properly, and leave the rest of us alone."
An arguement I saw once against regulating (videogames/rockNroll/TV/boogieman-of-the-week) for the children's sake, in the vein of "A modest proposal", was as follows:
If a child grows up wrong, the single greatest culprits are usually the parents. Other people who can severly screw up a child include relatives, educators, and people in a position of trust (most cases of child molestation involve either a relative or authority figure as the culprit).
Therefor, the single best way to limit the number of damaged children who grow up into horrible people is to control or limit those individuals who would be in a position to harm a child psychlogically. Force people to get a parenting license, force preists/teachers/cops/etc to undergo psych testing to eliminate the pedos and individuals with abusing tendancies, force relatives to likewise undergo testing before they're allowed to be named guardian, etc.
Now, obviously, this would violate the rights of those people extensively. But if we're willing to curtail free speech in the name of the childre, then we ought to be willing to curtail other rights as well.
Would we rather limit free speech of the majority, in the cause of providing some nebulous sense of security for the children? Or would it be better just to bite the bullet, limit the rights of parents and others, and do some actual good for the children? The former probably only offers a false sense of security, the latter actually does some good, albeit at a far higher cost.
When viewed in that light, most people would balk. Who would want to sacrifice their freedom in the name of children? But that is exactly what laws like this do, they just do it in a smaller way, without any real advantage for the children who are "protected". Laws prohibiting videogames might concievably do some tiny good; laws that forced preists/teachers/parents/etc to undergo testing would definately do some good.
And the thousands upon thousands of other things that can make them antisocial? What about them? Where are books, TV, radio, movies, the net, comics and/. in all this? Hell, what about the public school system - nothing makes a child antisocial better than throwing them into an environment with a free for all pecking order and forced conformity.
And what about the other things that can impress upon a young mind, like, say, religion? Shall we begin letting the state supervise everything that *might* be a detrimental infulence upon children? I'd say the preachers of the world do far more damage to young minds than the entertainers - shall we start keeping them away from children also?
This bill is crap. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. This was not a poorly worded, but well intentioned attempt at regulating things sensibly for children; this was a vote grabbing measure by sleazy politicians that panders to the puritanical elements.
Trying to make the world superficially safe and clean for kids does them no favours. Trying to pretend we live in a kinder world, one that doesn't have as much violence, is about as sensible as telling them babies come from storks as a way to shield them from the truth about sex. They'll find out just fine for themselves, and better it be from a parent a than either the state or the schoolyard. Parents who support crap like this are trying to shirk their responsibilities - because they'd rather have a nanny state shield their children from reality than equip their children to deal with the real world.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can screw a million people, you're a CEO. Or possibly a porn star. Whichever is sleazier.
Nah, they're still trying to finish Prey remember?
Quote:
"For starters my post was deliberately simplistic to illustrate the hypocracy of the US attempting to project standards on others that it does not itself conform to."
What standards? Nuclear disarmament? Stability? I'm not sure what point you are trying to argue with me.
Quote:
"I was using the term loosely to describe the stupidity of the comment that went before."
Stupidity of what comment?
You claimed calling the US stable was "BS", in response to my post about the logical reasons for a dictator wanting nukes as a deterrant.
My point has been that Iran has no logical reason to give up their nukes. No more, no less. The person before me stated that Iran is run by religious zealots - which I do not disgree with - and that America, China, Et al are stable, while Iran is not.
I pointed out that the relative stability of the US and Iran is not in question, and that the fact that Iran is a theocracy doesn't mean they don't have rational reasons for wanting a nuclear deterrance. I hardly call that "stupid".
If you want to use your own definition of the word stable, go right ahead. But don't claim I'm stupid for counting the US as a politically stable country.
Weapons of mass distraction? :-P
"I thought "stable" meant something along the lines of "does not cause disruption"."
You thought wrong. "Stable" in a geopolitical context means more along the lines of "not likely to undergo a violent uprising or civil war, or undergo massive domestic upheavals, or change from one form of government to another in the forseeable future". It also implies that the "stable" government has a reasonable amount of control over its military. It has nothing to do with morality.
The US today is stable. In the 1860s it wasn't - America was in the midst of civil war. You might well argue that Licoln was a much better president than Bush (I certainly think so), but Lincoln commanded a country that was plagued by instability, whereas Dubya has control over a country that's relatively stable.
Stability has nothing to do with how warlike, how democratic, or how well governed a country is. Pretending that the US isn't politically stable because it's warlike is like pretending Benzene isn't chemically stable because it's toxic - both are taking "stability" to mean something completely different from what people who study political science or chemistry mean when they use the word. A chemist would tell you that a stable chemical can still hurt you, and a polysci major would tell you that a stable country can still make war.
Wonderful. I'm sold on the idea.
Now lets see you convince the United State's Congress, and the Pentagon.
And you missed out on some of the factual arguements presented.
The old bombs have a lifespan. That isn't doublespeak - it's FACT. New bombs will have to be built if we wish to keep them as a deterrant - and convincing politicians and generals that there is no need for such a deterrant is futile, so that's right out. The US no longer has bomb production capability, so the new bombs will need to be made in new factories. And they might as well update the elderly designs while they're at it, since there's no reason to build a new factory to build from bomb designes that are 20+ years old.
Nothing about this is illogical, or contrary to known facts.
The only way developing new bombs will lead to more bombs total if:
A) The new bombs are deployed before the old ones expire (unlikely)
Or
B) More new bombs are built than currently exist. This is expensive, and probably unecesarry, given that nukes aren't needed in massive numbers. A hundred might be enough of a deterrant.
What possible need do they have for doublespeak? The only possible point you might argue is that we shouldn't be building new bombs at all, and that we should give up the ones we have. Good luck convincing the rest of the world about that though.
Actually, yes - in the example you give, the hypothetical nation would be less armed with a few missiles than with hundreds of soldiers, assuming no other weapons were taken into consideration.
Missiles are more destructive than soldiers, but also less versatile. There's a military saying that all the bombs/tanks/ships in the world are meaningless to victory unless you can put a grunt on the patch of land you mean to hold.
And anyway, your example is exchanging one type of weapon for another. The article is about exchanging one generation of the same weapon for another - the metaphor might work better if you were talking about exchanging a battalion of WW2 era riflemen for a single squad of soldiers armed with modern assault rifles.
Because those goals aren't mutually exclusive?
America doesn't reprocess waste because of the fear that reprocessing technology could aid in nuclear proliferation. Other countries already do this however, so it isn't a question of R&D. In fact, IIRC, American nuclear fuel is partly (mostly?) derived from decomissioned bombs.
Existing fission reactor designs are already as safe as they're likely to get. The safety concerns have more to do with the fact that most of the current reactors are older designs dating back 30 years or more. The reason for this is - wait for it - people think nuclear plants aren't safe, and therefor don't want new plants build (I'll let you try and puzzle out the logic of this). So we don't need R&D so much as a chance to build newer reactors and take the older, less safe ones offline.
Fusion reactors are another story; they do need more R&D money, and would be FAR safer than fission reactors, not to mention cleaner. However, fusion tech is going to take another few decades at least, so it's along term investment, something politicians are loath to make.
None of those wars involved an invaded country possessing nukes of their own. Korea couldn't threaten the US with nukes, nor could Vietnam. Afghanistan couldn't nuke the USSR. In each case the country on whose soil the war was fought wasn't a nuclear power.
And realistically, those are examples of war-by-proxy; minor conflicts fought between two major powers by way of of a third party government. The US and the USSR didn't fight each other directly, and the reason is nuclear deterrance.
Dunno if you were replying to the wrong person, or misinterpreted what I said, but reread my post.
There is no question that the US is stable (as is China, and the USSR back in the day). Nor is there any question that Iran is a dangerous theocracy. Under no circumstances am I defending Iran, or attacking the US.
However, the US has already acted with military force in the middle east, on the pretext of preventing a dictator from aquiring weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, America considers Iran to be its enemy, both geopolitically and ideologically.
Given those two facts, why would Iran give up its nuclear program? Even if the country was run by secular moderates, they'd have no logical reason to get rid of their nukes, and every reason to want to keep them as insurance. The fact that the people in power there are neither logical nor moderate just makes it even harder to convince them. Even a treaty assuring the Iranians that they will not be invaded is not enough - treaties are just words on paper, whereas nukes are a tangible and frightingly effective deterrant.
Like I said, I'm not defending them, only their logic.
You'd want to build underground anyway. The lunar surface isn't shielded from sunlight, radiation, or anything else. There's no atmosphere, no magnetic field, nada. Sunlight would kill lunar crops if it wan't filtered, so no glass dome greenhouses either.
Underground we'd get our radiation shielding for free. We could put solar panels on the surface, though a power plant would still be needed for lunar night (which is about 2 weeks long). Or we could think big and put the solar panels in a line going all ther way around the lunar equator. Plants could get sunlight redirected and lessened in intensity by mirrors during the lunar day, and lighted by lamps during the night.
Sure, and the next thing you know, Bubba the security guard puts a fridge magnet on the bomb for kicks, and KABOOM!
Plus, the bombs would presumably chain react if they exploded near each other. Bomb 1 goes boom, causing bomb 2 to vapurize, letting the anti-matter out, and also going kaboom - repeat as needed til all bombs are gone. Unless we build them out of explosion-proof Unobtainium, and I hear that stuff is in short supply.
No, it would be Uranus for producing noxious chemical weapons, silly.
If they retire their old weapons and build new ones, isn't that reducing their armaments? If I get rid of a dozen old guns and buy a single new rifle, am I not reducing the number of weapons I have?
I can see why people would want them to get rid of all nukes, and not just some, but you'd never convince a military-minded government to do that. It's probably better that they keep a smaller, less destructive arsenal purely as a deterant.
And I don't see why this article would neccesarily mean more nuclear weapons yet. If the labs develop better bombs, and those bombs are built while the old ones are taken out of storage and dismantled, that at least accomplishes something (since old bombs lying around in storage are probably more of a safety hazard than new ones). Plus, there is no guarantee that the next administration will be as military focused as the current one, so even if they do build a better moustrap, it may not be deployed.
As long as the total number of nukes is decreasing, there is progess.
Eh, Iran was told all they need to be when the US invaded Iraq.
It's simple - if you have the bomb, you're safe. If you don't have it, you'll be invaded. Given that the US seems fully ready to use military force in the middle east, what possible reason would Iran have for NOT building nukes? Nukes make a wonderful deterrant after all.
I'm not saying I agree with them, but they're certainly being logical. Given a choice between, say, a non-agression pact and a stockpile of nuclear weapons that can make the other guy think twice about declaring war, I'd take the nukes. Assurances that you won't be invaded are just words on paper after all.
Antimatter is so old fashioned. Bring on the singularity weapons and matter-energy conversion beams, I say!
Actually, can you imagine what a pain in the ass antimatter weapons would be? One power failure, and BOOM - say goodbye to your stockpile, and most of the continent you were storing it on.
The universe is large enough and old enough to take care of itself.
"I notice u say 'ex'.. perhaps it wasnt so accidental?"
My money is on computer geek foreplay. A steamy session of hardware mounting gone a litte too far for close quarters.
One minute you're screwing in a motherboard, and the next...
Actually, I'll bet Jackass T could spin this the right way. Ahem:
"Games are teaching our children to find love (well, ok, teenagers. Actually adults, ah screw it, we'll just say children and hope they don't notice the age range). This must be stopped at once! Think people - your children could be FALLING IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE RIGHT NOW! It's sickening. Games must be banned before more people find happiness!"
Oh, and the real JT could probably work something in there about child predators. You know, just because he can, not because that's what the study says.
What exactly do you call kids playing with toys? Or playing outdoor games (sports or otherwise)? I'd call those role playing, of a sort. Imagination and roleplaying don't seem that different to me, except that the former only requires thought, not action. Children do plenty of both with or without any complicated equiptment.
In an RTS game, you might be cast as a medieval ruler. How is that different from children building snow forts and declaring themselvs king? Or commanding mock battles with toy soldiers?
In a FPS game you might play capture the flag. In RL, children... well, play capture the flag. The only difference is virtual vs. real environments. And the RL ping is better, though finding enough people without a server is harder.
In sports, there are rigidly defined rules, objectives, teamwork, coordination. Sounds an awful lot like computer game rules/logic to me. And there is certainly teamwork, as well as other social elements, in almost every multiplayer RPG and coop type game.
Nowdays you can't even argue that the RL stuff is social and the games solitary - every new game now seems to either include multiplayer or even require other players, and come to that, there are plenty of RL childrens games that don't require a group. The only signifigant difference is that games aren't physical activity, and that's a exercise/health issue, not a psychological one.
There is nothing special about games to set them apart. For children, games are merely an extension of what they do already - roleplay and imagination. You could argue that violent visuals are inappropriate for children - but if that is the case, then the same regulations should apply to all visual media. If you must ban one from minors, then fine, ban all visual violence and be done with it. Anything less is hypocritical.
And no, the MPAA does NOT count as a reason why movies shouldn't be regulated - games have the ESRB, and most major stores already self regulate. Moreover, it is quite easy enough for children to get access to R-rated movies. Your anecdotal evidence means absolutly nothing, since my own equally anecdotal evidence is the exact opposite (I have to assume that means the places that we live are quite different), and because there have been uproars in the past when it was found that the restrictions were easy to bypass.
Every few years we get another story about how 8 out of 10 kids could get an R movie from blockbuster, or how 16 year olds got into the theater for the latest hollywood gorefest. These stories are alarmist nonsense, but they illustrate the fact that MPAA self-regulation is flimsy at best. Why should games alone bear the burden of censorship in the name of the children?
That, my friend, is a strawman. And a pretty poor one at that.
My arguement was not "lets protect them from nothing". My arguement was "X and Y have the same effect on children. If we regulate X, shouldn't we also regulate Y?" Unless you can show me that X and Y (games and any of the other things I listed) do not have the same impact upon children, then your entire rebuttal is baseless.
Do games, and for example movies, have the same impact upon children? Probably. Are we regulating movies as tightly as games? Nope, at least not in Oklahoma. So where's the rational behind this law?
As for the second part, GTA is fundamentally no different from any other form of fiction that focuses on the evils of the world. There are plenty of movies/shows/stories that feature the villain, often doing things just as evil as the nameless GTA goon. The fact that kids play the game doesn't matter; imagination is a powerful force when you're young, and passive entertainment does a fine job of giving kids ideas about the world already. The arguement that interactivity somehow elevates games above the rest is ludecrous to anyone young enough to remember their childhood - we ALL "roleplayed" heros and monsters at some age, whether with games, or with stuff as simple as legos and toy soldiers.
It is better for the kid to be taught right from wrong, and what reality is like, and that people do wrong to each other. If a kid can distinguish fantasy from reality and can tell what's right and what isn't, then GTA won't be a problem (though I'd still leave the choice as to whether to let a child play that up to the parent). If the kid can't tell right from wrong, or real from imaginary, then whose fault is that?
"Kids need oversight, yes. Does everyone else not involved in raising kids need this law? Nope. How about passing a bad parenting law, to get these morons to raise their kids properly, and leave the rest of us alone."
An arguement I saw once against regulating (videogames/rockNroll/TV/boogieman-of-the-week) for the children's sake, in the vein of "A modest proposal", was as follows:
If a child grows up wrong, the single greatest culprits are usually the parents. Other people who can severly screw up a child include relatives, educators, and people in a position of trust (most cases of child molestation involve either a relative or authority figure as the culprit).
Therefor, the single best way to limit the number of damaged children who grow up into horrible people is to control or limit those individuals who would be in a position to harm a child psychlogically. Force people to get a parenting license, force preists/teachers/cops/etc to undergo psych testing to eliminate the pedos and individuals with abusing tendancies, force relatives to likewise undergo testing before they're allowed to be named guardian, etc.
Now, obviously, this would violate the rights of those people extensively. But if we're willing to curtail free speech in the name of the childre, then we ought to be willing to curtail other rights as well.
Would we rather limit free speech of the majority, in the cause of providing some nebulous sense of security for the children? Or would it be better just to bite the bullet, limit the rights of parents and others, and do some actual good for the children? The former probably only offers a false sense of security, the latter actually does some good, albeit at a far higher cost.
When viewed in that light, most people would balk. Who would want to sacrifice their freedom in the name of children? But that is exactly what laws like this do, they just do it in a smaller way, without any real advantage for the children who are "protected". Laws prohibiting videogames might concievably do some tiny good; laws that forced preists/teachers/parents/etc to undergo testing would definately do some good.
And the thousands upon thousands of other things that can make them antisocial? What about them? Where are books, TV, radio, movies, the net, comics and /. in all this? Hell, what about the public school system - nothing makes a child antisocial better than throwing them into an environment with a free for all pecking order and forced conformity.
And what about the other things that can impress upon a young mind, like, say, religion? Shall we begin letting the state supervise everything that *might* be a detrimental infulence upon children? I'd say the preachers of the world do far more damage to young minds than the entertainers - shall we start keeping them away from children also?
This bill is crap. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. This was not a poorly worded, but well intentioned attempt at regulating things sensibly for children; this was a vote grabbing measure by sleazy politicians that panders to the puritanical elements.
Trying to make the world superficially safe and clean for kids does them no favours. Trying to pretend we live in a kinder world, one that doesn't have as much violence, is about as sensible as telling them babies come from storks as a way to shield them from the truth about sex. They'll find out just fine for themselves, and better it be from a parent a than either the state or the schoolyard. Parents who support crap like this are trying to shirk their responsibilities - because they'd rather have a nanny state shield their children from reality than equip their children to deal with the real world.
Drat! There's blood in my caffine system!