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Ben Walters

The Entertainment Software Association - Industry Facts - 0 views

  • The best-selling video game of 2007, "Halo 3," took in more revenue ($170 million) on its first day of sales than the opening weekend receipts of "Spider Man 3," ($151 million), the highest-grossing movie opening ever.
  • computer and video games to meet the demands and tastes of audiences as diverse as our nation's population.
  • Today's gamers include millions of Americans of all ages and backgrounds.  In fact, more than two-thirds of all American households play games. This vast audience is fueling the growth of this multi-billion dollar industry and bringing jobs to communities across the nation.
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  • U.S. computer and video game software sales generated $10.5 billion in 2009.
  • Sixty-seven percent of American households play computer or video games. 
  • The average game player is 34 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.
  • The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 40 years old.
  • Forty percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (20 percent).
  • In 2010, 26 percent of Americans over the age of 50 play video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999.
  • Forty-two percent of heads of households play games on a wireless device, such as a cell phone or PDA, up from 20 percent in 2002.
  • Eighty-two percent of all games sold in 2009 were rated "E" for Everyone, "T" for Teen, or "E10+" for Everyone 10+.
  • Parents who have children under 18 with a gaming console in the home are present when games are purchased or rented 93 percent of the time.
  • Sixty-four percent of parents believe games are a positive part of their children’s lives.
Dillon Patel

Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says - 0 views

  • our planet's recent climate changes have a natural
  • and not a human-induced
  • controversial theory.
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  • Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Get an overview: "Global Warming Fast Facts".)
  • "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
  • Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
  • Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets
  • ice ages throughout their histories.
  • "Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.
  • Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.
  • has not been well received by other climate scientists.
  •  
    From a reliable source, National Geographic, they say that Global Warming's main cause MAY NOT be humans, though in fact solar. Against my argument.
Bhavya Puri

Shark Fin Soup Facts - 0 views

  • But we’re not paying enough attention to what we are taking out of our oceans – sharks – and they’re being killed at the rate of up to 73 million per year.
  • You may not really care much about sharks but our oceans account for about half of the planet’s oxygen supply and sharks play a key role in maintaining the health of the oceans.
  • 73 million sharks a year are being served up to make celebration soup.
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  • If you feel this way, you’re not alone, but it might surprise you to know that although there are more than 350 distinct species of sharks, only a few even bother with humans. The giant Whale Shark doesn’t even have teeth.
  • As of late 2009, the world’s population of sharks had already diminished by 50 to 75%.
  • A North Atlantic population survey reports as much as an 89% decrease.
  • show that for the 181 species of sharks for which they have adequate data, over 64% of those populations are noted as “threatened” or “vulnerable”. Of those, over 21% are categorized as “endangered” or worse. At least one species is already listed as “extinct in the wild.”
  • Sharks are pulled onto fishing boats where their fins are cut off and their bodies are thrown back into the ocean as waste. A large percentage of these animals are still alive and suffocate. Even though less than 5% of the shark is fin, the rest is usually thrown away because of the economics of it. Shark meat must be properly refrigerated and takes up a lot of space on a boat. Fins, however, can be cut off, bundled, and hung to dry in large nets. It is the fin that produces the largest profit by far and can be sold for hundreds of dollars per pound.
Mihikaa Naik

The Mozart Effect: Fact or Fiction? - 0 views

  • music can positively affect human beings, yet they believe that these positive effects are not limited simply to the music of Mozart or other classical composers
  • music stimulates certain areas of the brain that are crucial to its performance in intuitive and logical matters
  • babies
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  • music has helped their brains to develop at a faster rate
  • autism, attention deficit disorder and epilepsy showed that while they are exposed to music
  • ocial skills and concentration improved dramatically i
  • our own voices can help ease pain and heal our bodies. T
  • music can lower or increase a person's heart rate and blood pressure, depending on the type of music.
  • The auditory nerve in the inner ear can strongly affect many muscles in the body.
  • some others have had no significant response at all, or even worse, negative responses.
  • exposure to such music actually decreased their subjects' capacity to concentrate.
  • may not be so for everyone
Ingrid Sande

CDC - Fact Sheets-Underage Drinking - Alcohol - 0 views

  • Alcohol use by persons under age 21 years is a major public health problem.1 Alcohol is the most commonly used and abused drug among youth in the United States, more than tobacco and illicit drugs.
  • Although drinking by persons under the age of 21 is illegal, people aged 12 to 20 years drink 11% of all alcohol consumed in the United States.2 More than 90% of this alcohol is consumed in the form of binge drinks.2 On average, underage drinkers consume more drinks per drinking occasion than adult drinkers.3 In 2008, there were approximately 190,000 emergency rooms visits by persons under age 21 for injuries and other conditions linked to alcohol.4
  • The 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey5 found that among high school students, during the past 30 days 42% drank some amount of alcohol. 24% binge drank. 10% drove after drinking alcohol. 28% rode with a driver who had been drinking alcohol.
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  • Consequences of Underage Drinking Youth who drink alcohol1, 3, 8 are more likely to experience School problems, such as higher absence and poor or failing grades. Social problems, such as fighting and lack of participation in youth activities. Legal problems, such as arrest for driving or physically hurting someone while drunk. Physical problems, such as hangovers or illnesses. Unwanted, unplanned, and unprotected sexual activity. Disruption of normal growth and sexual development. Physical and sexual assault. Higher risk for suicide and homicide. Alcohol-related car crashes and other unintentional injuries, such as burns, falls, and drowning. Memory problems. Abuse of other drugs. Changes in brain development that may have life-long effects. Death from alcohol poisoning. In general, the risk of youth experiencing these problems is greater for those who binge drink than for those who do not binge drink.8 Youth who start drinking before age 15 years are five times more likely to develop alcohol dependence or abuse later in life than those who begin drinking at or after age 21 years.9, 10
  • Prevention of Underage Drinking Reducing underage drinking will require community-based efforts to monitor the activities of youth and decrease youth access to alcohol.
  • reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising, and development of comprehensive community-based programs. These efforts will require continued research and evaluation to determine their success and to improve their effectiveness.
Yasmin Tandon

The Debate over Foreign Aid - Council on Foreign Relations - 0 views

  • $4 billion--a 7 percent reduction in the already frugal
  • proposed budget of
  • $58.8 billion
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  • -$14.6 billion--for global challenges like health, food security, climate change, and humanitarian assistance.
  • less than a quarter
  • wants to maintain a strong commitment to overseas assistance and global health.
  • budget request includes strategic
  • structural shifts to reach those goals, including aligning foreign assistance more closely with foreign policy objectives, demanding greater accountability from recipient governments, and delivering more "bang for the buck" by increasing cross-agency cooperation, streamlining delivery of goods and services, and reducing U.S. government redundancies.
  • In fact, $14.6 billion for the abovementioned global challenges amounts to a mere .38 percent of the $3.8 trillion federal budget.
  • Americans want to be magnanimous in helping poor nations but also want to reduce spending
  • The problem is that polls show that Americans actually believe that spending on overseas health, development, and humanitarian and anti-poverty programs is 15 to 20 percent of the national budget. In fact, spending has never exceeded 0.5 percent.
  • Very little of the government's budget is discretionary and easil
  • also lack the strong constituency backing of other government programs
  • global financial crisis
  • greatly increased the need for agricultural, poverty, and health programs
  • World Bank estimates show backward movement on key health and development targets since the onset of the economic crisis.
  • 2. Will the Obama administration's structural reorganization of foreign assistance achieve the administration's, or Congress', goals?
Aneesh Mysore

Why video games are good for kids - 0 views

  • There is a lot of controversy about how bad video games are for children, in regards to violence, and general obsession with playing, so much so that nothing else matters to them. Having been quite involved in more than one video game in my time, I can attest to the fact that they can become quite addicting and there is a kind of obsession that drives you to keep playing until you’ve won the game
  • Video games have many benefits to children which most of us never even think of. Video games promote good eye-hand coordination, problem solving skills, critical thinking and competition.
Aneesh Mysore

Video Games For Underage Children - 0 views

  • n fact, over eighty three percent of all those adults who buy computer games or video games for children against the publisher's age recommendations are the parents themselves.
  • well over sixty percent of all those who do play or buy such video games are over the age of eighteen.
  • that parents don't realise just how much computer graphical capabilities have developed in the last few years.
Mihikaa Naik

Spatial intelligence and the 'Mozart effect': Does listening to Mozart make you smarter? - 0 views

  • widely believed to be an established fact
  • ntelligent – it is intricate, skillful, precise and sophisticated
  • rain activity becoming
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  • coordinated or synchronized
  • Francis Rauscher and her colleagues published a stud
  • visualise folding and cutting a piece of paper
  • Mozart effect’ (as the Press called it
  • quickly captivated the public imagination
  • many examples of single scientific studies that initially catch he public imagination and get a lot of press coverage, but are subsequently proved to be invalid or relatively insignificant.
  • effect of Mozart on cognitive performance has been found
  • specific type of spatial task
  • no way can be considered to be a test of general intelligence
  • Nature in 1993
  • . Listening to Mozart has been shown to have no effect on working memory performance
  • therefore misleading to understand the Mozart effect
  • The effect is likely to be due to arousal or mood, not changes in cognition
  • Differences
  • in mood have been shown to have an effect on performance
  • positive mood
  • esearch provide no evidence that the improvement differ
  • other engaging stimuli that are equally pleasing to participants
  • authors’ views on their own study
  • over-reaction in the popular press
  • jumping to conclusions
Bhavya Puri

Shark Education - Shark Finning Facts - 0 views

  • Education
  • Shark specialists estimate that 100 million sharks are killed for their fins, annually.
  • One pound of dried shark fin can retail for $300 or more. It's a multi-billion dollar industry
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  • Loss and devastation of shark populations around the world. Experts estimate that within a decade, most species of sharks will be lost because of longlining.
  • Unsustainable fishery. The massive quantity of sharks harvested and lack of selection deplete shark populations faster than their reproductive abilities can replenish populations.
  • Each country with a coastline is responsible for laws and regulations pertaining to fishing in their waters.
  •  
    Talks about why Shark Finning is bad and a bit about shark finning
Puja DeGamia

Eating Disorders: Body Image and Advertising - HealthyPlace - 0 views

  • Advertisers often emphasize
  • he importance of physical attractiveness in an attempt to sell products
  • In recent survey by Teen People magazine, 27% of the girls felt that the media pressures them to have a perfect body
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  • Researchers suggest advertising media may adversely impact women's body image,
  • ads made women fear being unattractive
    • Puja DeGamia
       
      this can lead to unhealthy behavior as girls strive for the ultra-thin body idealized by the media
  • he average woman sees 400 to 600 advertisements per day
  • and by the time she is 17 years old, she has received over 250,000 commercial messages through the media.
    • Puja DeGamia
       
      Shows the average amount of media exposure girls have targeted towards them
  • Only 9% of commercials have a direct statement about beauty,
  • but many more implicitly emphasize the importance of beauty--particularly those that target women and girls.
  • This constant exposure to female-oriented advertisements may influence girls to become self-conscious about their bodies and to obsess over their physical appearance as a measure of their worth
  • ty, and the bodies idealized in the media are frequently atypical of normal, healthy women. In fact,
  • Advertisements emphasize thinness as a standard for female beau
  • today's fashion models weigh 23% less than the average female
    • Puja DeGamia
       
      a young woman between the ages of 18-34 has a 7% chance of being as slim as a catwalk model
  • Women frequently compare their bodies to those they see around them, and researchers have found that exposure to idealized body images lowers women's satisfaction with their own attractiveness.
  • girls reported in a
  • Body Image Survey that "very thin" models made them
  • feel insecure about themselves.
  • Dissatisfaction with their bodies causes many women and girls to strive for the thin ideal. The number one wish for girls ages 11 to 17 is to be thinner
  • Eighty percent (80%) of 10-year-old girls have dieted,
    • Puja DeGamia
       
      The media is not only being exposed to girls who are well into their teens but young girls aged 10 or younger.  - media impact has started spreading through age groups making little girls conscious about their weight as well.
  • One study found that 47% of the girls were influenced by magazine pictures to want to lose weight, but only 29% were actually overweight
  • Research has also found that stringent dieting to achieve an ideal figure can play a key role in triggering eating disorders.
  • Girls who were already dissatisfied with their bodies showed more dieting, anxiety, and bulimic symptoms after prolonged exposure to fashion and advertising images
  • in a teen girl magazine.
Shaakya Vembar

You Say Potato, I Say Cassava: Language, Culture and Perception: Scientific American Po... - 0 views

  • "Do you think its just a coincidence that the same culture that uses this kind of indeterminate word is the culture that came up with the uncertainty principle
  • we are obsessed with time, we talk about time all the time and in fact time is the number one noun in terms of usage according to the Oxford [English] Dictionary.
  • So we are talking about time all the time, but if you actually ask someone to define what time is, [they] really can't do it.
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  • So how do we talk about time? We talk about it metaphorically, and for the most part and this not just in English, but across the world in many different languages.
  • So the metaphors we have like time being a landscape that we are moving across; so we talk about "coming up to Thanksgiving," as though Thanksgiving is a location that we are moving towards, but we also sometimes talk about time as something that's moving while we are static.
  • Kuuk Thaayorre, the language of Pormpuraaw, is that time moves for them from east to west, so they don't talk about it as moving from east to west, but in terms of nonlinguistic cognition—we've tested this in various ways—they seem to depict it as moving from east to west
Shumona Raha

Euthanasia and Human Rights - 0 views

  • Euthanasia literally means “good death”. It is basically to bring about the death of a terminally ill patient or a disabled. It is resorted to so that the last days of a patient who has been suffering from such an illness which is terminal in nature or which has disabled him can peacefully end up his life and which can also prove to be less painful for him.
  • Active euthanasia means putting an end to the life of an individual for merciful reason by a medical practitioner by giving a lethal dose of medication to the patient. Passive euthanasia takes place where methods such as removing artificial life support systems such as ventilators, hydration, etc are resorted to.
  • On the other hand voluntary euthanasia means where a patient who is suffering a lot asks a medical practitioner to end his life whereas involuntary euthanasia is just the opposite of voluntary euthanasia that is where there is no consent of the patient but for it there can be many reasons such as if he is not mentally competent to give his consent and other such reasons.
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  • A person has a right to live a life with at least minimum dignity and if that standard is falling below that minimum level then a person should be given a right to end his life.
  • Supporters of euthanasia also point out to the fact that as passive euthanasia has been allowed, similarly active euthanasia must also be allowed.
  • A patient will wish to end his life only in cases of excessive agony and would prefer to die a painless death rather than living a miserable life with that agony and suffering.
  • According to them its not granting ‘right to die’ rather it should be called ‘right to kill’.
  • Opponents also point out that when suicide is not allowed then euthanasia should also not be allowed.
Aditi Buti

Is Poverty Linked to Terrorism? | Global Envision - 0 views

  • starting with the fact that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by middle-to-upper-class men. (A 2003 paper suggests that terrorist groups may recruit well-educated, well-off members because they can blend into their Western targets.)
  • Poverty can surely lead to a sense of societal alienation, which could make people more likely to join a terrorist group
  • A prime example is American Greg Mortenson's efforts to build dozens of schools in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are documented in the book Three Cups of Tea. According to Mortenson, "Education in general is a powerful tool to provide alternatives to the illiterate, impoverished areas that are the recruiting grounds for terror."
Kanika Vaish

EBSCOhost: The Truth About Teen Girls - 0 views

  • essarily support one. Despite a minor increase in 2006, the rate of pregnancies among teen girls has been on a downward trend since 1991. Another indicator, the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, is alarmingly high: nearly 1 in 4 girls ages 14 to 19 and nearly 1 in 2 African-American girls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But this is the first year such a study has been completed, and the study doesn't separate 14-to-16-year-olds from 17-to-19-year-olds, so it's still unclear which way that trend is heading.
  • Other studies imply that girls, while not exactly chaste, are not behaving in ways that media reports about the hookup culture might lead us to believe. According to the Guttmacher Institute, one-third of surveyed teenagers 15 to 17 had had oral sex, and most of those were not virgins. Of teens ages 15 to 19 who had had oral sex only, two-thirds reported having had only one partner.
  • They don't want to be like the characters in Gossip Girl (only 16% of whose viewers are actually teen girls) or America's Next Top Model; they just want to look like them, to try on that identity.
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  • "They think, If I have a baby, I'll be someone. It gives them an identity." How can Ireland be so sure? She gave birth to daughter Haley, now 3, when she was 15.
  • Once the idea has taken hold, it's hard to shake off, and the fact that the presidential campaign features a pregnant 17-year-old means that the debate about teenage sexuality is growing only more heated. Girlhood sexiness seems to be everywhere: on TV shows and in movies, in advertising, in teen magazines and all over the Internet.
Dominick Wong

Concorde Aircraft Facts, Dates and History - 0 views

  • delta wing configuration and an evolution of the afterburner equipped engines originally developed for the Avro Vulcan strategic bomber. It is the first civil airliner to be equipped with an analogue fly-by-wire flight control system.
    • Dominick Wong
       
      Pros &Cons
  • For speed optimization: double-delta (ogive) shaped wings afterburning Roll-Royce/Snecma Olympus turbojets with supercruise capability thrust-by-wire engines, ancestor of today's FADEC controlled engines droop-nose section for good landing visibility
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  • Mach 2.04 'sweet spot' for optimum fuel consumption (supersonic drag minimum, while jet engines are more efficient at high speed) mostly aluminium construction for low weight and relatively conventional build full-regime autopilot and autothrottle allowing "hands off" control of the aircraft from climb out to landing fully electrically-controlled, analog fly-by-wire flight controls systems multifunction flight control surfaces high-pressure hydraulic system of 28 MPa (4,000 lbf/in) for lighter hydraulic systems components fully electrically controlled analog brake-by-wire system pitch trim by shifting fuel around the fuselage for center-of-gravity control parts milled from single alloy billet reducing the part number count.
  • unique experience of passing through the sound barrier was less dramatic than would be expected. The moment would be announced by one of the pilots, and could be seen on the cabin display, otherwise the slight surge in acceleration could easily be missed. At twice the normal cruising altitude, turbulence was rare and the view from t he windows clearly showed the curvature of the Earth. During the supersonic cruise, although the outside air temperature was typically -60 C, air friction would heat the external skin at the front of the plane to around +120 C making the windows warm to the touch and producing a noticeable temperature gradient along the length of the cabin. Most remarkably Concorde was the only passenger airliner able to overtake the terminator. On certain early evening transatlantic flights departing from Heathrow or Paris, it was possible to take off at night and catch up with the sun from the cockpit you could see the sun rise in the west.
  • aris crash The Concorde was the safest airliner in the world according to passenger deaths per distance travelled until the 25 July 2000 crash of Air France Flight 4590 in Gonesse, France, although it should be noted that the Boeing 737 fleet acquires more passenger miles and service hours in one week than the Concorde fleet acquired in the course of its entire service career. In any case, all of the people on board the flight perished, as well as four people on the ground. As the plane was on its take-off run, a metal piece punctured the tires which then burst, puncturing the fuel tanks and leading to the loss of the aircraft. The report of the investigation was published on 14 December 2004, attributing the crash to foreign object damage from a titanium strip that fell from another aircraft, a Continental Airlines DC-10 which had taken off four minutes before; the piece had not been approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration.
  • Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde supersonic transport (SST)
  • commercial servic
  • cruise speed of mach 2.04 and a cruise altitude of 60,000 feet
  • In the late 1950s the
  • British, Fr
  • ench, American
  • Soviets
  • developing a supersonic transport
  • ere lar
  • espective governments as a way of gaining some foothold in the aircraft market that was
  • designs called the Type 233 and Super-Caravelle
  • dominated by the United States.
  • prototype construction in the early 1960s, but the cost was so great that the companies (and governments) decided to join forces
  • egotiated as an international treaty between Britain and France
  • draft treaty was signed on November 28, 1962.
  • both companies had been merged into new ones and the Concorde project was thus a part of the British Aircraft Corporation and Aerospatiale.
  • Only 20 Concordes were built, six for development and 14 for commercial service. These were: two prototypes two pre-production aircraft 16 production aircraft
  • Critically, many of the victims of the 9/11 attacks were business executives based within the World Trade Center buildings who were either regular Concorde customers themselves, or authorised others to travel on the aircraft.
krpa savlani

Who Is the Zodiac Killer? - 0 views

  • he Zodiac Killer, a serial murderer active in Northern California in the 1960s and 1970s, was notable not only for his killing spree and mysterious ciphers sent to news
  • outlets and police, but also for the fact that he got away with the murders, as his identity was never discovered
  • Arthur Leigh Allen, but his DNA, fingerprints, and handwriting did not match that left behind by the Zodiac Killer.
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  • While the Zodiac Killer claimed responsibility for 37 victims, only seven have been confirmed. All had been young couples except for cab driver Paul Stine,
  • ingerprints and handwriting did not match that of the Zodiac Killer and he was therefore never charged for the killings.
  • Jack Tarrance, whose stepson found a black hood resembling that of the Zodiac Killer, as well as undeveloped rolls of film that Tarrance's stepson says contain gruesome photos of the murders. None of the evidence has been substantiated, though the case is still open and active.
Ben Walters

The gaming-violence connection: why society finds it comforting - 0 views

  • the attempts to legislate restrictions on violent video games and the ambiguous science that supports those efforts.
  • why these legislative efforts gain so much traction despite their lack of a solid scientific foundation.
  • in the journal Contexts, USC sociology lecturer Karen Sternheimer analyzes these efforts in terms of ongoing societal fears regarding the influence of media on children.
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  • despite the proliferation of violent, first-person shooters in the wake of Doom, juvenile homicide rates have fallen in the decade since its release. Random school shootings remain incredibly rare; for all forms of homicide, students face a seven in 10 million chance of being a victim.
  • Random school shootings remain so rare, in fact, that Sternheimer reports that the FBI found it impossible to generate a profile of a "typical" shooter.
  • society doesn't really understand its youth. As a result, adults fear their loss of control over the factors that influence childhood development in an increasingly connected world.
  • Far from being a new danger, the Sternheimer report suggests that gaming is simply the latest in a long series of media influences to take the blame. "Over the past century, politicians have complained that cars, radio, movies, rock music, and even comic books caused youth immorality and crime, calling for control and sometimes censorship." She terms the targets of such efforts "folk devils," items branded dangerous and immoral that serve to focus blame and fear.
  • These folk devils can be used for political advancement or financial gain via lawsuits such as those that have targeted game makers. But, based on Sternheimer's description, their primary function appears to be to distract people from identifying the real causes underlying our discomfort with youth culture. It also may distract people from getting to know their kids.
Ben Walters

Were video games to blame for massacre? - Technology & science - Games - msnbc.com - 0 views

  • The shooting on the Virginia Tech campus was only hours old, police hadn't even identified the gunman, and yet already the perpetrator had been fingered and was in the midst of being skewered in the media.
  • Video games. They were to blame for the dozens dead and wounded. They were behind the bloodiest massacre in U.S. history. Or so Jack Thompson told Fox News and, in the days that followed, would continue to tell anyone who'd listen.
  • But whether Seung-Hui Cho, the student who opened fire Monday, was an avid player of video games and whether he was a fan of "Counter-Strike" in particular remains, even now, uncertain at best.
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  • Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the school shootings and the finger-pointing that followed, game players and industry advocates say they're outraged that the brutal acts of a deeply disturbed and depressed loner with a history of mental illness would be blamed so quickly on video and computer games. They say this is perhaps the most flagrant case of anti-game crusaders using a tragedy to promote their own personal causes.
  • "It's so sad. These massacre chasers — they're worse than ambulance chasers — they're waiting for these things to happen so they can jump on their soapbox," said Jason Della Rocca,
    • Ben Walters
       
      'common sense tells me'
  • When Jack Thompson gets worked up, he refers to gamers as "knuckleheads." He calls video games "mental masturbation." When he's talking about himself and his crusade against violent games, he calls himself an "educator." He likes to use the word "pioneer."
  • On those rare occasions when a student opens fire on a school campus, Thompson is frequently the first and the loudest to declare games responsible. In recent years he's blamed games such as "Counter-Strike," "Doom" and "Grand Theft Auto III" for school shootings in Littleton, Colo., Red Lake, Minn. and Paducah, Ky.
  • He's blamed them for shootings beyond school grounds as well. In an attempt to hold game developers and publishers responsible for these spasms of violence, Thompson has launched several unsuccessful lawsuits.
  • "It disgusts me," said Isaiah Triforce Johnson, a longtime gamer and founder of a New York-based gaming advocacy group that, in response to the accusations, is now planning what is the first ever gamer-driven peace rally. 
  • Microsoft did not create "Counter Strike" but did publish a version of it for the Xbox.
  • authorities released a search warrant listing the items found in Cho's dorm room. Not a single video game, console or gaming gadget was on the list, though a computer was confiscated. And in an interview with Chris Matthews of "Hardball," Cho's university suite-mate said he had never seen Cho play video games.
  • "This is not rocket science. When a kid who has never killed anyone in his life goes on a rampage and looks like the Terminator, he's a video gamer,"
  • And in a letter sent to Bill Gates Wednesday, he wrote: "Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable (for) the harm done at Virginia Tech. Your game, a killing simulator, according to the news that used to be in the Post, trained him to enjoy killing and how to kill."
    • Ben Walters
       
      See how bad his research is, the only possibility of him ever playing a game was on his computer, yet he blames Microsoft, who created a game for the Xbox (which would be incompatible for a PC) for directly and massively influencing these events.
    • Ben Walters
       
      Counter Strike, the game he blamed for these killings, has two objectives. Protect an objective from a bomb that the team of terrorists are going to try to plant, or to plant this bomb. Neither of these objectives have to include murder, or solo missions.
  • Fed up with the scapegoating and lack of understanding, gamer groups have begun to get increasingly organized in their attempts to change public perception of their favorite hobby.
  • While Thompson concedes that there are many elements that must have driven Cho to commit such a brutal act, he insists that without video games Cho wouldn't have had the skills to do what he did. "He might have killed somebody but he wouldn't have killed 32 if he hadn't rehearsed it and trained himself like a warrior on virtual reality. It can't be done. It just doesn't happen."
  • Dr. Karen Sternheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern Calfornia and author of the book " Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions About Today's Youth," disagrees. She believes that it didn't require much skill for Cho to shoot as many people as he did. After all, eye witness accounts indicate many of the victims were shot at point-blank range.
  • And for all of Thompson's claims that violent video games are the cause of school shootings, Sternheimer points out that before this week's Virginia Tech massacre, the most deadly school shooting in history took place at the University of Texas in Austin… in 1966. Not even "Pong" had been invented at that time.
  • Sternheimer says the rush to blame video games in these situations is disingenuous for yet another reason. Although it remains unclear whether Cho played games, it seems nobody will be surprised if it turns out he did. After all, what 23-year-old man living in America hasn't played video games?
  • "Especially if you're talking about young males, the odds are pretty good that any young male in any context will have played video games at some point,"
  • "I think in our search to find some kind of answer as to why this happened, the video game explanation seems easy," she says. "It seems like there's an easy answer to preventing this from happening again and that feels good on some level."
  • The blame game
  • Jason Della Rocca agrees. "Everyone wants a simple solution for a massively complex problem. We want to get on with our lives."
  • As the leader of an organization that represents video game creators from all over the world, Della Rocca knows the routine all too well.
  • Someone opens fire on a school campus. Someone blames video games. His phone starts ringing. People start asking him questions like, "So how bad are these games anyway?"
  • Of course, he also knows that this is far from the first time in history that a young form of pop culture has been blamed for any number of society's ills. Rock and roll was the bad guy in the 1950s. Jazz was the bad guy in the 1930s. Movies, paintings, comic books, works of literature…they've all been there.
  • Still, Della Rocca believes that people like Thompson are "essentially feeding off the fears of those who don't understand games."
  • For those who didn't grow up playing video games, the appeal of a game like "Counter-Strike" can be hard to comprehend. It can be difficult to understand that the game promotes communication and team work. It can be hard fathom how players who love to run around gunning down their virtual enemies do not have even the slightest desire to shoot a person in real life.
  • "It's the thing they don't understand," Della Rocca says. "It's a thing that's scary."
  • "You cannot tell me — common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they're on a mass killing spree in a video game, it's glamorized on the big screen, it's become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high. And we're going to have to start dealing with that."
  • the members of Empire Arcadia — a grassroots group dedicated to supporting the gaming community and culture — have been so incensed by the recent attempts to blame video games for the Virginia Tech shootings that they've begun planning a rally in New York City with the assistance of the ECA.
  • "There we will protest, mourn and show how real gamers play video games peacefully and responsibly," organizer Johnson wrote on the group's Web site. "This demonstration is to show that gamers will not take the blame of this tragic matter but we will do what we can to help put an end to terrible events like this." Johnson says that, ultimately, he hopes the rally — scheduled for May 5 — will help people better understand video game enthusiasts like him. "We are normal people," he says. "We just play games."
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