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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

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,

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."

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."

"the resilience and pervasiveness of giving in our culture,

The USA is only the world's biggest giver because it is rich.

most stingy and self-interested giver in the developed world:

USA is the

America is the world's most generous nation.

absolute figures are less significant than the proportion of gross domestic product (GDP, or national wealth) that a country devotes to foreign aid

long established the target of 0.7% GDP for development assistance

while thin women and pumped-up men are the successful, popular, sexy and powerful ones. How can we tell our children that it's what's inside that counts, when the media continuously contradicts this message?

Super models in all the popular magazines have continued to get thinner and thinner.

Modeling agencies have been reported to actively pursue Anorexic models.

he average woman model weighs up to 25% less

han the typical woman and maintains a weight at about 15 to 20 percent below what is considered healthy for her age and height.

By far, these body types and images are not the norm and unobtainable

Diet advertisements are another problem.

hese images are fake.

the ideal body" combined with the diet industry's drive to make more money, creates a never-ending cycle of ad upon ad that try to convince us

Pop-culture's imposed definition of

Barbie-type dolls have often been blamed on playing a role in the development of body-image problems and Eating Disorders.

Not only do these dolls have fictionally proportioned, small body sizes, but they lean towards escalating the belief that materialistic possessions, beauty and thinness equate happiness.

Barbie has more accessories available to purchase than can be believed, including Ken, her attractive boyfriend.

personally do NOT believe every girl that has a Barbie-type doll is at risk of disordered eating,

We need to remind ourselves and each other constantly (especially children) that

With an increased population of children who spend a lot of time in front of television, there are more of them coming up with a superficial sense of who they are.

we are continually exposed to the notion that losing weight will make us happier and it will be through "THIS diet plan".

if you lose weight, your life will be good."

These images may not help, and for those already open to the possibility of negative coping mechanisms and/or mental illness, the media may play a small contributing role -- but ultimately, if a young man or woman's life situation, environment, and/or genetics leave them open to an Eating Disorder (or alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, OCD, etc.), they will still end up in the same place regardless of television or magazines.

it helps to perpetuate an ideal of materialism, beauty, and being thin as important elements to happiness in one's life.

What is rarely reported is that worldwide, sharks kill an average of 10 people every year. It's usually when people venture into a shark's habitat and not the other way around. By contrast, humans kill around 100 million sharks every year - a number that has ballooned in recent years because of the enormous demand for shark fins to make shark fin soup.

Shark fin soup is a delicacy reserved for the wealthy on special occasions and it has been part of Chinese culture for centuries. For years, only rich Chinese mostly in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore consumed it, so the impact on the overall shark population was negligible

Over the last decade, the exploding middle class in China has changed the fate of the shark.

2011, the worldwide gaming market will be worth $48.9 billion at a compound annual growth rate of 9.1%

ith gains slowing every year because of the maturation of the current generation of consoles,

exceed the 6.4% advance that PwC foresees for the overall entertainment economy during the period.

Its data include consumer spending on games, but exclude spending on hardware and accessories.

For the U.S. gaming business, PwC projects 6.7% compound annual gains for the five-year period, to $12.5 billion. Asia-Pacific should remain the region with the highest overall spending on gaming during the period and reach $18.8 billion in 2011, PwC forecasts.

Despite its leading size, its 10% average annual gains will only be exceeded by the combined region of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), which is pegged for a 10.2% compound annual gain and is set to remain at No. 2 in terms of worldwide gaming.

In the U.S., online and wireless games should see the biggest gains through 2011

online will expand from an estimated $1.1 billion market last year to $2.7 billion in 2011

Consumer spending on console and hand-held games will go from $6.5 billion in 2006 to $7.9 billion in 2011

However, the U.S. PC games market will continue its decline, with PwC eyeing a contraction from an estimated $969 million in 2006 to $840 million in 2011.

growing from an estimated $80 million last year to $950 million in 2011

this estimate could prove conservative as "advertisers like to reach the younger males" that many games tend to attract.

He also said that the overall gaming audience continues to expand and become somewhat more female and older than in the past thanks to casual games and the arrival as games as an "important part of culture."