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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,

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."

Are animal experiments useful? Animal experiments only benefit human beings if their results are valid and can be applied to human beings. Not all scientists are convinced that these tests are valid and useful.

Animal experiments are widely used to develop new medicines and to test the safety of other products.

In November 2008 the European Union put forward proposals to revise the directive for the protection of animals used in scientific experiments

The proposals have three aims: to considerably improve the welfare of animals used in scientific procedures

to ensure fair competition for industry to boost research activities in the European Union

The main changes proposed are:

to make it compulsory to carry out ethical reviews and require that experiments where animals are used be subject to authorisation to widen the scope of the directive to include specific invertebrate species and foetuses in their last trimester of development and also larvae and other animals used in basic research, education and training to set minimum housing and care requirements to require that only animals of second or older generations be used, subject to transitional periods, to avoid taking animals from the wild and exhausting wild populations to state that alternatives to testing on animals must be used when available and that the number of animals used in projects be reduced to a minimum to require member states to improve the breeding, accommodation and care measures and methods used in procedures so as to eliminate or reduce to a minimum any possible pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm caused to animals

Search Story and Title Text Search Title Text Only Sort Option For Results List By Relevance Rank By Story Date Optional Date Range &nbsp;&nbsp;(reset) From:&nbsp; Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 1980 1979 1978 1977 1976 1975 1974 1973 1972 1971 1970 1969 1968 1967 1966 1965 1964 1963 1962 1961 1960 1959 1958 1957 1956 1955 1954 1953 1952 1951 1950 1949 1948 1947 1946 1945 1944 1943 1942 1941 1940 1900 1850 1800 1700 1600 To:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 2010 2009 <

n many

laces, it was legal for people as young as 18 to purchase and drink alcohol.

The in

roduction of a

constitutional amendment lowering the U.S.'s voting age to 18 in 1971 ushered in a further wave of lowered

drinking ages in many states.

However, that tide was swiftly reversed beginning in the late 1970s.

federal law was passed in

984 that effectively established a national minimum drinking age of 21

Is the current minimum drinking age of 21 a good idea, promoting safety and responsibility among American teenagers? Or has it backfired, causing an increasingly dangerous drinking culture among U.S. youth?

Critics, however, argue that the 21-and-over drinking laws have actually made for a more dangerous environment for American teenagers by prompting them to do their drinking in private, unsupervised environments

Supporters of the current minimum drinking age say that the higher age limit has reduced drunk driving deaths substantially, and generally makes for a safer environment. Teenagers and alcohol make for a potentially hazardous mix, supporters maintain, and any steps taken to separate those two elements should be welcomed. Additionally, the human body does not fully develop until around the age of 21, proponents say; the intake of alcohol can cause grave mental and physical damage to a still-developing body.

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.

Now that researchers know these off-the-shelf games can have wide-ranging benefits, they’re trying to home in on the games’ most important aspects, potentially allowing designers to create new games that specifically boost brain power.

“Until now, people have been asking can you learn anything from games?’’ MIT’s Klopfer said. “That’s a less interesting question than what aspects of games are important for fostering learning.’’

Do students learn more with a more narrative game?

is assessing whether games that are novel, include social interaction, and require intense focus are better at boosting cognitive skills. McLaughlin and her colleagues will use the findings to design games geared toward improving mental function among the elderly.

Does this mean that Tetris is good for your brain?’’ Haier said. “That is the big question. We don’t know that just because you become better at playing Tetris after practice and your brain changes . . . whether those changes generalize to anything else.’’

an international team of researchers, including several from Iowa State University, reported that middle school students in Japan who played games in which characters helped or showed affection for others, later engaged in more of these behaviors themselves.

Researchers also found that US college students randomly assigned to play a prosocial game were subsequently kinder to a fellow research subject than students who played violent or neutral games.

Unlike, say, movies or books, video games don’t just have content, they also have rules. A game is set up to reward certain actions and to punish others. This means they have immense potential to teach children ethics and values

(Of course, this is a double-edged sword. Games could reward negative, antisocial behavior just as easily as positive, prosocial behavior.)

Some off-the-shelf games already contain strong prosocial themes

he classic Oregon Trail, which make players responsible for the well-being of other characters and feature characters who take care of one another.

“Ultimately, the video game needs to be an entertaining experience,’’ Seider said. “The game has to be fun.’’

Researchers suggest advertising media may adversely impact women's body image,

ads made women fear being unattractive

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.

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

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,

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.

In order to play and win, the player has to be the aggressor. Rather than watching violence, as he might do on television, he's committing the violent acts. Most researchers acknowledge that this kind of active participation affects a person's thought patterns, at least in the short term.

Another factor that concerns both researchers and parents is that violence in video games is often rewarded rather than punished.

If played frequently enough, games like this can skew a young person's perception of violence and its consequences.

In 2002, researchers Anderson and Bushman developed the General Aggression Model (GAM). Often considered one of the greatest contributions to the study of violence and video games, the GAM helps explain the complex relationship between violent video games and aggressive gamers.

The GAM takes some (though not all) of the heat off video games by acknowledging that a gamer's personality plays into how he is affected by violence. Anderson and Bushman refer to three internal facets - thoughts, feelings, and physiological responses - that determine how a person interprets aggressive behavior. Some people's responses are naturally more hostile, making them predisposed to respond more aggressively to violent video games.

Short-term effects were easily identified in the GAM; the most prominent being that violent games change the way gamers interpret and respond to aggressive acts. Even those who aren't predisposed to aggression respond with increased hostility after playing a violent video game. The game becomes what's called a "situational variable" which changes the perception of and reaction to aggressive behavior.

No long-term studies have been conducted to date, so there are only hypotheses.

Anderson and Bushman theorized that excessive exposure to violent video games causes the formation of aggressive beliefs and attitudes, while also desensitizing gamers to violent behaviors.

Parents would be wise to monitor the amount of time their kids spend gaming and watch closely for any negative effects.

The conventional story about Pakistan has been that it is an unstable nuclear power, with distant tribal areas in terrorist hands. What is new, and more frightening, is the extent to which Taliban and Qaeda elements have now turned much of the country, including some cities, into a base that gives jihadists more room to maneuver, both in Pakistan and beyond.

homegrown militants who have hidden Al Qaeda's leaders since the end of 2001 are no longer restricted to untamed mountain villages along the border. These Islamist fighters now operate relatively freely in cities like Karachi--a process the U.S. and Pakistani governments call "Talibanization."

Dozens of Taliban commanders have moved their wives and children to Pakistan, where they live in the suburbs of cities like Peshawar and Islamabad. This keeps them out of the reach of Afghan authorities, who have been known to arrest relatives in order to track down guerrilla fighters.

Those forces, all working together, have brought the Afghan jihad home to Pakistan. Within the tribes' ancient mud-walled fortresses they run training courses for insurgent recruits and suicide bombers. Some graduates travel to Afghanistan to fight beside the Taliban. Others will stay in the tribal area to fight the Pakistani Army, while others are sent out to hit targets in places like Karachi. Several terrorist plots in Britain have been traced back to the tribal areas.

It’s absurdly easy to get started:

It’s no “World of Warcraft,” but for non-gamers like Hinz, that’s exactly the point.

They were either too violent or too complicated or too ‘childish,’” she says.

She’s online a lot — spending two to three hours a day on “FarmVille,“ but usually not all at one time. Most of her family plays the game, including her eldest daughter (hooked), her three grandkids (hooked) and her husband, a hard-core gamer who reluctantly allowed his wife to rope him into virtual horticulture. Now, she says, he’s really concerned about his crops.

Hinz loves “FarmVille” because it’s something she can control.

Hinz loves tweaking her virtual plot of land, and her schedule affords her plenty of time to do that.

Some of the “FarmVille” updates are free, and some you have to pay for, but Hinz says the cost is negligible. “I would spend more than $10 to see a movie, and I’d get to sit there for two hours and that would be it. Whereas 10 bucks on this, I can get enjoyment out of it every day.”

She likes leveling up, and the competitive nature of the game. But Hinz also really likes the interaction on “FarmVille.”

“When I started my Facebook account, I had two friends — my daughters. At one point, while playing “FarmVille,” I had over 200 friends on Facebook,” she says.

Zynga dangled a Hot Rod Tractor for “FarmVille” players

play “Mafia Wars,” another Zynga game, to level 10.

At first, Hinz was indignant. “I’m 50 years old, and I’m not going to do something where you ‘ice’ people, or you rob banks or stuff like that, where that’s the objective.” But then she got to thinking. The Hot Rod Tractor can plow nine plots simultaneously. It’s got flames on it. “I figured, what the hell, I’ll just get to level 10 and do it. And now I’m a level 40 in ‘Mafia Wars’ as well,” she laughs. “It’s a lot funner than I thought it would be. It’s something I can do while I’m waiting for things to harvest.”

Still, Hinz says she’s got the games under control, and that they’re not controlling her. “If I started putting things off in order to do ‘FarmVille,’ if it becomes a priority over work, or spending time with my family, that would be an addiction.” Is she there yet? “No. I do it because I can.”

The situation has grown so acute that 10 South Koreans -- mostly teenagers and people in their twenties -- died in 2005 from game addiction-related causes, up from only two known deaths from 2001 to 2004, according to government officials. Most of the deaths were attributed to a disruption in blood circulation caused by sitting in a single, cramped position for too long -- a problem known as "economy class syndrome," a reference to sitting in an airplane's smallest seats on long flights.

In one instance, a 28-year-old man died in the central city of Taegu last year after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours with few breaks. He finally collapsed in a "PC baang " -- one of the tens of thousands of Internet game cafes that have become as common as convenience stores across South Korea. Users can pop in to these small, smoky dens -- with walls covered in gothic game posters -- for about $1 an hour, day or night.

"Game addiction has become one of our newest societal ills," said Son Yeongi, president of the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity, which offers government-funded counseling. "Gaming itself is not the problem. Like anything, this is about excessive use."

Experts are seeing more cases of game addiction in many industrialized nations -- particularly the United States and Japan. But sociologists and psychiatrists have identified South Korea as the epicenter of the problem.

That is in part because young people here suffer from acute stress as they face educational pressures said to far exceed those endured by their peers in other countries. It is not uncommon, for instance, for South Korean students to be forced by their parents into four to five hours of daily after-school tutoring. With drug abuse and teenage sex considered rare in the socially conservative country, escape through electronic games can be a hugely attractive outlet.

At the same time, South Korea boasts an unparalleled gaming culture. In 2000 in Seoul, the capital, South Koreans inaugurated the World Cyber Games -- a sort of gaming Olympics that now draws players from 67 nations. Professional South Korean gamers can earn more than $100,000 a year in domestic and international competitions.

The latest example of this trend, is the recent come-back of Britney Spears- after she'd given birth to two children, she was ridiculed for wearing a skimpier outfit, due to being "fat." The problem is, although she'd had two children, she was far from fat- yet the media criticized her for daring to show her "less than perfect" body on national television. With issues like this, it's no wonder that children and teenagers are being bombarded with messages of what perfection is and how to "be" perfect.

to encourage a healthy body image.

it's extremely unusual- rare even- for an actor, actress, or other star to be "over-weight"- or even of a normal weight.

The media influences teens' self-esteem and self-worth when it constantly bombards them with what society now considers ideal, and a distorted perception of what's "perfect." To stop the negative influence that the media has on children and teenagers, it's a good idea to limit exposure of body-image damaging programs, magazines and it's good

now unless an actress or model is thin to the point of practically being able to see bones, she is criticized as being "fat."

When children see these images on television, in magazines, in songs, movies, etc- then it's no wonder that the rate of eating disorders among teenagers is rising rapidly, and now parents are feverishly searching for an answer.

If Marilyn Monroe or Rita Hayworth were around today, they'd be labeled as "fat." What a twist, and a shocking example of how our society has misplaced standards of beauty and "perfection!"

accept that extreme thinness is anorexia.

norexia is the desire to maintain a lower body weight than is normal and healthy.

If a little girl sees a variety of thin/anorexic celebrities on TV, in magazines, decides with her friends that they are beautiful, that she'd like to look like them and, in an attempt to do so, she proceeds to lose 20 kilos, she's anorexic!

The danger is that the numbers of women who have uncomfortable thoughts about their bodies are far, far higher than those suffering from full blown anorexia

once these thoughts have first sprung into existence, all they need is a little nourishment to make them sprout roots...and grow.

First into a diet, often into an eating disorder such as anorexia.

she just feels inadequate and guilty because she can't bring herself to starve her body to the same extent as the models and celebrities do.

it's impossible to find a magazine without at least one spread on some amazing diet and exercise regime, always with the implicit message that we are 'wrong/lazy' if we don't follow it.

not only does media influence on anorexia exist, anorexia is deliberately being perpetuated by the media and the mixed messages it portrays

he media, especially ads and commercials for appearance-related items, suggest that we can avoid the hard character work by making our bodies into copies of the icons of success.

ads reveals a not-so-subtle message ? ‘You are not acceptable the way you are. The only way you can become acceptable is to buy our product and try to look like our model, who is six feet tall and wears size four jeans - and is probably anorexic’

To underestimate media influence on anorexia is to underestimate the power it has to influence the self esteem of us all.