Nachimir

But what if someone officially unendorsed it, eh?

Should be there shortly. Why is Grippage going to Australia? Holiday? Emigration?

English is full of compound terms, for instance staircase. I have no idea why some might take root and others not, but being picky over any that are commonly used seems futile. You can put it down to a google fight, in which case video game is the more common, but that tells us nothing directional. I find myself, as ever, not giving a shit over which term is prevalent, personally preferring Video game, and finding the whole "debate" over the terms pointless.

"This game will make you wet other people's pants" - IGN.com

I doubt that would make the sidequest worlds feel any less like barren heightmaps with random item drops and an occasional dungeon to crawl.

U.S. Secret Service: "Only 1 in 8 school shooters showed any interest in violent video games; only 1 in 4 liked violent movies." Additionally, violent crime in Western nations has apparently declined, while simultaneously the popularity of games has increased.

True, but imagery enters the unconscious mind far more directly than text (i.e. memory techniques tend to revolve around parsing textual or verbal data into imagery, which can be recalled far more easily later and quickly decoded). What the difference in effect might be, noone knows of course. On comic ratings, there are imprints like DC's Vertigo, labelled "For mature readers only", though not sure if there's any explicit age set or recommended for this. If so, it's not obvious by the labeling. Germany being a great example of this right now, talking about banning even the production of violent games as a knee-jerk reaction to school shootings, despite evidence against any correlation.

Yeah, I binged on this just before I left work last Friday. The post where Alice was pretty amazing.

The problem underneath rating systems is that noone knows what effect this kind of content might have on kids, and noone wants to take the risk. There would be no way of getting an academic study of, say, the effect of Video game violence on kids past an ethics committee, and rightly so. What we know seems to be: 1: Every new form of media generally creates moral panic directed at the medium but centred on content. 2: Societies cope with new forms of media and people eventually accept that it's not a direct cause of violence. IMO, the more mature a human is, the less context they need built into something to properly understand it. "Mature content" is a label I see as pretty spurious since despite the extremity of it, there's very little that's grown up about that kind of titillation. The label doesn't so much name the content, but its suitable audience. Mature entertainment can include sex and violence, but does so with context. My only worry about PEGI is that it's less well known than BBFC ratings. Parents can be so ignorant, and often don't give a shit, or assume "it's a game so it's for kids". The BBFC symbols have much better recognition due to being used on films here for 30 or more years.

Fucking *excellent* Noyb

I'd like to post a little on militant atheism and religion here. OssK, yes, I think your experience might be a little skewed. When faith enters politics, I find it disgusting and would fight it. When it's fucking up people's lives by (for instance), making them feel guilty about their sexuality, or keeping them in an unhappy marriage, then I'll speak against it. However, I've met a shit ton of religious people now who are generally relaxed, capable of having differences of opinion with understanding and without invective, and aren't trying to control, influence or persuade others. They're just people trying to get on with their lives who happen to believe what I regard as fairy stories. Never mind, they're still good people and, shock horror, mentally competent too. Considering that a cosmology student I worked with once answered my question "How verified are, say, Stephen Hawking's theories?" with "Basically they're the best guesses we've got" and my brother spent three years firehosing me with the philosophy of science, and nearly every teacher I had was, at some point, unable to answer my questions on things like magnetism reaching the point of "that's just the way it is and we don't know why", then my views on faith have mellowed over the past few years. Every single person, even the most militant atheist, has faith in something, even if it's that there's no god, or that there house won't have burned down when they get back there, that their lover isn't fucking someone else right now, that vitamin C is good for them, or that Heinz baked beans are better than Tesco Value baked beans. These are mundane and mostly inconsequential forms of faith that we don't think about or often debate, and the same could be said of a lot of things religious people put their faith in. Few of us have the time to check everything presented to us as science, yet we tend to put our faith in it (you would not believe just how detached things we hear are from the actual academia, and sham academia, that spawns them. Every day we're bombarded with "We did some SCIENCE, and the answer was BUY THIS PRODUCT", and not just through advertising. PR agencies specialise in spreading such messages *much* wider than that). Eating X is good for you. Smoking a cigarette will, on average, shorten your life by five minutes (I've always suspected this factoid resides in the same territory as all those "Men think about sex every X seconds" ones). Eating Benecol reduces cholesterol (read much about nutritionism and you wouldn't trust this claim any further than you could throw a ton of the stuff). Walking X number of minutes a day will prevent heart disease (Will it, or do I need to run a half marathon a week before there's any profound effect? What if you've already spent your life eating fried breakfasts? Was the study that found this done on people that were already at a healthy weight? Are the posters I'm seeing for this a PR fueled initiative by my local council that originates with profoundly misinformed people and flawed studies? Worse things have been deliberately perpetrated by local authorities). Atheism is the best guess I've got at what's going on in this universe. Other people think different things. As long as those agendas aren't harming others by filling them with self-destructive doubts, exploiting their loneliness, encouraging them to control and browbeat others, rinsing them for cash, or otherwise causing harm, then fuck it. I don't need the rest of humanity to believe the same things I do, so why would I preach my own best guess at the state of the universe? This post was brought to you by far too much Ben Goldacre, but it's relevant. Rubbishing religious beliefs is like shooting fish in a barrel as far as I'm concerned, and outside of politics about as meaningful and fun. What interests me is that there are much more subtle, and sometimes more harmful and exploitative forms of bullshit constantly trying to insinuate themselves into our minds, and all of us fall for some of it.

(Babble on religion/militant atheism/faith incoming on the universe thread). Patters Yeah, go outside. Take up distance running or something. What kind of area do you live in? Bouldering as castorp suggests would be good (though perhaps not if you live in Kansas). Thunderpeel Aw man, I'm sorry to hear that :-(

http://twitter.com/realnickgriffin is really quite hilarious, and worth going back a few pages to read upward. They keep inventing mini-dramas for him where, for instance, he accidentally appears to be Muslim in front of other fringe MEPs

I used to have a massive problem with religious people, and would describe myself as having been a fairly militant atheist. Then I met lots of reasonable religious people and was troubled by it. I'm still an atheist, but recognise that many religious beliefs, even if I think they're fairy tales, are mostly harmless. At some point I'll disagree with them, but it's usually on something unimportant. The harmful fuckheads tend to be a minority.

I read the TIG source piece on him too. I find it pretty disgusting that he managed to get onto the IGDA board. They're not doing so well this year between him, Michael Capps on quality of life, and Jason Della Rocca leaving.

Are the amounts in that diagram corrected for inflation? <-- oops, never mind. That's insane. I'd heard things similar to this, but not seen any visualisations of it. I'm incredibly shocked that it was possible for entire countries to get looted like this. Well here's to a great 2010... ¬¬

I'm not sure I can make it. Meant to be planning something with friends, and not sure how long it'll take. Should be around for at least a bit before 11 though.

I think it has me at:

Want this. One of the reasons I started playing video games more, and picked up UnrealEd, was because I was sick of rolling dice and consulting tables for two hours to determine what happened in the first few seconds of a Car Wars match.

Oh man yes, Fungus The Bogeyman and Dr. Seuss all the way. When I was very young, this one was my favorite: We had those too. Love the magical non-decompression cover art.

I've played with the kind of window suckers they've adapted into the "GetAGrip™", and they are *, but I can see a lot of frail people hurting themselves as they detach from uneven or wet bathroom surfaces. I kinda hope that company rots.*

I made two sales for Popcap I'm slightly impressed with the execution. Not the most difficult thing to adapt to iphone, but they've done it well.

Yeah, not a huge Beatles fan at all*, but the animation with it really pulled me in to the music. Excellent. * I really, really want Rock Band Electric Six ¬¬

Where for art , and ? :-(

I'd be well up for some TF2, though the mic for my PC is fucked. I'm currently debating whether to get L4D for PC or 360, as I have groups of friends that play on both. I like that the 360 is more arsing around versus the PCs military precision. OTOH, I'd like to play with the authoring tools...