So I fail to meet even the mediocre standard of posting weekly. Will I try to mend my slothful ways in the future? Meh.

Last weekend was a long weekend (Memorial Day; roughly equivalent to the Canadian Rememberance Day but far, far less observed. At least 'round here.) I spent it pretty much glaze-eyed in front of the TV, either rocking out or making myself ill.

A while ago, I read a Web discussion about that old standby: the effects of video games. I think it started with whether violent games make you violent, but people started giving examples of how intense sessions with other types of games affected them.* The old "Tetris-eyes" example was given where you start thinking of how things like skylines or building windows could fit into each other. Someone even talked about playing a lot of Othello/Reversi with his brother (the board game, not the electronic version), then lying on a couch with a pillow at his head and thinking, in all seriousness, that if someone put a pillow at his feet he would turn into a pillow.

I started thinking of this when I actually accelerated (slightly! And only for a moment!) towards a neighbourhood cat on our street after a day of playing Katamari Damacy. I feel shame.**

So while the debate goes on, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. It sure seems inconsistant to say, for example, that simulators are an effective method of training you to react in certain ways, but games aren't. Even outside of the virtual, pyschologists and teachers use role-playing as a therapy/educational tool because they think it has an effect. So RPGs and LARPs don't?

I guess it's like the Buddhists saying that anything done mindfully can be a meditation. Use the power for good, fellow geeks! :)

And now for some things that are completely different.

An oldie but a goodie. I guess I'm a "Town Crier"
Sort of a corollary to the above
Really cool photographs
Interesting environmental points




* Note that I didn't say "impacted them," Ferlak!

** In my defence, this is an annoying cat that kills birds, including a pair of mourning dove babies that I'd been watching, and leaves them in my backyard. Katamari just gave me a slightly different framework for my hostile feelings towards it.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    I hate to admit it, but after about 8 hours of playing Battlefield 1942 on campus I remember walking by a window and looking at the 8 or so people in that room and thinking "Huh, one grenade = 8 points" and giggling about the imagery (in 1942 the people sail about when grenaded). So I hear ya...  

  2. Anonymous said...

    You've GOT to be kidding. I have *always* hated that weird photos site. I find it incredibly creepy and Just. Plain. Wrong.

    I'm sure there are lots of studies about the kind of crap that RPGs cause, but it's probably all locked away in a dusty library with a +22 door and Chthonic Librarian.  

  3. Anonymous said...

    As Norm Deschamps has said: "Use your powers of evil only for good."  

  4. Anonymous said...

    Thanks to you, I borrowed Guitar Hero from James. Damn, just what I needed was another addiction. :)

    Favorite so far... Iron Man.  

  5. Amy said...

    Iron Man is excellent, but my heart belongs to "I Wanna Be Sedated." That's the only song I can do on "hard" (not coincidentally, it's the only song in the game I really know).  

  6. Anonymous said...

    *blink* You don't know 'Killer Queen'?

    She keeps Moet et Chandon
    In her pretty cabinet
    'Let them eat cake' she says
    Just like Marie Antoinette...


    You don't know 'Ziggy Stardust'?


    Ziggy played guitar, jammin' good with Weird and Gilly,
    The spiders from Mars, he played it left hand
    But made it too far
    Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band...


    One of the things that blew me away was how many songs I did know.

    And when you say it's the only song you can "do" on hard, does that mean getting 5 stars? Or getting thru the song without crashing out?  

  7. Amy said...

    Oh, get five stars and 100%, of course... shyah, right. I mean getting through the song at all.

    I did recognise a few other songs, but IWBS is the only one I knew completely.  

 

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