Making a mountain out of a mole hill-ary?

Well, once again I have procrastinated and waited entirely to long to update this. Anyway, an article from the LA Times today that caught my attention was one regarding the recent controversy about the semi-new game Grand theft Auto: San Andreas. What interests me more than the calamity about the games content* or whether video games are better than football is the fact that Senator Hillary Clinton called for a $90 million study "on the effects of video games on children". Mind you that the funding for this is coming from our tax dollars. Is this really that big of an issue, when we are still occupying both Iraq and Afghanistan? Is this just another publicity stunt for Hillary to get into a headline to help in the polls when she is speculated to run for president? In any case, it seems like a joke to me.

On a tangent of this subject, I have a question that has had me confused for a while. Why is violence in video games such an issue with politicians/ parents /PTO boards /Grandma's? The same acts of violence are depicted on TV and movies regularly, yet when they take place on a gaming console or a computer screen they are influencing the childrens behavior. Is it because games are not a passive media? The article listed above points to evidence that we are at an all time low for violence among adolescents. Right now video the video game market is at an all time high, with sales around $25 Billion dollars. That's more than the movie industry, yet we America excepts that there are adult themed movies, but not adult themed games. If you are interested on further discussion on the matter, more reading/discussion can be found on /.

Anyway, in personal affairs, this next month or so should be fun. Many staffing changes at work will probably have me working weird shifts for a while. But even better than that, I just booked a flight to Tampa, FL to stay a while with my roomates parents(they just moved down there), my roomate, and a couple of friends. Nothing like a summer vacation in Florida. Hopefully this one will fare better than my last vacation here in Kentucky where my car was broken into and about $600 worth of stuff was stolen and a day was wasted haggling with the local athorities. Anyway, I will try to keep you updated. Don't expect any photos though, as my camera was recently involved in an accident involving an alcoholic drink, the other one we had was stolen when my car was broken into, and plus I'm to lazy to host the files anywhere.



*so far I have been unable to tell if the content is something that is actually shipped with the game or the explicit content is added to the game by downloading a "mod" from a website and adding content to the game. If anyone knows, please email me.