The whole violence in Video Games debacle has come up again, this time with Katie Couric doing an expose.
What u guys think?
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Why We Should Care
The natural response to something like this is to ignore it in the hopes that it will go away — I know I've had that response. But the real tragedy here is that so much of this could have been good. I really do feel for Quinn Pitcock and Mark Petric. Depression and addiction are real, crippling issues for so many people, and to diminish the cause by simply looking at the symptom is blatantly irresponsible.
These kind of scare stories — with their spooky clichéd music, dramatic editing and one sided thinking — will only go away if we demand something better. We need, as gamers, to expect to be treated like adults by the mainstream media, even at its lowest common denominator.
We need to demand basic, competent research and an adult discourse. Because if we don't, we're going to be ignoring this stuff for the rest of our lives
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Also a tweet was posted for anyone to post any positive aspect to violent video games
Temporary electronic tattoos could soon help people fly drones with only thought and talk seemingly telepathically without speech over smartphones, researchers say. Electrical engineer Todd Coleman at the University of California at San Diego is devising noninvasive means of controlling machines via the mind, techniques virtually everyone might be able to use. Commanding machines using the brain is no longer the stuff of science fiction. In recent years, brain implants have enabled people to control robotics using only their minds, raising the prospect that one day patients could overcome disabilities using bionic limbs or mechanical exoskeletons.
BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah announced the game officially on the BioWare blog today.
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The game, called Dragon Age III: Inquisition still has no release date and not much further information beyond the title, which we first heard floated in an earlier leak of some information from a marketing survey. Darrah wrote that the team's plan had been not to reveal information until there was something substantial actually to show, but hinted that rumors had indeed gotten out of hand
Documentary about how psychopaths and antidepressants influence our society - a provocative snapshot of the world we live in.
Directed and Produced by Misha Votruba and Vaclav Dejcmar
It is a well-known fact that our society is structured like a pyramid. The very few people at the top create conditions for the majority below. Who are these people? Can we blame them for the problems our society faces today? Guided by the saying "A fish rots from the head." we set out to follow that fishy odor. What we found out is that people at the top are more likely to be psychopaths than the rest of us. Who, or what, is a psychopath? Unlike Hollywood's stereotypical image, they are not always blood-thirsty monsters from slasher movies. Actually, that nice lady who chatted you up on the subway this morning could be one. So could your elementary school teacher, your grinning boss, or even your loving boyfriend. The medical definition is simple: A psychopath is a person who lacks empathy and conscience, the quality which guides us when we choose between good and evil, moral or not. Most of us are conditioned to do good things. Psychopaths are not. Their impact on society is staggering, yet altogether psychopaths barely make up one percent of the population.
Broken into three parts, our search for the fishead starts in New York City, on Wall Street, where a big chunk of the world power is concentrated. This small plot of city land is where the economic crisis erupted and what we found there has far-reaching consequences, both for the psychopaths and us normal folk. The second part of the film touches on how, for a small number of people, overuse of antidepressants can result in behaviors that appear to mimic some psychopathic features. Although overuse of these medications will not produce psychopathy, they may stifle emotion and decrease the user's ability to feel empathy. They also may have the opposite effects, "normalizing" emotional experience and empathy. More than one-third of the Western population uses and, in some cases, abuses these drugs. But why? So why do we want to take a pill that flattens or normalizes our normal feelings? We think something sure smells fishy again.
It is not too far fetched to say that for the first time in history we not only praise psychopaths in the highest positions of power, but in many cases, they became our role models. On top of that, we don't seem to think it's a problem. In the third part, we come back to the idea of us, the normal people in our day-to-day life. How much different are we from the average psychopath? By embracing a superficial culture, each of us maybe unwillingly supports the fishead. Albert Einstein said, "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." Through interviews with renowned psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo, leading expert on psychopathy Professor Robert Hare, former President of Czech Republic and playwright Vaclav Havel, authors Gary Greenberg and Christopher Lane, professor Nicholas Christakis, among numerous other thinkers, we have delved into the world of psychopaths and heroes and revealed shocking implications for us and our society.