Beer Ninja

I love wordpress. Not only does it provide people with an easy to use platform for showcasing their ideas and interests, it also provides them with an extensive statistical overview of how their site is viewed by others. My favorite statistic would have to be the Search Engine Terms. These terms are like little windows into the minds of random people who visited your blog. From them I learned, for example, that my blog can be found using the search string “giant cock murder” and “fuck me your cock”. Sidestepping the obvious question of how this would lead anyone not operating an Infinite Improbability Drive to my site, I would very much like to know what in the world these people were in fact looking for, and what drove them to using aforementioned search terms. Seriously, what’s a giant cock murder supposed to entail? And what do you want to know when you resort to querying google with “fuck me your cock”? They  could be the only words someone remembered from their favourite sex story, but I don’t quite want to write off the possibility of something entirely different. Yet…

The most obvious conclusion I have had to derive from these particular statistics however, is that I have deeply, profoundly overestimated the combined intellect of the world’s online community. You see, my goal for this site was, first and foremost, to write down and catalogue some of my intellectual endevours and general misanthropy; second, to have a handful of people with like minds reading this; and third, to maybe inspire one or two people to look at things in a different light once in a while. I guess schematically my expectations would look a bit like this:

Of course in reality, it is almost infinitely more like this:

I say this, because the top two search terms leading disyllabic, underdeveloped little retards worldwide to my site right up untill today are, always have been and probably always will be, “beer” and “ninja”. Go figure.

Naturally, this is all my fault and not theirs, as they simply follow their inexplicable urge to scour hundreds of pages of google results for “beer” (I couldn’t realistically estimate my blog to appear anywhere even near the first hundred results), whereas I could at least be expected to factor in some sort of knowledge of lowest common denominators and/or the law of averages when deciding on tags for my posts. I am so very ashamed.

Putting the focus beside myself for a minute, what about the other party in this abysmal communication error? What about those poor, unsuspecting simpletons looking for beer and ninja (that’s actually the correct plural for ninja, in case you were wondering), only to find a blog full of long, unintelligible words used for the most part to describe, ridicule and alienate those very same poor, unsuspecting simpletons?  I imagine this would feel a bit like drinking a big gulp of fresh apple juice with your breakfast, only to discover that your roommate has been experimenting with the intrinsic characteristics of cat pee again and decided that the best place to store his latest sample was in a pitcher in the fridge. I also imagine that these two situations would drive about the same percentage of grown men to tears (about one in three).

To soften the blow a bit, and to reassure people that deep down I’m actually a really nice guy, I have a special surprise for all of you who came here looking for either beer or ninja, laboriously working your way through numerous google result pages. I hope you like it, you guys deserve a break.

Georgia come home!

From LambdaMOO to World of Warcraft – MMORPG’s

UPDATE: Yet another paper from the mastermind that brought you such literary gems as Hyves & Privacy and Planet of the Apes. How does he do it?

Anyway, this one’s sort of a virtual lineage, chronicling the adventures of the Multi-User Dungeon, all the way up to everyone’s favourite online RPG World of Warcraft. If you’re wondering what can be said about WoW and other MMORPG’s from an academic point of view as opposed to a what-level-is-your-Night-Elf-Mohawk point of view, clicky-clicky here or visit the papers section on the right.

Why banning GTA in Thailand is a short sighted response

And here we go again. When a 19 year old boy in Thailand, who was apparently an obsessive Grand Theft Auto (GTA) player, was inspired by the game to rob a taxi, he didn’t anticipate on the 54 year old driver fighting back. The boy then stabbed the man to death. Claiming that this is the second GTA related incident in two years, the Family Network called to the Culture Ministry to ban GTA. On August 4, the games were banned and New Era Interactive Media, the distributor of GTA in Thailand, halted sales of the game and called upon shops to take the game off the shelves. As far as I could tell, these are the facts. Of course, since there is video game violence involved, suddenly everyone thinks they have an expert opinion the matter.

While the Bangkok Post hails both Amporn Benjapolpitak of the Mental Health Department and Deputy Public Health Minister Wicharn Meenchainant, who respectively strongly question GTA being the sole cause of this incident and urge parents to watch what games their children are playing, most news sources seem to focus on the claims by Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the ministry’s Cultural Surveillance Centre. This conehead says that the “time-bomb has already exploded and the situation could get worse. Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner.”

GTA doesn’t even allow you to murder shop keepers, SO THERE!

To me as a new media academic, this is like slapping your cock across my face. If violent video games truly had such a severe impact on people’s psychology, to the point where they run out into the streets going on killing rampages, you would expect a lot of cases like this one. But wait, THERE AREN’T. With sales for the entire series topping 70 million unique sales, not including the recently released GTA IV which sold 6 million copies in its first week of release, I would expect the number of GTA related car robberies, prostitute rapes and random killing sprees to at least run into the thousands. Instead, there are six. SIX. Two in Thailand, four in the US.

Maybe Thangsupachai should brush up on his statistics, because when you show these numbers to ANYONE familiar with basic statistics, he will instantly tell you that the games have nothing to do with it and that the one who did it was probably already fucked up in the ol’ noggin. This is not to say that there are no studies showing a positive correlation between playing violent videogames and violent behaviour. It’s just that people who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about should shut the hell up.

In a meta-study conducted in 2003, researchers found that videogames indeed have a strong effect on violent behaviour. As they say, “[f]or each outcome variable, there was a significant effect of exposure to violent video games. Playing violent video games was associated with increases in aggressive behaviour, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, and physiological arousal, and with decreases in helping behaviour.” This is probably music to the ears of violence condemners worldwide, but there’s a catch.

You see, in most of the studies they reviewed, “[f]or aggressive behaviour, aggressive cognition, and helping behaviour, the majority of participants were under 18; for aggressive affect and physiological arousal the majority were 18 or older. The 18 and older samples were composed mostly of college students in the 18–21 age range, so overall, the samples can be characterized as being overwhelmingly composed of children and adolescents.” This means that most studies looked for either aggressive behaviour in children, or arousal in young adults, but both, and not the other way around. This also means that it is impossible to make an age distinction within the results. As the researchers state in a footnote, “age needs to be a within study factor, not a between study factor”. My guess is there probably will be a difference, one that would make banning games superfluous. Allow me to explain.

Ever since children started developing ADD symptoms from watching the Power Rangers on TV, concerned citizens have looked to science to confirm for them that watching violence makes you violent. Since then, studies have proven in more and less convincing reports, including above mentioned meta-study, that there is indeed a correlation to be found. The simple explanation for this is that when people watch other people doing things, mirror neurons start to fire. This is what makes you susceptible to empathy and what makes a man cringe when he sees another man get kicked in the gonads. Put simply, your brain imagines that it happens to you. This is critical in early development, as this allows children to mimic important behaviour and social conventions more quickly. As you can probably work out by now, this is exactly the mechanism that ensures that any researcher will find aggressive feelings and physical arousal in young adults. This also explains violent behaviour in children exposed to violent video games. The difference here is conditioning.

A typical child will learn violence is bad when he starts to walk around on his own and decides to kick his friend in the balls just for the fun of it. Usually, this is were mums comes in and scolds the child for doing a bad thing. Lesson learned: violence = bad. This will not however, negate any physical effects one may find in that person later in his life wile playing violent videogames. He still has those mirror neurons, you know.

So really, what can go wrong with video games, and what went wrong in Thailand and really any situation related to video game violence such as the Columbine shooting, are three things:

1. Parents should teach their child from an early stage that violence is bad, and they should keep doing this. They should also scratch their heads when all he does is sit in his room playing Counter Strike, mail ordering firing arms. This would probably be a good time to talk to him.

2. There should be an age recommendation for games OH WAIT THERE IS. Maybe there’s room for improvement here, but for fuck’s sake, if the label says 18+, don’t give it to your 8 year old, you retard.

3. Some people are just plain defunct and will do stupid things no matter what. If the guy had scarfed down shrooms, started flinging Molotov cocktails and raped a girl with a tiara, he would probably have stated Super Mario as his main inspiration.

The Dark Knight – Reviewed

*WARNING* This review contains spoilers. Do not read if you haven’t seen the movie yet. On second thought, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, go and do that RIGHT NOW before anything else, you don’t want to be the only kid in school who hasn’t now, do you? *WARNING*

Few films have created as much buzz and received as extensive a viral campaign as the new Batman film, The Dark Knight, which makes it very hard to watch it even the tiniest bit unbiased. Of course, major kudos to Heath Ledger for dying and effectively making it im-fucking-possible to do so, as everyone and their pet hamster seemed to have an opinion on the film as a whole, Ledger’s performance, Ledger’s Oscar nomination and the impact of his untimely death on aforementioned film, performance and optional Oscar nomination—BEFORE THE FUCKING THING WAS EVEN SCREENED.

Unfortunately, being a big fan of movies in general and Batman Begins in specific, I couldn’t really afford not to see it, so there I went: out on the streets and into the theatre with a disgruntled little voice in the back of my head ready to scream bloody murder as soon as it didn’t turn out to be every last thing they promised it to be. People who have seen the film already have probably guessed by now that I didn’t have to scream bloody murder—it’s actually a pretty good movie—but there were a few instances of bloody rape.

First of all, there’s Morgan Freeman, reprising his role as Lucius Fox. Now, is it just me, or is he in pretty much every movie that comes out lately? I’m starting to feel like I’m going crazy or something, because he also seems to have the same role in every one: a passive aggressive smiling father figure slash mentor. Don’t believe me? Just look at his track record: Danny the Dog – piano teacher/manners mentor; The Bucket List – cancer patient/compassion mentor; Se7en – detective/MENTOR; Robin Hood – Moor/MENTOR; Wanted – Assassin/MENTOR; Bruce Almighty – God aka THE ULTIMATE MENTOR… I don’t know about you, but I’m sensing a pattern here.

Whereas Wanted at least had him break out of character by making him say “motherfucker” and “oh fuck” (funniest thing I’ve seen in a while), the best Nolan could come up with was to have him borrow some of the powers from his previous role in either Bruce Almighty or Wanted, as near the end of the movie he is somehow able to quickly and flawlessly monitor, interpret and relay information from a 500 screen computer station. That’s called cheating, Morgan Freeman, and it’s not nice. But as I said, it could very well be me who’s going crazy…

Christian Bale stars once again as Batman, which he does in a pretty decent fashion. He expands on the classic character by adding rage, torment and remorse to the checklist of character traits for deep and sinister superheroes, which works well I guess. He still talks like a douche with balls in his throat when dressed up as Batman, though.

Katie Holmes, who was apparently to busy bludgeoning baby seals or breastfeeding homeless guys or whatever it is that gets Scientologists wet in their pants these days, is replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal who is more fun to watch and acts a lot better. Ultimately though, I feel as though the role could just as well have been played by stuffing Gary Coleman in a dress and a brown wig without much detriment to the credibility, as we all know the story really revolves around one man: the Joker.

The Joker, played by Heath Ledger, is nothing short of fantastic. Seriously, I’ve been looking everywhere for a possible flaw in the role, and even though the Joker is constantly skipping around the screen, licking his lips like a disturbing, maniacal little girl in desperate need of some chapstick, Ledger makes it work. Although sadly it’s impossible to determine how much of the hype around his Oscar nomination is due to his unfortunate overdose, he definitely deserves to be nominated. Looking at the list of previous winners, I’d say he actually has a shot at winning it as well. Seriously, people, Russel Crowe?!

Physical impossibilities aside (for instance, Batman bending a machine gun with his hands and driving up a wall at full speed, only to do a neat little pirouette and stop dead in his tracks, apparently completely impervious to the excessive G-Forces such a move—if possible—would exert on him), there are a few choices plot-wise that I don’t really understand.

First of all, the Scarecrow is featured once again, but he only gets about 0.8 seconds of screen time. He doesn’t add anything to the story and could just as well have been a random thug with a sissy pistol. They should’ve found a better way to incorporate him in the story, or left him out completely.

Second, what the hell were they thinking when they added the sonar lenses? Three dimensional imaging overlapping your standard view would most likely disorient the fuck out of most people, but I guess Batman is the exception to the rule here. Also, it kind of reminded me of Val Kilmer’s sonar suit in Batman Forever, and that is never a good thing. Personally, I think night goggles would have been easier, more believable and more widely usable, but I’m sure “sonar lenses” sounded like a jolly good idea when the what-technology-will-Batman-use-in-the-grand-finale meeting threatened to continue into the late hours of the night.

Lastly, while the Two-Face subplot nicely rounds up the story (and he looks pretty awesome), it felt a little tacked on and made the movie feel just a tad too long. There’s a whole part round about the 2 hour mark where the general chaos in Gotham City is rising, but nothing really important seems to be happening, which to me felt like a really uncomfortable point for a slow moment in an action movie.

All in all, this movie is kind of like taking a dump after eating white bread for two weeks straight: it takes longer than you think and there are some bits that make you feel a little awkward, but when you look at the thing as a whole, it’s pretty damn impressive.