Gorgon

I'm guessing the straw dummies are a good approximation of what it feels like, what muscles are strained, when you stab someone with a bayonet affixed. Clicking a mouse is not a lot like shooting a rifle though. That new neuron connections should be created while you are shooting pixels on the screen, which could modify your behaviour. it all sounds pretty unlikely.

That's just a gripe with the questions and the method, the conclusion might be right after all for all I know.

Almost one in 10 of those questioned aged between 16 and 50 said they downloaded music illegally. However, eight out of 10 of that group also bought CDs, vinyl and as MP3s. Maybe it's important for file sharers to state that they also buy music to avoid stigma. 1000 polls is the bare minimum needed to call most things statistical, and then only if the entries had been selected to reflect the country's demographic.

So games are training, like lion cubs learning to hunt. Well we don't have any practical application for hunting skills anymore, but maybe a part of our primitive brain still needs the thrill of the hunt (FPS games) Would it be possible to deliberately craft a game with the intention of eroding empathy... I don't know, I think you would need more levels of control. Was Hitlerjugend a game ?. It was advertised to new recruits as something akin to the boyscouts. Then the kids were subjected to increasing levels of fanatical fascist Indoctrination. One did not leave, it simply wasn't done. It was quite spectacularly effective in eroding empathy according to former members.

I don't think anyone suggested that simulations would be poor at training tactics. They do nothing about the psychological element though, which is what we concern ourselves with here - does pretend violence erode the capacity for empathy, and of course it doesn't.

Yes they are violent, but it's pretend violence, there are no victims. I don't buy that it desensitizes children since they are perfectly capable of telling real from make believe, it's what they do all day long when they play. They learn to lie around age 5-6 which involves a reasonably complex calculation and mixture of the real and the imagined. The distinction between real and imagined is, in a word, unavoidable.

I'm not sure there is much medical proof of the matter, but I can think of several old stoners who just 'never came down' off their trip. I'm all for a little hallucination, but I don't think I would enjoy giving up that many of my faculties at once. It would just feel too scary. Consequently I never repeated my failed shrooms experiment.

I tried shrooms one time and nothing happened. Of course I did fry them and serve them with a stake, it might have fouled the active ingredients. They were hand picked by experienced hippies so they must have been the genuine article.

Can't we just assassinate the old maharajah and promote some ambitious fellow who is more understanding of our goals. It's worked reasonably well so far.

Blablahblah... because you can't delete a post.

Well jeez, just smoke a very small amount if you don't know what you've got. Anyway you are better off paying extra for premium and smoking less of it than using too much 'standard'

It helps with appetite, the munchies, and is given to patients to counteract for instance the effects of chemotherapy. There is even a synthesized cannabis pill for those who dislike smoking it.

That would be glassy eyes and shaky hands. lols.

I'm willing to be that you know a whole lot of people you would never think smoked but actually do. You don't need to have glassy hands and shaky eyes to have a drinking problem you know, those are just the visible signs of someone with a serious problem.

Just as an aside, I get suspicious whenever people say things like 'studies show' or 'statistics indicate'. Although I agree with the general sentiment Lare (is that a name) is conveying. There have been some attempts to link cannabis with depression and psychosis, but I think the point here is that cannabis can in some cases aggravate an existing condition. It depends on the individual. Anyway if you experience those effects, simply stop.

Why would you expect anything from movies that are spinoffs of toys ?

Someone in the cast is filming using a hand held camera type horror flicks are so lame.

Some people are genetically predisposed to substance abuse, and in the other end of the scale we have people who don't feel much in the way of withdrawal symptoms, be they physical or psychological. Cannabis is probably the easiest of them all to kick. Smoking is bad for your health, cigarettes or joints both, but that's not what we are discussing.

It's possible to abuse cannabis like everything else. If you need a joint to fall asleep and one to steady yourself in the morning that's a definite warning sign. Those are the people walking around in a perpetual zombie state wearing dirty clothes, not taking proper care of themselves. There are however, more moderate and functional users than you could possibly imagine. I'd say more than half the people I know. It probably varies a lot geographically though.

The basic version is free, should tell you what you need to know. http://www.sisoftware.net/

I thought 300 was bad in a good way, I mean it had stunning visuals and painfully bad acting. It also has tanned homo erotic Greeks edging suspiciously towards fascism without offering anything in the way of an excuse. I mean that's not a good thing, but it's an achievement, of sorts. Waterworld has the same 'un-ashamedness' about it's general pitiful lousiness as a movie which is what makes it a candidate for kitsch and bad-good. Just imho of course.

I am seriously considering the 64 mb version of this http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1005/1/ It's about 20-30% cheaper than the competition, although not as fast. Should be a noticeable improvement in load times and boot times though, for the first time in, well more or less ever.

Where are all the cool clan mechs