Geek vs Life

YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!!!

Click here if you’d like to know my frustration.mebeli

So I’m browsing around on TV.com, adding episodes for Haruka -Beyond the Stream of Time-, when I catch this little nugget at the top of my screen. I’ll spare you from reading it (although the comments are amusing), and give you a brief synopsis:

A 10-year-old girl in England who is reportedly 4′9″ and 6 stone (84 lbs) was called “fat” by Wii Fit (even though that term is not used) in their BMI test. Her parents are pissed, and now the spokesperson from the National Obesity Forum (remember, it would be England’s National forum) wants to ban the game from children.

If you want more on what’s been said and everything, you can go ahead and read it, but here’s the reason I’m posting this:

Something in that article is wrong.

I went up to the CDC’s website and found these nifty little calculators. The first one is for adults, the second is for children. So, I assumed that maybe the game doesn’t have a separate calculator for children. So I did it in the adult calculator. And the result was a BMI of 18.2, which is underweight (18.5 is normal). So I did it again with the children’s calculator. I assumed that the test was done today, on the girl’s 10th birthday (giving it an exact 10 years). This time, the result of 18.2 put the girl in the 69th percentile for her age/weight/gender. The 5th through the 85th percentiles are healthy weight. Which means that, by the information given, the girl is not overweight.

This leads us to four options:

1) The game was wrong. Out of all the options, I find this one the least likely. I mean, if there were glitches in the game, surely we’d've heard about it by now, wouldn’t we? No, if it were an error in the game, this wouldn’t be an isolated incident.

2) The parents are lying. Everyone thinks that their child is “perfect,” and no parent would want to admit to their child’s actual weight, if they are overweight. So this option is a bit more likely than the first.

3) The newspaper purposefully changed the information. According to my roommate, the Daily Mail isn’t exactly know for it’s accuracy in reporting. Using the calculator, I found out that that same girl, if she were 93 lbs instead of 84 lbs, would be in the “at risk of becoming overweight.” Perhaps the step-father’s statement had been “six and a half stone” instead of “only six stone” (93 lbs would be approx. 6.6 stone), and the paper took some “liberties” in their reporting. I think this one’s a little more likely than the last.

4) User error. The pad could’ve been broken and not weight her correctly. Maybe the girl had her backpack on still, or was holding something that made the sensor think she weighed more. I highly doubt the paper would’ve checked on that, and the parents were probably too offended to think of testing it again to check it. This is probably tied with #3 on most likely.

So there you have it. Should children be “banned” from playing a fitness game? Especially one that, I believe, does denote itself as “for entertainment purposes only”? I’ll let you make your own decision.

Ok, so wandering around Destructoid, I found this video:

Jack Thompson is getting to people. Only difference here is that they’re focusing on online RPGs.

Now, we all know that video games cause misanthropy, violence and sadistic murder, but did you know that they are also the vile, sordid root of isolation, depression and suicide for some people? That’s right folks, this latest bit of video game sensationalism comes courtesy of Philadelphia’s Action News on 6ABC and features some crack head of a mother talking about how Everquest was the reason her poor little 21 year old medicated rifle owner locked himself away, quit his job, then went ahead and offed himself.

They at least acknowledge the fact that the people who are killing themselves and running around getting depressed over their night elves are people who had problems already with meds, and the game is just a catalyst, like drugs. But its still irritating when developers put their sweat and blood into making them work, only to get blamed for everyone’s dead kid…

April 16, 33 students were killed at Virginia Tech. Being one of the last people on earth without TV, it took a while for the news to actually get to me of what happened. It was a customer at work that told me. “Did you hear about the shooting?” Instantly my mind was going off, flashbacks of Columbine running through my head.

I paused for reflection, feeling sorrow for the families of those that were lost, and twangs of anger. Both at the shooter, and for the people that didn’t notice any of the signs of a problem. My inner journalist chimed in, telling me to do further research. That’s when I saw a name that inspires constant annoyance and tends to enrage me. That of a Florida lawyer, Jack Thompson.

I knew deep down inside, that as soon as he heard the news, he would have been on any sort of communication to news agencies to get interviewed on what he thought happened. The closest thing to a recognized source he got on to was that of Fox News, where he once again started spouting the evils of video games, and how they’re “murder training programs.” And this is where I draw my line in the sand. No more will I allow this form of art to be ridiculed on account of a couple of dumb fucks that do horrific things. Hitler was a painter and a vegetarian. Was it the carrots and the happy little clouds that caused the Holocaust?

Video games are an art, just as any other. How you feel about them is a reflection of how you feel in general. One can look at first person shooters as killing trainers, but there is more to them. As with any game, they simulate things that are supposed to help you succeed in the world around you. Other ideas that are pushed in an average first person shooter are things like timing and teamwork, especially in multiplayer games.

But, once again, here I sit watching videos of the news, pulling out ideas that I simply can’t believe are being thrown around. Jack Thompson with “Michael Carneal was spurred to go on a spree shooting in Paducah, Kentucky by computer games and trained on Doom before the shooting,” and Dr. Phil with “common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society.” Rush Limbaugh downplayed the connection, though. It scares me that he’s on our side.

(Originally published in the Ebbtide, the Shoreline CC Student Paper)

Part of me wanted to put this in a different order, so it wasn’t quite this heavy, but as it means a lot to me, and this is so important, well, here it is.

A couple of days ago (again, sorry for the delays on this stuff), some kids did something absolutely horrible. They killed a homeless man, after having beaten him ruthlessly. Rocks, bricks, and even the man’s own BBQ grill were thrown at him. They then took a pipe and a baseball bat (that was there for his protection) and beat him to death. Afterwards, one of the boys smeared his own feces on the body, and cut the man’s face to make sure he was dead.

The story was covered by CNN, and I saw it on Penny Arcade. Well, today the…umm..step mother of the boy wrote Gabe about her experience with him.

The boy claimed that the experience was like the rush one gets from video games. Ok. That’s just ass. Plain and simple. He knew full and well what he was doing, and provided a convenient scapegoat. This child had something seriously wrong with him. Take the fall, dammit. Don’t blame anyone else. So, there’s one gripe.

The other is with the institutions that are set up to protect children against violence. Now, I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be there. They should. Just as there are messed up kids, there are even more completely fucked parents that should never have kids to begin with. But dammit, examine the entire situation instead of just blindly taking someone’s word. In anything, especially something this serious. Peoples lives are ruined by these accusations; those of the children, and those of the parent’s.

What the hell is going on with kids today? Was it really this bad when we were growing up and we just didn’t hear about it? I can’t see blaming the media as much as is done now. And perhaps a lack of cohesive family where influences are shared rather than simply attempted to be given in passing. But, then you end up with situations like this one, where it isn’t the parents. The parents were trying.

Well, to attempt to lighten it up, perhaps it was the evil gene. Recessive until this generation.