Oh, I see, well that explains it.

You mean the reason why Europe has fewer fat people is because europeans don't treat the obese like fucking monsters? No way! Thats crazy talk.

I have long believed that is the American obsession with image and sexuality that has aggravated the problem of obesity. Nearly every 'good' cure to obesity (omitting dangerous diet pills or starvation diets) involves social interaction of some kind. Lampooning people who suffer from obesity only furthers their isolation and in no way is productive towards recovery.

I was an overweight, acne-ridden, isolated kid all through middle school - but it was the social interactions I made through multiplayer gaming on the internet (specifically, MUDS - yeah... mega dork) that gave me the confidence to approach people in real life (high school), and later lose weight with their encouragement (senior year).

Also, isn't there a beauty to anonymity? Do we really need to see everyone's physical appearance to judge if we want to kill some mobs and grab some lootz with them? I personally would prefer not to. If I'm looking for women, I go to a supermarket, mall, or bar. On the net, my intent is otherwise focused, and I don't need to see what my digital comrade looks like to figure out if I'm having a good time playing my game. That much is usually implied.

It goes just a little deeper than that.

You have to consider the fact that games like Grand Theft Auto 4 and Assassin's Creed are not even capable of being released in China - not just because of particular things in the game which could be set by a configuration file or bypassed with a boolean (the main character is Slavic, shooting of 'Triad' gang members), but because of the raw nature of the gameplay itself. Granted, GTA IV is a very visceral example, but with these new restrictions, China is now going to have a say in the gameplay of every game that is released in China - and game developers are going to have to pay for it. To be honest, only huge software companies (Blizzard, Electronic Arts) are going to find developing a game for China profitable, because these "bureaucratic fees" are going to crowd out everyone else - and they are going to have to design these games specifically for China. The root poster is right - these new games are probably going to be much tamer than their non-Chinese counterparts, and will probably sell horribly outside of China, and will likely not be translated. The cultural wall remains.

I would also suspect that there is a great deal of concern over the fact that many web hosting providers offer MySQL as the included database for a cheap, base-level, non-configurable package. Turnover of mindshare in that market seems to be extremely slow -I've noticed the cheaper packages tend to be sold to the technophobic. Many hosting providers will be inclined to stick with MySQL and MySQL support contracts with Oracle. This is part of what Oracle purchased, to be honest, but the EU has the right to examine if this is fair play.

The image in the article isn't really good. If you want to see a demonstration of what they did in real time, it's here.

A person's handwriting can also convey personality and emotion behind the written word which is really not possible through set type. When you write with your own hand, you write with your own font - your personality speaks through it. It also shows a degree of effort. It takes a little more focus to write a letter by hand (especially when your trying to stay on the same line, and you aren't using college rule looseleaf), and one may be surprised by how many people appreciate it.

I have pretty bad handwriting, but there have been times where I have painstakingly written something out by hand to people when I felt it truly mattered. Thank you notes, in particular, are very well received when hand written.

In the mid-90's I was in a program called Talented and Gifted - simply called "TAG" for short. Essentially, all the 'smart' kids (recommended by teachers, guidance counselors, and 'anomalous' test scores) were put into a room in middle school for one period (45 minutes) a day. Essentially, all we did was play games. There were occasions where we learned about other cultures and exchanged letters with students in Russia, but for the most part it was a period in middle school devoted specifically to games of all sorts.

However, the games were quite serious, at least as far as games go. I remember one in particular, where our whole class was informed we had 'woken up' in a bomb shelter, supposedly after a nuclear attack. We were given no general background of the setting of our dilemma, only the vague recollection that something *bad* had happened. None of us could quite remember exactly what happened, or how in particular we got there. We remembered our personal histories, but the information was on cards that were given to us by our TAG teacher, and we were not allowed to show them to other students - we had to 'express' what was on the card in interim periods between decisions. A little like a character sheet, if you ask me.

We were then given one direction by the "MC" of the game, the AI programmed into the bomb shelter - choose a leader. The whole game then revolved around a process of negotiation amongst the survivors with said leader , as said leader decided whether or not to enter into different communications with different camps in this post-apocalyptic world, something which the AI explicitly advised against. The climax of the game involved one decision: will you open the door to your shelter past the airlock (i.e, not safe, if the world was irradiated you would die) and check outside? Both the AI and the other camps advise against this through nearly the entire game. However, I remember our team deciding to open the door. We did, and found that not a singular nuclear missile had gone off, and that everyone was in hiding. In the end, what the game 'taught' was that neither the AI nor the other camps could be trusted, and the best conclusions were the ones we came to ourselves.

Obviously, you can't teach Mathematics through a video game. You can, however, clarify some of the more obscure portions of Mathematics through demonstration, and video games are an excellent way to demonstrate.

I think the good people of the Manhattan Public School Department will quickly find, however, that games meant for general consumption (i.e., non-educational purposes) are not fit for the task. For instance, I would not pick EA's "Dante's Inferno" to quickly teach kids in my history class the impact Dante Allegheri had on how people viewed religion, or its relationship to politics. I might opt for something more along the lines of this, which does gloss over some details, but hits the heart of the matter pretty neatly.

I can't really ever see myself buying e-books because I would not own the property rights to them, i.e. I could not give or sell them after reading them, as I do with paper books. As a classical liberal, I hold property rights among the most important rights that I possess as a human, and not being able to do what I wish with something that I have paid money for and ostensibly "own" doesn't jive with me. The day that I can sell or give an e-book to someone else (without having to ask for permission mind you) I may reconsider, but for now I am perfectly happy with dead tree books. They are real property.

Thanks!