if my kid enjoyed eating an entire chocolate cake every day, should i allow that as well?

some behaviours are clearly more detrimental to his long term happiness than others.

sports keep kids in shape and help them develop important social skills. porn and video games do neither. i know which thing i would rather my kid be doing. you are welcome to let yours do whatever you please, just don't be shocked when they turn out do be basement dwellers at 30.

perhaps 'fulfilling' was not the best word choice. instant gratification is more what i had in mind. but i wholeheartedly agree with you. for the ones that social interaction comes naturally, video games and porn are probably much less of an issue. but for those who are already mildly socially awkward, video games (or porn, or books, or television, or whatever) are an easy way out - one that will only make their problem worse. yes, i speak from experience.

at least books stimulate the mind, expand the vocabulary, give you something interesting to talk about with the opposite sex. the others, much less so.

i don't care if my kid sneaks a playboy under his bed. i want him to understand and appreciate sex. but a few nudie magazines are a lot different from having access to a virtually unlimited quantity of porn videos, some of which are horribly degrading and may affect his outlook on women and sex.

comparing stick figures with tits on a cave wall to the quantity and quality of porn available on the internet now is... well, we'll just call it silly.

for a relatively trivial amount of money, you could, were you so inclined, spend every waking hour of every day watching HD video porn, and always get fresh content, never being forced to repeat the same porn. from the privacy of your own dark room! without ever leaving the house! maybe you telecommute for a part time job to pay the bills, also without leaving the house. you order food delivered to your door step.

there is a completely unprecedented ability to gorge yourself on your (porn|videogame) addiction and avoid any social interaction whatsoever.

I don't think it means the end of the world or society as we know it, but you certainly have to acknowledge that it is a new phenomena, not comparable to... well, anything in human history.

while we are at no risk of extinction (from social awkwardness anyway), and while there are plenty of well-adjusted guys playing porn and watching video games (or maybe its the other way around), there is a lot more truth to the story than many here would like to admit.

playing video games and watching porn IS a much easier and more fulfilling way to spend your time than getting shot down by girls from school. boys ARE socializing less and withdrawing more.

when i have kids, i can guarantee you that the amount of time they spend playing video games or surfing the web will be very closely watched. and they damn well won't have either of those things in their bedroom.

i don't think that porn or video games are inherently unhealthy, but i do think that they are potentially addictive in the same way that many other things are - things I would want to keep tabs on my child's access to and use of.

[turn-based out of combat? what a pain that would be!]

with few exceptions, the old games you speak of were turn based, so while they are FP, it would be a far stretch to call them S - there are no shooter / fast paced / twitch elements to them.

fallout 3, oblivion, skyrim - the combat in those is actually FPS in nature. yes, VATS was a nice option to get the tactical feel back, and i'm not saying fallout 3 was a bad game - i enjoyed it quite a lot - but the gameplay definitely had a very different feel, for obvious reasons.

I had no idea they were remaking xcom, holy crap. i am giddy with excitement. now i just need someone to make another game like planescape:torment and the triumvirate will be complete...

it seems that in american games anyways, the true RPG has gone the way of the dodo, and all we get now are FPS-RPG hybrids. while fallout 3 was fine, it was no fallout 1 or 2. i LIKE turn based top down gameplay. It's relaxing, and i can see everything thats going on easily.

i am VERY interested in seeing where this goes.

i plug all my favorite shows into TED (torrent episode downloader), which automatically searches multiple torrent sites for new episodes and downloads them for me. Then, I use SmartRename to automatically move and sort the downloaded files into an appropriate folder structure. Then, XBMC downloads show & episode info and allows me to play them effortlessly.

end result? the world's best DVR. any show i want, usually within a day of airing, a button press away. And I am not limited to shows that stream online via Hulu or their website. I also don't ever have to worry about commercials or "Buffering..." problems.

I don't even have Reader installed, I use FoxIt for any PDFs I have to open and have never noticed issues. YMMV, but I suggest you at least give it a try.

I notice the biggest difference when working with large (50+ page) PDF docs on my netbook. Adobe Reader is unbearably slow to scroll through pages, but FoxIt is painless and smooth.

Seriously, get FoxIt PDF reader. It's free, and approximately 5 million times faster than Adobe Reader.

yeah, and do doctors in those countries pay five and six digit sums per YEAR for malpractice insurance?

obstetricians in florida can expect to pay up to $200,000 a year in insurance premiums. admittedly, most doctors "only" pay $20k to $40k per year, the lucky guys.

lynch the lawyers.

http://www.ehow.com/about_5514154_average-cost-medical-malpractice-insurance.html

i can certainly agree with your example of pictures from a party, but that was obviously cherry-picked to prove a point. in this particular case, the images were trivially different from pictures that could have been taken from public property. the judge examined the situation and made a rational judgement based on the evidence.

my first reply might have been a bit snarky. but your straw man was just begging for a bit of lighter fluid and a match :-)