Uncensored Media Considered Harmless

The word "Internet" was uttered precisely once in last night's presidential debate, and I don't have to tell you the context. You already know the topic was Columbine, and you already know the Net was being blamed for mass murder. What our Republican candidate failed to mention is that his party's bogeymen, the evil Internet and its evil twin violent entertainment, have brought about a new era of peace. If we really want less violence in our schools, we obviously need more violence on our Internet.

"Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line we begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and have their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody else's life."
- George W. Bush, presidential debate, October 11, 2000

The term we're looking for is "manufactured crisis." That's what we need to start calling it, this supposed violence in our schools.

I don't need to provide you with more quotes from Bush, Gore, Cheney and especially Lieberman about how disgustingly violent our culture has become. You can't pick up a paper without seeing at least three people moaning about violent movies, the violent internet, and worst of all violent video games. They're infecting the minds of our children, don't'cha know. It'd be the new national pastime if it weren't 200 years old: grumping about those damn kids.

Let's counter disinformation with some real numbers. Here's an annotated timeline showing the increase in violent imagery, and the corresponding decrease in actual violence.

1993
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,438,200.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 49.1.

Let's consider 1993 our baseline year, the pre-Doom year. That blockbuster was not released until December 1993, so I think we are safe to assume that it did not begin darkening hearts until 1994 or later. By the end of 1993, the internet's two million host machines include 500 webservers.

Demolition Man, Kalifornia and Falling Down are in the theaters.

1994
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,424,200: a 1% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 51.2: a 4% increase from the previous year.

In 1994, shareware Doom, downloadable from the evil internet, shatters existing gaming records. Its bloody graphics and Satanic imagery shock and offend many who are easily shocked and offended. In an era where 200,000 is a great-selling title, 1994 sees the first of fifteen million gamers who download and play Doom.

Meanwhile, the web grows at an annual rate of 341,000%, becoming the 2nd-most popular type of data; among the three million machines on the net, there are too many webservers to count.

The movies Pulp Fiction, Timecop, True Lies, Children of the CornIII, and the politicans' favorite Natural Born Killers are all released in 1994.

1995
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,290,000: a 9% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 2,169.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 46.1: a 10% decrease from the previous year.

In 1995, the web becomes the most popular internet service among the net's four million machines. Shareware Doom continues to rack up downloads. Doom II: Hell On Earth, released last October, takes over as the violentest game ever, with an initial release of half a million units.

The Basketball Diaries, Braveheart, Se7en, and Die Hard3 are released.

1996
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,134,400: a 12% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 1,683: a 22% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 41.6: a 10% decrease from the previous year.

1996 is a banner year for violent images. Doom II continues on its track to eventually sell two million copies. Duke Nukem 3D, aimed at the young teenage male market, gives our nation's young boys a healthy mix of strippers, jokes, and mass slaughter with machine guns. Soon after, the breakthrough title Quake offers unprecedented visual accuracy: blood, gore, and murder are now illustrated with detail that makes Doom and Duke Nukem look cartoony.

Scream is released in theaters to tremendous success, along with Broken Arrow, CrowII, Sling Blade, and the excellent Fargo. Meanwhile, there are now 9 million hosts on the net.

The effects of all that horrible media violence in 1996 appear in 1997's statistics...

1997
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,055,200: a 7% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 1,457: a 13% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 38.8: a 7% decrease from the previous year.

In 1997, there are 16 million hosts on the net. At year's end, QuakeII is released, and is quickly banned in Germany for its even-more-realistic violence. And Con Air, Face/Off, Starship Troopers, and Scream2 are released in theaters.

1998
Total under-18 murderers: 1,169: a 20% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 36.0: a 7% decrease from the previous year.

In 1998, Quake II hits its sales stride and begins corrupting young minds. Grand Theft Auto, one of the more vilified and censored video games, is released. The web crosses the 300-million-page mark.

Brace yourself for the movie list: Lethal Weapon4, Saving Private Ryan, American HistoryX, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Ronin, Urban Legend, Blade, and the crappy remake of Psycho hit the theaters.

The result?

1999
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 32.1: an 11% decrease from the previous year.

There it is. In the four years between the release of Doom and Quake II, the number of killers under the age of 18 in this country plummeted. A drop of 46% in just four years is nothing short of astonishing.

Long-term graphs are even more valuable. Click through to these, they're small and quick:

• The homicide rate, 1900-1998. We are experiencing the longest and steepest sustained dropoff in violence since the Great Depression.
• Homicide offenders grouped by age, 1976-1998. The number of teenage killers is steadily falling.
• Average age of homicide offenders, 1976-1998. The average age of the American killer has been rising since 1993.

Last month, I watched CNN as my friend Bennett Haselton got grilled opposite Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). After CNN's introduction telling us what to think - cutting straight from footage of Doom to footage of crying Columbine students - the Senator explained how violent games cause children to commit violent actions. He wants to keep dangerous weapons like Quake away from our kids.

That's how the Senator - who voted against secure handgun storage, and twice against child safety locks - positioned himself as our noble defender of children.

How do the posturing panderers justify their crisis-du-jour? How'd we end up with the phantom of media-created child violence as a major election issue, while violence plummets?

The facts speak for themselves. If seeing violence has any effect on children's actions, it obviously makes them calm and peaceful.

So here's the slogan for my campaign: our kids deserve the best in first-person shooters. In my America, every family will have free movie tickets, 300 megatexels, and low-ping broadband. Let's put an end to frame rates under 30Hz. For our country - for our safety - we can leave no child behind.

(Sources: US DOJ 1, 2, 3; OJJDP 1, 2, 3; FBI UCR; Blues News; crime.org; poynter.org.)

Ok, this has gone on long enough...

People keep attributing crime to one thing or another willy-nilly, but the only thing that crime has ever been reliably attributed to is the ratio of the median income for the majority of the population to the median income of the rich. When this gets too wide, crime goes up. When it narrows, crime goes down. It's been narrowing. Crime has been going down. It was very narrow in the fifties. Crime was low. In the eighties, with inner-city blight and practically no means of employment for inner-city youths, crime went sky-high.
Crime isn't caused by guns; it isn't caused by violence in the media; it isn't caused by bad parenting; it isn't caused by lack of government or increase in police patrol; it isn't caused by war or peace. There are criminal tendencies in all of us, and when desparation gets high enough, the crime line on the bell curve moves and we get more criminals. When there is readily available employment everywhere, the line moves away from the center, and fewer and fewer people excersize their criminal tendencies.
That is the only reason anyone has ever been able to prove. The correlation between personal wealth and crime is extremely easy to demonstrate, whereas even parenting is hard. In Columbine, it is obvious that bad parenting had something to do with it, but there are plenty of situations where good people come from bad homes. Statistically, bad parenting isn't significant anymore than violent movies and games are. And availability of guns has nothing at all to do with crime rates except to act as a deterrant to petty crime, so a high saturation of guns in a society will reduce the instances of burglary and robbery and a certain decrease in homicide, but will certainly not increase these things unless they are in the hands of criminals only.

Re:Does anyone bother learning about the candidate

Yeah, and I wish that not everybody believed every single thing they read on web. Take this criticism with just as large a grain of salt as you have apparently taken the third parties' candidates' legitimacy in the first place.

realchange.org is the ONLY site on the web that I have found that has bad things to say about Nader (other sites just paraphrase this site). For the large part, this site seems to be out to just criticize and slander candidates because it feels like it, for the sake of criticism itself. Most of what is there about Nader is out of context, and I don't really put much credibility in it.

Please, be at least as skeptical of your sources of criticism than of the subjects of the criticisms.

In the grand scheme of things, yes, Nader is head and shoulders above most of the other candidates. And if that just means the other candidates are sleazier than you thought, well, so be it.

I dare you to find a SECOND source to qualify, put in context, and legitimize the statements on this site. If you do, come back then...if not you're just propaganting unsubstantiated criticism.

The Government Wants Control Over All Media

"What violence is in a dictatorship, propaganda is in a democracy." During war time, the information available was deliberately limited to pre-edited propaganda reels and edited front-line reels. Then, came Vietnam. The Television media was somewhat edited, but was raw. This swayed public opinion against the war. Watergate as well brought the people against the government and made people believe the media more redily. Then, you have Reagan, an actor who knew how to play the cameras. He was trustworthy, because he knew how to be. And Bush showed The Perfect Political War, the Iraqi Attacks. 90+% opinion polls. Now, we have the Internet. A technology which crosses boundries, which crosses nations with a dot-uk, dot-gr, dot-iq, dot-cn, dot-ru, dot-cd, dot-whatever-two-letter-ISO-code. You can see the rest of the world through a different nation's set(s) of eyes, and in a nation like ours where the media is highly controlled and pro-gorment and pro-megacorp, this is dangerous. China's solution was the Great Firewall, one of whose major crackers I had the priviledge of seeing a few months ago. However, in a nation of free-speech and free-media guaranteed by law, this is impossible. So what's the solution? Condemnation. The internet's bad, and naughty, and rotten, and filled with violence, and lies, and porn. And because people still believe the megacorporate media, they believe the lies more readily than the truth because of the infallibility of the source. Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys said that the best way to combat the media is to becaome the media. I guess that's one of the purposes of Slashdot.

So... What does cause violence?

As someone who pretends to be at least semi-intelligent, I know that video games, the media, and the internet do not cause violence, nor do they promote crime.

This is my opinion.

However, if these things don't cause crime or violence, I must ask myself - what does?

Actually, I must not ask myself what causes violence and crime, I must instead ask myself "Why am I not violent and/or a criminal?"...

This is the root question. I am not saying I don't get angry, that I never throw things out of anger, that I don't ever yell - indeed, I have done all of these things, and will probably do them again in the future. However, overall, I am not a criminal, nor am I violent. So, why not?

I think (personally) it comes down to one thing, and one thing only:

Respect.

I am not violent because I respect myself and others. I am not criminal because I respect others and their property.

One thing I have noticed, growing up, is that respect seems (for a lot of people - not all) to come with age and wisdom. It is also something that can be taught. In fact, I would argue that even if respect is instilled at an early age, you still gain more respect as grow older. What makes me say this?

I have seen interviews on TV done with older individuals who, as younger teens and adults, commited various attrocious crimes (murder, rape, etc), but now see the error of what they have done (many times after spending long amounts of time in prison), and are trying to get youths around their neighborhoods to change, to be better individuals. I have also personally seen individuals who, as they got older, gained more respect.

Recently, I got my first driving ticket, for speeding. I was doing 85 in a 75 mph zone. What does this have to do with anything? Well, when the cop hit his lights, I looked at my speed, saw that I was speeding - and thus rightfully deserved the ticket. No prob there. After I got home (knowing that I typically speeded all the time, even going 15 miles to/from work), I decided to do an experiment:

For one week, I would try going the speed limit, and see how it was. I would respect my fellow drivers, and drive more safely. So, what did I find?

First, I found that speeding didn't help me any in the first place at such short distances - and extra 10-15 mph only saves a few minutes, if that, on trips of such short distances.

But most intriguingly (perhaps because before, I was one among many), was the blatent display of lack of respect of other drivers. Now, these same drivers would "get on my tail", urging me to go faster, plus I tended to notice more of the "insane" drivers on the road. I also noticed the ones who gave the same respect as I was now giving.

After the week was up, I continued driving at the more conservative speed. I have since found (it has been over a month now) that I find it less stressful driving to and from work - less stressful driving everywhere, in fact - since I am not having to concentrate as hard as I did driving at major speeds. I can also spot the less respectful drivers on the road quicker, and get out of their way, as well.

Lack of respect - this is what causes the majority of violence and crime in America.

I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?

it's not about being stubborn

Voting against gun locks makes sense, for a number of reasons.

1. A lock on my gun will at the very least make it difficult to ready my weapon to defend my life, family, and home. At the worst, it will outright *prevent* me from doing so, say because I lost the key or forgot the combination. And if on top of that I don't have kids, then there's no chance of an accident being prevented, and thus no possible positive value whatsoever.

2. It is my absolute right to use my property (here, my gun) in any way that is not an INITIATION of force. Simply storing it in a certain way is not a willful act of violence, and thus cannot be legitimately prohibited. (note that use of my firearm in self-defense is RETALIATORY force, another absolute right).

3. Kids are smart. Could you have gotten the lock off of a gun when you were a kid if you didn't know any better? I could have, no doubt. All a kid would have to do is sit around guessing combinations, or just find the key, and the lock's as good as non-existant. The kid's also smart enough to pick a time when daddy's away, so he has a bunch of time to guess numbers or hunt for the key, whereas when your house is being broken into you have mere seconds to ready your firearm.

4. An irresponsible gun owner, who has children, and puts a lock on his gun creates for himself a false sense of safety. What a responsible gun owner does is take his kid to the range and teaches him how to properly handle and shoot a gun, and to respect it for the dangerous tool that it is, like my Uncle Marc did with me when I was 7. And because I knew proper gun safety that young, I got my first gun for xmas when I was 12, a beautiful Ruger 10/22 that I still have and love (I'm 19). Because I've known proper firearms ethics, I've never shown my friends where the guns are, or played with a loaded gun, or anything of that foolish nature. For the irresponsible gun owner who doesn't teach his kids about guns, that lock is indeed ALL that insures against an accident, and it is flimsy insurance indeed.

5. Laws mandating "safe storage" are unenforceable, unless we really do repeal the 4th Amendment (remember when we had protection from unreasonable searches and siezures? I don't, we lost it before I was born). The police would have to knock on your door, ask you if you own any firearms (this is already a hideous violation of your rights), and then if you say yes, you'll have to show them where and how your guns are stored, and the police will have to decide if it's "safe" or not. Of course, to even show up, they'd either need no 4th Amendment restrictions, or a proper warrant (and how would they get a warrant if the only evidence are the guns themselves?).

So, to summarize why no intelligent person should vote FOR gun lock laws:
1. They're counterproductive.
2. They violate our rights.
3. They don't work.
4. They're counterproductive.
5. They're unenforceable.

MoNsTeR

Enter The Sarchasm

Sarchasm: The distance in understanding between a person who makes a sarcastic remark, and the person who completely fails to grasp the slightest clue of what the speaker meant.

I don't usually flame Slashdot commenters en masse.

I'll make an exception for every single one of you who paid way too much attention in Stats class and far too little attention in English.

Jamie's point wasn't that we need more violence. I don't care what he said; it doesn't take more than a few moments of reflection to realize Jamie's point was to brutally shred the conjecture that A) Video games have turned our kids into bloodthirsty murderous beasts and B) The people wishing to blame everything on violent games have any legitimate intention of truly protecting our children(as opposed to just trying to make a quick political buck).

Seriously, folks. Figure it out.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Did the Internet Turn YOUR Heart Dark, Child?

If so, sign the pet ition [e-thepeople.com] @ e-thepeople.com: "We, the undersigned, hereby state that each of us is the child whose heart was turned dark by time on the Internet, as mentioned by the Governor during the second Presidential debate.
Further, we hereby declare the Governor to be a big smirky doofus."

Guns vs pot

I've come to the conclusion that the whole gun debate in the US, and the pot debate in Europe represent 2 very different views of governments:

Europe: We don't care much about what you can do to yourself, that's your business. However we will restrict stuff made to harm others.

US: We don't care what you can do to others. But we will restrict stuff made(or grown) that might harm you.

ok.. I havent worked it out completely yet, but feel free to comment :)

//rdj

Re:what we REALLY need.

we need better parents!

You'll never get anywhere in politics by blaming the people who vote for you. Even if you're absolutely 100% right. You will never see a politician with this position get elected, which is a shame, since I firmly believe you're right.

Re:what we REALLY need.

we need better parents!

I think the Onion [theonion.com] said it best:

FBI to Require Background Checks On Child-Care Providers; Child-Havers Unaffected [theonion.com].


--

Great. Now prove the two are connected.

The problem I have with this is that you're basically doing the same thing that the people who blame the internet for violence are doing: spouting off statistics without proving a relationship between them.

Is it really Doom that caused the drop in crime rates? Or is it better law enforcement at the state and local levels? Is it mandatory sentencing? Was it caused by things that happened 15 years ago? PROVE IT, or you are as bad as they are.

I have to say that Bush's quote about the Columbine shootings being related to the internet was weak. It certainly sounded like he was blaming the net, at least in the sound bite that got picked up on the radio this morning.

(On the other hand, I have to point out that Gore's assertion that more gun control would have prevented Columbine is absurd. The killers broke something like 19 different laws getting their guns, the problem was that they didn't get CAUGHT doing it. It was a failure of enforcement, by the police, and the schools, and the families, not a problem of not having enough laws on the books. But with Gore, as with all gun control types, all it will take is just one more little law, and one more little right surrendered. Then everything will be fine and the sun will shine 24 hours a day. And when that doesn't work, they'll do it again. This is off-topic, I know, but I had to say it.)

Jon

Re:Do It To Julia!

You cannot effectively defend your own rights by attacking someone else's.

You can defend your safety (your right to life, if you will) by attacking someone else's rights. You are most likely alive right now because everyone else's right to kill you has been taken away by the government, while this does not prevent every murder, it prevents a whole lot. I know there are plenty of people I would have killed in the heat of the moment if I knew there would be no repercussions from law enforcement, I would drive much faster if the government didn't take that right away, and I would steal food from the grocery store if the government didn't take that right away.

You do obtain security by taking freedom away. In a truly free socity, anyone would be free to take your freedom away.

Logically

If Al Gore created the internet, and the internet causes violent crime, then logically Al Gore causes violent crime!

Come to think of it, I don't really remember to many school shootings before Clinton and Gore came to power.

Re:what we REALLY need.

how long have we been hearing that solution? if no other cause for the crisis du jour seems immediately relevant: blame parents.

Are parents not legally and morally responsible for their children until their children reach adult age?

The reason that particular solution hasn't gone away yet is because as a general rule parents aren't taking responsibility for their children's upbringing. They pop 'em out, plunk them in front of the TV/computer/N64 and then blame everyone else when their kid turns out to be the next psychopath.

As a parent of two (soon three) children myself, I know damn well how much hard work it is to raise kids (and these kids aren't even old enough to cause real trouble yet!) -- many parents just don't realize how much effort is required and when they do, they slough it off since it's "too much".

So yes, better parents is the answer.

Censorship is inevitable

We do have a serious problem in our culture. Tipper and I have worked on the problem of violence and entertainment aimed at children. She's worked on it longer than I have, but I feel very strongly about that. And if I'm elected president, I will do something about that. But I think that we -- I think we have to start with better parenting. -- Al Gore, The Same Debate [cnn.com]

The truth is that Americans, en masse, have decided that they want to give up the benefits of living in a free society in exchange for the "benefits" of living in an autocratic state.

The truth is that the Republicans decide, after the string of school shootings that the best way for them to defend their positions on guns was to ratchet up the Culture War. The Democratic presidential ticket is just as right wing on the Culture War as the Republicans are, there is no significant difference between the two tickets on the First Amendment.

I'm probably tilting at windmills with my Libertarian vote, but as far as I'm concerned a vote for the two party system is a wasted vote, and I don't feel like sitting home on election day feeling irrelevant as the Democratic and Republican sharks circle around the US Constitution deciding with part to chomp off next.

As a game developer recently wrote in Computer Gaming monthly, games are going to take the fall for Hollywood, because Hollywood has more clout with the old men than the Gaming Industry. The studies which supposedly "prove" that violent video-games lead to violence in real life are junk science (see my sig), but that won't matter to people who believe that creation science is not an oxymoron. (Or even to some others, who may scoff at people who believe in creation science but will choose to believe the nonsense behind these studies because it fits in with their world view, or gets them money and political power.)

America is not a free country, it is only free compared to worse places. When you go to a movie, you don't see the same one they can show unedited in Europe. When you play a game, you play a different version than they play in Japan. It's a new age of censorship, with the government putting legal muscle behind region based censorship.

We will continue to hear, from the fascists who now populate the Republican and Democratic parties that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." If you can put aside the reality of life in modern America and believe that, I envy you. Unfortunately, I am incapable of destroying my powers of reason to the point where I can agree with such a statement.

We are heading into a new dark age, and no one is putting on the brakes. Where is a public voice against censorship? Where is a cry for reason over emotion?

Not in American political life, that's for sure!

School shootings

The problem is not the growing number of school shootings, but the growing number of school shootings of white teenagers against other white teenagers.

I lived in Philly most of my life growing up, and there were always lots of shootings and incidents in the city schools. But they were predominately in the black schools, and so nobody put up much of a fuss about it. I think it just goes to show how the media is still an ethnocentric device of the majority race of this country.

It isn't just the Republicans

I'll remind you that it was the present administration, with Al Gore's vocal approval, that signed into law the Child Online Protection Act, later found unconstitutional. After it was overturned, the Clinton administration said it wanted to enact a new law that would pass muster with the Supreme Court. Plenty of Democrats in Congress voted in favor of that bill. Even more recently, Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman has threatened the movie industry with legislation if it doesn't do more to keep its more violent/sexy material away from young people. Blaming the net for social decay isn't an activity limited to Republicans, nor is the desire to censor what people see.

Re:Look, apples and oranges!

But claming that there's no correlation at all between virtual and actual violence, even in sarcasm, is just dodging the issue and irresponsible in the extreme.

Good piece, thank you! You listen to NPR, and appreciate good logic. Did you catch that story a few days ago when the Milosevic government fell? An NPR story spun the story about how "good" the Serbian people are because they are to a man armed, and yet had a revolution with no bloodshed. See the logic? The US has too many murders, therefore too many guns. Serbia has little killing, therefore... good people.

Re:The Real Issue

Of course it is. And neither of the individuals you can watch on network TV support the Constitution, public safety, integrity, or the freedom of the Internet or of anything else. Both of those candidates stand for continued increase in the size and scope the federal government, and the corresponding decrease in liberty and increase in taxation.

What to do? Well, I'm voting for a candidate who supports my right to buy whatever games I want, play then whenever I want, send or receive any form of communication via the Internet or any other medium without being intercepted by government agents, rent or buy any film I want, and do all of this without paying any federal income or sales taxes. Sound good? If so, then check out Harry Browne [harrybrowne2000.org]. He's on the ballot in all 50 states and - I'm not 100% sure, but - hold your breath - I think he's actually read the Constitution at some point in time!

If you don't want your Net to be taxed (Gore) or censored (Bush), vote for the candidate who actually supports your views, not just the lesser evil of the two drones you may have watched last night. Blatant plug? Sure. Offtopic? No damn way. If you vote for Gore, you're saying that you support higher taxes (and censorship - Lieberman, anyone?). If you vote for Bush, you're saying that you support censorship (and higher taxes - come on, do you really see this guy resisting money coming his way?). Well...do you?

What's wrong with this post.

One of the first things you should learn (in any social science class, anyway) is that correlation does not imply causality. Wait a minute. Apparently someone doesn't get that. I'll say it again.

Correlation does not imply causality.

Saying "what we really need is more violence in the media" is a lot like Herrstein and Murray's conclusion in the Bell Curve [amazon.com] that non-white people really *are* less intelligent. They conveniently forgot, as apparently you have as well, to look at confounding factors, and so they assigned race as a causative factor of low intellligence.

Now, I'm not accusing you of being a racist. I understand that what you probably MEANT was that "hey, the increase in media violence has not caused a corresponding increase in actual violence." I just wish you'd SAID that. Because what you DID say is that media violence somehow decreases actual violence. Which is preposterous, and not supported by anything.

"his party's bogeymen"

The scariest thing about this election is the fact that the two leading candidates agree on most of the issues that concern us most.

(Interlude: Sigh... It appears that www.algore.com [algore.com], and not www.algore.org [algore.org], is the Gore campaign homepage. I guess that's appropriate, since politicians are basically commercial organizations these days...)

Here are some quotes from a 1998 Gore speech [algore.com]:

In a changing and complex world, parents need an ally--an active government, on the side of parents, giving them the tools they need to raise happy, healthy, thriving children, according to their own values...

Some say we should take no action at all--just let children roam free on the Internet. To them I say: children are not miniature adults. They are vulnerable and impressionable, and we have an obligation to protect them from harmful words and images on the Internet...

Today, on behalf of President Clinton, I am calling for new legislation to require every school and library that applies for the e-rate to come up with its own plan for protecting children from objectionable Internet content...

This speech was given long before the Columbine incident, and (creepily) a few hours before the Jonesboro shooting. The fact that Gore came up with his position on his own, before all the hype started, is in some ways even more disturbing.

On balance, Gore-Lieberman would probably do slightly less damage to our freedom of speech than Bush-Cheney would, but the difference is insignificant. Blaming the movement on the Republicans only reduces your credibility as an activist.

As you might have guessed by now, I'll be voting for Harry Browne [harrybrowne2000.org]. At least he uses TLD's properly.

SlashDot the Vote.

Hey all, we have power, we take down servers by our sheer numbers. We are many. Let's pick a candidate and /. the vote.

what we REALLY need.

I think most people are influenced too much by the various forms of the media out there. I am not trying to start a flame war, but we don't need less violence in video games or the internet or anything else... this may come as a shocker, but:

we need better parents!

now, I am not blaiming anyone here, but where are the parents at in all of these instances? violence prevention starts at home, with the morals and values that are instilled by our parents and peers.

people need to leave our internet, video games, literature, etc. alone and be responsible for the life they bring into this world.

The Real Issue

This campaign speaks to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line, we have begun to disrespect the Constitution, where a "public servant" can walk in and have their heart turn dark as a result of being in Washington, and walk in and decide to take over everybody else's life.
/.

Re:you think BUSH is stupid...

Ted Nugent makes Bush's position on Columbine and the Internet look rational. Apparently, his book suggests that the Columbine kids should've rushed the gunmen

Why is that such an unreasonable course of action, as compared trying to hide and hoping that the gunman kills someone else instead of you? Here is a report (original source here [ogo.org]) on a student who did exactly that, and was aided by his experience with guns:

In May 1998, 15-year-old Kip Kinkel walked into the crowded cafeteria of Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, and opened up on students with a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle. He shot wildly at first, then started singling students out for death. At one point Kinkel walked up to a student who was lying on the floor, placed the rifle to her head, and attempted to fire three times, but nothing happened. Wrestler Jacob Ryker, shot through the lung in the first wave of bullets, charged the 15 feet separating him from Kinkel, tackled him, and disarmed him. Had Ryker not done so, the toll could have been much higher than the roughly two dozen injuries and two deaths the shooting caused.

In a Nightline broadcast shortly after the shooting, ABC's Ted Koppel credited Ryker with halting the shooting. But once the details of the shooting were out of the way, the program quickly turned into another debate on gun control. Koppel and his reporters never explained how it was that Ryker knew when to attack Kinkel; the hero could have been doing nothing more than making himself a better target in a suicidal charge. It turned out that Ryker and his family were hunters and target shooters. From the sounds the gun made, Ryker knew Kinkel was out of ammunition. Ryker's parents credited his familiarity with firearms with helping to stop the shooting.

No, that's just a symptom

"we need better parents!"

Yes, we do. But you can't just make that happen by saying it. Here's the REAL issue:

We need a more intelligent, better-educated populace!

Education is known to increase IQ plus it is a lot easier to control the quality of (unless you want to have a Genetic Screening Board) so that is the area we need to focus on. Intelligent, educated people will make smart choices, including raising intelligent children intelligently.

I'm all for defense and "military readiness"--but can't we take 3% of the defence budget in order to triple (or more?) our education spending? More teachers, higher standards (for both teachers AND students), public involvement, PR work to counter anti-intellectualism, etc. Get smart, the rest will follow.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

While I do agree that to draw a link between the presence of violent movies, games, music etc, and real violence is absurd. It is just as absurd to say that the presence of violence in games and movies caused the drop in real world violence.

With 2 million convicts in our prisons, an increase of 1 million from a decade ago, and the proliferation of firearms in the hands of honest citizens, I can't see how violent crime can do anything but go down. Those most likely to commit violent crimes are either in prison or smart enough to refrain so they don't get shot. Those who are neither are dead.

Youth have always been a great convenience for those who want to manipulate the public. Talk about how much something or another is going to hurt someone's kids and how you plan to stop it and you've got their attention if not their outright support. Whether or not that something is harmful to anyone at all is irrelevant if you can paint a dark enough picture of it. The internet is merely another "new threat" in a long list of other supposed threats that have been used over the years to dupe the stupid among our nations voters.

As someone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground, I'm really quite angered by Bush's comment about someone having "their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet." What planet is he on? Or a better question might be what planet are the people on who he is obviously pandering to? Politicians repeat back what they think the public believes, not what they themselves believe. He's pandering to people who vote and who are not online. As a group, the elderly vote more than anyone else. They are also least likely to be online and most distrustful of new technologies and social change. So whats that add up to? Attacking the internet makes grandpa more likely to vote for you instead of Gore.

A new technology which has social impact will always demonized by those who don't understand it. The more quickly a new technology is adopted, the more vigorously it will be attacked.

The internet is simply the latest victim of this mentality. These attacks remind me very much of what happened when television became popular, or rock music. In both cases there was a "moral outcry" from people who didn't have a clue about either one. Television was figuratively demonized, and rock music was literally demonized. Television expanded our horizons, even if most people did watch the Gong show instead of Nova. Today very few people believe that television is inherently harmful to anyone, yet at one time many people believed just that.

The simple truth is that those guys in Colorado didn't kill anyone because of the internet. One was crazy, the other easily led. Psychologists have been working and trying for a very long time to understand the nature and causes of psychosis and other dangerous mental disorders. Last time I checked use of the internet wasn't among their leading theories.

Things like this just go to show you that quite a few people in this world are truly not very bright. I never used to believe that. I liked to think that most people were intelligent. I'd still like to believe that, but I can't. If the average IQ is 100, then close to 50% of the population has a double digit IQ. I don't think the IQ tests have been recalibrated anytime recently, so the average may be 110 for all I know. I do know that for every intelligent person out there, there is another person who is not too bright. It seems to me that our only real hope in the long run is genetic engineering. Imagine if the average IQ were 150 and pretty much no one had an IQ below 125. How much better the world would be without cretins dragging the rest of us down. I think it would be a very good world indeed.

Lee Reynolds

Re:Attack on the internet

You know, it's funny, but most of the people shooting each other over heroin and cocaine prohibition don't have computers.

I'm going to make a social observation. Normally, one prefaces social observations with, "I am not a racist; these are just the facts." However, what I'm going to say is probably somehow racist, so I will make no such disclaimer.

Anyone who's read the numbers know that upper-middle class kids with internet access do not commit the majority of crimes. The majority of crimes, actually, are committed by underclass minorities who do not have internet access.

Occasionally, a fairly well-to-do kid will snap after being picked on for long enough, and will pump bullets into everyone he sees. In 1991, two years before Doom, when the most violent game I had was probably either SPACEWAR.EXE or Pool of Radiance, I was actively plotting to drive my mom's SUV through my middle school playground at 80 MPH. You beat a kid up every day for long enough, and he's going to want to kill you. I don't think his cultural influences matter one bit.

Don't harp on guns.

Secure handgun storage and trigger locks are not the answers either. A kid who really wants to shoot up his school will always find a way to get his hands on firearms. The real answer, as has been posted on Slashdot many times, is to make our schools a place no kid would dream of shooting up.
--

Re:No, that's just a symptom

false. Education is emphatically not known to increase IQ.

you can become more educated about IQ, however, especially if you read this open letter published in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago. [www.mun.ca]

Two points: Japan and FPS/Guns

Note that Japan, which has an extremely low rate of violent crime is one of the richest in cultural violence. Gore and sex filled movies, anime, manga (comic books), and tv series are quite prevalent in Japan. Of course, there is significant social conditioning to repress your feelings as well, but it is an interesting correlation. On a slightly different note my brother recently got the opportunity to shoot a real rifle for the first time. Considering that none of my friends or his friends have shot anything more than an bb gun he did pretty well. Bullseye's with a scope and inner diamond using raw sights. He attributes it largely to playing hundreds of hours of Action Quake and Counterstrike. So there are two correlations that would be interesting to see. If the more violent outlets you have the less likely society as a whole is to have occurences of violent crime. And if practicing 'murder simulators' translates to improvments in real world firearms/tactical situations.

Homicide Rates in Scientific American

Take a peek at the graph of homicide rates across the world in this month's Scientific American. To everyone on this planet outside of the US it's completely and totally obvious that the constitutional right to weaponry is the biggest cause. Are parents in the US *that* much worse than parents elsewhere? Of course not. Is there more violence on US TV? The rest of the world watches US TV. The cause is gun law. Why do Americans find this so difficult to see? By the way - I'm not making any value judgement about gun laws. If you Americans like guns that's all well and good. Just don't be surprised that this pleasure comes with a price. On the other hand it's interesting to compare with a country that doesn't seem to have laws any more. The homicide rate in Russia is incredible.
--

Virtual Violence

As a Brit, we have had similar tragedies, but not to the extent that the US has. True, we have had Dunblane, but that was due to a lunatic with several unregistered firearms.

I _is_ interesting that the two people that the US is planning on letting run the country have chosen to tie the internet to teenage violence. Ok, so there is a possiblity that people who can't distinguish reality from games like Quake might get carried away, but there is a substantial chunk of evidence that shows that games of that nature actually aid reaction times and concentration. Who amongst us has sat down for a quick five minute game of AvP and stood up four hours later? I certainly have.

After a couple of hours playing Gran Turismo on the PSX my driving is pretty ropey, but if I sit down for an hour and talk with my friends before I drive, it isn't a problem. When I get in my car, It actually feels more responsive and I certainly notice more of what is happening around me. In some ways, I concentrate more on what I am doing simply because I _know_ it is not a game.

I totally disagree that the internet is to blame for violence and subversion. The internet simply _is_, it is the people that choose to use the information or can't handle that volume of information that are to blame. In some case, it may be the people that let them use it, but as it's free, who can say where to draw the line? I'm not going to.

Re:Don't harp on guns.

A hundred-thousand enscripted German soldiers aren't going to stand a chance against 12 million determined Poles with hunting rifles, I don't care what you say.

Got Panzers coming for you? Blow up the bridges in their way. What good is a tank if you're stuck behind a river. Bombers? Puhleese! Bombers are only effective against infrastructure. Defense plants, power, etc.

Correlation is not causation

While Bush's comments are groundless, naive, and a smear on technophiles, I really must raise my objections to the idea that participating in virtual violence is some sort of safety valve. It's not. Just like artificial neural nets, our brains pathways become reinforced with activity. Could it be that playing violent video games reinforces pathways that equate violent responses to tense situations? Afterall, the military uses video games desensitize infantrymen to pulling the trigger (without such training, some significant percentage of soldiers in combat will not pull the trigger or will shoot over the heads of the enemy).

Correlation is not causation. Crying censorship is not a convincing argument.

To address some other points made. Good parenting is important. As a parent, I know (or think I know) that the great majority of parents will do just about anything for their children. Parents routinely go to great lengths to secure income while at the same time providing a safe environment, nourishment, and education for their children.

IMHO, it is our society's reward system that is doing great harm to many children's value systems. As a society, we often reward the dishonest and deceitful with great wealth. Specifically, I am speaking of CEO's who use unfair business practices but command incredible compensation, the politicians who abuse the campaign financing laws, and the athelete who justifies his narcistic behaviour with his talent. Don't underestimate a child's ability to cut through crap. It is difficult for a parent to teach honesty and civility when as a nation we (seem to) value treachery and bad behaviour.

So, let's gives parents some credit. Afterall, it's our children that will be financing our retirement. We don't want to save in IRAs only to find the dollar to have no purchasing power by the time we go liquid.

That all said, Bush is absolutely wrong. His comments are very unresponsible. Unfortunately, they will have currency with too large a segment of our population.

Perhaps the best response is to point out the great of achievements of computer science history. Allan Turing cracking Enigma. Medical modelling. Etc.

Gun Safety

That's how the Senator - who voted against secure handgun storage, and twice against child safety locks - positioned himself as our noble defender of children.

If you think Handgun Control Inc. has anything to do with gun safety, you have been smoking too much weed. Anyone who opposes their gun ban agenda is branded as being "against the children". The one program that has been proven to work, the NRA's "Eddie Eagle" program, has faced bitter opposition from the so-called gun safety advocates.

Look, apples and oranges!

I appreciate the tongue-in-cheek commentary on political hype, but correllating an increase in violent games and movies to a decrease in violent statistics is just as bad as what the politicians are claiming. I just fundamentally dislike using bad statistics to back up any argument.

I listen to NPR [npr.org] just about every morning and evening, and violent gaming seems to have a surprisingly objective review there. Just yesterday was an interview with one family on why Diablo II is so popular, with audio quotes from two young boys maintaining that "It's just a game!", and that they can distinguish cartoon/videogame violence from the real thing.

But then, a couple of months ago, they had another discussion about a pre-teen kid esperienced with first-person shooters, and his first experience with shooting a real handgun. The adult observer commented on how steady his hand was, how careful his eyes, how his hesitation at shooting a target was nonexistent -- and then pointed out that these games are so good at training individuals to use real weapons that the Army now uses the same technology toward the same goal.

Do realistically violent games and movies desensitize kids to the real thing? No doubt. Does it do so to the point where actual violence is much, much easier to commit? Unprovable. There are plenty of things that can cause a decrease in crime statistics, from better policing to bad reporting. But claming that there's no correlation at all between virtual and actual violence, even in sarcasm, is just dodging the issue and irresponsible in the extreme.

Re:The Real Issue

You're right. It is a matter of culture.

This first example is becoming cliche, but stick with me a moment: In Japan, acts of violence and depravity are commonplace in anime and manga, and are accepted... yadda yadda. And their people commit one of the lowest rates of real violence in the world.

Contrast that with Germany, where entertainment that depicts violence committed by one human against another is verboten. Command and Conquer had to be retouched and its manual rewritten to depict its soldiers as robots, not people. Even then, it was sold only to adults. Forget about playing Panzer General. And God Forbid you even link to a web page that mentions Nazis in anything but a contemptful light. This is a reaction to their Fascist era, a time when elected German leaders executed 6 million minority citizens.

So yes. It is cultural. IANASociologist, so I won't get all Jungian and speculate about archetypes and cultural personality, but each society has to find what works -- and what doesn't -- for them. And in every society except stagnant, isolated ones, it's an ongoing search.

Now I'm going to use a word that will make a lot of you want to invoke Godwin's Law [landfield.com]. But I'm not using that word in the sense in which Godwin usually encountered it. I'm going to use it in it's original sense. It's important that we, as informed citizens, be able to talk about this word, and know what it really means.

Get out your dictionary [m-w.com] and look up the first definition of fascism [britannica.com] - it's not about goosestepping and stiffarm saluting and gassing minorities. It's about efficiency. Fascism is the principle that any order, any rule, any law, is justified if it means the state will benefit: be more efficient, run smoother, be safer. Beginning to sound familiar? It should.

Because that's exactly what a lot of legislators have aimed for lately, without regard for individual liberty: anti-smoking laws, censorship of violence in media, drug wars, gun control, three strikes mandatory sentencing. Even worse, if it hasn't been effective at safety and efficiency, it's been successfully sold as such.

And it's not only state-oriented fascism, it's corporate-oriented fascism. Washington legislators are more than happy to exchan ge votes for the contributions [billionair...orgore.com] of major corporations in order that they may run more efficiently. Laws are continually passed "for the good of the people" when they are really just good for business. To hell with the constitution, there's a buck to be made.

It's scary how the children of men who fought against fascism in WW2 are so willing to embrace it. It's scary how easily we've forgotten. Too many liberals, conservatives, and moderates alike are willing to sacrifice our liberties for safety and efficiency. My grandfather, a WW2 B-29 pilot, is probably pounding the walls of his coffin in frustration.

But that's the dark corners of the big picture. We still have defenders of the liberties endowed upon us by the constitution: From the EFF to the NRA. The entire state of Nevada and most of Texas. From PETA and Greenpeace to Larry Flynt. The Libertarian Party and even Nader. Anyone who argues for the rights of anything other than big business and "what's best for the country."

We aren't going to wind up like modern Germany. There's an equilibrium somewhere between libertarian anarchy and fascism, and we're seeking it. There are too many of us who paid attention in high school Civics class and know what's in the bill of rights. There are too many of us who own guns and know how to use them properly... and accurately. There are too many of us who entertain ourselves simulating small unit combat and tactics...

So you see, in the end, FPS and RTS games are one of the weapons in our arsenal against bad government. They fit right in alongside free press and the right to bear arms. No wonder they're being condemned by government. I suggest that these games -- weapon and combat simulators, really -- should be protected under the second amendment, as well as the first.

Re:Ahh, yes, throwing money at the problem

It works so well. If you took 3% of the defence budget and tripled the education spending, do you know what you'd get? More administrators. More education foundations like the NEA. More stuff....

BUT LESS LEARNING!

Money isn't the problem. Oh, sure there are some schools with money problems, mostly inner-city, predominately black/hispanic schools. Do you know why they aren't getting money? I don't know -- maybe because the money is regulated from Washington?

Many public schools are flush with cash -- and they don't know how to spend it, so they spend it badly.

Re:jamie, jamie, jamie

I don't see how securing your guns at home, or putting safetly locks on them so that kids can't opperate them infrindge on your right to own/use them.

Back in 1991 (I was the ripe old age of 14), my mom's new husband raped her, grabbed a gun and told her he was coming to kill my dad, sister and me. Upon notifying he cops of his threat, they said they couldn't do anything until he actually came after us. My Dad and I loaded our shotguns, turned off the lights and waited for him to show up (which he never did since my mom filed charges and he was picked up on the rape count on the way here). Sure, we ended up not needing the gun in this case when our lives were threatened but what about people who've received anonymous death threats and the police refuse to help? Should they be forced to keep their gun locked away where they can't get to it? What happens when a (illegally obtained) gun-wielding thug breaks into your house at night to rob you? "hold on Mr. Robber, let me take my gunlock off before you shoot me." Even if the crook didn't have a gun, he could just as likely have a knife, baseball bat, pipe, whatever. Millions of crimes are PREVENTED each year because of the threat of a gun wielding defender.

I'm all for the 2nd amendment, and i think by law all head of households should be required to take a gun saftey course, and own a gun w/ammo.

Take this a step further. Teach kids in schools what guns actually do. We have fire prevention week in most schools and one day the fire department will come in and explain fire escape techniques. Why can't we have an officer come in and talk about gun safety one day a year? He doesn't need to teach kids how to clean a gun, aim effectively, etc... just teach them that guns kill and when you kill someone, they don't come back - EVER. One of the most effective things you can do is set a watermelon out in a field and shoot it to show what happens when a bullet hits someone's head.

But requiring that they be locked in a closet? That would only seem to be the common sense thing to do if you have guns and kids....my dad did it so i wouldn't play with something i didn't understand.

I grew up with guns in the house. My earliest memories of them were my dad telling me to NEVER touch them unless he was around and gave me permission. I was taught exactly what they did and how they worked. I learned to respect the awesome amount of damage they can do. I saw first-hand what a 12 gauge slug can do to a living body (deer). He gave me my first gun( a 22 rifle ) at age 7. I respected it as a tool of death and didn't screw with it like it was a toy. Why? I knew better. I was brought up in a culture that respected guns and educated me about them. Locking something away and pretending they don't exist(security by obscurity) NEVER really works... education(open review) is the best answer.

Re:Don't harp on guns.

The Jewish ghetto in Warsaw managed to hold back the Germans for quite some time, very successfully, with no more than handguns and perh. a few long guns. Didn't do them any good in the long run, but it worked for awhile.

Heck, I believe it was the Danish king's retainers who held off the Nazis for some time with naught but staves and swords--their guns having been confiscated--before finally being defeated. That story could be apocryphal, though.

Re:Do It To Julia!

> You can defend your safety (your right to life,
> if you will) by attacking someone else's rights.

Really?

> You are most likely alive right now because
> everyone else's right to kill you has been
> taken away by the government

So what you are saying is that others have the right to kill me, and the government is opressing them by saying that they can't?

Firstly, I would object by saying that no right to kill exists, regardless of what a government says.

Secondly, This is bull. It is social pressure and the fact that killing a person, outside of self defense, is considered to be morally wrong that people don't kill.

Thirdly, Safety is a feeling, You can never truely be absolutely safe. You may FEEL safer because there are laws against murder, however the law is NOT what stops me, or anyone else, from shooting you. ALL the law does is make you FEEL better.

> I know there are plenty of people I would have
> killed in the heat of the moment if I knew there
> would be no repercussions from law enforcement,
> I would drive much faster if the government
> didn't take that right away, and I would steal
> food from the grocery store if the government
> didn't take that right away.

Really? You are in the minority then, in fact, you may even have some sort of psycological problem - giving up control of your own decisions to an outside force can't be healthy.

I drive faster than speed limits - sometimes signifigantly faster. I wouldn't drive faster than I do now - because I wouldn't feel safe doing it. I drive exactly as fast as _I_ judge is safe and apropriate (sometimes thats much slower than the speed limit posted - sometimes much faster - it depends on road conditions and the state of my vehicle - NOT the numbers on a sign)

I do not steal from stores. I know I could, and I know I could get away with it if I wanted to. I don't want to. My moral beliefs do not allow me to, even if I could get away with it. The law never enters into the picture here.

Kill people? Hell no. Not unless my life, or the life of another was in danger. I may have been mad, I may have felt like visiting violent acts upon a person. However...I have never been so mad as to be actually ready to kill someone. I have control over my anger, enough as to not present a danger to society.

Again...law doesn't enter into the picture. I was brought up to respect life and to respect others. THAT is what keeps me from comming to your house and shooting you, and your whole fammily. THAT is what keeps just about everyone else from doing it too.

To get back to the point of guns. If you take away guns legally, then they will be replaced with illegal guns. Do you REALLY think that a person who is willing to kill a person is going to even think twice abou tbuying an illegal gun?

Do you actually expect that someone is going to say "Darn, I want to kill him, shoot him right dead, but I can't break the law and buy a gun".

Face it, the people who own guns now, and will not go out and buy illegal guns, are the ones that you didn't need to worry about anyway. Someone who is willing to use a gun to commit violent acts, outside of self defense, are the ones who wont think twice about buying illegal guns.

As for whether they will be available - you can close down all of the gun manafacturers in the world, new black market ones will spring up over night.

the ONLY effect that it could possibly have is giving the black market YET ANOTHER product that they can sell to make more money.

--Steve

Re:School shootings

Predominantly in poor schools. Race is not an issue--it is, as it ever has been, a class issue. The dupes are the racists on both sides who want it to be a race issue.

Nobody cares much about violence among the lower classes because one can show that certain kinds of violence have always been common amongst them--just as certain kinds of violence have been common amongst the upper classes and no-one cares much about that either. It is when the middle classes--traditionally, the most contented and least violent and criminal--see an increase that there is an issue.

The upper and the lower classes have always been violent, immoral and criminal. It is when the middle class goes the same way that there is cause for concern.

Not that the middle class is much better; it lacks the style of the upper and the honesty of the lower...

The real agenda!

I think that there is something else going on here, it definately makes for a good conspiracy!

Since man first made his own spears, the main outlet for anger and violence has been through the art of warfare. You got a kid who likes to destroy and cause violence? Send him to the army! That way he can persue his violent tendencies and promote the interests of the nation at the same time, everyone wins!

Now, with the advent of violent media/games, most of these aspiring killing machines have been pacified by the realistic killing environments that have been created for them in movies/games/comic books/etc, and have no interest in becoming professional 'real-life' killers, they just want to become another Quake World Champion!

The United States, being a military superpower, realizes that it's next generation of soldiers are quickly dwindling due to lost interest in serving in the armed forces. So in the end, the new political agenda isn't about children causing violence, it's about the upcoming lack of violent children enrolling in the armed forces!

Internet and Crime

The idea that 3D shooters are some form of katharsis for America's youth is ludicrous. It has been psychologically disproven, you cannot compartmentalize violence in this way. Embracing violent behavior in one location tends to create violent behavior everywhere else as well.

Why is adolescent violence going down then? Because most adolescent violence is caused by people who don't have a sense of "belonging". This is not to say that being a loner means you are a killer, but a common thread in a lot of these teen shootings is that the shooter didn't have many/any close friends. Interviews with the other students go like this "I didn't know him very well but he was always very nice." Getting the picture. The internet changed all that because now, while a young geek can't find people like him at school, he can find them on the net. He "belongs" somewhere in cyberspace. Hence the drop in violence.

Note I am not advocating geek profiling or anything like that. I am saying most school shootings involve loners. It is an observable trend. Thanks to the internet non-social loners in meatspace are much more likely to have a social life in cyberspace.

Re:The Real Issue

I agree with many of your sentiments. The "two party" system is a crock. The two "major" candidates are corporate clones of slightly different flavors. I also agree with a lot of the Libertarian philosophy, however, I believe being a pure libertarian verges on plain irresponsibility. I believe government can and should play a positive role in providing certain fundamental services to citizens, if we architect the system to resist corruption. Therefore I am voting for Mr. Nader of the Green party. To me he has many of the pluses of the libertarian ideals, plus the added bonus of a passion for social justice, which this world and country has far too little of.

But in general, to all those undecideds, independents, and progressives out there, I say: Please, take a moment, analyse the third party candidates, and ask yourself who you really trust and who you would really like in office. Elections are not horse-races or soda tasting contests; you should vote your conscience. For anybody that dissuades you from voting on your conscience on the basis that the candidate "doesn't have a chance", you should immediately discard their persuasions - apparently *they* have already given up and have settled for the lesser of two evils.

(and some facts to nudge you: 1) the election is decided not by popular vote, but by the electoral college. In all but a handful of battleground states, you can vote "freely" for a third party. While it may not have a large effect on who eventually carries that state, it will send a message, and will help build your third party so that *next* time, we can't be ignored; 2) for those liberals or conservatives out there that think that the opposing major candidate will go against your opinions as far as abortion and the supreme court: since abortion was instituted, the most liberal judges were appointed by conservative administrations, and conservative judges by liberal administrations...don't fall into their scare tactic)