Not quite. They were both called Händel :P

kW/h on slashdot's front page. What's wrong with this world?

DON'T mention his name!

And BTW, magic IS real, it's just applied maths, see e.g. Charles Stross: The Atrocity Archives.

Smoking pot can get you into that state, even if you are usually perfectly rational. (Except that you don't remember much of it the next day.) Maybe religious people are naturally stoned.

Indeed, and I am honestly grateful. We were full of shit back then, and it is invaluable that someone (a lot of people actually) went through hell to beat it out of us. (Talking to my grandparents I learned that it took a generation to appreciate it.)

It is nice, too, that we were given a second chance (in terms of Marshall vs. Morgenthau plan).

I am totally stunned by the fact that it is possible at all for employers do this in the US.

If it happened here in Germany, everyone would be outraged, and the company would be knee-deep in trouble. It would be in the news front pages and on prime-time TV. The employer's reputation would be damaged for a long time. IANAL but I am sure this level of threatening someone's privacy is a criminal offense here.

We went through all the pros and cons of storing cord blood when our kids were born. Finally we decided against it. It looked too much like a rip-off. We felt that the companies that offered services make a big business out of people's fears. IIRC, it's highly unlikely that your kid will be in a condition to benefit from its stem cells. There was no public service at that time in Germany or I would have considered donating it.

Incidentally, we tried it last weekend, after my wife read about it on the web. We called it Darkness Experiment, because the kids love experiments. We did it only 2 days, and with somewhat stricter rules (no electricity at all except fridge/dishwasher/laundry and answering phone calls). Initially my kids wanted to kill me but eventually we played board games under candle light and even *gasp* talked. It was really quite nice, some kind of togetherness which is not usually there. And we all agreed to repeat it some day, but not too soon :-)

Touché.

Maybe we can meet in the middle and blame being an aspie AND video games. I guess they (the games) precisely hit the trigger which makes susceptible people go bezerk.

My sons (7 and 9) have been exposed to video games for a good year now, mainly Wii and Nintendo DS ("The Tendo").

My tentative summary: All is fine as long as they play short duration games, like Sports or Mario Kart, where a games lasts only a few minutes.

But it's different when they play games with a story that swallows them, like Zelda or Lego Star Wars. I'm convinced that these games do mess with their minds. Sometimes it takes them the rest of the day to get back out of the game. They don't respond any more. OK, this is probably normal between kids and their parents, but there's more: After a game they are overexcited and hyperactive, they can't focus on a single thought, they have headaches, they scream and shout, they tell us that they hate us and they look as if they mean it. Sometimes I can almost see fangs grow on them.

I guess it's because we take away their super powers when we tell them it's time to switch off. And the worst part is they realize how they are (namely aggressive) and they're obviously not happy about it. But of course they want to play again ASAP. This is highly unsettling form a parent's pov.

You can argue whether this is really as bad as it looks from my perspective, but IMHO these are clear symptoms of addiction and negative side-effects. I have come to believe that video games are unhealthy (to some extent) at a young age and would have liked to keep them away from gaming for a bit longer, and feed them football, hide-and-seek and some healthy mud-digging instead. The kids appear much more sane (and happy, and human) after some real-world activity. But of course you can't help them gaming if daddy owns a Wii, and everybody else in school boasts with their elder brother's gadgets.

In order to mitigate the symptoms we have agreed never to play longer than 30 minutes per day in our family. This has helped a bit, but only quantitatively. The outbursts of aggression have become rarer but not less harsh.

What has become of slashdot... There used to be an agreement to give mod points for quality, but they are more and more abused to encourage bullying and to support a political agenda. Rockoon's post is wrong in many ways, including facts and style, but people find it "Insightful". Unbelievable. The geeks have lost. The dork side has taken over.