A Few Thoughts On...the effects, or lack thereof, of violent video games on society

I've long been a person who has screamed against people who complain that violent video games are the reason for the increase in school violence in the last 20 years. I've also screamed against people who say the same thing about TV and movies but, in the words of Alton Brown, that's another show. I've found an article that does a lot to damn the people who have this point of view. It will be posted at the end of this entry. It's an unusual stance coming from someone who identifies as liberal in their political leanings seeing as how liberals/democrats seem to be the main ones who believe this nonsense. Thankfully this seems to be changing as a recent statement by Nancy Pelosi, a democrat, indicates but there are still way too many people in power in Washington who believe such foolishness.

Why do people like to say that Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Socom, Resident Evil, Call Of Duty, Grand Theft Auto and other such games increase violence? Simple. It's the easy answer to a complex problem. Most people don't want to put some legitimate thought into this discussion and thus, actually have to work their minds so they come up with the easiest answer possible even if it's grossly incorrect. This is the work of people who don't want to work to actually solve the problem themselves but simply want to bitch and moan about it and hope society does it for them.

I have been playing the Mortal Kombat series of games since I was 8 years old. In 20 years of playing those games, I've never once attempted to, or even had the urge to, set someone on fire, pull their head off their torso with the spine attached, or pull someone's beating heart out of their chest. I've never once even had the urge to kiss a stranger just to see if they'll inflate and explode as happens in Mortal Kombat 2. Yet according to these fringe lunatics, I should've already knocked off a few dozen people. I have a close friend who has watched strong R-rated horror films loaded with gore and violence since he was 4 or 5 years old and, to my knowledge, he's never once had the urge or attempted to slice someone in half, crush their skulls, ram a machete through their chest cavity, or anything else that Freddy and Jason ever did on the screen.  I myself was the only member of my 2nd grade class to have seen Terminator 2 when it was first released on VHS in 1992. I wondered then why no one else had seen this wonderful movie and it didn't occur until years later that I was the only one in the class who had parents who allowed me to watch a hard R-rated action film. On the flipside of this, I have another friend who, by his own admission, didn't see his first R-rated film of any kind until he was about 16 years old and he certainly wasn't playing any video games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, Primal Rage, Killer Instinct or any other massively popular violent game of the time period and honestly, I don't know if he would've been allowed to anyway.

Yeah, I know I said movies and TV were another show but this instance figures into my larger point.
What is that point? The point is that we had parents who raised us with a sense of right and wrong as well as a sense of fantasy and reality. Many parents these days teach their kids that the universe revolves around them and do nothing to teach them how to deal with adversity which of course means when things don't go their way, they act out. This factor, combined with how easy it is for any J6P in America to get military grade weaponry, is the biggest reason for escalated school violence.


"Violent Video Games Are Good For Society?"

http://beta.fool.com/reubengbrewer/2013/02/21/violent-video-games-are-good-for-society/25235/?source=eogyholnk0000001

The 12th Anniversary of Dale Earnhardt's passing

The following was posted on my Facebook page on February 18, 2011; the 10th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt's passing. It still pretty much sums up my thoughts, emotions and feelings about losing a childhood hero even 12 years later. There will be new thoughts at the end of the original post. In fact, I'm considering the idea of updating this post every year on this date and then re-writing it from scratch to include anything that came later for the 20th anniversary in 2021. Here is the original post as it appeared on Facebook 2 years ago warts and all.

So who you gonna pull for when he's not racing anymore?

This is gonna be very much a free for all and may not follow a lot of structure but I've been planning this for a while and been beating myself up all day about what I wanted to write and how I wanted to write it so basically this is as raw and unpolished as it can be.

The question that's in the title of this note was a question posed to me on or about February 9, 2001 by a guy named Chris Stanfield in the RCHS library. We had been working on a project for class and we needed all the computers in the library for the class. Needless to say, I had other things on my mind besides school and today, I wanted to see the practice speeds that had been coming out of Daytona in preps for that year's Daytona 500. Chris was talking with me as I looked up the speeds as well as the full Daytona schedule for that week. He saw me looking specifically for Dale Sr and Dale Jr.'s practice speeds. Just making conversation he asked me was I a Sr. or Jr. fan. I explained I was a Sr. fan but I also pulled for Jr. for obvious reasons. He then out of the blue asked me what was I gonna do when Dale Sr. was no longer racing. I thought little of this, I just simply answered "I don't know. I guess I'll pull for Dale Jr." Little did I know how much of an impact that simple question would have less than 10 days later.

On February 17th, after watching the then Busch series race and the IROC race, my dad asked me who I thought would win the 500. I told him I believed Michael Waltrip would win it, Dale Jr would finish 2nd and Dale Sr. would finish 3rd. I had no evidence for this, it was just simply what came to mind at that moment.

The day of the 500 itself, February 18th, 2001, started off on a bit of a sour note as I woke up to see that longtime Braves great Eddie Matthews had died that morning. He would regrettably be forgotten in the aftermath of the events to come later that day. The broadcast began on Fox at 12 Noon that day. It was the first race Fox had ever broadcast. During the pre-race segment, they interviewed many drivers and Dale Earnhardt was among them. He finished up his interview with a quote that, like Chris' question to me earlier, meant little at the time but would later be seared into my memory. His quote was "you're gonna see something you've never seen before today on Fox."

I didn't watch much of the race itself due to Directv not carrying local channels at that time. The interviews I saw were at my grandparents house where they had basic cable which meant they got local channels. I figured I would read the results and watch highlights later and since my dad was recording it on vhs tape at my grandparents and if Dale won or anything big happened I'd watch the tape. This was up until my dad came in from playing golf around 3:30 pm. He came in the house and asked me had I seen the big wreck that happened. I asked him what he was talking about. He said there'd been a huge wreck with about 25 laps to go and that there was at least one car that flipped. I asked did Dale get through and he said he didn't know. So I went to my room, disconnected the Directv box so I could hopefully get a decent reception on Fox 8 which I managed to actually get through the antenna on the roof of the house. Much better than I usually got. Anyway, I saw the crash itself and watched as Tony Stewart flew like a leaf and 19 other cars hit each other like bumper cars in the crash that Nascar fans usually refer to as "the big one", a common occurence at the plate tracks(Daytona and Talladega). My question was soon answered as they did a rundown of the field and I saw that Dale had gotten through the crash so I was relieved.

After the race resumed, I watched the last 20 or so laps of the race and then came the white flag. Waltrip was in 1st, Dale Jr. in 2nd and Dale Sr. in 3rd, as I had predicted the day before. They come around turn 3, we see a wide shot that pans left as it follows Mikey and Jr. out of turn 4. The camera changes angles and we see in the upper right part of the screen 2 cars crashing. All I could see as to who was in it was a big white 3 and I then silently muttered some obscenity after seeing he'd crashed. But Mikey had won the race and Dale Jr. had gotten 2nd so it was a nice finish. It was Waltrip's first career win in almost 15 years of racing in the then Winston Cup series.

The camera then switches to 2 crashed cars in the grass area just out of turn 4. One of them is Dale's car and one of them is Ken Schrader's car. Schrader was then shown to walk over to Dale's drivers side to see if he was okay. He then immediately jumped back slightly and waved the paramedics over to Dale's car in an almost panic. I knew then something was really wrong. Minutes passed, no new information, simply replays of the crash. It was easy to tell by the commentator's that it wasn't good but they didn't say anything because they themselves knew nothing official at the time. More minutes passed, I told my dad that he'd crashed and I thought something was really wrong because of what I'd seen Schrader doing. I went to eat supper while watching for information about the crash and Dale's condition. After nearly 90 minutes of no new information, I knew something tragic had probably happened and I began to prepare for the worst. Finally, around 6:30 pm, after I'd gone back home, my mom called the house and told my dad that Dale was gone. It was then I flipped on the tv and saw the press conference that had taken place about 10 minutes before and Mike Helton utter those words I will never forget. 

"This is undoubtedly one of the toughest announcements that I've ever personally had to make, but after the accident in turn 4 at the end of the Daytona 500, we've lost Dale Earnhardt."

I was empty. I really didn't know what to think or do. I had lost a childhood hero before in 1993 but it was unthinkable to think that it had happened a second time and to Dale Earnhardt of all people who many Nascar fans truly thought was invincible. The driver in 1993 I'm referring to is Davey Allison who died in July 1993 in a helicopter crash at age 32. But it had happened, Dale was gone and the emotion and sadness from that day has not left me, even 10 years to the day of this tragedy.

Dale Earnhardt's death was to me the biggest tragedy in Nascar history and is one that, as time has shown, the sport as a whole may never truly recover from. No sport to my knowledge has ever lost its biggest star in its biggest event of the season. I spoke to many people afterwards who said they didn't care about Nascar any more now that he was gone and that sentiment still runs today. Most fans at some point returned to being fans again but it's more or less universally agreed that it hasn't been the same and will never be the same as it was before this day, 10 years ago. 

To answer Chris' question if he happens to read this, I did become a Dale Jr. fan for a while as well as a Kevin Harvick fan who was handpicked by Dale Sr. himself to be his successor. It's pretty much believed that had he not died, he would've likely retired at the end of the 2002 season when his last contract with RCR expired. I later fell out of favor with Dale Jr. and focused solely on Harvick which is where I stood until the end of the 2010 season when I left the sport altogether due to many stupid decisions made by the sport since 2004. It is also my considered opinion that if Dale were alive today, he would be truly disgusted to see what this former sport has degenerated into. Dale was also known to be a voice of reason among the drivers and the brass at Nascar as a whole and I truly believe that so many awful decisions that have been made in the last decade of Nascar would've never been made if Dale Earnhardt were still alive. 

As we move forward in time and Dale Earnhardt becomes even more of a name and a legend in time, his death will be felt by Nascar as long as it manages to exist and the results will not be pretty. I truly believe that Nascar will continue to tumble in the eyes of American sports fans as well as racing fans altogether. Ratings and attendance at the tracks(save for the major races) have tumbled, and because of this, it's entirely possible that by 2020 maybe 2025, Nascar may not be around any more. If by then Nascar still exists, it may no longer be on television and will be seen in the same vein as pro wrestling is seen in the US which is how many traditional Nascar fans see the sport today. When I say it will be seen like pro wrestling, I mean that it will be seen as a show and simply entertainment rather than a legitimate sport and legitimate competition which as I said is how many traditional fans view what the sport has become already. In the 10 years since his death, Nascar has gone from being second only to the NFL in terms of popularity and the fastest rising spectator sport on the planet, to being the butt of a joke and being one of the few cases in history where a sports own leadership purposely angered and ran off its core fan base over a period of a few years.

Nascar could've survived and even thrived in the post-Dale Earnhardt era but in 2004, it all changed forever and the decline that began with Dale Earnhardt's death went into overdrive and the sport continues on a downward spiral to this day that can only end with either major changes in leadership or with the sport folding and since there is no one around that seems to have the pull or the voice of reason Dale Earnhardt had with the Nascar brass, the sport simply cannot and will not be saved.

It will probably never be proven decisively if my beliefs are true, but I will go to my grave believing that Dale Earnhardt's death was the beginning of the end for Nascar as a sport. 

2/18/2013 Update: I've recently been alerted to a website called The Internet Wayback Machine which is an archive of web pages going back to 1996. In looking through a few of the major sports sites, I've come across a few Earnhardt related links from that time. I have included one in particular with this blog as part of my 2013 update.

From Nascar.com, this was an article from a subsection of the website. It was published on the site, to my knowledge, the afternoon Dale died and was later moved to the tribute section. It is simply titled 2-18-01.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010331055037/http://www.nascar.com/DRIVERS/winston/DEarnhar00/tribute/02_18.html

It's very haunting to read this article again (I've not seen it since 2001 obviously) and it's even more haunting to read it as it's written which is in the present tense. It's all so fresh and vivid as though it just happened.

I'm closing the 2013 update with the lyrics from "Still The Same" by Bob Seger. This was one of 4 songs that were played during Dale's memorial service which aired a few days after Dale's death. I wish I could find the music video that was actually played on the broadcast somewhere online but I can't so I can only put the lyrics here. I have the service on tape but I haven't watched it since it aired live and I refuse to pull it out and watch it now even 12 years later.

You always won everytime you placed a bet
You're still damn good
No one's gotten to you yet
Everytime they were sure they had you caught
You were quicker than they thought
You'd just turn your back and walk

You always said
The cards would never do you wrong
The trick you said
Was never play the game too long
A gambler's share
The only risk that you would take
The only loss you could forsake
The only bluff you couldn't fake

And you're still the same
I caught up with you yesterday
Moving game to game
No one standing in your way
Turning on the charm
Long enough to get you by
You're still the same
You still aim high

There you stood
Everybody watched you play
I just turned and walked away
I had nothing left to say
'Cause you're still the same
You're still the same
Moving game to game
Some things never change
You're still the same

A Few Thoughts On the upcoming 2013 MLB Season

A Few Thoughts On is a new series that I will be starting which will be shorter blog posts than my usual fare. The name is borrowed from Robert A. Harris who posts an excellent column in the Blu-Ray section of the Home Theater Forum called "A Few Words About." I hope to make this at least a bi-weekly segment on the blog. Our first topic deals with the upcoming 2013 baseball season.

I just saw the early World Series predictions and I have to ask why everyone seems to think Toronto is a lock for the AL Pennant. Granted they're likely to win the AL East because it will be filled with a lot of relative mediocrity this year but honestly, I see the Yankees, Baltimore and Tampa Bay as being  capable of winning that division. Let's not forget other teams outside the AL East like Detroit and Anaheim. You can also bet there will be a surprise team from the AL as there usually is such as Oakland and Baltimore were last year. I believe Detroit and Anaheim(sorry, I feel stupid calling them the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) are far more likely to get to the World Series than Toronto is this year. Detroit in particular because they will be playing with a sense of revenge on their minds after their embarrassing effort in the 2012 World Series.

I'm not saying Toronto won't make the World Series but I am saying there have been many "super-teams" in the past who have fallen flat on their faces. My honest prediction for Toronto is that they will win between 89 and 95 games this year and will at least make the playoffs as a Wild Card team. Of course this doesn't take into account the possible powerhouse NL teams that they could meet in the World Series such as Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco and if all comes together, I'll even throw Atlanta into that group as well. Other than Atlanta, all of whom I think are superior to Toronto and as I said, Atlanta may be added to that list later.

I will release my full MLB predictions for 2013 as we get closer to the season. Probably towards the end of March.