Mal

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• Commented on Typo Hunt: Empire Games
  Didn't find an error in the book, but in the blog post: "pleasetell..." -> "please tell..."; scnr...
• Commented on In other news ...
  Cool! Referring to the note: is this canon? (Or alternatively: is the question stupid?)...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  I'll try to summarise a response to various points made in one post while also trying to clarify my position: First of all, I am assuming the position that war is generally "bad" (I'll touch on the topic of "exceptions"...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Yes, I guess I am kinda new in a way. Thanks for the link, promises to be an interesting read. And yes, of course you're right about girls' play: I'm not saying they're ethically "better". But different. By the way,...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Ah sorry, I get it now. No way to edit comments here, so I have to write a new one: I understand you to ask that in a violent society, isn't it best for my child individually to engage in...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  No. To have my child do something for the sole and exclusive reason that all other children do it is pretty much the worst motivation for anything. Further, as I wrote before, the very notion that kids should play war...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Exactly! Instead of seeing WW I as the "war to end all wars", Versailles should have been the "peace to end all wars". Of course, we kind of have that now with the EU, just that some people forgot what...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Very good point, thanks. The entire argument - we need violence to prevent a second Hitler - is highly circular to begin with. Just as "we need good men with guns to stop bad men with guns" just leads to...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Not "trauma", no. But I think the question is, do war games and violence/war in media affect children? The answer to that question has such an emphatic "yes" that there has been a general consensus to have child ratings. UG/PG13,...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  I, too, have fond memmories of C&C, though I was more obsessed with trying to mount tank charges. And I never forgave Kane for not letting me assault the Pentagon... As for your personal experiences, I didn't know any of...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  "Is there evidence that their war gaming before Age X will prevent them from learning/changing appropriately at Age X?" In short, yes there is....
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  "They aren't playing at killing, they're playing at "beating the bad guys" same as they play at "putting out fires"." Exactly. They don't actually know what they are doing. They internalise that pointing the gun at somebody and pulling the...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  "The next year, the first children arrived who had lost a parent in that conflict." I don't know of course, but am I wrong to assume that this was the event that gave war a completely new meaning for you?...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Well... but wouldn't you say that if you need a game to let people know WW I happened, THEN you have a problem with your education system? Ok maybe I'm missing something. I live in the UK btw. and it...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  "Perhaps had there been more gamers around in the 1930s, Hitler would have been stopped earlier." War gamers, you mean? Then we have found, I think, the nucleus where we disagree. Because I think - and I know historians on...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Sorry, meant to write that going to war should be the very last resort....
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  I agree that computer games can be an effective, if somewhat random, teaching/learning aid. I'm not a native English speaker and my grades were horrible at first. Only when I started playing Hitchhiker's Guide, Space Quest (I-III, with the text...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Hitler and Stalin: My point here was that Hitler was, for the most part, not stopped by people who had valiantly applied the knowledge gained from playing war games in their childhood (what I understood you to suggest in both...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Sorry, I was trying to be sarcastic about how this discussion should imho be informed by findings from child psychology (e.g. child development stages, what games teach kids what, etc.), but few commenters considered that. Instead I consider many comments...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  It's never too late to join in! It's your post after all....
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Thanks for the praise further up. Quite a number of good and informative points in your posts, thanks! I'm starting to suspect however that despite the topic of the post, many commenters are less interested in findings of empirical child...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  "Hitler wasn't stopped by legions of grim pacifists strongly disapproving his regime; that is one of those lessons apparently being forgotten..." So true. Hitler was stopped by millions of Russian soldiers sent to their certain deaths by a ruthless Soviet...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Sorry, in the last paragraph I meant to write: "Although I should say that my actual beef with this blog post is not in itself the specific content: It is the apparently unreflected leveling of different types of (conflict) play...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  In another thread on this blog, there was a comment pointing out that the world is sliding backwards exactly as World War II fades from living memory. (I paraphrase, of course.) This blog post seems to be exactly the way...
• Commented on Playtime is over
  "For those of us Europeans who think the EU in its current form is an impending disaster it is really annoying when people mistakenly equate these 2 very different things." And it is for that reason I spoke of Europe...
• Commented on Playtime is over
  What I read you write is that what we're seeing in the US (Trump), UK (Brexit), maybe soon France (Front National) and Germany (AfD), Turkey (Erdogan) etc. ... is a controlled effort to undermine the liberal West? I don't think...
• Commented on The Day After
  The operative sentence here is: "Back in those days, passports were of a different nature", meaning that back in those days, passports were of a different nature. Meaning that passports today have a different purpos compared to when people still...
• Commented on The Day After
  That's not the point. Your statistics covers pre-election numbers and there is no imminent reason to leave the country yet. Further, you established yourself that 36% of the US population has a passport. How do you know that doesn't cover...
• Commented on The Day After
  Thanks for the research. So what I hear you say is that 60% of US-Americans have so little cash in hand that a holiday abroad would virtually wipe their savings. So, when I am told that many US-Americans don't have...
• Commented on The Day After
  Well, I think it just validates the argument: most people need passports for travel. If you don't/didn't need it for clos countries, you still need it for further-away destinations. Which are more expensive. So when US-Americans tell me that many...