It’s good for you, therefore it must be constitutional.
Taken from College Drinking Prevention.
Issue: “Establishing a legal drinking age of 21 is unconstitutional age discrimination.”
Response: This question has been treated in detail in two court cases, one in Michigan, the other in Louisiana. In both instances, the courts upheld the constitutionality of the laws, based in part on the demonstrated value of age 21 laws in preventing traffic crashes.
So it doesn’t matter that it is unconstitutional just so long as the government thinks that it is protecting people? Basically that is what this entire web page boils down to; it’s OK to make these laws because it is for people’s safety and everything we say is backed by research that we are more than willing to refer to but refuse to show.
Phonicals
Anyone who knows me very well knows that I am an avid reader, I blame this condition on my mother who was also afflicted with the same condition. When I was a young child she brought me into our living room and with a deliberate air (which I was later to learn was actually sadism) she introduced me to phonics; soon after I was hooked.
Many of you have seen someone who is hooked on phonics, could be a stranger at a coffee shop, maybe even be someone that you know. While you can’t alway tell if someone is hooked on phonics, some people are quite easy to identify.
A surprising number of people are completely comfortable with their affliction, these people can be seen in public areas, generally sitting somewhere out of the way, with their book out in plain sight. While these people might look completely harmless do not take that for granted. When disturbed they can turn extremely hostile, babbling nonsense like, “Not now he is about to propose to her!” or “Don’t interrupt, he is about to stab someone!” Do not be fooled! A careful examination of the area will prove that nothing of the sort is taking place. These are simple scare tactics that are a phonical’s first defense against unwelcome attention.
I know that right now you are asking yourself, “What if they do not prominently display their hobby?” “How can I tell if any of my friends are hooked?” and, “Can I catch this from being around phonicals?”
Phonicals are a lot like normal people in the aspect that they like to hang out with other people like them. Usually they are looking for the best places to get their “hook”, or finding out what other phonicals are hooked on. Places that these kind of people typically frequent are used book stores, coffee shops, or Barnes and Noble. This is where things can get confusing as normal people drink coffee and hang out at Barnes and Noble in an attempt to seem smarter than they really are so obviously discretion is advised.
Another way to determine whether or not your friend is hooked on phonics is to visit them at their house. Now this can be a bit tricky as some extremist phonicals take the phrase ‘A man’s home is his fortress’ literally. They do not necessarily have walls and a gate but it can be quite difficult to gain entrance to their house, but once you do you are basically looking at their bare soul.
At first this can seem like a foreign concept because most people entertain guests at their house quite frequently and keep their personal life locked away in their room. Phonicals however seem to be quite surprised when you suggest that you meet them at their house.
A good way to see their home in its unmodified form is to arrange a later date (at least a week in advance) that you will drop by, then conveniently forget to remind them in advance. This works well because phonicals as a whole seem to be rather confused about how calendars work and will typically forget any appointments made within a day. The reason that you set the date out at least a week is because no phonical will be able to keep his home clean for more than a couple days, and by then they will forget that you are coming which will result in the home returning to its original state.
When you drop by it should be fairly obvious, many people will keep a bookcase stocked with books to provide the illusion of culture, with phonicals the bookcase will be full and slightly overflowing. Books will be strewn in odd places such as tables by the couch, the kitchen counter, or on the floor. This is not unlike when you are trying to impress a girl that you have brought to your house, the only difference being that the phonical will not have gaps in his bookcase.
Another good way to tell is if you see a high amount of disposable coffee cups or mugs lying around. For those of you who have gamers instead of children the cups will be replaced with empty Mountain Dew cans.
The absolute clincher for telling if someone is a phonical are the pets that they have wandering around their house, these are their guards. Do not be alarmed, the guards are merely there for observational or philosophical reasons, they will usually refrain from attacking you.
It is extremely easy to tell these guards apart from the average household pet. All animals exist to better the lives of human beings, whether through sacrificing themselves for our consumption, completing various jobs for us, or simply making our lives more enjoyable. A phonical’s guards will not fall into any of these catagories. They do not obey the phonical’s spoken commands, complete any obvious physical work, or provide any sort of sustenance. In fact the only thing that they seem to do is sleep, search the house for intruders, and look directly into your soul.
You should have a fairly good idea now on how to determine if someone is a phonical. In the next lesson we will discuss what the impact of a phonical is on the neighborhood and how to deal with them.
No fair! I’m color blind!
Remember children, being color blind is no excuse to have a website that reflects your condition.
Monochromatic <–I went expecting colors! 
Triad <—More like what I was expecting my monochromatic page to look like.
Complementary <– No comment for this one.
If I am completely wrong on this one you will have to forgive me, I missed class that day and am attempting to understand this on my own.
But it made perfect sense to me!
Typography:
noun
| 1. | the art or process of printing with type. |
| 2. | the work of setting and arranging types and of printing from them. |
| 3. | the general character or appearance of printed matter. |
One thing that I find frustrating when building a website is to spend time creating something that I think looks cool or is obvious in use, only to find people think that it is confusing or hideously grotesque in appearance.
One website that I am sure made perfect sense to the creator but I thought could use a little work was Guns America. As soon as I set eyes upon this web page I was overwhelmed, all of the text seems to be crammed together, on my screen there is a large block of white space on the right hand side which makes the page feel extremely lopsided, and as the straw that broke the camel’s back the menu bar is beyond obscene. It is a long list of miniature sized text that starts out by traversing the left side of the page in a single column then decides to have a change of pace and changes into multiple columns which take up a larger portion of the page.
I think that this person could have a decent web page if they made it look good to people with different screen sizes and if they had a much more cohesive menu bar.
Violence in America, is it because of video games?
Someone commented on my previous post about “killing games” which can also be known as first person shooters (may I point out that there are several 3rd person “killing games” Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto come to mind).
Following is their comment and my response which I have decided to make into its own separate post because this is a topic that I am rather vehement on.
[quote]
“Ok, so you say you’ve been playing “Killing Games” for years (I call them first person shooter games). I truly hate them. Gun safety’s first rule, is never point a gun at anyone….not even your dog, even if you have stapled him….hey that’s not nice!
My kids have grown up just fine, but they do have the same argument as you, I just don’t buy it. Look at the level of violence in our country, and you can’t chalk it all up to hormones in beef.
Read a book, talk a walk, talk to a friend, volunteer at the food bank, there’s lots to do, than shoot your poor stapled dog.” 
[/quote]
“First off I would like to say thank you for taking the time to post your thoughts here, it shows a lot about you that you can disagree but still keep things civil.
I agree that there is a high level of violence in our country, it is my opinion, however, that this is due to poor parenting rather than allowing children to play fps’, or even (I am loath to admit) watching overly violent movies.
I personally have never watched the any of the Saw movies, I am rather horrified not only that someone would create a movie like that, but also that it would be so widely accepted.
At first I would be temped to think that if someone were to watch those movies, it would not cause them to do violence, but they would already be open to the idea of using violence and that is why they would not be as affected by those movies.
However, I realized that that was to broad of an idea. My best friend has watched all of the Saw movies, but you would never know that from just meeting and being around him. This guy is somewhat renowned throughout our group of gamers because of how much control of himself he has; he rarely ever loses his temper and when he does it barely shows. I am not saying that he bottles all his anger up, when something happens that will make him angry then he will just let it go and move on.
I am sure that you did not mean it as such but your comment that I should, “Read a book, talk a walk, talk to a friend, [or] volunteer at the food bank, there’s lots to do.” was extremely offensive to me. By this comment you are (maybe not purposefully) implying that people who play “killing games” do not engage is extra curricular activities, never read books, go outside, or keep an active social life.
I can almost guarantee that I read more book that you do. Almost every night before I go to sleep I enjoy reading, my own personal library is somewhat extensive. I also greatly enjoy sports and keep in close contact with my friends (both local and otherwise).
Here is an interview I had with a pro gamer about this topic.
What is your background in video games?
Hewy – “I first started playing Sega Genesis, my favourite games back then were NBA Jam and anything to do with Sonic. From there it evolved, I picked up almost every console until I came across the XBOX. There I picked up Halo 1 and Amped Snowboarding. Ever since then I’ve been hooked on The Halo series, but balance out my time playing halo with Guitarhero II & III, Madden 2008, and Counter Strike Source.”
What are your thoughts on violence in video games and the rising violence in America?
Hewy – “The violence seems to be increasing as the FPS genre along with adventure etc. continues to add more violence into their games because they believe it will appeal to their target audience. But violence in video games and it being the cause of violent acts in America just seems like an easy scapegoat politicians can use. Sure, it may be the cause of some instances, but that is very rare and the person who was influenced by the game most likely is somewhat mentally challenged or has some disability.”
How many hours do you spend on video games weekly?
Hewy – “Probably around 15-20, it usually depends on how much school work I have and what the schedules for other activities I have look like”
How do you spend your time when you are not playing video games?
Hewy – “I play Highschool and AAA baseball for my city, as well as running cross country and I freestyle ski competing across north America”
What would you say to parents who are concerned with their kids playing “killing games”?
Hewy – “I personally don’t think kids should play killing video games. Mainly because they don’t really have the mental capacity to know what is reality and what isn’t. I think parents should always keep track of what their kids are playing. But for teens, I think parents need to realize that most teens know it’s just a game and that they wouldn’t go out killing people in real life, and plus FPS aren’t always about killing, the strategies and mental aspect of the game are probably more important then killing and that’s another thing parents should look at. “
Also may I point out that this picture http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/imagerepository/LR_child_gun_250.jpg
was not taken on the streets of America.
I would also highly recommend reading this page.
http://hrewiki.pbwiki.com/Child+soldiers+-+points+for+a+talk
I read the whole thing, it should only take a couple minutes of your time.
Well, I am sorry that I dragged that so far out. I tend to talk a lot when I am defending something I am interested in.
In closing and to sum up my main points (which is a proper ending) I do not think that video games make people violent, I think that lack of proper parenting creates character defects which people like to pin on violent video games (whether fps or not). And while I do believe that violence is a present and escalating problem in America, I believe that it is a much greater problem in other countries where practically none of the people get to play any video games.”
-Jason
Wooooow…
For some reason I have not been able to come up with the motivation to write about my trip to Las Vegas, partially because I have told it to so many people and partially because I do not believe that the people that might be reading this are from the same crowd as I am.
To sum everything up, very few teams actually attended MLG Las Vegas. Where there should have been in the neighborhood of two hundred, four man teams in attendance, there was about fifty. Keeping that in mind our placing is not what it would have been had there been a full crowd.
The first day was FFA aka Free for All (every player for himself in a race to amass the most kills in fifteen minutes).
I am pretty bad at FFA and I was not surprised at all when I got knocked out first round (still disappointing!)
The next day was the team games and that went ok for us, out of fifty teams we made thirtieth (semi pro bracket.)
Even though I don’t count it due to the lack of people technically we can say that we went to an event and got semi pro, which is about the top two hundred players in the world.
What did count and that thing I am the most excited about was playing against a Halo 1 pro (keep in mind that we have been playing Halo 2)
Halo 1 definitely is where I excel and it is my favorite game; getting to play it against someone who was a Halo 1 pro was a dream for me.
What happened next blew my mind. We agree to play 1v1, first on his host, then on mine (host plays a very large role.)
Both games I won with relative ease. A day later I we played some 2v2s (again on the Pro’s host) and we won four out of the five games we played.
I knew that I was good at Halo 1 but I never would have guessed that I was good enough to beat a Halo pro. The only thing that makes me sad is that I never had the opportunity to play Halo 1 while it was being played competitively or else I too could have been a Halo pro. Partially this is because of growing up in Alaska, cut off from the rest of the world. Another reason is that my mother did not want me to play “killing games”. Because of these two reasons I missed out on having something that few people in the world have the skill to take, a pro contract. That would have changed my life in such a huge way.
Parents, I urge you to really think before you stop your children from doing something. I have been playing “killing games” for years now and I have never, nor ever will without sufficient reason kill another person. This is because of the morals that were instilled into me by my parents, not because they stopped me from playing video games.
If anyone really wants to know more about my trip to Las Vegas or pretty much anything concerning video games, feel free to come talk to me.
-Jason
Ok, when I said I was going to keep this blog more or less up dated, I really meant less. I do apologize for keeping everyone waiting in suspense but, as those of you who are intimately familiar with last minute vacations would know, things can get a little hectic.
Last blog I left off with a three man team, plane tickets, and not much else besides a stubborn resolve to make this happen even if it wrecked us.
Here is a quick tip for people thinking about going on a trip to Las Vegas, don’t! Ok, well I am obviously joking but there is a lot of hassle involved.
If you are under twenty one there are only a couple hotels that you can check into, one of those being the Hilton.
Secondly you might leave with all your appendages attached but you will return missing an arm and a leg at least. Food there is so expensive you would think that America was enduring a serious famine.
Another thing that was amusing to me were the Mexicans that stand on the side walk, flicking their hooker trading cards. They are there on the pretense of handing them out as cheap advertising, but really they are just mocking you for not have trading cards with ladies on them whom are only covered by advantageously placed stars, stars that you would wish on if you were into wishing on stars.
Enough tips, back to the story.
There was only one other person that I could think of to fill out our roster, and he was already on a team. A quick wish on a hooker star later and Nick was on the phone telling us that his team couldn’t go and he wanted to talk with us about getting on ours. As an added bonus he also brought a coach to the team.
Coaches for gaming teams have a rather interesting role, instead of coaching us before the game and letting us do our thing during the game, they let us do our thing during practice and coach us during the game. I will explain that a bit more later.
Somehow (again with my mom’s help and quite a bit of luck) we managed to get our hotel situation figured out. It was fairly complicated but it boiled down to someone from a different team that was over twenty one would get two rooms (one for our team one for his) and we would give him cash once we met up.
With everything set up we got down to practice like good little children. Yeah right.
A combination of conflicting schedules, lag due to living in Alaska, and ACS (Do not subscribe to ACS they are terrible) we never had much practice before we left. In fact, the most practice we had as a team was once we arrived in Vegas.
well I wrote quite a bit but said little right there. I am ADD and can never pay attention to one thing for to long, so I guess I will post this now and write more later.
Better Google images!
I went to Google images and I noticed something new. I don’t know how long this has been the case but I just noticed it.
When you select the image size you want you can now pick “Super large”, or something along those lines.
Previously the largest you could pick would return a picture size of at least eight hundred pixels (I believe). Now the smallest is somewhere around one thousand pixels.
I am in love.
I instantly ran a search for “Bioshock” (If you have a problem with this game, do not keep your ignorance to yourself, speak up so we can all marvel at your lack of education. Ie come talk to me about it, you can be helped.)
So far as I have found this is the best way to search for High Res pictures. I am now going to spend the rest of the night on my 41k dialup getting as much pictures as humanly possible.
-Jason
It’s all about Vegas.
For those of you who read my last blog, you will know that Major League Gaming is a company that hosts gaming tournaments. Go figure.
Somehow in a moment of insanity, brought on no doubt by a lack of sleep and medication , my friend and I decided that it would be a good idea to try to throw together a team and buy plane tickets to compete at MLG Las Vegas. The upcoming PFD would take care of the money side of things and we would figure out two other people to fill the remaining spots on our team.
The next day we contacted our mutual friend Jeff, aka Evening, and offered him a spot on the team; to our utter delight he quickly accepted. Three spots filled, one to go.
Filling the roster proved to be one of the smaller problems as we browsed for plane tickets and hotels. Because this was a last minute affair plane tickets were horrendously expensive. The cheapest coming straight from Alaska Airlines and weighing in at seven hundred twenty dollars for each of us. After adding about thirty dollars a night for hotel (splitting it four ways), sixty dollars each for entry pass, food, and transportation things were not looking good at all.
We were concerned that our first serious hurdle would knock us out. Redemption came in the form of my mom who had a companion ticket which lets two people go for basically the price of one. This cut the plan ticket down to about four hundred dollars each. A bit more searching online yielded hotels for twenty dollars a night; things were looking up.
The next problem we came across is that we needed to buy everything as soon as possible, however, the PFD refused to be hurried. Like typical teenagers we decided to hit up a parents for a small loan, or about eight hundred dollars. Hysterical laughter ensued. Actually we are in the process of convincing our parents now. Once we have that done most of our worries will be taken care of. There is still the problem of an incomplete roster but I am confident that we will be able to pick up a capable fourth.
I will keep this blog more or less updated on our progress both prior to and post tournament.
Terrible website
So the time has come to pick on some poor hapless victim’s website.
Today, and totally by random, I chose Art.net. I found this site disappointing for a number of reason.
Firstly Art.net is a fairly basic name, you don’t have to remember anything outlandish like Idrawdragonmonkeys.com. If someone is randomly perusing the web for art, the chances of them typing in Art.net is fairly high. Part of the reason that this website is so disappointing is because they are wasting such a high profile name.
Secondly there is not much eye candy on this page; the background is monotonous, the menu is blue text, and the banner is a 561 x 142 px picture. Overall this page is fairly boring.
Third, I was a bit put off by how many links I had to follow before I could look at their art, which (by the way) I found to be a bit underwhelming. But that is just my opinion.
