I was trying to ignore this whole GTA fiasco, but I cannot leave it alone. I understand why parents are in an uproar. I mean, if I let my 12 year old son play a game and then found out it had sex and violence in it without my knowledge I would be mad too. Oh wait, it has a freaking 17+ rating on it. If the worst thing that you can think of is the animated porn, then I think you need to take a look around because you might need to go to the doctor.

Anyway, I will let some articles do the rest of my talking. This one is the most important. It shows the level of violent crime among teens from the 70’s onwards. The remarkable thing is that starting in the early 90’s this crime has dropped almost in half. To steal a line from somewhere else, “Maybe Senator Clinton should look into the therapeutic effects of violent games.”

Oh I remember where it was from. This editorial basically says maybe Clinton should look into high school football instead of video games.

Two quick other notes.

1) Low and behold people that pirate music spend over 4 times as much on legal music as those who don’t pirate. Now of course this could just mean these people like music that much more, but I doubt it.

2) Supposedly there is a copy of the family guy movie already out (the complete dvd) This site, allegedly has some screenshots of the movie that will not be released for months.

I’ll be gone for the weekend visiting relatives and then to Ann Arbor on Saturday for whoever wants to meet up there! Back Sunday.

Before I mention anything about the recent Bush nomination I thought I would share a little something I heard on the KQRS morning show (the best one around if you’re asking). It was audio of Ron Gardenhire (the skipper of the Twins) ranting about being thrown out on Monday’s game. It is freaking hilarious. He has since apologized, but it is still some of the best audio ever.

Here it is

So I have yet even more fun stuff that I have found in the land of google. The first one is a hack that lets you use the satellite and map together so you can see one on top of the other. It’s pretty funky. You have to zoom out a bit and move your way over to your area unless you happen to know your current longitude and latitude though.

The second is one is more freaky in a big brother way. It links up phone directories and reverse lookups to find out who is living on your street!

Then for all your cracker barrel fiends, there is a site devoted to the game that everyone plays. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, stop into your local cracker barrel (look for old people) . Anyway it shows you all the possible ways to beat that damn peg game.

Also there is a cool keyboard that has been floating about that uses oled screens for the keys so that they can change based on what you are doing. For example, open up a game and instead of letters you see the different things you can do (shoot rockets, jump etc). Pretty crazy, and no one has any idea when/if it will be sold.

Last, but definitely not least, is the truth that those ionic breeze 350 dollar air purifiers not only don’t work, but could be harmful to your health. So of course sharper image is suing consumer reports.

On a side note, I get most of these links from places like engadget.com and the a really cool site called digg.com. I don’t give them credit enough, but the truth is that that many, many sites link to the same stories. I will be posting their links on the side when I get around to it for everyone to check out.

Well the trip was a lot of fun. You guys can see what Jessi and I did if you want by looking at the pictures, under Trips. It was a vacation six years in the making. Too bad we’re still poor and didn’t get more than an hour outside of our homes:)

Before I head off to vacation with Jessi I thought I’d post that the Flaming Lips is offering a cd free for download. So go check it out. Back Sunday night, have a good one.

I actually forgot I wrote down a few things to mention while I was busy working. One was a study done by the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health trying to see why American’s pay more than other countries for health care. The findings were that neither malpractice suits or supply constraints were significant factors

From MRP’s website
Noah Feldman, the New York University law professor who helped write Iraq’s interim constitution, says that the United States is deliberately creating “massive instability and uncertainty wherever we can in the Middle East in the calculated hopes that what will come out on the other side will be better than what we had to begin with.” Feldman spoke July 6 at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Listen Here It’s start at around 3 minutes 55 seconds if you don’t want to hear the news from that day.

And well this, this, is just hilarious. It’s basically shows you how dumb CNN/FOX/24 hour lies, err,news is with regards to hurricanes. Listen Here

Don’t have a lot to say today because I’m pretty tired. I’ve been staying up a bit too late redesigning this site and forgetting to do that whole sleep thing. Anyway I’ve got one link . It’s a blog that if you scroll down a bit, has links to all the Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” campaign. They’re pretty funny if you haven’t heard them before.

So I decided to go and start scanning pictures. It’s a long, hard, slog as Donald would say. Anyway, pictures will slowly start to appear in the coming weeks and months as I scan in pictures from the last past decade or so.

Also at the end of last week I found a few articles that were very interesting. Supposedly in the following week an article is coming out showing that homsexuality is a gene. It was printed on July 3rd and I haven’t seen much in the news, but that attacks and G8 probably took over everything.

This article could finally be the breakthrough needed for AIDS research. The new drug supposedly has almost no side effects and keeps the AIDS virus from entering new cells. Hopefully this drug will not be just another headliner grabber and actually turn out to be the cure that everyone has been looking for.

It is because of our foreign policy. Until people can discuss this without being labeled as un-patriotic or a terrorist these horrendous, unjustifiable attacks will continue until we wake up one morning to one so awful it actually will cripple our nation. Discussion never hurt anyone. It does not mean you are giving into the terrorists. It does not mean you are un-patriotic. It may mean that people will realize that our policy of installing dictators in the Middle East, having hundreds of thousands of US troops in the Middle East, and a completely hostile relationship may not be the best for the security for us or our children. Not in my name.

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