Luton Suffers Nine Shootings In Four Month Crime Wave.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324949/Armed-officers-patrol-streets-LUTON-stop-dangerous-shoot-outs-feuding-gangs.html

/// Bedfordshire Police have also invoked Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, allowing them to stop and search without suspicion. ///

Will others now agree with me that our country is becoming much more increasingly dangerous, than it once was?

Because this kind of thing 'NEVER' happened in my day.

[LazyGun]

@ Trigger - Thats ok :) Good to clear up the confusion, anyway.

And people say video games have no educational value -pfft :)

[ChuckFickens]

Technically, the C is a sub-carbine model, the K is the carbine model.

[anotheoldgit]

jim360

/// What I find tiresome is this constant rudeness about the world I live in, that somehow it is in many measures far worse than yours. That is an accusation I just do not recognise. ///

Well then you wouldn't would you that is obvious.

Don't forget that I also live in 'your world' but you have never lived in 'my world' so as to make a comparison, that is the difference.

[anotheoldgit]

triggerhippy

/// But the G36c is not an assault rifle, Battlfield 3 has taught me this! ///

Seems to me video games teach some people a wide range of things, all mostly wrong.

[Zeuhl]

/Don't forget that I also live in 'your world' /

Don't forget that your subjective perceptions of today's world will be influenced by your experiences in the 'old world'

It doesn't necessarily mean that your perceptions of 'today' are any more or less accurate or valid than mine or jim's

they are just different

That is why it is better not to pretend that subjective perceptions are an accurate or useful indicator and use objective measurements instead

For example; the statistics that show that here (and across most parts of the world) violence and conflict are reducing

Rather than rely on

[Zeuhl]

Please forgive superfluous last line :-)

[FredPuli43]

Video games are the modern kids' shoot -outs in Westerns, aog, and playing out wartime machine- gun fights, in the playgrounds and streets; the activities of our younger years (and thus the good old days, perhaps). The problem is that they don't require as much imagination, though they do require more realistic strategy and tactics.

But seeing a film of Shakespeare's work requires less imagination than seeing it as a play does. It is all a concession to the modern age and its technology

[anotheoldgit]

It's official the G36C is an assault rifle.

/// G36C | The ultra-short assault rifle ///

/// The dimensions of a submachine gun with the terminal ballistics of the 5.56 mm NATO round. Developed for special tactical applications by police and military special forces. ///

http://www.heckler-koch.com/en/military/products/assault-rifles/g36/g36c/overview.html

[Kromovaracun]

"Seems to me video games teach some people a wide range of things, all mostly wrong."

What do you know about video games, aog? And what evidence do you have that they cause bad behaviour?

[Kromovaracun]

Incidentally, in a recent thread you also challenged me to provide evidence that you believe video games to cause anti-social behaviour (and in the course of doing so admitted that you know nothing about video games):

"I know nothing of video games and I have never proposed that I do.

So having cleared that one up on my own behalf, can I now once again 'challenge you' to provide any evidence otherwise. "

Here: http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question1237048-3.html

[jim360]

True that I have never lived in your world. Then again, I have read about it and don't have the problem of viewing the past through rose-tinted spectacles. While I am not saying that you do either, I've pointed out countless times that "back in the day things were so much better" is a constant refrain of the older generation. Your own protests to that effect are nothing new and, while they may be right in some ways, are not in just as many others.

[anotheoldgit]

Kromovaracun

/// What do you know about video games, aog? And what evidence do you have that they cause bad behaviour? ///

There are many on here who have no experience whatsoever of the days of the 30s, 40s and 50s, but that doesn't stop them from making a comment on those times.

There is some interesting reading on the subject of video games and violence in this link.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/what-science-knows-about-video-games-and-violence/

[Kromovaracun]

//“I don’t think we have enough science to suggest that playing video games causes violence in children any more than watching violence on TV,” says Ryan Hall, a psychiatrist at the University of Central Florida, referencing a vast body of scientific literature that has failed to find any strong connection between violent television and corresponding behavior. “There is no indication at this time that violent video games are training killers.”//

//To Hall, fears about video game violence are reminiscent of earlier moral panics about rock music, Dungeons & Dragons, and especially comic books, which in the 1950s were the subject of scholarly concern and even a Senate hearing about their role in juvenile delinquency. At that hearing, forensic scientist Frederic Wertham decried the “endless stream of brutality” in comic books, denouncing one title in particular as embodying sadistic fantasies that would be “particularly injurious to the ethical development of children.” That comic was Superman.//

//Hall’s points are echoed by psychologist Christopher Ferguson of Texas A&M International University, who in January met with Vice President Joe Biden to help chart a course for studying video game violence in Newtown’s aftermath. “It’s normal for the country to be frightened and traumatized. It’s a normal human reaction to want answers. Whether they’re the right answers doesn’t always matter. We want to restore a sense of control,” Ferguson says. “There’s this historical pattern. People are desperate for an answer, and so they reach out. Media is something people like to point at.”//

On the "anti" side, your link cites the research of Brad Bushman, whose method was essentially to monitor people playing video games and see how it affected their short-term behaviour - largely finding that they were slightly more irritable. This is a well-estbalished phenomenon - but only in the very short term (as in, a few minutes after exposure).

For example, In one of his books ('Quirkology' I think), Richard Wiseman discusses a similar experiment which recorded how slowly people walked out of an experiment when they had been reading about an elderly person who walked slowly. But there's no evidence that this kind of thing lasts any longer than a few minutes.

It also cites Gary Slutkin, an anti-violence campaigner who I'm not particularly familiar with. But his evidence for video games being "not harmless" is his own opinion on an online shooter run by the US military called 'America's Army' (which I have played once or twice, and I have friends who play because it is free and not a bad game). Just because the American military thinks it might help with recruitment, this does not mean that it actually does. Everyone I know who plays America's Army - both here and stateside - does so completely aware of its propaganda intentions, simply because it is free.

Cont.

[Kromovaracun]

In response, I'd point you (as I have done at least 3 times before) to the research of Harvard psychologists Kutner & Olsen, who carried out their own surveys, held focus groups and also carried out a meta-analysis of existing research on violent video games.

They also debunked a much-lauded paper using brain scans on video game users to suggest "copy cat behaviour".

They did also find that kids who were troublesome (getting into fights etc) did tend to spend a heavy amount of time playing M-rated video games, but stressed that there is no evidence that the latter caused the former. Particularly considering that well over 90% of teenagers played video games and that violence in American schools has actually decreased over the same time period that they have become popular:

//Video game popularity and real-world youth violence have been moving in opposite directions. Violent juvenile crime in the United States reached a peak in 1993 and has been declining since. Between 1994 and 2004, arrests for murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assaults fell 49 percent, resulting in the lowest juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes since at least 1980. Murder arrests, which reached a high of 3,790 in 1993, plummeted 71% to 1,110 by 2004. School violence has also gone down.//

http://www.grandtheftchildhood.com/GTC/Myths.html

[Kromovaracun]

//There are many on here who have no experience whatsoever of the days of the 30s, 40s and 50s, but that doesn't stop them from making a comment on those times.//

The difference is, we use evidence to talk about them.

[anotheoldgit]

/// The difference is, we use evidence to talk about them. ///

And the difference being that evidence is gained from some other's personal interpretations, whereas I do not have to read up on it, mine is gained from many years of actual experience.

[jim360]

We can debate about the quality of personal evidence until the cows come home. There is certainly plenty that reading about the past will not give compared to living it.

It is, though, a generally accepted guideline that there are many times when you are better placed to understand what went on after it all happened and the dust settled. In the immediate aftermath of an event facts may be misreported as people rush to understand what went on -- Wars are a good example of this, the propaganda often dominates people's thoughts years after it's been debunked.

In the long run the best way to evaluate the past fully is in cold analysis many years after, "uncorrupted" by one's own experiences that can bias one's stance. That doesn't mean discounting your own experiences out of hand, but you have to allow that you, like everyone else, saw the world through your own eyes. And whenever that happens personal experiences tend to dominate regardless of the truth. How often is our favourite version of a song the first one we heard? How often do we judge someone very quickly and never quite get over that first impression? In both cases, it's very common -- and you have to remember this when you keep banging on about "I was there". I know that. But, sometimes, it's a good thing that I wasn't.