seriously folks...

Simon Penny's article "Representation, Enaction, and the Ethics of Simulation" had some points that really caught my attention. First of all, on page 77, the word phallocentric appears, which instantly validates the article. Phallocentricity, by the way, is climbing the ladder of my favorite words. It's in my top 8 for sure.

On page 77, Penny quotes David Grossman who says that kids are essentially practicing to kill with these videogames. Much like a flight simulator does for pilots, videogames teach children how to kill every target in their visual field. The most fascinating part of this was note #8 at the end of the article on page 83. Essentially, the point was that the kid who opened fire in a school in Paducah, Kentucky was an unusually good shot. He fired 8 shots, hitting 8 different children, 5 of which he hit in the head, and 3 of which he hit in the upper torso. They were trying to imply that because this kid played shooting videogames for hours each day that he was that much better of a shot. I disagree with this. While I do think it's a n interesting coincidence, a child's mastery of up, down, up, left, right, start is not going to help him pick up a 3 pound piece of steel and aim it with his eyes and steady his hands and squeeze a trigger 8 different times. One skill has nothing to do with the other.

What I was sold on was the fact that this kid probably only had 1 target, but once he had shot the person he came to shot, he didn't really know what else to do besides to keep shooting. This I believe, and it's definitely disturbing.