Yahoo: NKorean nukes + 'Heroes' video game, TV = recruits

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Yahoo: NKorean nukes + 'Heroes' video game, TV = recruits

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Oct 09, 2006 1:29 pm

Here's how behavior is manufactured with keywords in media by giving you 2 + 2 to get you to think 4 later on.<br><br>The front page ofYahoo has featured boxes of images and headline links.<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>I strongly suspect</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> today's Yahoo is a case of spooks luring recruits by showing Kim Il Song next to GI Joe.<br><br>Juxtaposed are these two prominent messages using the classic formula of heroes vs anti-heroes to synthesize into behavior, recruiting kids to 'defend our freedom'--<br>:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>N. Korea test condemned</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>World leaders call for harsh sanctions after N. Korea's claim of a successful nuclear test.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/ww/news/2006/10/09/kimjongilguards.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/ga/buzz/feature/vg4/vg_pulse_companyofheroes.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Hottest Video Game Downloads<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Company of Heroes</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br> 1. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Company of Heroes</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br> See Images; Download Demo<br> 2. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>F.E.A.R</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. Extraction Point<br> See Images; Download Demo<br> 3. Call of <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Duty</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> 2<br> See Images; Download Demo<br> 4. Tomb <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The concept 'hero'</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> is being heavily marketed right now with a TV series called 'Heroes' and a Disney movie about football players called 'Invincible,' heavy male identity triggers about power and status.<br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://adlog.com.com/adlog/i/r=8492&s=689649&t=2006.10.09.12.49.55&o=1:&h=pi&p=&b=4&l=En_US&site=6&pt=&nd=&pid=&cid=&pp=&e=&rqid=01c17-gne-ad6452397022287167/http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/Ads/7318/10/NBC_Heroes_Contest_MPU1.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>See how many keywords and allusions to 9/11 you can find here-<br>http://www.tv.com/show/17552/summary.html<br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.fanbolt.com/forums/images/avatars/heroes/09.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.fanbolt.com/forums/images/avatars/heroes/16.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.fanbolt.com/forums/images/avatars/heroes/13.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>The TV mind control industry has been working hard to <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>tie into the internet world and not just keep viewers but significantly increase audience emotional involvement </strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->with shows. Voting on plots, 'rescuing' from cancellation, discussing characters, etc.<br><br>The cross-marketing of TV shows with video games and comic books reveals a Herculean (pun intended) effort to keep kids hooked on corporate/spook-generated image-conditioning products.<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>‘Heroes’ launches weekly graphic novel on NBC site<br>Heroes, NBC NBC’s character thriller “Heroes” got great reviews last week, some of which speculated that its everyday people suddenly discovering superpowers could make a great comic book. The show already had that idea – its makers launched an online graphic novel that reveals chapters each week alongside Monday night’s episode airings.<br><br>At nbc.com/heroes/novels, fans can interact with the Web’s Flash creation or download a printable version of several vibrant color “pages.” The debut explores the background of the investigating Suresh character (Sendhil Ramamurthy) in ways the on-air show can’t. Each chapter “won’t necessarily be about that episode,” series creator Tim Kring said in a recent conference call, “but it can be an alternate look at what you’ve seen, or a story that just enhances your appreciation of the characters.”<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>“Heroes” was “always designed to have a large online component,” Kring says, “so in the development of the show, we took a lot of that into consideration to have the time and personnel to handle it.”<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>He hired as one of his co-executive producers Jeph Loeb, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>who has worked at both Marvel and DC supervising the likes of Superman and Batman </strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->(the “Hush” tales).<br><br>Loeb had collaborated with superstar artist Tim Sale, who’s not only overseeing the online “Heroes” comics, but providing two of the show’s tantalizing on-air clues – the future-event paintings that torment artist character Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera) and the equally predicting comic book 9thWonders by which time-bender Hiro (Masi Oka) plots his next moves.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <br>http://www.heroesshow.com/<br>And the ratings for this 'Heroes' TV show amongst the recruitable age demographics have been stellar-<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Heroes Premiere Ratings<br>Heroes, NBC At 9 p.m. ET, the debut of "Heroes" (5.9 rating, 14 share in 18-49, 14.3 million viewers overall) delivered NBC's highest 18-49 for any fall drama premiere in five years (since "Crossing Jordan" on Monday, Sept. 24, 2001). <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>"Heroes" soared above the time period competition in the key demographic of adults 18-49,</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> with a 31 percent margin of victory over second place (5.9 vs. a 4.5 for CBS' comedies). Pending updates, "Heroes" also won the hour in total viewers, among adults, men and women 18-34 and other key measures.<br><br>"Heroes" was up 48 percent versus NBC's 2005-06 season average in the time period, excluding sports (5.9 vs. 4.0). From its first half-hour to its second, "Heroes" grew by 13 percent (to a 6.3/15 from a 5.6/14) and by 1.1 million viewers overall.<br><br>Pending updates, "Heroes" is within one tenth of an 18-49 rating point of the highest rating so far this fall for any new series premiere, close behind Sunday's debut of "Brothers & Sisters" on ABC. By comparison, "Brothers & Sisters" benefited from a 9.6 lead-in rating in 18-49 from "Desperate Housewives," while "Heroes'" had a 3.8 rating lead-in last night.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>So this is probably more than just clever marketing for the video game industry which is itself an image-conditioning agent working with the Pentagon training soldiers in sophisticated multi-sensory patrol training designed to prepare for them for discerning targets under battlefield chaos and stress. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 10/9/06 1:05 pm<br></i>
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Re: Yahoo: NKorean nukes + 'Heroes' video game, TV = recruit

Postby postrchild » Mon Oct 09, 2006 2:01 pm

Hugh, I hat e to jump on the band wagon, but dude I think you are reachin again.... I wont deny that the premise you are hypothesizing isnt true, but I think you have to consider what the true "benefits" would be from such a program. I dont think kids are reading the google page like you everyday. They are more concerned with their Myspace page or whats new on Youtube. The games may be feeding some of this, but no more than games of Cowboy and Indian or playing soldier in the backyard did back in my day. I think you are giving them too much credit...not the spooks but the kids. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Yahoo: NKorean nukes + 'Heroes' video game, TV = recruit

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Oct 09, 2006 2:14 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The games may be feeding some of this, but no more than games of <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Cowboy and Indian or playing soldier in the backyard</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> did back in my day.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Same conditioning through role playing and rehearsing battle. That's how children are prepared for adult behavior.<br><br>Yes, this is as old as society itself because it works.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I dont think kids are reading the google page like you everyday. They are more concerned with their Myspace page or whats new on Youtube.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>This is on Yahoo as soon as one signs on the ISP on the way to other websites.<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Thus it is that most effective conditioning agent, the brief and casual uncritically absorbed stimulus, "hidden in plain view."</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>That's how social engineering works, by normalizing things through low dose exposure daily, like camo-colored clothes on civilians and Hummers on our roads.<br><br>This is what Disney does, it normalizes male dominance and militarism into young minds for later harvest by the National inSecurity State. And has since the 1950s when the Psychological Strategy Board within the CIA was mandated with affecting the values and beliefs of all Americans all the time to ensure a warrior culture of males during the Cold War.<br><br>Every single Disney narrative is about a young male becoming a man by learning to fight or "finding his roar." <br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Conditioning hidden in plain view.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 10/9/06 12:24 pm<br></i>
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yahoo!

Postby orz » Mon Oct 09, 2006 3:55 pm

Here we go again.. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br>Hugh, seriously, you should come to the UK, you'd probably explode! <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> Our ad industry is so cynical and postmodern that you could read all sorts of terrifying stuff into it.. well, you don't even need to read into it... I mean why stretch to read sinister motives into (not human generated, incidentally <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :rolleyes --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/eyes.gif ALT=":rolleyes"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> ) combinations on the yahoo front page, when you can go in any major tube station and be confronted with A LIFESIZE PHOTO OF GEORGE BUSH BEING ASASSINATED! <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :eek --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/eek.gif ALT=":eek"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br>Also the new free propagana newspapers, that you easily pass literally 50 people handing out if you walk anywhere in central london, have the same pic on the front page... <br><br>what do you make of that!?! <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :eek --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/eek.gif ALT=":eek"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Yahoo: NKorean nukes + 'Heroes' video game, TV = recruit

Postby professorpan » Mon Oct 09, 2006 3:59 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>So this is probably more than just clever marketing for the video game industry which is itself an image-conditioning agent working with the Pentagon training soldiers in sophisticated multi-sensory patrol training designed to prepare for them for discerning targets under battlefield chaos and stress.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>(Insert standard critique of HMW grand conspiracy theory here)<br><br>(Insert request for facts/evidence here)<br><br>Recycle.<br><br>:-)<br> <p></p><i></i>
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uhhh

Postby orz » Mon Oct 09, 2006 4:05 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>This is on Yahoo as soon as one signs on the ISP on the way to other websites.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>Hate to break it to you Hugh, but all the myspace kids actually know how to use a web browser! <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> They have set their home page to blank/myspace/livejournal/whateverrr... also most ISP's don't default to yahoo...<br><br>Go to preferences/settings menu item, you can set you home page to RI, a blank page, or whatever you like, and not have to put up with all the yahoo mind virii! <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Prof Pan's comment

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Oct 09, 2006 4:25 pm

Glad to see your paying attention, Prof. <br>"Assertion 2-R. Reply: Refutation 3-N."<br><br>Seriously, this stuff is worse for our kids than some congressman's overactive libido because <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>it leads to bombing kids in other countries.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>So I'm calling it out as it happens. <br><br>Thanks for playing. lol. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Prof Pan vs Gary Webb vs Pentagon/Ezboard

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Oct 09, 2006 4:50 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>(Insert request for facts/evidence here)<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>(I want to know why Ezboard signs me out when I try to post this? WTF? This has happened before, too.)<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Here's one of Gary Webb's last stories before he died. </strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>It's about the Pentagon and video games. NPR did a story about this a few months ago but first did a cute set-up story with a precocious youngster declaring that video games weren't hurting him and that it was those silly adult gamers who were the addicts. Oh, I see. NPR knows how to precondition a topic.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.newsreview.com/chico/PrintFriendly?oid=oid%3A32361">www.newsreview.com/chico/...id%3A32361</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>This article was printed from the News&features<br>section of the Chico News and Review originally published October 21, 2004.<br>This article may be read online at:<br>         <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=32361">www.newsreview.com/chico/...?oid=32361</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The Killing Game</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>For young men, first-person shooters are the hottest computer games around. That's why the Army spent $10 million developing its own. But there's a catch. Big Brother gets to watch you play.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>By Gary Webb</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>It's Tuesday, practice night for the LANatomas Counter-Strike clan. Five young men wearing headphones are sitting side by side before a bank of computer monitors, fingers flickering over keyboards, mouses clicking, yelling out warnings to each other. The room, a narrow computer-gaming center in a suburban strip mall, is pleasantly dim, lit with black light and neon. Blue Oyster Cult thrums through the sound system, but not loudly.<br><br>On-screen, the clan creeps quietly down a dark hallway of an oil pumping station in Russia, assault rifles and flash-bang grenades in hand, looking to kill five terrorists who were attempting to dynamite the complex. They think their enemies are hiding somewhere in ambush, hoping to draw LANatomas into a trap, and they're right.<br><br>"They're in CT spawn!" one of the clan shouts suddenly. "Left side!"<br><br>"I see them!" his neighbor yells back. "They're stacked!"<br><br>"Don't peek," their clan leader warns. "I'll get them." Before he can move, he is riddled with terrorist bullets and slumps to the ground. The rest of the clan quickly meets the same bloody fate, and the message "terrorists win" flashes on the screen. The game resets, and they begin another round.<br><br>LANatomas is an hour into its twice-weekly practice, getting ready for its season opener Sunday night against res.ilience, a clan from the Seattle area. In preseason standings, LANatomas is the top-ranked team in the Pacific Conference of the Cyberathlete Amateur League's Main Division, and the members hope to claw their way into the Premier Division this season, one step from the big time. But at the moment, the Premier Division clan they're practicing against--Eminence, from Dallas--is mowing them down.<br><br>"Dude, we are getting raped," clan leader Jeff Muramoto mutters.<br><br>Looking over their shoulders is Craig Wentworth, a slight, pale, blond man wearing narrow glasses and a red T-shirt. Wentworth, 20, is the clan's veteran and has been playing Counter-Strike fanatically for five years. A junior at California State University, Sacramento, he decided recently to step back, citing the time required to remain competitive in league play. Now he just drops by to watch and advise.<br><br>"We were playing seven days a week, hours and hours a day, and I just got burned out," he says. Playing under the name Las1K, Wentworth says he won about $2,000 in cash and another $2,000 in computer parts in Counter-Strike tournaments. "Not bad for a hobby. I was one of the more famous players around here. A lot of people knew me."<br><br>Muramoto, 21, looks up at Wentworth with a grin of affirmation. "Dude. You were own-ness."<br><br>But Las1K hasn't laid down his weapons for good and he knows it. "You always come back," he says quietly, watching his friends blast their way through a phalanx of terrorists. "You get pissed, take off for a few months, but you always come back to it."<br><br>For anyone who hasn't seen one of these games--known as first-person shooters--here's the gist of them. You're placed in a combat zone, armed with a weapon of your choice and sent out to find and kill other players. Knife them, club them, blow them apart with a shotgun, set them afire, vaporize them with a shoulder-launched missile, drill them through the head with a sniper rifle--the choice is yours.<br><br>Depending on the game, blood will spray, mist or spout. Sometimes your kills collapse in crumpled heaps, clutching their throats and twitching convincingly. Sometimes they cry in pain with human voices. Their bodies lie there for a while, so you can feed off them if necessary, restoring your own health. Then you can grab their weapons and set off to find another victim, assuming you don't get killed first.<br><br>It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but among young men it's far and away the most popular genre of computer game. Some psychologists and parents worry that such games are desensitizing a large, impressionable segment of the population to violence and teaching them the wrong things. But that depends on your point of view. If, like the U.S. Army, you need people who can become unflappable killers, there's no better way of finding them.<br><br>It's why the Army has spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds developing its very own first-person shooter, and why the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard are following suit. For anyone who thinks kids aren't learning playing shooter games, read on.<br><br>First-person shooters originally were designed as contests between man and machine, but, as with many things, the advent of high-speed Internet connections changed that. Now, from the privacy of your home, you can take on players the world over. Best of all, it costs nothing to play other than the initial price of the game. (Playing from an Internet cafà or gaming center, such as LANatomas, costs a few dollars an hour.) Bearing names like "JizMack's California Slaughterhouse," "Let the Corpses Fall" and "Newbie Cemetery," free game servers abound. It is endless war, day or night. On a recent Wednesday morning, more than 29,500 servers were hosting games of Counter-Strike, and more than 66,000 people were playing.<br><br><br>Budda-budda-zing. The Army's combat game is so lifelike that the Defense Department is using it to test new weapons systems.<br><br>For gamers, the attraction of online play is obvious. In the cyberworld, you're not hunting down slow computer-generated Nazis. You're matching wits with real humans (sometimes real Germans), which somehow makes a kill all the more satisfying.<br><br>Moreover, computer graphics and sound have evolved to the point that it is easy to think you're in a tangible world. Your immediate surroundings vanish. Crickets chirp, bushes rustle, bullets whiz by your head and shower you with chips of concrete. Shell casings clatter to the floor. Mortars crump in the distance, and grenades send up gouts of rock and dirt. It's a loud, bloody, violent and altogether alarming world. Yet it is oddly exhilarating.<br><br>"I have to laugh when someone says, 'Oh, the people playing these games know it's not real,' " said Dr. Peter Vorberer, a clinical psychologist and head of the University of Southern California's computer game research group. "Of course they think it's real! That's why people play them for hours and hours. They're designed to make you believe it's real. Games are probably the purest example yet of the Internet melding with reality."<br><br>LANatomas clan member Rob McCarthy, 17, a senior at Sacramento High School, couldn't agree more.<br><br>"What's interesting to me is that you can become famous in the cyberworld, and that fame can carry over into the real world," McCarthy said. "In the cyberworld, you can earn respect, just like in real life. Most parents can't get their minds around that."<br><br>It may sound fanciful, but he's right. Top Counter-Strike teams and top players have developed cult followings, and with that have come fame and fortune. Management teams have sprung up to develop new talent, and cash tournaments are commonplace. Clans from 50 countries attended the World Cyber Games two weekends ago in San Francisco, competing for a $25,000 top prize and lucrative corporate sponsorships.<br><br>Team 3D, arguably the best clan in the United States, boasts sponsorships from Subway, Hewlett-Packard, Nvidia (which makes graphics processors) and Sennheiser (which makes audio equipment). The world's No. 1-ranked clan, Schroet Kommando of Sweden, is sponsored by Intel and has its own clothing line. Fatal1ty, a legendary Counter-Strike gamer, also has a clothing line and a Fatal1ty-brand computer motherboard coming out.<br><br>In addition, top players make extra money by giving private lessons for anywhere from $50 to $120 an hour, schooling players on strategies, gunnery, weapons selection and squad tactics.<br><br>For thousands of Counter-Strike players, the game has become their life. "This is what I want to do," said Carson Loane, 18, a LANatomas clan member who once played Counter-Strike for 20 consecutive hours. "But if I'm going to do it competitively, I have to practice at least 10 hours a day. And I'm prepared to do that. But the catch is you've got to find four other people to do it with you. The only way to win this game is as a team."<br><br>In Chico, an organized team, or clan, of Counter-Strike enthusiasts has yet to form, though not from lack of effort. Erik Manley, manager of Software Etc., at the Chico Mall, lights up at the mention of the game. He said he and some friends have tried to form a team, but without much success so far.<br><br>"There was some interest at first," he said. "We got a Chico server listed online, but it never took off. There are only about five of us right now. We're still hoping to get something going."<br><br>Manley said Counter-Strike may be the most enjoyable online game he's ever played.<br><br>"You begin to play," he said, "and all of a sudden it's four hours later."<br><br>Stanford University psychology professor B.J. Fogg isn't surprised to see such dedication to a computer game.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>"Video games, better than anything else in our culture, deliver rewards to people, especially teenaged boys," said Fogg, who studies the effects of computer games. "Teenaged boys are wired to seek competency. ... Video games, in dishing out rewards, can convey to people that their competency is growing. You can get better at something second by second."</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>But what is it kids are getting better at when they play first-person shooters hour after hour? Many would assume it's a complete waste of time. But the U.S. government would disagree.<br><br><br><br>An America's Army team gets the drop on an OPFOR armed with an AK-47.<br><br>As the number of people playing Counter-Strike soared into the millions, the U.S. Army could only watch wistfully. For years, Army recruiters had diligently pursued the very same demographic--middle-class male teenagers--with dwindling success.<br><br>In late 1999, after missing their recruiting goals that year, Army officials got together with the civilian directors of a Navy think tank at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey to discuss ways of luring computer gamers into the military.<br><br>Combat gamers not only happened to target the right age for the Army's purposes but, more important, possessed exactly the kind of information-processing skills the Army needed: the ability to think quickly under fire.<br><br>"Our military information tends to arrive in a flood ... and it'll arrive in a flood under stressful conditions, and there'll be a hell of a lot of noise," said Col. Casey Wardynski, a military economist who came up with the idea for an official Army computer game. "How do you filter that? What are your tools? What is your facility in doing that? What is your level of comfort? How much load can you bear? Kids who are comfortable with that are going to be real comfortable ... with the Army of the future."<br><br>With the vast funding of the U.S. government behind them, the Army/Navy team began developing a game that it hoped would turn some of its players into real soldiers. "The overall mission statement ... was to develop a game with appeal similar to the game Counter-Strike," wrote Michael Zyda, the director of the Navy think tank. "We took Counter-Strike as our model, but with heavy emphasis on realism and Army values and training."<br><br>After two years of development, America's Army was released to the public on the first Fourth of July after 9/11. The gaming world gasped and then cheered. Contrary to expectations, the government-made shooter was every bit as good a $50 retail shooter and, in some ways, better. Plus, it was free--downloadable from the Internet at www.americasarmy.com. That, too, was a calculation, one the Army hoped would weed out people who didn't know much about computers. The game and its distribution system were difficult by design, Zyda noted.<br><br>"That was a very key thing. First, they would have to be smart enough to download the game off the Internet. Then, they would have to become good at [the game], which isn't easy. To attract those kinds of people, that was the mission."<br><br>In the wake of 9/11, the public and media reactions were, in the Army's words, "overwhelmingly positive." Salon's Wagner James Au, for example, gushed that the game would help "create the wartime culture that is so desperately needed now." Most media accounts focused on the novelty of using a video game to help find recruits and carried jocular headlines like "Uncle Sim Wants You."<br><br>There are now more than 4 million registered users, more than half of whom have completed the required preliminary weapons training and gone online to play, making it the fourth most-played online shooter. The Army says there are 500 fan sites on the Web, and recruiters have been busy setting up local tournaments and cultivating an America's Army "community" on the Internet, hoping to replicate the Counter-Strike phenomenon.<br><br>"With respect to recruitment, actual results won't be known for four or five years, when the current raft of 13- and 14-year-olds will be old enough to join," Zyda wrote.<br><br>But not everyone saw the game as a good thing. A Miami attorney named Jack Thompson went on ABC News and threatened to seek an injunction, saying it wasn't the government's job to provide kill 'em games to youngsters. He was deluged with angry e-mail and allegedly received death threats.<br><br>"The Army and the Defense Department have a very long history of conducting unethical, illegal experiments upon soldiers and civilians," Thompson angrily reminded players in a posting to the official Army Web site. "This 'game' is yet another experiment upon the unsuspecting pawns who play it. You are the latest guinea pigs."<br><br>Thompson was more right than he knew. Recruiting computer gamers was only one of the goals behind the creation of America's Army. The other purpose, aptitude testing of potential recruits, has gotten virtually no publicity.<br><br>Currently, Army game developers are in the process of creating a statistics-tracking system that can tell how much time a player spends online, how many kills he's made, which battlefields he's best at, how many kills he averages an hour and similar minutiae.<br><br>Why would the Army spend tax dollars tracking and collecting arcane statistics about the players of its game? Because the data can be used to predict what kind of soldier they'd be.<br><br>"Suppose you played extremely well, and you stayed in the game an extremely long time," Wardynski explained in an interview last year. "You might just get an e-mail seeing if you'd like any additional information on the Army."<br><br><br>Slaughterhouse Five: the LANatomas Counter-Strike clan between rounds. From left, Craig Wentworth, 20; Rob McCarthy, 17; Jeff Muramoto, 21; Carson Loane, 18; and Jon Loane, 16.<br>Photo By Larry Dalton<br><br>America's Army isn't merely a game, recruiting device or a public-relations tool, though it is certainly all of those things. It's also a military aptitude tester. And it was designed that way from the start.<br><br>In a paper written while he was still developing the game, Navy computer expert Zyda noted that "the research focus is to determine if games can be instrumented to be able to determine the aptitude, leadership abilities and psychological profile of the game player."<br><br>Wardynski confirmed that the aptitude testing research had been successful. "That's as far as we've taken it. It's something we'll be moving ahead with in the coming year."<br><br>The Army has been collecting player information in a vast relational database system called "Andromeda," Wardynski said, that recruiters will be able to use to look up a player's statistics if one of them shows up in a recruiting office. A version of America's Army now in development will take that a step further, allowing players to create a "persistent" online alter ego, one that steadily progresses through the virtual ranks by taking additional training or specialized missions, generating valuable data along the way.<br><br>Recently, an updated version of the game called Special Forces was released, and there was a reason why that particular theme was chosen. "Specifically, the Department of Defense wants to double the number of Special Forces soldiers, so essential did they prove in Afghanistan and northern Iraq; consequently, orders have trickled down the chain of command and found application in the current release of America's Army, which features Special Forces roles, missions, and equipment," a Navy-produced booklet states.<br><br>Paolo Banzon is a harried man. He looks around the Yobags Internet Cafà in Hayward, where he works as a technical engineer, taking in the sight of dozens of milling teenagers, most of them Asian, many of them wearing backpacks, shorts, chains and expensive tennis shoes. From all over Northern California, clans had flocked to this flat, sun-baked industrial park on a Saturday morning for a chance to win the $650 top prize in Yobags' Counter-Strike tournament.<br><br>They're fussy customers. Banzon has been running from table to table, answering questions about unacceptable frame rates and processor speeds, rebooting computers, loading and unloading drivers. It has been bedlam, but Banzon is excited. Yobags is the area's first Internet gaming parlor owned and operated entirely by Filipinos, he says proudly, and "this tournament will put us on the map. It's the first one we've held since we opened, and look at this place!"<br><br>The LANatomas clan quietly sets up its computers and checks out the competition. Jon Loane, 16, strolls over to watch a clan named Ninjas practice and comes back shaking his head. "That's TAG," he says. "They shouldn't even be here." TAG had been a Premier Division clan last season when, during the playoffs, it was caught using a "ringer," an expert player not on its roster. As punishment, the Cyberathlete League banished it to the Intermediate Division for a season. Ironically, the penalty made TAG technically eligible to play in the Yobags tournament, which is closed to Premier Division clans.<br><br>It was not good news. LANatomas members haven't been playing well, and they know it. After handily winning their season opener, they were steamrollered by the Schooled in Killing clan, a team the online experts predicted would lose. Overconfident, LANatomas barely practiced. In addition, clan leader Muramoto skipped the game to attend a concert "with a girl," which did not sit well.<br><br>Today, there is more than pride riding on their performance. There is also the matter of the $125 entry fee.<br><br>In competitive play, a game consists of 30 rounds, each clan playing 15 rounds as terrorists and 15 rounds as counter-terrorists. The first clan to win 16 rounds, either by killing its opponents or thwarting their mission, wins the game.<br><br>LANatomas' first match, against the clan Effortless from San Jose, is close. After falling behind 2-0, Effortless--a young team thrown together just for the tournament--overcomes its nervousness, and by the end of the first half the San Jose kids have jumped out to a 10-5 lead. "Settle down, guys," Muramoto messages his troops. "Take a deep breath and remember: It's just a game."<br><br>The second half goes a little better. With their backs to the wall, LANatomas players dig in and start winning. But they stumble in the last round, and Effortless ekes out a 16-14 victory. "We're OK," McCarthy insists. "We were doing better at the end." Besides, it's double-elimination. As long as they don't lose again, they're in the hunt.<br><br>Two hours later, they're out in the parking lot stowing their gear in their cars, having earned the unwelcome distinction of being the first clan ousted from the tournament. "This is what happens when we don't practice," Carson Loane says disgustedly. "If we're not going to practice, these tournaments are a waste of money." No one says anything. "So, we're going to practice tonight, right? Anyone got a concert to go to?"<br><br>Muramoto looks unhappy. "This is feeling like a job, dude. It's like a job."<br><br>Loane is persistent. "We're going to practice, right?"<br><br>Muramoto sighs. "OK. But just for a couple hours."<br><br><br>That night at practice Loane quits.<br><br>"He said some of us weren't devoting enough time to practice," Muramoto later says. "I'm working two jobs seven days a week, and I'm already spending three or four nights a week on this. I can't do any more. I need a life outside this game."<br><br>But that idea may be put on hold for a while. The next day Muramoto receives an offer from a Peruvian Counter-Strike clan. If all goes well, he says, LANatomas could be winging its way down to Peru to train with the South American clan, all expenses paid. Contracts are on the way. "This could be pretty good," he says.<br><br>Last March, with the success of America's Army assured, the Army cut the Navy out of the picture. "Differences between [the Navy] and Army management saw the game's production take a different turn," Zyda wrote. "The Army chose to take control of development."<br><br>According to the Army, it "expanded the America's Army development team to two new locations." One of them is the Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), which bills itself as the Army's "Center of Lethality."<br><br>Located on 6,500 rolling acres in northern New Jersey, a safe distance from any town, ARDEC is the Army's main weapons research plant. Its mission: to turn technology into weapons. Over the years, its labs have sprung such devices as laser-guided "smart" missiles, the "bunker buster" bomb and chemical weapons, as well as crowd-control devices like knockout gas, riot batons and--one of its current projects--incapacitating sound rays.<br><br>What could such a lethal outfit want with a kids' computer game? Unbelievable as it sounds, they're using it to test new weapons. Bill Davis, the head of the America's Army weapons research group, said the game's "graphics were well beyond what the military was able to match" and provided a virtual testing ground so lifelike "we can, in essence, try out a new weapons system before any metal is cut."<br><br>Currently being tested is a computer-controlled airburst grenade launcher, which Davis said will probably be featured in a future release of America's Army, completing a circular journey from virtual reality to reality and then back to virtual reality.<br><br>One month after the Army took over production of the game, it announced that it had signed an exclusive long-term contract with the French software company Ubisoft to bring America's Army to a wider, younger audience. By next summer, it will be out in a "console" version, for use with Xbox and Sony game machines. Currently, it is playable only on high-end PCs, "which reaches a certain demographic for household income," Wardynski tells an interviewer. "We'd like to reach a broader audience, and consoles get you there. For every PC gamer, there are four console gamers."<br><br>Also in the works, he says, are an America's Army clothing line, comic books and toy action figures.<br><br>In a neurological lab at the University of Tuebingen in Germany a few months ago, the first of a dozen young German men slid into the claustrophobic confines of an ultra-high-resolution MRI machine and prepared to play Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror.<br><br>A Counter-Strike clone, Tactical Ops is bloodier, more frenetic and less strategic. It's known as a "twitch" shooter: Since the bullets fly so fast, instantaneous reaction time is needed to avoid death.<br><br>The experiment, funded by USC's Annenberg School of Communications, was designed to discover whether playing violent computer games induced aggressive brain activity. In other words, does your brain react the same way as it would if you were killing someone in real life, or does it realize that it's just a game?<br><br>Earlier studies, notably those done by Iowa State University psychologist Craig Anderson, had shown links between high video-game violence and heightened aggression, and not just casual links. Anderson said the connection is greater than the link between cancer and second-hand cigarette smoke. But, according to the Entertainment Software Association, "there is no compelling evidence that establishes a link between playing games and aggressive behavior."<br><br>If there were, obviously, it could be bad for the $7-billion-a-year game business, since half of all Americans over 6 play computer and video games. Last year, 239 million games were bought, nearly two for every household in America.<br><br>The Iowa studies were based on word-association tests and psychological models. The USC experiment would be based on medical evidence. The scientists conducting it, USC media psychologist Rene Weber and German neurologist Klaus Mathiak, had spent a year designing their tests, and, as they turned on the giant magnetic imager, they were nervous.<br><br>Foremost among their worries was whether their subjects could stand being trapped inside an MRI for an entire hour. Most patients, they knew, began demanding release within 20 minutes. They needed an hour.<br><br>The MRI began its ungodly hammering, and the young man--who had a trackball mouse by one hand and a keypad by the other--started to play, watching an image beamed into his glasses. The minutes ticked by without complaint. He seemed, Weber recalled, oblivious to everything but the game.<br><br>As the man blasted his way through Tactical Ops, the MRI scanner mapped his brain activities with such precision that the researchers could determine what it was doing at any given point in the game, frame by frame.<br><br>The results are still being analyzed, but Weber said it appears clear that the gamers' brains had the same reaction to computerized violence as they would to real violence. Aggressive brain activity was "quite remarkable. ... The results were consistent in nine of the 12 subjects," he said.<br><br>The scientists made another discovery as well. None of their subjects complained of being inside the MRI for an hour. In fact, Weber said, several asked if they could play longer. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>---------------------------------<br>Ya just can't start indoctrination early enough, can ya?<br><br>A source-<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.wonkette.com/politics/general-dynamics/fun-with-the-militaryindustrial-complex-180503.php">www.wonkette.com/politics...180503.php</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.wonkette.com/assets/2006/06/gdbook01.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://cache.wonkette.com/assets/2006/06/gdbook02-thumb.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.wonkette.com/assets/2006/06/gdbook03.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.wonkette.com/assets/2006/06/gdbook04.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.wonkette.com/assets/2006/06/gdbook05.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.wonkette.com/assets/2006/06/gdbook06.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.wonkette.com/assets/2006/06/gdbook07.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.wonkette.com/assets/2006/06/gdbook08.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 10/9/06 3:14 pm<br></i>
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Re: Prof Pan's request for "facts, evidence"

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Oct 09, 2006 4:52 pm

Are you denying that American kids are indoctrinated and recruited using pop media?<br><br>Yes or no? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Prof Pan's request for "facts, evidence"

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Oct 09, 2006 4:57 pm

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://publications.childrennow.org/publications/media/boystomen_1999_media.cfm">publications.childrennow...._media.cfm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Boys To Men<br>Entertainment Media Messages About Masculinity, September 1999<br>product image         Boys to Men: Entertainment Media Messages About Masculinity - 1999<br>This 28-page companion report analyzes the role that entertainment media plays in boys' development.<br>$10.00         <br><br>Introduction<br>At the end of 20th century America, we live in a society that often sends confusing and conflicting messages to men and boys. They are bombarded with information that reinforces gender expectations no longer consistent with the diversity of current family and workplace roles.<br><br>Many of the nation's boys are also in jeopardy. Boys are more likely than girls to fall behind in school, to commit suicide, to be involved in violent crime.<br><br>As boys pass from childhood to manhood, they develop their moral and ethical code. While young people have traditionally been guided in these paths by familiar sources--family, friends, religion--today's boys are increasingly influenced by an ever-expanding and pervasive media.<br><br>From an early age, boys are especially active users of media, watching hours of television, movies, music videos, and sports, listening to radio and CDs, surfing the Internet, and playing computer and video games. Researchers have suggested that the cumulative impact of these media may make them some of the most influential forces in their lives, especially during adolescence. Yet there is remarkably little research on media's influence on boys.<br><br>To explore this important issue and to expand on our previous research on gender, Children Now commissioned research into the media's messages about masculinity and their impact on boys. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>In-depth content studies analyzed messages in the prime-time television shows, movies, and music videos most frequently watched by boys. Included in the research is a national poll of 1,200 young people (ages 10 to 17) and focus groups in which boys offered their own insights into the media they consume.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>We learned that, in spite of the complex and changing work and family experiences of real-life men, media portrayals do not reflect this complexity. Rather, messages and images remain strongly stereotypical. Those who are admired share predictable and timeworn attributes.<br><br>Today's young people, while consuming unprecedented quantities of media, experience a contradiction between their own reality and media messages about masculinity. While they identify the characteristics and behaviors so familiarly attributed to men, they also recognize that the men and boys they see on TV are not like themselves nor the boys and men in their own lives.<br><br>This groundbreaking study provides valuable insight into the identity formation of boys. How young people absorb and integrate the media's images along with their personal experiences will have a profound impact on the expectations and behavior of a new generation of men.<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Highlights<br>Key findings from a national poll of children and a content analysis of television programs, movies, and music videos most watched by boys.<br><br>Vulnerability and Emotions<br>Although male characters in the media displayed a range of emotional behavior, including fear, anger, grief, and pain, they rarely cried.<br><br>Violence and Anger<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Almost three-fourths of children describe males on television as violent and more than two thirds describe men and boys on television as angry.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>One in five male characters employs some form of physical aggression to solve problems.<br><br>Work vs. Domestic<br>Across boys' favorite media, men are closely identified with the working world and high prestige positions, while women are identified more often with their domestic status.<br><br>Over one-third of children say that they never see television males performing domestic chores such as cooking and cleaning.<br><br>Race<br>Men of color are more likely to focus on solving problems involving family, personal, romantic, or friendship issues; while white men in the sample are consistently motivated by succeeding in work, preventing & managing disaster (i.e. "saving the day"<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START ;) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> , and pleasing non-romantic others (e.g., family members, friends, co-workers).<br><br>TV vs. Reality<br>Across race and gender, the majority of children believe that the boys and men they see on television are different from themselves, boys that they know, their fathers, and other adult male relatives.<br><br>Many kids believe that financial wealth is an over-represented sign of success on television, and that their ideas of real-life success are underrepresented on television.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>                 <p></p><i></i>
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x

Postby orz » Mon Oct 09, 2006 5:12 pm

I for one am catagorically denying that Yahoo decide on their front page content in terms of what subliminal messages they can convey. <br><br>Certainly the media is full of millitaristic indoctrination. I'd say the <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>overt</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> content of the media is far more dangerous than the alleged covert stuff you seem to get so excited about tho. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: orz, big and bold

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Oct 09, 2006 5:18 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I for one am catagorically denying that Yahoo decide on their front page content in terms of what subliminal messages they can convey.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Why? I mean, do any of us really know who sets up Yahoo's front page and why?<br><br>All I have to go on is what I see. I realize Google News uses algorithms and keeps humans out of the editorial loop (allegedly, no guarantees) but Google scams things with plausibly deniable algorithms, too.<br><br>So I don't know how you could possibly make that assertion, orz. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: "Pre-adolescent combat conditioning."

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Oct 09, 2006 5:43 pm

<br>"Imagery conditioning." Look it up. Study it. It is what drives America's spook-designed pop culture.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.lullabyebaby.com/k677_baby_camo.htm">www.lullabyebaby.com/k677_baby_camo.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.lullabyebaby.com/images/677_camouflage_gift_set.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>This five piece newborn camouflage boxed gift set includes several baby camo pieces. This baby camo set includes two camo onesies, bib, cap and socks. All baby camo clothing is 100% cotton. <br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://ak.collectiblestoday.com/images/product/280/1639710001.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>http://www.militaryclothing.com/IBS/SimpleCat/Product/asp/hierarchy/00/product-id/292066.html<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Item#/SKU: 66111 (UNIT 1;RW14)<br>New 3 Color Desert Jacket Kids. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Just like the soldiers are wearing in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> 4 Pockets<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.militaryclothing.com//ImgUpload/P_292066_990104.JPG" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>This article cites Navy Commander Narut's spilling the beans on the US military's desensitization conditioning to train assassins <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>and links it to the same effect on American children watching violent imagery.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>http://www.jerryconnell.org/pre_adolescent_combat_conditioni.htm<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Pre Adolescent Combat Conditioning<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Submitted by Larry Collins<br><br><br> <br><br> Did you know that in WW-II, American soldiers, when face-to-face withthe enemy, tried to kill him only 15% to 20% of the time? It is a phenomenon<br> officially described as "Failure To Fire".<br><br> During The Vietnam War, soldiers tried to kill a face-to-face enemy 95%<br> of the time. This was accomplished through conditioning.<br><br> Did you know that our children are receiving conditioning that is<br> similar, only much more dangerous?<br><br> I'll tell you right up front, that this article SHOULD disturb you, and<br> if you are a parent, it will probably provoke a LOT of thought about<br> parenting.<br><br> I've just finished reading "On Killing", by Lt Col Dave Grossman<br> isbn 0-316-33011-6<br><br> It deals with the psychological factors surrounding killing another<br> person, both in wartime and in the civilian setting. It brought up some<br> interesting points concerning operant and classical conditioning in today's<br> media including movies and video games.<br><br> The first part of the book deals with killing in the military, the<br> training, the rates of failure to fire among soldiers in WW-I, WW-II and<br> Vietnam, and the factors that make it easier to overcome the natural<br> resistance to killing, i.e., increased psychological distance,<br> mechanical distance, etc.<br><br> The second part deals with factors in our civilian society that<br> operate on us in much the same manner as military training does, in<br> lowering our natural resistance to violence and killing. I have<br> included some excerpts of this second part below.<br><br> Now everyone knows that no one factor is to blame for our tremendous<br> increase in crime and violence in the past few decades, but this book<br> goes a long way towards an explanation of some of the factors that<br> operate on the impressionable and malleable minds of kids and young<br> adults today.<br><br> What is the root cause of this epidemic of violence in our society?<br> An application of the lessons of combat killing may have much<br> to teach us about the constraint and control of peacetime violence.<br> Are the same processes the military used so effectively to enable<br> killing in our adolescent, draftee soldiers in Vietnam being<br> indiscriminately applied to the civilian population of this nation?<br> The three major psychological processes at work in enabling<br> violence are classical conditioning (A la Pavlov's dog), operant<br> conditioning (@ la B. F. Skinner's rats), and the observation and<br> imitation of vicarious role models in social learning.<br><br> In a kind of reverse "Clockwork Orange" classical conditioning<br> process, adolescents in movie theaters across the nation, and watching television at home, are seeing the detailed, horrible suffering<br> and killing of human beings, and they are learning to associate this<br> killing and suffering with entertainment, pleasure, their favorite<br> soft drink, their favorite candy bar, and the close, intimate contact<br> of their date.<br><br> Operant conditioning firing ranges with pop-up targets and<br> immediate feedback, just like those used to train soldiers in modern<br> armies are found in the interactive video games that our children<br> play today. But whereas the adolescent Vietnam vet had stimulus<br> discriminators built in to ensure that he only fired under authority,<br> the adolescents who play these video games have no such safeguard<br> built into their conditioning.<br><br> And, finally, social learning is being used as children learn to<br> observe and imitate a whole new realm of dynamic vicarious role<br> models, such as Jason and Freddy of endless Friday the 13th and<br> Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, along with a host of other<br> horrendous, sadistic murderers. Even the more classic heroes, such as<br> the archetypal law abiding police detective, are today portrayed as a<br> murderous, unstable vigilante who operates outside the law.<br> There are more factors involved. This is a complex, interactive<br> process that includes all the factors that enable killing in combat.<br><br> Gang leaders and gang members demand violent, even killing,<br> activity and create diffusion of individual responsibility; and gang<br> affiliation, loosening family and religious ties, racism, class<br> differences, and the availability of weapons provide forms of real and<br> emotional distance between the killer and the victim. If we look<br> again at our model for killing enabling factors and apply it to<br> civilian killing, we can see the way in which all of these factors<br> interact to enable violence in America.<br> ...<br> In the 1950s and 1960s students brought knives to high school,<br> whereas today they bring .22s. But those .22s were pretty much al-<br> ways present at home. And while there is new weapons technology<br> available, fifteen minutes with a hacksaw will make a pistol out<br> of any double-barreled shotgun, a pistol every bit as effective in close<br> combat as any weapon in the world today - this was true one<br> hundred years ago, and it is true today.'<br><br> The thing we need to ask ourselves is not where did the guns<br> come from? They came from home, where they have always been<br> available, or they may have been bought in the street thanks to<br> the drug culture - which deals in illegal weapons as readily as it<br> deals in illegal drugs. But the question we need to ask is, what<br> makes today's children bring those guns to school when their<br> parents did not? And the answer to that question may be that the<br> important ingredient, the vital, new, different ingredient in killing<br> in modern combat and in killing in modern American society, is the<br> systematic process of defeating the normal individual's age-old,<br> psychological inhibition against violent, harmful activity toward<br> one's own species. Are we taking the safety catch off of a nation,<br> just as surely and easily as we would take the safety catch off of a<br> gun, and with the same results?<br><br> Between 1985 and 1991 the homicide rate for males fifteen to<br> nineteen increased 154 percent. Despite the continued application<br> of an ever-increasing quantity and quality of medical technology,<br> homicide is the number two cause of death among males ages<br> fifteen to nineteen. Among black males it is number one. The<br> AP wire article reporting this data had a headline announcing,<br> "Homicide Rate Wiping Out Whole Generation of Teens." For<br> once the press was not exaggerating.<br><br> In Vietnam a systematic process of desensitization, conditioning,<br> and training increased the individual firing rate from a WW-II<br> baseline of 15 to 20 percent to an all time high of up to 95<br> percent. Today a similar process of systematic desensitization,<br> conditioning, and vicarious learning is unleashing an epidemic, a<br> virus of violence in America.<br><br> The same tools that more than quadrupled the firing rate in<br> Vietnam are now in widespread use among our civilian population.<br> Military personnel are just beginning to understand and accept<br> what they have been doing to themselves and their men. If we<br> have reservations about the military's use of these mechanisms to<br> ensure the survival and success of our soldiers in combat, then how<br> much more so should we be concerned about the indiscriminate<br> application of the same processes on our nation's children?<br> ...<br> Classical Conditioning at the Movies<br><br> If we believe that Commander Narut's techniques might work,<br> and if we are horrified that the U.S. government might even<br> consider doing such a thing to our soldiers, then why do we permit<br> the same process to occur to millions of children across the nation?<br> For that is what we are doing when we allow increasingly more<br> vivid depictions of suffering and violence to be shown as<br> entertainment to our children.<br><br> It begins innocently with cartoons and then goes on to the<br> countless thousands of acts of violence depicted on TV as the child<br> grows up and the scramble for ratings steadily raises the threshold<br> of violence on TV. As children reach a certain age, they then<br> begin to watch movies with a degree of violence sufficient to<br> receive a PG-13 rating due to brief glimpses of spurting blood, a<br> hacked off limb, or bullet wounds. Then the parents, through<br> neglect or conscious decision, begin to permit the child to watch<br> movies rated R due to vivid depiction's of knives penetrating and<br> protruding from bodies, long shots of blood spurting from severed<br> limbs, and bullets ripping into bodies and exploding out the back<br> in showers of blood and brains.<br><br> Finally, our society says that young adolescents, at the age of<br> seventeen, can legally watch these R-rated movies (although most<br> are well experienced with them by then), and at eighteen they<br> can watch the movies rated even higher than R. These are films<br> in which eye gouging is often the least of the offenses that are<br> vividly depicted. And thus, at that malleable age of seventeen<br> and eighteen, the age at which armies have traditionally begun<br> to indoctrinate the soldier into the business of killing, American<br> youth, systematically desensitized from childhood, takes another<br> step in the indoctrination into the cult of violence.<br><br> Adolescents and adults saturate themselves in such gruesome<br> and progressively more horrific "entertainment," whose antiheroes -<br> like Hannibal the Cannibal, Jason, and Freddy - are sick, inviolable,<br> unquestionably evil, and criminally sociopathic. They<br> have nothing in common with the exotic, esoteric, and misunderstood<br> Frankenstein and Wolf Man villains of an earlier generation<br> of horror films.<br><br> In the old horror stories and movies, very real but<br> subconscious fears were symbolized by mythic but unreal monsters,<br> such as Dracula, and then exorcised exotically, such as by a stake<br> through the heart. In contemporary horror, terror is personified<br> by characters that resemble our next door neighbor, even our<br> doctor. Importantly, Hannibal the Cannibal, Jason, and Freddy<br> are not killed, much less exorcised; they return over and over again.<br> Even in movies where the killer is not an obvious sociopath,<br> the common formula is to validate violent acts of vengeance by<br> beginning the movie with a vivid depiction of the villain per-<br> forming horrible acts on some innocents. These victims are usually<br> related in some way to the hero; thereby justifying the hero's<br> subsequent (and vividly depicted) vigilante acts.<br><br> Our society has found a powerful recipe for providing killing<br> empowerment to an entire generation of Americans. Producers,<br> directors, and actors are handsomely rewarded for creating the<br> most violent, gruesome, and horrifying films imaginable, films in<br> which the stabbing, shooting, abuse, and torture of innocent men,<br> women, and children are depicted in intimate detail. Make these<br> films entertaining as well as violent, and then simultaneously pro-<br> vide the (usually) adolescent viewers with candy, soft drinks, group<br> companionship, and the intimate physical contact of a boyfriend<br> or girlfriend. Then understand that these adolescent viewers are<br> learning to associate these rewards with what they are watching.<br><br> Powerful group processes often work to humiliate and belittle<br> viewers who close their eyes or avert their gaze during these<br> gruesome scenes. Adolescent peer groups reward with respect and<br> admiration those who reflect Hollywood's standard of remaining<br> hardened and undisturbed in the face of such violence.<br><br> In effect, many viewers have their heads bolted in a psychological<br> clamp so they cannot turn away, and social pressure keeps their<br> eyelids open.<br><br> Discussing these movies and this process in psychology classes at<br> West Point, I have repeatedly asked my students how the audience<br> responds when the villain murders some innocent young victim<br> in a particularly horrible way. And over and over again their answer<br> was "The audience cheers." Society is in a state of denial as to<br> the harmful nature of this, but in efficiency, quality, and scope, it<br> makes the puny efforts of Clockwork Orange and the U.S. government<br> pale by comparison.<br><br> We are doing a better job of desensitizing and conditioning our<br> citizens to kill than anything Commander Narut ever dreamed of.<br><br> If we had a clear cut objective of raising a generation of assassins<br> and killers who are unrestrained by either authority or the nature<br> of the victim, it is difficult to imagine how we could do a better job.<br><br> Conditioning Killers in the Military<br><br> On the training bases of the major armies of the world, nations<br> struggle to turn teenagers into killers. The "struggle" for the mind<br> of the soldier is a lopsided one: armies have had thousands of years<br> to develop their craft, and their subjects have had fewer than two<br> decades of life experience. It is a basically honest, age old,<br> reciprocal process, especially in today's all volunteer U.S. Army.<br><br> The soldier intuitively understands what he or she is getting into<br> and generally tries to cooperate by "playing the game" and<br> constraining his or her own individuality and adolescent enthusiasm,<br> and the army systematically wields the resources and technology of a<br> nation to empower and equip the soldier to kill and survive on the<br> battlefield.<br><br> In the armed forces of most modem armies this application of<br> technology has reached new levels by integrating the innovations<br> of operant conditioning into traditional training methods.<br><br> Operant conditioning is a higher form of learning than classical<br> conditioning. It was pioneered by B. F. Skinner and is usually<br> associated with learning experiments on pigeons and rats. The<br> traditional image of a rat in a Skinner box, learning to press a bar<br> in order to get food pellets, comes from Skinner's research in<br> this field. Skinner rejected the Freudian and humanist theories of<br> personality development and held that all behavior is a result of<br> past rewards and punishments. To B. F. Skinner the child is a<br> tabula rasa, a "blank slate," which can be turned into anything<br> provided sufficient control of the child's environment is instituted<br> at an early enough age.<br><br> Instead of firing at a bull's eye target, the modem soldier fires<br> at man shaped silhouettes that pop up for brief periods of time<br> inside a designated firing lane. The soldiers learn that they have<br> only a brief second to engage the target, and if they do it properly<br> their behavior is immediately reinforced when the target falls down.<br><br> If he knocks down enough targets, the soldier gets a marksmanship<br> badge and usually a three day pass. After training on rifle ranges<br> in this manner, an automatic, conditioned response called "automatically" sets in, and the soldier then becomes conditioned to respond to the appropriate stimulus in the desired manner.<br><br> This process may seem simple, basic, and obvious, but there is<br> evidence to indicate that it is one of the key ingredients in a<br> methodology that has raised the firing rate from 15 to 20 percent<br> in World War-II to 90 to 95 percent in Vietnam.<br><br> Conditioning at the Video Arcade<br><br> In video arcades children stand slack jawed but intent behind<br> machine guns and shoot at electronic targets that pop up on the<br> video screen. When they pull the trigger the weapon rattles in<br> their hand, shots ring out, and if they hit the "enemy" they are<br> firing at, it drops to the ground, often with chunks of flesh flying<br> in the air.<br><br> The important distinction between the killing enabling process<br> that occurs in video arcades and that of the military is that the<br> military's is focused on the enemy soldier, with particular emphasis<br> on ensuring that the U.S. soldier acts only under authority.<br><br> Yet even with these safeguards, the danger of future My Lai<br> massacres among soldiers drawn from such a violent population must<br> not be ignored, and, as we saw in the section "Killing and Atrocity,"<br> the U.S. armed forces are taking extensive measures to control,<br> constrain, and channel the violence of their troops in future<br> conflicts.<br><br> The video games that our children conduct their combat<br> training on have no real sanction for firing at the wrong target.<br><br> Note: go to Toys-R-Us & demo Nintendo's "007 Goldeneye" game<br><br> This is not an attack on all video games. Video games are an<br> interactive medium. They demand and develop trial-and-error<br> and systematic problem-solving skills, and they teach planning,<br> mapping, and deferment of gratification. Watch children as they<br> play video games and interact with other children in their neighbor-<br> hood. To parents raised on a steady diet of movies and sitcoms,<br> watching a child play Mario Brothers for hours on end may not<br> be particularly gratifying, but that is just the point. As they play<br> they solve problems and overcome instructions that are intentionally<br> inadequate and vague. They exchange playing strategies, memorize<br> routes, and make maps. They work long and hard to attain the<br> gratification of finally winning a game. And there are no<br> commercials: no enticements for sugar, no solicitation of violent<br> toys, and no messages of social failure if they do not wear the right<br> shoes or clothes.<br><br> We might prefer to see children reading or getting exercise and<br> interacting with the real world by playing outside, but video<br> games are definitely preferable to most television. But video games<br> can also be superb at teaching violence - violence packaged in<br> the same format that has more than quadrupled the firing rate of<br> modern soldiers.<br><br> When I speak of violence enabling I am not talking about video<br> games in which the player defeats creatures by bopping them on<br> the head. Nor am I talking about games where you maneuver<br> swordsman and archers to defeat monsters. On the borderline in<br> violence enabling are games where you use a joystick to maneuver<br> a gun sight around the screen to kill gangsters who pop up and<br> fire at you. The kind of games that are very definitely enabling<br> violence are the ones in which you actually hold a weapon in<br> your hand and fire it at human shaped targets on the screen. These<br> kinds of games can be played on home video, but you usually see<br> them in video arcades.<br><br> There is a direct relationship between realism and degree of<br> violence enabling, and the most realistic of these are games in<br> which great bloody chunks fly off as you fire at the enemy.<br> Another, very different type of game has a western motif, in<br> which you stand before a huge video screen and fire a pistol at<br> actual film footage of "outlaws" as they appear on the screen. This<br> is identical to the shoot/no shoot training program designed by<br> the FBI and used by police agencies around the nation to train<br> and enable police officers in firing their weapons.<br><br> The shoot-no shoot program was introduced nearly twenty<br> years ago in response to the escalating violence in our society that<br> was resulting in an increase in deaths among police officers who<br> hesitated to shoot in an actual combat situation. And, of course,<br> we recognize it as another form of operant conditioning that has<br> been successful in saving the lives of both law enforcement officers<br> and innocent bystanders, since the officer faces severe sanctions if<br> he fires in an inappropriate circumstance. Thus the shoot-no shoot<br> program has served successfully to both enable and constrain violence<br> among police officers. Its video arcade equivalent has no such<br> sanctions to constrain violence. It only enables.<br><br> Social Learning and Role Models in the Media<br><br> Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning can be done with earthworms,<br> and operant (Skinnerian) conditioning can be conducted on rats<br> and pigeons. But there is a third level of learning that pretty much<br> only primates and humans are capable of, and that is what is called<br> social learning.<br><br> This third level of learning, in its most powerful form, revolves<br> primarily around the observation and imitation of a role model.<br><br> Unlike operant conditioning, in social learning it is not essential<br> that the learner be directly reinforced in order for learning to take<br> place. What is important in social learning is to understand the<br> characteristics that can lead to the selection of a specific<br> individual as a role model.<br><br> The processes that make someone a desirable role model includes:<br> Vicarious reinforcement. You see the role model being reinforced<br> in a manner that you can experience vicariously.<br><br> o Similarity to the learner. You perceive that the role model has key traits that make him/her similar to you.<br> o Social power. The role model has the power to reward (but does<br> not necessarily do so).<br> o Status envy. You envy the role model's receipt of rewards from<br> others.<br><br> An analysis of these processes can help us understand the role of<br> the drill sergeant as a role model in violence enabling in military<br> training, and it can help us understand why a new type of violent<br> role model is so popular among America's youth.<br><br> Violence, Role Models, and Drill Sergeants in Basic Training<br><br> "From this time on I will be your mother, your father, your sister<br> and your brother. I will be your best friend and your worst enemy.<br> I will be there to wake you up in the morning, and I will be there<br> to tuck you in at night. You will jump when I say 'frog" and when<br> I tell you to shit your only question will be what color." IS THAT<br> CLEAR?"<br><br> - Drill Sergeant G., Fort Ord, California, 1974<br><br> Does there live a veteran who cannot close his eyes and vividly visualize<br> his drill sergeant? Over the years a hundred bosses, teachers,<br> professors, instructors, sergeants, and officers have directed various<br> aspects of my life, but none has had the impact that Drill Sergeant G.<br> had on that cold morning in 1974.<br><br> The armies of the world have long understood the role of social<br> learning in developing aggression in their soldiers. In order to do<br> this their venue has been basic training, and their instrument has<br> been the drill sergeant. The drill sergeant is a role model. He is<br> the ultimate role model. He is carefully selected, trained, and<br> prepared to be a role model who will inculcate the soldierly values<br> of aggression and obedience. He is also the reason that military<br> service has always been a positive factor for young people from<br> delinquent or disadvantaged backgrounds.<br><br> He is invariably a decorated veteran. The glory and recognition<br> bestowed on him are things that the trainees deeply envy and desire.<br> Within the young soldiers' new environment the drill sergeant has<br> enormous and pervasive authority, giving him social power. And<br> the drill sergeant looks like his charges. He wears the uniform.<br> He has the haircut. He obeys orders. He does the same things.<br> But he does all of them well.<br><br> The lesson that the drill sergeant teaches is that physical aggression<br> is the essence of manhood and that violence is an effective and desirable solution for the problems that the soldier will face on the battlefield. But it is very important to understand that the drill sergeant also teaches obedience. Throughout training the drill sergeant will not tolerate a single blow or a single shot executed without orders, and even to point an empty weapon in the wrong direction or to raise your fist at the wrong time merits the harshest punishment. No nation will tolerate soldiers who do not obey orders on the battlefield, and the failure to obey orders in combat is the surest route to defeat and destruction.<br> ...<br> Role Models, the Movies, and a New Kind of Hero<br><br> If such "manipulation of the minds of impressionable teenagers" is a necessary evil, accepted only reluctantly and with reservations for combat soldiers, how should we feel about its indiscriminate application to the civilian teenagers of this nation? For that is what we are doing through the role models being provided by the entertainment industry today. But while the drill sergeant teaches and models aggression in obedience to law and authority, the aggression taught by Hollywood's new role models is unrestrained by any obedience to law. And while the drill sergeant has a profound one-time impact, the aggregate effect of a lifetime of media may very well be even greater than that of the drill sergeant.<br> ...<br> In the war movies, westerns, and detective movies of the past, heroes only killed under the authority of the law. If not, they were punished. In the end the villain was never rewarded for his violence, and he always received justice for his crimes. The message was simple: No man is above the law, crime does not pay, and for violence to be acceptable it must be by the constraints of the law. The hero was rewarded for obeying the law and channeling his desire for vengeance through the authority of the law. The viewer identified with the hero and was vicariously reinforced whenever the hero was. And the audience members left the theater feeling good about themselves and sensing the existence of a just, lawful world.<br><br> But today there is a new kind of hero in movies, a hero who operates outside the law. Vengeance's a much older, darker, more atavistic, and more primitive concept than law, and these new antiheroes are depicted as being motivated and rewarded for their obedience to the gods of vengeance rather than those of law. One of the fruits of this new cult of vengeance in American society can be seen in the Oklahoma City bombing, and if we look into the mirror provided by the television screen, the reflection we see is one of a nation regressing from a society of law to a society of violence, vigilantes, and vengeance.<br><br> And if America has a police force that seems unable to constrain its violence, and a population that (having seen the videotape of Rodney King and the LAPD) has learned to fear its police forces, then the reason can be found in the entertainment industry. Look at the role models; look at the archetypes that police officers have grown up with. Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry became the archetype for a new generation of police officers who were not constrained by the law, and when Hollywood's new breed of cop was rewarded for placing vengeance above the law, the audience was also vicariously rewarded for this same behavior.<br> ...<br> At a lower level are the vicarious role models who kill without even the tissue of any apparent justification whatsoever. Having been desensitized by the kinds of movies outlined above, a portion of our population is then willing to accept role models who kill entirely without reason. The vicarious reinforcement here is not even vengeance for supposed social slights, but simply slaughter and suffering for its own sake and, ultimately, for the sake of power.<br><br> Notice the sequence in this downward spiral of vicarious role models. We began with those who killed within the constraints of the law. Somewhere along the line we began to accept role models who "had" to go outside the law to kill criminals who we know "deserved to die," then vicarious role models who killed in retribution for adolescent social slights, and then role models who kill completely without provocation or purpose.<br><br> At every step of the way we have been vicariously reinforced by the fulfillment of our darkest fantasies. This new breed of role models also has social power: the power to do whatever they want in a society depicted as evil and deserving of punishment. These role models transcend the rules of society, which results in great "status" to be envied by a portion of society that has come to adore this new breed of celebrity. And of course we have observed a similarity to the learner in the role model's rage. A rage felt by most human beings toward the slights and perceived crimes inflicted upon them by their society, but which is particularly intense in adolescence.<br><br> The increase in divorces, teenage mothers, and single parent families in our society has often been noted and lamented, but a little noted side effect of this trend has been to make America's children even more susceptible to this new breed of violent role models. In the traditional nuclear family there is a stable father figure who serves as a role model for young boys. Boys who grow up without a stable male figure in their lives are desperately seeking a role model. Strong, powerful, high status role models such as those offered in movies and on television fill the vacuum in their lives. We have taken away their fathers and replaced them with new role models whose successful response to every situation is violence. And then we wonder why our children have become ever more violent.<br><br> I recently watched an old re-run of Hawaii Five-O. In one scene, a man was shot in the back by a sniper with a deer rifle. He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, and when they began examining him, he had a 4-inch spot of blood on the back of his shirt, and no mark on the front.<br><br> I pointed out to my son that this wasn't realistic, but at the time that series was being filmed, they didn't feel it necessary to show a spray of blood and tissue exploding out of the man's chest.<br><br> Then I pointed out that I feel there is a correlation between the showing of all the gory details, and the readiness of people, especially young people, to see it in real life.<br><br> Fifty years ago, policemen and soldiers were the only ones that had a chance to become used to the reality, which is commonly shown to anyone with money for a movie ticket today, over and over.<br><br> Most "Action" movies of the last 20 years, if they were shown prior to 1965, would have had the entire audience outside vomiting, from the psychological shock of seeing what is shown.<br><br> How can this not have affected some of the children who grew up to walk into public places carrying guns AND bombs (guns don't seem to be enough, anymore). What will today's children be doing to society 10 years from now? <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 10/9/06 3:46 pm<br></i>
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well

Postby orz » Mon Oct 09, 2006 5:48 pm

It seems like a really unlikely claim, that's all... I should say that's my personal opinion, but I'd be VERY surprised if this were literally the case.<br><br>'extraordinary claims' and all that...<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Why? I mean, do any of us really know who sets up Yahoo's front page and why?<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>Well, a whole load of computer geeks who work for Yahoo know presumably...? Hey, why not ask on <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/!!!">answers.yahoo.com/!!!</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :lol --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/laugh.gif ALT=":lol"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br> It seems to me that a big site like yahoo is gonna be at least partly automated and updated/edited by a whole load of people... not ideal for implanting specific messages as it's ever changing and lots of factors to get in the way of such. Also as i've noted, if you're logged in to yahoo it will customise some pages based on you preferences, location etcc...<br><br>Anyway we've been over this before i think, so i won't go on for now <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: "Pre-adolescent combat conditioning."

Postby Attack Ships on Fire » Mon Oct 09, 2006 5:51 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I mean, do any of us really know who sets up Yahoo's front page and why?<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>If you have so much knowledge of a grand conspiracy involving Yahoo, video game makers, TV show producers and movie makers, then offer some hard evidence instead of drawing conclusions based on coincidences.<br><br>Even the controlled demolition side of the WTC debate has more circumstantial evidence for their case than you do for yours. Evidence please. <p></p><i></i>
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