Gamers Get Their Kicks From Dying – Wired Magazine Annotated
tags: clive_thompson, death, gamers, gaming, violence, wired_magazine
Via Regine (WMMNA), an article in Wired Magazine by Clive Thompson, “Gamers Get Their Kicks From Dying.”
He writes: “In The Psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic Emotional Responses to Violent Video Game Events — published in this month’s edition of the journal Emotion — [Niklas] Ravaja [a scientist who has done pioneering research into the emotions of gamers as they play] reaches an amazingly counterintuitive conclusion: Gamers don’t like shooting their opponents, but they’re suffused with pleasure when they themselves are shot dead.”
What’s also interesting is that this presents some alternative evidence that one doesn’t become desensitized to violence just because one plays violent online or computer games.
How to marry a Canadian – Crosscut Seattle –
tags: breast_cancer, canada, cancer, crosscut, health, health_care, jeanne_sather, seattle, usa
“When a Seattle writer tried to recruit some north-of-the-border help in her fight against cancer, she learned how different our countries really are.” Seattle cancer blogger Jeanne Sather writes about the differences between Canadian and American health care (including, especially, cost, and access to). Her blog, The Assertive Cancer Patient provides real time details and updates.
A Daily Dose of Architecture: AE2: Highway Noise Barrier Annotated
tags: daily_dose_of_architecture, highway_noise, john_hill, noise_barriers, sprawl
John Hill has an excellent entry on highway noise barriers, those typically uninspired, unattractive, fake brick walls that are supposed to address a particular problem of sprawl, “dispersed living patterns and the high-speed roads that allow access to them” (as he puts it). Mercifully, there are attractive alternatives, …and alternate solutions: “…the best case for raising the bar on the design of these barriers is to make them part of a building; in other words bring the architecture to the road, don’t use the barrier to separate the two.” Brilliant!
Downtown to be painted with digital light Annotated
tags: downtown, grafitti, light_art, neograf, neografik_project, nomlg, public_art, vancouver
Downtown Vancouver’s corporate buildings will be “grafitti-ed” with laser art, as part of Cultural Olympiad. See the New Form Festival for more info.
Wish we had something comparable in Victoria (hint, hint!)…