I don't know what to call this post

1. a. Violent games create violent people.
b. Violent games only affect certain groups of people.
c. Violent games don't affect anyone.

2. Right now the dominant perspective is that Violent games create voilent people. This is because the people who believe that violent games are ok aren't vocal about it. The people like Jack Thompson that want violent games to be taken care of are very vocal about it. They take every opportunity to get their opinion out there.

3. I think the view that violent games don't affect anyone should be the main view. If violent games created violent people, I would have already gone on like 20 killing sprees. Jack Thompson uses the fact that school shooters play violent games to justify his claims. This might be convincing if only like 1% of teenage guys played violent games. I think the chances of a non-gamer shooting up a school aren't very good simply because there are less teenage guys that don't play games than there are teenage guys that do. Plus, the people that shoot up schools aren't really very popular to start with. Since they don't have friends to hang out with what else are they going to do? You should be thinking something along the lines of "I guess they'll play video games."

4. There doesn't really need to be a policy to support my views. Really a lack of policy is what I'm calling for here.

Campus policy

The parking policies on campus are absurd. Why is it that the lots behind the colliseum don't allow overnighht parking? They are the biggest lots on campus and we can only park there during the day. The University claims that they did it to open up parking for commuters. That doesn't make any sense. If a resident can't find a place to keep there car elsewhere, they are going to move there car back to those lots in the morning before they go to class. This would happen before the commuters even get to campus. So essentially what the University has accomplished is to decrease parking for residents, without opening up anything for commuters. So why would the University do this? I also heard of them telling people about a security issue, but its really not very safe for everyone to be moving there cars around all the time. Once again, nothing accomplished. So what could the University be accomploshing by doing this? I can tell you exactly what they've accomplished. They managed to sell every last one of their garage spaces, and still have people wanting to buy them. The only way to get a guarunteed space is to pay the university another $300 plus for a space in the garage.

I also think that all university parking meters should be canned. This could open up a lot in front of capstone and the lot in front of the BA building. I can see why they might want to make that particular lot a teacher's lot, but they could make one of the existing teacher lots a student lot. I think that visitor parking should be left up to city parking meters. Another thing is that most of the people I see parked in the Capstone parking meters are people that have USC parking passes.

Cursing

Achenbach and Reilly have two different perspectives. They both argue against cursing, but in two different ways. Achenbach argues that curse words are oversused. He says that the F-word can be used for almost anything, and that its used way to often. He wants us to slow down a little bit and preserve the word. The word has already lost a lot of its shock factor, and will only continue to do so as its used more and more. Achenbach says that, "we have to conserve it, si that oiur chuildren and our children's children can use it when we're gone." He takes a humorous approach to decreasing cursing. Reilly is strongly against cursing. He is even taking classes to reduce the amount of foul language in his vocabulary. He mainly uses fans at sporting events to prove his point. He presents foul-mouthed fans in a negative light. He makes them look stupid so that the reader won't want to be like them. I have to agree with Achenbach on this one. I like to curse on that "rare" occasion. There's even a guy on my floor that i've deemed "f-ing brain" and I call him that on a regular basis.

changing perspectives

You know, this may sound strange but thats just thew way it is. I honestly can't remember the last time I changed my mind about an important issue. I'm a pretty consistant person. I feel the same way about abortion as I did 4 years ago. I feel the same way about gay marriage as I always have. I feel the same way about Bush being president as I did when I was 10. It's kinda funny that I called it way back then isn't it? The closest thing I can think of to changing my opinion on an important issue was my opinions on the legalization of marijuana. Back in the day in elementary school they brain washed us with the whole "Drugs are bad mmmkay" type speeches. I don't smoke, but I know people that do. Many of them are really cool people. Many of them aren't so cool. Now that I'm old enough to form my own opinion about it I think it should be legalized. I just don't see how an addictive thing like cigarettes can be legal and something non-addictive like marijuana isn't. Of course there wouold be restrictions placed on it like no driving while high, no weed for little kids, things of that nature. I don't exactly consider that to be a change in my opinoin though because being a little kid I just beleived what was told to me, so I really just had somebody elses opinion

Focus

Basically just focus on everything after the second paragraph. I know thats the weakest part of my paper. Let me know what other info you'd like to see in there and things of that nature.

I don't get it

I don't understand why everyone has to care so much about everything. I'm an extremely laid back person. I tend to take the same approach to political issues. I make an opinion on an issue most times just because I don't see why I should care. Let me explain. Take gay marriage for example. I''m in favor of it. I'm not gay and I don't really have a lot of gay friends or anything. I really have nothing to tie me to this issue, so I'm not biased about it. The reason I don't care, is that I don't see how two gay guys getting married is going to make my life so terrible. Maybe if there was a decent arguement against it I would change my mind. "It says in the bible etc." I don't care what it says in the bible. Well I do care because I'm a chrsitian, but I'm not going to let that sway me on this issue. Seperation of church and state kids. You can't use what it says in the bible to make legislation. "The dictionary definition says that marriage is between a man and a woman." So now Webster gets a say in what legal in this country? Can't we change the definition? "Think of the kids." I know that there are plenty of heterosexual parents that should never have had a kid. Maybe we should start giving out child licences to verify who's qualified to be a parent. I don't know that we've seen enough children with homosexual parents to know how they will be effected.

Body Image

Our culture has a huge focus on our physical appearance. One of the primary concerns in todays culture is weight. Everyone is concerned with how much they weigh, which is odd because we are the fattest country in the world. They're calling it an obesity epidemic. I love the way one comedian talked about it. He said that a convorstation between our generation and our grandkids would go something like:

child: "Wow granda the obesity epidemic, how did you survive?"

grandpa: "I dunno Jimmy it was tough, there was cheesecake and porkchops everywhere"

I'm sure I didn't get the exact wording on that, but it was something along those lines. Everyone wants to be skinny but most people just don't have the self control to eat right and exercise. Some people say that the increase in weight could decrease our average lifespan by five years. This is the only thing that could be affected by our weight though. Studies have shown that the way we look can have a huge impact on our jobs. One study found that", for women, a 1% increase in body mass as measured by the body mas index results in a 0.6 pertentage point decrease in family income" (Armour 257). You're job is affected by other aspects of your appearance too. Darlene Jesperson was actually fired from Harrah's for not wearing makeup. Another study found that CEOs are, on average, 3 inches taller than the average man.

Why is appearance so important in our culture? It puts a huge stress on people, especially women. Shouldn't we have better things to worry about than what we look like?