Sunday, May 23, 2010

Rockstar: Only "Terrible Parents" Buy Our Games for Their Kids

Radio personality and Rockstar producer Lazlow Jones has a message for people who buy Rockstar games for their kids: "You're a terrible parent."

Rockstar games are awesome. They're also most definitely not for kids. From Grand Theft Auto to Manhunt to the new Red Dead Redemption, just about everyone agrees that these are games that parents should keep far away from their children. And for those parents who do let their kids play them, because they don't know any better or they just don't care, Rockstar has a message: You suck.

"Our games are not designed for young people," said Lazlow Jones, who hooked up with Rockstar in 2001 by writing and performing in radio segments in Grand Theft Auto 3. "If you're a parent and buy one of our games for your child, you're a terrible parent."

"We design games for adults because we're adults," he continued. "There's a lot of kids' games out there that we're not interested in playing. Just like you enjoy watching movies and TV shows with adult themes and language and violence, that's the kind of thing we seek to produce."

He claimed that despite its reputation, Rockstar gets relatively little "pushback" from rating boards, although he noted that the videogame industry in general faces far greater challenges than other media when it comes to producing mature content. "If you tell a gritty crime drama with violence and profanity and call it The Sopranos you're handed a load of awards to put up on the shelf," he said. "You do the same and call it a videogame and you'll have certain organizations up in arms."

But times are changing and Lazlow thinks Rockstar deserves a lot of credit for "pushing the boundaries" of what's acceptable in videogames today. "I think ever since GTA IV came out and there were such rave reviews by major publications saying that this is actually art the restrictions about being politically correct have largely fallen away," he said.

Source: TheEscapist

S'pore: Lowest child mortality

PARIS - SINGAPORE is ranked first in the world for the lowest estimated rates of children under five who die each year for 2010, followed by Iceland, Sweden, Cyprus and Luxembourg.

In the United States - whose ranking has dropped from 20th to 42 since 1970 - the mortality rate is nearly double the European average. But the proportion of under-five children who die each year across the globe has dropped 60 per cent over the past four decades, according to a study published Monday.

In the last 20 years this salutary decline has accelerated, with the number of deaths among newborns, infants and one-to-four year olds falling from 11.9 million to an estimated 7.7 million in 2010, the new figures show.

That remains a staggeringly large number of young lives lost, many to preventable diseases and overwhelmingly in the world's poorest nations. A child born today in Chad, Mali or Nigeria is nearly sixty times less likely to see her or his fifth birthday than one born in Scandinavia. And progress still falls short of the trajectory needed to meet the UN's Millennium Development goal of slashing child deaths globally by 66 per cent between 1990 and 2015.

But the decline in under-five mortality is still an encouraging achievement, and suggests further progress is possible, the report says. Even at the current rate of improvement, there are 31 countries on pace to meet the UN benchmark for 2015, including Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia and Egypt.

All told, 54 of the 187 nations examined in the study are poised to reach the goal. In 1970 there were more than 200 under-five deaths for every 1,000 live births, the measure used to rank nations in this grim index. By 1990, that list had dwindled to 12, and today no country crosses the 200-death threshold, according to the study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

'One of the biggest achievements of the past 20 years has been this incredible progress in countries that historically have had the highest child mortality in the world,' said Christopher Murray, Director of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and co-author of the study. --AFP

Source: ST (24 May 2010)

Game Addicts Arrested for Starving Baby to Death

3-month-old Starves to Death While Parents Spend Hours in Internet Cafes

Gaming addiction turned horrifically tragic as the three-month-old daughter of a Korean couple starved to death while her parents were caring for a virtual daughter during a 12-hour MMOG session.

The couple, identified only as "the Kims" due to Korean privacy laws, had met in 2008 over an online dating site and subsequently married and had a child. The husband, 41, and the wife, 25 were both unemployed, living with the parents of the wife. Both spent most of their time at 24-hour internet cafes, notorious for crowds of gamers and dense cigarette smoke, even during the pregnancy. The couple called the police in September to report their daughter's death after returning from a 12-hour gaming session.

The autopsy results were chilling. The child, who had been born prematurely, died of malnutrition. The couple also admitted to feeding her rotten powdered milk as well as spanking her whenever she cried. The child was generally neglected in favor of an online daughter over the Korean MMOG PRIUS, which was consuming much of the couple's play time at internet cafes while their daughter was left alone and unfed.

South Korea has had serious problems with gaming addiction, which has led to a number of deaths via exhaustion in the past few years. "There's no certain clinical indicator to define 'game addiction' but our study shows that brain PET [scan] images of suspected online game addicts are very similar to that of a cocaine addict," Dr. Kim Sang Eun of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital said. The problem is reportedly even higher in Korea due to the nation's 95 percent broadband access, and the fact that there are more mobile phones in South Korea than there are people.

While obviously an extreme example, it is nevertheless one that cannot be ignored. Fortunately, most gamers aren't this irresponsible, but it's still a very real risk in our world.

Source: ABC News (4 Mar 20101)

Monday, May 17, 2010

Is Singapore the worst environmental offender?

ST - A NATIONAL University of Singapore (NUS) study which ranked Singapore as the worst environmental offender among 179 countries has drawn a sharp response from the Government, but its authors are standing by it.

The study, jointly done by NUS and the University of Adelaide, found that Singapore's headlong rush into developing a modern megalopolis over the last 30 years had taken a terrible toll on its natural environment.

The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, however, has slammed the 16-page paper - which looks at relative environmental impact of countries - for not taking into account the 'unique circumstances of each country'.

Responding to queries from The Straits Times, a ministry spokesman said that the study was based on a proportional environmental impact index, which is defined only in terms of total land area.

'As such, countries with limited land size which have high intensity of land use would be necessarily disadvantaged in this proportional index,' said the spokesman.

'Correspondingly, the main indices which contributed to Singapore's poor ranking were contingent on total land area. For example, natural habitat conversion, which is the area of human-modified land divided by total land area, unfairly penalises Singapore's high urban density.'

In response, Professor Corey Bradshaw, 38, director of ecological modelling at the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and one of the paper's three authors, was adamant that the data spoke for itself.

'We didn't make it up,' he said. 'It's publicly available data so anyone can look at this.'

The study, which took about three years to complete, was published by peer-reviewed online science journal PLoS ONE.

Professor Navjot Sodhi, 48, from the NUS department of biological sciences and co-author of the paper, said Singapore's rapid development in the last 30 years has seen it lose 90 per cent of its forest, 67 per cent of its birds, about 40 per cent of its mammals and 5 per cent of its amphibians and reptiles.

The study is thought to be the first in the world to adopt a new rating system which looks only at environmental indicators such as forest loss, natural habitat conversion, marine captures, carbon emissions and biodiversity.

As the index focuses on modern environmental impact, it 'ignores some elements of historical degradation such as deforestation in Europe', the authors said in the paper. It therefore 'might penalise developing nations more heavily'.

Although a country like Brazil, for example, has chopped down more rain-forests, Singapore, proportional to its size, has wreaked greater destruction as nearly all its forests have made way for urbanisation, explained Prof Bradshaw.

He added: 'Singapore's development over the last 20 to 30 years has meant that it has done the worst damage to its environment.'

Developing and developed nations such as South Korea, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and the Netherlands were also penalised by the proportional index.

While Singapore fared poorly in terms of proportional environmental impact, it is too small to figure in terms of global or absolute environmental impact. For that, the 10 worst countries are: Brazil, the United States, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, India, Russia, Australia and Peru.

The authors conceded that Singapore was something of an anomaly as it is a city state, and a fairer comparison would be between it and other cities such as New York City and Hong Kong.

The negative rating is not the first Singapore has received in environmental studies.

The Republic has frequently been cited as having one of the highest per capita carbon emissions globally by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which provides energy statistics to the US government, factoring in data such as carbon emissions from bunker fuel, aviation and refining processes.

Latest EIA data taken in 2006 indicated that Singapore emitted 141 million tonnes of carbon emissions, ranking it as the 33rd-highest emitter of greenhouse gases among 215 countries.

Singapore - which adopts a measurement standard that does not include bunker fuel, aviation and refining emissions, which is in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines - puts its own carbon emissions figure as 40 million tonnes.

In this year's Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which ranks 163 countries on both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality, Singapore did better, coming in 28th with 69.6 points. Iceland fared the best with a score of 93.5 and Sierra Leone came in last with 32.1.

Speaking to leaders at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December last year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong defended Singapore's environmental record, saying it had taken environmental issues seriously since its independence more than 44 years ago.

He said Singapore had recently set a voluntary and domestically funded target to reduce emission growth by 16 per cent from business-as-usual levels by 2020, subject to a globally binding climate change deal.

He described this as 'a substantial commitment which will entail significant economic and social costs'.

Source: Straits Times

Monday, May 10, 2010

Last Week in Reality

APRIL

26 MON
Look, No Hands The jail term meted out to a 69-year-old magician who sexually assaulted his 12-year-old apprentice has been upped from six to 10 years. The jail term was increased after an appeal from the prosecution. The offences were discovered by chance when a neighbor saw the man walking around naked in his flat while the boy was inside.

27 TUE
The Time Of Sands Marina Bay Sands was finally opened to the public, at the auspicious time of 3.18pm. 36,000 patrons, many Singaporeans, gathered to try their luck on the opening day. Locals had to pay their $100 levies before being given a queue number to wait for their turn on the casino floor. In return, they received a commemorative silver coin, and were treated to free food and entertainment as they waited.

28 WED
Sports City? Hosting the first Formula 1 night race and the inaugural Youth Olympic Games has rocketed Singapore into second spot at the Ultimate Sports City awards. The award, given out by the UK’s Sport Business Group, recognizes a city’s quality as a host of sporting events. The ranking is based on sporting events held in the past, and also considers future events to be hosted. This is Singapore’s first appearance on the list and only Melbourne was ranked higher.

29 THU
Ultra Beatdown Two men are in court, charged with beating up a full-time National Serviceman. The 18-year-old was abducted and brought to a cemetery at night where he was beaten by six men, one of whom carried a samurai sword. One of the men is the father of a 14-year-old girl who was the girlfriend of the NSF, and the beating was delivered in an attempt to end the relationship.

30 FRI
The Birds And The Bees The Ministry Of Education has called for transparency from schools that engage a third party organization to complement their sexuality education program. Six vendors have been approved to provide the service, and they will be required to make the information they provide available to the public. The MOE’s stance on sexuality education avoids making calls on abortion, masturbation, and oral or anal sex, and does not promote homosexuality, promiscuity or sexual experimentation.

1 SAT
I Do Two A new service launched by the Ministry for Community Development Youth and Sports allows Singaporeans to search through marriage records. Names, part of the NRIC numbers and the marriage date of the two parties can be obtained. This information might be relevant for dating agencies, private investigators and anyone who wants to ensure that their partner is not already married. To prevent abuse of the system, each user is only allowed two searches a year.

2 SUN
Assassins Freed Street Wars comes to Singapore on May 10. For a fee of $50, participants are given a hitlist of people who need to be "taken care of," and they have three weeks to rub them out using H2O as ammunition. The only weapons allowed are water guns and water bombs, and the targets are other players of the underground game. First played in New York City five years ago, "assassins" can perform the jobs alone or team up with other like-minded killers to snuff out competitors with a squirt of water.

Source: IS Magazine

The impact of iPod

The iPod Revolution

Sunday, May 9, 2010

China clears murderer after 'victim' shows up alive

The following 2 articles shows the impact of wrongful punishment. What is the difference in the reporting of the same issue?

BEIJING - A CHINESE man who spent nearly 10 years in jail for murder has been cleared after the supposed victim reappeared alive and well.

Zhao Zuohai was jailed in 2002 for murdering one of his neighbours in a village in the central province of Henan in October 1997, Xinhua news agency reported late Saturday, quoting a court statement.

The neighbour went missing after the pair had a fight in October 1997, the report said, and Zhao was charged when a headless, decomposed body was found 18 months later.

Zhao was initially sentenced to death, but this was commuted to 29 years' imprisonment, Xinhua said. The supposed victim, Zhao Zhenshang, returned to the village April 30 and after confirming his identity, the court cleared Zhao Zuohai of murder on Friday, the report said.

Zhao Zhenshang, 56, told Xinhua he and Zhao Zuohai had been good friends, but fell out over a woman and money. He said he fled the village after hitting Zhao Zuohai, fearing his revenge, Xinhua reported, and stayed away as he had not earned much money and felt ashamed. A villager said that during Zhai Zuohai's time in prison, his wife had remarried and two of his children had been adopted.

Henan Provincial Higher People's Court has ordered an investigation into the case and said the judges responsible for the original verdict would be punished. --AFP


A Chinese man who spent almost 10 years in jail for murder has been freed after his supposed victim was found alive.

Zhao Zuohai had a fight with his neighbour, who then disappeared, and was charged when a headless, decomposed body was found 18 months later.

The miscarriage of justice came to light when the neighbour, Zhao Zhenshang, returned to his village in Henan province to seek welfare support.

He had fled after their fight because he feared he had killed Zhao Zuohai.

Mr Zhao's conviction for murder was reportedly based mainly on a confession. His brother said police had forced him to drink chilli-tainted water and set off fireworks above his head to extract one.

Correspondents say convictions in the Chinese court system are strongly dependent on confessions, motivating police to use force to get one. Henan Provincial Higher People's Court has ordered an investigation into the case and the original judges will be punished.

Mr Zhao was initially sentenced to death for the crime, but the sentenced was commuted to 29 years in prison. While he was in jail, his wife remarried and several of his children were adopted. --BBC

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Facebook chats exposed

SAN FRANCISCO - FACEBOOK on Wednesday temporarily shut down its online chat feature after a software glitch let people's friends in the online community see each others' private chat messages.

For a 'limited period of time' chat messages and pending friend requests could be made visible to friends, according to Facebook.

For peeks at the usually walled-off information, Facebook users had to manipulate a 'preview my profile' feature in a particular way, according to Facebook. 'When we received reports of the problem, our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function,' a Facebook spokesman said in an email response to an AFP inquiry. 'We also pushed out a fix to take care of the visible friend requests.'

Chat was back in action for most Facebook users by 1900 GMT (3am Thursday Singapore time) and it was expected to be working across the website after.

'We worked quickly to resolve this matter, ensuring that once the bug was reported to us, a solution was quickly found and implemented,' the Facebook spokesman said. The software glitch struck as the world's top online social-networking service is increasingly scrutinised regarding the privacy of members.

Slightly more than half of adult users of social networks have posted 'risky personal information' such as birth dates or children's photos to profile pages, according to a Consumer Reports survey titled 'Social Insecurity'. The survey indicated that 23 per cent of Facebook's users 'either didn't know that the site offered privacy controls or chose not to use them.' --AFP

Click here for article

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Old folks in S'pore an asset to their families

Study finds they give more help than they receive from their families, compared with the elderly elsewhere in Asia

COMPARED with old folk in other Asian states, the elderly in Singapore are contributing both practically and financially to their families, according to a 2008 global ageing study by Oxford University.

Unfortunately, they also get less support of the same kind from their children and grandchildren.

Said British gerontologist Sarah Harper, one of the researchers behind the study: 'We have this idea that older people are a burden on our society but that's because we tend to look at it through our tax system, that they are not in work.'

This is far from the truth, because the study showed that older people still made significant contributions towards their loved ones at home, she said yesterday, in presenting the study at a conference by the International Consortium for Intergenerational Programmes.

Around 1,000 seniors each from various places worldwide were asked if they had given financial and practical support to their family members over a six-month period.

The study also asked respondents - aged above 55 - if their children or grandchildren had done the same for them.

The results showed that older folks in Singapore were giving more help to their children and grandchildren than the other way around.

Twelve per cent of Singaporean respondents said they offered support such as shopping for groceries, or helping their children clean the house.

On the other hand, just 9 per cent of them said their family members had either shopped or cleaned house for them.

In Asia, the Philippines had the most seniors who gave practical help, with 40 per cent, and China the lowest, with 3 per cent of grandparents saying they helped out.

Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia and South Korea were included in the study as well.

Singapore was also one of three Asian countries where the elderly respondents offered more practical support to their children and grandchildren than otherwise. The other two were the Philippines and South Korea.

In terms of financial help, the younger generation in Singapore ranked third worst when it came to giving money to their parents, with only 18 per cent of respondents saying their children had given them money.

South Korea ranked the best, with 67 per cent of seniors saying they received money from their children, followed by Malaysia with 56 per cent; the Philippines with 40 per cent; India with 35 per cent and Hong Kong with 29 per cent.

In South Korea and the Philippines, the older generation gave the children as much financial support as they received from them.

Some 6 per cent of Singapore seniors also said they contributed financially to their children and grandchildren.

Professor Harper said yesterday on the sidelines of the four-day conference which ended yesterday: 'When we look at what's happening in families, we see that older people are making a large contribution.

'They are giving money to their children and grandchildren, they are providing care and they are also providing practical support.'

In his closing remarks at the conference, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Lim Boon Heng said that he hoped to see more creative programmes encouraging intergenerational bonding being developed.

'As these seniors renegotiate the terms of their old age, so must other generations renegotiate their relationships with them,' the minister, who is in charge of ageing issues, added.

Click here for the article in the ST on Apr 30 2010

Monday, May 3, 2010

'Long-term harm' of too much TV for toddlers


The more TV a toddler watches, the higher the likelihood they will do badly at school and have poor health at the age of 10, researchers warn.

Go to BBC to read the original article.