Technically Incorrect

I know most people in the world have already made major changes to their fitness regimen to avoid a nasty case of Wii knee.

You'll all remember Wii knee. This was the condition, caused by excessive Wii console waggling, that was discovered, quite miraculously, just before the Christmas shopping season.

Now doctors are warning all PlayStation obsessives not to grip their consoles so tightly. If you do, you may be at risk of PlayStation palmar hidradenitis.

This is a skin disorder that is characterized by painful lumps on your palms. And you just thought you were holding your four-iron too tightly.

Vincent Piguet and his colleagues at University Hospitals and Medical School of Geneva revealed their gripping discovery in the British Journal of Dermatology. They liken the condition to patches that appear on children's feet after too much hopping, skipping, and jumping or whatever.

This may be the first case of PlayStation hand worm. Doctors are suggesting the cause is simply not removing your hand from the console for a period of five years.

(Credit: Cc Schizoform)

Perhaps you, the people who treat your PlayStation with loving reverence, will be a touch skeptical about PlayStation Palm Lumps. Sony is already there, putting its arms around you and telling you that the mad people will be captured shortly.

This one is for mature audiences only.

The whole of Britain is aghast and, quite naturally, deeply interested in the story of Alfie Patten, a 13-year-old boy who has just become a father for the first time. Yes, he and his maybe girlfriend, 15-year-old Chantelle Steadman, are celebrating the birth of little Maisie.

And they're toasting their bliss like every other newly-blessed couple- with a touch of PlayStation.

In these wonderful, touching pictures, baby Maisie rests in Alfie's lap, while he fights off fatherhood's lack of sleep by fighting a bunch of drug dealers in Stilwater Prison. He is, indeed, enjoying the carnage of Saints Row 2.

"It was easier that I thought," Alfie told the Sun newspaper. No, he was not referring to the charming hand-to-hand combat of the game, but rather to the first night of the hand-to-mouth tribulations of being a father.

"I'm the Daddy!!" "No, I'm the Daddy!!"

(Credit: CC YellowBlade 67)

I know that those of you who adore Saints Row 2 will be aware that it is something of an adult pleasure. So you, too, will find additional symbolism in the fact that Alfie adores this game, rated for 18s and over in the UK, rather than something a touch more family-friendly.

Your face will, perhaps, crease in involuntary ecstasy when I tell you there have been overnight developments worthy of Saints Row 2.

In the game, respect has to be earned. Well, imagine, then, the human respect-o-meter this morning as two other teenage boys, Richard Goodsell, aged 16 and 14-year-old Tyler Barker have emerged from their playrooms to declare that they might be the father of little Maisie and not Alfie.

I am sure that you, too, are only waiting for the first wise academic to declare that this sort of behavior is the fault of the video game culture. And regular readers will know how we feel about academic video game research here.

Alfie is just as much of an adult for playing Saints Row 2 as he is for allegedly fathering a child. An amount that might be described as not at all.

Maisie, take that console away from Daddy and see if you can slap him with it.

Now this one, found totally at random, is innocent, right?

(Credit: CC GWire)

How closely does your Mii resemble the real you?

I ask only because it seems that police in Japan decided to dispense with the services of a sketch artist--who knows, perhaps he was too temperamental--and used a Wii to create their own impression of a man they wanted to question.

The Mii feature on Nintendo's Wii video game console allows you to create your own avatarish persona on games such as Wii Sports. So the wise policemen in the Kanegawa prefecture apparently decided they could swiftly create a Mii of a man who may have been involved in a hit-and-run road accident.

There is no word whether the residents of Kanegawa are rushing around their neighborhoods, brandishing this supposed likeness of a young man with long brown hair, glasses, and Heidi Klum's cheekbones. And there is no word that this avatar has been re-created on many thousands of Kanegawa Wiis and is trouncing untold numbers of Roger Federer look-alikes.

But it's lovely to think that such frivolous games are now being used in the serious cause of truth and justice on the Miin Streets of Kanegawa.

There are those who believe that computer games cause trauma rather than soothe it.

Scientists from Oxford University would like to spank that theory with a shovel, throw it to the ground, and kick it till it's unconscious.

In a piece of research that would not seem out of place on an episode of House, Oxford psychologists believe they have taken the first steps in showing that a concerted finger-waggle of your Tetris could help you forget the maniac who plowed straight into you at 60 miles an hour, the contorted features of the insane lover who just smashed your skull with a frying pan, and the one-night stand you should never have had after leaving Dan's Oyster Bar and Lapdancing Club.

Because I know readers of Technically Incorrect are an unruly, skeptical crowd, I should be clear about the Oxfordians methodology. The researchers showed their researchees ugly images of nasty accidents, crushed-up skulls, and bloody entrails from various sources.

Then they asked half of them to play Tetris, while the other half apparently did nothing. In Oxford, that probably means reading a little Dostoyevsky while sipping a Pimms.

The Tetris players apparently suffered significantly fewer nasty memories of those ugly images than did those who were left idle. The researchers are extrapolating that this might help people deal with post- traumatic stress disorder.

I cannot be sure that this woman, who is playing Tetris DS, has suffered a head trauma. But, yes, those are socks on her head.

(Credit: CC Mache)

The logic, according to Dr. Emily Holmes of Oxford University's psychiatric department, may be that Tetris simply blocks the mind from storing painful memories.

There is, however, a small catch. You must play immediately after your car accident or encounter with the frying pan.

The Daily Telegraph quoted Holmes as explaining that "Tetris may work by competing for the brain's resources for sensory information. We suggest it specifically interferes with the way sensory memories are laid down in the period after trauma and thus reduces the number of flashbacks that are experienced afterwards."

If you're wondering why they chose Tetris rather than, say, World of Warcraft or Grant Theft Auto, apparently Tetris requires the use of a significant chunk of the mind.

Of course, some could argue that Grand Theft Auto--where you are actually, in some instances, left for dead--might demand a rather larger portion of mindspace than moving a few colored building blocks with a sound effect more annoying than your serially-divorced history teacher from high school.

Still, all of us have traumas: some work-related, some relationship-related, and some inflicted upon us by a world that just doesn't understand us. We spend every day wishing we could put this stuff behind us.

I therefore fully expect Tetris sales to triple within days of this post appearing.