Technically Incorrect

There is a view that removing all 15-year-old boys from this earth would not only help global warming but also our cultural horizon.

Supporters of this view will then be heartened to hear the story reported by the Chicago Tribune of a 15-year-old boy who suffered a serious trauma. His parents took away his Xbox.

The boy, a resident of Buffalo Grove, Ill., which sounds like the sort of place where discipline is imparted along traditional lines, decided to express his feelings and exert his identity. He called 911 in order to ask the police whether his parents were, indeed, within their rights to remove his gaming equipment from his sensitive little fingers.

How could any parent take away such a vital component of a child's life?

(Credit: CC Dave B/Flickr)

However, brave as all 15-year-olds are, he appears to have hung up. So the Buffalo Grove police which, on its website, declares that it is "dedicated to making our community a better place to live and work", wandered along to his house.

Where they may have just laughed until their shirts billowed like the kaftans of the late Luciano Pavarotti.

Commander Steve Husak told the Tribune that the officers not only told the little tyke that parents do, indeed, have the right to take away his gadgetry, but that it might be an idea to listen to what they had to say.

It is not recorded why the parents took away the boy's Xbox. Perhaps it was because he's a vastly intelligent youth who will soon be the governor of Illinois.

Have you ever written a text message and then failed to correctly multiply 3 by 7 right after you pressed "send"?

Have you ever posted an update on Facebook and instantly reached for your Proust? And have you ever sent a tweet, looked in the mirror, and suddenly believed that you had a twin?

Well, according to the Telegraph, Dr. Tracy Alloway, a psychologist from the University of Stirling in Scotland, can explain all of this.

The good doctor has spent many of her days studying working memory, which allows people to retain and use information. She believes it to be a far more significant measure of the well-being and intelligence of humanity than, say, IQ.

Alloway spoke Sunday to the British Science Festival at the University of Surrey and rather gushed about the success she has had in training children to enhance their working memory.

And she happened to mention that certain social-media behaviors are rather more conducive at developing working memory than others.

Is this man improving your intelligence?

(Credit: CC Andrew Feinberg/Flickr)

While Facebook apparently expands the working memory and therefore "enhances intelligence" because the mind has to work in keeping up with one's 500 friends, Twitter does not deserve such glowing praise.

Instead, Alloway released both barrels of her working memory in a critical appraisal of microblogging. She said that because Twitter was so succinct, "your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections."

She was equally critical of anything she deemed "instant"--YouTube and texting, for example. On the other hand, video games and Sudoku allegedly involve more thinking depth, more tracking of past actions, and more mapping of those things you might do in the future. Therefore, they enhance working memory.

I find myself instantly recoiling from the doctor's pleasantly radical analysis. I begin to wonder whether, for example, it makes a difference if you are watching a four-minute video on YouTube about, say, the Large Hadron Collider.

I wonder if it counts that you find a link on Twitter that leads you to a deeply intellectual debunking of all research methods in psychology.

And I wonder whether it really can be true that keeping up with a bunch of supposed friends on Facebook can make you just that little bit smarter.

Surely when you think of all the time some people spend on Facebook, doesn't it make you think that perhaps, just perhaps, they need to get a life? Or at least a better working memory of one?

I know there are some people who have not slept for fear that Google had finally committed itself to some alien culture.

Well, some outerworldly alien culture. Well, some outerworldly alien culture where all beings were green and no one used phrases like "market segmentation" and "41 shades of blue."

You see, a mysterious doodle appeared on the Google home page. It showed an alien spacecraft making off with the second "O" in the word "Google."

Were we really expected to merely gogle now? Didn't that sound uncomfortably close to ogling?

Though there were no references to the Church of Scientology, Google's first pronouncement on the subject did not quell the concern.

The questionably benign company declared: "We consider the second 'o' critical to user recognition of our brand and pronunciation of our name. We are actively looking into the mysterious tweet that has appeared on the Google twitter stream and the disappearance of the 'o' on the Google home page. We hope to have an update in the coming weeks."

The world continued experiencing the occasional shudder, until Google's Twitter page produced this revelatory tweet on Friday: "1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19."

Well, it was revelatory to those who think in a certain way, one to which I can only aspire.

"Yes, of course," those who think that way said to themselves, while simultaneously slapping their heads with a fly-swatter. "It's a reference to that wonderful Japanese video game of the 1980s, Zero Wing."

Now, look, I've heard of Vera Wang. But somehow Zero Wing passed me by, though I think it would be an excellent name for a fashion designer.

However, those on the inside (of the spacecraft) tell me that Zero Wing is terribly cool and features extremely characteristic English translations.

Apparently, Cats, a villain even greater than the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, makes this declaration at the beginning of Zero Wing: "How are you gentlemen. All your base are belong to us."

Well, when you take all those numbers in the Google tweet and turn them into the corresponding letters of the alphabet, you get: "All your O are belong to us."

Why would some Googlies want to feature Zero Wing now? Well, it's the game's 20th anniversary.

So there. The problem is solved. The world is safe. Google has not been taken over by aliens.

Or can we really be sure of that?

I met a perfectly lovely young woman this weekend who told me that when she was a teenager she took Ecstasy, snorted coke, and inhaled pot as if it were dim sum on a Sunday morning.

So I found myself relieved beyond the effects of a hot stone massage to discover that research on teenage girls has shown that when they play Tetris it has a wonderfully positive effect on their brains.

The Mind Research Network, which appears to be a nonprofit organization that examines brain injury and mental illness, decided to spend three months of its life and donations on watching what happens when teenage girls play Tetris.

The network's scientists seem giddy about the results: consistent practice on the pleasantly mind-numbing little game seems to have given the girls a thicker cortex, as well as creating more brain efficiency in other parts of their tender gray areas.

Now, I'm not sure that every teenage girl on earth will be excited about having a thicker cortex, but the brain of Dr. Rex Jung, one of the boffins behind this experiment, is veritably bursting with joy.

"We did our Tetris study to see if mental practice increased cortical thickness, a sign of more gray matter," Dr. Jung said Monday in a press statement.

(Credit: Cc TotalAldo/Flickr)

He continued: "If it did, it could be an explanation for why previous studies have shown that mental practice increases brain efficiency. More gray matter in an area could mean that the area would not need to work as hard during Tetris play."

Essentially, the excitement engendered by this little game playing seems to revolve around the notion that the brain's structure is not as fixed as scientists of old had assumed.

However, I feel I need now explore the frisson of doubt that overcomes me every time I read research. You see, this study does not help us discover the actual relationship between a thicker cortex and increased brain efficiency.

How might I know this? Why, because I read the smaller print, in which Dr. Richard Haier, a co-investigator of the Tetrisettes, said: "How a thicker cortex and increased brain efficiency are related remains a mystery."

You see, the functioning of teenage girls' brains is, as one has always thought, an utter befuddlement.

While the scientists claim that they used girls in the study because boys tend to have too much video game experience, I am now wondering just one thing: were these Tetrisettes drug-tested?

I know you might think this is far fetched. I know you may think I only meet lovely girls who are strange and tell outlandish tales of teenage drug use.

But, you see, there were only 26 girls in this study. And if I'm to believe that the actions of teenage girls will somehow inform our knowledge of the brain, I want them tested for coke, pot, E, and, definitely, crystal meth.

Interestingly, the study's notes say that none of the girls was taking a prescription medication. But neither were so many baseball players in the 1990s.

Perhaps my zeal for scientific purity, otherwise known as my skepticism, may be excessive here.

But perhaps it was made excessive by some small print in the study. I know your cortex will become thinner on receiving this information, but the study was funded by "Blue Planet Software (BPS), Inc., the company holding exclusive licensing rights to Tetris".

You know you want to. You've wanted to do it for some time now. No, not tell Pink and Sandra Bullock they have terrible taste in men, but slap a Wall Street ignoramus.

AddictingGames, the site that brought you the ecology sniper game evocatively entitled "Shoot The Bastards," now brings you "Trillion Dollar Bailout."

It's a simple affair. You have a New York skyline, against which various chaps in suits stand, asking for cash. The Stank of Bummera, for example. Or Crysalot Motors. With one slap, you can send them to a dark hole in which, you hope, a hungry Hannibal Lecter awaits with the dining table already laid.

However, this game is not merely about releasing your feelings about the pickle with a slap. No, you can also help those innocent, gullible homeowners who really did believe that they could afford a $500,000 house on a $40,000 salary.

"Please, mister. I need another $8 billion for my bonus."

(Credit: CC Dan Perry.com)

Beneath the Wall Street skyline is a row of houses, not unlike those you see along your cab route from JFK into the city. From these houses emerge ordinary folks who are asking for a mere fraction of the amount begged for by, for example, Sitty Group or the charmingly named RNC Financial. With one click on the moneybag icon, you can deliver them salvation.

However, because this game stems from a sense of change you can believe in, you can give these people a backhander of the more physical kind. The kind that burns like cystitis and says: "What were you thinking, BlagoBrain?"

I am touched that the people at AddictingGames.com have bothered to understand that, when it comes to video games, there are certain kinds of violence that can only enhance societal well-being.

I have also heard rumors, as yet unsubstantiated, that the company intends to produce a new game in which you can slap a Facebook lawyer.

I have been consoled by the general consensus that scientists should stop researching video games.

Now the European Union has reached a conclusion that may make some of you reach for the person in the next cubicle and offer them inappropriate physical contact.

Video games are, according to the EU, good for kids.

They are not gaming. They are learning important skills in the information society.

(Credit: CC Totoro)

The report boldly goes where perhaps no report has gone before: "Video games can stimulate learning of facts and skills such as strategic thinking, creativity, cooperation and innovative thinking, which are important skills in the information society."

Hah.

The manifestly idiosyncratic authors of this report go on to declare: "Video games are a great stimulant which in addition to entertainment can also be used for educational purposes (....) schools should pay attention to video games and informing children and parents about benefits and disadvantages that video games can have."

Oh, yes, the report does go on a little about ratings systems. But I refuse to be tainted by anything other than radiant news for gamers.

So rush out and buy your kids a few video games. At the very least, it will improve the dexterity of their fingers. Which will make them more adept at turning on the dishwasher. And replacing light bulbs.

Just a rain shower ago, I highlighted a stunningly surprising piece of research suggesting that video games feed the male need to dominate.

My Sunday has been infiltrated with news from yet another bunch of huge brains. This time, it's the chaste scientists from Brigham Young University in Utah, who have spent money to discover that the more you play video games, the more your personal relationships will suffer.

The researchers crunched their numbers simultaneously with their granola to reveal that increased video game participation brings with it increased involvement in something called "risky behaviors." These seems to include things such as the abuse of alcohol and illegal substances.

For example, those of you who play video games every day apparently smoke twice as much as pot as those who indulge their Grand Theft Auto demons only occasionally--and three times more than those for whom video games are a mortal sin. That could mean that you pot-smoking gamers are, perhaps, 21 and male.

Naturally, the big Brigham brains didn't just emit portents of, um, doom. They also offered some hope--that's what researchers are supposed to do. They suggest that the link between gaming and behavior of a less than social nature is only "modest." And they are living the dream that family-oriented video games like Wii will somehow prove not to be antisocial. So, kids, give up killing people on screen, and take up tennis.

The hands of an excessive pot smoker? Oh, please.

(Credit: CC Oskay)

Please forgive me if I find this research a touch difficult to swallow with my blueberry muffin. If I put the two pieces of work together, I find that gamers have a desperate need to dominate, and therefore smoke a lot of pot and have bad relationships. It all seems a little fanciful.

So, because this country needs all the money it can get, I would like to save these scientists' time, money, and brains. Here are the results of my multibillion-dollar research, undertaken all over the world.

Some people play video games; others don't. Some smoke pot; others don't. Those who play video games include silly little boys, slightly less silly little boys, men with large responsibilities for whom video games are the only release after they've put the kids to bed, women who--guess what?--just enjoy playing, and millions of other people who play them because they find them fun.

Yes, my friend Cristiano is very pale because he starts gaming at midnight and doesn't finish till 6 in the morning. He is still a nice man. And he doesn't appear to smoke pot. But his girlfriend is getting a little annoyed. Less because he sleeps at the wrong time of day and more because he is so pale and putting on weight. There's is also the fact that he has started to speak in a strange Martian-like language.

Unfortunately, no research will ever prove that gaming is a threat to society. Because it isn't. Unless you want to believe that Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney behaved as they did because of an uncommonly excessive affection for pinball at the arcade in their youth.

We are all weak. We all need something to take our minds away from the sad elements of reality. Some choose video games. Others choose Brooke Hogan or the fabulously pretty cast of Twilight.

Please, dear scientists, will you just put your brains to solving the world's economic crisis? Because if none of us has jobs, we won't be able to buy any more video games. Thank you so much.

I always thought video games were a modern day artform.

But Professor Allan Reiss of the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research at Stanford University has proved such an elevated idea to be mere liberal tripe.

His research shows that video games stimulate the parts of men that so many other activities just cannot reach: the need to conquer, stomp on, dominate, crush, destroy, maim, annihilate, and turn to ashes and dust.

Women, apparently, understand video games, but their neurology doesn't house the same desire to conquer, stomp on, etc., etc.

Can you see his mesocorticolimbic center begin to throb?

(Credit: CC Rebecca Pollard)

"These gender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become 'hooked' on video games than females," Reiss was quoted in the Daily Telegraph. "I think it's fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species--they're the males."

You mean Cleopatra just sat back, played with her asps, and refused to conquer? How sad.

For those of you who are more scientifically inclined, the area of the brain that was put to the test in this research is called the mesocorticolimbic center. And in the case of the men, their mesocorticolimbic center resembled a particularly powerful volcano the minute a simple console was placed before them.

"Most of the computer games that are really popular with males are territory and aggression-type games," explained Reiss.

It is so heartwarming when science confirms what so many secretly feared.

I understand that World of Warcraft is some kind of video game that allows skinny boys to feel like they have untold powers of intimidation and survival.

And I am all for humans eking out their aggression without affecting others. Physically, at least.

But I have to say that the masterful World of Warcraft TV spot featuring Ozzie Osbourne might even make normal human beings warm to the idea of spending their whole lives in this videogaming Nether Region. (Except if you're under 18 and living in China, in which case I understand the Government only allows you three hours of Warcraft residence.)

Whoever it was who decided it might be a good idea to use Ozzie Osbourne to advertise this game deserves, oh, at least a mention in a Malcolm Gladwell book.

If you have not seen this spot, you have been deprived of essential cultural oxygen.

Ozzie screams that it is, indeed, he who has been the Prince of Darkness since 1979. Not some animated bearded chap who looks like a cross between the Almighty and Hugh Jackman's Grandad.

Ozzie then manages to, at least in some versions, utter the phrase "What's your (expletive that all of us use daily, if not hourly, but some cultures still find uncomfortable to look at when written down) game?!!"

This is all highly amusing in itself. Especially as Ozzie's diction has been deemed so uncertain that the spot has now been littered with subtitles.

But the sheer genius of this work of art lies in the fact that of all the people the Warcrafties could have chosen to be their spokesperson, they chose a 60-year-old whose hands shake more than a Yugo navigating a pothole.

Perhaps Ozzie is a secret lover of video games. Perhaps he privately spends his evenings trying to break par on PGA Tour 08.

But my bet is that if he ever found the patience to sit down and join the world of Orcs, Trolls and Dwarves, that patience would be almost immediately interrupted with screams for Sharon or some other deity to deliver him from this (expletive that all of us use daily, if not hourly, but some cultures still find uncomfortable to look at when written down) hell.

Yet none of this matters because the utterly inspirational casting of the man who brought us War Pigs opens World of Warcraft to even the most skeptical of beings. Which would be me and my three remaining sane friends.

I can only hope they will make a follow-up spot that would feature Ozzie actually trying to play. Now that might just be the ad of the decade.