You just made me feel bad. 
On the upside, I never had to dodge rocks in PE. The other occasional projectile, yes. (There seem to be very few sports which don’t involve objects in flight towards their participants.) But at least no rocks.
Yeah, that came across a little harsh. I don’t find anything wrong with using the internet as a primary social outlet. I find the sorts of communities that form online fascinating, since it’s not limited by geography. I get far more out of interacting online than I ever could face to face.
As to the OP, video games do not need any more undeserved vilification than they endure already.
Or they just have jobs with internet connections and lots of down time. 
Uh, no, we haven’t had video games as long as we’ve had television. And the commonality of video games in the home is a relatively recent development. TVs have been in almost all homes in the USA for at least two generations; when I was a kid in the 80s, home video games systems were still catching on, and most people did not have home computers. They didn’t become all that commonplace until ten or fifteen years ago, really.
Bad parenting is the cause in the first place. Parents often choose neighborhoods with few children (and may not have anyone in the same age group), love oporrly designed (often undesigned) suburbs with no way to get to friends’ places without driving or biking on busy roads, and actively prevent kids from playing without constant supervision. This is not a recipe for excercise.
That’s because we’re the ones who can read and write.
You can have my controller when you pry it from cold, dead hands.
Unless you’re one of those loons who gets up and embarrasses himself which they show in the commercials, playing with a Wii is no more exercise than playing with your other wii.
Oh, so he’s been personally involved in something he talks about? Well, good heavens, let’s ban him from ever mentioning it again. Can’t have that sort of thing, no siree.
Deary me, we can’t have any talk of banning stuff, now, can we?
I liked dodgeball, actually.
And the correct answer is…
“Who the hell are you to tell me I must be punished for my lifestyle choices? Piss off.”
Why stop at fiction when we could add board games, computers, movies, puzzles, scrapbooks, barbies, train sets, radios, and The Bible. With these kinds of revenues we could win the World Cup by 2030* or so.
*This years host? The fucking moon!
Well, I was partly being sarcastic, what with the built in assumption of this proposal that outdoor sports are so much better than video games that games should be taxed to support them ( as if sports aren’t subsidized enough ). However, since when has sports NOT been connected to thuggish behavior ? School jocks are notorious for bullying and worse. Sports stars are also known for violent behavior. And sports fans the world over have a reputation for violence; would you prefer to walk into a video gamer’s convention, or a gathering of soccer hooligans ?
Don’t be silly; the bullying is a reward in itself. All the bullies need is permission or encouragement; when a teacher tells the class that he wants the big kids to “keep the little kids in their place”, what do you expect to happen ?
Like chasing and throwing rocks at the students who end up on the Internet because they get tired of being assaulted ? Or, as adults, making life hell for other people in ways that won’t get them arrested if they tried it as adults.
:smack: My tri-lingual lifestyle is catching up to me and my ability to communicate has taken a nose dive lately. Obviously I know we havn’t had video games as long as TV. Sorry for saying something so rediculous.
Football hooligans aren’t playing football, they’re spectators. What reason do you propose spectators of a nominally non-contact sport should become so aggressive? Do you think it’s anything to do with hundreds of young men fueled by alcohol all being in the same place at once (i.e. nothing to do with the sport itself, as claimed?)
Since pretty much forever. We all know the tales of marauding bloodthirsty cricket fans, or the legendary rugby massacres of the 1880’s…
I don’t think that a government in a free society should “promote” anything. Their job is to keep the strong from oppressing the weak, and cut out all of the other nonsense. Then they would need less tax dollars, so we could keep more of those dollars and spend it the way we choose. That is the core of freedom.
Sure, I think that kids today need to get off of their lazy, fat asses and do something outside. That doesn’t mean that we need a government program to implement it…
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
I’m sorry you had lousy PE teachers. But you’re making the same kind of argument as those who would abolish the FDA because it’s corrupt. I was never a great jock, I was a small nerdy weakling in fact, but I loved PE & am enormously grateful for it.
I think we should discourage the overuse of computer games, I dunno if a tax is the best way. (And my Nobunaga’s Ambition-obsessed teen self is a bit disturbed by the idea…)
Well, I think that confiscatory taxes are one way to subtly forestall the power of the strong to oppress the weak, so I dispute that it would take less tax, but that’s another debate maybe…
So here’s my question.
Why are they promoting outdoor sports? Because exercise is good for you?
If that’s the case, then they shouldn’t be promoting outdoor sports, they should be promoting exercise. Games like Dance Dance Revolution and others that require you to get up and move around should not be taxed. I’m seeing a logical disconnect between ‘‘exercise is good for you’’ -----> ‘‘tax video games’’ ------> ‘‘give the money to outdoor education programs.’’
And in terms of the ‘‘disconnect from nature,’’ well I love nature as much as the next girl, but can anyone prove that being ‘‘disconnected from nature’’ somehow leaves you less healthy and happy?
Outdoor sports is not the only means by which one can exercise. And obviously, playing video games and getting exercise is not always mutually exclusive. Therefore this proposal makes no sense to me.
So why aren’t we hypothetically taxing books as well? You don’t exercise while reading.
But wait - reading is good for you, right? We don’t want to punish people for doing good things. But then there’s useless reading as well - Harlequin romances, action serial novels… These are the equivalent of soap operas and TV dramas.
So, no tax on Shakespeare, because obviously that’s good reading. A tax on cheap romances and “The Punisher” books.
Really, what we need is a ‘cultural approval’ board that looks at everything people do and decides what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’, and punishes the ‘bad’ people. All for the good of society, of course. It takes a village, and a village needs elders with whips and the occasional stake and torches.