integer on Tue, 21 Aug 2001 02:34:41 +0200 (CEST) |
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>>This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, >>requires a state of relaxation which is becoming rarer and rarer. > >yesyesyes - exactly. g!d! +? >many children don't read the velveteen rabbit anymore - many parents aren't children anymore +? >they play videogames - even @ the age of 4 or 5. comme ca +? there once was a painter. a brilliant painter, who mastered the art of replication and the depiction of the beautiful. yet he was lonely, he felt that there was no-one alive who could understand him, no-one capable of perceiving his entire being. one morning he wept in his garden, crying to god to send him someone who might comprehend his full beauty. that day, he painted a new canvas, a portrait of an unknown and stunningly beautiful woman. when he had finished, he cried to god to give her sentience, as this most wondrous painting could be the only being in the world who might understand him. to his amazement, the woman in the painting began to move. 'hallo! hallo!' he cried to her. 'where are you?' she replied. 'here, beside you!' the woman in the painting looked around her. 'are you up, or down? across?' she asked. 'no, no', the painter implored, 'i am .. i am .. out!' 'out? what is _out_?' she replied. 'out! out here!' the woman did not understand him. she only knew two dimensions - vertical and horizontal. her world was that of the flat canvas. the painter ran out to his garden and threw himself onto the ground. 'god, oh god!' he wept. 'where are you?' 'out.' came the reply. >the velveteen rabbit & that text together are sad > >it gives the sense that many things have been lost. > >subtle things - which we don't notice until it >is brought to our attention. t!ngl.tangl. Researchers: Video games hurt brain Scientists at Japan's Tohoku University said they've found that computer games stimulate only those parts of the brain devoted to vision and movement and do not aid the development of other important areas of the brain. The researchers are particularly concerned that by spending many hours playing games some children will not develop their frontal lobes, which play a crucial role in controlling behavior and in developing memory, emotion and learning. In contrast, tasks such as arithmetic stimulate brain activity in the frontal lobe, which is thought to continue developing until adulthood. Professor Ryuta Kawashima, who led the team that carried out the research, told The Observer that the discovery is highly important. "There is a problem we will have with a new generation of children--who play computer games--that we have never seen before," he said. "The implications are very serious for an increasingly violent society, and these students will be doing more and more bad things if they are playing games and not doing other things like reading aloud or learning arithmetic." Kawashima asserts that children must be encouraged to practice basic mathematics, reading and writing to boost the development of the frontal lobe. He is convinced that children who play video games excessively will not develop their frontal lobes and will consequently be more prone to violent acts because they will be less able to control their behavior. The study looked at the brain activity of hundreds of students playing a Nintendo game and compared it with other students who were carrying out basic arithmetic. It found that much more brain activity was needed to solve the simple mathematic tasks than was used to play the computer games and that activity in the frontal lobe varied significantly. -----Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to post to the Syndicate list: <syndicate@eg-r.isp-eg.de> to unsubscribe, write to <majordomo@eg-r.isp-eg.de>, in the body of the msg: unsubscribe syndicate your@email.adress