Changing a name doesn't change the truth of the game. Kinda like Cookie Monster being forced to eat carrots to give a good example to obese American children-he's still Cookie Monster, even if he's called Carrot Monster.
Beer pong is till beer pong, no matter what you name it. Does playing it on Wii reinforce drinking behaviors? When games are as realistic as, well, reality, it makes perfect sense to think "Pong Toss" will be a nice segue into beer pong. From a personal perspective, I first wanted to shoot skeet and trap after playing Duck Hunt on the original Nintendo. If you like the game, it makes you wonder, "Hmm, I wonder if I'll like the activity in real life?"
The game company has a bit of social responsibility to not invent a game which can damage society. But the thing that bothers me most is that "Pong Toss" is rated T for Teens.
Beg pardon? Teens? The only teens who can legally drink in this country are those in the armed forces while they're on a military base. And those guys probably don't have an excessive amount of time for Wii or beer pong.
Just another sad commentary on how we view alcohol consumption in our society.
************
Wii Beer Pong Game Draws Jeers
Does New Nintendo Game Glorify Teen Drinking Culture?
By CLOE SHASHA
July 9, 2008
ABC News
JV Games has cleaned up its new Nintendo Wii version of the college drinking game "Beer Pong" by removing references to booze and renaming the title, but authorities and mental health experts fear that it will only reinforce an alcohol culture on teens.
In the Wii Nintendo game "Pong Toss," developed by JV Games, the player scores a point after tossing a ping pong ball into the opponent's cup.
"Pong Toss," as it's now called, still gives gamers the ability to practice the tossing skills required for Beer Pong, a popular drinking game involving ping pong balls aimed into cups of beer. Beer-guzzling is the goal of the real Beer Pong game in many college settings.
The game earned a rating of "T" for teen — ages 13 and up — from the independent Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), and that has caused parents, educators and even one state's attorney general to react with dismay.
"When a behavior is modeled or practiced in any form, it becomes more likely to be practiced in the future," said New York psychologist Eva Levine. "Kids are very susceptible to this type of media. I see it all the time with young kids and adolescents. It's definitely true that children that are exposed to alcohol use are much more likely to engage in alcohol behavior."
On Monday, Conn. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal expressed concern about the game, and about the future games that will be released under JV's Frat Party Games line.
Blumenthal believes that a game like "Pong Toss" has more worrisome consequences than other types of violent or dangerous video games.
"My strong concern is the ratings, which fail to reflect the potential dangers," said Blumenthal. "It promotes alcohol use and even abuse and binge drinking, which certainly seems a more realistic prospect than someone driving a car dangerously after playing 'Grand Theft Auto,' although obviously, that's a problem as well. But what the beer pong game does is much more immediate for teenagers than what happens in 'Grand Theft Auto'."
The worry about teen drinking is real and rising. On Monday, an Associated Press analysis of federal records found that 157 college-age people, 18 to 23, drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available. The number of alcohol-poisoning deaths per year nearly doubled over that span, from 18 in 1999 to a peak of 35 in 2005, though the total went up and down from year to year and dropped to 14 in 2001.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Keg Parties or Wine Tastings: What's College Drinking Really About?
Yesterday, I received the monthly E newsletter from my alma mater, Missouri State University.
Colleges are known for partying, heavy drinking, scenes from "Animal House"...all that stuff that post-college grads smile at, shake their heads in wistful amusement and think, "Man, it's a wonder no one was killed."
Colleges and universities don't typically promote their drinking stats, mainly because they're usually so disturbing. It's well known how much drinking goes on in colleges, but no one uses anything to do with booze as something to better the face of the university. Except maybe my alma mater...
When I received the E newsletter, there was an article about how Missouri State wines win medals in a regional competition. What?
Turns out, one of the branch campuses of Missouri state has a vineyard and winery called Mountain Grove Cellars. Wine from MGC was entered in a wine competition in Indiana recently and won.
It's interesting how different alcohols are "acceptable" due to the culture surrounding them. Wine is considered a classy, social beverage for celebrating, etc. But if there was a brewing contest, would anyone be proud of that? Or if someone was distilling their own whiskey, would that be something to brag about? Doubtful.
No college would ever think of promoting their university while promoting how good their alcohol is UNLESS that alcohol is wine. Just interesting cultural and sociological observations about college drinking and creation of alcohol...
Colleges are known for partying, heavy drinking, scenes from "Animal House"...all that stuff that post-college grads smile at, shake their heads in wistful amusement and think, "Man, it's a wonder no one was killed."
Colleges and universities don't typically promote their drinking stats, mainly because they're usually so disturbing. It's well known how much drinking goes on in colleges, but no one uses anything to do with booze as something to better the face of the university. Except maybe my alma mater...
When I received the E newsletter, there was an article about how Missouri State wines win medals in a regional competition. What?
Turns out, one of the branch campuses of Missouri state has a vineyard and winery called Mountain Grove Cellars. Wine from MGC was entered in a wine competition in Indiana recently and won.
It's interesting how different alcohols are "acceptable" due to the culture surrounding them. Wine is considered a classy, social beverage for celebrating, etc. But if there was a brewing contest, would anyone be proud of that? Or if someone was distilling their own whiskey, would that be something to brag about? Doubtful.
No college would ever think of promoting their university while promoting how good their alcohol is UNLESS that alcohol is wine. Just interesting cultural and sociological observations about college drinking and creation of alcohol...
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Something To Make "Light" Of?
It's interesting how the airline made light of this. The woman tries to open the cabin door at 33,000 feet? Granted, this is pretty hard for someone who is, 1. not in the flight attendant "know" on how to do it and, 2. drunk. Still, if she was able to get the door open, that spells bad news for everyone on board. The attempted assault with a bottle is another sign that these are two women who simply do not know how to control themselves with alcohol - and the kind of people who probably shouldn't even be drinking socially, either.
***
Drunken Passengers Go on Rampage, Force Plane's Emergency Landing
Sunday, July 27, 2008
foxnews.com
BERLIN — Two drunken British women went on a rampage on a charter plane, hitting one flight attendant with a bottle of vodka and trying to open a cabin door as the aircraft was cruising over Austria at 10,000 meters, police said Saturday.
The staff on the flight from Greece to England eventually forced the women back to their seats and the pilot made an emergency landing in Frankfurt on Thursday, police told The Associated Press, confirming a statement they had issued on Friday.
The identities of the women, aged 26 and 27, were not released, but police said the 26-year-old may be charged with attempted assault and interfering with air traffic.
Both women were released, police said.
The rampage occurred when a flight attendant denied the women alcohol because they were visibly intoxicated, police said. The 26-year-old took a swipe at a cabin attendant with a bottle of vodka, then attempted to open a cabin door.
"Apparently the 26-year-old wanted to catch some fresh air," the statement said, in an effort to make light of the altercation.
The two women were taken into custody by police at the Frankfurt airport and given a breathalyzer test. Both were legally intoxicated.
After an hour in Frankfurt, the flight continued on to Manchester, England.
***
Drunken Passengers Go on Rampage, Force Plane's Emergency Landing
Sunday, July 27, 2008
foxnews.com
BERLIN — Two drunken British women went on a rampage on a charter plane, hitting one flight attendant with a bottle of vodka and trying to open a cabin door as the aircraft was cruising over Austria at 10,000 meters, police said Saturday.
The staff on the flight from Greece to England eventually forced the women back to their seats and the pilot made an emergency landing in Frankfurt on Thursday, police told The Associated Press, confirming a statement they had issued on Friday.
The identities of the women, aged 26 and 27, were not released, but police said the 26-year-old may be charged with attempted assault and interfering with air traffic.
Both women were released, police said.
The rampage occurred when a flight attendant denied the women alcohol because they were visibly intoxicated, police said. The 26-year-old took a swipe at a cabin attendant with a bottle of vodka, then attempted to open a cabin door.
"Apparently the 26-year-old wanted to catch some fresh air," the statement said, in an effort to make light of the altercation.
The two women were taken into custody by police at the Frankfurt airport and given a breathalyzer test. Both were legally intoxicated.
After an hour in Frankfurt, the flight continued on to Manchester, England.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Post Away...
Ya know, I'm usually very concerned with how people portray themselves on Facebook and MySpace. I hate the idea of anyone posting pics of them doing some goofy stunt that could later mean they won't get a job, etc. But when a guy like this rubs the victim's nose in his crime? It makes me re-think my position. So, post away! If it helps put unrepentant fools like this behind bars for longer than they'd have originally been sentenced to, post away!
****
Web Photos Come Back to Bite Defendants
By ERIC TUCKER,
AP
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (July 19) - Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."
In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton's drunken-driving case.
A judge gave Joshua Lipton a two-year prison sentence over a drunken driving charge after the prosecutor uncovered this image of Lipton dressed up in a "Jail Bird" costume two weeks after his accident that nearly killed a woman.
Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.
Online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace have offered crime-solving help to detectives and become a resource for employers vetting job applicants. Now the sites are proving fruitful for prosecutors, who have used damaging Internet photos of defendants to cast doubt on their character during sentencing hearings and argue for harsher punishment.
"Social networking sites are just another way that people say things or do things that come back and haunt them," said Phil Malone, director of the cyberlaw clinic at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The things that people say online or leave online are pretty permanent."
The pictures, when shown at sentencing, not only embarrass defendants but also can make it harder for them to convince a judge that they're remorseful or that their drunken behavior was an aberration. (Of course, the sites are also valuable for defense lawyers looking to dig up dirt to undercut the credibility of a star prosecution witness.)
Prosecutors do not appear to be scouring networking sites while preparing for every sentencing, even though telling photos of criminal defendants are sometimes available in plain sight and accessible under a person's real name. But in cases where they've had reason to suspect incriminating pictures online, or have been tipped off to a particular person's MySpace or Facebook page, the sites have yielded critical character evidence.
"It's not possible to do it in every case," said Darryl Perlin, a senior prosecutor in Santa Barbara County, Calif. "But certain cases, it does become relevant."
Perlin said he was willing to recommend probation for Lara Buys for a 2006 drunken driving crash that killed her passenger _ until he thought to check her MySpace page while preparing for sentencing.
The page featured photos of Buys _ taken after the crash but before sentencing _ holding a glass of wine as well as joking comments about drinking. Perlin used the photos to argue for a jail sentence instead of probation, and Buys, then 22, got two years in prison.
"Pending sentencing, you should be going to (Alcoholics Anonymous), you should be in therapy, you should be in a program to learn to deal with drinking and driving," Perlin said. "She was doing nothing other than having a good old time."
Santa Barbara defense lawyer Steve Balash said the day he met his client Jessica Binkerd, a recent college graduate charged with a fatal drunken driving crash, he asked if she had a MySpace page. When she said yes, he told her to take it down because he figured it might have pictures that cast her in a bad light.
But she didn't remove the page. And right before Binkerd was sentenced in January 2007, the attorney said he was "blindsided" by a presentencing report from prosecutors that featured photos posted on MySpace after the crash.
One showed Binkerd holding a beer bottle. Others had her wearing a shirt advertising tequila and a belt bearing plastic shot glasses.
Binkerd wasn't doing anything illegal, but Balash said the photos hurt her anyway. She was given more than five years in prison, though the sentence was later shortened for unrelated reasons.
"When you take those pictures like that, it's a hell of an impact," he said.
Rhode Island prosecutors say Lipton was drunk and speeding near his school, Bryant University in Smithfield, in October 2006 when he triggered a three-car collision that left 20-year-old Jade Combies hospitalized for weeks.
Sullivan, the prosecutor, said another victim of the crash gave him copies of photographs from Lipton's Facebook page that were posted after the collision. Sullivan assembled the pictures _ which were posted by someone else but accessible on Lipton's page _ into a PowerPoint presentation at sentencing.
One image shows a smiling Lipton at the Halloween party, clutching cans of the energy drink Red Bull with his arm draped around a young woman in a sorority T-shirt. Above it, Sullivan rhetorically wrote, "Remorseful?"
Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini said the prosecutor's slide show influenced his decision to sentence Lipton.
"I did feel that gave me some indication of how that young man was feeling a short time after a near-fatal accident, that he thought it was appropriate to joke and mock about the possibility of going to prison," the judge said in an interview.
Kevin Bristow, Lipton's attorney, said the photos didn't accurately reflect his client's character or level of remorse, and made it more likely he'd get prison over probation.
"The pictures showed a kid who didn't know what to do two weeks after this accident," Bristow said, adding that Lipton wrote apologetic letters to the victim and her family and was so upset that he left college. "He didn't know how to react."
Still, he uses the incident as an example to his own teenage children to watch what they post online.
"If it shows up under your name you own it," he said, "and you better understand that people look for that stuff."
****
Web Photos Come Back to Bite Defendants
By ERIC TUCKER,
AP
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (July 19) - Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."
In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton's drunken-driving case.
A judge gave Joshua Lipton a two-year prison sentence over a drunken driving charge after the prosecutor uncovered this image of Lipton dressed up in a "Jail Bird" costume two weeks after his accident that nearly killed a woman.
Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.
Online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace have offered crime-solving help to detectives and become a resource for employers vetting job applicants. Now the sites are proving fruitful for prosecutors, who have used damaging Internet photos of defendants to cast doubt on their character during sentencing hearings and argue for harsher punishment.
"Social networking sites are just another way that people say things or do things that come back and haunt them," said Phil Malone, director of the cyberlaw clinic at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The things that people say online or leave online are pretty permanent."
The pictures, when shown at sentencing, not only embarrass defendants but also can make it harder for them to convince a judge that they're remorseful or that their drunken behavior was an aberration. (Of course, the sites are also valuable for defense lawyers looking to dig up dirt to undercut the credibility of a star prosecution witness.)
Prosecutors do not appear to be scouring networking sites while preparing for every sentencing, even though telling photos of criminal defendants are sometimes available in plain sight and accessible under a person's real name. But in cases where they've had reason to suspect incriminating pictures online, or have been tipped off to a particular person's MySpace or Facebook page, the sites have yielded critical character evidence.
"It's not possible to do it in every case," said Darryl Perlin, a senior prosecutor in Santa Barbara County, Calif. "But certain cases, it does become relevant."
Perlin said he was willing to recommend probation for Lara Buys for a 2006 drunken driving crash that killed her passenger _ until he thought to check her MySpace page while preparing for sentencing.
The page featured photos of Buys _ taken after the crash but before sentencing _ holding a glass of wine as well as joking comments about drinking. Perlin used the photos to argue for a jail sentence instead of probation, and Buys, then 22, got two years in prison.
"Pending sentencing, you should be going to (Alcoholics Anonymous), you should be in therapy, you should be in a program to learn to deal with drinking and driving," Perlin said. "She was doing nothing other than having a good old time."
Santa Barbara defense lawyer Steve Balash said the day he met his client Jessica Binkerd, a recent college graduate charged with a fatal drunken driving crash, he asked if she had a MySpace page. When she said yes, he told her to take it down because he figured it might have pictures that cast her in a bad light.
But she didn't remove the page. And right before Binkerd was sentenced in January 2007, the attorney said he was "blindsided" by a presentencing report from prosecutors that featured photos posted on MySpace after the crash.
One showed Binkerd holding a beer bottle. Others had her wearing a shirt advertising tequila and a belt bearing plastic shot glasses.
Binkerd wasn't doing anything illegal, but Balash said the photos hurt her anyway. She was given more than five years in prison, though the sentence was later shortened for unrelated reasons.
"When you take those pictures like that, it's a hell of an impact," he said.
Rhode Island prosecutors say Lipton was drunk and speeding near his school, Bryant University in Smithfield, in October 2006 when he triggered a three-car collision that left 20-year-old Jade Combies hospitalized for weeks.
Sullivan, the prosecutor, said another victim of the crash gave him copies of photographs from Lipton's Facebook page that were posted after the collision. Sullivan assembled the pictures _ which were posted by someone else but accessible on Lipton's page _ into a PowerPoint presentation at sentencing.
One image shows a smiling Lipton at the Halloween party, clutching cans of the energy drink Red Bull with his arm draped around a young woman in a sorority T-shirt. Above it, Sullivan rhetorically wrote, "Remorseful?"
Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini said the prosecutor's slide show influenced his decision to sentence Lipton.
"I did feel that gave me some indication of how that young man was feeling a short time after a near-fatal accident, that he thought it was appropriate to joke and mock about the possibility of going to prison," the judge said in an interview.
Kevin Bristow, Lipton's attorney, said the photos didn't accurately reflect his client's character or level of remorse, and made it more likely he'd get prison over probation.
"The pictures showed a kid who didn't know what to do two weeks after this accident," Bristow said, adding that Lipton wrote apologetic letters to the victim and her family and was so upset that he left college. "He didn't know how to react."
Still, he uses the incident as an example to his own teenage children to watch what they post online.
"If it shows up under your name you own it," he said, "and you better understand that people look for that stuff."
Saturday, July 19, 2008
The JATY
Ya know, this isn't such a bad idea. Doubtful most Americans who'd drive drunk in the first place would own one, but that's the culture we've created here. In Korea? Maybe not so much. The skull and crossbones is a nice touch, too!
JATY DR7200: Breathalyzer and nav...all in one!
Posted Jul 16th 2008 7:02PM by Alex Nunez
This is the JATY DR7200 GPS, and it does a lot more than just tell you where you are and how to get where you're going on that 7-inch screen. You see, it's got an integrated breathalyzer, too, so it'll also tell you whether you should even be trying to get where you're going. Blow "over" and you get a standard BAC readout, a red "OVER" warning, and if that's not enough, a yellow skull and crossbones to drive home the point that, well, you really shouldn't be driving at all. In addition to all that, it supports just about every techno-acronym you can imagine (USB, MP3, DiVX, JPEG, MPEG, etc.), so if you're in no shape to drive, you can at least watch a movie on the thing while you wait it out. Want one? Just run on down to the local electronics store...in Korea.
JATY DR7200: Breathalyzer and nav...all in one!
Posted Jul 16th 2008 7:02PM by Alex Nunez
This is the JATY DR7200 GPS, and it does a lot more than just tell you where you are and how to get where you're going on that 7-inch screen. You see, it's got an integrated breathalyzer, too, so it'll also tell you whether you should even be trying to get where you're going. Blow "over" and you get a standard BAC readout, a red "OVER" warning, and if that's not enough, a yellow skull and crossbones to drive home the point that, well, you really shouldn't be driving at all. In addition to all that, it supports just about every techno-acronym you can imagine (USB, MP3, DiVX, JPEG, MPEG, etc.), so if you're in no shape to drive, you can at least watch a movie on the thing while you wait it out. Want one? Just run on down to the local electronics store...in Korea.
Friday, July 11, 2008
DWI Will Make You Stupid and Poor
Just returned from my stepson's orientation and registration at the University of Florida. One of the sessions for students and parents alike was on alcohol and UF's policy concerning infractions dealing with alcohol.
If you ask people why they're going to college, you'll likely get the answers:
1. To get an education
and
2. To get a good job
Money and smarts – the two biggest reasons people choose to continue their education. While at the alcohol seminar at UF, there was a DWI deterrent I'd never before considered...
If a UF student gets a DWI on campus, he/she is immediately suspended. The semester's classes? Gone. They'll possibly get to start back the following semester.
One thing UF talked about is tracking; i.e., is a student on track in his/her chosen field of study. For instance, if a student is tracking, he/she will have their pre-reqs in order and they're on track to get their diploma in the correct amount of time. Due to how classes are arranged, if one gets a DWI, tracking becomes impossible.
For instance, let's say an engineering student needs to take trig. Trig is only offered in the fall semester (this is just a "for example", folks). If that student is pulling an A in the class and it's two days before the final exam, if the student gets a DWI on campus, BAM! Everything from that semester is gone. Next semester doesn't offer trig. The student will, in all likelihood, now be one year behind. No longer on track, the student will have the double whammy of paying the DWI, increased insurance rates and they now have a black mark on their criminal record which won't be looked on favorably by employers.
College students are known for partying and alcohol consumption. While that reputation is deserved by approx. 20% of college students, the deterrent UF has for combating DWI on its campus is a great, great way to help students stay on track.
If you ask people why they're going to college, you'll likely get the answers:
1. To get an education
and
2. To get a good job
Money and smarts – the two biggest reasons people choose to continue their education. While at the alcohol seminar at UF, there was a DWI deterrent I'd never before considered...
If a UF student gets a DWI on campus, he/she is immediately suspended. The semester's classes? Gone. They'll possibly get to start back the following semester.
One thing UF talked about is tracking; i.e., is a student on track in his/her chosen field of study. For instance, if a student is tracking, he/she will have their pre-reqs in order and they're on track to get their diploma in the correct amount of time. Due to how classes are arranged, if one gets a DWI, tracking becomes impossible.
For instance, let's say an engineering student needs to take trig. Trig is only offered in the fall semester (this is just a "for example", folks). If that student is pulling an A in the class and it's two days before the final exam, if the student gets a DWI on campus, BAM! Everything from that semester is gone. Next semester doesn't offer trig. The student will, in all likelihood, now be one year behind. No longer on track, the student will have the double whammy of paying the DWI, increased insurance rates and they now have a black mark on their criminal record which won't be looked on favorably by employers.
College students are known for partying and alcohol consumption. While that reputation is deserved by approx. 20% of college students, the deterrent UF has for combating DWI on its campus is a great, great way to help students stay on track.
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