Video Games Do Not Kill

Doctors Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson speak with X-Play about their book, Grand Theft Childhood.

In their 2008 book, Grand Theft Childhood, Harvard Medical School psychiatrists Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson warn about video games. The gist of their warning: don't jump to conclusions.

Video games have a dual reputation as harmless, exciting fun and as home training systems for mass murderers. Dr Kutner and Dr Olson's book shows that neither characterisation is true across the board, although one is much closer to the truth.

Using a $US1.5 million ($A1.56 million) grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, part of the US Justice Department, the two set out to explore what kinds of video games children aged 12 to 14 play, how they play them, why they play them, and what relationships there might be between game habits and other behaviour.

The couple, who are also the parents of a video game-playing teenage son, surveyed more than 1200 US school students aged 12-14 and 500 of their parents.

Their survey did not directly ask about serious criminal behaviour, in part to avoid children incriminating themselves, but their book uses statistics published by the Justice Department to conclude that "videogame popularity and real-world youth violence have been moving in opposite directions.

Violent juvenile crime in the US reached a peak in 1993 and has been declining ever since."

Mass shootings at schools are the ultimate juvenile crime nightmare, but Grand Theft Childhood cites a US Secret Service study concluding that only "one in eight school shooters showed any interest in violent video games".

Shooting holes in gaming theories

The Birthday Party Online

Here's a selection of videos from The Birthday Party, one of the best things to come out of Australia in the last 220 years.


Fears of Gun

The Birthday Party Lyrics



She's Hit, Birthday Party at the Hacienda Club in 1983


Release the Bats, (live hacienda 1982)


Hamlet Pow Pow, birthday party live at brixton ace in 1982


Junkyard, Live @ The Seaview Ballroom, February 1982


Deep in the Woods


Mutiny in Heaven, in Electric Ballroom back in 1984 by Nick Cave with the Cavemen(Adamson,Race,Bargeld,Harvey).

The Long Cigarette by Rafael Rozendaal

http://www.newrafael.com

More inovative video art at Club Internet:
The second exhibition of ambitious online gallery Club Internet, "Oracle" explores
the spiritual qualities of cyberspace. Travess Smalley, tntet and Damon Zucconi are
among the participating artists who tease otherworldly properties out of our
disembodied relationship to the products of virtual navigation. Club Internet's
unusual design bolsters the exhibition theme: its main page is stripped of all but a
small toolbar and magic wand, and the artworks are presented, as much as possible,
outside of their original contexts. Clicking the magic wand or refreshing the page
will load another artwork, but because this process is random, each path through
"Oracle" is different from the last. This navigational opacity and generative
randomness imbues the online gallery with the qualitie! Club Internet

Knowledge for the Land

A animation about the importance of securing traditional knowledge for the benefit of community and country. Special thanks to communities involved and University of Technology - Sydney. Created by Luke Stanford. Story told by Victor Steffensen.
The Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways was developed from the aspirations of Indigenous Elders, to preserve and recognise Traditional Indigenous Knowledge. Through a grass roots methodology, we are connecting Indigenous groups to recognise and strengthen Traditional Knowledge to benefit Environment and Community well being, for all present and the future generations.

Nak Tarhu

Nak Tarhu is an instrument created by Australian luthier Peter Biffin. It is based on the Cretan Lyra but it has 5 playing strings instead of 3 and it has 12 long sympathetic strings.

Syd, London 1967 and Pink Floyd

Extraits du film Tonite Let's All Make Love In London de Peter Whitehead montrant l'intégralité des deux morceaux de Pink Floyd : Interstellar Overdrive et l'inédit Nick's Boogie. Ils ont été enregistrés en studio les 11 & 12 janvier 1967. On voit aussi quelques extraits de concert à l'UFO Club et au 14 hour Techinicolour Dream (enregistré à l'Alexandra Palace en avril 1967).


Memories of Syd Barrett. Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006) was an English singer, songwriter, guitarist and artist. He is most remembered as a founding member of British progressive rock band Pink Floyd, providing major musical and stylistic direction in their early work, although he left the group in 1968 amidst speculations of mental illness exacerbated by heavy drug use.
He was active as a rock musician for about seven years, recording two albums with Pink Floyd and two solo albums before going into self-imposed seclusion lasting more than thirty years. His post–rock band life was as an artist and keen gardener, ending with his death in 2006, and a number of biographies have been written about him since the 1980s. During his withdrawal from public life there were numerous speculative, although largely appreciative works about him, most notably his former band Pink Floyd's 1975 album Wish You Were Here.

The Tick: A Justice Sandwich (no topping necessary)

The Tick - Season 1, Episode 1 The Tick is assigned as guardian to The City, meets Arthur, discusses entomology, sees a blimp, and monologues.



The Tick - Season 1, Episode 7 The Tick fights for the right to his own name while accidentally foiling The-Mad-Bomber-What-Bombs-At-Midnight's not so subtle plans.

The Tick is a fictional character, an absurdist spoof of comic book superheroes. Created by cartoonist Ben Edlund, the character debuted as a newsletter mascot in 1986, was spun off into an independent comic-book series in 1988, and gained mainstream popularity through an animated TV series on Fox Broadcasting in 1994. A short-lived live-action TV series, video game and various merchandise have also been based on the character.
In 1986, 18-year-old cartoonist Ben Edlund created The Tick as a mascot for a newsletter of the Brockton, Massachusetts store, New England Comics, where he was a customer. Edlund expanded this into stories, beginning with the three-page tale "The Tick" New England Comics Newsletter #14-15 (July-Aug. to Sept.-Oct. 1986), in which the hero escapes from a mental institution. The character became popular and the store financed a black-and-white comic book series, The Tick, beginning with a first issue cover-dated June 1988 and subsequently reprinted at least nine times through the next decade, including later editions with additional content. The Tick #4 (April 1989) introduced sidekick Arthur.

fire swimmer fire starter black magic devil eye

PLAY AT THE SAME TIME

Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein in Discussion

Author, Activist and Former California State Senator Tom Hayden talks in depth with the author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, about the state of the fourth branch of government: journalists. Both Hayden and Klein became serious journalists in college, and it was during that time that both experienced their defining moment. When Tom Hayden interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr at the 1960 DNC in Los Angeles, he asked questions while imagining the headline, "Tom Hayden Interviews MLK," but by the time he wrote the article he knew there were more important things in the world than personal glory. Naomi Klein rebelled from her liberal, feminist mother until Mark Lepine gunned down fourteen women in what became known as the Montreal Massacre. It was then she realized people were dying for the beliefs her mother fought for, and that realization awakened the activist within her. After both events, Hayden and Klein dedicated their lives to telling the truth about the world, and doing everything in their power to not use subjects like "they," but use "we" instead. It is that distinction that defines their journalism to this day.

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band Videos

Captain Beefheart and Magic Band. Maybe 1967? Playing Electicity and Sure 'Nuff 'n Yes I Do from the album Safe as Milk.

Don Van Vliet (born Donald Glen Vliet on January 15, 1941, in Glendale, California, U.S.) is an American musician and visual artist, best known by the pseudonym Captain Beefheart. His musical work was mainly conducted with a rotating assembly of musicians called The Magic Band, which was active from the mid-1960s through to the early 1980s. Van Vliet was chiefly a singer and harmonica player, occasionally playing noisy, untrained free jazz-influenced saxophone and keyboards. His compositions are characterized by their odd mixtures of shifting time signatures and by their surreal lyrics, while Van Vliet himself is noted for his dictatorial approach to his musicians and for his enigmatic relationship with the public.
Van Vliet joined the newly formed Magic Band in 1965, quickly taking over as bandleader. Their early output was rooted in blues and rock music, but Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band (as they were called, collectively) gradually adopted a more experimental approach. 1969 saw the release of their best known album, Trout Mask Replica, which was produced by Van Vliet's childhood friend Frank Zappa and is today regarded by some as a challenging but groundbreaking and influential masterpiece. Van Vliet released several more albums throughout the 1970s, but his group was beset by shifting line-ups and a lack of commercial success. Towards the end of that decade, he settled with a group of younger musicians and received acclaim for his three final albums, released between 1978 and 1982. Van Vliet's legacy is one of limited commercial success, but nonetheless one with a devoted following. Despite this lack of commercial success, his influence on musicians, especially those of the punk and new wave genres, has been described as "incalculable".
Since the end of his musical career around 1982, Van Vliet has made few public appearances, preferring a quiet life in his northern Humboldt County, California home where he has concentrated on a career in painting. His interest in art dates back to a childhood talent for sculpting, and his work—employing what has been described as a "neo-primitive abstract-expressionist aesthetic" —has received international recognition. Several of Van Vliet's former band members recently reformed as a group, and toured as The Magic Band from 2003 to 2006.




Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, Live in Paris.



Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, 1972.



Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, Live in Belgium 1969.