Found the below this morning.  Short but good read.

Violent games: Unreal means just that

With excitement about the forthcoming Unreal Tournament III building and other chart-topping games like Call Of Duty 4 doing incredibly well, the question of whether you can pick up real battle skills from these games - and what effect that has on a gamer - is back on the agenda. I'm still on the fence about the effects of violence, but a painful experience shattered any illusion that I was learning real-world skills.

Several years ago I worked in an office full of twenty-something geeks. We managed to network all of our computers together so we could play the original Unreal Tournament against each other. Unreal is a first person shooter (an FPS as the kids say), where you pick up big guns and try to kill everybody else or just the other team, depending on what style of game you are playing. We ended up playing this every lunchtime and every evening after work for a couple of months as obsession took hold.

One of the people I worked with had been a Marine before he went on to the natural next thing of selling online ads. You would expect somebody that previously had a career in the art of killing would be fantastic at a computer game that was all about guns. He was terrible, really terrible. You would find him in a corner looking the wrong way while you crept up on him and 'fragged' his character. He once managed to kill himself with the sniper rifle, a feat that none of the rest of us could reproduce, even when we tried.

We mocked him about being being so very bad at Unreal depite having been in the Marines. One day this changed: the day a load of us went to play paintball. This fellow managed to show a large number of us that computer games are definitely not real and nor do they give you real-world abilities. Many of us believed that the hours spent playing Unreal would give us the advantage in what is essentially a live version of the game. They didn't, and the paintballs welts served as a reminder of two important lessons. One: game skills do not equal real skills. Two: never mock an ex-Marine. The very name of Unreal Tournament should have given us a clue.

Posted by David Hutchinson on February 20, 2008 at 05:01 PM |

Mousetrap Technology - Times Online - WBLG: Violent games: Unreal means just that

Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin laughing it up - with a gun.  This illustrates what is wrong with the "guns are wrong" crowd... they cant hold them properly or with the respect deserved.    LOL

Seriously, sometimes gun ban types cant think beyond themselves...  instead project their experience (or lack of it) onto the rest of us and assume WE wouldnt know better.

Source: Caption the photo - Nola.com
Source: Malkin
Related: Nagin in contempt

This guy decides he is more important than the rest of us.  Parked in three spots no less.  Where? Jln 10/1

For lunch today we went to "Restoran Kanna Curry House" @ Jalan 10/1 in PJ.  Both of us ordered Banana Leaf.  Wasn't bad, but not great either with price being on the high side.  What they did well was the fried fish and pepper chicken.  With two teas and an ice-cream soda, our total for both of us was RM28.  Service was ok, no complaints, but have had better for the same money.

Serving method was a little different than prior BL's at other places.  The curry choices are standard but they place the containers on the table and you serve yourself.  I chose to do a 90/10 of Chicken/Fish Curry.

Another blogger was pretty happy with the other outlet in Section 17:
Kanna Curry House by tankiasu

Overall, I give this a 3/5

How can one come to these conclusions?  I find it odd.  Read more via the link.

Sen. Kerry Blames Tornados on Global Warming
Former Democratic presidential nominee blames 'intense storms' that have killed more than 50 on climate change.
 By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
2/6/2008 5:07:05 PM

“And insurance companies are beginning to look at this issue and understand this is related to the intensity of storms that is related to the warming of the earth" - Kerry

Sen. Kerry Blames Tornados on Global Warming