Healthy Smoking!

An article in today's Sydney Morning Herald details a opinion piece in the Jakarta Post written by a board member of the Victor Chang Foundation.

The piece is controversial because it suggests that smoking can be healthy for you, you can read the Herald's write up about it here

What’s awesome about this story is that it proves that Indonesia is still not under government control and, unlike Australia, is NOT a Nanny state!

Sure the message is wrong, but if you’re stupid enough to believe claims like this then I’d like to put you in touch with a Nigerian prince who needs your credit card details in order to launder his money!

Later on in the article we get two cents worth from yet another lobby group - this one is called Action on Smoking and Health (A.S.H. geddit!) you know - I gotta start my own lobby group because this is clearly the growth industry in this country at the moment.

Atkinsons in the 80's

While gamers here in Australia have issues with politicians using violent videogames as a scapegoat for societies ills (that's right boat people - you've got the night off!) and while anyone with a passing interest in the whole 'R18+ rating for games' affair will have more than a passing interest in tonight's SA election, it's interesting to look at how they dealt with it (some 16 years ago) in America when video games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap went from the gaming press to the tabloid headlines with their salacious and graphic violence.

1UP's Ray Barnholt went and reviewed C-SPAN (think A-PAC) footage of the US Senate hearings on Video Game violence.

Check it out - Things I Learned From the 1993 Game Violence Senate Hearing - it's an interesting read - particularly for the way that Nintendo aggressively clung to the notion that video games were only for kids, a philosophy that almost brought them undone for the two succeeding generations.