Sen. Clinton wants a "study" of Grand Theft Auto and other games and their effects on the children. I have "played" Halo - I played Doom and Quake in grad school, but nothing like the games of today. I didn't have the patience to spend hours understanding what Halo was all about, so I had my buddy put the settings to "kill all and never die" and spent an hour or two blowing the heck out of everything that moved.

Did I understand how to shoot one weapon or another, sure, but I had no idea of what the game was all about.

Enter this opinion by Steven Johnson in the LA Times, and I have to agree with a lot of what he says. At the very least, his ideas are observationally equivalent to what Sen. Clinton claims is going on.

I especially agree with the football story. I played NCAA 2004 on an X-box last year and got roundly trounced. What exactly is a red-dog 44 scat back blue (or whatever the play was called)? American football is a blast to watch (especially my Dawgs!) but it is an extremely complicated game when you are the coach. The intellectual side of games is probably not recognized enough by those who have not played them. Also, when the technology allows us to wage war remotely from six thousand miles away, we will have an Ender's Game generation.