mental manifestations

Back in Fall 2005, I was taking Written Argument as part of my curriculum at RIT. We had to produce a research paper in which we would take a stance on some topic and argue that. At the time, California Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger just signed a bill that prevents the sales of violent video games to minors. I had been following the politics of this since Summer 2005, but never articulated my opinions until I took this class. I took the stance that (violent) video games do not cause violence in youth. In summary, there are too many social factors that are being ignored to make the claim that violent video games causes youth violence.

The reason why I never posted it until now was because I had been trying to post the text of my paper in one post, and I never was satisfied with the formatting. Just after I finished my paper, I also had to plan some moving details so I could start my job. I just never got around to posting my paper since then.

I hope you enjoy it. I truly put a lot of effort into this paper. E-mail me (matt at mattchan.net) if you want to have a deeper discussion. I can also point you to some books or links if you would also like to read more about this topic.

Download the paper: PDF - 47 KB

This is the reason why Thanksgiving is the only holiday I look forward to.

I had upgraded some components in my computer, but I also needed a new power supply to provide power to the whole thing. Dell computer cases are not the greatest to work with. I had to take a metal saw and literally hack out a big piece of metal just so I could connect my power cable to the back end of the power supply.

Back when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, I would listen to the radio sometimes when I did my homework. Some of the songs were catchy and some weren’t. Anytime my family went to Borders Books & Music, I’d go look at the CDs in the music section. I would just peruse through the aisles looking at the various cover art until I found an artist that I had heard on the radio. I would go through the artist’s discography until I found one that contained a song I had heard on the radio. My next few moments would be spent looking at the tracks and wondering if I should buy the CD or not. I had not heard any of the other artist’s songs before and it seemed silly to buy just one CD for one song and a whole bunch of others I hadn’t heard. I almost always put the CD back into the shelf, and then I would continue on looking for another artist I recognized and repeat the process all over again.

I wanted to have music, but I didn’t want to pay for the songs I didn’t want. The songs I liked came from all different artists. My idea was that kiosks should be set up in Borders (the thought of putting in other places hadn’t occurred to me at the time) where people could scroll through a library of songs, pick the ones they liked, and have those selected put onto a CD. People would be charged just one flat rate price for each custom CD that they created.

It was just an idea at the time.

If only…

I decided to journey into DC yesterday because of the nice, warm weather. I spent 4 hours yesterday walking around DC, and happened upon this statue outside the Federal Trade Commission building.

I’m not sure what it was supposed to be, but I thought it looked like the Incredible Hulk was molesting a horse.

It’s a late Friday night, and I just came up with a crazy idea.

Run image algorithms on all the pictures on Hot or Not and find trends in faces that yield a particular score.

My friend only had one response for me: “Thesis!”

Yes, that is me in a dryer.

Someone has as an agenda.

Under no circumstances should anyone take pictures while playing frisbee.

Take a guess where it hit me.

Don’t try this at home.

Go to college.