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Dave “the hand of ” Munger at Cognitive Daily points to a study on the powerful effects of massive multiplayer online role playing games like World of Warcraft, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot and others :

One type of game — one of the most popular types, in fact — hasn’t been studied nearly as much as the traditional arcade-style game: massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. One of the studies of this type of game seemed to find that players weren’t more aggressive because the games foster cooperation between players.

But we’ve also heard — and seen, with Jim’s game-play, that MMORPGs like World of Warcraft can be more engaging and distracting than other games, sucking away hours and hours in seemingly endless online quests. Even if it turns out these games don’t promote violent behavior, is it possible that they have other detrimental effects?

….Sleep quality was significantly worse in the MMORPG group than the other groups, and the participants said the game interfered with their academics (although their actual academic performance didn’t suffer compared to the other groups). Yet the MMORPG group was significantly more likely than the other groups to say they planned to continue playing the game after the study was complete.

So is this behavior addictive? Smyth doesn’t offer an assessment, but the fact that the MMORPG appears to be negatively impacting several areas of these students’ lives — and that they continue to play on despite this — suggest it might be. But once again, we must be careful when generalizing results such as this. Just one MMORPG was tested, so we can’t say whether these results apply to other games. What’s more, the students clearly were getting some benefits from the game, building an online social network that was valuable to them. Despite these caveats, to me it’s surprising that such dramatic results occurred even when groups were randomly assigned to the games. Maybe nearly anyone could get “hooked.” Which is why I’m not especially interested in getting started.

We’ve known that gaming is a powerful behavioral tool since the early RAND wargaming studies, making MMORPGs a potential delivery system for education and occupational training in the 21st century

I have an op-ed/article up this morning at Pajamas Media on the Culberson-Capuano internet rules dispute:

Congress Debates Muzzling Congressmen Online

….There is certainly a legitimate and longstanding interest in preventing the misuse of federal employees or funds by prohibiting them from having any connection to campaign activities, a point on which Republicans and Democrats can easily agree. Furthermore, Capuano is correct to call the current rules “antiquated” and more restrictive, on paper at least, than his proposals. However, the old rules have been widely ignored by congressmen and have never been enforced, which left members of the House free to post online and engage in virtual interaction as they pleased. Enforcing the new, somewhat milder restrictions, as Capuano intends to do, amounts to a severe regime of prior restraint on speech.

More ominous still would be the precedent of the U.S. government designating “official” external websites – imagine having the power to select “official” newspapers – that would have to hew to House regulations and be as free as possible from political or commercial advertising. Given the ubiquity of blogads, most blogs, bulletin boards, and discussion forums would be shut out of the conversation with our nation’s elected officials. Essentially, Capuano is demanding that the internet adapt itself to the House of Representatives instead of the House adapting to the reality of the internet.

Read the rest here.

In addition to the posts on this issue this weekend by Matt Stoller and Mark Tapscott, my friend Lexington Green points to this new piece calling for a bipartisan coalition by Patrick Ruffini at The Next Right.

Cheryl Rofer of Whirledview has called for a blog tank on the strategic question of countries with just a few nuclear weapons:

Blog Tank: National Strategy for a Few Nuclear Weapons

Herman Kahn worked out the strategies for massive nuclear exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Both the United States and Russia are now disassembling their nuclear weapons, rather than building more. The nations that have tens or hundreds of nuclear weapons are looking fairly peaceful lately; even India and Pakistan seem to have achieved their own version of the balance of terror. Terrorists don’t seem to have any nukes hidden away yet.

So the danger is that a nation will break out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty with a few nukes. This is a very different problem from the one Kahn addressed.

The last country to face an analogous situation was the United States at the end of World War II. By the time it had tested an implosion device at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and dropped weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was out of atomic bombs and fissionable materials. Truman bluffed for the several years it took to build some tens of nuclear weapons.

That was, of course, when no other nations had nuclear weapons.

Andy at Nuclear Mangoes reminded me over the weekend of my irritation that nobody has addressed the strategy of one to a few nuclear weapons. That’s a different problem than something in the range of 5-10, which is a different problem from a higher number. None of these have been addressed systematically for today’s world.

So let’s have a blog tank. Anyone who wants to participate should post a scenario (or scenarios) on their blog or, if you don’t have a blog, in the comments to this post. Here is the problem I want to address:

What strategies are available to a country with fissionable material sufficient for 1-5 nuclear weapons, some of which may be assembled? Take into account probable responses, and assume some sort of rationality on the holders of these weapons and material. You may specifically refer to Iran and North Korea, or any other nation, or make the scenario(s) more general. Flesh out the scenario with some support.

I envision a next step after the scenarios have been presented, perhaps a mutual critique, but I am open to suggestions on that next step. Let’s keep this first round to scenario development.

I’ll pull things together, as I did the last time around. I won’t try to reconcile one scenario with another, although I may note similarities.

Deadline for scenarios: July 18.

This is a great idea. I see that Shane has already responded but I will look more closely at his post here on Sunday.

This may cause my friend Jeremy some dismay, but he gets a hat tip for this link:

Democrat Michael Capuano Tries to Stop Members of Congress from Using the Internet

Speaker Pelosi weighed in on the matter:

“We share the goal of modernizing the antiquated franking regulations to address the rapidly changing realities of communications in the internet age. Like many other Members, I have a blog, use YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Digg, and other new media to communicate with constituents, and I believe they are vital tools toward increasing transparency and accountability.”

So Pelosi is good on this stuff, as she should be.  She has an exceptionally talented New Media staff who can do great work because there are no Franking Restrictions on leadership offices.  The right is largely correct on the substance of their claims, though they are making some partisan accusations that aren’t grounded in a real understanding the problem.  Soren Dayton at the Next Right asserts that Pelosi is violating the rules through her use of social media, because he didn’t know that leadership offices aren’t subjected to the rules.  What is actually going on is that Pelosi’s excellent use of blogging, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Digg is unwittingly providing an extremely successful pilot for how members and committees can and should use the web to interact.

I had not realized that either and I thank Matt Stoller for the information in his post. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi uses her considerable authority to push through better, common sense, rules for the House to allow rank and file members to have the online presence that she has created, I’ll be more than happy to retract my previous remarks and apologize.

I thought the internet rules issue for the House of Representatives might be dying down when Rep. Capuano issued a heated denial of intending to censor or restrict access to social media. Unfortunately, that denial contrasts 180 degrees with what Rep. Culberson claimed was said by Capuano at a meeting on the subject:

“Cong Capuano confirmed to me today that rule will limit Member video posts to approved sites w approved content w disclaimer &  He said text/blogs/Twitter social media sites next. My analysis correct: we could only post approved content on approved sites w disclaimer Twitter would be prohibited to Congressmen because We the People are free to post political comments recommending who to vote for or against”

We are now down to the point where one congressman or the other can only be a liar. It should be evident as to whom within a few days.

If you are inclined to believe, as am I, that the Democratic Party leadership fears that their longterm electoral and legislative success depends upon restoring at least some semblance of the liberal dominance over public debate that prevailed in the pre-internet, pre-talk radio, pre-cable TV days by rejiggering the rules of the game, reviving the “fairness doctrine” and initiating regulations on political speech online – then you might wish to check out Let Our Congress Tweet.