Things to be Grateful For: English Dubbing Part Deux

Suck on this.

Things to be Grateful For:

The glorious dubbing in Violence Jack. I swear that this is the single greatest dialog in anime history.

I learned it from Videogames

Sleepy D

Hard to believe but my safer, milder alter ego does get his stuff printed every week in a small town newspaper. I know. What are newspapers right?

I won’t print the name of the paper or the lame ass alias he goes by for his job, as I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. This isn’t going to be a normal type of thing. His writing is too lame for this blog. Not enough T in his A.

Normally they’re way too lame to really post on here. But sometimes, the boy scout does manage to at least cause some noggin scratching. Here’s one such post based off a Popular Science Article on Video games and education.

Are we still stuck on the old belief that videogames do in fact rot your kid’s brain?

According to a recent Popular Science article, maybe not.

The article took a look at an educational collaboration between educators and game-developers in New York.

The results: the games created are fun, holding children’s attention, and helping them retain more knowledge.

Apparently, students are having an easier time learning about integers and fractions while playing the virtual role of a Spartan spy—one possible set up for some of the games played—in Athens, Greece, tasked with breaking a code.

And if you have any worries about the games making your children into unsocial zombies, you can rest them. Children are working together to solve these game problems.

This may be the closest these next few generations get to having an arcade experience.

For an adult gamer like me, there couldn’t be a better idea for our fractured educational system.

It’s a small band-aid to a huge wound that consists of ills related to the social, class, and financial fields. But at least it’s first aid.

If you’ve been following this trend for a while though, this collaboration shouldn’t come as a surprise.

A good portion of my elementary and middle school days consisted of me playing games on the Macs, like Number and Word Munchers. In other words, games that were fun enough to hold my attention, yet still contained enough educational value so that my skills in math and vocabulary would increase. I didn’t even know I was learning anything. I just wanted to help the green dude on my screen eat.

This trend hasn’t confined itself to the classroom either. There have been numerous recent attempts by game companies to capitalize on thinking games. Notably, Nintendo’s DS game, Brain Age comes to mind. Although I haven’t exactly seen it light up on the sales charts, it’s a great reminder of Nintendo branching out to reach every “nongamer” possible.

So I’m sure one has to wonder what arguments support the belief that video games and education are a bad idea.

Some would argue about video/computer game education’s lack of reality. With that I mean, yeah, the games teach and develop some skills, but only in a virtual world. It doesn’t mean that your answers or skills won from the game will necessary work in the real world.

It’s like being tasked to build a plane, while using simple measurements and basic geometric shapes. At its base, a sixth, no, even a fourth grader could do that. But in real life, forget it. There’s way more to building planes than basic measurements and crude geometric shapes.

You have to consider material, finances, break down those crude shapes into a million parts and bits and then figure out how all of that comes together. True, you could just make a game as extensive as that, but not everyone is cut out to build planes.

It’s a rough example, admittedly, but that’s the kind of dilemma the concept faces.

My answer to that however: Are textbook, or even lecture lessons ever really 100 percent applicable for the real world?

I went through four years of college for Journalism and I can tell you simply, that nearly every textbook rule I’ve encountered, so far in my “career,” has either been broken or bended.

Then again, my job isn’t necessarily math based like many others. Math, to me, has always seemed to be less philosophical and much more definite, which is probably why after college algebra, I said goodbye and never looked back.  If you ever want a good show, you should see me try to do advanced math and measurements in my head. It’s like watching a monkey trying to place the correct shapes in the right slots. Bring a sandwich.

Still, I have to believe that not everything is ship shape and direct for engineers and mathematicians. Not everything could be so exact and finite. There have to be some flubs or factors that school didn’t cover.

So the virtual argument doesn’t really mean much to me.

I also don’t believe that it could make the role of teachers obsolete.

Video games should not and would not replace them. Wait, I’m sorry, that was the sound of my gamer heart breaking from that last statement.

All kidding aside, like a textbook, it’s to be used as a tool; an instrument of battle for a war that we, as a nation have been losing.

If we want this nation to become the innovation powerhouse once again, then education is where we need to start. And if this gets kids at least motivated to learn, then why stop it.

It’s only a game. It’s only a way of teaching.

You can take a look at the article for yourself at: http://www.popsci.com/entertainment-amp-gaming/article/2009-12/new-school-teaches-students-through-videogames.

Not bad. Probably needed more time to flesh out the points more, but with newspapers, you’re fighting with space. Also, I would have made it a point to drop a few more swear words, racy jokes, and provided some hot female form to distract readers from just how weak of a writer you are.

For example: Blah blah, joke about monkey poo, blah blah, joke about women in the kitchen:

I'll Chun Your Li! Rowrrr!!!

Boom! Distracting picture. Neva On Time. We’re a classy act folks.

For MLK Day

By Sleepy D

I would imagine that a lot of this would really be said if the late Dr. were alive today. Although, I think he wouldn’t drop N-bombs in his speech. Would it be enough to inspire a huge change, closer to what he envisioned?

Who knows?

I do know that as a people–meaning every f*cker on this planet–we’ve still got a loooooooong way to go. Race relations are not where they need to be. I don’t think I’ll even be alive by the time we start judging and hating on each other on what really matters: religion.

Course I could try to do something to push that change along instead of posting Youtube cartoons on a blog site, but where would that leave my audience? Yep, all two of you.

Things to be Grateful For:

Skee-Lo’s “I Wish.” ‘Nuff said.

Seriously, if you don’t remember this song, and it’s elite beat didn’t cause your feet to go beat street back in the day, then you’re soul already belongs to the devil. Heaven’s got a radio station called WSKLO  99.9, Skee-Lo on the hour, every hour.

And for bonus points:

That’s right two posts from da ‘Lo. Hey, laugh if you want but I want my place in heaven. It was a wild weekend. Drugs were ingested. Hookers were buried. And I’m pretty sure a hungover monkey isn’t legal. Oh it was fun. But legal? Pfffft!