New Research Shows Fundamental Flaw in 1-10 Scaling!

Recent statistical analysis of the classic 1-10 scale of attractiveness has revealed a potentially game changing idea. Chief researcher of made up things and known truth speaker Jonathan Tollestrup made a shocking discovery while trying to pay attention to a particularly dry lecture last week. The discovery that absolutely no one uses the numbers one, two or three when asked to describe the attractiveness of a particular person. "It's baffling to think that absolutely no one seems to think of people as drop dead ugly." Eilidh Ward of shamanistic fame told The Critical Canuck. "Like come on, some people just don't got it, you know?"

With this new revelation Mr. Tollestrup has announced that a new system will be put into place to replace the fundamentally broken arbitrary system of describing attractiveness to your bros. The proposed changes would remove the numbers one, two and three from the system but leave the rest of scale intact. The alteration will take effect precisely 26 days from today in order to secure a smooth transition between the two distinctly different systems.

During an exclusive interview yesterday with the famed Chief researcher, it was revealed to The Critical Canuck that even with the delay the transition may be difficult for some. "Beginning the scale at four and ending at ten will completely alter our understanding of who is and is not a total bombshell. Those who thought they were reasonably attractive at a seven will have to learn to live with the fact that they are actually just  an average looking person now." After finishing the press conference researcher Tollestrup was greeted by hundreds of grateful people who were looking forward to being objectified in a more accurate manner.

Several critics of this new system have already noted that with these changes that there would be a forty percent decrease in available options for people to describe how good-looking another person is. Resident expert on rating people Kim Passey expressed her faith in the creative nature of those who use simple numbers to describe the attractiveness of a person. She even went on the record to state, "They are the most original and clever people I've ever met, I'm sure they will think of something. Maybe decimals?" Critics would quickly reply to Ms. Passey's comment noting how it made a lot of sense and that they had no further concerns.

Analysts of human attractiveness are anticipating a surge in reports of attractiveness as the new archaic and pointless system replaces the old archaic and pointless system.

A Quick Response to "Video Games vs The Brain"

A good friend of mine recently wrote a post on her blog titled, "Video Games vs The Brain" wherein she talked about a study conducted by a professor Akio Mori. In the study Professor Mori brought in subjects that fit into one of four categories: normal, (Those who rarely played games) visual, (Those who are avid TV viewers) half-video game, (Those who played played less than fifteen hours a week) and video game (Those who played games at least two hours a day.) Professor Mori then measured the brain waves of the subjects and found that those in the visual and video game group did not have much activity in the areas of the brain related to creativity and emotion. Shay (The author of the blog) Then extrapolated some of her thoughts on the results of the study and about excessive gaming and television watching in general.

Now before I get into my response I would like to say a couple of things, first off being that I quite enjoyed this post. It's an interesting discussion and I thinks its good to have discussion about it. Secondly, can we be real for a minute and mention how absolutely awful having the font, size, and colour of the text change seemingly at random throughout the post is? I love you Shay, you are a good person, but seriously that just looks so bad. Just painful to read. I mean I think I get why you changed font the first time as you transitioned from writing about the study to your thoughts, but it's 100% unnecessary. It makes it look like you just copy pasted a paragraph from somewhere else onto your post and it looks bad. Now that we got that out of the way, let's actually talk about what the words said an not the font.

There are already a bunch of Facebook comments that highlight the major problems with this post. The study doesn't say what games people were playing which could have a dramatic affect on what kind of brain activity the subject will show. Imagine a hypothetical situation where the game being played is pong. Everyone knows that game right? You move a paddle up or down to hit a ball back and forth. There is nothing else to it, you could sit Leonardo DaVinci down with pong and he's not going to show off creative thoughts because there isn't anything to that game. That's just one hypothetical situation though. The other problem with the post highlighted by Facebook comments was that it was a study of correlation and not causation. A study like the one conducted by Professor Mori simply can't offer itself as evidence that excessive games or T.V. stop your creative thinking, it can only be evidence that a relationship between the two does exist.

Another problem that I did not see mentioned was the fact that it was only one study. That's a problem. This study might show a relationship between excessive gaming and a lack of beta waves, (Which are thought to be related to creative thinking and emotion) but another study might show something completely different. I'm not saying that another study will, but leaving that question unanswered erodes the credibility of an argument. Also don't think for a second that this isn't an argument being made because it is.

Now I only have one more thing I want to bash at in this post, the last paragraph made me cringe. No word of a lie. To quote, "If you answered the same as I'm doing today, Then I'm sorry, but you are living your life not to the fullest, and that's where regrets come form." Not only does the wording feel awkward, (living your life not to the fullest? Really? How about but you are not living life to its fullest. Don't lead you reader into thinking your going to say one thing and then turn it around on them like that, feels weird to read.) especially since in the previous paragraph she stated to take things in moderation, and now she's saying it would be good to cut it out completely. The real problem though is that it's an absolute statement. What if I meet my long lost brother and the only thing we have in common is playing games? I'd say playing some with him would still be well within living life to the fullest, and I know that's a really extreme example, but you expose yourself to problems like that when you make absolute statements about subjective things. Honestly I was thinking this was actually a great post until the end of it, now I'm forced to call it just "good."

Alright I'm done, hate train has departed. There are definitely flaws with the reasoning in the post, but I applaud Shay for taking the time to open up a discussion about this. It's nice to see discussion in comments on Facebook rather than just a mass of likes. Keep it up Shay.

Just a reminder of some of the really great things about games.