For those of you who are actually interested in how my research paper is going, I’m including my works cited here.

Works Cited

Acland, Charles R. Youth, Murder, Spectacle: the Cultural Politics of "Youth in Crisis" Boulder: Westview, 1994. Google Books. Google. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.

Albrecht, Bob, and Greg Stafford. The Adventurer’s Handbook: a Guide to Role-playing Games. Reston, VA: Reston Pub., 1984. Print.

Blackmon, Wayne D. "Dungeons and Dragons: The Use of a Fantasy Game in the Psychotherapeutic Treatment of a Young Adult." American Journal of Psychotherapy 48.4 (1994): 624-32. Academic Search Elite. Web. 17 Feb. 2011.

Carney, Brian M. "Mind Games: Dungeons & Dragons Immersed Players in Another World." Wall Street Journal 7 Mar. 2008, Eastern ed.: W13. Print.

Carter, Robert, and David Lester. "Personalities Of Players Of Dungeons And Dragons." Psychological Reports 82.1 (1998): 182. Print.

Fine, Gary Alan. Shared Fantasy: Role-playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002. Print.

Gilsdorf, Ethan. Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: an Epic Quest for Reality among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2009. Print.

Hamilton, Robert A. "GAME IS TARGET OF FIGHT IN PUTNAM." New York Times 26 May 1985: 4. Newspaper Source. Web. 16 Feb. 2011.

Harmon, Dan, and Andrew Guest. "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons." Community. Dir. Joe Russo. Prod. Chris McKenna. NBC. WNBC, New York, New York, 3 Feb. 2011. Hulu.com. NBCUniversal, 4 Feb. 2011. Web. 20 Feb. 2011.

Hoffmann, Frank W., and William G. Bailey. Sports & Recreation Fads. New York: Haworth, 1991. Google Books. Google. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.

Lancaster, Kurt. "Do Role-Playing Games Promote Crime, Satanism and Suicide among Players as Critics Claim?" The Journal of Popular Culture 28.2 (1994): 67-79. Academic Search Elite. Web. 16 Feb. 2011.

Lawler, Edward J., and Barry Markovsky. Social Psychology of Groups: a Reader. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1993. Print.

Richardson, James T., Joel Best, and David G. Bromley. The Satanism Scare. New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1991. Google Books. Google. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.

Rouse, Richard. Game Design: Theory & Practice. 2nd ed. Plano, TX: Wordware Pub., 2005. Google Books. Google. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.

Rubin, Lawrence C. Using Superheroes in Counseling and Play Therapy. New York: Springer Pub., 2007. Print.

Schick, Lawrence. Heroic Worlds: a History and Guide to Role-playing Games. Buffalo: Prometheus, 1991. Print.

Schwartz, John. "Dungeons & Dragons Prison Ban Upheld." New York Times 27 Jan. 2010, National ed.: A16. The New York Times Company, 26 Jan. 2010. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.

Singer v. Raemisch. United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 25 Jan. 2010. United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit. United States Department of Justice, 25 Jan. 2010. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.

Svitavsky, William L. "Geek Culture: An Annotated Interdisciplinary Bibliography." Reconstruction: An Interdisciplinary Culture Studies Community. EServer. Web. 21 Feb. 2011.

Tindale, R. Scott, Linda Heath, John Edwards, Emil J. Posavac, Fred B. Bryant, Yolanda Suarez-Balcazar, Eaaron Henderson-King, and Judith Myers, eds. Theory and Research on Small Groups. Vol. 4. New York: Kluwer Academic, 2002. Social Psychological Applications to Social Issues. NetLibrary. Web. 24 Feb. 2011.

Dan Hughes wrote on 1/28/2011 at 10:18 AM

I was billed a $39.00 to my credit card.  I never authorized a charge.  Reverse it.  You can email me or contact me at [phone number]

Classmates “Reba” wrote on 1/28/2011 at 11:49 PM

Hello Classmates Member,
Thank you for contacting Classmates Member Care. We’re more than happy to assist you.

**YOUR ACTION REQUIRED–PLEASE FOLLOW THE STEPS BELOW TO AVOID FURTHER BILLING**

We’re sorry to hear that you don’t wish to continue as a Classmates Gold member. While purchasing your Gold membership, you were provided with information just above the "Submit Payment" button explaining that all memberships are enrolled in our automatic renewal program. This automated billing process prevents any interruption in your Gold membership benefits. Through your acceptance of the Gold membership offer, you authorized us to continue to charge your credit card to extend your membership until you took the necessary steps to remove yourself from this program.

If you wish to discontinue your paid Gold membership after the current term, you may remove yourself from the automatic renewal program any time prior to your renewal date.

To change or confirm your renewal option, simply follow these steps:

1. Click Account at the top or bottom of any Classmates.com page.
2. Enter your password. (If you don’t remember your password, click Forgot your password? to submit a password request.)
3. Under Membership Information, click your Renewal Option (Automatic).
4. You’ll arrive at a page that will ask if you want to cancel the automatic renewal option. Click YES.
5. Confirm that your Renewal Option is now listed as Manual.

By changing your renewal option to manual, your account will not be charged again. You’ll continue to receive full Gold membership benefits until the end of the current term. At that time, your Gold membership will simply expire and revert to free status (unless you choose to manually renew). As a free member, you’ll still be listed on the Classmates website and receive email notifications about your account activity.

Dan Hughes wrote on 1/28/2011 at 11:51 PM

I never submitted a payment.  I did not submit payment for a $39.00 charge.   I never authorized it.

Remove it.  Contact me for the credit card information.

~Dan

Classmates “Reba” wrote on 1/29/2011 at 5:50 AM

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for your reply.

The issue you have described occurs when you’ve signed up for both a Gold membership and a free membership. As a result, if you’re logged in to your free membership when attempting to use Gold member features, you will see prompts to pay even though you already own a Gold membership.
To make sure you’re able to use your Gold member benefits, we’ve removed your duplicate free registration.
Please log in to the Classmates.com website using your email address or registration number, as well as your password. Keep in mind that you may need to first log out of your free membership by clicking Sign Out at the top or bottom of any page.

If you’ve forgotten or misplaced your password, click Forgot your Password? on the login page and follow the instructions provided. Keep in mind that the name and email address you enter must exactly match the information listed on your Classmates membership. Please make sure you’re not using any email filtering programs that would block our ability to reply.

For security purposes, please send me the last four digits of the Visa credit card you used to pay for your Gold membership.
Please reply to this message at your earliest convenience with the requested information.

Thank you in advance for your time. I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Classmates.com

Dan Hughes wrote on 1/29/2011 at 10:57 AM

This is crazy!  I don’t have a gold membership, and don’t want one, that’s what I keep trying to tell you!  I have never given you my credit card!  I only had one account, tied to this email address, which I looked at your free service and then NEVER put in my card number because I decided I didn’t want it!  I’ve never used anything else, or another account, and I never wanted anything else.  If you have other accounts with my name and my credit card number, than they are fraudulent, and I demand you refund my card!  I do not want your services!  On top of it, I want you to remove whatever accounts my name are one from your system, fraudulent or not!

The card in reference ends in [XXXX].

This needs to be resolved, either through you removing the fradulent charge, or my bank doing the same.

Dan Hughes

Classmates “Michelle” wrote on 1/30/2011 at 4:19 AM

Hello Daniel,

Thank you for your reply. I apologize if this matter has caused you any frustration.

If you have received a charge from Classmates.com but have never paid for a Gold membership on our website, please contact your bank or credit card company to resolve this matter. Your bank or credit card company may contact us if any further information is required.

Michelle
Member Care Department

Dan Hughes wrote on 1/30/2011 at 12:27 PM

I have already reported it.

What I do need from you is to delete my account (including the fraudulent one you accepted my credit card for) from your systems so you do not charge me again next year.

Please reply that this is done so if you do charge me next year, I have something to show you.

Also, I am disappointed that at a report of fraudulent usage, you refuse to refund the charge.  I am reporting this practice to the BBB, and will include this experience in my next newspaper column.

I await your reply,

Dan Hughes

Classmates “Nathan” wrote on 1/31/2011 at 2:02 AM

Hello Daniel,

Thank you for your reply. I apologize if this matter has caused you any frustration.

Our records confirm that you have an active  12 Month Gold membership for  $39.00. Your membership is currently paid through Jan 28, 2012.

Click Account, located at the top or bottom of any Classmates page, to review your membership term and renewal option.

Note: If you’re encountering any problems accessing your Gold member benefits, it may be necessary to log out by clicking Sign Out at the top or bottom of any Classmates page. Then, simply log back in and you should have full access to your Gold membership.

Please be assured that your membership is no longer enrolled in the automatic renewal program and you will not be charged again. Your Gold membership will expire and revert to FREE status on  Jan 28, 2012. After your membership reverts to free status, you’ll still be listed on Classmates and receive email notifications about your account activity.
We make efforts to ensure our members understand the terms of the membership they are purchasing by providing information about the automatic renewal program directly on the credit card payment page, right above the "Submit Payment" button. On the same page, it states that payment for a Gold membership is non-refundable.
The automatic renewal program and no refund policy are also explained in the Classmates Terms of Service, which you agreed to when you clicked the "Submit Payment" button to finish your membership payment.
We hope you’ll take some time to explore and enjoy Classmates.com and get the most out of your Gold member benefits. We’re constantly updating the site to make it more valuable to you and more fun to use.

Nathan
Member Care Department

Dan Hughes wrote on 1/31/2011 at 5:47 AM

I very clearly asked you to *delete* my information, not *deactivate* it.  I stand by the stance that whatever account has my credit card on it is fraudulent, and even though your company deems that as not your problem, and want to keep the money even though it was reported fraudulent, I don’t even know the login name or password of this fraudulent account!  Classmates.com company policy is apparently to allow fraudulent activity, keeping money it steals in this way.

DELETE the accounts.  I await confirmation.

Dan Hughes

Classmates “Venita” wrote on 2/1/2011 at 1:14 AM

Hello Daniel,

Thank you for your reply. I apologize if this matter has caused you any frustration.

I understand your concerns about your Classmates Gold membership. I have reviewed your request and will make an exception to our policy and process a refund for the time remaining on your Gold membership term, in the amount of$38.68.
Your credit will be processed by Classmates immediately. Please note that the timing of your credit will depend on your financial institution.
Additionally, as you requested, I have removed your membership from our site. Please disregard any residual emails that you may receive from Classmates over the next 10 days or so. These are emails which have already been scheduled and queued for delivery to your email address.

Venita
Member Care Department Supervisor

Hence, when instant messaging became the hot thing (read: America Online), my friends and I communicated with complete sentences.  Why?  Because of the stigma that came with misspelling: you looked like a damned idiot if you couldn’t spell correctly or misused punctuation.

For the many of you to whom this is a novel concept:

 

Complete Sentences: Sentences that begin with a capital letter, have a complete subject and predicate that agree properly, uses and ends with proper punctuation, and has each word spelled correctly.

Fast forward to today.  The introduction of cell phones and text messaging, followed by tweeting, has furthered the trend of “shortening” words.  It isn’t a bad thing, per se; you’re trying to get a message across in the fewest characters possible, especially when you get charged extra by your service provider if you have to take multiple messages to do it.

PS: Don’t get me started on the whole “cell phone carriers rape us on transmitting data called ‘text messages’ by charging us ridiculous amounts to send BYTES of information” thing.  It’s just too painful.

However, as I found when I had to take a mandatory composition class in college last semester, this is having a horrible effect on students of today.  I claim that at least half, if not more, of word usage by high school students is via text message or instant messaging.  This means that students spend time practicing how to do it wrong.  Then they get to college, and they can’t spell or use apostrophes correctly. 

Seriously, I had at least two classmates who were so confused as to when to use apostrophes that they somehow figured that every single word that ends in an s got an apostrophe: There are many egg’s, He had several girl’s, I worship Jesu’s.  Stuff like that.  It got bad when they had to write long sentences: The Jona’s brother’s have million’s of fan’s in many countrie’s acros’s the world.

Here lies the problem that the students do not understand: this is normal to them.  They grew up (and we let them—parents, I’m looking at you!) using this type of communication, and that’s what they know.  Everybody does it.  They do not understand that everyone who might ever read their writing (bosses, hiring personnel, colleges) are going to look at their skills and wonder how they made it to age 20 and still not be able to spell. 

Twenty years of your life gone, and you cannot write your native language.  You should be ashamed!

I find apostrophes are the worst of all time.  Before dropping letters to fit a sentence into 160 characters, apostrophes can be dropped, and it still sounds like the way we would say it.  This allows for people who cannot spell to still get the appropriate message from the text—most of the time—by saying it aloud.  The same thing goes for end-of-sentence punctuation.  So, if you think spelling is bad because they practice it wrong, punctuation is horrible because they NEVER PRACTICE IT AT ALL.

So yes, in closing, yes, if you are in college, and you still cannot spell, and can still turn in horrible papers with all the tools available to you (online grammar sites, dictionaries, even f*cking spell check), then yes, I consider you less intelligent than the people who came before you at that age who could.  Because every one of us who wants to hire you thinks that spelling is what *normal people* can do.  *Experts* do wonderful things with grammar and sentence structure, but *normal people* can at least spell.  To us, you look absolutely terrible.

Oh, and one last PS:  Sometime in the past couple months I saw one friend post to another that someone she was instant messaging with told her to stop using end of sentence punctuation because it made her sound pretentious.  You, sir, are an example of what is wrong with this world. 

WARNING.  This post contains spoilers for Tron: Legacy, and probably for the original Tron as well.  If you haven’t seen the original Tron, well, then I’m afraid it just isn’t going to work out between us.  I’m sure you’ll find someone who loves the same things you do.

WTF.

The graphics in Tron: Legacy are nothing to shake a stick at.  They’re really quite good.  The first scene with the updated Space Paranoids truly captured my heart as a Tron fan.  The lightcycle battles were everything I wanted them to be and more.  The lightgliders and lightbuggy were totally cool (probably not their real names, but I don’t care).  However, while utilizing the latest and greatest in graphic technology, the plot was lacking.

The movie begins with some backstory to fill us in on Sam Flynn, Kevin Flynn’s son.  Jeff Bridges is an old fart now, so the choice to computer animate a 1989 Kevin Flynn talking to his seven-year-old Sam was an interesting choice.  There was a bit of a disconnect there, as even the best visual effects cannot make a computer-generated character look like real life, but I understood why they did it; it would have been even worse to have current Jeff Bridges acting like his 1989 self.  Unfortunately, the director is depending upon your knowledge of the original Tron—set in 1982, before I was born—to understand this.  The young woman who sat next to me at the theatre actually leaned over and asked “Why does he look fake?”  Since a computer animated Bridges-as-Clu stars as the main villain, I can see how this alienates audiences who may not have seen the original Tron—one character computer animated while all the others are live action.

Other than the graphics and decent opening, which included a visit to the now-defunct Flynn’s arcade, the rest of the movie failed to live up to my expectations.  Even Flynn’s arcade is nothing more than an Easter egg; new viewers were probably bored mindless.  There was some possible intrigue with the titular character, Tron, having been somehow corrupted, but other than a single moment of revelation followed by Tron’s “rebooting” from orange to white, we never get to see what became of him.  This causes problems on two levels.  First, those having watched Tron before are left sorely disappointed as they watch the entire movie as this cloaked character with the familiar Tron logo on his chest goes around doing horrible things only to not get to see the situation resolved.  Second, those who have not seen Tron before do not realize this is a character until the old Kevin Flynn names him as someone important.  Unfortunately, the audience is left confused as the movie never moves beyond that.

The page thing is bogus, and obviously a forced plot point.  Alan receives a page from a defunct phone number from his long lost friend, Kevin Flynn, on a pager he decided to apparently keep for twenty years.  When he finally receives a clue about his friend, he goes  to Sam Flynn and hands him the keys to Flynn’s arcade—which he also apparently kept for twenty years.  Then he leaves, completely uncaring as to what happens.  It makes the opening feel flat and forced.

We’re also very lucky that Sam Flynn is an obviously trained daredevil, parachuting from buildings and possessing inhuman skills with a motorcycle.  These are precisely the skills he will need in the Grid, and he just happens to be blessed with them.  He’s also a skilled computer hacker, but that part we can probably assume based on his lineage.  However, pulling up the list of previously issued commands and reentering the last one to try to understand what his dad was doing was the one logical thing that made sense.  Much better than “Oh, look, a laser, I’ll bet you that I somehow know this laser thing will take me to meet my dad!”  Given the way the rest of the opening was set, I was totally prepared for it, and was pleasantly surprised.

The whole “do nothing” idea was absolutely dreadful.  It was the biggest cop-out for why Kevin Flynn—the Administrator of the Grid who has Jedi-like powers over the environment—decided to not do a damn thing for twenty years.  Speaking of twenty years, according to the original Tron movie, long stretches of time in the digital world was no more than seconds in the real world.  Kevin Flynn spent twenty real-world years in the digital world, which should have been equivalent to thousands upon thousands of years.  If I may say so, Kevin seems to have aged REALLY well.

What really made me give up on the movie is when the audience is introduced to the lightcycle that Kevin Flynn himself has programmed.  It was said to be the “fastest thing on the Grid.”  When Sam stole it to head back to the Grid, I was looking forward to see what it could do.  Then Sam parked it.  And gave it to a random Program to distract the guards.  Then it was captured.  The end.  Wow.  How awesome was that.  It should not have even been mentioned at all: let people assume it was the original bike from the first movie.  Then we would not have felt so disappointed when Sam just gave it up.  We know what the old bike can do; it is just an Easter egg.  A lightcycle custom made by Kevin Flynn? That should have been something to see.

After all of this, I just have to say the story of Tron: Legacy is just not worth it.  If you watched the original Tron, this one is a treat to see how the Grid has changed.  But even you will be disappointed with how the story plays out, especially with Tron’s story.  If you did not watch the original Tron, then the special effects are all that is in this one, and maybe worth a Red Box rental later.

When I’m at my computer, it’s not a big deal.  I can copy and paste each individual post into Google Translate and manually translate them one by one.  I try when I can, but when they’re all different languages, one-by-one is the only way to do it… frankly I don’t feel like it a lot.  More often than not, I end up just hiding all the ones in my feed that aren’t English to make room for other posts.

It’s even worse on my phone.  I have an Android phone, which has awesome Facebook integration, however, you cannot copy and paste from the Facebook app.  Even if you could, then I’d need to boot up the browser, navigate to the page, paste into the browser…. complete pain in the ass.  So those posts get hidden even faster on my phone.

It got pretty bad; one guy posts in Mandarin ONLY.  He’s a great guy, but he posted often enough that I ended up hiding his entire feed. 

So recently, while reading one of these posts, I had an epiphany: there needs to be a way to automatically translate these things, from Facebook’s side.

I’m not talking a web plug-in, like Google Translate; Google Translate can only detect one language on the screen and translate it, not a good situation when you have five or six different languages showing.  Also, it does not affect the feed itself… even if there was a web plug-in to translate it before it displayed on your computer screen, that doesn’t change the information being handed out to mobile devices; it is still in a foreign language.

What we need is a feature from Facebook itself.  A setting that can either be activated by the poster or the friend.  For example, if I choose English as my primary language, and someone else chose Dutch as theirs, then Facebook should give me the option to automatically translate the text of those feeds into English.  And since automatic translation isn’t perfect, you just need the little label on it saying “Translated from …” just like the little icons that tell you how they posted to Facebook, and then you can ask the person directly to translate if the automatic translation butchers it beyond meaning.  The technology exists, it just needs to be implemented.

Just a thought.

As ghetto as it looks… it works, and it was a marked improvement over our previous equipment.  I record because I have a strong voice, and I’ve always wanted to podcast and stuff, but I never really got the chance to.  Besides, I’d much rather write. 

(I still giggle when I see this stuff though.)

1. I have the right to judge my own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon myself.
2. I have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying my behavior.
3. I have the right to judge if I am responsible for finding solutions to other people’s problems.
4. I have the right to change my mind.
5. I have the right to make mistakes—and be responsible for them.
6. I have the right to say, “I don’t know.”
7. I have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them.
8. I have the right to be illogical in making decisions.
9. I have the right to say, “I don’t understand.”
10. I have the right to say, “I don’t care.”

I have the right to say no, without feeling guilty.