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Undoubtedly gambling, like other addictions, depends on a complicated mixture of brain chemistry, environment and socialisation. Howard Shaffer, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, notes that the rate of pathological gambling in America has remained relatively constant for the past 35 years, despite a huge expansion in the opportunities on offer. There was a spike in the late 1990s but levels have dropped since then. Dr Shaffer draws a parallel with a classic virus-infection curve: high at the beginning as those most susceptible fall ill, but gradually tailing off as people adapt. |
✖ Via The Economist: “The risk instinct. Why do people bet?” June 8th, 2010 |
• Aug 04, 2010 link notes tagged:
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gambling
money
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loss
sociology
psychiatry
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Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and his partner Choi Mi-sun, 25, fed their three-month-old baby only on visits home between 12-hour sessions at a neighbourhood internet cafe, where they were raising an avatar daughter in a Second-Life-style game called Prius online, police said. Leaving their real daughter at their home in a suburb of Seoul to fend for herself, the pair, who were unemployed, spent hours role-playing in the virtual reality game, which allows users to choose a career and friends, granting them offspring as a reward for passing a certain level. The pair became obsessed with nurturing their virtual daughter, called Anima, but neglected their real daughter, who was not named. Eventually, the couple returned home after one 12-hour session in September to find the child dead and called police. The pair were arrested on Friday after an autopsy showed that the baby died from prolonged malnutrition. |
✖ Via Telegraph.co.uk: “Korean couple let baby starve to death while caring for virtual child” Mar. 5th, 2010 |
• Mar 15, 2010 link notes tagged:
technology
communication
kids
parent
family
Internet
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death
existence
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I’ve been watching with bemused interest as US geeks (apparently 120.000 of them, although I’d take any initial figures with a large grain of salt if I were you) rushed to pre-order their iPads and, deprived of the thrill of actually using it until it arrives, gushed forth on the details of their purchase and reasons thereof as if they were boasting about the pedigree of a puppy that is yet to be weaned and handed to them in a little basket. |
✖ Via The Tao of Mac: “Undercurrent” Mar. 13th, 2010 The Tao of Mac is Rui Carmo’s blog: “I’m someone with a Systems Engineering degree, a decade and a half of overexposure to the Internet, and (horror of horrors to the uninitiated), Marketing experience – as well as social graces that allow me to mediate between geeks and “regular” folk. I’ve pretty much done it all where it comes to the telco world, having been immersed in Wi-Fi, 3G (UMTS) and IP-related stuff at a major GSM operator for several years (ten, actually, going on eleven at the time of this writing).”(more) |
• Mar 13, 2010 link notes tagged:
technology
communication
addiction
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