I've often argued, based on the fact that youth and young adult crime rates have been dropping for years, that violent video games do not lead to violence. A new study out shows that young men who play several hours a day show brain activity similar to that of someone engaged in actual violence. This does not, as the article points out, answer the larger question: do violent people tend to gravitate toward such games, or do games make people more violent? I, in response to the "sky is falling" group that sees violent video games leading to our ruin, still believe that young adults have in general an ability to differentiate between real and virtual violence, and to separate their actions on the screen from their actions in real life. Thoughts?

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In other news, the US House, for the third time in a decade, has passed an amendment that would allow Congress to place a ban on flag burning. The last 2 times, the Senate was unable to achieve the two-thirds consensus necessary to send the amendment to the state legislatures. This time, with at least 65 senators seeming to support it (67 are necessary), there is a strong potential for the amendment to pass. Rep. Duke Cunningham, who is already in hot water for potentially illegal real estate dealings in California, thinks people who oppose the amendment are out of touch with the American people. But Rep. Jerrold Nadler of NY has a good reply: "If the flag needs protection at all, it needs protection from members of Congress who value the symbol more than the freedoms that the flag represents." Sept. 11 did change how we lived in small ways represented in big government actions. Yet our lives remain essentially unchanged, and the role of our flag as a symbol of the nation, not of a single ideology, should remain unchanged as well. I hope this bill gets shot down.