jr conlin's ink stained banana

Recently (well, for relative values of "recent", but that's not the point), i was listening to a RadioLab show on stress. One of the segments dealt with how rats deal with stressful situations. Researchers subjected the rats to a fairly stressful environment and then observed that there were four ways that rats could reduce their stress levels.

1. Gnawing on wood
2. Thinking they're in control (give them a useless tool they think controls the stress).
3. Provide them a tiny dog to kick
4. Let them beat up another rat

Ok, i made the third one up mostly because i couldn't remember the third stress release mechanism for rats and partly because i could fully imagine a rat kicking some chiuhauha across it's cage.

Still, that fourth one (the beating up another rat), makes a fair bit of sense to me. If nothing else, it explains why First Person Shooters are so danged popular. It gives one the chance to completely ruin the virtual day of hordes of anonymous individuals which will not result in charges and an unwantedly familiar bunkmate named "Peaches". Heck, i've popped in the demo of Crysis multiple times as of late just for the opportunity of beating up computer generated minions by the score. And i do admit, afterwards, i've got a lot less stress. Well, that's before i start swearing at the lack of aiming assist that results in my second shots going far of the mark and the fact that the AIs apparently solved their aim problems a while ago, but that's also beside the point.

As far as i'm concerned, yay for needlessly aggressive, mindlessly violent video games!

So much more rewarding than real life carnage.

Plus, less rats.