For the record, as computer generated imagery continues to improve, this scenario becomes more and more likely. Eventually I expect there will be a point that the only difference between a car flipping off a car carrier into a bus-load of UN peacekeepers in a game and the same scene on the even news is that one of them is tragic and the other is effing awesome. Personally, I enjoy violent video games as much as to be expected by a person in my demographic, but I also believe it necessary to occasionally refamiliarize myself with some I.R.L. violence just to keep perspective.
For instance, I watched a television program this week that detailed the exploits of the french police’s bomb-disposal unit. Apparently they spend the majority of their year recovering undetonated weapons reported by civilians. These weapons are almost all german, and over seventy years old. They estimate that despite handling several thousand cases per year, it will still take another fifty years to sift all the bombs out of their countryside.
There was one segment where a woman had found a small object in her yard, thinking she had just run her lawn mower over a rock. When she realized it wasn’t an ordinary rock, she called the bomb-disposal people and they identified the object as a World War II era hand grenade. Then two officers and mother suddenly sprang into action as a curious four year-old went to touch the device. The officers loaded the weapon into their truck and drove it off to be detonated some miles away. Chilling.
Ja.