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Gaming For Good

For the last several weeks it had been impossible to tune in to the news and not hear updates on the Israel-Lebanon conflict. As an uneducated listener who has no real understanding of the issues involved, inundated by factoids and analysis by media spin doctors, you wonder why and how it helps for you to stay informed.

Most 24/7 news channels seem to revel in making the common person feel that they should be grateful for having some semblance of a "normal" life in a world that had been overtaken by warring terrorists, natural calamities of epic proportions and HIV pandemics in a burgeoning catalog of gloom of doom. Watching a well-heeled news reader, straining every botoxed nerve on her face, to read her litany of death and despair on a HDTV plasma TV perched high up on a wall in a public place has something sinister and Orwellian about it.

That gamers should take a serious turn and try to save the world "one game at a time" sure feels like the only piece of empowering and good news I have heard in a while.

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