How can men turn things around?

Maybe I take too much of my belief system from "The Millionaire Next Door" -- and my kids are going to hate me for it in 10-15 years -- but those researchers made a pretty compelling case that parental assistance to adult children ultimately held those adult children back, and it was a pattern that held across all income and education levels.

 

Given that the book is highly correlated with my belief system, it seems odd to me that I've still never read it. One of these days...

 

So, let me see if I have this straight. If I don't believe in God and remain single, I'm part of the immaturity problem?

Man, this writer's a total doodyhead ...

 

Know what makes someone really empowered? Owning other people as personal property and having them do your work for you.

 

I agree with whoever said the 18-24 year olds skew the video games statistic. I played a lot of Madden, NCAA football in high school, among other games. I still played multiple sports and went out to parties ... etc.

In college I had a lot more free time and spent a large chunk of it playing Halo with my roommates. I would say I played a decent amount more video games in college than in high school. I still graduated, went to parties and had a social life.

I don't see why video games are inherently bad. Can they become addictive and people throw away their lives doing it too much? Of course but that is true for most hobbies.

 

I know it's easy to pick on that kid (particularly because of the way he came across in that article), but he might not necessarily have been wrong to turn down a $40K/year job if his skill set was such that he could earn more in another job.

I took the first job I was offered out of college at a weekly, rather than pounding the pavement a little longer and trying to get in at a daily. Looking back on it, I believe that decision probably set me back five years in my career. It took me a while to shake the stigma that daily editors often attach to weekly papers.

I think I would have served my career better to keep working part-time at the daily I was at (and the restaurant I was at) and building up some more clips to get a job at another daily than to have accepted the job at the weekly. I've made progress in the last few years finally, but I'm quite sure I'd be farther along my career path by now had I turned down that job. And I say that as someone who enjoyed the hell out of my time at the weekly.

Yes, the kid may have been a douche, but sometimes the first opportunity isn't necessarily the best opportunity.

 

Gamers cured AIDS last week.

 

How are we defining video games? The advent of the Web/app casual game (Angry Birds, Farmville, Bejeweled) puts a form of the video game before almost every demographic. And the Wii was marketed as a family/non-traditional gamer console, broadening the base of consumers further.

It'd be a little different if 40-year-old men were trolling the video arcades, playing Zaxxon and listening to Pat Benatar because they can't bear to deal with 2011.

 

Here's the thing with a number like this 85% - I'm assuming that includes even those who moved back home for a few weeks or months and then moved out once they found a job. Once again this is anecdotal, but I went back home for the summer and hated it most of the time. I couldn't wait to get a job and move out and I ended up actually planning to move before I nailed down a job. Of the 100+ people I know more than a year out of college (and in this age range), only one lives with his parents and that's so he can pay off his student loans. Most of the rest live in cities a good distance away from their parents.

 

Hell is for children.

 

I own a Wii and have been known to play Angry Birds on my phone. Am I a gamer?

I am just ecstatic that my kids have no interest in video games. 10 times out of 10 they'd rather be outside and during the winter, we have basketball hoops in the basement and play T-ball down there.

They have some games for the Wii, but they're barely touched.

We were going to the local amusement park over the summer and my oldest wanted to invite one of his friends and the kid said that he'd rather go home and play video games and invited my kid over. My son declined.

To each their own...