Call of Duty turns Jamie Vardy into a ticking timebomb

Big news in the Daily Mail that Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy is “gunning down rivals” by playing Call of Duty on his PlayStation.

Those rivals had best watch out. The Daily Mail told us Call of Duty turns you into a murderer – maybe:

He shoots! He shoot! He keeps on shooting until the game is over and his wife call him down for dinner…

Anorak

Posted: 7th, March 2016 | In: Back pages, Key Posts, Reviews, Sports, Tabloids, Technology | Comment

Call Of Duty And The Chinese Rare Earths Monopoly

I’VE just realised that I was interviewed about the Call of Duty game back a while. They wanted to know how realistic was the plot point in the game where the Chinese exploited their monopoly of rare earths production.

Complete bollocks was my simple response. Here’s the set up:

Blockbuster video game Black Ops II last year enthralled gamers, with its premise that the world could be brought to the brink of war over China’s dominance of rare earth minerals (REM).

The premise is based on the scarcity of these minerals which are used for, among many other things, powerful batteries, camera lenses, MRI scanners, modern electronics, such as iPods, TVs and computers, and for renewable energies, such as solar panels and wind turbines, meaning they are integral to modern life.

Although obviously far fetched, at its inception Black Op II’s narrative didn’t seem so implausible. For many years, China had been responsible for producing 97% of all REMs. In recent years it has been known to use its monopoly of the industry as a geopolitical weapon, and to drive up the price of REMs. However, more recently China’s dominance has diminished and in November last year, the country closed its largest mine, Baotou Steel mine, in a bid to maintain falling prices.

As a direct result of China’s tactics, the exact opposite to Black Op II’s narrative has occurred – the world hasn’t fought China for its REM riches, but found its own.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 6th, November 2013 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment

Sun says ‘fantastic’ Call of Duty drove Adam Lanza to kill

COME “inside the dark, lonely world of maniac Adam Lanza”.

He’s the killer everyone knew.

Lanza is the killer who “lived in [a] windowless lair playing violent video games”.

Lair? Lanza had no criminal record. He had never shot anyone before he murdered so many at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Surrounded by posters of weapons, he plotted massacre

Did he? Was it a plot? Or was it more spontaneous? The guns were his mothers. All were legal.

Peter Samson has more:

SCHOOL massacre maniac Adam Lanza fuelled his violent fantasies while hidden away in a windowless bunker plastered with posters of guns and tanks.

Young man has posted of tanks and guns. And was it a bunker or a basement?

bunker: a protective embankment or dugout; especially : a fortified chamber mostly below ground often built of reinforced concrete and provided with embrasures

basement: the part of a building that is wholly or partly below ground level

Anorak

Posted: 18th, December 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (4)

Coroner implicates Call of Duty in Teenager’s suicide

THE inquest into the death of Callum Jordan Green, 14, is a bit odd. The teenager from Stockport took his own life.

The Manchester Evening News looks at the words of Coroner John Pollard. The paper notes that before he died, Callum Green had played Call of Duty. The MEN says that the Coroner “did not blame the game for the fact that Callum, of Keston Crescent, Brinnington, Stockport, hanged himself”.

Anorak

Posted: 6th, September 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment