Recent content by jay-ell

Hard-Wired for Gaming Progressive parents have long known that videogames are a great motivator in their kids' lives. But for Jamie Dunston and her son Pearce, gaming is much more than that: It's a way for her to help him overcome some of the most difficult challenges posed by autism. Read...

I've often said that I'd rather my kids spend an hour playing a video game than an hour in front of the television. Now that we as a society have decided that kids can learn from TV shows like Sesame Street, it's time we afforded the same funding and respect to video games that teach...

I actually wrote a different piece a while back about a program at the University of Texas - Dallas center for Brain Health, which has a program that uses Second Life to teach people with Asperger's about social skills in a way very much like what you've described. I had originally included a...

Thanks for the kind words. It was an awesome sight to behold, quite honestly, to watch my kid suddenly understand that the baby was crying for a *reason.* That's about when he stopped covering his ears and screaming when she started to cry, and started pointing at me an instructing me to "Be...

Different people have different degrees of trouble with different kinds of stimuli. My son isn't particularly sensitive to smells, for instance, but some autistic people are. And sensitivity to something can sometimes cause kids to seek that kind of stimuli -- for instance, many autistic...

Hard-Wired for Gaming Progressive parents have long known that videogames are a great motivator in their kids' lives. But for Jamie Dunston and her son Pearce, gaming is much more than that: It's a way for her to help him overcome some of the most difficult challenges posed by autism. Permalink

I've mentioned this in about a dozen other threads, but I named my daughter Hero, and I think that is pretty awesome. Penn Gillette (of Penn and Teller) named his daughter "Moxie CrimeFighter." My spouse went to college with a girl named Heavenly Walker. She was hott. And I...

Fixed that for you.

I chose my avatar ironically. Also, I threw it up there intending to replace it with a decent one later, and never got round to it.

I worked at a company that got bought by GameStop prior to the buyout. The company I worked for was a nice place to work. I had a good manager, my co-workers and I were selected from a pool of applicants to represent a diverse range of games knowledge, and the corporate practices were...

My daughter is my Hero. Literally. Her legal name, on her birth certificate and everything, is Hero. Also, she is mine. We expect big things from that girl. She's only one, but so far, so good. :)

Ann is the singer. Nancy Wilson (her sister) is the guitarist. And she is awesome. Also, someone else already said Liz Phair, and Sheryl Crow is a great guitarist, but people tend to know her as a singer instead. I think there are fewer women guitarists for the same reason there are...

I started gaming as a kid because it was one of the only things I could get my big brother to play with me. (He's 10 years older w/ no siblings in between.) I stuck with it more than he did and married a gamer dude, so I play games with my spouse all the time. When we were dating, we used to...

Sounds right to me. Then again, I'm a housewife/mommy/writer who spends 40 hours a week online, so... Actually, the correct phrase is, "Not now, dear...Someone is WRONG on the INTERNET [http://xkcd.com/386/]." That's right, guys. Every time you troll a message board, some other...

I think the consensus so far has been that there's nothing inherently wrong with virginity, but that certain shallow people will think less of you for it anyway. Personally, as the parent of a daughter, I'm highly pro-virginity. ;)