I own a business and business has been good lately. I have been completely overwhelmed by it which is a good thing, but it has caused me to be less involved in TLF. I assure you that once things slow down in about a month, I will refocus on the site and the the radio show. Please be patient with me and I guarantee that it will be worth it.
Thanks,
SR
Army lures recruits with video games
WSJ | July 28, 2008
GURNEE, Ill. — In the Tweety Bird section of the parking lot at an amusement park here, visitors are trying a new attraction. They jump into Humvees or Black Hawk helicopters and use fake firearms to hunt down “genocidal indigenous forces.” They shoot at huge video screens.
“I like that I got to use a gun!” said 13-year-old Spencer Padgett, after trying the “Virtual Army Experience.” His dad, Scott, from Laporte, Ind., said he wanted his son to gain an appreciation of the sacrifices being made by the Army.
..
The Virtual Army Experience — a traveling exhibit of the U.S. Army — has been touring the country for the past year and a half, stopping at amusement parks, air shows and county fairs. The Army, which collects information from the thousands of people who play the game, says it’s an innovative way to reach a new audience. But critics don’t like the idea of the military using giant videogames as a recruiting tool.
While the Army met its goal of adding 80,000 new soldiers last year, it faces a tough recruiting environment. These days, “parents are less likely to encourage their children to consider military service,” said Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command.
The Virtual Army exhibit is based on a videogame the Army began developing in 1999, after missing recruiting goals. Not only do videogames give the Army a new way to relate to the public, they also present “an opportunity to shape their tastes,” said Col. Casey Wardynski, director of the Army’s Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point.
The Army spent about $9 million building four versions of the Virtual Army Experience, Col. Wardynski said. It cost $9.8 million last year to operate the exhibits. This year, the main exhibits will visit 40 events. The smaller “Delta” version will visit 31 separate events.
It’s catering to the interest of America’s youth,” said Nicholas Mantych, 21, from Genoa City, Wis., who recently tried the Virtual Army game. He suggested another idea the Army could offer players: “They should give them gear and paintball guns.
”
Recent player Miles Cahill, 23, who works at a videogame retailer, said the Army’s game wasn’t as good as other shooter games he’s tried, but it was still fun. He didn’t mind the marketing aspect.
quote:
Vanity Fair contributing editor Alex Shoumatoff was arrested this week after he tried to sneak in to the world famous Bohemian Grove, the exclusive getaway of some of the world’s most powerful men who gather there every year in July for two weeks. See San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross column.
The portly Shoumatoff was ingloriously handcuffed and arrested July 13 for trespassing after only managing to get past the first security checkpoint at the Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, Calif.
Read More
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/16/alex-shoumatoff-emvanity_n_113126.html
Writer/environmental warrior Alex Shoumatoff booked his wife and kids into a Russian River motel Saturday, then drove off to join the merry men inside the Bohemian Grove.
But the New Yorker wasn’t invited, not hardly. Shoumatoff is working on a Vanity Fair story critical of attempts by the Bohemian Club to clear some trees from the gorgeous, 2,700-acre camp near Monte Rio alive right now with the midsummer gathering often called the greatest men’s party on Earth.
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080717/NEWS/807170338
SF Chronicle, July 16, 2008, Matier and Ross column: In the woods: Vanity Fair contributor Alex Shoumatoff faces trespassing charges after apparently trying to sneak into the famous, rich and powerful Bohemian Club’s annual retreat over the weekend.
For more than a century, the club has been hosting its secretive summertime retreats up at the 2,700-acre Bohemian Grove. The party atmosphere, however, has been tempered of late by the club’s
battle with a fourth-generation member, John “Jock” Hooper, who resigned in 2004 over the Bohemian plan to harvest oak and fir trees from its wilderness. The club insists the logging would thin no more than 1.5 percent of its second-growth trees, and that the idea is to protect the grove’s beloved
redwoods from fires like the ones now raging around the state. But Hooper doesn’t buy it, and is fighting the club’s cutting plan before the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. When Hooper enlisted the help of former Harvard classmate Shoumatoff to write about the harvesting controversy, the club fought back by hiring San Francisco PR man Sam Singer - last heard spinning the San Francisco Zoo’s side of the tiger-mauling story - to launch a counterattack. First, Singer branded Hooper as a hypocrite for running a logging operation that cut 5 percent of the conifer trees from a farm he owns in Mendocino County. Next, Singer shot off a letter to Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter,
demanding that Shoumatoff be pulled from the story because of his connection to Hooper.
But Shoumatoff - best known for the Vanity Fair article about mountain gorilla advocate Dian Fossey that eventually became the film “Gorillas in the Mist” - stayed on the story. “Yes, I’m an old friend of Hooper’s,” Shoumatoff wrote to one of Singer’s associates in June. “But I am also a responsible reporter who tries his best to get both sides of the story.” Shoumatoff warned that unless the club’s flacks started cooperating, “readers are going to get the idea that you’re hiding something and you are
going to come off like a bunch of idiots.” Now, however, it’s Shoumatoff who could have some explaining to do after he was nabbed Saturday night by security guards while allegedly trying to sneak
into the grove compound. He was turned over to Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies and held for six
hours on a trespassing charge before posting bail. We tried reaching him for comment at the Northwoods Lodge, across the river from the grove, where he was believed to be holed up in a cabin. He didn’t return our phone call. Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak told us the magazine stands by
Shoumatoff and his continued reporting.
