March 7, 2010
Creepy Bodybuilding in Russia
via 2leep.com latest links on 3/7/10
Creepy Bodybuilding in Russia It may seem strange, but according to the author of these photos, some Russian bodybuilders look like this. This one was spotted on the lake shore when he got for some swimming fun.
more...
Betting On The Oscars? Google Has A Super Simple Docs Template To Use.
Tonight is the 82nd annual Academy Awards. Some people watch the show for the movies. Some watch it for the glamor. And some, watch it to gamble. And Google is making that easier than ever.While the show is almost always way too long, one way to get into it is to have an Oscar pool, where everyone picks who they think will win in each category. Google has set up a special Google Docs template that allows you to easily create this pool and send it to all your friends. It's so simple, that you can even set it up to be filled out right within an email.When you send the email to a friend, they'll be asked to enter their name, and then simply select who they think will be the winner in each category. Google has already populated all of this data in the template, so there's really nothing more for you to do. When they send this information back, it will be imported into a Google Spreadsheet, so you can compare the data from all your friends. You can also see a more visual "summary" of the data.Categories such as "Best Short Film (Live Action)" also ensure that this can be a pretty fun drinking game, as well. You have a few hours til the show, get picking.CrunchBase InformationGoogle DocsInformation provided by CrunchBase
Absolutely unreal and creative surreal photography by Hermin Abramovitch
9:55 AM (15 minutes ago)
from Design You Trust. World's Most Famous Social Inspiration. by phogph
Absolutely unreal and creative surreal photography by Hermin Abramovitch, talented photographer from Israel.
Photography by Hermin Abramovitch
Creative Illustrations by Federico Bebber
from Design You Trust. World's Most Famous Social Inspiration. by phogph
Federico Bebber was born in 1974 in Udine, Italy. Since 1998 he has been creating digital art. He uses digital tools based on photography
Glenn Danzig wants you to have some cake…guess who made...
Glenn Danzig wants you to have some cake…guess who made...
from http://juliasegal.tumblr.com/
2 people liked this
Glenn Danzig wants you to have some cake…guess who made it? Yeah, his mother.
NSFW: Hey, America! Our draconian copyright law could kick your draconian co...
via TechCrunch by Paul Carr on 3/7/10
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the DMCA.
On the one hand, as an author, I like that it gives me a way to stop illegal copies of my work being distributed in the US, so ensuring that I can continue to make a living without having to get a proper job. On the other hand, as an occasional journalist, I hate that it can also be used by trigger-happy lawyers to prevent certain embarrassing documents entering the public domain.
Thus conflicted, it was with some trepidation that I received news from the old country that Gordon Brown’s government is getting ready to enact its very own version of the DMCA. Called the Digital Economy Bill (DEB), the new statute aims – amongst other things – to halt the rising tide of intellectual property theft on the Internet. But unlike the DMCA, its reach won’t be limited to national borders: any site anywhere in the world that’s accessible from the UK needs to obey it of it or else it’s liable to find itself blocked from the entire country. I’m not kidding, this is China-level enforcement.
The bill has now been through the House of Commons (the starting point for all statutes) and the House of Lords (our second law-making chamber). Along the way it has been tweaked and plucked, with various clauses added and removed – but, as it makes its way back to the Commons for a final vote, here in a nut are its key clauses:
Firstly, if the law passes, ISPs will be obliged to keep track of all allegations of illegal file-sharing made by copyright owners. There complaints will be used to produce an list of “persistent offenders” (subscribers who had received more than, say, 50 complaints about them) which will be made available on request to the copyright owners. The list will be anonymised, with subscribers identified only by a reference number, but copyright owners can then apply to the British courts to subpoena the names and addresses of the subscribers involved. Copyright owners can then take legal action directly, claiming substantial damages for each violation. The government is also able to take action: demanding that ISPs cut off internet access from households identified as persistent offenders.
A second – and even more controversial – clause was bolted on by members of the House of Lords in response to the claim that over 35% of copyright breaches occur not through P2P sharing, but rather through media hosts like YouTube and file locker services like Rapidshare. The new amendment will give the courts the power to demand that British ISPs block access to any site that knowingly and unlawfully hosts copyright material. That’s not just sites hosted in the UK but any site anywhere in the world. As with the DMCA, the ISP won’t be liable until they are notified of the illegal content (the ’safe harbor’ defence) providing they then take immediate steps to block the sites hosting them. If, however, the ISPs refuse to act, they will be liable to the full legal costs of the copyright owner. But unlike the DMCA, the amended bill contains absolutely no penalties for copyright owners who file bogus or spurious claims. The effects are about as chilling as can be: it is in the copyright owners’ interests to make as many claims as they like, and in the ISP’s interests to immediately block every site they’re notified of in order to avoid potentially huge legal costs.
Opponents of the bill point out that most cases will never come to court as ISPs will roll over immediately, as they frequently do under DMCA in the US. But the opponents don’t stop there. Hell, they don’t really stop anywhere. Between the amended blocking clause which could, in theory, see sites like YouTube blocked from the UK – and the potential for having one’s entire house disconnected from the web, the DEB has come in from a veritable gale of criticism, much of it vented right here in the blogosphere. Who’d have thunk it?
TechCrunch’s own Devin Coldewey notes that the “persistent offenders” list won’t just affect domestic file-sharers. Internet cafes, hotels and anywhere else that offers public wi-fi access could find themselves taken offline if their customers are found to be swapping copyright files. If anything, these public access points are even more at risk as it doesn’t take many teenagers using your cafe to rack up 50 copyright violations: this despite there being no way for the establishments to police what their customers are doing online. As Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow put it, almost entirely without hyperbole, “UK Digital Economy Bill will wipe out indie WiFi hotspots in libraries, unis, cafes“
In fact Doctorow is one of the bill’s harshest critics, writing numerous posts about its dangers. Not only is he vehemently opposed to the persistent offenders clause but he also rails against the site-blocking amendment, arguing that it will essentially ban file lockers from the UK, even when much of the content hosted on them is perfectly lawful. In response to Doctorow and his ilk, thousands of UK web users have signed petitions opposing the bill. Even members of parliament have come out to publicly attack the proposed measures – as Tom Watson MP told me on Twitter: “Enshrining net filtering at ISP level scares me half to death…. Law has to have a starting point. This isn’t it. Copyright reform for the internet age should be Step One. Rip it up. Start again.”
A clusterfuck, then. A total shit show, even more draconian than the DMCA and even more packed to the gills with chilling effects. There’s an election coming up in the UK and the government is apparently anxious that the law be pushed through before then, but to do so would be a travesty – instead the bill should be scrapped and revisited in the next parliament.
Or at least that was my first thought. Then I actually read the bill.
And, you know what, it’s actually not that bad.
For a start, the first point of contention – the compilation of a persistent offenders list, and the potential banning of them from accessing the Internet – isn’t quite as unfair as it sounds. Despite Doctorow’s claim that “your entire family [can] be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial”, there are actually multiple points at which evidence comes into play, and the accused file-swapper is given a chance to defend themselves. The bill requires the creation of an independent tribunal body to hear claims of unfairness arising from the new laws, and alleged infringers have not one but two rights of appeal to the tribunal. With each alleged breach, the new law demands that the ISP send a letter to the subscriber putting the allegations and the evidence to them.
Only once a significant number of breaches have been alledged (the drafters of the bill suggest 50) will the subscriber be added to the persistent offenders list. Again, they will be notified. Only at this point can the copyright owner appeal to the court – using a law that has been around for 36 years – to get the name and address of the offender. Even then, though, they won’t be taken to court. Instead, the copyright owner has to send the subscriber yet another letter (this will be their 52nd) warning them that legal action is imminent if they don’t stop. It’s only then that legal action will be taken, leading to a possible fine and – only at the extreme end of the scale – their Internet access being disconnected.
The second point of contention – the blocking of file-sharing sites – is still pretty bad, but again it’s not quite what some commentators [*cough* Cory *cough*] suggest with headlines like “Lords seek to ban web-lockers (YouSendIt, etc) in the UK“. Yes, the courts will have the power to require ISPs to block sites that egregiously host copyrighted files. But they can only do so if the site involved has refused to remove the copyrighted files – a last resort against foreign file lockers who ignore British court injunctions. More importantly it’s also a power that the British courts have had since the 2002 E-Commerce Directive Regulations (with ISP’s being similarly liable for inaction): the new legislation simply creates a DMCA-style process for making take-down requests easier to issue.
After several hours of reading – not just the proposed new law but also all of the existing copyright law, plus the current World Intellectual Property Organisation Treaty (the UK is a signatory) and also hundreds of pages of discussion around all of the above – a few things became clear…
For one thing, many of those opposing the bill don’t seem to be opposed to the bill itself so much as they’re opposed to the entire notion of copyright law, particularly when it’s used by “greedy record companies” or “rich recording artists”. As one commenter put it on the Guardian: “If you want to be solely a ‘recording artist’ and find you’ve been caught short – tough. No one owes you a living. You’ve been rendered obsolete by technology (not me) and you either adapt or fade away like so many other industries.” The only copyright law that people like that will accept is one that lets them steal whatever they like.
Far be it from me to suggest that Cory Doctorow has an anti-copyright agenda, but there’s no doubt he’s the world’s leading proponent of the ‘give everything away free and reap the tangential rewards’ model of intellectual property protection. Creative Commons might work perfectly for a man who makes his living writing and speaking about how he gives things away free, but it’s not always the answer for musicians, authors and filmmakers who don’t have that particular sideline. And I say that as an author who just gave his last book away under a Creative Commons license and who isn’t going to go broke any time soon.
Whatever Doctorow’s biases, headlines like “UK Digital Economy Bill will wipe out indie WiFi hotspots in libraries, unis, cafes” or “Leaked UK government plan to create ‘Pirate Finder General’ with power to appoint militias, create laws” do nothing to encourage rational debate. In fact, they’re curiously reminiscent of “Obamacare will kill grandma” claims from Republicans in the US. Why debate facts when you can drive people to your way of thinking through scary headlines?
And yet, shrill objections aside, it’s equally clear that the Digital Economy Bill has its fair share of potential problems. There’s not a huge amount of new law in the bill, but there are a whole bunch of new processes – new takedown notices, persistent offender lists etc – all of which will need to work properly from day one. In the British government’s haste to rush it through before the upcoming election, there’s a huge risk of passing a bad statute which will prove impossible to enforce.
Most clear of all though is that, beyond a general call to “scrap the bill and start again” (again: paging the Republicans), none of the opponents of the bill are suggesting a credible alternative. For all of our fears of “chilling effects” the fact is that the Internet is shitting all over the intellectual property rights of the UK creative industries (industries which account for 7.9% of the nation’s GDP). Existing law offers almost all of the protections required by copyright owners, but it’s too slow and costly to enforce in the face of widespread online infringement. A shake-up of the enforcement process is much needed – not just to protect fat cat record companies, but also to ensure the livelihoods of thousands of musicians, authors, filmmakers, photographers, artists and the rest who contribute to our cultural landscape. To those people, the effects of an online copyright free-for-all are just as chilling. If the DEB isn’t the right bill , then it is beholden on those attacking it to suggest an alternative.
Here’s mine:
1) My parents run a business that offers free wi-fi to their customers. I know it’s impossible for them to act as copyright police and so, alarmed by the proposed bill, they’ll likely choose to close down their wi-fi hotspots. To avoid that, the law needs to distinguish between domestic and business internet users when it comes to the persistent infringers clause. For domestic users, the 50-strikes and you’re out clause – and the disconnection threat – should stand: it’s a powerful deterrent, and there are plenty of points at which householders can appeal. For businesses and public wi-fi providers, the disconnection threat should be dropped entirely – it’s clearly a disproportionate punishment – but the fine should remain. In both cases, though, the burden should rest on the copyright owner to prove complicity in the infringement. Domestically, this is as simple as proving multiple breaches from the same IP address – there is a duty on the homeowner to lock down their wi-fi and to know what is happening under their roof, especially after receiving multiple notifications. For businesses, though, the copyright owner should face the (almost impossible) task of showing that the business owner is knowingly permitting copyright breaches on their premises. They’ll basically have to send private detectives round and catch the owner in the act – something only worth doing in extreme cases.
2) The current site-blocking amendment should be dropped entirely. Instead it should be replaced with a virtual carbon copy (quelle irony) of the DMCA’s takedown procedures, but with even more severe punishments for copyright owners who file spurious claims. If an alleged infringer files a counter-notice but the copyright owner decides not to then pursue legal action, the former should be immediately entitled to claim damages against the latter, set at a fixed amount (say £250 – a little under $400) for every day each affected file was offline. In the case of entire sites being blocked, these damages could be enormous. The result: copyright owners will have a costly disincentive against filing spurious claims.
3) Finally, and most importantly, the bill should be abandoned until the next parliament. Rushing through legislation is almost never a good idea – and it’s not like it’s going to be a vote winner, either for this government or the next one. With the full lobbying force of the creative industries behind a new law, there’s virtually no chance that it won’t be passed in the next twelve months so MPs should take the next few months to revise it, to consult with experts, to explain it to critics and generally to ensure that everything that can be done to make it fair has been done.
The UK’s creative industries generate £112.5 billion in revenue for the British economy. The Digital Economy Bill should be passed, and it should be passed soon. But more than all of that, it should be passed right.
Siberian Methane Could Fast-Track Global Warming
MAR 5 2010, 12:55 PM ET
Unexpectedly huge quantities of Siberian methane are being released into the atmosphere, according to a new study. The resulting feedback loop could dramatically outpace the climate models that scientists and policy makers have been using as they attempt to roll back emissions.
When it comes to climate change, methane is bad news: It is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing increased atmospheric temperatures.
A National Science Foundation study in today's issue of Science found that melting permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is causing an annual release of nearly 8 million tons of methane. In deeper ocean areas, methane that escapes from the seabed has time to oxidize as it rises to the surface, transforming into less potent carbon dioxide by the time it is released into the atmosphere. In the shallow waters of East Siberia, however, methane that escapes through the thawing permafrost rises quickly to the surface and enters the atmosphere in its original form.
Eight million tons is a relative a pittance compared to the 80 million metric tons produced by livestock around the world each year. But the Siberian methane problem will only get worse as temperatures increase and more permafrost melts.
Joe Romm at Climate Progress describes this methane release as "the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle." According to the NSF, "the Earth's geologic record indicates that atmospheric concentrations of methane have varied from about 0.3 to 0.4 parts per million during cold periods to about 0.6 to 0.7 parts per million during warm periods." Today's study pegs methane levels in the Arctic at 2.85 parts per million, the highest concentration in 400,000 years, so the methane feedback loop is already well under way.
Perhaps the scariest part of these findings is that they are not included in climate models. According to Romm, "no climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra." The methane findings from the East Siberian shelf are a dangerous new variable that must be incorporated into planning and policy making.
Some dissenters argue that since scientists only began monitoring the East Siberian area recently, it's possible the shelf has been leaking methane for thousands of years. But does it matter? Melting permafrost releases methane, and methane causes warming, and warming melts permafrost -- so no matter how long this process has been active, new scientific knowledge of it must immediately be factored into policy decisions.
Col. James Sabow: Pentagon shooter was obsessed with 1991 case
Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell was drawn to the 1991 case of Marine Corps Col. James Sabow. Investigators said the officer committed suicide, but others – including his brother – are sure he was murdered.
By Gordon Lubold Staff writer / March 5, 2010
Washington
Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell was drawn to the case of a Marine Corps colonel who was found dead in his back yard in 1991 in a shooting that has intrigued conspiracy theorists for years.
The death of Col. James Sabow at the former El Toro Air Station in California was ruled a suicide in several investigations.
But Col. Sabow’s brother, David, a respected neurologist in South Dakota, has long suspected
that the Marine Corps covered up the murder of James Sabow, pointing to several independent investigations that find holes in the government’s findings.
With singular focus, David Sabow has attempted to reveal what he terms a cover-up, raising legitimate questions about his brother’s death and the government’s attempt to hide the truth. That has been embraced by conspiracy theorists, including Mr. Bedell, who reportedly believed that the facts in the Sabow case must come out, potentially opening the door to confirm other conspiracy theories.
Sabow's death tied to 9/11 conspiracy?
Bedell wanted to “see that justice is served in the death of Colonel James Sabow, as a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions and institutions such as the coup regime of 1963 that maintains itself in power through the global drug trade, financial corruption, and murder, among other crimes,” according to a Wikipedia entry linked to Bedell under the name “JPatrickBedell,” CBS News reported.
Reached at his home, David Sabow said he is sorry for the “deranged” man who authorities say shot two Pentagon police officers. Nonetheless, David Sabow notes that Bedell was thought to be intelligent and had clearly analyzed the evidence in James Sabow’s death. And while Bedell’s Internet musings brings welcome attention once again to the case of his brother, he fears Bedell’s rantings could undermine his efforts to unearth the truth.
“The greatest chance is that the intelligence agencies will try to use this to delegitimize the authenticity of the evidence that proves beyond a doubt that Colonel Sabow was murdered,” David Sabow said Friday.
David Sabow said he did not hear of Bedell until he read news reports about what he’d written on web sites, where he appeared to have concerns about 9/11 and was generally angry with the federal government.
Bedell's problems with the law
Bedell apparently had also had problems with the law, including charges for marijuana possession. According to ABC News, he was charged in Nevada with possessing 76 grams of marijuana. (For more on the Pentagon shooting, click here.)
Bedell appears to be a textbook case for the kind of individual whose anger at the government found validation with the case of James Sabow.
David Sabow claims his brother was killed because he had knowledge of illegal activity on the El Toro base, since closed, in which senior officers were helping to ship drugs into the US from Central America. Yet more than five investigations over the years have concluded that Sabow died at his own hand, distraught over being relieved of his job for unrelated reasons.
Those government investigations are shams, says Sabow. He points to numerous pieces of evidence – supported, he says, by at least a dozen independent investigators – that Sabow was in fact killed.
One of the last investigations was directed by Congress. Sabow and some former government officials convinced Rep. Duncan Hunter (R) of Calif. to direct the Pentagon to open up yet another case, in 2004.
That investigation, led by Jon Nordby, a criminal forensic analyst and death investigator, concluded that Sabow committed suicide even while it acknowledged that mistakes were made in previous investigations.
Iraqis defy intimidation to vote, attacks kill 31
By HAMZA HENDAWI and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA (AP) – 1 hour ago
BAGHDAD — Insurgents bombed a polling station and lobbed grenades at voters Sunday, killing 31 people in attacks aimed at intimidating those taking part in an election that will determine whether the country can overcome the sectarian divisions that have plagued it since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
any Iraqis hope the election will put them on a path toward national reconciliation as the U.S. prepares to withdraw combat forces by late summer and all troops by the end of next year. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is fighting for his political future with challenges from a coalition of mainly Shiite religious groups on one side and a secular alliance combining Shiites and Sunnis on the other.
Despite mortars raining down nearby, voters in the capital still came to the polls. In the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah in northern Baghdad, Walid Abid, a 40-year-old father of two, was speaking as mortars boomed several hundreds yards (meters) away. Police reported at least 20 mortar attacks in the neighborhood shortly after daybreak. Mortars also fell in the Green Zone — home to the U.S. Embassy and the prime minister's office.
"I am not scared and I am not going to stay put at home," said Abid, who owns a cafe. "Until when? We need to change things. If I stay home and not come to vote, Azamiyah will get worse."
Voting closed at 5 p.m. as scheduled but officials said those who arrived at polling centers before that time would be allowed to cast their votes.
Many view the election as a crossroads where Iraq will decide whether to adhere to politics along the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish lines or move away from the ethnic and sectarian tensions that have emerged since the fall of Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted, Sunni-minority rule.
Al-Maliki, who has built his reputation as the man who restored order to the country, is facing a tough battle from his former Shiite allies, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and a party headed by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
"Al-Maliki gave us security despite all the terror. What more can he do?" said Mariam Omran, a 55-year-old bespectacled mother of four clad in a black chador. "All I want is peace for my country," she said after voting in the Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad.
Al-Maliki faces a challenge from a secular alliance led by Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister and secular Shiite, who has teamed up with a number of Sunnis in a bid to claim the government.
"These acts will not undermine the will of the Iraqi people," al-Maliki said Sunday morning, speaking to reporters after casting his ballot.
Exiting the polls, Iraqis waved purple-inked fingers — the now-iconic image of voting in this oil-rich country of roughly 28 million people.
But observers have warned that the election is only a first step in the political process. With the fractured nature of Iraqi politics, it could take months of negotiations after results are released in the coming days for a government to be formed.
Extraordinary security measures did not foil Sunni insurgents who vowed to disrupt the elections — which they see as validating the Shiite-led government and the U.S. occupation. They launched a spate of mortar, grenade and bomb attacks throughout the morning that, beside Baghdad, targeted the northern city of Mosul, Fallujah, a former bastion of the insurgency west of Baghdad, and small towns just to the south of the capital.
In a posting early Sunday on an Islamic Web site, the al-Qaida front group Islamic State in Iraq warned that anyone taking part in the voting would risk "God's wrath and to the mujahideen's weapons," saying the process bolsters Iraq's Shiite majority.
In Baghdad's northeast Hurriyah neighborhood, where mosque loudspeakers exhorted people to vote as "arrows to the enemies' chest," three people were killed when someone threw a hand grenade at a crowd heading to the polls, according to police and hospital officials.
In the city of Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of Baghdad, a bomb inside a polling center killed a policeman, said Iraqi Army Col. Abdul Hussein.
At least 19 people died in northeastern Baghdad after explosions leveled two buildings about a mile apart, and mortar attacks in western Baghdad killed seven people in two different neighborhoods, police and hospital officials said. In Mosul, police said unidentified gunmen threw a grenade on a polling center, wounding six voters. In Fallujah, six mortar rounds were fired around the city but caused no casualties, police said.
At the scene of one of the Baghdad blasts, near the Sadr City slum, rescue workers said they could hear women and children caught alive under the debris screaming for help. The blast left a mound of rubble, scattered with blankets, pillows and torn bits of clothing. Rescue workers used cranes and tractors to lift debris. Bodies were being recovered several hours after the explosion.
An explosion in the mixed neighborhood of Kirayaat, in northern Baghdad, killed one person, said police and hospital officials. There were a number of other explosions elsewhere in the country, but no other reports of fatalities.
U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Stephen Lanza said Sunday's attacks sought to intimidate voters.
"But what we've seen is that this psychological effect was not achieved," he said.
About 6,200 candidates are competing for 325 seats in the new parliament, Iraq's second, full-term legislature since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion seven years ago this month.
To try to secure the elections, Iraq sealed its borders, closed the airport and deployed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi military and police in the streets. Extra checkpoints were set up, and in some parts of central Baghdad, people could not go 50 yards (meters) without being stopped for search.
In keeping with the U.S. military's assertion that Iraqis are running the elections, the only visible American military presence was in the air or escorting election observers to the polls; four U.S. helicopter gunships could be seen at one point this afternoon in the sky over northern Baghdad.
Police: Couple nurtured virtual child while real baby starved
Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- Police have arrested a South Korean couple whose toddler starved to death while they were raising a virtual child online, authorities said.
The couple fed their 3-month-old daughter once a day between marathon stretches in a local Internet cafe, where they were raising a virtual child in the fantasy role-playing game Prius Online, police told local reporters Friday.
Prius Online is a 3-D game in which players nurture an online companion, Anima, a young girl with mysterious powers who grows and increases her skills as the game progresses.
Police have not identified the 41-year-old father and 25-year-old mother, who lived in Suwon, a suburb south of Seoul. But the father apologized, speaking to reporters.
"I wish that she hadn't got sick and that she will live well in heaven forever. And as the father, I am sorry," he said.
The baby reportedly died five months ago.
South Korea has one of the world's fastest broadband networks. Seoul has won international awards for e-governance. Online gaming teams are sponsored by major conglomerates and 24-hour, high-speed Internet cafes, known as PC Bangs, dot every urban neighborhood.
Police said the couple had lost their jobs and used the game as an escape from reality, especially after the birth of their premature baby.
"They instead played an online game in which they raised a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby," Chung Jin-won, a police officer in Suwon, told Yonhap News Agency.
"South Korea remains a very conservative society so people who fall outside the norm can come under severe stress and pressure," said Michael Breen, the Seoul-based author of "The Koreans."
"The Internet has provided such people with a paradise to escape to and simply get lost in."
Morticians in Mexico see business jump
NOGALES, Mexico - Morticians are among the few entrepreneurs in this Sonoran border town who have seen business surge in the past year, but they aren't talking about it on the record.
One Mexican funeral director explains over the phone that she has two bullet-riddled corpses in her parlor, with armed men guarding the doors.
"It's dangerous, very dangerous," she warns, her voice quaking. "The family of these men told us, 'Nobody comes in. If they do, we're going to shoot them and then we're going to shoot you.' "
Another mortician emphasizes that fatalities from the cartel conflicts are not profitable. Most victims are low-level henchmen. Some come from remote areas of Mexico and are never identified. Others hail from poor families that cannot afford funeral costs.
Because of that, four mortuaries in Nogales, Sonora, voluntarily bury the drug-war casualties on a rotating schedule.
"I have three bodies right now," the mortician notes. "One is from November, two from December. Nobody knows who they are, so I have to bury them. I have to pay."
That expense is compounded, he adds, by the cost of preparing remains that require extensive reconstruction because of the severe wounds.
"You embalm first in many places," he explains professionally. "Then you sew. . . . We build their faces back up, everything. The only thing there's no repairing is if they've been totally burned or decomposed."
Asked if he is fearful that a deceased person's enemies will launch an attack against mourners, catching him in a crossfire, the mortician raises his hands in surrender: "If they come here, they can have what they want. I don't worry about it."
Moments later, he asks that his name not be published in a news article.
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