So you thought that just because the sun is finally out in New York for the first time in weeks, the kids should go outside to play. Well, get them inside right away and have them play more video games - and not just any games, but specifically the "first-person shooter" games parents love to hate! Their visual attention skills depend on it:

Researchers are reporting today that first-person-shooter video games — the kind that require players to kill or maim enemies or monsters that pop out of nowhere — sharply improve visual attention skills.
Experienced players of these games are 30 percent to 50 percent better than nonplayers at taking in everything that happens around them, according to the research, which appears today in the journal Nature. They identify objects in their peripheral vision, perceiving numerous objects without having to count them, switch attention rapidly and track many items at once.
Nor are players simply faster at these tasks, said Dr. Daphne Bavelier, an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Rochester, who led the study. First-person action games increase the brain's capacity to spread attention over a wide range of events. Other types of action games, including those that focus on strategy or role playing, do not produce the same effect.
..."We were really surprised," Dr. Bavelier said, adding that as little as 10 hours of play substantially increased visual skills among novice players. "You get better at a lot of things, not just the game," she said.

And buried in the article is a disquieting finding about an emerging gender gap:

The professor and her student decided to study the connection between video game playing and visual attention. They carried out four experiments on undergraduates, all of them male because no female shooter game fans could be found on campus. (Emphasis added.)

Why isn't NOW agitating about this? Isn't it important to stop a gender gap from emerging between the visual attention skills of Americans? This calls for governmental action to encourage the women of America to play first-person shooter games. Which Democratic presidential candidate will show his (or her, if you count Carol Mosley-Braun) ability to design innovative, progressive reforms for the important problems affecting the lives of American women?