So the usual suspects in Australia are claiming that so-called ‘redemption machines’ – essentially, the video equivalent of those ball games you find at Chuck E Cheese in which players accumulate points that can be redeemed for prizes – are ‘indoctrinating’ children to become slaves to the adult-only video poker machines (pokies). Reminds us of the same dumb argument that has been used to label marijuana a ‘gateway’ drug and to claim that violent first-person-shooter video games turn kids into bloodthirsty Columbine killers. Dovetails nicely with our own gateway theory, namely, that dumb people tend to say dumb things. Read more.