Grand Theft Auto IV has achieved sales of over $500 million during its first week. Will the nation survive?

After just one week, the video game Grand Theft Auto has sold more than six million copies worldwide, earning its maker, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., more than a half-billion dollars.

The entire Grand Theft Auto game series has been widely derided by critics as harmful to children because of the violent activities in which the characters engage. The critics are apparently operating on the theory that adolescents are too stupid to recognize that the rules of video games do not apply in real life.

Positing an allegedly deleterious message of Grand Theft Auto IV, AP reports, Mothers Against Drunk Driving have "complained that the latest version includes the ability to drive while intoxicated."

Here they are just being silly: that ability is embedded in the human Y chromosome.