by Andy Rementer @ Techno Tuesday

It’s getting harder to find clean television programming that doesn’t contain offensive language, according to the New York Times in the article More Than Ever, You Can Say That on Television.

Ever since George Carlin laid out the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” in 1972, television writers and broadcasters have been digging more deeply into the thesaurus, seizing on new ways to titillate, if not offend. And while the word “douche” is neither obscene nor profane — although this usage is certainly offensive to many people — it seems to represent the latest of broadcast television’s continuing efforts to expand the boundaries of taste, in part to stem the tide of defections by its audience to largely unregulated cable television.

I added the emphasis on that last sentence.

Rather than striving for better quality entertainment, the broadcast networks are striving to keep up with their cable counterparts by competing in the art of pushing the boundaries of bad taste. They are actively trying to offend, in order to garner more attention.

I’m all for freedom of expression — in the right context, and in the company of adults, movies and television programs can be raw and realistic.

The 10:00pm boundary should be respected so that parents can make a choice. If you don’t want your kids being subjected to offensive language and suggestive or explicit images, knowing that television is safe before 10:00 would be comforting. A firm boundary lets parents set limits. If you don’t want your kids soaking up that stuff, then you have an “off by 10:00pm” rule.

Music and radio isn’t really much better. I’ve filed complaints with the FCC in the past over local pop radio stations that my kids in middle school had been listening to. Songs with offensive lyrics and morning DJs that talked openly and joked about celebrities and sexual themes. Yeesh! I was driving my pre-teens to school for Christ’s sake!

What are your strategies for combating these offensive onslaughts?

by Andy Rementer @ TechnoTuesday.com

He’s clearly a brilliant guy with some very significant accomplishments behind him. Ray Kurzweil offers predictions on where we will be with technology in the future.

In Kurzweil’s estimation, we will be able to upload the human brain to a computer, capturing “a person’s entire personality, memory, skills and history”, by the end of the 2030s; humans and non-biological machines will then merge so effectively that the differences between them will no longer matter; and, after that, human intelligence, transformed for the better, will start to expand outward into the universe, around about 2045. With this last prediction, Kurzweil is referring not to any recognisable type of space travel, but to a kind of space infusion. “Intelligence,” he writes, “will begin to saturate the matter and energy in its midst [and] spread out from its origin on Earth.”

The article didn’t elaborate on what you’d be able to do with this off-site backup of your life’s worth personality, memories, and skills. If you bump your head, will you be able to do a restore operation to put it back?

Will we be able to wipe one person’s brain clean and download somebody else’s thoughts into it?

You can now read Families and Technology on Your Kindle!

My thought on the Kindle (and e-book readers in general) is that they aren’t the same as other screens. They aren’t any more interactive than a book. They aren’t backlit, so they’re not stimulating. The e-Ink display does not support animation, so you can’t play games on it. What it does do is allow people to read words — lots of words.

And it is portable, so that means you can go outside… and read. :-)

Don’t want to pay full price for a Kindle? I am sellling a Kindle on eBay right now so you’ve got less than seven days to get your bid in! Started the auction at $1, but most Kindles are ending at about 2/3 of the price of the new ones, and this one is in excellent condition, like new.

A Google image search for texting while driving will turn up some pictures that will give you nightmares. If your kids text while driving, you might want to show those pictures to them. I am not inclined to link to them here because… they are gross.

But if it makes your texting teen rethink updating their Twitter while driving, then perhaps let them see what can happen.

A lot of adults aren’t any brighter than careless teens.

“My job has me out on the road for four to five days out of the week,” Anthony Perry, a director of business development for a Washington-based health care research firm, told CNN in an e-mail sent from his BlackBerry. “I don’t particularly think I am that good at texting while driving but I do it anyway, recognizing the risks.”

I don’t think he actually does recognize the risks. Mr. Perry, please have a look at those images I mentioned above. Only then can you say that you recognize the risks.

More stupidity follows:

Nevertheless, for many in business, it seems to be a matter of competitive survival.

“Now with e-mail and with the advent of the BlackBerries and hyper-accessibility, there’s this sense that if you don’t show that you’re always prepared and ready to respond and address an issue, then somehow you’re going to be perceived as not being conscientious or not keeping up on things,” said Tom Britt, a professor of social psychology at Clemson University in South Carolina.

“I could not imagine doing my job, or living my life, without the aid of a bberry,” Perry wrote. “I don’t know many who could who are in my line of work.”

In the context of an article about the modern workplace, devices and connectivity, that kind of attitude wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But this is from this article about texting while driving. Are people seriously justifying the need to text while driving? Work demands are forcing you to put your life in great peril? Really? Or do you think that you’re that important (not to mention, indestructible)?

Mr. Perry. You only get once chance to become fatally distracted. Do that Google image search mentioned above. You’re job isn’t important enough to risk your own life or the lives of others.

Sending that message can’t possibly be that important. If it is, then it’s important enough to justify pulling over for a minute.

Kids, be careful about what you put up on your facebook pages. It could come back to haunt you when you apply for a job some day.

And grown-ups… heed the same warning!

Wife blows MI6 chief’s cover on Facebook

The wife of the new head of MI6 has caused a major security breach and left his family exposed after publishing photographs and personal details on Facebook.

Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all of Britain’s spying operations abroad.

But entries by his wife Shelley on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, their friends’ identities and where they spend their holidays. On the day her husband was appointed she congratulated him on the site using his codename “C”.

Unbelievable.

Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

The rectangles even help Americans to successfully emote, often by using a combination of visual and aural signals to indicate when laughter or tears should be produced.

“Life would be very different if it weren’t for these magical squares of light,” cultural studies professor and social critic David Ostroff typed to reporters using one of his wireless messaging rectangles. “Sry. Have 2 go. Movie about 2 strt.”

On average, Americans interact with anywhere from 53 to 107 pulsating rectangles every week. For many, however, this is simply not enough. Despite having a leisure rectangle in every bedroom, along with multiple work rectangles, a rectangle just for the children, and one or two rectangles that can do the work of several rectangles in one, many citizens admit to being dissatisfied.

If Apple really wanted to be different, they would avoid building another rectangular device and do something insanely great, like give us a glowing nonagon, or a let’s get all retro and go back to the 1950’s style glowing squircles.

Have you ever measured how much time your kids are in front of all glowing rectangles? It would be an interesting experiment. I wonder if we actually did measure all of that time with TV, computers, iPods, and video games, if it would make us more likely to impose limits.

If you do come up with measurements, post them in the comments.

For my two kids, my son exceeds my daughter by a large margin. My daughter is mostly in front of her computer, while my son does a considerable amount of TV and iPod Touch staring in addition to the time he spends on the computer and it can consume an unhealthy amount of time.

Who do you think has anxiety the most from kids having to unplug from their devices when they go to summer camp for two weeks? The kids? Or Mom or Dad?

In some cases, both.

Having gone through an Internet connectivity outage that went on for over twenty four hours, I can understand what it is like to feel unable to communicate via email, keep up with the outside world, and get work done. I work from home. So my Internet connection is important to me. I experienced significant frustration, a feeling of helplessness, perhaps some anxiety. But within a few hours, I realized that I would survive and that my connectivity would be restored at some point, and then I was able to move on to enjoy my forced vacation from being online.

Sounds like the kids who experienced the forced disconnection from tech at summer camp go through the same thing. But they do survive and quickly find out that their time can be filled with enjoyable things to do with other people. And many find that they even don’t miss their connectivity.

But the helicopter parents mentioned in the article appear to be the most anxious ones. Gasp! They can’t be in constant contact with their kids! And what is their reaction? Fear! The idea that their kids can’t pick up after a couple of rings to reassure them that they are safe makes Mom really uneasy… Does Mom resolve to let go and just get a grip? No. Instead she reassures herself that she can bug the camp counselors frequently to check in on her kid.

And what do the camp counselors have to do to fend off the barrage of worrisome parents constantly calling? They have to reassure parents that their kids are still alive by posting photos of them on an online gallery. Oh brother.

When I was a kid, my parents dropped me off for two weeks at camp, and then hopped on a ship to the Bahamas for at least a week if not longer. There was no way that either of us could get in touch with each other even if there was some kind of emergency. Maybe some kind of telegram could have been sent to let them know that I was eaten by a bear. But I have a feeling that my parents would have rather waited to hear about that when they got home. Why spoil a fun vacation in the Caribbean with news of my unfortunate death?

[photo by Symic]

Photo by Wesley Fryer

You’re watching the evening news and the anchor says, “Coming up next! Something that will scare the crap out of you!” After a sequence of commercials, back to the news program where they report on a murder, or an abduction, or just something that shocks and frightens you.

They peddle fear because it sells advertising. It gets you to pay attention.

We don’t become overly concerned about our safety in the real world, because we live in it every day — working, shopping, socializing, jogging &mdash and we know it’s safe based on our experiences. Horrible things on the news rarely ever show up in our lives.

The news widely reports, and harps on, those rare events that happen in the real world.

When they report about online dangers and examples of bad things happening on FaceBook, MySpace, chat rooms and the like, some parents become very nervous about their kids being in the online world.

Some parents, not having a lot of experience in the online world, aren’t living it every day and can’t grasp that it’s relatively safe. They are only going on the sensationalized news stories.

If you’re one of those parents who is concerned about the online world your kids inhabit, you need to take some steps so that you can relax.

First, get some facts to put things in perspective. I heard Lenore Skenazy on NPR’s Talk of the Nation to discuss the realities of online predators with Neil Conan, Richard Blumenthal, and Janis Wolak. Each has a unique perspective on, and it is worth the half-hour listen.

Lenore also wrote about the subject on her
Free Range Kids blog So check them both out.

Next, calm your nerves by familiarizing yourself with the online world. Even better, ask your kids to help setting you up. If they show you the ropes you’ll get a good idea of what they do online as they explain to you what is cool and what is dumb. Ask them questions like, “What if somebody friends me, but I don’t want to be their friend?” or “If somebody is my friend, and they start bugging me, can I unfriend them?” You may come away with a feeling that you’re kids are doing a good job of being safer online than you think.

But don’t be insulted or angry if they won’t friend you. This is a way that your kids hang out with their peers. You’re their parent, not their peer, and they will think it’s creepy that their parents insist on always being present in their teen hangout. Besides, don’t we want to keep adults out of our kids online hangouts?

Pick up Lenore’s, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry and help your kids to grow up stronger and independent.

Talking to my ex the other day about my 13-year-old son and how I would be willing to let him go hang out by the beach with his friends in the summer time, she made it clear they she wouldn’t agree to that.

I pointed out that when we were 13 years old that we did things like that all of the time. That valid point was simply dismissed and I got the hair-raising “Well, it’s a different world today.”

<Sigh> Yes, it is a different world today. In general, a safer one for kids.

In our town, we have a small beach, heavily populated with adults, and more than one lifeguard on duty. And our son is not a risk-taker. And we’re talking about Long Island Sound — there is no surf on this beach!

I just ordered Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry and after I am done reading it I’ll pass it along to her to see if it has any effect.

A recent study suggests that your grades will suffer if you’re a heavy Facebook user.

Researchers from the US have found that students prone to accumulating friends, uploading photographs, chatting and “poking” others on Facebook may devote as little as one hour a week to their academic work.

“Our study shows people who spend more time on Facebook spend less time studying,” said Aryn Karpinski, a researcher in the education department at Ohio State University.

They found that 68% of students who used Facebook had a significantly lower grade-point average than those who did not use the site.

Correlation is not Causation

Is it the use of Facebook that affects people’s grades?

Or is it a lack of studying that affects people’s grades? This is most likely the problem.

If it wasn’t Facebook, it would be MySpace, or video games, or television, or even Frisbee and Hacky Sack. Sometimes instead of studying, kids want to be doing something else.

Or perhaps the correlation might suggest that less intelligent people are using Facebook more? The smart people happen to be spending more time doing their classwork, and so they don’t have as much time to spend goofing off on Facebook.

It’s Seems Almost Obvious

There are only twenty four hours in a day, and if you spend too much time doing certain things, then you’re not going to have enough time to do others.

People need to spend less time doing unproductive tasks, and spend a little more time doing productive things. For a student, that translates to making sure you’re adequately studying. If you have to study using your computer, or if you’re writing a report, shut off your distractions! All of them. Email, Facebook, IM, Twitter, etc. They will make it impossible to think straight!

Are your kids in the band or orchestra at their schools? Do they play a cello, a violin, a piano, or a trumpet… They say that learning to read and play music on an instrument is a terrific educational tool. I assume that is mostly true as long as they’re playing an instrument other than a Game Boy…

DJ Scotch Egg – Scotch Bach from NTSH 4 on Vimeo.

Andy Rementer’s Techno Tuesday:

Common Sense Media has information on “sexting”, along with some statistics and advice.

I found a link to thatsnotcool.com which seems like a good site to share with the kids.