Apparently not… supposedly…  At least not by creating a black hole here on Earth.

My feeble little mind understands enough to create worry about some silly things. Take black holes for existence. My working layman’s definition of a black hole is some entity that is so incredibly dense, that its gravity is so strong that he can pull matter into itself, and it’s so strong that even light can’t escape it.

My physics major friends are all laughing at me now.

But when I read stories about the Large Hadron Collider and how it might be used to create microscopic black holes, I then envision the LHC getting immediately sucked into the black hole, followed by the rest of the lab at CERN, followed by Switzerland, and then Europe. Then I figure I’ll hear that sound you get when you snap your cheek with your finger as the whole planet collapses into the black hole.

If you are willing to trust the scientists, this isn’t likely to happen.

Phewww!

Posted: April 22nd, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 1

There is disagreement over a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) study that makes a case that people are reading less and kids are in trouble as a result.

The NEA study is ignoring online reading, according to Steven Johnson in his article Dawn of the Digital Natives. He contends, “if you actually read the report, what you find are some startling omissions - omissions that ultimately lead to a heavily distorted view of the Google generation and its prospects.” He points out that “The NEA makes a convincing case that both kids and adults are reading fewer books. “Non-required” reading — ie, picking up a book for the fun of it — is down 7% since 1992 for all adults, and 12% for 18-24 year olds.”

But the NEA report also shows that younger children are making progress in their reading abilities. Teenager’s reading scores have only dropped by about 1% in 15 years. Is that Alarming? It doesn’t seem to be.

Kids as well as adults increasingly read more online, and in Johnson’s estimation, they are “exercising the same cognitive muscles” whether the words are represented in ink or pixels.

The NEA hit back, saying that Steven Johnson misrepresented the report. Sunil Iyengar is the director of the Office of Research & Analysis at the NEA, and he says that they did not exclude online reading from their analysis. He says their data comes from studies “…asking people how frequently they read anything whatsoever for pleasure — a category so broad as to include text of any length in any format through any medium, from books to cereal boxes to, yes, computer screens.”

Then Iyengar parades additional statistics which seem to support the NEA’s claims.

But as you read both of these articles, the notion that Johnson and Iyengar are both cherry picking statistics to support their arguments emerges.

Iyengar ends with some honesty that suggests we need to put this debate on hold for a while because we really don’t have all the answers: “Now is the time for educators and intellectuals to produce sound empirical studies of the risks and benefits of electronic media.”

Perhaps it’s not the medium as much as the quality of the content that makes the true difference in kid’s becoming smart.

Until a clear answer emerges, a policy of moderation in using online media is probably the safest path, and encouraging reading is never a bad thing.

Hat tip to Kevin Arthur for linking to the articles mentioned above. Here are additional book related links from his great blog, Question Technology:

• Books and Emotional Attachments
• Does Kids’ Reading Need to be More Interactive?
• eBooks Better than Traditional Books?

Posted: March 22nd, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 3

I learned through Dr. Helen, that Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is being proposed for inclusion in the DSM-V.

IAD has actually been proposed for inclusion as a psychiatric diagnosis in the next issue of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).Writing in the new issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Dr. Jerald J. Block, M.D., said that excessive internet and computer usage should be labeled a mental disease, as it has all of the components of a compulsive-impulsive disorder:

1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives,

2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible,

3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and

4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue

“excessive internet and computer usage should be labeled a mental disease”. Makes sense to me; excessive anything is a problem though, isn’t it?

Everything in moderation.

Posted: March 20th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

I hope so. I’m working on it.

Despite my infrequent posting here, I do enjoy blogging and want to be doing more of it. I have been sidetracked by a crazy work schedule as well as having to deal with some unpleasant life stuff. The good news is that the unpleasant life stuff is coming to an end, and the crazy work schedule will probably continue for a while, but I’m trying to make a little more room in my life for doing things that I enjoy doing. Blogging here is one of them.

So for those of you still reading my feed or visiting, I want to hear from you, and I’m interested in your thoughts on what you’d like to see here. I plan to continue in the spirit of interesting pros and cons of technology and how it affects families and kids. I will continue to try to avoid hype and I don’t want to be an endless stream of fear-mongering about online predators and the evils of [insert name of popular social networking site here].

Posted: March 20th, 2008 under Admin.
Comments: none

On a weekday morning, last week, I was waking up, still a bit groggy, when I heard my daughter excitedly calling her brother over to the window, saying something about “birds”. It sounded like my son was unimpressed, but her enthusiasm was surprising for 6:45am.

When I got out of bed and went to the kitchen, I asked, “What were you showing your brother this morning? Something about birds?”

She said, “Oh ya! I was getting ready for school, and I could hear all these birds singing outside! I can’t remember the last time I heard them. I got excited.”

I laughed at the weirdness of it all — but is it that weird, really? We forget how much nature offers us when we rush around all of the time. We’re so busy with work, school, being connected to gadgets, and stuck indoors during the cold season. When winter wraps up and warmer days bring singing birds back, it really does make us feel better. We welcome back a missing piece of our wellness.

I was happy that she kicked off her morning with the happiness of the chirpy birds, but if nature is so important to the well-being of my kids, I worry a bit. They get a lot less of nature’s positive influences than my generation did as kids. I would easily spend eight to ten hours outdoors with other kids on a weekend day in the summer. The kids I see today probably spend a quarter of that time outdoors on a good day! Computers, video games, cell phones and television contribute to keeping kids indoors.

This is why a coalition of groups, led by the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, wants lawmakers in New Mexico to implement a one-percent tax on video games, game consoles, and TVs. This would create a fund to help pay for outdoor education.

“We believe that an outdoor education program in New Mexico could be funded through a tax on the very activities that are divorcing kids from nature, promoting more sedentary lifestyles,” said Michael Casaus, Sierra Club’s New Mexico youth representative. “One of those culprits is TV and what we call screen time.” (CNN)

Those are sentiments that most concerned parents share, but is more government intervention, laws, and bureaucracy really the answer? Do we really need to outsource parental responsibilities to the government?

Parents already have a lot on their plates and are stressed, but consider Richard Louv’s point from his book, “Last Child in the Woods“: Nature can be an antidote to the problems parents are experiencing. “Stress reduction, greater physical health, a deeper sense of spirit, more creativity, a sense of play, even a safer life - these are the rewards that await a family when it invites more nature into children’s lives,” he says.

It’s our job as parents to get kids off the computers and video games and get them outdoors. It is also important to be involved with them in nature and encourage it by being good role models. We should also enjoy what nature has to offer to us for our own well-being.

Posted: February 19th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 4

FRONTLINE has a feature on “Growing Up Online” that looks good.

Tuesday, January 22nd, 9 P.M. ET on PBS. Check your local listing to make sure you don’t miss it.

UPDATE: If you missed it, check the links above as it maybe rebroadcast, or you can watch the program online.

Their summary from the website:

MySpace. YouTube. Facebook. Nearly every teen in America is on the Internet every day, socializing with friends and strangers alike, “trying on” identities, and building a virtual profile of themselves–one that many kids insist is a more honest depiction of who they really are than the person they portray at home or in school.

In “Growing Up Online,” FRONTLINE peers inside the world of this cyber-savvy generation through the eyes of teens and their parents, who often find themselves on opposite sides of a new digital divide. From cyber bullying to instant “Internet fame,” to the specter of online sexual predators, FRONTLINE producer Rachel Dretzin investigates the risks, realities and misconceptions of teenage self-expression on the World Wide Web.

Trailer here:

Posted: January 19th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 1

Apparently this world that we live in isn’t big enough, and so the large corporations and marketeers are busy creating new virtual worlds for our kids to inhabit, and they’re teaching them valuable lessons that they can take back to the real world as they grow up.

Like, “spend, spend, spend!”

Brett at DadTalk tells us that these virtual worlds are on the rise.

My kids went through the Webkinz phase. I think there was something before that, but I can’t remember. It’s been a while. Now my son is into Runescape, which as best as I can tell isn’t overloaded with marketing. But there was MapleStory, which he was eager to part with his money to get ahead in that game. Apparently, you could take Dad’s hard-earned money and turn it into play MapleStory cash and buy accessories in the virtual world. Uh… no…

But he did come up with $10 that he received from Grandma as a gift… So he handed over the money, and put through the transaction on my PayPal account. Just a couple of days later, he burned through his virtual cash, and showed up with another $10 in cash that he wanted to give to me to transfer another $10 into his MapleStory account. Uh… no…

“Earning” virtual cash in the game to spend in the game is one thing, but when these games start requiring monthly subscriptions or drum up the desire in the kids to convert their real cash into “play money”, forget it.

Go read Brett’s post. He’s got some great quotes and he elaborates more on the impending assault be the huge corporate marketing machines on our kids.

And naturally, I’m going to plug ComputerTime for parents who would like a little help keeping their kids in the real world. We get a lot of compliments on how it eliminates the fighting. If you struggle with the endless “Just five more minutes! Please!” arguments, give it a try!

Posted: January 2nd, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

Do you believe that kids would rather have time with their parents than more stuff? I do, but not everybody seems to agree with me. I know parents who work overtime so that they’ll be able to be in a position to provide more stuff for their kids. I recently witnessed a couple of kids who became upset their their Mom had to go into work because she volunteered to take overtime. Her explanation was, “If you guys want nice stuff, then Mom has to work more to be able to give you stuff.” The kids’ response: “We would rather be able to spend time with you.” I think the comment went right over her head.

Kids want ‘time with parents, not gifts’:

Forget the expensive presents for the kids this Christmas and spend more time with them instead, a new guide to the festive season says.

British charity, The Children’s Society, is recommending parents this year put more effort into baking delicious treats, dressing up and making decorations with their kids to ensure a more memorable Christmas for the entire family.

The charity’s 16-page guide says children are more likely to value the memory of baking, a treasure hunt or finding “snowy footprints” from Santa than the toys under the tree.

Spokesman Tim Linehan said findings from the charity’s two-year investigation into modern British childhood had revealed that children want to spend more time with their parents.

“If you ask a child what they remember about Christmas they are far more likely to tell you about something funny that happened or something they did with their parents than a present,” he told The Times newspaper.

“We are not trying to write-off TV or computer games … but these are more solitary pursuits than the games of the past.”

The guide recommends 100 cheap and simple things for parents to do with their children, including dressing up as Santa and watching a family movie such as the classic It’s a Wonderful Life.

In a post on Get Rich Slowly, the book Unplug the Christmas Machine, a book about escaping the commercialism of Christmas, is excerpted and the authors list four things that they say that kids really want:

1. A relaxed and loving time with the family.
2. Realistic expectations about gifts.
3. An evenly paced holiday season.
4. Reliable family traditions.

I was unable to find the 16-page guide online at The Children’s Society website. It looks like you have to request a hardcopy.

Ironically, this organization also recently got an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest Christmas stocking. What would you do with the largest Christmas stocking? Fill it with more stuff? Dooah! :-)

Posted: December 30th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

A business research firm reports an estimated $650 Billion lost in productivity due to information overload. An engineer at Intel who studies computer productivity estimates about 8 hours a week is lost because of information overload.

According to Steve Lohr, in a NYT Bits posting, “The information-overload toll is largely a byproduct of workers grappling with the growing tide of e-mail, instant messages, cellphone calls, wikis, blogs and the like.”

Email, instant messages, cellphone calls, wikis, blogs and the like. Wikis and blogs are a lot like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube. Kids use all of these same tools. So it is hard to imagine that they aren’t being affected in the same ways. Is information overload affecting their studies and lowering grades? Is it shaping them in negative ways?

Some suggest that kids are growing up in this multimedia world and are better multitaskers. What is a better multitasker? If multitasking is the goal, then I am sure that today’s kids are indeed better at doing more than one thing at once. But if the goal is higher productivity in learning and better grades, multitasking isn’t your friend.

Are moms and dads being affected by information overload? When Dad comes home with his bluetooth headset attached and he’s still talking to his business associate, is he being somewhat neglectful of his family? Is the mother sending a negative message to her kids when she has to interrupt reading to them on the couch because her crackberry just beckoned to her with it’s electronic chirp?

How does your family cope with information overload and the interference of all of the gadgets?

Posted: December 22nd, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

How much technology is “too much, too soon”?

Opinions on this vary so much and most parents make their decisions from the gut anyways, or they just leave it up to the kids to decide. If the kids like computers, video games and gadgets, they just let them have at it.

My friend Brett (Dadtalk) ponders this question as he notices that his kids don’t want to play with the “toy versions” of things. They much prefer the real things. I noticed this with my kids too, my daughter when she was 2 couldn’t leave our TV remove alone. So we bought her this flashy toy one. Instead of black and gray, it was bright red, blue, green, and yellow, and each button played fancy sounds and made the device flash. In no time she became bored with it and kept wanting the real TV remote again.

Like most parents, Brett spends a lot of time thinking about the welfare of his kids and what he can do for them now to prepare the for the real world. He wants them to have an edge in the real world. Who wouldn’t. And the tools of the real world contain computers, cell phones, PDAs. Brett comments:

“One day a computer will be the single most important tool in their lives.”

Hold that thought.

I met a neighbor at a soccer game once, and we chatted. I told him about the product that I was developing, ComputerTime, and how it would help parents limit the time that their kids would spend on the computer because some kids just can’t get off of them without a lot of effort on the part of their parents. His response was, “Oh! I don’t think I would want that on my computer. If I could get my kids to use it 24 hours a day, I would!” Huh? You want to raise a sedentary, greasy, anti-social, pasty-white, introverted nerd?

As somebody who has worked in the software development world, let me tell you what it’s about in a nutshell.

• Problem Solving
• Creativity
• Ability to Learn New Things
• Motivation
• Communication
• Listening
• Speaking
• Leadership
• Persistence
• Imagination
• Teamwork
• Designing Complex Systems
• Doing Computer Things (writing code, Googling, creating documents, email, etc)

The point is, that a job in the computer field can be lucrative, but if you put your kids on a computer for 24 hours a day, are they going to learn how to do all of those other things on the critical skill list above? And that list is about the same for any other career your kids might be interested in.

Kids need to learn those other skills and they’ll do by playing with other kids, getting involved in group activities, playing alone, reading, talking, helping Mom and Dad around the home, being left alone for a while with a problem with real objects in our real environment, walking the dog, helping cook dinner, building a dog house, helping fix the alternator on the car, and sure, using electronic devices once in a while.

I did all of these things growing up and I didn’t start using a computer until I was 15. And look where I am today! Steeped in technology, being successful, and yet always struggling to keep up with the constant change!

Think about this: Compare cell phones now to cell phones 10 years ago, or cell phones 20 years ago. Compare DOS to Windows 3.1 to Windows Vista. Compare Fidonet BBS, to AOL, to the World Wide Web 1995 to the World Wide Web 2007. Do you think anything your kids learn today, technology-wise is going to matter when they’re coming out of college in 20 years? The landscape will look quite different than it does today. I’m sure of that.

So what’s going to be the single most important tool in your kids lives? Their brains, properly equipped with a broad range of problem-solving and social skills!

So Brett, don’t worry too much about your kids falling behind in the technology curve. I think they’ll do great. Focus on the basics and raise wonderful, creative, well-rounded adults who can problem solve in a team environment and persist at things and be really fun to work with, and they will prosper. Those skills never become obsolete, and in a tech industry, they sometimes seem so hard to come by these days.

Posted: December 5th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2