Category: Culture
Interesting “Plugged-In” Research
The New York Times is running a series of articles on “Your Brain on Computers.” Here is a paragraph or two of latest article, “The Risks of Parenting While Plugged-In.” Click the title to read the entire article.
The Risks of Parenting While Plugged-In
by Julie Scelfo | June 9, 2010WHILE waiting for an elevator at the Fair Oaks Mall near her home in Virginia recently, Janice Im, who works in early-childhood development, witnessed a troubling incident between a young boy and his mother.
The boy, who Ms. Im estimates was about 2 1/2 years old, made repeated attempts to talk to his mother, but she wouldn’t look up from her BlackBerry. “He’s like: ‘Mama? Mama? Mama?’ ” Ms. Im recalled. “And then he starts tapping her leg. And she goes: ‘Just wait a second. Just wait a second.’ ”
Much of the concern about cellphones and instant messaging and Twitter has been focused on how children who incessantly use the technology are affected by it. But parents’ use of such technology — and its effect on their offspring — is now becoming an equal source of concern to some child-development researchers.
A Favorite Overt Liberal
There was a time that I would not have missed the Jim Hightower Show. He is a liberal’s liberal that is well educated, but has a home town vernacular that is comfortable and unassuming. I wish Sirius radio would add him to one of their channels. He did a good piece on the oil rig catastrophe that I’ll post two paragraphs here. Click the title to read the rest of the article.
Government Impotence and Corporate Rule
by Jim Hightower, June 2, 1010 | CommonDreams.org | Creators.comMany news reports about the Gulf oil catastrophe refer to it as a “spill.” Wrong. A spill is a minor “oops” — one accidentally spills milks, for example, and from childhood, we’re taught the old aphorism: “Don’t cry over spilt milk.” What’s in the Gulf isn’t milk and it wasn’t spilt. The explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon well was the inevitable result of deliberate decisions made by avaricious corporate executives, laissez faire politicians and obsequious regulators.
As the ruinous gulf oil blowout spreads onto land, over wildlife, across the ocean floor and into people’s lives, it raises a fundamental question for all of us Americans: Who the hell’s in charge here? What we’re witnessing is not merely a human and environmental horror, but also an appalling deterioration in our nation’s governance. Just as we saw in Wall Street’s devastating economic disaster and in Massey Energy’s murderous explosion inside its Upper Big Branch coal mine, the nastiness in the gulf is baring an ugly truth that We the People must finally face: We are living under de facto corporate rule that has rendered our government impotent.