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Continuing the thought from yesterday’s post :

I am always amazed that people still believe that what they watch on TV does not affect their behavior. Or rather, I am amazed that they think it can’t affect anyone’s behavior. There are people who think that what people watch is just entertainment and therefore cannot affect how they live.

The saying is that Art imitates life, not life imitates art (with apologies to any blog by that name). And there is the famous quote that if violence on TV causes violence on the streets, then why doesn’t comedy on TV cause comedy on the streets?

To which I respond : comedy on TV does cause comedy on the streets.

Back when Seinfeld was in its heyday, most people would watch it and then whatever phrase was the most popular phrase of the show became the most popular phrase in the country for the next week. There was a lot more comedy on the streets, copying whatever it was that was on TV.

Don’t say that comedy on TV doesn’t cause comedy on the streets.

And there are multiple examples of people being injured or worse by trying something they saw in a movie. How many of those does it take before someone will admit that maybe what you put into your soul via your eyes can affect how you live or what you do?

If what we see and hear on a regular basis does not affect us, then why do advertisers pay so much for commercials or product placements? If there is a study that shows people are immune to such influences, then a consultant could save companies a lot of money by eliminating their TV/film advertising budgets.

This fact of life is more easily seen by parents. My kids recently watched Kung Fu Panda. For the rest of the day after the movie, did they behave as they behaved before the movie? Not even close. They were jumping, kicking, and swinging things in their efforts (conscious or sub-conscious) to emulate what they had seen on screen. In this case, that lasted all of one day and they were back to normal the next day.

But what if their eyes are fed a steady diet of violence? How will they behave? What would happen to the average level of violence in their thoughts? in their actions?

What if their eyes and ears are fed whatever is on TV? How will they treat their parents after several years of watching sitcoms? How will they treat women when they are older?

Certainly, there are many people who can watch things and not be affected. And there are plenty of people who will do bad things without having been influenced to do so by a TV show or movie.

After all, sin is not new.

But why promote it?

I want to watch football and I want my children to be able to watch football with me. I have come to realize that although football is safe for young eyes to watch, the commercials are not.

I‘ll let the kids watch the first bit of Saturday night football or Sunday night football before they go to bed. As soon as the station switches from the game to commercials, I grab the remote and have it ready to switch channels in case something bad comes on. They already don’t like going to bed. I don’t want some movie preview to scare them right before bedtime.

Movie previews are the worst when it comes to scary stuff. When it comes to anything else inappropriate, the TV station’s shows are the worst offenders. They have previews for whatever dramas or sitcoms they want to promote for the coming week, and the previews are meant to catch your attention. That means they don’t always show things that are what I want to see or what I want my kids to see.

I figured that went with the territory of the prime-time games.

I figured that the afternoon game would be safe to leave on commercial while I stepped away for a minute.

Alas, it was not. I forgot that it was Halloween. Somehow that made it okay to show disturbing images to young children during daylight hours… I came back to find my 4-year-old watching a TV screen that was showing people at a local (to whatever game it was) Halloween party. The costumes were very elaborate and professional looking, but also very grotesque and scary.

Now, whenever I leave the room during a football game or any other show, I turn the TV to the nothing-but-local-weather-not-even-commercials channel, one of the secondary digital channels here. I just can’t trust the TV stations’ judgment when it comes to content. Or maybe it’s really the advertising company that I can’t trust, but the end effect is the same – not watching commercials.

I got to thinking – why not rate the commercials? And then require a warning at the beginning of each commercial so that the viewer would have a chance to avoid it? They do that with normal TV programs already. The catch is that commercials are so short that the offensive material often starts very quickly, so the warning would need to last long enough. I thought that the worse the content was, the longer the warning would need to be.

• G would not need any warning
• PG would need a 1-second warning
• PG-13 would need a 2-second warning
• R would need a 3-second warning

While that’s a start, it’s insufficient. What if I’m changing channels and stumble into the middle of a commercial? The warning at the beginning wouldn’t help me then. Scratch that plan…

What about limiting a commercial’s rating to the program’s rating? A commercial’s rating should not be able to any worse (where G is good and R is bad) than the rating of the program during which it airs. What’s the point of rating a show as appropriate for children when at least 8 of the 30 minutes (that’s at least 26%) of the show is unchecked advertisements?

That would require a change to the broadcasting system, because not only are commercials not currently rated but sports and news shows are also not rated. My suggestion would be to make sports default to PG and news default to PG-13. If a network knows ahead of time that a sports show requires something other than PG (wresting, Superbowl halftime show, etc.), then it could set the actual rating of the show to the right level.

Once the rating of commercials is in place, then you could either trust the show will be safe (i.e. the rating will be what you expect throughout that whole block of time) or you could setup the V-Chip and know that offending or graphic or frightening commercials would not make it onto your TV screen. The V-Chip doesn’t work if something is not rated, so today’s V-Chip program ignores news and sports and commercials. Those gaps need to be closed somehow.

This blog post might not do much, or even affect the FCC or even my local TV station, but at least I feel better now. I just want my kids’ eyes and minds safe until they can discern what is good.

And I still want them safe after that too.

Ink Eraser

The local Thai place has the option of shrimp, scallops, or squid. We asked Alpha if he wanted squid the next time we got Thai food. He didn’t say yes or no. He asked “Do they take the ink out first?”

Maybe It Could Clean Teeth

Here is my side of the conversation with Beta. You can supply the imagination to fill in his part, both his speech and his actions.
“Yes, Beta?”
“No, toothpaste shouldn’t be down here. It should stay in the bathroom.”
“What!? NO! Don’t put that in your mouth! That’s A+D ointment, not toothpaste!”

Not Impressed

Alpha wanted to ask something of a parent. I was walking up the stairs but he assumed I was the other parent.
“Mom?” he asked.
“Yes Alpha,” I replied in as good a falsetto as I could muster.
“Daddy, that didn’t sound anything like momma.”

Hey all you WordPress users: are you jealous of people on Blogger who get fancy archives and categories that display the links in a collapsible/expandable list? Do you want the little arrows next to your links too?

Your wait is over – Collapsing Archives and Categories are here.

Okay, maybe it’s not that dramatic. And it’s not new. I noticed that my WordPress blog had very bulky and boring Archives and Categories sections, so I searched for widgets that would make them better.

I found Collapsing Archives and Collapsing Categories, by Rob Felty. They did basically what I wanted, but they didn’t look quite right to me. So I separated the date from the post title and I think they look much better now.

Before
After

Anyway, he did all the hard work – I simply modified them slightly so that they would look more like I wanted them to look. If you want to see them in action, just look on the right side of this blog until you see “Categories” or “Archives”. Those sections are the widgets.

You can visit the Collapsing Categories page or Collapsing Archive page to read more about them, including steps how to modify the widgets to make the dates distinct from the titles.

First bird flu, now swine flu…

A co-worker and I were wondering what will be next, probably in a year or so. We came up with horse flu and frog flu and fish flu. I think we could come up with the next global scare (remember, you can’t spell pandemic without panic) if we just randomly affix a type of animal the to word flu. No, not the real animal, just its Latin name.

Why is it called the Swine Flu and not the Porcine Flu?

The only answer I could muster is that swine is a noun and porcine is an adjective. That provoked me to wonder “What about avian flu? Isn’t avian an adjective?”

Avian is an adjective, but don’t forget about bird flu. So that’s a toss-up.

Then there was the great Hong Kong flu of 1968. Hong Kong is a proper noun, but that still counts. I suppose the adjective form of the whole term would be “Hong Kong flu-y”, and it would make you a number one super guy. And I will resist the urge to insert a “Kung-Flu Fighting” joke here.

Another flu strain throws a wrench into all these works – the Spanish flu. Spanish is definitely an adjective. The noun would be Spain. But no one calls it Spain flu. So maybe there’s no rule about how to name a flu strain.

I would like the adjective form of flu names. That way we could use all those obscure terms like

• equine flu
• ranine flu
• piscine flu
• bovine flu
• vulpine flu
• lupine flu
• ovine flu
• apian flu
• etc.

Just don’t get the donkey flu.

Currently, my kids come to me about everything. Okay, maybe it just seems like everything. I’m sure my wife hears more of their needs than do I. One of my jobs as a parent is to get them to be able to resolve conflicts peacefully on their own.

They were not getting along well the other day. They went back and forth throughout much of the day, and it got rather comical after a while.

Beta : “Daddy, Alpha is using his whiny voice!”

Alpha : “Daddy, Beta put his toe in my eye!”

I suppose I see their problems as rather trivial and wonder why they need to call me over to settle who gets what Lego or who read which book first last night, but to a small child those are the important things.

I am just glad that the conflicts are that trivial – who gets the red plate and who gets the blue plate – and they (and I) don’t have bigger worries.

Finally, just before bedtime when the kids were getting their books for me to read to them, I heard this:
“Daddy, Beta is not letting me get through!”
“Well, did you ask him to move?”
“No…”

(slight pause)

“Beta, please move so I can get through.”
“Okay”
“Daddy, I asked nicely for him to move, and he moved!”

Funny how that works… This situation definitely needed some encouragement thrown in, so they would remember how well things work when you are nice.

“Good job to both of you.”

I went out to eat for lunch yesterday. I looked at the menu and picked out what I wanted. The waitress came to take our orders. The guy at the end went first. All standard stuff so far.

Then the guy next to me went. He ordered the same sandwich I had picked for myself. Arrgh…I hate it when that happens.

But that’s okay, because he still has to pick out a side dish. There’s no way he would pick the same side as I.

(And yes, I do try to have good grammar even in my thoughts.)

Then he picked the same side dish that I had chosen.

I was torn, oh so torn, as to whether I should change my order.

I could get the coleslaw instead. That would make it a different order.

But I decided to stick with my original order. And you know what? It tasted just fine and was not affected by the fact that the guy next to me was eating the same thing.

My wife doesn’t understand why it’s a big deal what other people order at the restaurant. I know I’m not the only one like that. It doesn’t matter if the other person knows what I’m ordering (“steals my order” after hearing me order it) or just randomly gets the same thing (as in this case). Either way, I am troubled by it.

But why? I haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe it’s a desire to be unique, to be myself. But why can’t myself be similar to someone else?

Random Life Tip : When you put dishes away from the dishwasher, unload the bottom rack first before even pulling out the top rack. If, just hypothetically speaking here, there were a bowl in the top rack that was upside-up and so it got filled with water because it couldn’t drain, you wouldn’t want that bowl to spill water all over the formerly-dry dishes in the bottom rack. Not that it would ever happen to me.