Students: Leave Phones at Home

Judy Keen, writing in USA Today, reports that schools “across the USA are cracking down on students whose cellphones disrupt classes and make it easier to cheat. Starting Monday, the 222 public schools” in Milwaukee “will enforce a ban prompted by fights that escalated into brawls when students used cellphones to summon family members and outsiders.”

“It's a mess," says Ed Kovochich, principal of Bradley Tech High School. He broke up a fight last month that involved a non-student carrying a pistol who arrived after getting text messages from students. Under the new policy, Kovochich says, "If you use it, we take it."

PC Wins Out over Spouse

Demetria Gallegos, writing in the Denver Post Staff, says that a new study indicates that most people spend more time with technology than they do with their family. A survey conducted by Kelton Research, and commissioned by http://www.support.com/, a site that offers tech support found that 65% of respondents spent more time with a computer than with their spouse or significant other.

More than 80 percent of those polled said they were more dependent on their computer than they were three years ago. The survey was conducted in December and January, involving 1001 participants nationwide.

Cell Phones Plague Family Life

A study published in the "Journal of Marriage and Family" finds that cell phone and pager use has become a vehicle for job worries and problems to interfere with family life for both men and women. Cell phone technology is linked to increased psychological distress and lower family satisfaction in general for working men and women.

Upshot: Manage your cell phone after hours or it will quickly manage you.

Small Transgressions Exposed

Jennifer Saranow, writing in the Wall Street Journal, discusses how “bad parking, loud talking -- no transgression is too trivial to document online.” In some respects this can be socially beneficial, but too quickly, I fear, such postings represent the kind of over-information in which too many people are immersed.

Is Your PC a Spam Slave?

The website ThisIsLondon.co.uk reports that “image spam” could bring the internet to a standstill. “At first, they seem like your average junk email, containing share tips or an advertisement for Viagra, along with a small, slightly garbled picture.But this, experts say, is the spam that could bring the internet to a virtual standstill this year. To bypass anti-spam software, the emails use an image instead of text.”

“In the past six months, this image spam has seen a massive increase and now represents 35 per cent of all junk email, according to security software firm F-Secure and image spam is taking up 70 per cent of the bandwidth bulge. The emails, generally containing stock tips, come from gangs and even bored teenagers in the United States and Russia trying to inflate prices in a swindle called ‘pump-and-dump’".

“They promise that a cheap, usually American, stock will take off. The perpetrator then dumps his stock as buyers leap in before it collapses. Dmitri Allperovitch of computer security company CipherTrust said: ‘They're niche companies with no profit and no products, so when you see a spike from almost no trades to two or three million when the spam is sent out, you know there were a lot of people who fell for it.’”

Is your PC a slave unit to such schemes. Are you unwittingly passing bogus information to millions of other people?

Info on Demand: Boon or Bane?

Apple announced the iPhone at its annual Macworld expo. Steve Jobs called the iPhone a "revolutionary mobile phone" that will feature an iPod, phone and "Internet communicator."

The High Cost of Procastination

A recent article “Man returns book overdue since 1960” features the high cost of procrastination! Robert Nuranen of Hancock, Michigan just turned in a book that he had borrowed for a ninth-grade assignment. Mr. Nuranen claimed that his mother misplaced the copy of "Prince of Egypt" while cleaning the house. Every now and then the family came across it, only to set it aside again. (Hardly his mother’s fault.) He found the book again around New Year’s day while goinh through a box in the attic, presuming looking for something else

"I figured I'd better get it in before we waited another 10 years," he reported on Friday with a $171.32 check, equal to 47 years' worth of late fees. Current librarian Sue Zubiena said that the library had long ago lost any record of the book, but she said, "I'm going to use it as an example," she said. "It's never too late to return your books."

If only he had read my book, The 60 Second Procrastinator (Adams Media) Ref: http://tinyurl.com/fedl8. He might have turned it in a bit earlier!

Sexy Images and Decision-making

Valerie Iancovich, writing for the DiscoveryChannel in Canada says “It's not shocking news that a bikini-clad woman will affect many men's judgment. But now, a recent study suggests that a man with high testosterone levels is more easily-influenced by a scantly-clad lady than guys with lower levels of the hormone.”

“Once the men with high testosterone were exposed to the photos of the women, they were more willing to settle for a poorer deal. As a matter of fact, just touching a bra prior to playing the game seemed to squander the resolve of the testosterone-heavy men.”

So, macho guys, be careful what type of information (photos, graphics) you’re exposed to. It might render your contort your decision-making capacity.