Posting the Wrong Kind of Info

Vast segments of the population have turned to online exhibitionism. Writing in the Washington Post, economist Robert J. Samuelson observes says, “ It turns out that the Internet has unleashed the greatest outburst of mass exhibitionism in human history.”

“People seem to crave popularity or celebrity more than they fear the loss of privacy.” However, “what goes on the Internet often stays on the Internet.

Of particular concern: Something that seems harmless, silly or merely impetuous today may seem offensive, stupid or reckless in two weeks, two years or two decades,” says Samuelson. “Henry David Thoreau famously remarked that ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Thanks to technology, that's no longer necessary. People can now lead lives of noisy and ostentatious desperation...”

Unscientific Americans

From a National Science Foundation's biennial report on the state of science understanding, research, and education, of 1,574 adults surveyed:

* 54% knew long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. In other words, 46% did not know.
* 51% knew that antibiotics kill bacteria but not viruses.
* 48% knew that the earliest humans didn't live at the same time as the dinosaurs. So, an astounding 52% did not know.

What kind of information are Americans likely to know? The name of Tom Cruise’s baby and who Brad Pitt was married to before Angelina Joli… makes me weep for the state of our collective intelligence.

NY Times: Serial Malpractice

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” - Benjamin Disraeli, cited by Mark Twain.

Peter J. Smith, writing for LifeSiteNews.com, explains how The New York Times, with a rich tradition of misconstruing data “has once again published another 'hit piece' on the institution of marriage, alleging that for ‘the first time more American women are living without a husband than with one.’ However, US census data for 2005 shows that the January 16th front-page story in the New York Times is just another disturbing showcase of the Times’ tolerance for ‘journalistic malpractice’.”

First, a look at the offense: “For what experts say is probably the first time,” writes New York Times writer Sam Roberts, on the front page, “more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.” …“In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000,” Roberts writes. He then states that married couples now represent a minority of all American households and “the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.”

Smith counters emphatically: “The plain truth is that Roberts’ findings are at variance with U.S. census reports for 2005, which demonstrate a far different picture from the profiles selected by Roberts of single women ‘delighting in their new found freedom.’”

“According to the 2005 report ‘Marital Status of the Population by Sex and Age’, the United States is not yet a culture that has discarded the institution of marriage, where 60.4% of men and 56.9% of women over 18 years old are married.

Smith points out how Roberts created his own “analysis” by using the Census Bureau’s “Living Arrangements of Persons 15 Years Old and Over by Selected Characteristics”, by including in his 51% figure of women living without a spouse: unmarried teenage and college girls still living with their parents, women whose husbands work out of town, are institutionalized, or are separated from husbands serving in Afghanistan and Iraq!

Smith offers the facts: “Among marriageable women over 18 years old, 56.9% of women are married, with 53% having a spouse present, 1.4% with a spouse absent, 9.9% widowed, and 11.5% divorced. Yet, 67.3% of women 30-34, and 70.5% of women 35-39 are married, a far cry from the profiles of women offered by the Times of women finding fulfillment outside marriage.”

“It’s one of a series of articles the New York Times has run… playing games with numbers in a misleading and dishonest way, each one of them having the same point: marriage is over, marriage is finished, nobody wants to get married anymore, people are happier not getting married,” talk show host Michael Medved told his radio audience, accusing the Times of committing “journalistic malpractice”

“…97% of women between the ages of 15 and 19 are never married!” observes Medved. “What does it tell you when he’s including girls living home with their parents as single women and then uses that to create this lie that the majority of women are unmarried?”

My take on all this? Managing information and communication is tough enough these days without purported trusted news sources like the New York Times publishing erroneous reports.

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.

Self-Induced Lost Opportunities

"For all the hand-wringing about Generation M, technology is not really the problem... It's not so much that the video is going to rot your brain, it's what you are not doing that's going to rot your life."

– David Levy, Ph.D., University of Washington Information School

The Web as Social Hangout

From the AP newswire in New York:

“The online hangout MySpace got even more popular in November, beating Yahoo in Web traffic for the first time, a research company said Tuesday. News Corp.'s MySpace recorded 38.7 billion U.S. page views last month, compared with 38.1 billion for Yahoo Inc., according to comScore Media Metrix. MySpace's growth was 2 percent over October and triple the 12.5 billion recorded in November 2005.”

“The numbers underscore the rapid rise of a social-networking site that encourages visitors to stay and make friends through free tools for messaging, sharing photos and creating personal pages known as profiles.”

Way Too Many TVs

NEW YORK (AP) -- The average American home now has more television sets than people. That threshold was crossed within the past two years, according to Nielsen Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said.

Half of American homes have three or more TVs, and only 19 percent have just one, Nielsen said. In 1975, 57 percent of homes had only a single set and 11 percent had three or more, the company said.