internet, pew study

It’s Official

6 Comments

Today there was an article by Mark Hatchman that summarized the latest Pew Research report on the web. It confirmed what I have suspected for a long time: blogs are the domain of old farts and fartettes. OK, OK, Mr Hatchman didn’t refer to old farts and fartettes, nor does the original report, but they may as well have.

The report was a result of the Pew Research Center’s ongoing Internet & American Life Project effort. The key finding relevant to blogging was that the number of teens that said they blogged dropped from 28% in 2006 to 14% in 2009. Contrast that with the constant 10% of adults that say they maintain a blog. The real kiss of death amidst teens is that they consider blogging to be un-cool. 

Other interesting numbers pointed out that teens prefer myspace while adults tend towards facebook. No real surprise there. One glimmer of hope – teens don’t tweet. Less than 8% of teens use Twitter compared to 19% of adults. Twitter was also rated an un-cool amidst teens. 

So looks like the old farts and fartettes have it – we can blog and tweet to our hearts desire – the kids won’t be reading so we can say anything we want about them. {*grin*} 

One factoid that we all are probably already aware of is that there was a decline of roughly 5% in the number of homes with internet/broadband in 2009. Pew made no explanation, but I suspect the economy. For interesting reading, take a look at the full report from Pew Research.


mama kat, music, writer's challenge

Ahhh, I Don’t Hardly Know Her …

8 Comments

Once more dear friends, into the breech we go. Time for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge. This week I have choosen to do only one topic:

1.) A song you can’t escape.
(inspired by Stefanie from I’m not much into health food, I am into champagne)

My take is a bit different than the standard lyrics rattling around the skull driving me to distraction. The other night I was listening to music as I finished working on some work work. What to my wondering ears should appear but

followed by

I was struck, in that off-hand stunning way that coincidence slaps you up side the head, by the fact that these songs are associated in my mind with two milestones in the journey to adulthood.

What milestones you ask? Well, Louie, Louie was the first rock song I ever heard performed by a live band. Granted it was a group of fellow junior high classmates playing at the first school dance of my seventh grade career, but it is cemented forever in my mind as the epitome of live and music. To this day more than 40 years later I cannot hear Louie, Louie (or Sitting On The Dock In The Bay by Otis Redding) without casting my mind back to the excitement and sheer joy the live sound brought me. The body throbbing bass, the impact of the drums, the crisp drone of the electric guitars – there is nothing better in the world.

A couple of years later it was 1969 and Crimson & Clover was dominating the AM airwaves. It coincided with the time when I was first seriously entranced by the idea of feminine companionship. Yup, that was when I suffered my first crush on a {*gasp*} girl. Heck, it was the first time I even seriously thought of girls as truly desirable to hang out with for reasons different than guys. Every time I hear Crimson & Clover, I am immediately back in the heady brew of feelings and desires and hormones and melancholy thoughts from that time. Not to mention all the drugs and hallucinogens that were rampant in the world as the 60’s came to a close.

The powerful associations formed by music with our emotional and mental state when we first heard it is spooky and wonderful. Hearing the music brings the memories flooding back. But I wonder if the additional social element of community commonality that my generation had continues today. (Stick with me here – you’ll soon understand what I’m blithering about!) When I was going through adolescence, we all heard the same songs at the same times on the AM and then FM radio. You and all your cohorts heard the same music at the same time, sharing the same music with a common set of experiences. It was only in college that non-synchronous introduction of different music via {*gasp*} vinyl records began to separate out tastes and preferences.

Contrast that experience with kids of the same age today. Each of them tends to listen to their own collection based more on the intesection of exposure and their social networking. Even a group as small as two is likely to have two separate iPods in their individual ears, listening to different sounds. Thus, I suspect that the common music/experience phenomenon is lost in the generations of today. The commonality is no longer in the experience of and while listening, it is the selection of what to add to the collection and to play. A very different set of memories.

What do you think?

facebook, name, urban dictionary

My Name Is …

2 Comments

My perusal of my Google reader today pointed out that Facebook was pushing the inanity of people looking up their names in the Urban Dictionary and then reporting the results. Given I don’t facebook (and don’t care for Lost which seems to be filling the twittersphere at the moment), I figured I’d follow the Facebook lead.

1 Daniel – This is a difficult name to define because it defies many boundaries of human perception, let alone various languages. One of the closest translations that experts give is God or many other variations of that general idea. Despite the fact that various names have been pinned to Daniel, its seems that all of the above examples (including that of God) cannot even withstand the magnitude of Daniel.

… Daniel is so powerful, it defies all laws of this or any other universe. Recent studies have shown that people who have attempted to comprehend this name have either disappeared, died spontaneously, or driven themselves into a pertinent state of insanity and/or catatonia.

One common belief is that Daniel is possibly the grounds on which everything and nothing is based. It seems to surpass the idea of infinity. Quantum physicists report that this Daniel is Everything and Nothing. It or He is said to have unexplainable connections with the String and Superstring Theories as Daniel resonates within every single layer of the multi-dimensional complex and yet still exists beyond that point which is where scientists have lost the trail. Various theologists and spiritual leaders believe that Daniel is one who is, as they say, “The Answer”. All attempts to understand this idea of Daniel have failed.

3 Daniel – word used for guys who confuse chicks beyond confuzzlement. When a guy is referred to as a Daniel, he has probably confuzzled a chick by saying that he likes her, while he also likes another girl at the same time, and does nothing about the situation.

6 Daniel – a guy you can always go to with any of your problems. He is sensitive and caring. He will try his hardest not to give up on you but sometimes he does. He’s a good guy with the best personality. even when your upset with him he can still put a smile on your face. His love is unconditional. Don’t make mistakes with him, because he’s strong enough to leave. he’s a great singer and if you’ll ask he mostly sings to you. He wants to be a musician. His ex-girlfriend is amazing and crazy at the same time, but loves him with all her heart…

I can certainly go along with the first definition! {*grin*} The third is just plain wrong – I don’t think I have ever confuzzled a chick in that manner. The sixth has some degree of truthfulness, but I’m sticking to my godhood from the primary definition. So what does the Urban Dictionary say about your name?

comments

Do You ….

9 Comments

Do you have people who read your blog but then comment via snail mail (the USPS kind)? I do.

It never fails to crack me up when I get a snail mail commenting on the blog. Why spend $$$ to mail off a comment when you could simply type one in online? Or email me directly through the published email address? I understand the local readers who either call me on the phone or stop me on the street to comment on the blog – they feel it is more personal and polite to comment directly. I can understand the additional sense of connection that comes from the face-to-face or mouth-to-ear interactions. But to mail off an epistle about a blog post seems to me to be a bit odd.

So far most of the snail mails have come from people I know because we went to school together close to 40 years ago. It isn’t like they aren’t computer literate; they are. It isn’t like they don’t occasionally send an email; they do. So why the snail mail epistles? I’m hoping one of them will choose to answer, be it via snail mail or email or blog comment or ….

It is pretty funny in a way. I read other bloggers complaining that their friends don’t read their blog, their family doesn’t read their blog, etc. I have a different problem, a number of people who read my blog but don’t comment in the standard ways. I’ve decided to treat it as an honor to me that they have found a channel to convey their comments to me – what more could an itinerant scribbler hope for?

What’s your comment oddity of the moment?

falsehood, mmr, rant

Fraud Exposed

6 Comments

Sometimes someone does something so odious that no rational person can ever forgive them.  To a scientist of any ilk, falsifying data is one such crime. Especially when it is done for commercial interest and harms the public health, it is totally unforgivable. Andrew Wakefield, sometimes with a decorative Dr. in front of his name is one who has committed such an act.  As detailed in the London Evening Standard, he was found “in breach of ethical and professional guidelines.”

His research (on only 12 subjects) was the major impetus behind the mass fear of the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccinations. The idiocy was quickly seized upon by the autism groups and Jenny McCarthy. From the hearing:

The research has since been discredited by subsequent studies involving millions of children, which found no evidence for the link between the triple jab and autism. It has since been retracted by the Lancet, and ten of the original 13 authors disowned the research. But the claims sparked a massive drop in the number of children given the triple jab for measles, mumps and rubella. Vaccination rates have still not fully recovered to levels before the scare.

Just causing the resurgence of MMR in the population is bad enough, but it also appears that Mr. Wakefield caused this wave of hysteria and disease at least partially for profit.  Once again from the hearing, Wakefield …

received £55,000 to carry out the research on behalf of solicitors acting for parents who believed their children had been harmed by MMR, but could not account for how at least half of this money had been spent and did not declare any conflict of interest to the Lancet, according to the fitness to practice panel.

So to echo crankylitprof over at Cranky Epistles, Wakefield falsified his data, a lot of hysterical people bought in to it, and a lot of kids have been harmed because of his duplicity.

We are all sympathetic to those afflicted or affected by autism in their search for a cause, but joining in hysteria seldom leads to anything good.  And in this case it has brought diseases once declared defeated back into circulation, causing yet more misery. And all because some idiot was intellectually dishonest as well as a liar by omission.

Things Done Right