Only 37% of all people have a freezer; really?

Is that possible? According to this chart that I borrowed at the every fascinating Bleeding Heart Libertarians, it is:


That just jumped out at me as an odd stat.

The point of the post was that if you look at how the poor have fared since 1984, things aren't really so bad. Almost none of the poor had computers, cell phones, microwaves or clothes dryers and less than half had air conditioning. Not all of those are life changing. But computers almost certainly are. Computers - hand in hand with the internet - open a vast world of education and knowledge to the poor that they would have almost certainly been locked out of in the past.

Microwaves, clothes dryers, and cell phones, while not life changing in the same way, certainly are time savers, allowing the poor to work longer hours, or to have more leisure time while working the same hours. Air conditioning, although largely taken for granted, is a life-saving invention. And I'm not being dramatic. It literally saves lives.

The author of the post also notes that while many "experts" lament how wages have been largely stagnant over the last 20 or 30 years, that isn't the whole picture. As computers and cell phones and microwaves have become cheaper we now live better lives, even if we make the same money, than we did 30 years ago. Not only that, but thanks to microwaves, VCRs, the internet and things like dryers, we have more free time, and more entertainment options available to us.

So it's not really fair to simply lament that wages have largely remained the same over the last 30 or so years, because in the big picture, our lives are vastly easier than they were 30 years ago, and we have access to a much wider array of entertainment and educational options.

"The hardest job kids face..."

Fred Astair lived from May 10, 1899 to June 22, 1987. For the purposes of this post I'd like that 1987 to be a bit earlier (no offense Mr. Astair), but it will do.

At some point during his life, he said the following:

"The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any."

It's important to realize that he died in 1987. So at the very latest, he must have been talking about "kids" in 1986 or 1987. Given this, the "kids" he was talking about would now be between 20 and 40 years old (roughly ages 0-20 in 1986). Again, this is assuming the latest possible date he could have made this comment.

Why is this important? Well, next time any one between those ages tries to tell you about the lack of "manners" kids have these days compared to their day, keep in mind that Fred Astair thought the same thing about them way back when they were kids. And any time some one over those ages tries to tell you how parents don't set good examples for their kids... well... guess who was "not setting" a good example for all those kids Astair is talking about.

Just another example of how things really aren't worse today than they were back then. The good old days weren't always good, and (today or tomorrow) ain't as bad as they seem.

SCOTUS (did not) Kill The Video Game Star

The SCOTUS gets it right. Video games, even violent ones, cannot be banned:

"This country has no tradition of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence. And California’s claim that "interactive" video games present special problems, in that the player participates in the violent action on screen and determines its outcome, is unpersuasive."

It was an action no one would be fool-hardy enough to ever try to do with books. Becuase, well, books are old and fancy and respected and stuff. Old people remember when they used to read them, especially the paper kind. Way before anything fancy like "interactivity."

This ruling is the right one and I give hearty "boos" to Justices Thomas and Breyer for their dissent. There is no room, in my opinion, for dissent on this issue. It's cut and dried First Amendment stuff. "Congress shall make no law ..." No law. Not "sometimes might wanna make," or "could make" or "in special cases may make." No law. Period.

These types of cases provide plenty of potential for bad outcomes. A ruling against the video game industry pretty much forever relegates it as a second class citizen. At least until its so accepted as a medium that the point is moot and the court finally reverses path. Thankfully, that didn't happen here. Look, for instance, at TV, where swear words subject networks to fines, but not cable shows. All because networks are "free" to access. As if the First Amendment is phrased "Congress shall make no law limiting speech unless its readily available speech." Meanwhile, society picks away at the restriction bit by bit until its pointless, until "F" bombs are eventually allowed, so long as they don't reference the implied physical act.

But secondly, this is the type of ruling that, if it goes the other way, eventually ends up impacting all manner of things. If interactivity is the turning point, then "choose your own adventure" books eventually looped into the ruling. If not them - a childhood staple of mine, I realize they aren't tremendously popular now, then Dungeons and Dragons games. "The kids can create and commit violent acts against zombies, which in their imaginations look like people! Not to mention skeleton, which potentially WERE people, at one time!"

I'm not entirely against the idea of keeping kids from playing ultra violent video games. But I think the right way to go about it is to have parents police the games, and to a larger (and more important) extent to explain to kids that this is what you do in games, not in real life.

I won't be against my kids knowing or using curse words. I don't find it that corrupting. Most everyone I know is aware of curse words, and I can't find a correlation between the knowledge of them - or even their use - and the idiots I know. So I won't care if my kids use the words - so long as they use them in the right instances. You don't use them to your parents, or your grandparents, or in social settings, or especially in formal settings. But if you hit your thumb with a hammer, you have carte blanche just that one time to let one rip. I hope that level of permissiveness takes away the "shock" value of the word.