links links links links, links links links links, linkety liiiinks, linkety links

(sing abover to the tune of Monty Python's 'Spam Spam Spam Spam'.)

Because I have no originality, here be links!

New 'mommy wars': a fight against pop culture's excess

Excerpts: What's really happening with American mothers of all stripes ... is worry about popular culture, and what feels like a tsunami of forces threatening parents' ability to impart positive values to their children, according to a new survey of more than 2,000 mothers. Moms report a cultural onslaught that goes far beyond Hollywood movies and TV, and into the world of the Internet, electronic games, and advertising.

"We heard mothers talking about the kind of hypersexuality that's out there, about violence and disrespect, about body image..."

...

A mom can protect her children at home, but it's hard once they venture into the world, to go to school or visit a friend's house, says Ms. Waller.


Boy, am I ever there. Sometimes it feels like trying to hold back the sea with a cubicle partition. For me, it's actually one of the big reasons I want to homeschool my kids. Because home schooling parents tend to be a little more conscientious about limiting TV and computer/internet time, and setting some kind of limit on what's on TV or the computer. When Daniel is around home schooled friends, they tend to play outside or play pretend or build with lego or whatever. When he goes to his public school friends' houses, they watch TV or play on the computer. Exclusively violent games. His public school friends have been playing shoot'em up games for years - blood, guts, cannons, blasters, etc etc, and nobody seems to think this is a problem. Daniel's feeling more and more left out these days. In one internet game, his characters are only up to level 2, while his friends are up to level 8-10, because they get so much more uncontrolled internet time than he does. Only one of his regular school friends gets a limit: half an hour on the computer, then it turns itself off.

Link to article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20050506/ts_csm/amoms

***
From linealyn: queennell's Scantily Clad Beneath The Clear Night Sky - A Brief Brief History of Time
Newton: Haaaaaang on a minute. If I’ve got gravity holding shit together, I don’t need Aristotle’s crystal balls. This means that the stars might be, like, really far away. And, like, go on for ever.

Newton’s flatmate: WTF d00d, stay off the wild mushrooms!

Newton: But, right, if they go on forever, then my shiny gravity means that the Universe will collapse under its own weight.

Newton’s flatmate: Seriously, Isaac, no more opium on your cornflakes.

***
Study: Meanness in Girls Can Start at 3

You don't say. And this is news because... ?

b-days and websites and gifs, oh my

Happy birthday, jenniferjames!

So, so far I have completed files up to Challenge #12 of thursday100plus, to put into a website for same. This is good. I'm quite proud of this accomplishment.

Except that I'm planning on putting up files for the first 60 challenges. Erm.

Oh well, it'll get done. And in the meantime, it's kind of neat to go back and see what was posted. I'd probably be getting this done a lot faster if I wasn't re-reading some of the stories.

Still have no clue how to animate gifs. Every site I go to, I either can't download the animation applications, or I can, but get lost trying to use them. I'm ever so hopeless. Hard to believe I was a high school computer teacher for four years.

Sheltering Pt 2

Here's a question: what age do you think is appropriate to allow kids to watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves?

We own the movie (I think we got it from ninja_kat) and I showed mine the trailer arrow-POV shot, because it's cool. They wanted to know if they could watch the whole thing, and I said Nope, when you're older.

Then I wondered how much older.

See, here's the thing. The violence is not that bad, as far as non-G-rated movies go. It's certainly no worse than what they've seen in LOTR. And although we eventually had to declare a moratorium on LOTR last summer after they became obsessed with killing every living and imaginary thing on the planet, we ended the moratorium a few months later to no ill effects, and I'm sure the pure violence part of Robin Hood would not be a big deal.

There's also a little teeny potty mouth - at one point, Will Scarlett says "F*ck me, they cleared it!" but again, that's not a big concern. They've heard those words before. They know where they're appropriate and where they're not (eg in the playground = not OK; on the ski hill after nearly being killed by a chair lift = OK).

But there's a scene in there where the Sheriff of Nottingham forcibly marries Maid Marian, and then goes about trying to un-Maid her. It's... um, somewhat disturbing. In part because it's played for laughs, which... eep. Nothing horribly graphic happens, but he's hurriedly undressing while a battle rages on outside, and there's a part where he lies down on top of her (both of them mostly still fully dressed) and shoves her legs apart - and then Robin Hood comes crashing through the window and he looks up and says something like, "Do you mind? We've just been married!"

See, I don't have much of a problem with sexuality, although somehow Daniel has reached the venerable age of 8 still not knowing how babies are made because he just hasn't asked (Justin, OTOH, asked and was told and said Huh.) But I'm not sure I want my kids to see what's basically a rape scene played for humour value.

But then again... the rest of the movie is pretty good... how big a deal is this... and what if we talk about it with them beforehand... and what if they see the movie (or something else like it) somewhere else... and you know the drill. Blahblahblahmommyangst.

Any ideas? How old do you think kids should be before viewing this movie, or one like it? How old is too old to be shielding them from this kind of thing? How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?

Well, that was gratifying :)

Just read the boys part of Prisoner of Azkaban, the Gryffindor-Slytherin match (they know the movies cut out a lot of what's in the books, and they'd asked whether anything was cut out of Quidditch.) So I'm reading through, having to stop every few minutes as they start asking questions (what's a penalty, why do they need to be fifty points ahead before winning, etc) and then we get to the part where they actually win - and I think the whole street heard them cheering and yelling. They ran around screaming for several minutes before I finally called them back to hear the last two paragraphs of the chapter. It's a good thing we live in a child-friendly neighbourhood.

See, this is the kind of thing that I treasure with my kids. Having them be interested and able to get into stuff even when it's not on TV or on a computer.