Ford has announced new technology for some of its 2010 model cars that will allow parents to control the top speed of their teenagers’ cars.  As a bonus, they can also limit the volume of kiddies’ stereos and make the car send out constant alert chimes if the seatbelt isn’t getting used.

Nice idea.  Parents, I’m sure, are thrilled at the prospect.  Teens, I’m sure, hate the idea.

My opinion?  It’s a drop in the bucket.  Here’s a better idea:

Make the top speed in every car on the road 80 miles an hour.  I don’t know of anywhere in the country where it’s actually legal to go faster than that, anyway, and for many places, 80 is too fast.  So 80 should be it.  Period.  If 80 isn’t fast enough for you, hop on a plane.

Put a limit on the volume of the stereo on every car on the road.  If I can hear your music outside your car while you have your motor running and all windows sealed tight, it’s too loud.  I don’t care how much you want your mental screws vibrated loose by a strong beat; I shouldn’t have to listen to it with you.  And I assure you:  no one wants to sit through the wild potpourri of music on my iPod.  (The difference is that I don’t rudely and selfishly subject others to my tunes, and I think the world goes on fine without my doing so.)

Make that little seatbelt chime that insistent on every car on the road.  If you really want your teens to follow your orders about wearing a seatbelt, provided them with the advantage of being able to follow by example, not just by order.  Show them how much you personally think a seatbelt makes a difference for you, while you demand it of them.

If we really want to keep drivers safe, we need everyone on the same page, not just younger drivers who feel so cramped their first few years on the road that they spend them looking forward to “going full throttle” once the restrictions go away.

Today was supposed to be the day some friends of mine from church headed to the hospital to deliver their son, Lucas.  Lucas apparently wasn’t all that patient about it, and decided he wanted to be a “Monday’s Child” instead of a “Tuesday’s Child,” so he was born yesterday morning.

After work, I dropped by the hospital for a quick hello just to see him.

The mom, Christi, looked amazing in the recovery room, reminding me why women are supposed to be the ones to give birth:  no man could go through childbirth of any kind and not require three or four months in ICU!

At least.

The dad, Rick, was holding Lucas when I walked into the room.  As I watched, I noticed that Lucas’s hands — the tiniest little hands — were folded together just under his chin, fingers intertwined, as if he were praying.  So precious.

Welcome to the world, little Lucas.

There was a time when I’d have thought Saturday morning television would never be without The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, and that the kids’ block of PBS would never be without Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

If anyone runs Bugs and friends on Saturday morning, I guess I am watching some other channel at the time.  Fact is, I haven’t seen the rascally rabbit for a while now.

And now there’s news that while Sesame Street is still going — although virtually unrecognizable to those of us who grew up with it in the 1970s — Mr. Rogers is being sent packing from many PBS affiliates.

No new episodes shows have been produced for seven years.  Rogers passed away five years ago.  And officials at local PBS stations now say that the old tried and true program is showing its age, along with a decline in viewership that they have to act on.

Yes, ‘Neighborhood’ was a sometimes-hoaky production.  Yes, there were times when Rogers himself seemed far too “goody-goody” for anyone over the age of 12 to possibly be able to take seriously.  But for those who were younger than that, he was something special.  And for those of us who remember watching when we were those little kids he talked to, there was no one quite like him when it came to pointing out the fact that we’re all valuable in our own special ways.

Maybe there will be some new production with new characters that will communicate exactly the same message in a whole new way that is somehow just as effective.

But I doubt it.

Each year, Beloit College releases its “Mindset List,” which applies common pop culture to rising college freshmen to give those of who are older a better perspective of the world view these students might have from what they have experienced (and haven’t experienced) in their short lifetime.

Here are my top ten shockers from the big list created for the College Class of 2012:

1. Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
2. Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
3. IBM has never made typewriters.
4. McDonald’s and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries.
5. The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno and started at 11:35 EST.
6. Personal privacy has always been threatened.
7. Caller ID has always been available on phones.
8. Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.
9. 98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear.
10. Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.

Enlightening.  And frightening.

Here’s their full list of 60 items, with my own added disclaimer that reading it will likely make you feel very, very old.

Someone pass the Geritol.

The Amethyst Initiative is designed to bring the debate over lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 to the forefront in 2009. As hard as it may be to believe, educators from colleges across the country actually support dropping the drinking age.

They claim that doing so would curb the desire for binge drinking among their students. Opponents say that raising the drinking age created a drop in the number of drunken driving fatalities.

One of the typical arguments about why the drinking age should be lowered really ticks me off. It goes something like this:

“If an 18-year-old can join the military and die for his country, he ought to be able to drink.”

That is one of the stupidest lines of reasoning I’ve ever heard.

For one thing, the military teaches discipline and responsibility. Chugging a beer does not.

But let’s apply that same logic with a similar argument: one might argue that driving a car carries great responsibility. It certainly should be left to responsible people. In North and South Dakota, a driver with a beginner’s permit can legally drive alone as early as 14 1/2 years of age.

So if, by those states’ laws, someone 14 1/2 is legally-responsible enough to drive a car, why doesn’t that mean that he should be legally-responsible enough to be shipped overseas into a warzone and potentially die for his country?

If we’re going to compare totally unrelated things and pretend that they’re identical, then let’s go all out! The youngest age that any state suggests a child can do anything “grown up” ought to be the universal age at which he should be able to do all things “grown up,” right?

So forget about sending them to high school…just pluck them up right out of middle school and ship them off to a Quonset hut somewhere before they know what hit ‘em. And don’t forget to pack plenty of beer so they can take their minds off the irrational logic over why being able to do one thing ought to automatically mean being able to do something else that’s totally different.

Any parents out there jumping for joy at that thought? Didn’t think so. Because there’s a reason that different things are appropriate at different ages.

If I ever have kids and they want to attend a college that supports lowering the drinking age just because it doesn’t want to deal with educating its students about alcohol dangers or with enforcing alcohol rules on campus, I’d have a real hard time paying tuition there. They sure don’t sound capable of sending a good message to kids as far as I’m concerned.

I suspect that for most people, the thought of someone bringing a gun into a classroom is a scary thought.

Apparently, it’s not that scary an idea for some teachers in Texas, because a small school district in Harrold, Texas has decided to let teachers and school staff members carry concealed firearms.

Just ponder that a second and ask yourself if you’d be okay with that if your child was in that classroom.

Granted, the intent of this unusual, unorthodox decision is to protect students against school shootings.  But in most cases, that’s what police resource officers are for.  Unfortunately, the school is a half-hour away from the nearest sheriff’s office, so a quick police response is unlikely.  And there are specific conditions anyone who carries a handgun must follow to the letter to minimize problems.

But if I were a parent in Texas, I think I’d be calling for a new police substation rather than gun-toting teachers.

Remember your senior portraits from high school?  There was probably one pose in a tuxedo or evening gown top, followed by a portrait in more casual attire.  The background for such an image was likely something neutral that was basically a solid color on some kind of cloth backdrop.

That was then.  That is not now.

Have you seen any senior portraits lately?  Just take a look at the galleries here and here.  Granted, all of these kids are beautiful, as if they had been cast out of some model catalog.  But look at the backdrops:  they take the kids outside.  They place them in sports cars, with motorcycles, with horses.

And these two sites offer samples that are “clean” by comparison to what others offer; I’ve seen portraits that seem to want to depict sensuality.  And that seems like a lot of pressure on an 18-year-old.

If I were in school and saw pictures like these, I might seriously consider cutting school that day.

Does it bother anyone else that some senior portraits seem to go a bit over the top, or am I the only one?

My senior pictures were taken 20 years ago, and coming up later during the Arch-a-thon, I’ll actually run a couple of them, just to show you what they looked like back in 1988.

Remember my post from last Friday — that was 08/08/08, incidentally — about the sheer number of eights people were trying to embrace for special events?

Here’s another, though it’s more in the coincidence department:  a baby in Minnesota was born on 08/08/08 at 8:08 am.  Her weight?  Yep…eight pounds, eight ounces.

No, really.  I am not making this up.

A video game is being blamed for a real-life murder.  No, really.

A teen in Thailand is accused of robbing and murdering a cab driver — and apparently he confessed to having done so — to imitate scenes from the game “Grand Theft Auto.”

Police said the youth, an obsessive player of the video game, showed no sign of mental problems during questioning and had confessed to committing the crime explicitly because of the game.

“He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game,” chief investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak told Reuters.

He wanted to find out if robbing someone was really as easy as the game depicted?  So why did he not stop at robbing him?  Why kill the person?

In cases like this, a lot of people immediately start blaming the video games.  This suspect, apparently, was a frequent player of the game.  I’ve watched a lot of television in my time, and I’ve seen lots of robberies, killings, and all other types of delinquency being committed by various characters in various shows.  You can spend about a week watching a soap opera and pretty much see a little of everything when it comes to bad behavior.

I’ve never once planned to have an affair with someone, rob someone, or kill someone, just to see if it’s really as easy in real life as it is depicted in something that’s fictional.

The next time someone says video games should be banned because they spawn such bad behavior, I want to ask that specific person if they think that they’d seriously go kill someone if they sat down and played “Grand Theft Auto.”  Really.  Would that be all it took for them?

That’s not to say that there isn’t a line that gets crossed a little too often.  But anyone who would seriously go emulate such extreme behavior has a lot more going on than just being a little too hooked on a video game; and if just being exposed to violent storylines is enough to send such people over the proverbial edge, where do the bans stop?

Do we just lock everyone into sound-proof rooms where they can have no contact with other people and no contact with any “dangerous” ideas?

After all, even the Bible contains stories of murder.

As if South Carolina ranking #1 in text messaging while driving, we’re also getting national attention because a high school principal has decided to resign after being asked to allow the formation of a club he says goes against his “professional beliefs and religious convictions.”

The club in question is a Gay/Straight Alliance. His resignation will take effect in June of 2009, at the end of the 2008-2009 school year. I can’t help but wonder, if he’s so offended, why he didn’t set his date of separation to be June of this year.

The organization that creates such clubs nationwide describes its vision of the future as “a world in which every child learns to accept and respect all people, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.”

Doesn’t sound so terrible, does it?

The principal in question says his school focuses on abstinence-based curriculum, and feels that a Gay/Straight Alliance would imply “that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

¿Que?

First, let me get the abstinence issue out of the way. Abstinence-based curriculum stresses the importance of waiting for sex until after marriage. It’s what most Christian organizations like to push for in our schools, because it allows parents to sit back and feel that kids are getting the “right” message. But as everyone who has ever been a teenager knows, being told that you should wait for something almost certainly guarantees that you don’t want to wait for it. Add to that the typical peer pressure students face, and a curriculum that urges abstinence with less-than-realistic instruction on protection for those students who choose not to wait, and you have a scenario that is basically facilitating the real possibility of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases. It doesn’t take a college degree to see that.

The opposite of abstinence-based sex ed is comprehensive sex ed:

“There is good evidence, from studies of programs implemented in the US, UK and other European countries and countries in Africa and Asia, that comprehensive sex education can reduce behaviors that put young people at risk of HIV, STIs and unintended pregnancy. Studies have repeatedly shown too that this kind of sex education does not lead to the earlier onset of sexual activity among young people and, in some cases, will even lead to it happening later.”

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the rest of the quote:

“…that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

I can guarantee that every student in this principal’s school will choose to engage in sexual activity with the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes at some point…whether there is a Gay/Straight Alliance or not. The only exceptions will be those who decide to be celibate for life, or those who prefer relations with something other than humans, and I’d as soon think no more of that. If he could just figure out what needs to get said to make the members engage in sexual activity one day with members of the opposite sex only, his little “problem” would be solved, wouldn’t it?

If the formation of a Gay/Straight Alliance is enough to make people want to have sex, shouldn’t even abstinence-based sex education be banned as well? After all, if just the mere mention of the topic — which is apparently this principal’s concern — is enough to send students over the edge, isn’t sex education itself also a danger? Even if students are pressured not to have it until later, they’re still telling them something about having it, and that must be asking for trouble!

Maybe sex education in his school should be replaced by good old Home Ec. Baking chocolate chip cookies and sewing on buttons probably wouldn’t get anyone all that hot and bothered. (Unless they got too close to the hot oven.)

The executive director for Faith in America, a group that fights religious bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans, issued a statement that read in part:

“We truly believe it is unfortunate that this principal cannot see the immense harm that is caused when a social climate of rejection, condemnation and violence is justified with misguided religious belief. To make such a choice over simply allowing gay youth a forum to meet and talk, alludes to the apparent deep-seated prejudice that must exist in the religious mindset of this person.

“It is unfortunately very similar to the time in our history when segregation in schools was once allowed to flourish because of the deep-seated prejudice that existed in our institutions and the religious mindset of many people during that period.”

Or, to put it another way, discrimination is discrimination, no matter what makes the targets of it different from the “rest.”

The article from Columbia television station WIS-TV also quotes the parent of a student at the school:

“We are not putting them like, ‘ugh. You know you’re lepers.’ But we have to stand for what our foundation of our nation was about.”

Huh?

I might have to go dig up my history book, because I don’t recall reading that our country was founded to discriminate against gay high school students. I do, however, happen to vaguely remember something about the desire for religious freedom being a motive.

Religion does play a big role in this. There are plenty of Christians who refuse to call homosexuality anything other than an abomination. Many of them latch on to issues like this so that they can deflect their own sins that they don’t like to talk about. It’s human nature, after all. Rather than take the blame for something you’re doing that’s wrong, it’s so much easier to point a finger at someone else you feel is worse.

They also are convinced that homosexuality — and heterosexuality for that matter — should be the classifications of one’s sexual preference, not sexual orientation. As if anyone really wakes up one day and chooses which he’ll be.

Think about this for a second.

How old were you when you decided to which gender you were attracted? How many long days and nights did you labor over the decision? How long was your list of pros and cons for each gender?

Surely, if it was solely a function of choice, you must have spent a long, long time carefully considering which “team” you’d be “playing” for.

I can’t help but wonder why these religious zealots who are so against a club designed to open dialog wouldn’t welcome it. They should want straight students talking with gay students. They should want gay students — or in their minds, students who are choosing to be gay — to be exposed to straight students, those who are doing the “right” thing, so that they may see how happy and perfect the straight students’ lives are, and be positively influenced to rethink their “choice.”

That is to say, they should want those “good, sinless” straight students to rub off on those gay students. (No pun intended.)

Dialog, they should believe, could make all the difference in turning these gay students’ lives in the “proper” direction, right?

If they’re so convinced that it works for abstinence, then what’s the hang-up about homosexuality? They should be eager to quash two “problems” at once.

That is, if they’re giving it any real thought at all.

It was on this date back in 1958 when a Denmark company finally got it right. And had they not settled on the particular design they patented five decades ago, the their brand, named after the words leg godt, which translate as “play well,” might never have become a household name.

The company had actually been in business since the early 1930s, but their idea for a toy involving interlocking bricks just never quite caught on. Through perseverance and a little experimentation, they finally stumbled on the right formula for the plastic that makes up their “Automatic Binding Brick.”

And America has been grabbing up LEGO blocks ever since. I think my first LEGO set was a hospital, and since I already knew I wanted to go into television, when I played with the set, I would build the hospital without the “fourth wall;” then I’d stage the action on the inside and outside of the hospital. For a while, the doctor and nurse characters were right out of Jack Webb’s Emergency! series. (Remember that show?)

Every kid should have a LEGO set.

Myspace, the outrageously popular social networking site, is making adjustments to it’s automatic security settings to protect younger users, the Today show reported Tuesday.  The adjustments will give parents more options in limiting access of their children’s profiles, which could otherwise come into the view of online sexual predators.

Critics say that an underage user can simply create an account, lie about their age and even their name, and still have a full-fledged page on the site.

The operative word in that criticism, it seems to me, is lie: it’s the same kind of argument that blames McDonald’s because you’re fat, when you’re the one who’s buying it and eating far too much of it.  There seems to be no personal responsibility in these criticisms.

Yes…if you falsify your registration, which happens to violate the Terms of Service you have to agree to abide by to join, then you can break the rules.

But the question is, how, exactly, is a site like Myspace supposed to verify a user’s identity and age? Even charging a fee or demanding a credit card number doesn’t necessarily prove anything, because nowadays even teens under 18 have credit cards (or at least debit cards that masquerade as credit cards). Until the computer is able to hook the user up to some kind of mandatory lie detector test, and can perform its own DNA analysis while you wait, there is only so much any software platform can do.

Computers don’t lie, but people do.

And in this case, kids may lie, but concerned and connected parents won’t.  If parents are going to let their kids run amok on computers, they shouldn’t be surprised to find that junior or juniorette have skirted around something to get where they want to go.  But if parents let their kids play on the computer and take the time to spend time with them as they do, and to be involved enough to know where they’re going and what they’re doing, there’s a lot better chance that such dangers will never become reality.

Isn’t that worth a little involvement?

If you were a child of the 1970s, you may remember a short-lived cartoon/live action series shown in the classroom called Vegetable Soup.

Thanks to the “miracle” of YouTube, here is the ultra-funky theme song:

The metaphor of the recipe — “It takes all kinds of vegetables…” — was intended to be a theme of diversity and acceptance of different people and views.

Hopefully, more of us can keep that in mind in 2008.

If one of television’s longest-running shows, Sesame Street, is a children’s show, why do the recently-released first and second season DVD carry a warning?

Sound strange? Here, according to Slashdot, is what the warning says:

“These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Say what?

The show’s executive producer, Carol-Lynn Parente, provides an example of some of the “errors” in the show’s early years, involving a skit called “Monsterpiece Theater,” featuring Cookie Monster dressed as Alistair Cookie:

“Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, ‘That modeled the wrong behavior’ — smoking, eating pipes — ‘so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.’”

She also points out that the ever-grouchy Oscar is the kind of character they might never have come to be if the show had premiered in 2007 rather than 1969.

This reminds me of classic cartoons that have been re-edited to remove comments and remarks that never raised an eyebrow sixty years ago, that are now potentially offensive. You can’t plop a child in front of a cartoon and walk away, just hoping that the entertainment is wholesome. The child is likely learn so much more if the parent is there to discuss what’s on the screen and to point out that what was funny a while back isn’t funny to some people today. It also gives the chance to talk about characters who, like Oscar, display behavior that is somewhat less than ideal; parents can help their children see why that behavior is unacceptable in a way that doesn’t feel like learning.

That isn’t to say that you should intentionally expose kids to things you know are inappropriate, but that line seems to be in a different place these days in virtually every living room. Sometimes, a little communication goes a long way.

In the old days, traditions were traditions.

Not anymore. Now, no tradition is safe, because someone might become offended.

Santa Clauses in Australia are being instructed not to use the icon’s famous trademark laugh, “Ho ho ho,” because it might be “offensive” to women. The word “ho” is often used by rappers and others as a derogatory term for women.

So Santas are being asked to say, “Ha ha ha” instead. Of course, what will end up happening is that the kids will ask their parents why Santa is saying it wrong, the parents will have to explain that “ho ho ho” is offensive to some people, the kids will ask why it’s offensive, and the parents will then have to explain the very controversy these worry-wort Santa organizers are trying to avoid to start with.

Ironic, isn’t it? Some people really need a reality check.

I wonder how long it will be before hoes disappear from the aisles of gardening stores because their mention is offensive.