Online predators are not nearly so bad as the media says 7 Aug 2009 I’ve been online now for nearly thirty years, from back in the days of BBSs and 300 baud acoustic couplers. In all that time, the internet for me has been annoying, occasionally angry, and with the occasional death threat from a Christian or insane person, but I have not seen, or heard of directly from anyone else, sexual predators online. As the father of two interney savvy teenagers, I was, of course concerned, but not in a state of panic. Which is why I find this video is so true and timely: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lsnC-iWHJ0&hl=en&fs=1&] Censorship Social evolution
Censorship Goodbye freedom 10 Sep 201113 Sep 2011 Ten years ago tomorrow tonight I was watching an episode of West Wing, and, as I do, channel surfing during the ads. One channel showed a fire in the World Trade Centre, which less than a month earlier I had stood at the base of looking up like the Australian… Read More
Humor Math and urine 16 Sep 2009 I just had to bring this blag post by Randall Munroe on the mathematics of the right choice of urinal to use in mens rooms to your attention. How can one not like a post that describes the ICUP (International Choice of Urinal Protocol) thus: Read More
Epistemology On innovation 11 Aug 201226 Aug 2012 [I’ll continue the congenital beliefs series soon. Also chocolatarianist political theory] [Late note: Stefano Ghirlanda has pointed me at two papers he has coauthored on just this topic. In one, published in PNAS, he and his colleagues investigate a model of cultural innovation. In another, as yet unpublished, they argue that “creativity… Read More
I think that this is just one aspect of a much bigger problem that has been created by the gutter press. Gutter press journalism is about selling newspapers, magazines or whatever medium one is working in and anything that raises sales and is at least borderline legal goes. These denizens of the press love to prey on people basic and irrational fears and there are no fears greater than those of parents for their children. The three greatest fears are kidnapping, rape and murder the greatest of all being a combination of all three. Whenever a case of child kidnapping with the following rape and murder takes place the gutter press goes into a hyper-drive feeding frenzy blowing the story up into gigantic proportion and stretching it out over days, weeks and in some cases months. The result of this activity can be seen in surveys done in many European countries. The overwhelming majority of parents believe that the risk of their children suffering such a fate has increased dramatically over the years and that it is now almost impossible for their children to go out on the streets alone. In fact almost the opposite is true. The number of such crimes throughout Europe has fallen dramatically in the last fifty years and it is probably saver for children to go out on the streets today than at any time in the last two hundred years. How do we solve this problem? Shoot the journalist?
Yay, thanks for the link! We’re glad this episode is striking a chord with so many people. As someone who was on BBSes as a younger person, I’m sure you have your own stories about how young people have dealt with unwanted sexual content online — my friends mostly say “yeah, I was exposed to unwanted sexual content when I was younger, and I ignored it/told the person to stop bothering me/went somewhere else.” I think the more we can spread our own stories about teens’ competence to deal with these things, the more we can help other people understand it’s not as scary as they think.