The Ghost In The Machine

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Einstein said there were only two things which were infinite--the universe and human stupidity, and he wasn't sure about the universe. According to the above linked article, the blame for this lies within technology.

Our kids are stupid. Evil demons inside the technology contraptions have done this to them. Somebody call the Ghostbusters.

Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."

Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."

Many kids never learn to do ordinary household tasks. They have no chores. Take-out and drive-through meals have replaced home cooking. And busy families who can afford it often outsource house-cleaning and lawn care.

"It's so all laid out for them," said Maushart, author of the forthcoming book "The Winter of Our Disconnect," about her efforts to wean her family from its dependence on technology. "Having so much comfort and ease is what has led to this situation — the Velcro sneakers, the Pull-Ups generation. You can pee in your pants and we'll take care of it for you!"

When I was a child, I had only ever used a conventional can opener. One year we went on vacation. We bought some corned beef hash. My dad handed me a P-38 can opener and asked me to open the can. I didn't know how to use it. Rather than allow me to stare blankly and starve to death, he did the unthinkable--he showed me how to use it!

True story.

OMG, Tron! A can! How will we ever open it???

Where are we as a society when we really believe technological advances are a bad thing? What has happened to us that we blame technology for bad parenting and the obvious consequences which follow?

Velcro was made to make things easier. One of its many uses is to keep shoes on your feet. It's easier to strap your shoes on with velcro than it is to tie your shoes with laces. This is called an advancement.

Ignorance is not stupidity. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge. Therefore, the child is ignorant because he hasn't been taught. The parent is stupid. Stupidity is the lack of quickness or keenness of mind to understand ordinary concepts. It also means you lack the power to teach these ordinary (simple) concepts or rules to others. There's a cure for ignorance; it is called Education. There is no cure for stupidity; as a wise sage once said, it is forever, and some say it should hurt.

There is a little thing, that apparently is widely unheard of, called Learned Behavior. The idea is, that certain behavior is learned. More importantly, there is certain behavior which has to be learned. If you always have had velcro shoes, or your parents have always tied your shoes for you, you're not going to know how to tie your shoes.

It generally takes five to ten minutes of your precious time to teach your child how to tie their shoes...assuming they have laced shoes. You may, in some cases, have to show them more than once, but eventually, they'll figure it out. Sure, this may take up your shopping time, perhaps even your drinking and partying time, but in the end it will pay off. Trust me.

When I was a child, technology had changed. There was really no need for me to know how a well pump worked; we had a house with modern running water. I didn't really need to know about an outhouse, or the application of corn cobs in such situations. Yet, I knew because my parents did and they relayed it to me.

So, you might come to the conclusion that you're dealing with a bunch of bad parents. This is closer to the real cause; however, what we're really dealing with are stupid people who are so overwhelmed with the latest technological advances and consumed with nostalgia, that they are blaming the new hotness for the old and busted.

Technological advances are a good thing. I can't wait to reach the future generation where all they know is that you defecate into the porcelain bowl and the glowy red laser disintegrates it. Trust me, I won't be whining about how I remember when you had to flush or use paper, and how the kids today are morons because they don't know how to wipe.

Today we are in a special moment. We are in that moment when it's out with the old and in with the new. We should not only appreciate and revel in this moment, we should rejoice in it. Instead, we're condemning it and blaming it on our inability to conform.

That is completely shameless, and dare I say: STUPID!

Caught in Their Own Trap

Article

There's an old joke about how the last person you want to see when you're with your girlfriend is your wife. This scenario may trump that. In South Wales, Cheryl Roberts suspected her husband David of being a pedophile.

Cheryl first became suspicious of her husband when he started spending long periods of time in his study. Then she saw a message pop up on David's desktop.

“It said, ‘You are a f-----g beautiful b---h’ and was signed Corky — his nickname,” prosecutor Martyn Kelly told the court. “She realized the message on the screen was one her husband had posted to a young girl. She had decided to pose as a schoolgirl to confirm her fears.”

One day, while David was in his study, Cheryl plugged in her laptop in the living room and signed into the chatroom. Posing as a teenage girl, she began a conversation with David. Through the course of the conversation, David performed lewd acts via web cam and then asked her to meet him for sex. Rather than confront him, Cheryl took the information to the Police.

Police discovered several images of child pornography downloaded on the computer, which David thought had gotten him nabbed. Detectives did not reveal until weeks later that David had been chatting with his wife and that she had turned him in.

Roberts confessed to possessing illegal images and engaging in indecent acts in the presence of a child. He was banned from contacting anyone, in person or online, under the age of 18, and was given three years of community service.

The Robertses have since separated and are seeking a divorce.

Surprise! I am pedo!

About a month ago, the FBI arrested Lawrence Silipigni, pictured above. Larry is a 41 year-old father of two daughters from Boston. He took a picture off someone's myspace profile and was using it to pose as a 17 year-old named Jamie. Larry posed as Jamie online to get underaged girls to make sex tapes for him. He was arrested when he attempted to trade them with someone for other child pornography tapes.

In one instance, he struck up an online relationship with a 13-year-old California girl, who he eventually convinced to masturbate on a Web cam for him.

The girl was subsequently contacted by a 16-year-old girl named "Jane" who said she too had had a relationship with "Jamie," which even progressed into a face-to-face meeting. Jane wrote to the California girl to warn her that Jamie was in fact a much-older man. Another girl, "Alice" also wrote to the California girl to warn her about Jamie.

Upon discovering Jamie was not who he seemed, the California girl wrote to him: "You r pedo." (Pedo is short for pedophile.)

"Sigh," Silipigni wrote back, the complaint alleges. "I'm lonely and hate being old."

The FBI investigation found that Silipigni had conversed with several underaged girls and that most of them had made videos for him.

During an April 2009 search of Silipigni's house and computer, according to the complaint, the FBI turned up numerous videos and evidence that Silipigni was in online chatrooms every day talking with girls he knew were minors.

According to the complaint, Silipigni admitted making videos of young girls via webcam chatrooms, but "did not recall" if he ever made the videos or conversations with the girls public.

Silipigni was arrestsed without incident at his home on Sept. 18 and was due to be transferred today to Los Angeles by U.S. Marshals.

These are not isolated occurrences. This sort of thing happens every day. In a World with the Internet, Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, Cellphones, Data Phones (iPhone, Blackberry, et al), texting, and a wealth of other mediums for our children and teenagers to communicate with others unsupervised, it's little wonder why this happens.

We teach our children to not talk to strangers, then we let them go on internet chatrooms to do just that. We let them on Mypspace and Facebook to tell the World all about themselves and where they can be found. We let them have cellphones to talk, text, and twitter to only God knows who.

Technological advancements can be wonderful, but they can be perverted and used for evil. Just because we have these things, doesn't mean that we have to let our children have them. Does the fact that all the other kids' parents let them have them mean you have to cave to the peer pressure yourself and jeopardize the safety of your children?

Will there be a future for today's youngest generations? Only time will tell, but at present, the outcome looks bleak. Seeing these two stories, and then seeing some of the other news stories which broke this week, it makes you wonder.

90,000 reported rapes last year in the U.S. with an estimated 75,000 unreported. The WHO reported this week that the number one cause of death and disease amongst women in their childbearing years, 15-44, is AIDS. A Vice President of UPS killed himself rather than facing the music for raping a 21 year-old university student. The Anthony Sowell case went international this week as they found evidence which may connect him to crimes in Japan as well as California and the Carolinas.

We keep seeing news stories showing reports and studies which show the crime rate going down, but we see more and more strange crimes. The amount of crime is decreasing, but the severity, depravity, and insanity of the crimes which are being committed is growing. However, as the economic depression gets worse, and the unemployment rate skyrockets, it's only a matter of time before those decreasing crime rates start climbing back up.