Monday, January 30, 2006

 
SCIENCE FRICTION.
External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Suppose, twenty years ago, in the mid-eighties you read a science-fiction book in which the following things started happening.

First, there's an incredibly warm spring. Then, a record-setting, oppressively hot summer, that seems to stretch all the way into December. Then an unbelievably mild winter. During this time, because of the heat, the hurricane season is so extensive and severe that for the first time, we make it all the way through the alphabet to W, and then through the Greek alphabet through, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Hurricane Epsilon, and then finally Tropical Storm Zeta, shattering the old record by 129%. Then on January 29, 2006 (in our science-fiction story), the lead story in the New York Times reports that the Presidential administration tried to silence NASA's top climate scientist from speaking out about the problem of global warming. This headline occurring the day after the main character and hero of the story--that's me, by the way--gets a mild sunburn walking around Brooklyn, New York on January 28th (which really did happen to our hero last Saturday, not incidentally).

The book, titled Hurricane Epsilon, would not have sold well, if it had been written. Why? Because people would have said that the idea of such bizarre weather coming about in only 20 years would have been too outlandish to be believed.

This doesn't sound like one of those science-fiction stories with a happy ending, I gotta tell you. This sounds more like one of those Soylant Green or Mad Max sort of science-fiction stories.

It's been running about 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit above normal since the middle of last year. It was at least 25 degrees above normal today in Manhattan, NY, after being 22 degrees above normal on Saturday; 22, 25, and 27 degrees above normal three days the week before; and 21 to 24 degrees above normal three days the week before that (and 13-18 degrees above normal three other days that week, and 9 degrees above normal the other day).

What's it going to be like when it's 25 degrees above normal in July? What's it going to be like a few years later when maybe it's 40 degrees above normal or more? Maybe that's never going to happen. But why isn't anybody talking about how strange and scary the weather has been for the past ten months or so?

This is The Official Record. 6:41 PM
link to this item: http://www.creamy.com/blog/2006/01/science-friction.html

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Thursday, January 12, 2006

 
IS THE AD COUNCIL ENCOURAGING ONLINE PREDATORS?
External link: http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/06/08/business/predators.php

I just saw a very bad advertisement on TV.

There's a cute girl, about 14 or 15 talking. At first we only hear the man's voice, but as the commercial goes on, you begin to see the guy talking, who turns out to be a good looking guy in his mid-twenties.

Man: Meeting a teen girl online is easy. They're so desperate for attention . . .
Girl: Attention from older guys is flattering. They get me more than guys my age . . .
Man: Age lets me play the supportive older guy, and that's inter--. . .
Girl: Interested in the same things. And you get to know someone when you're chatting . . .
Man: Chatting seems unthreatening to them. Once I talk about how perfect we are for each other . . .
Girl: Other people don't understand. If you trust someone what's wrong with meeting . . .
Man: Meeting them is the goal. That's when things get really interesting.

Woman's voice: Online predators know what they're doing. Do you?

Now, I'm all for alerting parents and children about the danger of online predators. But do they really need to teach older men that picking up a cute teenager online is so easy? Do they really have to portray the older guy as attractive and remind kids that his attention is "flattering"?

According to coolnurse.com, the age of consent for women is 18 in only 8 US states. It is 16 or lower in 33 states and the District of Columbia, including 3 states where it is 14. So, in most of the country, a so-called online predator in his 30s or 40s can go to a chatroom, seduce a 16-year-old girl, and be legally accountable to no one. And, aparently, in Hawaii, Iowa, and South Carolina, men can do so to a 14-year-old girl, and brag about to the police if they want to.

Whatever your opinion is about whether sex with a 14-year-old girl should be legal in the United States, I don't think we can really have an argument about whether it should be encouraged. It should not be. And yet I think this ad encourages men to get online and try to seduce a teenage girl, by making it look like it's very easy to do, and it glamorizes it to young girls by portraying the predator as an attractive man in his mid-twenties.

I really don't think that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Ad Council fully thought through the likely effect of this message, at all. I think they should retool their message.

This is The Official Record. 2:01 PM
link to this item: http://www.creamy.com/blog/2006/01/is-ad-council-encouraging-online.html

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