TV for kids

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you ever wondered how watching TV affects you? Or your kids? Well, I don’t have a simple answer to that here, but I discovered something pretty frightening today I want to share with you. It might not tell us whether or not we reflect what we see on TV, but if it even hints at reflecting our changing culture, I reckon we need to ask ourselves some serious questions.

UCLA has done a whole bunch of research about the TV programmes children watch, and what they promote as good ideas – how they tell children to be successful in life, if you like. In particular they tracked how these changed over the past few decades, looking at popular kids shows in the 60s right through to today.

And guess what they found. Here’s a tiny quote:

The top five values in 2007 were fame, achievement, popularity, image and financial success. In 1997, the top five were community feeling, benevolence (being kind and helping others), image, tradition and self-acceptance.

Which five would you most like? The whole news release is here.

Snooze, you loose

AAAGH! So annoying! It surely can’t be just me?

Its definitely annoying. Its’ annoying. Oh, now your just being silly. No, you’re being silly. Stop it.

Someone posted a picture the other day saying something like ‘in 2013, improve your grammar’, followed by a bunch of common examples. And I read them all, getting as annoyed with them as the author of it so clearly had.

When you snooze, you most definitely do not loose.

But why do people make such (what I consider) basic mistakes? There are four options I can see:

1. They’re lazy, and have no desire to put the effort into getting it right.
2. They simply don’t know they’re wrong, but would get it right if they were taught.
3. They know the correct way but have just made a typo (ahpens to the bset of us).
4. Actually, my understanding is wrong and theirs is right.

Each scenario is possible, and I’ve most likely encountered them all – what’s the best way of responding then?

1. If they know better they’re fair game for judgment, right? Intentionally making a mistake stops it from being a mistake.
2. If they’ve never been taught the right way, surely we ought to humbly, gently, show them how they’ve get it wrong so they can get it right next time.
3. A mistake’s a mistake. We can choose to forgive them, or perhaps to humbly, gently, demonstrate to them they made a mistake. Maybe they’ll even find it funny.
4. Unlikely. But in humility I ought to learn, and make sure I don’t make the mistake in future.

I’m glad we sorted that out. Now, if only we could apply that to Christianity…

Stuck in the Matrix

Image via Wikipedia

Monday blessings. A quote from Saint Richard Dawkins:

Basil Fawlty, British television’s hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn’t start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. “Right! I warned you. You’ve had this coming to you!” He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburetor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don’t we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty?… Isn’t the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component?… [D]oesn’t a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility…?

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions?…  Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution…. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

Yep, I know you know it’s ridiculous, but he is really claiming that rationally speaking, when it comes to belief in evolution, we should treat evil the same way we treat Basil’s response to his car breaking down; admit there’s a problem and try to fix it, but certainly not punish it! As Dawkins says elsewhere, people doing evil is just them ‘dancing to their DNA’; morality is a social construct, as if we’re actually living in the Matrix and simply don’t know that this is all a lie.

According to Dawkins we should be laughing at 9/11 where terrorists attempt to punish America. We should laugh at how silly the concept of prison is.

And, funny as it seems, and as much as I think that Richard Dawkins is as guilty of having ‘a defective component’ as the rapist example he uses, I actually agree with him on this one.

If humanity has come about essentially as a genetic mistake then morality is our own construct and we should look forward to the day that we lose it through the process of evolution.

But…

Of course, I can tell you with 100% certainty that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that morality is true. And if that’s the case, then clearly Dawkins’ theory must be incorrect; in other words, logic dictates that we need God.

And the irony of it all is that Dawkins actually doesn’t believe what he’s written himself. Dawkins has a daughter and if she were raped I don’t think for a second that he would ever simply say: ‘Don’t worry, you have a defective component. Let’s get that looked at.’ I fully expect that he would want that rapist tortured for eternity for what he did.

I can’t draw either

I quite like the idea of drawing. But to give you an idea of my skill, here’s a picture I created (entered it into a competition and won. Alright.):

But it does make be inspired (and a bit sick) to see incredible artists. Here are a couple I’ve spotted in the past week.

Fredo

Some of his are a bit freaky, but you can see them here.

Justin Beever

This guy is ridiculous. Apart from having a cool name. Check out more here.

Also, happy anniversary to me.

The importance of patience

Image via Wikipedia

A study was done in which a bunch of kids were put in a room, and given a marshmallow.

They were told that they were allowed to eat the marshmallow, but that if they waited for the adult to leave and return after a secret amount of time, they would be given two marshmallows.

Some of the kids couldn’t even wait until the adult had left the room before scoffing it down; most waited an average of about three minutes before giving in. A select few were able to last the full fifteen minutes before the adult returned, and were rewarded with two marshmallows.

Those kids were all visited over a decade later when they were in their teens. The few who had shown patience at that early age proved to be more successful academically, socially, health-wise…pretty much in every area.

Patience, it would seem, is an uncommon yet vital ingredient to an individual’s success in life. So, now we know…what can we do about it?

Here’s a well-written article about the original experiment, and here’s a fun video of a reperformance of it:

I bet you’ve snogged loads of boys

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve got nothing against posh people. I’ve got nothing against 14 year-old girls. But the combination? Apparently, disaster.

And overuse of the word snog.

I was on the train the other day and overheard two posh 14 year-old girls talking – it was pretty difficult not to, they were shouting right next to me. One of them was telling the other about a conversation she’d had with her sister earlier that week:

She asked if I’d ever snogged anyone and I said no for a joke. She was like, ‘are you kidding?’ so I was like, ‘of course I’ve snogged someone!’ so she was like ‘good job, if you’ve not snogged boys before your boyfriend will just dump you.’

They then talked a bit about snogging and this girl said that her first snog was when she was 12 and that she’d snogged about 500 boys.

Firstly – 12? When I was 12 I thought girls were from another planet so I’m not what you’re recollecting there is accurate.

Secondly – 500? Sure you have. That would require you to have snogged pretty much five different boys every week since you turned 12. Unlikely.

Thirdly – your sister’s wrong about your boyfriend, if his criteria for going out with you is based on whether or not you’ve kissed someone else then you should find someone else.

Fourthly – if the message that older girls are handing down to younger girls is that they must be promiscuous in order to be attractive, that’s bad news.

Finally – if I ever have a daughter, I hope her friends encourage her not to give herself away just because someone told her to.

How to Stay Christian in College by J. Budziszewski

This book is a manual written for current and future university students, designed to give them good preparation for coping with the spiritual battleground that is the uni campus.

I was excited about this book. It seemed to directly address a real problem, talking about real issues and not backing down. It was also really practical, so even though the opening chapters were talking about theology, the application was wonderfully clear.

But that said, I think the book let itself down when it tried to become too practical. In particular some imaginary conversations were recorded to show how certain logic can overcome incorrect worldviews, but it just didn’t seem realistic enough for me.

The two chapters on sex and politics stood out as particularly unhelpful. While I fully agreed with almost everything the author said, the analogies were flawed and talked about things which don’t seem that much of a concern any more. Maybe it’s because I’m from the UK but politics didn’t massively interest anyone I knew when I was at uni!

Overall I think this book’s heart is in the right place. It will certainly encourage Christian teenagers to enter university prepared to discuss their opinions in an informed manner. That said, I don’t think this would do much more than provide ammunition for a teenager who was ready to rebel at 18.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The King of Fools

Title of a Delirious song and album from the 90s? Yes. But originally the title’s taken from the climax of a Medieval New Year celebration called the Feast of Fools.

The idea behind the Feast was for everyone in the town to get ridiculously drunk over twelve nights. They’d sing songs together, hold mock church services (in which you’d respond ‘hee-haw’ rather than ‘amen’), and cheer a young girl riding through the town on the back of a donkey, babe in arms. When she arrives in the town centre, the town would nominate the most hideously ugly person to be ‘the King of Fools’.

In The Hunchback of Notre Dame we’re introduced to Quasimodo, and we see that he is blessed to wear that crown. He’s embarrassed, but as the outsider he is he’s quite honoured by the attention and the cheering crowds.

This is what it’s like to be human. We’re all so desperate to be part of the ‘in’ crowd, or simply part of any crowd, that we accept it even when it’s fake. We can’t tell the difference most of the time. We put so much effort into education, career, sports teams, hobbies, and all manner of other pursuits, but at the end of the day it’s Satan who sarcastically cheers us on, all the while mocking us for our folly.

But…

But there is one who genuinely accepts us. There is one who joyfully welcomes the outsider, honours us with a crown and cheers us on, but this is no mockery.

Jesus reached to the unclean in society like the lepers, the lady caught in adultery, and the bleeding lady. Jesus reached to the unloved in society like the tax collectors and the Samaritans, and freely welcomes us all.

How great is our God.

The law is our pedagogue

That’s the comment I read someone make on Galatians 3:24 recently:

The law is our pedagogue.

Great.

So I looked up pedagogue in the dictionary. I turns out that the commentator was correct, well done.

But why use that long word when you could have used ‘teacher’ just as well? Long words have a place, but not when you’re commenting on something in order to make it more straightforward for your readers!

If in doubt, KISS. Keep it simple, stupid.