"They are likely to be risk-averse, stifled by fears which are more phobic than real."

Very Ballardian article brought to my attention by Schneier

Childhood Risks: Perception vs. Reality

Great article on percieved vs actual risks to children:

The risk of abduction remains tiny. In Britain, there are now half as many children killed every year in road accidents as there were in 1922 -- despite a more than 25-fold increase in traffic.

Today the figure is under 9%. Escorting children is now the norm -- often in the back of a 4x4.

We are rearing our children in captivity -- their habitat shrinking almost daily.

See Ballard's Running Wild.

Screw kids

There's no ironic twist coming. I mean I don't like them. Not that much anyway. We worship the little buggers like some sort of sick cult of the child. We've fucking morphed kids into little, Disneyfied, creepy Margaret Keane figures. I think they're unpredictable (like bugs are), they smell funny, and you can't have a decent conversation with them. At least not a conversation that last any more than a few minutes.
And then there's all the patronizing you have to do for their parents and the rest of society. "Oh look at him/her. Isn't he/she so cute."
"No, your kid isn't that cute or interesting. Get over it."
Parents shouldn't expect any particular consideration or quarter from the rest of us because they wanted to boink. It's their choice/their responsibility, they should know what the extra burden entails. I'll treat them with the same civility I would anyone else. If I go out of my way to help, it's because I see you have your hands full and need help, not because the diminutive human you have in your company is somehow imbuing you with special status.
Don't get me wrong. I don't hate kids, I just don't worship the immature little buggers. Sure they're innocent and all (much less than I think many would believe though) but they all grow up to be ordinary fucking adults, quite capable of shitting on his fellow man.
One bit of irony is that a lot of people think I'd be a great dad.
Just keep them minimum 10 or 15 feet away from me and we'll do just fine. More if they're making noise.

Creepy Cult of the Child
Now a substitute teacher in Connecticut is facing 40 years because she walked into a classroom, operated the crappy computer provided, and got a lot of porn pop-ups to which the little shits came gawking at. The jury couldn't imagine getting a flood of pop-ups. They convicted her of running to get help with a machine she was told not to turn off when she came to fill in that day an she didn't turn it off. And it was twelve year olds. I can't even begin to tell you what I was up to at twelve. I wasn't that fucking innocent.
I started smoking at twelve. Fuck the porn, I want fucking 40 years from the executive who fucking got rich off of getting kids hooked.
If kids are so weak and addle minded as to be corrupted by a little bit of porn, God help us all. I'm a little more concerned with the 10000 plus fucking ads they're hit with every year. I guess anything we can do to maintain their innocence, right? Or is it THEY want a breed of fucking ignorant and naive fucking consumption cattle that'll buy any fucking lie the over-fucking-lords jam down our fucking throats?

Protect the Children From Porn
By all means, let's Protect The Children. Because that's what it's all about, right? It doesn't matter whose life gets mowed down in the process, as long as we are clear that it's all in the name of keeping kids innocent. (Wired opinion)

However, I do like Edward Gorey's kids.

Extracts from the Gashlycrumb Tinies

Edward Gorey at Wikipedia

Quote

There were times in its history when the United States came close to suggesting what a Utopian project might be, but the less appealing sides to American life now seem to be in the ascendant; there's a self-infantilism strain that gives America the look of Peter Pan's Never-never land. However, the future may well be a marriage between Microsoft and the Disney Company; an infantilized entertainment culture imposed on us by the most advanced communications technology. [JG Ballard - intv Hans Obrist, 2003]

Poetry

A tip from Boing Boing, gadgeteer and editor Joel Johnson discusses his take on over-the-counter electronics consumption.
A sample:

And you guys just ate it up. Kept buying shitty phones and broken media devices green and dripping with DRM. You broke the site, clogging up the pipe like retarded salmon, to read the latest announcements of the most trivial jerk-off products, completely ignoring the stories about technology actually making a difference to real human beings, because you wanted a new chromed robot turd to put in your pocket to impress your friends and make you forget for just a few minutes, blood coursing as you tremblingly cut through the blister pack, that your life is utterly void of any lasting purpose. (more at Gizmodo...)

It goes to my argument that even though everyone owns gizmos today, only a handful know about the technology that actually drives it, thus are incapable of doing much creative with it. Kids in my office are amazed that I not only know what their crappy little devices do, I can fix them and/or bend the technology.
Man, they are the Death-of-Innovation Generation!

Social Marketing Institute

Social Marketing Institute
"Advancing the Science and Practice of Social Marketing"

The Social Marketing Institute is being created to advance the science and practice of social marketing. Social marketing is the use of commercial marketing concepts and tools in programs designed to influence individuals' behavior to improve their well being and that of society. It is an innovative approach now being implemented by groups as diverse as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society, the U.S. Agency for International Development, AARP, and private sector companies whose strategies incorporate both business and social objectives. (emp. mine - S)

No comment.

Brutal

Latitude: 42.36008400
Longitude: -71.05875500
The wind was cold. Downtown is almost right on the waterfront so it's that much colder, but the light was good for shooting my cesspool. I also wanted to capture the Brutalist architecture of city hall.
I thought it interesting that one of the more progressive cities in the U.S. would have such an Orwellian structure at the core of its administration. Its design was supposed to be open and inviting to the public with the idea that the first levels have wide access to the average Joe, but its function seems more in line. The first few tiers are for the public, then the representatives like the councilors and mayor. It's the least accessible, most on high that the bureaucrats and their function resides.
The looming building itself might be acceptable on its own, but the plaza design surrounding the structure insures that one doesn't want to be out on it for very long. Surrounded by other sterile, Logan's Run type structures it makes a person anxious for cover lest a sniper's round finds its mark.

Blank Maxine and I arrived around 13:30 and made our way from Faneuil Hall to the plaza. Along the way I was snapping shots and learning the very basics of photography. When we made our way to the top, the cesspool was gone. I was crest fallen. One piece of evidence of the fall of western civilization was filled in and paved over, the expanse of concrete marking the place of the disused fountain/wade pool sunken beneath the brick walking/sniper target level. THEY covered the body, but THEY didn't disguise the grave.
We made due with the late twentieth century monoliths to bureaucracy collectively known as government center, our faces slowly numbing in the arctic wind. After getting some shots that I felt were satisfactory for a first time photographer, I had Blank Maxine take portrait shots of me. After giving her a multitude of goofy instructions, she got her shots.
"I'm looking for something that captures a sort of WWI pilot meets Thomas Dolby with a touch of Mad Max" I told her.
"Um...yeah."
So we knocked out a few more shots in the wind swept plain, feeling the shadows that lay across the public space. With a bright, cold sun and modernist buildings chilling our psyches and the final arrival of winter in New England getting to our flesh after this year's greenhouse gas delay, we called it quits for the day.
Rather than reviving the area the mayor (a good guy, although I think he may be a bit beholden to developers), who's often affectionately known as Hizzona or Mumbles in that distinctly Bostonian way, has proposed that they abandon the structure and build a new hall in one of our southern neighborhoods, conveniently named South Boston or Southie for short. After a couple of hours with the behemoth, I think I would miss it. It has become part of the Boston landscape and probably most offends the senses of the 495ers.
Just before I got into the car, some of the old vaudeville/strip club district known as Scollay Square, peeked out at me from slow Disneyfication of the Revolution's birthplace.

Some further reading about Boston City Hall:
Boston City Hall @ Wikipedia
Brutalized in Boston - Boston City Hall