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A La Carte (8/6)
- 08/06/09
- 9
It's SO Over
It seems that many adolescents are abandoning social media sites. "From uncles wearing skinny jeans to mothers investing in ra-ra skirts and fathers nodding awkwardly along to the latest grime record, the older generation has long known that the surest way to kill a youth trend is to adopt it as its own. The cyberworld, it seems, is no exception."
The Death of Handwriting
TIME mourns the death of handwriting in general and cursive in particular. "I am a member of Gen Y, the generation that shunned cursive. And now there is a group coming after me, a boom of tech-savvy children who don't remember life before the Internet and who text-message nearly as much as they talk. They have even less need for good penmanship. We are witnessing the death of handwriting."
Jesus Is a Friend of Mine
You remember that silly song "Jesus Is a Friend of Mine" that recently surfaced on YouTube. The album it was drawn from is now for sale (for the first time since the 70's). CT has a review.
Clunker Cash is Anything but Smart
This article is interesting for its perspective on the "Cash for Clunkers" program. The basic point is this: "As Bastiat showed 150 years ago, you don't create wealth by destruction." In other words, by destroying older cars (which still have some value) you do not, in the end, create wealth. Meanwhile, this second article suggests that the actual cost per vehicle may be in the tens of thousands of dollars (since many of the cars being purchased with the rebate may well have been purchased anyway).
Sexting Craze on the Rise
Though this article is UK-focused, I'm sure it's entirely applicable in North America. "A growing number of British teenagers are swapping sexually explicit images of themselves on mobile phones leaving them open to bullying and victimization by their peers, police and a children's charity said on Tuesday." This is of particular concern: "Girls were particularly vulnerable, the charity said, with evidence showing they were being bullied into taking and sharing intimate pictures by boyfriends."
Deal of the Day: Reformation Heroes
Reformation Heritage Books has released a second edition of the book Reformation Heroes which now includes a study guide.
It seems that many adolescents are abandoning social media sites. "From uncles wearing skinny jeans to mothers investing in ra-ra skirts and fathers nodding awkwardly along to the latest grime record, the older generation has long known that the surest way to kill a youth trend is to adopt it as its own. The cyberworld, it seems, is no exception."
The Death of Handwriting
TIME mourns the death of handwriting in general and cursive in particular. "I am a member of Gen Y, the generation that shunned cursive. And now there is a group coming after me, a boom of tech-savvy children who don't remember life before the Internet and who text-message nearly as much as they talk. They have even less need for good penmanship. We are witnessing the death of handwriting."
Jesus Is a Friend of Mine
You remember that silly song "Jesus Is a Friend of Mine" that recently surfaced on YouTube. The album it was drawn from is now for sale (for the first time since the 70's). CT has a review.
Clunker Cash is Anything but Smart
This article is interesting for its perspective on the "Cash for Clunkers" program. The basic point is this: "As Bastiat showed 150 years ago, you don't create wealth by destruction." In other words, by destroying older cars (which still have some value) you do not, in the end, create wealth. Meanwhile, this second article suggests that the actual cost per vehicle may be in the tens of thousands of dollars (since many of the cars being purchased with the rebate may well have been purchased anyway).
Sexting Craze on the Rise
Though this article is UK-focused, I'm sure it's entirely applicable in North America. "A growing number of British teenagers are swapping sexually explicit images of themselves on mobile phones leaving them open to bullying and victimization by their peers, police and a children's charity said on Tuesday." This is of particular concern: "Girls were particularly vulnerable, the charity said, with evidence showing they were being bullied into taking and sharing intimate pictures by boyfriends."
Deal of the Day: Reformation Heroes
Reformation Heritage Books has released a second edition of the book Reformation Heroes which now includes a study guide.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I write books and blogs for fun while doing web design and consulting for a living. I worship and serve at 
Published in 2008, this book
This is a guide that calls men,
This review of the bestselling
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Comments (9)
Mourning the Death of Handwriting ... brought to you on an electronic medium ...
The "It's SO over" article neglected to mention that Facebook was originally for college students, who are now most likely 25-35...
The article is correct that the cash-for-clunkers program doesn't "create wealth". On the other hand, it does get a bunch of older less-fuel-efficient vehicles off the road and replace them with newer-more-fuel-efficient vehicles, meaning that theoretically the emissions of the set of cars driven in the U.S. on average improves.
The article is correct that the cash-for-clunkers program doesn’t “create wealth”. On the other hand, it does get a bunch of older less-fuel-efficient vehicles off the road and replace them with newer-more-fuel-efficient vehicles, meaning that theoretically the emissions of the set of cars driven in the U.S. on average improves.
Theoretically, except that the amount of fuel and energy (and pollutants) it takes to create a new car is far greater than the energy saved by ditching a ten-year old car for a new one. But no matter. Let's not let reason get in the way! :)
Is that the case though?
If you keep a car for say 8 years, and drive it 15,000 miles a year, that's 120,000 miles. So a car that gets 20 mpg is going to burn 6000 gallons of gas over the course of its lifetime. A car that gets 30 mpg is going to burn 4000 gallons of gas, and it may also emit fewer pollutants other than carbon. So, ballpark, we'd need to know how the emissions (carbon and otherwise) of building a car compares to the carbon footprint of 2000 gallons of gas, plus the difference in non-carbon pollutants between "clunker" and "new car".
Another thing to consider is exactly what the article mentions: people may have been planning to buy a new car anyway. If this program convinces them to buy a more efficient new car instead of whatever they had been planning to buy, then its a "win" from an emissions POV. The "cost" of building a new car is going to be paid either way- the question is just what kind of new car is going to be purchased (and subsequently be on the road for the next 8-10 years).
One more thought:
Just as there is an environmental impact to produce an automobile, there is also an environmental impact to producing gasoline above and beyond what happens when it is actually burned. I'm not sure what the overhead is involved in extracting, transporting, and refining the oil that eventually becomes usable gasoline, but that would also need to be factored in.
Death of Handwriting: I'm probably older than most who comment on this blog so I can write in cursive but can't type. I have kids who do not know what life is like without a computer, Internet, a cell phone or 200 channels. They are lacking in the writing and spelling area, on term papers I get the "why do I need to know the write spelling I have spell and punctuation check" they use txt code and now computers can even correct that, google docs, and what really blows my mind is how they can talk to me and type at the same time at about a million words a second.
Two comments. . .
In the “It’s SO over” article, the data was from Great Britain, which has a decidedly different (online) culture than the US and other places in the world., I've read recent articles about FB in other languages, other countries -- and I'd be interested to see if the trend of younger people ditching social networking sites is consistent elsewhere.
Also, I have to agree with Challies and Bastiat and Barlow about the inanity of the Cash-for-Clunkers program.