Archive for the ‘Popular culture’ Category

Perception is not reality – the safety of our kids

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

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I was speaking with the mom of an eight-year-old girl. Her daughter wanted a friend to come over and the mom thought it would be a good idea to take the girls out to the park to play. The other mom’s response, “No, it isn’t safe.” The irony is that the 2nd girl has a TV in her bedroom with cable, a cell phone and a computer with Internet access. What that mom hasn’t realized is that she has opened the front door of her home to the entire unsupervised outside world.

Under pressure, MySpace.com announced that it will take further steps to protect children from adult content and possible predators on the site. Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that MySpace agreed not only to third-party monitoring but also to working on age verification technology.

I was curious about how this works so I downloaded a white paper on this topic to learn more. If you’re interested visit IDologoy.

The bottom line as always parents, the best protection our children have is us in their lives.

Our Celebrity Crazed Culture

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

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The Wall St. Journal listed the most popular stories on the web. The most viewed was “Loyalty Points That Buy a Night With Travolta.”

For 124,000 Starwood Hotels & Resorts points, Michael and Georgia Soares might have spent six nights in Paris at Starwood’s Hotel Prince de Galles on the Champs-Elysees. Instead, the Southern California couple used their hotel points to spend one night with John Travolta and the cast of the movie “Hairspray” at the film’s New York premiere.

“We walked the red carpet and everything. It was cool,” says Mr. Soares, a 43-year-old father of four who owns a restaurant in Orange County with his wife. The Soares also attended the movie’s after-party, where they chatted with Mr. Travolta and snapped a few photos

While the hotels are thinking outside the box to provide new experiences that loyalty points can provide, I can’t help but wonder; what is the appeal of spending time with a celebrity?

Our culture treats celebrities as if they were royalty. Even if they were I couldn’t imagine trading in points to spend time with Prince Charles.

Isn’t it enough that we see celebrity photos in dozens of magazines on the checkout line, watch the intimate details of their life (or at least the ones they choose to share) on reality TV, while network and cable news shows lead off with celebrity stories as if the war in Iraq or potential recession was filler.

C’mon folks – let’s stop this feeding frenzy and live our own lives. I doubt that Travolta would trade in his points to meet with the Soares family.

Babies are the new accessory

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

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It is quite fashionable these days to have a baby. Better than a handbag or Chihuahua, babies are the new ‘it’ accessory.

Those of us who are professional parents (non-celebrities) always knew that. The difference is that when our babies become toddlers and eventually teens, we never loose interest in the fashion moment.

The next time a celebrity sits on Oprah’s couch and gushes about their baby, just be confident in the thought that your little star will always be shining even if your baby’s name doesn’t result in any Google hits.