What I Learned From the Balloon Boy Episode

When you got in trouble as a kid wasn't the first thing your mom said, "So what have you learned from this?" Hopefully Falcon learned... something. I certainly learned a lot.

1. We don't have news on news channels anymore. Although long suspected, this was the tipping point of confirmation. What we have are clucky knitting circles that sit in studios with cameras on them, babbling reflexively to the latest chaos to cross their line of sight, while being slightly less informed, intelligent, and/or savvy than the majority of people we run into on a daily basis. No, I wasn't watching The View. Yes, some of them had (or were capable of growing) beards. That didn't make them any less clucky. Sometimes more so. Honestly, my barista has more gravitas and better information.
   
2. Be careful what you hear from your news source. Because they aren't careful what they read on the internet. They kept throwing out rumor and speculation by citing "some websites suggest." Turning to my husband I said, "I need to blog that the kids is actually a 2,000 year old vampire and although he fell from the balloon he's fine, he just needed the blood of twenty cows to heal his wounds. Very messy." You know, just to see if the news channels would bite. The only reason I didn't was because at that point we weren't sure the kid was ok and it would have been callous to disregard the family's feelings in an attempt to speculate. Obviously I don't have it in me to be a TV news anchor.
3. Being a kid is harder now. Let's be honest, we all did really stupid things when we were kids. But the chance for us to be fodder and spectacle for a drama-hungry 24-hour news network was dramatically lower in the 80s or even the 90s. Before the 80s those networks didn't even exist and you REALLY had to do something to get on the sedate, stately nightly news - either local or national. I'm now a little scared to have kids because they will be growing up in the roaring 2010s where.. there will be roving cameras zipping around trying to catch something interesting happening? I don't know how it can get worse from here, I just assume that it will.

Maybe I'm the last one who should be reviewing the news networks since I actually don't watch them often anymore (or maybe that's the point). My primary news source? Kind of... ambient. Information is pretty much omnipresent in our lives and when I hear/see/sense something that interests me I follow up on it, usually with Google. (Usually on my Blackberry, so my learning is 24/7 and location-independent.) After that I would list Daily Show and Colbert Report (affectionately dubbed "the boys" in our house) and I read the Late Night Political Jokes list pretty consistently. Last, but not least, is checking in on my blogging circle periodically to see what's up.

All that makes me question: perhaps it isn't just the newspapers that are becoming irrelevant.

Oh, Balloon Boy, what have you done?

Agent Simmons says "Ooh. Nokias are real nasty."

This month Fast Company is telling us about Nokia's plans to take over the world in their cover article Nokia Rocks the World: The Phone King's Plan to Redefine Its Business. Take it over and charge us all rent, mind you.

While reading the article I kept finding myself caught between finding cool things in their plan and then wondering whether their business model was downright evil. Alright, maybe evil is a bit strong (no doubt fueled by their description of the VP as "a cross between an Andy Warhol mystic and James Bond villain"), but a giggling enthusiasm for charging farmers in India $1 per month for a cell phone internet app that can help them with weather predictions and market prices seems a little sadistic somehow... because I imagine that is a very steep price for them. When I searched for the average income of an Indian farmer I came across this blog post from Devinder Sharma that cited it at 2,115 Rs in 2003 (that would be $43.28 American at current exchange rates). Could it be much more now? I doubt it. While trying to find a good source there were plenty of articles talking about the impoverished conditions of the Indian farmer, including one article that talked about increased suicide rates. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm trying to imagine spending more than a quarter of my income on a cell phone app (I assume the cost of the cell phone and plan is not included in that). Do I think it would be awesome for everyone in the world to have access to everything through the wonder of inexpensive phones and internet access? Yes I do. I'm just not sure that it can always be a profit thing.

Meanwhile, Fast Company is crazy good, so if you haven't read it consider this to be your sign that you should. It's like the Wired for business. If you don't read Wired either then get on that! Sheesh...

What Is Wrong With People?

I was blown away by the findings from this Chicago Tribune investigation, inspired by the Stolen Valor Act (2006).

Scores of Americans, from clergymen to lawyers to CEOs, are claiming medals of valor they never earned.

A Tribune investigation has found that the fabrication of heroic war records is far more extensive than you might think.

Take the online edition of Who's Who, long the nation's premier biographical reference. Of the 333 people whose profiles state they earned one of the nation's most esteemed military medals, fully a third of those claims cannot be supported by military records. ~ Claims of Medals Amount to Stolen Valor, John Crewdson, Tribune correspondent

Seriously, what is wrong with these people? Are they that insecure?