May 17, 2012
Hard to wallow

on porn’s edge

and not fall in

Sometimes, irony crosses the boundary to the absurd.

A British newspaper recently published an informative piece on Internet pornography addictions, noting that some children as young as 8 are developing a dependency as they view images on smart phones, tablets and other devices.

Near the end, the report said British Prime Minister David Cameron supports a measure that would block all porn web sites into the United Kingdom, requiring anyone who wants access to physically opt in.

This, the paper said, went along with its own campaign to block online porn and to open a “consultation on the introduction of content filtering systems for Internet accounts.”

What’s ironic about this, you ask?

The story on the paper’s web site was surrounded by links, with photos, to other content on the site. One was for a story about a “sex guru” talking about her new book while posing in a bikini. Another lured readers with Jennifer Lopez flaunting “her famous curves in an array of plunging swimsuits…”

The list of links seemed endless, and endlessly provocative.  None could be categorized, in a legal sense, as pornographic. But all were nibbling at the edges, inviting readers with the same emotional bait that attracts people to the hard-core stuff.

C.S. Lewis said, “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” By the same token, if we laugh at the virtues of modesty and fidelity, should we be shocked to hear that the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that seven out of 10 teenagers have viewed pornography on the Internet, often without even seeking for it?

Or can we really act with indignation when an Australian addiction specialist says some children share such things on their electronic devices with their friends?

If we, as some parents in a recent New York Times piece, decide that kids are naturally attracted to smut, therefore they should be allowed access to milder pictures of nudes “not much racier” than what appears in the swimsuit edition of a sports magazine, should we be surprised when they develop unhealthy attitudes toward women?

Two stories this past week highlight aspects of this problem. The first involved a court of appeals ruling in New York that dismissed a conviction against a man who had 132 images of child pornography in temporary files on his computer.

The other was the conviction of Steven Powell in Washington state on 14 counts of voyeurism involving, among other things, the surreptitious photographing of children.

The New York story brought to mind a column I wrote in 2007 about how difficult it is for lawmakers to keep up with the many devious ways pornographers go about their business. At the time, portable devices were beginning to make inroads, as were flash drives, making it easier to hide images.

Today the “cloud” and streaming video let users get around laws that specifically outlaw the act of downloading certain images. The New York court ruled that browsing was not the same as possessing child pornography.

This one had a happy ending, of sorts. Only 12 hours after the ruling, the normally divided New York Legislature had bills in the Senate and Assembly to close the loophole. Other states, however, remain vulnerable with their outdated laws.

The Powell case, meanwhile, is a textbook example of how pornography can capture a mind and change a personality. As Deseret News reporter Pat Reavy documented in an excellent piece on Powell’s background, those who know him describe how he went from a devout father and husband to a bitter deviant, and now a convicted felon, all because of an addiction to porn.

The culture appears determined to continue splashing around the muddy edges of this murky swamp while expressing outrage at those who fall in. This tug-of-war between the outer boundaries of an increasingly sexualized society and the inner guardians of basic propriety has been going on for awhile.

But the mixed messages and the never-ending development of new technologies are making the struggles more pronounced. A generation coming of age in the midst of this could use a lot less absurd behavior from the adult world.
Email Jay Evensen at even@desnews.com

May 9, 2012
Good deeds can overwhelm a world of evil

You don't need to be Superman to make a difference in the world (Deseret News archives)

The world shuddered this week at the thought of what non-metal underwear bombs could do to airport security in the future.

It recoiled at reports of how an obsession with pornography warped the life of a man on trial in Washington state for alleged crimes that may have stretched wide and penetrated generations.

Two weeks ago it heard about items found in Osama bin Laden’s compound and wondered how to stop a spider’s web of terrorism that seems to infest every dark corner of the globe.

Things can look bleak, indeed, if all you look at are bleak things. But while you worry about what, besides your sneakers, may have to go into the bin for the TSA to examine, there is another side to the behavior of the human race. You don’t even have to look too hard to find it.

I’ll start with one that got some media attention, although much of it was on celebrity news sites. Actor Dustin Hoffman happened to be in Hyde Park in London recently when a 27-year-old jogger collapsed nearby.

A Reuters account, confirmed by the actor’s spokesperson, said Hoffman called paramedics and tended to the man until help arrived, then he quietly returned to his home nearby. The man, Sam Dempster, survived.

Hoffman isn’t the only celebrity to recently break the stereotype of the rude, obnoxious, don’t-fly-this-plane-until-I-finish-my-word-game selfish prima donna. Actress Mila Kunis helped a man who collapsed and had a seizure while working in her home recently, and Patrick Dempsey used a crowbar to pry a teenager loose from a car that crashed outside his home in Malibu. Also, actor Ryan Gosling is reported to have grabbed a woman who was about to be hit by a car in New York.

These are people whose every move is watched by someone else. We may be surprised and pleased to note they are imbued with humanity and compassion, but they are used to us gawking.

The fact is, heroes are everywhere, and they come in the form of regular folks who often get little attention. One of my pastimes is to collect stories about teenagers doing heroic things. Here is a sample from recent days:

-A self-described tough kid in New Zealand who admits to getting into fights from time to time was “chilling” with his friends when he saw 74-year-old Ron Rolfe slide down an embankment that gave way and fall into a muddy stream. Both he and the friend jump to action and pulled the man out of deep mud.

It wasn’t easy. The young men worked hard to pull the man free, then struggled to get him up the embankment and to safety.

Rolfe had just been released from the hospital following a stroke and was in no condition to help himself. Nzherald.co.nz quoted the young man as saying, “We need to be there for our old people. They have paved the way for us.”

-In Britain, 18-year-old Luke Rose saw a 13-year-old boy fall from a 5-foot ramp while riding a scooter, land on his head and go into a seizure. The Selby Times said the older boy quickly attended to him and kept him steady, using First Aid skills until help arrived.

-And back in Washington state, while authorities were preparing to try Steven Powell for voyeurism, 13-year-old Damon Davenport was playing football outside an apartment building in Vancouver two weeks ago when he heard the thud of a child landing in a flower bed.

He and his friends noticed another child, age 18 months, wandering around on the roof of the three-story building. The toddler and his 2-year-old brother had climbed through a broken window screen.

Davenport ran upstairs, pushed a screen out grabbed the child, who, the Associated Press reported, was two inches from the edge.

The child who fell was fine because he landed in soft soil. Fire officials are nominating Davenport for a lifesaving award.

Desmond Tutu reportedly said, “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

That’s a good perspective in a world that often seems overwhelmed by evil.
E-mail Jay Evensen at even@desnews.com

May 7, 2012
This week's jokes

A humorous look at current events, otherwise known as:

More serious columns:

May 3, 2012
May Day mayhem makes the past new again

 Protests on May 1, 1912

Reports of the five men who were arrested Tuesday for allegedly trying to blow up a bridge near Cleveland ought to sound familiar to anyone with an ear for history.

The same can be said for the gangs of young men with hoods and painted faces who attacked businesses and cars in downtown Seattle that day, or the folks who rioted in Oakland, Calif.

One hundred years have now passed since “Prison memoirs of an anarchist” was published. It was written by Alexander Berkman, who had been convicted of attempting to murder Henry Clay Frick, manager of the Carnegie steel works. Berkman shot and stabbed Frick several times, but did not succeed in killing him.

The book details his harsh life behind bars in Pittsburgh, an account a reviewer of the day called, “a new high water mark … in our understanding of prison wretchedness.”

Also 100 years ago on May 1, members of the Italian Socialist Federation tore down an American flag, trampled it and lit it aflame at the end of a parade in New York. City police made no arrests. That prompted New York County Sheriff Julius Harburger to throw a fit while giving a dinner speech the next day.

“…if any man hauls down the American flag he should be shot on the spot,” he said, according to the New York Times of the day. “…The sooner these anarchists, bomb throwers, dynamiters and un-Americans are acquainted with the doctrines of the country and made to uphold them, the better for them and theirs.”

Today he would have been given his day on cable TV news shows and alternately castigated or praised for his desire to shoot flag-burners. A century ago he was given polite applause and a write-up in the paper.

The point of bringing all this up is to show that what happened Tuesday is not, by any means, new or original. Because the human lifespan is only roughly 80 years, that may be lost on the current inhabitants of this land, whose frame of reference has been so filled with al-Qaida, Vietnam and World War II that they aren’t aware of the anarchist violence that once dominated news accounts.

But we live in a world that, politically, at least, is much more similar to 1912 than it is to the more recent past. A century ago, anarchists were spreading havoc. They wanted to eliminate all rulers, clergy and wealthy capitalists, and they had succeeded in killing a president of the United States.

On May 1, 1919 they hatched their most audacious plot yet, packing bombs in Gimbel Brothers boxes and mailing them to 36 prominent Americans, hoping their greed would cause them to eagerly open the packages and speed their demise. As with Tuesday’s plot in Cleveland, however, authorities discovered the packages. They were able to stop only about half of the bombs from reaching their targets, however.

The Occupy protesters tried hard this week to distance themselves from the hooligans. In Cleveland, they canceled their planned march in response to the thwarted bomb attempt and said the anarchists, while associated with their movement, did not represent its commitment to non-violence.

And yet the violent faction continues to assert itself at Occupy events. Any movement that hints at tearing down institutions of wealth cannot reasonably separate itself completely from the history of that idea.

Today’s homegrown anarchists do not seem to be gaining the traction their forebears did, although it doesn’t take many to cause a lot of damage. Perhaps they remain an isolated group because the past 100 years, despite wars and occasional economic setbacks, have been extraordinarily good for people in this country.

Household median income is up sharply since 1967, and certainly since 1912, despite a slight setback since the downturn of 2008. Diseases have been eradicated, life expectancies are up considerably, workplace injuries are down, and even the air is cleaner.

All of this ought to sap this radical movement of its intellectual underpinnings. Unfortunately, where impressionable youth are concerned, some ideas seem to die hard.

Email Jay Evensen at even@desnews.com

April 25, 2012

Demonizing oil

never really

solves problem

Merit Energy rig in Eastern Utah (Deseret News archives)

Missed it by that much.

The fictional Maxwell Smart of TV and movie fame has used that line to get laughs for nearly 40 years as battles the evil forces of KAOS. Right now it could apply to gas prices.

A Gallup Poll taken in March found that Americans are fairly divided on the question, “At what price per gallon would it get so high that you and your family would be forced to make significant (changes in the way you live your life/cutbacks in your spending in other areas?)?

The statistical mean was $5.35 per gallon for forcing changes in the way we live our lives and $5.30 for making significant cutbacks in spending.

So close.

After flirting with an average price of nearly $4 a gallon, prices are beginning to fall. They came down about 6 cents on average during a two week period earlier this month and are, at least in 11 states, lower than they were a year ago.

Politicians have their own idea of the price at which gas affects how people vote, and it’s a lot lower than $5.30 a gallon. Would you believe $4? How about $3.75?

Judging by political speeches in recent weeks, that sounds about right.

If gas ever got to $5.30, we might change our minds about those lifestyle changes. It reminds me of a survey Genworth Financial did two years ago, asking Americans how long they would like to live. The average answer was 92, but my guess is they didn’t ask many 91-year-olds. The closer you get to a dreaded threshold, the more your perspective begins to change.

Or maybe such a price really would change us. We may find out some day, but not for awhile.

If you want to get dizzy, just look at the predictions of so-called experts concerning where gas prices are heading. You don’t have to venture back too far. In February of 2011, the former president of Shell Oil said it would reach $5 a gallon by 2012. The dreaded $5 prediction arose again just a few months ago.

Want to get even dizzier? Look at how politicians react to price hikes. For this, you can go back as far as you like. I chose 1956.

The Suez Canal crisis that year pitted Egypt against the forces of Britain, France and Israel, and shut off oil supplies for a time. As prices rose, President Eisenhower stepped in and ordered emergency oil supplies sent to Europe.

It was a textbook case of world events affecting market prices, but not to an outraged Senate, which convened hearings.

As the Chicago Tribune reported at the time, “There have been charges that the oil industry arbitrarily raised the price of crude oil 25 cents a barrel last month, using the excuse that supplying Europe with oil as a result of the closing of the Suez canal made the raise necessary.”

The government sued 29 big oil companies, charging them with plotting to fix prices. Maybe some voters enjoyed a feeling of revenge, but a federal judge quickly dismissed the suit.

Compare that to President Obama’s recent call for tough regulations on oil speculators, even though brewing tensions between Iran and Israel clearly were pushing oil prices higher, and even though the president couldn’t point to any evidence that anyone was manipulating prices.

Americans have been told they have an addiction to oil. It’s not really an addiction; any more than we were once “addicted” to VHS tapes. We were cured when DVDs came along, then again when videos began to stream over the Internet.

Natural gas has a lot of advantages over oil-based gasoline. The question is how we get from here to there.

Letting the chaos (not KAOS) of $5.30 gas spur it on may be one way. The reliance on oil, however, has national security implications, given some of the countries that produce it.

A strong, intelligent energy policy in Washington would help. That would require a break with the age-old tradition politicians have of demonizing the oil industry every time prices rise, then trying to pass that off as doing something about the problem.

Email Jay Evensen at even@desnews.com

April 19, 2012

Why the Janet Jackson case remains important

 

 

Eight years have passed since that infamous Super Bowl in which Janet Jackson made the term “wardrobe malfunction” a part of the culture.

I wrote at the time that she got what she wanted, which was publicity to help sell her new album. I’m not so sure she has what she wanted any more.

It is becoming increasingly clear that, no matter what she may do during the rest of her time on earth, Jackson probably can’t change the fact that her obituary one day likely will focus on what she did for nine-sixteenths of a second during a halftime show.

The Obama administration last week decided to appeal a decision that nullified the Federal Communications Commission’s $550,000 fine against the CBS television network for airing that malfunction, which briefly exposed a private part of the singer’s anatomy to a live audience.

A federal appeals court ruled last November that the FCC acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in imposing the fine.

From the beginning, this case has laid bare the frailty of public-decency standards in an age when adolescent humor seems to have overwhelmed all the playground monitors. The administration is fighting for the right to keep inappropriate images away from the small sliver of programming that makes up the public airwaves. Meanwhile, anyone, regardless of age, can go to YouTube, type in a few search terms and watch the offending halftime show on-demand.

Clearly, those who view junior-high behavior as creative freedom already have free reign over much of what passes for entertainment. People with standards are on their own against the storm.

We’ve come a long way in 52 years. Few people today remember the media circus that erupted on Feb. 11, 1960 when NBC decided to delete a joke that Tonight Show host Jack Paar told.

Paar’s joke had to do with a British woman who wanted to rent a room in Switzerland. Being proper, she enquired about the availability of a “WC,” which she took for granted to mean a wash closet, or a bathroom, as we would say. The Swiss schoolmaster who was helping her didn’t speak English very well, so he asked the local parish priest for help in understanding the woman. The priest assumed “WC” referred to “Wayside Chapel.”

In a letter to the woman, the schoolmaster wrote that he took “great pleasure in informing you that the W.C. is situated nine miles from the house.” As the letter continued, the misunderstanding became more absurd and amusing. For example, “It is capable of holding 229 people and it is open on Sunday and Thursday only.”

When Paar learned the joke had been cut, he walked off the show and didn’t return for three publicity filled weeks.

While NBC apologized to its temperamental star, the man who refused to air the joke, Ernest Lee Jahncke Jr., head of the network’s standards and practices department, remained unmoved. It was a question of good taste, he said. In particular, he was bothered by a double entendre that involved religion.

Religion is, of course, the arbiter for most of what society determines to be proper, and improper, behavior. Those standards are meant to protect people from both physical and spiritual harm. It should come as no surprise that the more spiritually illiterate society becomes, the less likely it is to articulate reasons not to tolerate vulgarities.

Jackson’s malfunction may have been a defining moment in her career, but it was only a blip in the relentless onslaught against decency. It pushed what remains of public limits, but only slightly. Before it happened, she and Justin Timberlake were moving on a stage filled with scantily clad, gyrating dancers. The lyrics included a promise to “have you naked by the end of this song.”

None of this is part of the case being appealed to the Supreme Court. None of it was considered inappropriate for the halftime of a family friendly football game.

The bar has moved far since 1960. If the FCC prevails, it would at least remain one voice of authority reminding people that decency is important.

Email Jay Evensen at even@desnews.com

April 11, 2012

Rational thought, nuclear weapons don’t mix

Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove

SAHUARITA, Ariz. — Our tour guide begins by making reference to the classic Cold War-era movie “Dr. Stragelove,” which he boasts of having seen multiple times. It is an entertaining farce whose humor seems more like wisdom as the years pass.

The journey from 2012 into the ever vigilant, uniquely irrational and strangely comforting world of that era is not far. Just take a few steps down a staircase out of the penetrating desert sun. It is, however, a journey that makes the distance between that world and today seem much farther than a mere 25 years.

This tiny town south of Tucson is home to the Titan Missile Museum. During the height of the decades-long standoff with the Soviet Union, there were 54 Titan missile silos in the United States kept on constant alert by four-person crews. This one, known officially as complex 571-7, is the only one that remains, complete with a now-unarmed missile.

For a small fee, anyone can take a guided tour through the innards of the silo, stare at the huge rocket on its underground launch pad, look at the stark living quarters and see the control room where the buttons of Armageddon were constantly guarded. 

The United States still has an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles ready to strike. But the urgency seems diminished, as does the comfort of an enemy that, for all its ruthless oppression, could be kept at bay by the thought of its own destruction.

Today’s world labors with a strange an unpredictable new set of rules. In recent days, pundits and politicians have argued over how best to counter the emerging nuclear threat from Iran.

Some of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s public comments about annihilating Israel would suggest he isn’t rational, but there are many complicating considerations, including the mindset of the ruling clerics above him.

The United States launched a war against Iraq based partly on Saddam Hussein’s actions that suggested he had weapons of mass destruction. He didn’t.

The United States is knee-deep in a war on terrorism in which the enemy thinks nothing of sacrificing its own life for a cause. Nuclear weapons are not a deterrent, but the enemy may find ways to use them against us.

Things were simpler in the Cold War.

Our guide chooses my 9-year-old son to man the control center deep in the silo as he walks us through what would have happened if the president had activated the “nuclear football,” the coded device for launching such weapons that still travels with President Obama wherever he goes.

The museum says it would have taken 58 seconds from order to launch. We watch as the guide explains the sequence of steps to ensure that no mistakes were made, and as he and my son turn separate keys and hold them for five seconds.

Lights go on. An alarm sounds. The guide now explains that, at this point, the missile is operating independently. There is no way to undo what has been set in motion. A 9-year-old has destroyed the world.

Speaking of children, the museum displays an old civil defense film teaching school kids how to “duck and cover” in case of a nuclear attack. The crowning scene shows a family enjoying a picnic when a flash lights the sky. Mom and the kids throw the picnic blanket over themselves. Dad hides under a newspaper.

The 8-foot-thick walls of the missile silo tell a different story. Our guide explains that, after launching the bomb, the crew would have about 20 days worth of food, water and air. They would await further orders or, in the absence of those, might decide to climb the stairs and see what was left of the world.

At the end of “Dr. Strangelove,” leaders debate placing a ratio of 10 women for every man in mineshafts where they could safely reproduce until radiation subsides and normal life can resume. But then they begin arguing about a possible “mineshaft gap” with the Soviets.

Maybe there simply is no way to measure rational thought where nuclear weapons are concerned.

Email Jay Evensen at even@desnews.com

March 28, 2012

When people

we must trust

go bonkers

 

JetBlue Captain Clayton Osbon, after being carried off his flight.

I hardly noticed the woman sitting next to me on a recent flight into the Wasatch Front — until she lunged from her seat and grabbed me, digging her nails into my arms.

We were descending amid thunderclouds. She endured in silence the first two times the plane suddenly dropped altitude and climbed back in jerking motions, as if driving up a staircase.  I had been lost in a book and unaware of her discomfort until the lunge.

As introductions go, it wasn’t ideal. It did, however, break whatever spell she was under. She spent much of the rest of the flight apologizing, and I spent it assuring her it was quite all right.

The National Institute of Mental Health says 4.7 percent of the adult population in the United States suffers from panic disorders, which can be characterized as the sudden fear of disaster or losing control of a situation. As a licensed therapist told the New York Daily News last week, flying can be a problem for people prone to such things.

But does that explain why Clayton Osbon, the pilot of a JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas, went berserk last week, trying to bust back into the cockpit and yelling about “Iran and Israel” and “al-Qaida”?

“There are several different sides to every story,” Osbon’s wife, Connye, who probably is as perplexed as everyone else, told ABCNews.com. She added a plaintive, “Just keep that in mind.”

Yes, Connye, we’re trying to keep a lot of things in mind. Among them, the American Airlines flight attendant who recently commandeered the public address system before takeoff and rattled on about mechanical problems, 9/11, an imminent crash and the airline’s bankruptcy. It was not the sort of buckle-your-seatbelt type announcement passengers have learned to sleep through. The plane returned to the gate and the attendant was removed.

Or what about the JetBlue flight attendant who fought with a passenger two years ago, then cursed everyone over the PA system before exiting the plane on an emergency chute, beer in hand?

Tuesday’s outburst by Captain Osbon also had faint and eerie echoes to 1999 and First Officer Gameel al-Batouty aboard Egypt Air flight 990 from Los Angeles to Cairo. When the Captain excused himself from the cockpit for a bathroom break, al-Batouty shut down the engines and sent the Boeing 767 into an irreparable dive toward the Atlantic Ocean, saying in Egyptian Arabic, “I rely on God.”

At least that’s what the flight recorder indicated. All aboard died in the crash. Despite a lot of conspiracy theories, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded only that the First Officer apparently caused the crash for unknown reasons.

Would Osbon have done a similar thing if allowed back into the cockpit? Reports said he was pushing buttons and acting irrationally when the co-pilot coaxed him to leave.

So what are we to make of it all? Is there some sort of flight-induced disorder scientists have yet to pinpoint; something perhaps induced by an enclosed, pressurized atmosphere? More importantly, what can do you do if the people in charge of your flight lose it?

In the post 9/11 world, passengers seem unafraid to intervene when someone is out of sorts. People who have endured the humiliation of removing shoes, belts jewelry and other clothing and being screened by high-resolution machines that strip away whatever is left aren’t about to let someone’s bizarre behavior ruin their flight. Unless the TSA installs CAT-scan machines manned by trained physicians, it will be impossible to check for potentially deadly behavior patterns.

Federal authorities, unmoved by any speculation about what made Osbon snap, filed criminal charges against him on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the theories continue. ABC News interviewed experts who wondered about a brain tumor or an infection, or perhaps even prescription drugs in his system or the lack of proper sleep.

Granted, such behavior is exceedingly rare in airline pilots. But, like Osbon’s wife, we search for the several sides to the story in hopes of finding something that separates his behavior from anything that might also afflict us.

Pilots are, after all, human, just as everyone else aboard the plane.

Email Jay Evensen at even@desnews.com

Stop tempting ‘foolish’ youth into mistakes

 

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of the chronically youthful President Theodore Roosevelt and therefore perhaps an expert, once said, “The secret of eternal youth is arrested development.”

She didn’t have the benefit of modern scientific evidence, but it turns out she was remarkably accurate.

When he was nearing 100, my wife’s grandfather used to regale us with stories of how, as a child, he and his friends played with explosives they found near construction sites in Oregon. We always marveled at how they escaped unharmed.

Truth is, few subjects can get a roomful of strangers going faster than “The stupid and reckless things I did as a youth.” Try it some time. You’ll find a lot of evidence for the idea that guardian angels exist to protect people from themselves.

Except that not everyone is so lucky.

News reports in Utah have been filled lately with extreme examples of this. Some, like the 8-year-old in Ogden who decided to steal his mother’s keys at 2 a.m. and take his 5-year-old sister for a ride in a minivan, were lucky. They ended up wedged in a ravine, sturdy trees keeping them from falling into the Ogden River.

Others, like 16-year-old Destiny McCubbin of Clearfield, learned painful lessons. She decided to throw a party at her house while her parents were away. Once she set the spinning wheel of adolescent foolishness in motion, she couldn’t make it stop. Uninvited people showed up, including rival gangs. Four people were shot, including her. Luckily, no one died.

Another story ended in terrible tragedy. A lot of unanswered questions remain as to how a 15-year-old Riverton girl was killed, but police have arrested a 31-year-old man with a long rap sheet. No one seems able to explain why the girl allegedly ended up with this person.

The lessons here go way beyond merely observing that kids do the darnedest things. They reach into areas of public policy and call into question a lot of things society allows.

Scientists, just like Roosevelt’s daughter, know there are real reasons why kids do those things, but all the research doesn’t lessen the terror a parent can feel trying to keep one step ahead of their offspring’s imagination.

Of all the body’s organs, the brain takes the longest to develop. Scientists once thought the brain’s wiring was complete by age 10 or 12, but research over the past decade or two has found that the parts responsible for self-control and judgment don’t fully develop until the early 20s, or perhaps as late as 25 in some people.

This lends credence to the words of 19^th century author Edward Bullwer-Lytton, who said the trouble with youth isn’t that their passions are stronger. “The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker!”

Quite an insightful comment from a man whose dubious claim to fame was to be the first ever to begin a novel with, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Ironically, dark and stormy accurately describes the state of many adolescent brains.

The web site teenbrain.drugfree.org describes the teenage brain as one in which emotion, motivation and physical coordination are shouting and the prefrontal cortex, where judgment resides, is not quite ready to referee.

Knowing this, some public policy choices become clearer. The legal drinking age, for instance, should never be lowered from its present 21. Research has shown that mind-altering substances are particularly dangerous to a developing brain.

The legal driving age becomes troublesome. Sixteen hardly seems an optimum age for guiding a heavy vehicle down a freeway.

Public universities should be pressured to justify why they allow coed dormitories, putting people in situations they lack the judgments skills to handle maturely.

At age 16, a friend talked me into taking his Dad’s car so he (who had his own car) and I could talk on CB radios while cruising the streets. We returned to find ourselves in trouble with police who had been called to investigate a stolen vehicle.

That was a fairly benign example of youthful foolishness.

Preventing such things can be nearly impossible. Keeping society from officially encouraging them, however, should be a bit easier.

Email Jay Evensen at even@desnews.com

The end of Britannica’s books won’t make us any smarter

 

Photo from the Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-britannica-ends-print-20120314,0,563429.story

If you happen to find the 1987 version of the Collier’s Encyclopedia Year Book, you would see my name as author of the entry for “Nevada.” I worked for a Las Vegas newspaper at the time and was paid a nice sum for the few paragraphs I produced.

The money wasn’t as important to me as the authoritative tone of the book. I still consider it one of the coolest bylines I’ve collected through the years.

That’s true even though Collier’s went the way of the Funk and Wagnall — once a great comedic catchphrase, as in “You can look that up in your Fund and Wagnall” — in the 1990s.

Now you can look it up on Google, which sounds odd, but not nearly as funny. Search “Nevada” and you will get 539,000 results in an instant. Some contain factual information. Some lead to official government web sites. Some lead to the sites of activists for one cause or another, and some are just plain silly.

Does that make us smarter on the subject? Perhaps, but only if we have the patience to read the way people used to. As I’ve learned through blogging, tweeting and using Facebook, reading no longer is a linear process. We go a paragraph or so, then click on a link that catches our fancy and find ourselves somewhere else entirely until the next interesting link comes along.

In his insightful essay in the Atlantic four years ago titled, “Is Google making us stupid?” Nicholas Carr put it this way: “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

Which doesn’t necessarily mean we’re getting anywhere faster.

The folks at Encyclopedia Britannica announced in recent days they are ceasing the printed, bound version of their product. The last set, after a string of 244 years, comes in 32 volumes and runs a cool $1,395. Not surprisingly, they have sold only a few.

Like most people my age, I grew up in the shadow of a bookcase filled with what one New York Times blogger this week described as “those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books.” On boring summer afternoons, I would lie on the floor and leaf through pages, seeing what I could learn.

Even though the books were painfully outdated even then, it was always an interesting ride. Today I watch as my children research topics for school projects while juggling a host of online chats and games with their friends on separate web windows and I wonder if they are getting the same experience.

Facts are one thing. Immersed reading, pondering and developing mental connections are quite another. Are we becoming the “pancake people” playwright Richard Foreman described — people with knowledge spread wide and thin and available at the fingertips?

Britannica’s move was inevitable. The computer age gives us video, audio, up-to-the-minute information and a host of other things our old encyclopedia couldn’t provide.

It also makes many people lazy. Traditional reference works like Britannica are available online for a subscription fee. A lot of folks rely on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that may or may not be factual and that easily can be hijacked by people with agendas.

In defiance of the law of entropy, our universe seems to be consolidating and organizing itself. A simple pocket device can serve simultaneously as a phone, clock, television, radio, record player, camera, photo album, typewriter, newspaper, publishing device, calculator, atlas, appointment book and, yes, encyclopedia.

Pretty soon, it will be impossible to think of anything to give someone for a birthday present other than clothes or a new such device for the pocket.

This isn’t necessarily bad. It is good that we live in a world where several intelligent points of view are readily available on a subject. That Collier’s entry I wrote 25 years ago, after all, provided only my take on the subject.

The question, however, is how many of us bother to seek out and ponder those points of view, and how many just quickly accept one to their liking?
Email Jay Evensen at even@desnews.com

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Cameron Duncan Media Award

  (Click here to read the Deseret News story.)
   Jay Evensen has been named this year's recipient of the Cameron Duncan Media Award, presented  at  the  annual RESULTS  Educational  Fund  International   Conference  in  Washington,  DC on June 19.
   The  award is  presented  every  year  to  a   journalist  who  has  demonstrated  outstanding  reporting  of  issues  related  to  poverty  and  hunger.
   RESULTS is a leading advocate for microfinance as a way to help the extremely poor people of the world find a way out of poverty.
   The developer of microfinance, Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
   A letter sent to Evensen, said, "After  an  internal  survey  of  coverage  of  domestic  and  global  health  and  poverty  over  the  past  year,  we   determined  that  your  writing  on  this  critical  issue  stood  out  as  particularly  outstanding."
   Evensen will travel to Washington to accept the award.
   For a list of previous winners, click here.
   Here are links to a few of Evensen's columns and editorials that resulted in this prestigious award:
  -Micro-loans give poor opportunity.
 -A microcredit milestone
 -A great peace prize winner
 -Polite, modest Yunus truly a Nobel man
 -Travesty in Bangladesh

Top of the Rockies winner

The Top of the Rockies contest, which recognizes the best in the journalism in the Rocky Mountain area, has awarded Jay Evensen third place for column writing, based on work published in 2011.

The following three columns were recognized. To read them, click on the headlines.

BYU 'honor' shocks nation that treasures wins

Brandon Davies should have been story of the week

Warren Jeffs a monster, but popular culture not much better

Evensen won second place in the same contest in 2011. The following three columns were recognized.

What would you have done in Bennett's place?

Those who sent immigrant list cowardly, hateful

Coffee party and oasis of civil, quiet discussion