{"id":650,"date":"2010-07-22T11:43:22","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T15:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=650"},"modified":"2010-07-25T05:55:21","modified_gmt":"2010-07-25T09:55:21","slug":"some-random-things-that-i-must-say-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=650","title":{"rendered":"Some random things that I must say today"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few things…<\/strong><\/p>\n

OK, a few things.\u00a0 Firstly, I finally updated my WordPress to 3.0!\u00a0 Woohoo!\u00a0 I’m all updated!\u00a0 Not that one can really notice from just reading the blog…<\/p>\n

Secondly, I created a new YouTube channel at youtube.com\/seanhannifin<\/a> to post random non-music stuff,\u00a0probably mostly\u00a0animation tests so that I can share my Animation Mentor progress.\u00a0 Here are my first animation attempts:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Woohoo!<\/p>\n

Um… what else?<\/p>\n

Comic-Con<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t really know much about Comic-Con, except that it’s apparently a pretty popular event. I don’t have the time or money to go to any such conventions (or the social connections that would make going to such an event more fun). Anyway, Comic-Con will be streaming live at MySpace<\/a> starting sometime today, so I might check it out for about 5 minutes…<\/p>\n

A few responses to Nurture Shock<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m reading this book called NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children<\/a>\"\" by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman.\u00a0 It’s a very interesting book; each chapter is dedicated to shedding new light and giving a new perspective to a certain topic.\u00a0 (Just look at the table of contents on Amazon if you really care what those topics are… I might blog about more of them in the future.)\u00a0 I love books that try to tackle long-standing myths.<\/p>\n

Anyway, chapter seven is called The Science of Teenage Rebellion, and while it doesn’t go into too much depth (afterall, you could write entire books on this topic … and people have), it does make some interesting points.<\/p>\n

This post is really not about those points, though.\u00a0 It’s really just my reaction to some quotes from the chapter.<\/p>\n

On Page 140, it says:<\/p>\n

Pushing a teen into rebellion by having too many rules was a sort of statistical myth.\u00a0 “That actually doesn’t happen,” remarked Darling.\u00a0 She found that most rules-heavy parents don’t actually enforce them.\u00a0 “It’s too much work,” says Darling.\u00a0 “It’s a lot harder to enforce three rules than to set twenty rules.”\u00a0 These teens avoided rebellious direct conflict and just snuck around behind their parents’ backs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Woah.\u00a0 So, just lying to your parents and breaking the rules behind their backs is not<\/em> rebellious?\u00a0 You think the parents would be OK with that?\u00a0 So… it’s good to set rules as a parent, because, hey, if it’s too many, your child will just break them behind your back…?<\/p>\n

I think it’s possible for a parent to set too many rules, and not enough rules, and doing either could help cause rebellion.\u00a0 And by “rebellion” I mean teenagers disobeying their parents, not just avoiding direct conflict.<\/p>\n

That paragraph makes it hard for me to understand what the author is trying to say, so I can’t really agree or disagree with him on it.<\/p>\n

Then, in a new section, on page 141, the book says:<\/p>\n

The Mod Squad study did confirm Linda Caldwell’s hypothesis that teens turn to drinking and drugs because they’re bored in their free time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Woah again!\u00a0 The book says pretty much nothing about how this was confirmed.\u00a0 It is seems way too simplistic to me.\u00a0 What about the many environmental influences?\u00a0 Peer pressure, parental pressure, school pressure, the availability of drugs and alcohol, etc?\u00a0 I’m not convinced anyone ever does anything just because they’re bored.\u00a0 There’s always more to it than that.\u00a0 If you were really<\/em> bored, you wouldn’t do anything!<\/p>\n

The book then talks about how Caldwell creates a program called TimeWise which tries to help kids counter boredom.\u00a0 And it says on page 143:<\/p>\n

For the seventh-graders who started out the most bored, “it didn’t seem to make a difference,” said Caldwell.\u00a0 It turns out that teaching kids not to be bored is really hard–even for the best program in the country.<\/p>\n

Why didn’t TimeWise have a stronger effect?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My guess would be that after TimeWise, kids are thrust back into the environment<\/em> they were in before.\u00a0 Yes, their time spent in the TimeWise program could affect their choices a bit, but they didn’t drink and do drugs just<\/em> because of mere boredom in the first place!\u00a0 You got your premises wrong.\u00a0 (The real results Mod Squad study might’ve been more complex than this, I don’t know.\u00a0 As I said, the book gives no explanation as to how the study confirmed such a thing.)<\/p>\n

And then, bum bum bum… the book says:<\/p>\n

Is it possible that teens are just neurologically prone to boredom?<\/p>\n

According to the work of neuroscientist Dr. Adrian Galvan at UCLA, there’s good reason to think so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To me, there seems bad reason to think so.\u00a0 Basically, scientists do these brain scans and watch parts of the brain light up.\u00a0 And for teens, they find that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t light up as much when the teen is supposedly excited (it shows a “diminished response whenever their reward center was experiencing intense excitement”).\u00a0 And the prefrontal cortex is “responsible for weighing risk and consequences.”\u00a0 Therefore when the teen is excited… “the teen’s brain is handicapped in its ability to gauge risk and foresee consequences.”<\/p>\n

That’s it?<\/p>\n

That’s the evidence?<\/p>\n

The prefrontal cortex shows a “diminished response” and therefore teens aren’t as good at foreseeing outcomes and are therefore just naturally prone to risky behaviour?<\/p>\n

And nevermind the environment?<\/p>\n

And… weren’t you at first trying to say something about boredom?<\/p>\n

Overall, it’s a very interesting book.\u00a0 I think the authors need to do a bit more research in this area though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few things… OK, a few things.\u00a0 Firstly, I finally updated my WordPress to 3.0!\u00a0 Woohoo!\u00a0 I’m all updated!\u00a0 Not that one can really notice from just reading the blog… Secondly, I created a new YouTube channel at youtube.com\/seanhannifin to post random non-music stuff,\u00a0probably mostly\u00a0animation tests so that I can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[220,18],"tags":[76,219,242,240,241],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-au","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}