Children Detach From Natural World As They Explore The Virtual One
Yosemite may be nice and all, but Tommy Nguyen of San Francisco would much prefer spending his day in front of a new video game or strolling around the mall with his buddies.
What, after all, is a 15-year-old supposed to do in what John Muir called “the grandest of all special temples of nature” without cell phone service?
“I’d rather be at the mall because you can enjoy yourself walking around looking at stuff as opposed to the woods,” Nguyen said from the comfort of the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall.
In Yosemite and other parks, he said, furrowing his brow to emphasize the absurdly lopsided comparison, “the only thing you look at is the trees, grass and sky.”
The notion of going on a hike, camping, fishing or backpacking is foreign to a growing number of young people in cities and suburbs around the nation, according to several polls and studies.
State and national parks, it seems, are good places for old folks to go, but the consensus among the younger set is that hiking boots aren’t cool. Besides, images of nature can be downloaded these days.
It isn’t just national forests and wilderness areas that young people are avoiding, according to the experts. Kids these days aren’t digging holes, building tree houses, catching frogs or lizards, frolicking by the creek or even throwing dirt clods.
“Nature is increasingly an abstraction you watch on a nature channel,” said Richard Louv, the author of the book “Last Child in the Woods,” an account of how children are slowly disconnecting from the natural world. “That abstract relationship with nature is replacing the kinship with nature that America grew up with.”
A lot of it has to do with where people live - 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, where the opportunities for outdoor activity apart from supervised playgrounds and playing fields are limited.
But Louv said the problem runs deeper. Wealthy suburban white youngsters are also succumbing to what he calls “nature deficit disorder.”
“Anywhere, even in Colorado, the standard answer you get when you ask a kid the last time he was in the mountains is ‘I’ve never been to the mountains,’ ” Louv said. “And this is in a place where they can see the mountains outside their windows.”
The nature gap is just as big a problem in California, where there are more state and national parks than anywhere else in the country. A recent poll of 333 parents by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 30 percent of teenagers did not participate in any outdoor nature activity at all this past summer. Another 17 percent engaged only once in an outdoor activity like camping, hiking or backpacking.
The numbers coincide with national polls indicating that children and teenagers play outdoors less than young people did in the past. Between 1997 and 2003, the proportion of children ages 9 to 12 who spent time hiking, walking, fishing, playing on the beach or gardening declined 50 percent, according to a University of Maryland study.
Kim Strub, a 46-year-old Mill Valley mother of 13- and 16-year-old girls, said kids these days just don’t have the time to get out in nature with all the pressure to get good grades and be accepted into a prestigious college.
“There is probably five times as much homework than there used to be when I was a kid,” she said.
“I used to be a member of Campfire Girls, and we would go out camping, sleep under the stars, go hiking, grind acorns, real outdoor stuff,” Strub said. “My two daughters have been in Girl Scouts, and when they meet it is primarily indoors. Going outdoors is just not a priority anymore.”
The lack of outdoor activity is more pronounced in California’s minority and lower-income communities. Latino parents, for example, were twice as likely as white parents to say their child never participated in an outdoor nature activity and three times more likely to say their child did not go to a park, playground or beach this past summer, according to the Public Policy Institute poll.
Several African American, Asian and Latino students from various San Francisco high schools admitted they rarely, if ever, go to the neighborhood park, let alone visit a national or state park.
“We are city kids, so we don’t get to experience the outdoors,” said Ronnisha Johnson, a 17-year-old senior at Philip Burton High School. “I don’t like bugs, and most of my friends don’t like wild animals. And they don’t teach you about the wilderness in school. Kids don’t think of it as a park. They just think of it as a big open space where there is nothing to do.”
Video games, television and electronic entertainment are undoubtedly part of the problem. Nguyen, a sophomore at San Francisco’s Washington High School, is part of a generation of teenage technophiles who always have a cell phone or iPod in their ear.
Nguyen said he plays video games two hours a day on average, but has been known to spend the whole day in front of a new game. He doesn’t know anybody who camps, backpacks or who has ever built a tree fort.
Children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 61/2 hours a day with electronic media, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The trend starts early. A 2002 study found that 8-year-olds could identify 25 percent more Pokémon characters than wildlife species.
“Everybody is glued to the computer, on Facebook or MySpace, and they’re texting all the time,” said Brendan Lin, 15, of San Francisco, who wants to be a computer technician when he grows up.
“These kids are becoming so acculturated to very fancy devices that do 50 things at one time that they can’t grasp how going out into nature and just looking or relaxing can be rewarding,” said Kevin Truitt, the principal of San Francisco’s Mission High School. “To go on a hike, to participate in nature, to just look at the beauty is foreign to them.”
Louv does not believe technology is the only reason for the lack of exposure to the outdoors. He said sensationalistic reporting of rare occurrences is a big reason why parents are reluctant to let their children out of the house, let alone wander through the woods or down by the creek.
“Every time CNN or Fox makes a huge story about a lost Boy Scout or a bear attack, it feeds the growing fear that parents and kids have of strangers and of nature itself,” Louv said. “The actual number of stranger abductions has actually been level or falling for 20 years, but you would never know it from the media. When they get done telling about the crime, they tell about the trial. And when it’s a slow news day, they bring up JonBenet Ramsey again.”
Entrance fees at state and national parks also serve as barriers, Louv said. In the inner city, lack of maintenance and violence in the parks deter visitation. In the suburbs, neighborhood regulations discourage young people from using open space, Louv said.
“Just try to put up a basketball court in one of these gated communities, let alone build a tree house,” Louv said. “Covenants and restrictions in planned communities often give the impression that playing outdoors is illicit and possibly illegal.”
The situation has caused great concern among parents, educators and physicians, many of whom believe the epidemic of childhood obesity in America is a direct result of the lack of outdoor activity.
Environmentalists are worried that the next generation won’t give a hoot about the spotted owl or other species. Others foresee trouble if children continue to be deprived of the many physical and psychological benefits that studies have shown nature and the outdoors provide.
A nationwide movement has begun to try to reverse the trend and, in many ways, California is leading the way.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a proclamation in July recognizing a children’s outdoor bill of rights, which lists 10 activities children should experience by the time they turn 14, including exploring nature and learning how to swim.
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area engages 30,000 school-age children in outdoor and environmental programs in the park every year, many of them ethnic minorities from the inner city. Numerous outdoor education programs for inner-city youngsters have also been implemented at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which borders urban areas of Los Angeles.
The National Park Service and a variety of local environmental organizations, including the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land, Save the Bay, and the Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council, have joined the effort.
Brendan Lin is an example of how such programs can work. He remembers fondly the one time he went camping on a school graduation trip five years ago or so.
“It was fun because it was quiet and there was no one to bug you. I like that,” he said. “I saw deers, squirrels, and I did a rope course.”
Louv said he is convinced American youth can once again learn the glory of mucking around in the natural world as opposed to the virtual one.
“We don’t all get to go to Yosemite, nor do we have to,” he said. “It can be the clump of trees at the end of the cul-de-sac or the ravine by the house. Those places may in terms of biodiversity not be that important, but to a child they can be a whole universe, where they can discover a sense of wonder. That is essential to our humanity, and we can’t deny that to future generations.”
Online resources
Read the Public Policy Institute of California report: www.ppic.org
Children and Nature Network has information and reports on the issue: www.cnaturenet.org
© 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle
It started in the 80’s. We took my inlaws to my family’s cabin at lake Tahoe for a two week vacation. My little nephew was glued to the TV set playing Atari games while the rest of us enjoyed the outdoors. But then he was the perfect age to be indoctrinated into becoming the new improved human, the consumer of electronic goods that shut out the real world. What use is nature if you can’t make money off of someone for using it? Better to charge admission to manufactured virtual worlds.
I have a copy of Louv’s book and hope to read it shortly. The issue isn’t with children so much as with their parents.
The X-Gen is struggling financially in relation to the Boomers. Most are simply not able to get that cabin, the resort industry is dying (my father in-law once owned a resort), and we get FAR less vacation time than our more civilized European counterparts. The single greatest set of crimes the Boomers committed against the X/Y-Gen was to not make a 32 hour work week, perhaps 6 weeks of vacation, and paid maternal/paternal leave national priorities. Our whole culture is anti- spare time.
I make it a point to take my kids on a 3 week camping/roadtrip every summer. My youngest did his first camping at the age of 1. When I take these trips I note that the majority of people I see on the road are old retirees.
i think it’s important for parents to make efforts, to keep their kids away from market as much as possible.
No problem. Peak oil will take care of that.
This is all the more reason to support community gardens at elementary schools. Most county extension offices should have volunteers and resouirces to help set up beds in school yards. Fresh air for kids and fresh produce for the schools, what could be better.
This is significant. I think the majority of these kids are going to assume that what goes on out there in nature won’t affect them. Inside their walled-in, air-conditioned spaces with their game consoles, what kind of respect for the environment will they learn? As a programmer, I’m dismayed at the skewed perspective of reality a child might get from skipping all contact with nature.
You can’t put band-aids on this one. You have to shift the mindset. Wow them. Highlight instead that the real world has much more going on than any virtual one. Teach in-depth biology and ecosystems. Expose how dependent we are on nature.
Life does not come shrink-wrapped.
There’s a good side to everything.
The less people are fishing–the better.
The less people are hunting-the better.
We dont need selfish dominionist attitudes towards Nature–and the status quo “conservation” movement has done nothing to reduce the destruction of habitat.
Peta was voted the most desirable charity organization to work for by young people in a NYT poll, so its not as gloomy as perceived. We need morally minded environmentalists, not ones that only want to preserve nature so they can keep exploiting it.
This is why kids today are suffering record breaking numbers of obesity. If you don’t move it, you won’t lose it. I don’t yet have children but when I do I will raise them like I was raised.. with limited tv time (i.e. less than 10 hrs per week), and certainly I wouldn’t allow a child under 15 to have a computer or gaming system. When I was a kid and I wanted something that I thought everyone else had I gave the reason that “Well everyone else has one (some popular toy, shoes, games, etc etc.)!” and I’ll give my kids the same answer I got.. “Well you’re not everybody else.”
Also, this says a lot about the parents of the current generation. They’re just as lazy as their kids are! They don’t spend time with their children because it’s just another ‘job’ they have to do in their day. It’s quite pathetic that parents allow their children to fail so early in life. Children learn by playing and interacting with the world around them and cutting them off from the outside world/natural world is not doing them any favors.
Childhood itself is disappearing in our society, and the media, foremost the TV, is responsible. What used to distinguish children from adults was lack of knowledge. Growing up we were always told we were to young to know that, or not old enough to do that. This protection is gone today. The media targets children, making them consumers even before they have a chance to earn money. We even have companies that make products for the unborn in a woman’s womb. What kind of society treats its young this way?
Hoa binh
Parents need to bear the initial brunt of any blame, neither children themselves nor a nebulous “society”.
Yet if parents don’t have the resources they need (spare time, vacation time, single income would be nice also), then we can blame society.
Another deficit in children’s lives is not knowing how to make things. Children are learning how to do tons of homework which is devoid of any use of their hands other than writing with a pencil. And even that is becoming a rarity as more students are relying on computers to type their homework. I am worried about the future for our children as more and more of them are becoming so dependant on computers, T.V., cell phones, iPods, etc. We are definitely raising a lot of kids who may be computer saavy, but what happens to generations of “plugged-in” kids in the future when all our oil runs out and our oil-dependant life style is no longer possible? How are comuters, T.V., iPods, and cell phones of the future going to get made? How is any thechnology going to get made? Forget about the technology stuff. What about the basics? Who is going to grow our food and how are we going to get it? What are we going to wrap our food in when we make our lunches? How does fabric get made? How will the clothes get here? What will we carry water in? An how will our tooth brushes get made? Most everything we use today is either made out of oil or is manufactured and delivered by oil. We don’t know how to find and make things ourselves. Everything is made for us and delivered to us. And it’s not just things. What about entertainment? Kids aren’t learning how to entertain themselves. What will generations of plugged-in kids do when there are fewer T.V.s, or videos to watch? Will they know how to put on a play or make puppets for a puppet show? How will they find each other and create community when there is no internet or cell phones? When oil runs low and eventually runs out, the ones who will survive will be those who learn how to make things and who can survive out in nature. All the technology dependant folks will turn to them for wisdom, for understanding the trees and the flowers, and for their toothbrushes.
But the alarming tone of this article doesn’t exactly support the articles premise - 53% of California kids DID go on an outing in the past year.
But I agree, things have changed since I was a kid, when we would spend most of out daylight free time exploring the woods and creek bordering our subdivision.
Agave,
Good point! It ironic that technology has created so many kids - adults too - who are technically illiterate. When I was a kid, I helped my dad repair and build stuff. by the time I was fourteen or so, me and my friends has built a simple radio recievers, built model rockets and understood aerodynamics at a qualitiative level, could name most of the trees in the woods and fish and other critters in the creek, and could identify at least a few constellations in the sky.
Kids today have seem to have virtually NO curiosity for science and no sense of wonder regarding nature. Their interests and desires are completely revolve around by commercial plastic crap.
Look around you in the parks and vacant lots. You will not see kids playing football, basketball, or baseball any more in pick up games. Some do skateboard, but bicycling is now almost gone.
You will find lots of soccer games with parents coaching from the sidelines. The kids all have nice little uniforms on but look closely. They barely seem to ever move, unlike what would be in a true sandlot game. Soccer is an extremely aerobic sport, but not in America it seems?
We raised our kids in a dense suburb. The violence, beatings, sexual attacks, gang activities and drugs make you want to keep your kids in the house all the time. Heck, they couldn’t build a snowman in the yard without it being destroyed within the hour. My sons reported to me on the aftermath of tortured dead animals they observed. I would have liked vacations but we couldn’t afford them. The only time we had was after my husband became ill and unemployed. These are the nighmares for many city children who stay behind closed doors.
I believe there is definitely too much homework for kids. I’m appalled when parents tell me how many hours their children are expected to spend doing school work at home. The schools have kids chained (figuratively speaking) to a chair for about 7 hours a day. If they can’t teach them what they need to know in that time, there’s surely something wrong.
In contrast, it takes about an hour a day for a home-schooled first grader to learn everything they learn in school in 7 hours. I know this because I have family members who home school. The amount of time needed gets larger as kids get older, but it virtually never goes to 7 hours and then there is no extra homework bringing the total to as much as 10 hours or more.
One family member whose child is home schooled went to visit friends where they were playing a game that involved facts and thinking. She knew so much more than the children they were visiting that on the way home she said, “Thanks for not sending me to school and making me stupid.”
Back on subject: Kids do need to get outside more. To start with, they need to have recess restored. In the student handbooks where I work, recess has been reduced to 10 minutes a day!
With parents working, kids doing homework, lack of money, and the difficulty of getting out of the city on weekends, it’s a monumental achievement to find time for outdoor activities.
As for hunting being a bad thing, I know a lot of people object to it on principle, but I’m always glad when someone wants to hunt on my land. The deer are so prolific they are wandering into the cities. I work in the middle of Parkersburg, WV, and there are deer in the cemetaries and they come into people’s yards.
We have no natural preditors to deal with the overpopulation, which hurts the deer as well as making them a nuisance. I admit that I love to get up in the morning and watch the deer from my porch, but I also know there are way too many of them for their own good or for the ecology.
Raymond Avenue Elementary School, in South-Central Los Angeles, which I attended from kindergarten to fourth grade, had a small working farm along its Normandie Avenue side. Crops and animals. Children worked it. The school still exists (I attended from 1951-1956). I don’t think the farm does. But it could. And would, in a world where we cared more for the welfare of children. Instead, we prefer to kill them (see Irak). I say “we” there because like it or not, we’re all complicit to at least some degree. We can do more, and better. Let’s, shall we?
Noise pollution and dependency on electronic noise-making entertainment devices is another dimension of the problem. Today there is far less intelligent face-to-face conversation. When I was a college student in the late 60s and 70s, going to diners and neighborhood bars and chatting with my friends and acquaintances was my favorite way to pass the time. In the 80s, these businesses died and were replaced by places with video games, loud stereos, and large video screens. The market was accommodating the needs of a new generation reared more by these gadgets than by communication with parents. Along the way, rock bands became much louder and the sounds they produce junkier. Hearing impairment and diminished communication skills are among the negative consequences of our noise culture. One way to “get back to nature” would be to see a return to the art of conversation.
To escape apartment dwelling and the crime and drugs that are the mainstay, I took leave of my job for the summer, gave up the apartment, and bought a tent. My two children and I spent the summer camping in California because I knew they being pre-teens, my life with them would be less once school started in the fall and I wanted them to know what it’s like to spend time in the outdoors. We had a memorable time although there were camps that were too full of partying and noise. Kids just have to have the chance to be outdoors without all the text messaging, etc. Parents, just take them away from the city if you can. They will never regret the experience nor will you.
I used to go camping in the White Mountains of NH(Now a National Park) we’d just drive up, park, lock the doors and go, then the fees started, first campsite fees…you hike uphill with a 65 pound pack on your back, 10-20 miles out in the middle of nowhere, no toilet, no pile of firewood, sleep in a tent, cook your own food and you have to fork up give or take $5 per person per night. Campfire permit, more money, then they wanted a car fee, 10 years ago it was $65 for the year even if you only went 1 weekend.
The last time I was there, I came late and set up tent in a public/privately managed roadside campsite…it was late, didn’t see the “put your hard earned money(what little) in the steel lockbox. The next morning a very angry big “Blackwater” type man started yelling at me through my tent walls as loud as he could, he wanted his money. I am no small man myself but this guy was scary, he wanted his $3.50 and he wanted it last night. Ahhh Privitization!
I haven’t been back in 6 years, I’d imagine there are more fees and Blackwater is running it now.
Amazing how the Neo Cons have crept into every niche and undermined things like… “watched a sunset from atop a mountain” “peace and quiet”
I was frazzled by the 3 greyhound buses full of 1st year med students who pulled up, got out and headed up the trail. I was soon informed there would be no where for me to tent that night as they had “reservations” Most had never been out of their back yard let alone done a 50 mile hike up hill, complete with foot blisters from ill fitting boots.
I never wanted to eat my peas, Black olives and mushrooms as a child, I was forced to and don’t regret it. I was also forced to hike a mountain in boy scouts which I hated at the time, but it grew on me and soon I wanted to sit atop a mountain again. Children need to be exposed. Parents today let the child rule the roost, that is a failure of parenting.
Screw anyone over 40 who acts like they have the right to lecture the younger (electronic) generation. The Babyboomers, the generation who thinks everyone is out to get them(thanks to the local news), who prosecutes teenagers for High School pranks… http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/18/national/main2942381.shtml , makes laws restricting what’s allowed in public spaces, designed the suburbs to look exactly like every other damn suburb, now says their kids are too involved in their own world to appreciate nature… wtf.
The first problem with this survey is that they asked parents about outdoor activities. The thing is… parents have no idea what their kids are doing.
Where I live, there’s a small forest behind all the suburbian houses. When I go jogging at night (there’s no one usually jogging past 9pm)… I see nothing but groups of teenagers walking or going to hang out in the forest. The reason they go there is because there are no adults, no cops telling them they can’t hang out, it’s a place where they can get away from their crazy, over-medicated, middle-aged parents. I often hear “Oh shit, someone’s coming”… but then they realize ‘oh, it’s that 20-something guy who jogs at night.’
This article is BS. Video games aren’t fucking up your kids, you are. And if this small rant from someone younger doesn’t convince you, then here’s one from someone your own age:
http://www.steve-olson.com/a-message-to-baby-boomers-and-generation-x/
In fact the strict father mentality assures many children are kept on tight reins so the worry is not about children but hearts that are not connecting with other hearts and the devastation of our natural systems caught in the delusion of ‘not me’ with all its excuses and compliants. Seems those of us writing here are also inside ignoring the ripening moon, nighttime is not just a TV show or this website or is it?
foamweapons
Agreed on all your points. Here’s at least one apology, don’t know how much it helps.
http://www.alternet.org/story/17253/?page=1
It’s not all adults that exhibit the flaws you mention however, it’s unfortunately most of the them. Just like high school which never ends (maybe pauses a bit during uni times depending on your school) the majority are idiots, animals going through life never questioning anything and just following herd instincts. Demonizing the different, the unique, those that can think for themselves.
All that being said, you have to admit there’s a lot of shallow people in your generation. I’m at the old end of GenX (40) and when channel surfing I see MTV dating shows where people boldly say given the choice to end world hunger or win an oscar they’d choose win an oscar, and that one actually gets picked with the rationale that the picker is self confessed shallow too. Miss South Carolina is also scaring us. But my professor friends are also all noticing a sharp decline in vocabulary at Uni these days. People don’t discuss, or talk, just one word answers and simple questions, “what’d u do this weekend?” “cool”
I personally believe in 2 things though. One, social responsibility, and two, person responsibility. If we all just blamed those who effected us (believe me, my parents are Pat Robertson watching, rapture watching, “kill the Arabs cuz God gave the land to the Jews” types and here I am) we would never get anywhere as a species. We have to rise above how we are treated.
But yes, you have no right to be blamed for this mess we’re or you’re in. The baby boomers sucked and sucked with little thought of tomorrow or the next generation, now look how deep we’re in it, and of course they’ll expect us to bail us and them out of it.
As far as nature goes, I prefer people to animals, but I do live in Europe where people are actually interesting to talk to, and still enjoy doing it at any age. Can’t blame people for video games though as there are so many idiots out there to want to escape from to a world that is consequent. A place where if you work hard you succeed, unlike the real world. I do need a walk in the green though 4-7 times a week or my pants start getting tight.
I do have my mp3 player on usually when I do it.
Who knows, a green deficient generation will be ideal for long distance space travel one day if we ever get there.
It makes me sad to say that I understand and agree with almost all of the posts here. (Sorry, foamweapons, but you’ve got your generation-blinders too tight around your head)
As a botanist and a teacher, I get to split my thoughts between the two most wonderful things on this Earth: nature, and children. This article hits home, and for me, “home” is no longer America. The very same situation is happening right here in Taiwan, and to some degree it may be even worse and more perverse. You would not believe what a high percentage of my students cannot swim. Remember, this is an island a little smaller than Maine. There’s almost every ecosystem (save perhaps deserts and boreal forests) represented on this island.
We have the same problems here: too much (far too much) belief that if a little homework is good, a lot is better. If there’s one single dangerous wild thing, then all things wild must be dangerous. The sole purpose of childhood is to train to be a working adult. Media can substitute for the real thing–and by that I mean both experiences in nature as well as human interaction. Things are more important than ideas. Wealth more than happiness.
The paradigm that is killing the Taiwanese people (and I’d bet most Americans could be viewed through this lens, too) is the bane and the bounty of our modern world: convenience. But convenience isn’t. It just isn’t. Malls instead of marketplaces. PlayStation instead of parks. Books instead of backpacking. TV instead of travel. Frozen food instead of farm fresh. Sorry, but I’ve been teaching the wonders of alliteration to my students, lately, and I just couldn’t resist…
Parents, you know what to do. Teachers, well, we ought to resist the tide a little more effectively and lean towards educating more and training less. And the rest of you: when is the last time you used the skills, training, passions, ideas, and concern to volunteer to a church youth group, a Boy Scout troop, or any other assembly of children and show them SOMETHING REALLY FRIGGIN’ COOL about nature? A branch of Mimosa, a maple seed spinning like a helicopter, a sliced-open gall from a plant stem, the delicate gills of a mushroom, the barbs on a bird’s feather, or the perfect anatomy of a rose?
Learn about one cool thing in nature, and show every child you see. If enough of us do this, we can reverse this trend. It’s everybody’s problem, really, isn’t it?
Connecting one’s child to nature in today’s environment is such an uphill slog. I convinced my wife that we needed to move out of the city to help our son connect to nature, and we bought a house in a rural area that is on the high bank of a river, with a woods next to the river. But getting my son to explore nature is like pulling teeth. He seems physically inseparable from the laptop his school gave him and I am lucky to get him to go down to the river once a month. It seems he is living in a separate universe from the one I experienced in my childhood.
Easy solution to this. Turn off the power. Forces all of these folks outside to see nature and maybe get in tune with it, if not then nature will get in tune with you and mother nature is no one to mess with.
I want to say something:
I myself consume on all those video games, computers, and DVDs you guys worry about. I’m also 18 and spend most time on my Macbook. Despite all this, I do have a curiosity in all things natural. My favorite excercise is walk for an hour, looking at my town. I love seeing animals of all shapes and sizes, marveling at these wonders of Earth.
I may be part of the consumer group, but I am at least aware of all the problems on earth. In fact, the reason I turn to consumable products is that I constantly worry my future is hopeless. Indeed, we get tired of that game or movie we bought, but the memory of the experience lasts forever. The chance to see or experience electronics may disappear, but the memory of ones already encounterd, that lasts forever, my friends. Remember that.
Sorry people, I’m just in an angry mood lately…
On another thread today I posted that I would stick a GM cornstalk up someone’s a**. This is why I don’t protest as much as I did in college… I can be very violent when it comes to politics.
(The hole in my wall marking Bush’s 2004 re-election agrees)
Relative article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/10/24/notes102407.DTL&feed=rss.mmorford