opiate of the masses?

Marx might have been on to something in his day, but in America, religion is no longer the opiate of the masses. TV has taken its place.

"According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube."

Kiyoshi Ota/Reuters

Panasonic says it expects that the 103-inch plasma screen TV, priced at $70,000, will have a limited market.

TV Statistics and info:

• Approximate number of studies examining TV's effects on children: 4,000
• Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 3.5
• Number of minutes per week that the average child watches television: 1,680
• Percentage of day care centers that use TV during a typical day: 70
• Percentage of parents who would like to limit their children's TV watching: 73
• Percentage of 4-6 year-olds who, when asked to choose between watching TV and spending time with their fathers, preferred television: 54
• Hours per year the average American youth spends in school: 900 hours
• Hours per year the average American youth watches television: 1500

http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html

• ABC's Desperate Housewives is the most popular broadcast-network television show with kids aged 9-12 according to Nielsen stats. It airs at 10/9. (Jan. 05)
• Average time kids spend watching TV each day: 4 Hours
• Children spend more time watching television than in any other activity except sleep. - Huston and Wright, University of Kansas. "Television and Socialization of Young Children."

http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/facts/mediafacts.asp

• The number of videos rented daily in the United States is six million while the number of public library items checked out daily is three million.
• According to the A.C. Nielsen Co. the average American watches 3 hours and 46 minutes of TV each day (that's more than 52 days of nonstop TV-watching per year).

http://www.soundvision.com/Info/misc/tvturnoff.asp

the sadly neglected blog that no one reads

I'm a hopeless blogger. I just can't seem to do it consistently. I read blogs from other people that post every single day. Not every other day, but every day, sometimes multiple times a day. And the thing is, these people seem to ALWAYS have interesting things to say, interesting films they've seen, interesting music they've heard, etc.

Is my life just unexciting or am I just unmotivated? Good question, but one I'll leave for now.

I think if I were writing a book I'd be more intentional about writing. I loves books. Books last. They endures for centuries, even millennium if they are kept in a good condition. I can touch a book, smell it. Heck, I can even lick it. I can spill coffee on it, get chocolate on it, underline a passage that really thrills me, or even drop it in the bathtub accidentally (that is, if I read in the bathtub. I don't read in the bath since I always shower. Its kind of messy to read in the shower).
Blogs on the other hand just seem so temporal and ephemeral. They are on my screen for a few minutes, then they're gone. Then I click through again later in the day and they are still there! And the next day they're still there. They are just waiting for me to put them on my screen. But I can't buy into the idea that someone will want to or even be able to read my blog thoughts 50 years from now. Will my kids ever see any of the blogs I've had? Will any of the entries be read in the future?

This blog that I've begun here is my third one. I started with something called Diaryland (which I thought for the longest time was actually DAIRY-land). Its still there as of right now; I just checked. You can find it here. Then I had a Xanga site (jamie's xanga). Actually as I was writing this I started thinking about those two blogs and wondering how long they'll actually exist in that weird place called cyberspace. So just in case the internet explodes tomorrow, I went them onto my hard drive. Of course, my hard drive might explode tomorrow. And the world might explode tomorrow too. But I digress...

Okay, since I'm talking about blogs, what blogs do I read? Here are some that I look at almost everyday:
Family:
http://www.xanga.com/BabyGarrett
http://www.xanga.com/babygarrett2

Friends/ acquaintances:
http://www.xanga.com/minakim139
http://www.xanga.com/jongmini

Lost - the world's best TV show ever, period, end of discussion!! And this is THE BEST blog about Lost. I know because I've read a whole lot of them! Don't argue with me!!
http://lost-and-gone-forever.blogspot.com/

Random blogs
http://www.neatorama.com/
http://www.rnyk.com/

And here are my 2 latest blog finds:
http://peer-see.com/blog/ (this is a couple that lives in China; I taught in China for 3 years)
http://falsani.blogspot.com/

So get out there and read some blogs while you still can!! The internet might explode tomorrow!