Live Free Learn Free Blog » Decency in the Media <title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-content/themes/thirteen/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/rss/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/atom/" /> <link rel="pingback" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/xmlrpc.php" /> <style type="text/css"> </style> <link rel='archives' title='August 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/08/' /> <link rel='archives' title='July 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/07/' /> <link rel='archives' title='June 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/06/' /> <link rel='archives' title='April 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/04/' /> <link rel='archives' title='March 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/03/' /> <link rel='archives' title='January 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/01/' /> <link rel='archives' title='December 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/12/' /> <link rel='archives' title='November 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/11/' /> <link rel='archives' title='October 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/10/' /> <link rel='archives' title='September 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/09/' /> <link rel='archives' title='August 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/08/' /> <link rel='archives' title='July 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/07/' /> <link rel='archives' title='June 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/06/' /> <link rel='archives' title='May 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/05/' /> <link rel='archives' title='April 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/04/' /> <link rel='archives' title='March 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/03/' /> <link rel='archives' title='February 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/02/' /> <link rel='archives' title='January 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/01/' /> <link rel='archives' title='December 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/12/' /> <link rel='archives' title='November 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/11/' /> <link rel='archives' title='October 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/10/' /> <link rel='archives' title='September 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/09/' /> <link rel='archives' title='August 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/08/' /> <link rel='archives' title='July 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/07/' /> <link rel='archives' title='June 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/06/' /> <link rel='archives' title='May 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/05/' /> <link rel='archives' title='April 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/04/' /> <link rel='archives' title='March 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/03/' /> <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/xmlrpc.php?rsd" /> </head> <body> <div id="headwrapper"> <div id="header"> <h1 id="title"><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog">Live Free Learn Free Blog</a></h1> </div> </div> <div id="wrapper"> <div id="content"> <div class="post" id="post-109"> <h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/01/20/decency-in-the-media/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to Decency in the Media">Decency in the Media</a></h2> <p class="postdate"> January 20th, 2006 at 6:06 pm (<a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/category/unschooling-life/" title="View all posts in Unschooling Life" rel="category tag">Unschooling Life</a>) </p> <div class="postentry"> <p>Today, Kenzie and I were watching an old movie in which several scenes took place on the Senate floor. Kenzie asked what the Senate was, so we decided to switch to C-Span to watch what was going on in the Senate. Instead of live coverage, they were showing a rerun of yesterday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on “Decency in the Media.”</p> <p>Kenzie was interested almost immediately because the first person we saw speak was the CEO of Echostar, owners of Dish Network, our satellite provider. He addressed the reason customers aren’t able to order channels separately, or <em>a la carte</em>. The giant corporations that own the channels offer them only in bundles - take one, take them all. We talked about this for a while - why the corporations do this, whether it’s fair to consumers, whether the corporations ought to have this right, etc. We also discussed monopolies (which was ironic, considering Senator Rockefeller was part of this hearing).</p> <p>This all led to discussions of censorship (especially censorship aimed at protecting children), the fairness or unfairness of companies advertising products to children during kids’ television shows, the “grooming” of children as future customers (i.e., McDonald’s), the negative effects of too much television, and the differences between children’s programming now and twenty-five years ago. We counted the number of kids shows that were currently on (14) and talked about whether it was better for kids to have a greater or lesser number of TV choices.</p> <p>Then, Kenzie noticed the D’s and R’s in front of the committee members’ names, so we talked about the general differences between Democrats and Republicans, ending with a discussion of the death penalty. An interesting afternoon.</p> <p>Now, he’s out riding his bicycle with a neighborhood friend. He crashed a few minutes ago, but a couple of bandaids did the trick. They’re back to tooling around the sidewalks screaming and laughing. </p> </div> </div>  <h3 id="comments">6 Comments</h3> <ol id="commentlist"> <li id="comment-57"> <h4 class="commentauthor">Pete said,</h4> <p class="commentdate"> January 20, 2006 at <a href="#comment-57" title="Permanent link to this comment">8:46 pm</a> </p> <p>How did you explain the differences btwn D’s and R’s to kenzie? </p> </li> <li id="comment-58"> <h4 class="commentauthor">Pete said,</h4> <p class="commentdate"> January 20, 2006 at <a href="#comment-58" title="Permanent link to this comment">8:47 pm</a> </p> <p>How did you explain the differences btwn D’s and R’s to kenzie? </p> </li> <li id="comment-59"> <h4 class="commentauthor"><a href='http://profile.typekey.com/LFLF-Editor/' rel='external nofollow'>Shana Ronayne Hickman</a> said,</h4> <p class="commentdate"> January 20, 2006 at <a href="#comment-59" title="Permanent link to this comment">9:32 pm</a> </p> <p>We focused on large and small government to begin with, but then it occured to me that this wasn’t necessarily always the case, so we discussed defense spending, health and human services spending, etc. We talked about education - school choice/vouchers, school spending, etc. We discussed the current focus on “values” and what we each considered our own values. We talked about religion and how that can play into R vs. D and whether or not it should. We talked about gun regulations, about drug sentencing, and then, about the death penalty. And, of course, we talked about the fact that not everyone will fit into one of these two categories (myself included) and that the people who identify themselves as Republicans, for instance, don’t all hold the same beliefs. We’ve touched on many of these things before, but not in the two-party sense. He had his own opinions on everything, and he decided if he had to choose one or the other, he’d call himself a Democrat. But, he knows, too, that there are other parties out there and that there’s certainly no requirement to identify with any of them. </p> </li> <li id="comment-60"> <h4 class="commentauthor"><a href='http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/' rel='external nofollow'>Henry Cate</a> said,</h4> <p class="commentdate"> January 26, 2006 at <a href="#comment-60" title="Permanent link to this comment">12:22 pm</a> </p> <p>It is fun how learning opportunities can pop up, if we are just sensitive to them.</p> <p>For some reason yesterday my eleven year old daughter and I were talking about lighting. She said that the safest place to be during a lightening storm was some place that lightning had already struck. I said that the saying “Lighting doesn’t strike twice in the same place” wasn’t true. I explained that the history of an unlikely event doesn’t affect its occurrence of happening again. We had a short fifteen minute lesson on probabilities, complete with flipping coins. </p> </li> <li id="comment-61"> <h4 class="commentauthor"><a href='http://www.starchildsearching.blogspot.com' rel='external nofollow'>Louise</a> said,</h4> <p class="commentdate"> February 7, 2006 at <a href="#comment-61" title="Permanent link to this comment">4:31 am</a> </p> <p>Hi Shana, I have tagged you on my blog for the 4 things meme. Basically you can answer questions with your 4 things. If you wanna do it, have a look at mine on my blog. It is friendly <img src='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_surprised.gif' alt=':o' class='wp-smiley' /> ) </p> </li> <li id="comment-62"> <h4 class="commentauthor"><a href='http://learninginfreedom.com' rel='external nofollow'>Ren</a> said,</h4> <p class="commentdate"> February 8, 2006 at <a href="#comment-62" title="Permanent link to this comment">9:16 am</a> </p> <p>Hey Shana,</p> <p>I’m tagging you for the “4 things Meme”. Hope you don’t mind!:) You can get the “4 things” format from my blog if you want to play. </p> </li> </ol> <h3 id="postcomment">Post a Comment</h3> <form action="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform"> <p> <input type="text" name="author" id="author" value="" size="28" tabindex="1" /> <label for="author">Name (required)</label> </p> <p> <input type="text" name="email" id="email" value="" size="28" tabindex="2" /> <label for="email">E-mail (required)</label> </p> <p> <input type="text" name="url" id="url" value="" size="28" tabindex="3" /> <label for="url"><abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr></label> </p> <p> <textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="60" rows="8" tabindex="4"></textarea> </p> <p> <input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" class="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit Comment" /> <input type="hidden" name="comment_post_ID" value="109" /> </p> </form> </div> <div id="sidebar"> <ul> <li id="meta"> <h2>Meta</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-login.php">Login</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/" title="Syndicate this site using RSS">Entries <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/comments/feed/" title="The latest comments to all posts in RSS">Comments <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr></a></li> </ul> </li> <li id="search"> <form method="get" id="searchform" action="/blog/index.php"> <p> <input type="text" value="" name="s" id="s" /> <input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" class="submit" value="Search" /> </p> </form> </li> </ul> </div> <div id="footer"> <p> <a href="http://wordpress.org" title="Powered by Wordpress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.">Powered by Wordpress</a> · Design by <a href="http://beccary.com" title="Theme designed by Beccary">Beccary</a> and <a href="http://weblogs.us" title="Theme sponsored by Weblogs.us">Weblogs.us</a> · <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer" title="This page validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional"><abbr title="eXtensible HyperText Markup Language">XHTML</abbr></a> · <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer" title="This page validates as CSS"><abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr></a> </p> </div> </div>  <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> var sc_project=605365; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_partition=4; var sc_security="d224bf47"; </script> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js"></script><noscript><a href="http://www.statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://c5.statcounter.com/counter.php?sc_project=605365&java=0&security=d224bf47&invisible=1" alt="free stats" border="0"></a> </noscript>  </body> </html>