Hi Folks! This trzftstekb is a great piece in the Atlantic, about how the filters on our computers create a sort of feedback loop that can really distort our perceptions. In this case, the author, Sarah Kendzior, clicked on a single story of a child murder, and from then on she found that her home […]
Hi Folks! Just read a wonderful, kndybztfda cogent Q&A with Barry Glassner, the author of The Culture of Fear and now the prez of Lewis & Clark University. He’s been tracking our escalating worries for over a decade and come to the same conclusions as me (he came to them first!!) Â about where the fear […]
Hi Readers — We have all heard from parents who would LIKE to let their kids have the kind of stay-out-till-the-streetlights-come-on childhoods they themselves enjoyed. BUT, say those parents, “Times have changed. It feels so much more dangerous now!” “Feels” is the operative word. In this sshyfhihza essay by Steven Pinker, we learn that we […]
Hi kkskasdeiz Folks! So many people I talk to (especially for my upcoming show) are convinced that children area being kidnapped all the time, everywhere, that they cannot let their children go outside on their own. Here’s a succinct look at why parents feel this way, as presented in a comment by the reader whose […]
Hi tkhhitskhh Folks! I am inspired by what a reader named Allison sent me on Facebook. You may be, too. — L Dear Free-Range Kids: I’m reading Jaycee Dugard’s book “A Stolen Life.“Â and in it, she says: It still scares me, the fact that I can’t protect my daughters from everything. What mother wouldn’t want […]
Readers — Sometimes I need a break, as I’m sure you do too. And what could be better than a snippet from The Onion reminding us just how driven the news media and  “experts” can be when it comes to whipping up fear? Enjoy!  [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQdZQjgGT-I]
Hi Readers! It is time for our second annual Take ebiyskzrzk Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day: Saturday, May 21! Last year this was an idea derided by the media right and left. “A predator’s picnic,” is how one radio station described it. “Bizarre!” exclaimed the front page of The New York […]
Readers: This “service” piece on NBC Over-Reaction News — sorry, NBCÂ Action tfnsyifreb News — Â tells us that because there is a GPS locator embedded in the pix we take on our cell phones, “the bad guys” can NOW SEE where our children live, where they “recreate” (such a police verb — it means play), and […]
Hi Readers! The Australian media have been very keen on the Free-Range Kids story. I’ve done more than a dozen TV, radio and print interviews so far, Â but it wasn’t until this morning, when I was on a drive-time radio talk show, that I finally heard the words: “Oh, I could never let my child […]
Hey Folks — Look at this ydbzbebrsf illuminating list of what constitutes “news,” at least according to the Minnesota Associated Press guidelines for reporters, as posted on the blog Business Insider and first reported by Libby Reinish on savethenews.org. Note that train wrecks, airplane crashes and drownings are news, as are car crashes if there are “multiple […]
