Idaho Conversation League

How powerful is Television? (From Slate Magazine) “ Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of three.” I’m not an expert on autism, but recently I took a refresher psychology class at The College of Southern Idaho. When we arrived at the chapter on dreams, something reminded me of the textbook from my previous psyche class, three decades ago. Back then, a statement claimed that 95 percent of us Americans dream in black and white. That study was from the early 60's, an era when we watched over 90 percent of TV shows through black and white sets. The textbook from my recent CSI class, posited precisely the opposite: that 95 percent of us now dream in living color! What was there to explain for this grand shift? Is there a correlation between the tones of Americans dreams and the types of TV’s they own? This made me wonder: Is television hi...

Barefoot from Africa by Catharina © O n a recent cold snowy morning, I was visiting a friend who reminded me that as dazzling as the hypnotic snow is, it’s customary to brush the snow from our cars. Moving slowly and not accustomed to the cold; being from a continent of sunshine with no winters, I find snow enchanting. I was even amused when I saw that the bottle of water kept in my car was frozen. Funny, in my country there is always a lack of freezers. You have to search for ingenious ways to keep things cool; here you are searching for ways to keep things warm. Odd...funny, inside out and upside down, from where I come. -That is, barefoot from Africa . As I was trodding around my freezing little blue car, which was the color of my skin after five minutes out of the warmth of his shack; trying to look intelligent and knowing what I am doing in this cold; I noticed the soft inner feather of a bird's wing stuck in the ice of my car's windshield. I calle...

How powerful is Television? (From Slate Magazine) “ Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of three.” I’m not an expert on autism, but last summer I took a psychology class for the first time since the 1970’s. I remember reading from a textbook in the previous psyche class, three decades ago, a statement that claimed 95 percent of Americans dream in black and white. That study was made in the early 60's -an era when over 90 percent of TV shows in America were watched through black and white sets. The textbook from my recent College of Southern Idaho class, claimed exactly the opposite -that 95 percent of Americans dream in living color! What was there to explain for this grand shift? Could there be a correlation between the tones of Americans dreams and the types of TV’s they own? Is television high definition hypnotism, so powerful that not o...