TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

You too!! I can't even stand to look at a can of aqua-net on the store shelf, it makes me want to run the other way screaming. Although I do miss my LA Gear

MJ

Hehe, my trolling for guys clothes consisted of three things at that time -
1. Black spandex miniskirt
2. Oversized backless white sweater (meant no bra, lol)
3. Hooker pumps

I still can't believe my parents allowed me to go out the door dressed like that. I am sure they figured if they didn't allow it, I would have shoved my hoochie clothing in my car and end up changing at a gas station anyhow. At least I had enough sense to not dress like that at school. But I always wore the high heels anyhow. Ah the beginning of my shoe addiction.

Heh, I must have been the only child with old fashioned parents in the 80s. I had a 22 on my 10th birthday for cryin out loud.

You're in Oregon, we're weird out here (so I've been told)

But things are not the same. Children dissapear and are only ever seen on milk cartons. The world is a more crowded place and a more dangerous place. The suns rays -- harmless for the most part when I was a child -- now cause cancer and we smear goop on our bodies to protect it when we leave the house. Yes we drank from the hose -- but that was before the population quintupled and they had to build a wastewater treatement up the street from the house and found lead in the water from rusty old pipes.

OUt of curiosity, how high did you rat your bangs up? My cousin had the tallest damn bangs I have ever seen, she measured them around 10 inches and they were SOLID.

By any actual measure, the US and the world is a far safer place to be now than it has ever been. Unfortunately, I cannot induce you to buy stuff based on that assertion.

To all the kids who survived the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's

I survived the 60's and 70's.ut I'm not sure about the 80's, as I have very little recollection of that time...

HI MOM

Except these things are either manifestly not true or the fearmongers have taken people's natural inability to evaluate tiny risks and bring them to our attention and exploit it.

The incidence of child abduction by a stranger is so low as to be effectively zero. Most of the "kids on milk cartons" were taken by a non-custodial parent in a custody dispute. The Center for Missing and Exploited Children capitalized on the horrific concept of having your child whisked from under your watchful eye at the grocery store to bring more attention - and dollars - to their organization. The net result is that people actually believe that the world is full of predators waiting for your instant of inattention, it isn't. In advancing their cause, they amplified fears that are simply unjustified by reality.

The sun has always been harmful in excess, that's why we tan. The sun has not become more dangerous, however, because of advances in medicine generally and living longer than they have ever before, people are more likely to experience melanoma because they previously would have died of something else first. And although it is true that sunscreen can ablate UV light which can indeed cause melanoma forming injury, we don't know what deleterious effects sunscreen might have over decades of use. However, there are plenty of manufacturers of sunscreen who would love for you to believe that peril is raining upon us from the sky and that for a fee, they'll protect us.

As for drinking from the hose, there are two points made there. The first is that water has become more pathogen laden as a result of population density. I don't know whether that is true, but there are affirmative reasons to believe that protecting yourself from more benign microbes can be harmful in itself. Recent, well validated studies have shown that the incidence of asthma is increasing but primarily in first borns in a household. The most credible explanation at present is that the later children have the advantage of their older sibling bringing home a host of microbes and allergens that our anti-microbial soap fetish keeps from the first child. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but a challenged immune system appears to be a more effective immune system.

Lead is a heavy metal which your body cannot eliminate effectively. It has conclusively been shown to retard mental development in children exposed to high levels of environmental lead. What is far less known is what the effects of trace amounts are, they could be slightly hazardous, they could be below our abilities to measure. Zero lead would probably be better than non-zero lead, but at what cost for what benefit? Again, the sellers of water treatment equipment would prefer that you eye your tap with suspicion, the more so the better.

This is working into a full-fleged rant so bear with me, or not.

I'd often pondered how we'd gone from a culture that was rather blithe about hitchhiking to one where you'd be an idiot to either hitch or pick one up. I suspect it went something like this: out of all of the multitudinous hitchhikers, one went bad and the national media swooped down on it with their "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality. This put the kernel of fear out into the culture making people slightly less likely to hitch or pick-up. This circumspection would feed off itself, the more drivers were leary of passengers, the more likely a hiker would be to encounter a driver with an ulterior motive. The more hikers came to be concerned about drivers, the more desperate the hiker you did pick up would be. Spin this feedback loop around a few decades and each party would be nuts to take the risk, and interestingly enough, they'd be slightly more correct in their belief.

The national media's ability to bring you the world now and the ratings boosts that fear buys them is incredibly valuable. Colombine was horrific, but television picking it to pieces for months across the country turned what would have been a sad story from some little town in Colorado into a national hand-wringer. A person is so much more likely to get hit by lightning than shot in school that the comparison is almost silly; your bathtub is infinitely more hazardous. But there isn't nearly as much money to be made in bathtub grip-strips as there is in installing metal detectors in schools where kids are carrying just about everything but guns. But this is an extreme example, watch how the local news will hype the hell out of the upcomming rain or snowstorm to get a clearer picture of the profits of fear. You may viscerally believe that schoolkids have become more malevolent, but I think it pretty clear that snow hasn't changed much in fifty years. Based on the news, though, it might as well have turned to brimstone.

By any actual measure, the US and the world is a far safer place to be now than it has ever been. Unfortunately, I cannot induce you to buy stuff based on that assertion.

... to compare the way Malachi presents his evidence and his arguments with the way Coco presents hers.

It's really very fas--- oh! Look! There's a trainwreck!

Many of the things that we are so concerned about, or fearful about, today, were not regarded as a problem then. But I think there is an increased level of violence in society today. People are more willing to use weapons on each other, and also do more vile things to each other than used to be the case.

I remember as a kid playing in the old abandoned meatpacking plant in the woods. Way out in the woods. The building was literally falling apart. It was about 4 or 5 levels with big holes in the floor all the way down where some sort of piping had rusted away or been removed.