Commentary

As I drove to work yesterday I listened to a fascinating interview on our local Catholic radio station, KVSS. Their morning show featured a discussion with Kathleen McGee and Laura Buddenberg of Girls & Boys Town.

What fascinated me was a discussion around teenagers and why they so often appear not to think about the consequences of a given action. McGee explained that during the teen years young people simply don’t have the same kind of brain that adults do. Their brains are still growing and developing.

She described that the amygdala (which produces emotional action) has a disproportionate amount of control over teens, while the prefrontal cortex is still developing (the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that assists with discrimination, logical thinking, consequent action, and so forth).

But instead of merely offering this analysis, she shared that parents can help teens develop their prefrontal cortexes in two simple ways (here is what I found so fascinating):

• Reading music helps develop this part of the brain – students should be enrolled in either vocal or instrumental music to develop their ability to read music
• Playing games of strategy develop this part of the brain – teenagers should learn and play chess or other similar games

If you have a young person in the house, start now by teaching them to play chess, and get them involved in music as well. Both are past-times that can provide most people with a lifetime of enjoyment and help keep their brains sharp, too.

While visiting with a gentleman a couple of weeks ago, he mentioned to me that he had a small pond on his acreage near the Elkhorn River. The previous day he had taught his granddaughter the art of angling, and consequently she caught her first fish. He described the feeling as a MasterCard Moment.

I knew immediately what he was referring to – those incredibly clever commercials MasterCard launched a couple of years ago. They follow a basic format something like this:

• Baseball glove – $40
• Two hours at the batting cages – $50
• His first set of cleats – $57
• Watching him hit a home run – priceless

I shared with him that, as a new deacon, I had just recently married a couple of my friends. Or to be more precise, witnessed their marriage. It was my first opportunity to witness a marriage. So here’s my own MasterCard Moment:

• James Arthur Vineyard trip – $59.12
• Gas to Ronald McDonald House – $2.67 (by today’s ludicrous prices, $4.27)
• Jiffy J-4000 to steam my alb with – $229
• Joining two friends together forever in the Sacrament of Matrimony – priceless

What kinds of MasterCard Moments have you had recently? Why not share one with us in the comment box?

Google scores another home run today — as they announce the beta version of “Google Talk,” their Instant Messaging client.

IMing is the ability to chat (via your keyboard, typing back and forth) with another user over the Internet. Not terribly unlike using a TTY/TDD. Most IM clients also include a voice option, where you can actually speak to them through a headset connected to your PC (usually through voice-over-IP technology).

Yahoo is still smarting over the beating they have taken from advertisers, and face a number of legal battles ahead. Their suspension of user-created chat rooms has caused a massive exodus from the platform.

Both Yahoo & MSN are working on a pay service that would allow user-created rooms, but that’s likely to go over as well as a lead balloon.

So Google strikes while the iron is hot, offering the beta program to their existing beta mail clients (Gmail). It’s clever in two ways:

1. Gmail users tend to be early adopters of technology, and more skilled than the average computer user. Google gets a more tech-savvy control group to test various features with before rolling it out to the masses.
2. By offering the service free they are no doubt building in a differentiating feature that will be used to draw users from both MSN & Yahoo. I would nearly guarantee that before Google Talk is offered to the general public, there will be the ability to chat, and to create user rooms.

I like Google, it’s my favorite search engine. I like Gmail, too, and I’ll like it a lot more when there are distribution lists for emailing.

Chances are, I’m going to like Google Talk, too.

Today’s title entry is from the Midrash – a collection of rabbinical teaching and commentary on a given book or topic of Scripture.

I’ve chosen that title because this is the inaugural post of my first blog.

I’ve decided to begin a blog for two reasons:

1. I enjoy reading blogs myself
2. It strikes me as an effective way to paint musings, reflections and questions on an electronic canvas for others to see as well.

I have interest in lots of things, which are likely to be revealed over time on these pages.

Welcome to all – and thanks for visiting!