The controversial traveling show "Our Bodies" is at Regina's Science Centre right now and they're offering a lecture series each week to go with the topic. This week's subject was "Kids As Couch Potatoes" and that seemed fairly relevant to our lives these days so we decided to go check it out.
Some random thoughts on both...
- I'm not sure what I expected but the exhibit didn't blow me away. I even wondered if we were getting the full show or if we got a bit of a mini-version being a smaller centre. (My memory of hearing about it when it played Toronto while in library school was that tickets were like $50 or $75 or something. Here, I think it's $20 and we got a discount for coming on lecture night.)
- the lecture revealed that kid watching TV is...bad! (Who'd a thunk it?) But still an informative talk with lots of good information and statistics (now where do those come from?)
- also lots of information about our society's less-than-active lifestyles - kids *and* parents - which are obviously closely linked.
- Shea and I both know we let Pace watch too much TV (and here I'll sound like that smart but not too smart friend from a recent blog post who happily used a sample size of one to show that formula feeding ain't that bad) but I watched a lot of TV growing up and I feel like I turned out okay. In fact, you rarely hear people (outside of the TV industry I guess) citing some of the benefits of watching television - it gives you cultural literacy and I'd argue a better awareness of our commonality than perhaps any other medium, it gives you visual literacy, it helps you in social situations, it can help you win money on TV game shows (okay, now I'm stretching and my arguments are collapsing in on themselves too!)
- speaking of breastfeeding, again that idea that extended breastfeeding doesn't get the promotion it deserves is all over the place when you're looking for it. The lecturer pointed out that UNICEF recommends six months of breastfeeding and I felt Shea tense, knowing she wanted to scream out "two years!" (They're both right - UNICEF recommends six months of *exclusive* breastfeeding but for that to be sustained for two years. But the point - why wouldn't a PhD in children's health studies take this opportunity to promote breastfeeding for the longer length of time in a crowd with lots of parents and families present?)
- Then, in the "fetal" part of the exhibit (not as bad as it sounds but they had it curtained off with an additional warning notice), they had one sign talking about SIDS which listed some of the contributing factors - pre-mature birth, drug & alcohol dependency in the mother, etc. But of course no mention that not being breastfed is now considered just as much of a potential cause of SIDS as those other things.
- Lots of the controversy around the exhibit is about the exhibition of human bodies for what is, in essence, entertainment (edutainment?) There is also some concern from the religious angle which, as an atheist, I can nicely ignore. Much more worrisome is the uncertainty about how the bodies were obtained and what sort of consents (if any) were in place. I mean, I've got my signed organ donor card in my wallet. But no similar document can or has been produced for these specimens who are suspected to possibly be executed Chinese criminals or worse (body trafficking?)
- our regular babysitter got her license recently and that's probably a clue that we'll be looking for a new babysitter soon. She's already gotten a job at a local bakery but says she'll still do some babysitting...at least for the time being. Man, where did the last couple years go?
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Wednesday, August 4
"Our Bodies" & Kids As Couch Potatoes
by
Jason
on Wed 04 Aug 2010 09:28 PM CST
Tuesday, July 20
Vote for My Hometown to Win a $25 000 Sports Upgrade Courtesy Kraft & TSN
by
Jason
on Tue 20 Jul 2010 07:54 AM CST
My hometown of Indian Head is one of two Saskatchewan finalists for a $25 000 make-over courtesy Kraft & TSN. You can vote for Indian Head today until noon. If we get the most votes, the money will be used to upgrade our historic ball diamonds (20 000 people used to come to our small town of 2 000 people in the 1950's for games!) and build a new kid's splash park which I'm sure Pace would love! Click on the link to vote (you can vote multiple times so feel free to do so) and for more information about these two projects.
Sunday, May 9
Betty White on SNL and Six Other Victories of the Internet That Influenced Pop Culture
by
Jason
on Sun 09 May 2010 07:24 PM CST
Former Golden Girl and definitely not-the-typical Saturday Night Live host, Betty White actually *was* the host of last night's show, mainly because of an Internet campaign that started on Facebook. Here's an article that details some other examples of Internet campaigns affecting pop culture.
Saturday, February 27
Saturday Snap - Archival Footage of "Sask Sampler Book Archive Launch"
by
Jason
on Sat 27 Feb 2010 12:00 AM CST
I recently bought a gizmo to convert old VHS tapes and other analog signals to a digital format. As I was getting it set-up for the first time, I picked a couple clips I had from around ten years ago - one where I'm featured fairly prominently and one where you get to see my backside!
 Here's one from when I worked for the Saskatchewan Publishers Group circa 2000. Two interesting things to note - even back then, I was talking about the information economy and the role of books in it. And the place where we held the launch? The Dunlop Art Gallery at the Regina Public Library! (Oh, and Shea makes a cameo as does one of the best hairdos of all time!) Friday, February 12
Friday Fun Link - Winter Olympics Begin (February 12, 2010)
by
Jason
on Fri 12 Feb 2010 05:16 PM CST
Not sure if you heard but apparently the Wet & Rainy Olympics are in Canada this year and the opening ceremonies are tonight.
The Olympics are once again a lightning rod of controversy and having them on our own doorstep has perhaps brought this home in a way that doesn't happen when they're in Italy or Japan or even next door in the US. Even Vancouver's libraries aren't immune, a controversy having stirred around a directive from VPL's marketing department about which sponsors to use during the period when the Winter Games are happening and which to avoid as well as asking staff to put pieces of tape over non-sponsor logos on things like electronic equipment. (I wonder if they were asked to do the same as what happened at the last Olympics when black tape was apparently placed over the logo of the urinal maker in the bathrooms at Olympic venues since Moens or Delta or whoever weren't the official plumbing sponsor of the Olympics!) [Edit: or worse] I'm mixed in my feelings towards the Olympics. I like the idea of what they're supposed to represent - the pinnacle of athletic achievement taking place on a global stage for international competition within international cooperation. But I'm not naive enough to dismiss the rampant commercialism and corporatization of the Games which has long replaced the ideals of the games as the most important thing. That's not even mentioning the massive expenses associated with hosting the Games and long-term debts that are always incurred (I think Calgary 1988 was the only modern Olympic Games - summer or winter - that ended up being debt-free at the end of it.) I've got lots more thoughts but I won't get into them there. I will say that I also have mixed thoughts about nationalism and patriotism. But one of the places where I don't is in regards to the Olympic hockey tournament. So Go Canada Go and here's a little clip to get your blood stirring, not least because whoever picked the song chose a great under-the-radar Canadian songwriter named Mike Plume...(ffwd to 2:57) Saturday, February 6
Saturday Snap - RPL Joins SILS (from local CTV station)
by
Jason
on Sat 06 Feb 2010 11:41 PM CST
Used a poor man's hack to get a clip from our local TV news about RPL joining our new province-wide consortium onto YouTube. Sorry for the crappy sound...
Sunday, December 20
Student Brings Typewriter to Class
by
Jason
on Sun 20 Dec 2009 09:00 PM CST
We went to Indian Head to have an early Christmas with my folks this weekend and at one point my mom suggested renting a movie to keep Pace entertained. It did not even cross my mind that she meant VHS movie instead of DVD (let alone streaming video or BitTorrent or some of the other technologies I tend to use to watch movies these days.) But that's indeed what we ended up getting. It was a good reminder that people live at different technological time points even if we're all at the same time point on the calendar.
This experience reminded me of this video which does a great job of capturing how different technology time points might intersect when taken to the extreme: Student Brings Typewriter To Class - Watch more Funny Videos Monday, October 26
Music Monday - UTwo-be
by
Jason
on Mon 26 Oct 2009 04:38 PM CST
Is there any other link today than the archive of the live U2 concert that was broadcast on YouTube last night? I haven't seen any final figures yet but some media outlets were reporting that there was likely an audience of hundreds of thousands of viewers watching live around the world and that figure will reach the millions once viewings of the rebroadcasts and archive of the concert are factored in.
This was the first major live music event carried by YouTube and yet another milestone in the world of online broadcasting, which is an area of particular interest to me, having given me my single highest mark for any major project I did in library school. (Of course, it was a Media Studies course but we won't think too deeply on the implications of that!) This presentation is getting a bit dated now but I'm happy to see that most of the points I made stand up quite well, nearly three years later. Monday, April 13
Music Monday - "I was sitting there watching TV/Wendy came and sat on my knee."
by
Jason
on Mon 13 Apr 2009 08:54 PM CST
In honour of the last episode of "Corner Gas" tonight, here's one of my favourite songs by the Odds, the former band of Craig Northey who wrote the "Corner Gas" theme song, "Not A Lot Going On".
(Unfortunately, the clip is from MuchMoreMusic who have more crap around the edge of the screen than the Business News Network. Probably fortunately for those viewers with sensitive ears, this clip is the adapted-for-TV version. On the album, the lyric definitely isn't "I was making love to Wendy under the stars".) Wednesday, February 11
Little Mosque on the Prairie & Indian Head, Saskatchewan
by
Jason
on Wed 11 Feb 2009 11:09 PM CST
My hometown served as a backdrop for many of the exterior shots of the CBC comedy, "Little Mosque on the Prairie". (Saskatchewan has a film tax credit that gives incentives for productions to shoot here and increases the benefit if you shoot a certain distance outside our cities. Indian Head is just outside this zone, about forty-five minutes from Regina, so has received a lot of film production since the tax credit came into effect.)
Now that the show is finished, they put up a thank-you note on the show's blog with a photo of the cast & crew (many local - hey, there's my grade eight shop teacher!). |
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