In the last few years, a handful of intrepid scholars have decided it’s time to try to understand why kids lie. For a study to assess the extent of teenage dissembling, Dr. Nancy Darling, then at Penn State University, recruited a special research team of a dozen undergraduate students, all under the age of 21. Using gift certificates for free CDs as bait, Darling’s Mod Squad persuaded high-school students to spend a few hours with them in the local pizzeria.

Each student was handed a deck of 36 cards, and each card in this deck listed a topic teens sometimes lie about to their parents. Over a slice and a Coke, the teen and two researchers worked through the deck, learning what things the kid was lying to his parents about, and why.

“They began the interviews saying that parents give you everything and yes, you should tell them everything,” Darling observes. By the end of the interview, the kids saw for the first time how much they were lying and how many of the family’s rules they had broken. Darling says 98 percent of the teens reported lying to their parents.

Out of the 36 topics, the average teen was lying to his parents about twelve of them. The teens lied about what they spent their allowances on, and whether they’d started dating, and what clothes they put on away from the house. They lied about what movie they went to, and whom they went with. They lied about alcohol and drug use, and they lied about whether they were hanging out with friends their parents disapproved of. They lied about how they spent their afternoons while their parents were at work. They lied about whether chaperones were in attendance at a party or whether they rode in cars driven by drunken teens.

(more in the next blog)

Pure beauty.

http://www.greatdanepro.com/Blue%20Bueaty/index.htm

Last night Billy Joel helped bid farewell to Shea Stadium, with the last concert at the field (the first being The Beatles historic show 43 years ago); Joel also performed there on Wednesday night, and the entire experience has been filmed for a future documentary.

Joel addressed the crowd Wednesday night, saying, “They’re gonna be tearing this place down, but I wanna thank you … for letting me do the best job in the world.” During one song, as the piano man did his thing, highlights of the Mets and Shea’s history played on jumbo screens.

Also during Wednesday’s set, Joel payed homage to the Fab Four, thanking them for the use of “their room” and playing “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Please, Please Me” and “She Loves You.” The 55,000 fans lucky enough to be in attendance last night, however, got a real life Beatle! The NY Times reports that 3-hours into the performance, Joel let Paul McCartney take the spotlight (full circle!); the mini-Beatlemania set included “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Let It Be.” McCartney told the audience: “It’s so cool to be back here on the last night. Been here a long time ago — we had a blast that night, and we’re having another one tonight.”

Guests throughout the two nights included Tony Bennett, John Mellencamp, Don Henley, John Mayer, Roger Daltrey, Garth Brooks and Steven Tyler. Members of the military, the NYPD and FDNY also joined Joel to sing the chorus of “Goodnight Saigon.” Amongst the sold out crowds were Joel’s ex-wife Christie Brinkley and Mayor Bloomberg. Check out some video from the Beatles 1965 concert, and Paul McCartney back at Shea last night.

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College-educated workers are more plentiful, more commoditized and more subject to the downsizings that used to be the purview of blue-collar workers only. What employers want from workers nowadays is more narrow, more abstract and less easily learned in college.

To be sure, the average American with a college diploma still earns about 75% more than a worker with a high-school diploma and is less likely to be unemployed. Yet while that so-called college premium is up from 40% in 1979, it is little changed from 2001, according to data compiled by Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank.

Want GPS with that? It is free for a month. Heck yeah! We are going to NYC next week and that is about as handy as a hump on a camel. Note to self: Remember to cancel it in a month,

I mention I am a teacher and she tells me I get 18% off each month for that! What? I probably could have been doing that for the last 3-4 years. why did I not know that? Note to self: Always ask when you buy something if there is a discount available.

Phone and cameras and text and GPS and internet and email and…… on and on it goes. Next thing you know you will be able to ……. it’s unlimited.

Then there is no game for your team for 3 days. That is kind of sick. It is like the whole world comes to a crawl and sits back and doesn’t know what ot do or what to say.

I did get a baseball fix yestrday even though it was T-Ball. My grandson had a practice and we took him. Not overlyexciting but you know that someday, some of those kids are going to be good and then you realize you were there when it started. It was interesting.

The weather here in Illinois is something I get tired of. Hot, humid summers and cold, windy, snowy winters. I long for better climate. Where in the USA do you find the “almost perfect” weather?

So, you say, why don’t you move? One word…. family. My kids, my grandkids and most of my wifes family live within 30 miles of here. We aren’t going anywhere.

I often thought that when I retire we would go somewhere more congenial to the weather. It won’t happen. So I ill suck it up and live with this 90 degree heat all week and the humidity. Afterall, it is HOME.

Where is the “perfect weather”?