Kids on Leashes!?

I think it was Mark Twain who said, "Children should be kept in a box with air holes until they are 18 years of age." While I always chuckle at that tongue in cheek quote, one thing I most certainly don't approve of is putting children on leases. Now, I know what you're thinking: "What the hell does Nick know? He doesn't even have any kids!" Very true, but I do have 3 wonderful nephews and a niece, who are all very curious and active. True, sometimes I can't keep up with them, and I have to chase them, but I don't think putting them on a leash is the answer.
Besides, somehow the leash would end up comically wrapped around my neck and arms, or in a tree, or something along those lines.

The leash thing seems pretty extreme to me, but then there's the other end of the spectrum: Parents who are too busy texting or chatting to notice that their kids are about to fall down the stairs or run into traffic. A few years back I grabbed a little kid by the collar as he was about to run into traffic in Manhattan. The mother, who was on her cell phone and not paying attention thought I had just grabbed her son for now reason. The guy standing next to me explained to her that I had most likely just saved her son's life. She was a bit nicer to me after that.

Parents, you probably don't want parenting advice from a confirmed bachelor, but I'm offering it anyway-Keep and eye on your kids, and the leashes on the cats or dogs.

It's The Blackberries Stupid!

Okay, so everyone is postulating and speculating about the state of the economy and AIG and the stock market, and on and on. There is no doubt that the world is in the midst of a Bastard strength quagmire, conundrum, or what have you, but in this humble journalists opinion, it has more to do with the fact that we are alienating ourselves from each other than with politics or even the economy.

We are all blackberried, facebooked and twittered up the wazoo, but no one is REALLY communicating. Sure, it's all fun and a great distraction, but when 9 out of 10 people in a business meeting are texting their friends instead of paying attention to the new "Business Model", well, Houston, we have a problem. I've seen this first hand, and quite frankly-it makes me ill.

It's been said before, but all this technology isn't really helping us, it's ultimately just making us ruder and more isolated. I for one, go out of my way to bump into people on the street who are too busy texting to pay attention to where they are going. And of course they give me the "deer in the headlights" look when I grab their coat to try to save them from being hit by a cab (that actually happened).

I'll get off my soapbox now, but, perhaps we need to go back to the days where people would actually get on a soapbox and communicate with their fellow man.