Myths, lies, and straight talk...

[Jistic]

This was on 20/20 the other night. Anybody catch it? I wish there was more truthful news reporting like this...

20/20

MYTH #10 — We Have Less Free Time. Countless news stories tell us we're running ourselves ragged. And everyone thinks it's true. Lots of Americans say have no free time. We all seem to be rushing everywhere.....Surprisingly, since 1965 we've gained an hour more free time every day.

Check it out for the full info if you didn't see it. IF you did, what did you think?

[SPTO]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

I didn't see the show but I just read the article. This seems a little TOO optimistic IMO:

MYTH #7 — The World Is Getting Too Crowded

We've heard protests about this for decades: News articles warn of "the population bomb," and "a tidal wave of humanity," and plead: No more babies.

The world population today is more than 6 billion. It seems like so many people. But who says it's "too many?"

There are lots of problems all over the world caused by too many people

But there's no space problem. Our planet is huge. In fact we could take the entire world population and move everyone to the state of Texas, and the population density there would still be less than that of New York City.

But, you might wonder, won't we run out of resources, like food?

Paul Ehrlich wrote the book "Population Bomb," and warned 65 million Americans would starve in a "Great Die Off" in the 1980s. The 1973 movie "Soylent Green" predicted food riots would erupt in the year 2022 but it doesn't look like that will happen.

According to media mogul and philanthropist Ted Turner, population growth is "a time bomb waiting to happen." If it continues, at the current rate, according to Turner, "Eventually you stand around in a desert with nothing to eat." But that too is a myth. We see the pictures of starving masses in populous places, but the starvation is caused by things like civil war and government corruption that interfere with the distribution of food.

With more people, we also have more smart ideas. Every year we learn how to grow more food on less land. Thanks to improved technology, the United Nations now says the world overproduces food.

About 15,000 babies are born every hour. But they are not a burden, they offer more brains that might cure cancer, more hands to build things, more voices to bring us beautiful music.

I believe that 6 Billion+ is a lot for this world. We as a species tend to be very uneffiicient with resources. We crave creature comforts that calls for chopping down the rain forrests, putting harmful green house gases into the air, urban sprawl and generally take up much more space then we need.

The assertion that new generations can solve our problems also seems very optimistic. All the brains in the world can't help when you don't have money, inadequate education and a power structure in the world that DOESN'T listen to the voice of change.

[BGarrett7]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

God, I hate John Stossel.

[Heelfan71]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

This was on 20/20 the other night. Anybody catch it? I wish there was more truthful news reporting like this...

20/20



Check it out for the full info if you didn't see it. IF you did, what did you think?

my theory is people fell like they have less time because they never have any quiet time. With technology (cell phones, pagers etc.) people never have any peace and quiet. People can get a hold of you no matter where you are at.

[USF11]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

I love these shows. People hate hearing the truth.

[Jistic]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

my theory is people fell like they have less time because they never have any quiet time. With technology (cell phones, pagers etc.) people never have any peace and quiet. People can get a hold of you no matter where you are at.

Great point. In the piece someone said that the reason why everyone feels so short of time is the explosion of entertainment options available to people now that they didn't have 50-100 years ago. We feel like we want to do so much in our free time that we feel rushed.

When they asked people about TV many said they watched 5-10 hours a week. When they made them keep a log they found out they were watching over 30! And they were shocked.

[Shaver]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

I think a lot of it has to do with the choices that some people make today. They go to work for 8+ hours, but because of cellphone, laptops, FAX, etc... they are never really away from work. I know with my job, I could literally work anytime of the day from any place in the world as long as I have an internet connection and my cellphone.

[fishepa]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

I think a lot of it has to do with the choices that some people make today. They go to work for 8+ hours, but because of cellphone, laptops, FAX, etc... they are never really away from work. I know with my job, I could literally work anytime of the day from any place in the world as long as I have an internet connection and my cellphone.

Unfortunately I could too.

[mjb2124]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

Unfortunately I could too.

Same here. 9-10 hours is on average the amount of time I spend at the office per day. After that, I'm still answering emails/txt/sms messages that are sent to my cell phone or taking calls until I go to sleep.

Most of the issue for me is that we have many offices on the west coast and they're always contacting Corporate IT (where I am) for advice after I'm already home.

[ExtremeGamer]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

Unfortunately I could too.

Me too

[p2xgamers]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

The tree thing was the only one that really surprised me. I kept hearing about it all the time when I was younger so I assummed it was right. Now I know better.

[Graphik]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

To much entertainment and technology.

You got cable with 6 million channels. (channel surfing is a biatch)
Major movies dropping at the box office every week.(there is always a movie you want to go see.)
Thousands of dvds you would like to get your grubby little hands on.(relatively cheap ways to get them, extra scenes, more endings, additional footage and programs)
TV shows coming out in dvd format.(before, you had to wait till a show was in syndication, now you can watch it anytime)
PCs (which is slowly killing most manual labor jobs by letting you do it yourself)
Internet(which offers and unlimited amount of information)
DVR/Tivo (you miss a shw do to something else and now you can go back and watch it, this alone sets you back from doing something else)
Video Games(with 10-30 hours of gameplay)
Sports(and the ability to watch any team in any city, more nationally televised games, more sports channels, more options)
Cell Phones(you can be reached anywhere and waste 5 minutes of your life tryna get off the phone)
Cars(everyone has one which makes travel times longer and traffic more slower)
Music(many ways to listen to them and more easily accessible)

Combine that with a Wife, Kid(s), friends, work and personal hobbies, there is'nt enough time in life to do everything you want to do.

[AI_Franchise]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

nothing about 9-11? o yeah, nevermind I forgot..

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

Ted Turner, lmao. But then again the man did colorize the moon.

[cch99]

Re: Myths, lies, and straight talk...

Yeh the free time thing is defintely do to wanting to do too much. I mean in the summers especially.

But alot of the things on that list that people think are true can be directly realted to media coverage of them.

I mean throughout time bad things, natural disasters, crime, etc, have been happening. The difference is that now you know about it right after it happens and when ever anything bad happens it's in your face everywhere. So it's usually one bad story to the next and people start thinking life sucks.

If you really sit down and look at it it's not so bad. Doesn't mean some of the things you can forget about about but people tend to want extremes. It either has to be total perfection or it's the end of the world.

I personally think all the negativity is starting to cause a backlash agains the media. They wonder why people aren't watching the news as much or aren't reading the newspaper. When the first 10 minutes are crime, disaster and such and the headlines are all negative who wants to read that crap.