NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Clive Thompson - September 5, 2008
On Sept. 5, 2006, Mark Zuckerberg changed the way that Facebook worked, and in the process he inspired a revolt.

Zuckerberg, a doe-eyed 24-year-old C.E.O., founded Facebook in his dorm room at Harvard two years earlier, and the site quickly amassed nine million users. By 2006, students were posting heaps of personal details onto their Facebook pages, including lists of their favorite TV shows, whether they were dating (and whom), what music they had in rotation and the various ad hoc "groups" they had joined (like "Sex and the City" Lovers). All day long, they'd post "status" notes explaining their moods - "hating Monday," "skipping class b/c i'm hung over." After each party, they'd stagger home to the dorm and upload pictures of the soused revelry, and spend the morning after commenting on how wasted everybody looked. Facebook became the de facto public commons - the way students found out what everyone around them was like and what he or she was doing.

But Zuckerberg knew Facebook had one major problem: It required a lot of active surfing on the part of its users. Sure, every day your Facebook friends would update their profiles with some new tidbits; it might even be something particularly juicy, like changing their relationship status to "single" when they got dumped. But unless you visited each friend's page every day, it might be days or weeks before you noticed the news, or you might miss it entirely. Browsing Facebook was like constantly poking your head into someone's room to see how she was doing. It took work and forethought. In a sense, this gave Facebook an inherent, built-in level of privacy, simply because if you had 200 friends on the site - a fairly typical number - there weren't enough hours in the day to keep tabs on every friend all the time.

"It was very primitive," Zuckerberg told me when I asked him about it last month. And so he decided to modernize. He developed something he called News Feed, a built-in service that would actively broadcast changes in a user's page to every one of his or her friends. Students would no longer need to spend their time zipping around to examine each friend's page, checking to see if there was any new information. Instead, they would just log into Facebook, and News Feed would appear: a single page that - like a social gazette from the 18th century - delivered a long list of up-to-the-minute gossip about their friends, around the clock, all in one place. "A stream of everything that's going on in their lives," as Zuckerberg put it.

When students woke up that September morning and saw News Feed, the first reaction, generally, was one of panic. Just about every little thing you changed on your page was now instantly blasted out to hundreds of friends, including potentially mortifying bits of news - Tim and Lisa broke up; Persaud is no longer friends with Matthew - and drunken photos someone snapped, then uploaded and tagged with names. Facebook had lost its vestigial bit of privacy. For students, it was now like being at a giant, open party filled with everyone you know, able to eavesdrop on what everyone else was saying, all the time.

"Everyone was freaking out," Ben Parr, then a junior at Northwestern University, told me recently. What particularly enraged Parr was that there wasn't any way to opt out of News Feed, to "go private" and have all your information kept quiet. He created a Facebook group demanding Zuckerberg either scrap News Feed or provide privacy options. "Facebook users really think Facebook is becoming the Big Brother of the Internet, recording every single move," a California student told The Star-Ledger of Newark. Another chimed in, "Frankly, I don't need to know or care that Billy broke up with Sally, and Ted has become friends with Steve." By lunchtime of the first day, 10,000 people had joined Parr's group, and by the next day it had 284,000.

Zuckerberg, surprised by the outcry, quickly made two decisions. The first was to add a privacy feature to News Feed, letting users decide what kind of information went out. But the second decision was to leave News Feed otherwise intact. He suspected that once people tried it and got over their shock, they'd like it.

He was right. Within days, the tide reversed. Students began e-mailing Zuckerberg to say that via News Feed they'd learned things they would never have otherwise discovered through random surfing around Facebook. The bits of trivia that News Feed delivered gave them more things to talk about - Why do you hate Kiefer Sutherland? - when they met friends face to face in class or at a party. Trends spread more quickly. When one student joined a group - proclaiming her love of Coldplay or a desire to volunteer for Greenpeace - all her friends instantly knew, and many would sign up themselves. Users' worries about their privacy seemed to vanish within days, boiled away by their excitement at being so much more connected to their friends. (Very few people stopped using Facebook, and most people kept on publishing most of their information through News Feed.) Pundits predicted that News Feed would kill Facebook, but the opposite happened. It catalyzed a massive boom in the site's growth. A few weeks after the News Feed imbroglio, Zuckerberg opened the site to the general public (previously, only students could join), and it grew quickly; today, it has 100 million users.

When I spoke to him, Zuckerberg argued that News Feed is central to Facebook's success. "Facebook has always tried to push the envelope," he said. "And at times that means stretching people and getting them to be comfortable with things they aren't yet comfortable with. A lot of this is just social norms catching up with what technology is capable of."

In essence, Facebook users didn't think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it "ambient awareness." It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does - body language, sighs, stray comments - out of the corner of your eye. Facebook is no longer alone in offering this sort of interaction online. In the last year, there has been a boom in tools for "microblogging": posting frequent tiny updates on what you're doing. The phenomenon is quite different from what we normally think of as blogging, because a blog post is usually a written piece, sometimes quite long: a statement of opinion, a story, an analysis. But these new updates are something different. They're far shorter, far more frequent and less carefully considered. One of the most popular new tools is Twitter, a Web site and messaging service that allows its two-million-plus users to broadcast to their friends haiku-length updates - limited to 140 characters, as brief as a mobile-phone text message - on what they're doing. There are other services for reporting where you're traveling (Dopplr) or for quickly tossing online a stream of the pictures, videos or Web sites you're looking at (Tumblr). And there are even tools that give your location. When the new iPhone, with built-in tracking, was introduced in July, one million people began using Loopt, a piece of software that automatically tells all your friends exactly where you are.

For many people - particularly anyone over the age of 30 - the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd. Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae? And conversely, how much of their trivia can you absorb? The growth of ambient intimacy can seem like modern narcissism taken to a new, supermetabolic extreme - the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world. Twitter, in particular, has been the subject of nearly relentless scorn since it went online. "Who really cares what I am doing, every hour of the day?" wondered Alex Beam, a Boston Globe columnist, in an essay about Twitter last month. "Even I don't care." - - - -
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LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH [Barclay - PA: Conservative/centre-right] - By Simon Johnson - June 23, 2008
Thousands of primary pupils were prevented from making Father's Day cards at school for fear of embarrassing classmates who live with single mothers and lesbians.

The politically correct policy was quietly adopted at schools "in the interests of sensitivity" over the growing number of lone-parent and same-sex households.

It only emerged after a large number of fathers failed to receive their traditional cards and handmade gifts.

Family rights campaigners last night condemned the policy as "absurd" and argued that it is marginalising fathers, but local authorities said teachers need to react to "the changing pattern of family life".

An Office for National Statistics report in April found that one in four British children now lives with a lone parent - double the figure 20 years ago.

The Father's Day card ban has been introduced by schools in Glasgow, Edinburgh, East Renfrewshire, Dumfries and Galloway and Clackmannshire. - - - -
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ASSOCIATED PRESS - By ANGELA K. BROWN - January 16, 2008
FORT WORTH, Texas - Several teenage gang members have been arrested on suspicion of forcing girls as young as 12 into a prostitution ring, police said Tuesday.

After befriending the girls and getting them high, Varrio Central gang members took them to some regular customers and then sought other men by trolling apartment complexes, offering the girls' services for $50, Fort Worth police Lt. Ken Dean said.

The gang apparently targeted runaways and other girls with unstable homes, and if the girls refused to have sex for money the members beat and sexually assaulted them and threatened their families, Dean said.

"The age of the victims and suspects is the surprising part of it," Dean said. "To have such young individuals in a somewhat organized business, a forced prostitution ring, is somewhat alarming and such a horrendous crime against the 12- to 16-year-old girls."

Detectives found five victims, ages 12 to 16, but believe there may be more. Those girls are back with relatives or in other safe places, he said, declining to elaborate.

A 15-year-old girl who may be a gang member helped the group by going to the victims' houses to pick them up under the pretense of going shopping or to a movie, which fooled the parents, said Lt. Dan Draper. - - - -
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Abstinence education critic says instruction doesn't 'go far enough'
WORLDNETDAILY - February 14, 2008
Another Florida school district is planning to give its 6th-graders lessons in how to use contraceptives, starting in April, a move that Planned Parenthood is promoting in the state.

WND earlier reported when the St. Lucie school board adopted a sex-ed curriculum that included a field trip to buy condoms, although district officials there decided not to use that lesson after parents objected.

Now officials in Palm Beach County have decided to teach their 6th-graders the use of contraceptives such as condoms, according to a report in the Palm Beach Post.

"Florida is the sixth-highest in the nation for pregnant teens, and that tells us we need to get information to our students," Judy Klinek, who oversees health education for the district, told the newspaper.

Since Florida law requires abstinence-based education, 6th-graders in the past have learned about sexually transmitted diseases and taught how to resist pressure to engage in sexual behavior, the report said.

Now, however, students will get "detailed" lessons in contraceptives, a move that is part of a larger effort to make such lessons mandatory statewide. - - - -
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'This isn't conjecture, it's happening now'
WORLDNETDAILY - By Bob Unruh - April 19, 2008
A doctor at the renowned Children's Hospital Boston has launched a new program to drug children to delay puberty so they can decide whether they want a male or a female body, according to a report today in the Boston Globe.

Pediatric endocrinologist Norman Spack, 64, says he started the Gender Management Service Clinic because he found himself encountering 20-somethings who were "transgendered" and in good shape socially, "but they were having trouble getting their physique to conform to their identity.

"I knew the 20-somethings could have better chances of passing if they were treated earlier," he said.

"We don't think that demonic is too strong a word to describe this," said a statement from the pro-family Mass Resistance organization. "It brings us thoughts of the Nazi doctors who thought they were doing good things."

WND has reported previously on some of the controversies prompted by the belief that a man can be born in a woman's body, or vice versa, including in Montgomery County, Md., where county officials have adopted a law that precludes those who provide public accommodations from discriminating based on that "gender identity."

Voters there have petitioned to have a vote on that law because they fear men who "decide" they are female walking into women's restrooms and locker rooms.

"Is this our future?" asked Mass Resistance in a commentary. "Dr. Norman Spack runs a clinic for young children who've 'decided' they are transgendered. Among other things, the clinic administers powerful hormones to delay (or even stop) puberty in order that the children more easily undergo operations that mutilate their bodies to 'change' them to the opposite sex."

"This is going on at the world-renowned Children's Hospital in Boston - not some backwater clinic. This is the elite of the medical profession," the organization said.

In a question-and-answer session with Globe columnist Pagan Kennedy, she starts the apologetic for doing surgery on children by saying, "Little boys sob unless they're allowed to wear dresses. The girls want to be called Luke, Ted, or James."

"Until recently, children with cross-gender feelings rarely received modern medical care - and certainly not hormone shots. After all, who would allow a child to redesign his or her body?" she asks.

But Spack, she wrote, has started a clinic that "is one of the few in the world to give children treatments that change their bodies."

She reports he uses drugs to delay puberty, "granting them a few more years before they develop bodies that are decidedly male or female." - - -

"The puberty-blocking drugs work best at the beginning of the pubital process, typically age 10 to 12 for a girl and 12 to 14 for a boy," he said. He's based some of his work on a Dutch model for sex-change, and said the recommendations there are age 16 for hormones that forever change a child's body. - - -

"This isn't conjecture," Mass Resistance' commentary said. "It's happening now. And 'transgenderism' is being promoted to kids by homosexual/transgender activists in the public schools."

Children as young as 12 already have been given the treatment.

Meanwhile, LifeSiteNews has reported that Spack previously acknowledged that only about 20 percent of children who claim to have a confusion over their gender hold those feelings in adulthood.

The hospital itself calls the program "unique in the Western hemisphere."

"This will be the first major program in the country that --- [is] also welcoming young people who appear to be transgendered and are considering medical protocols that might help them," Spack said.
Original Report Here 

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER [Knight Ridder] - By Joelle Farrell and John Sullivan - May 3, 2008
For school officials in Haverford Township, the challenge was daunting: What do you do when a 9-year-old student, with the full support of his parents, decides that he is no longer a boy and instead is a girl?

Parents of a third-grade student at Chatham Park Elementary School approached the administration on April 16 to ask for help in making a "social transition" for their child.

The Haverford School District consulted experts on transgender children, then sent letters to parents advising them that the guidance counselor would meet with the school's 100 third-grade students to explain why their classmate would now wear girls' clothes and be called by a girl's name.

Some parents objected. Eight called the principal to ask that their child not attend the session, and some posted angry messages on the Haverford Township blog.

"Why is the school introducing this subject to 8- and 9-year-olds?" wrote the parent who started the blog thread, which had been viewed more than 3,000 times as of yesterday. "Why were we not notified sooner. We received the letter today, the discussion at school is tomorrow." . . .

The student has not received medical treatments to change his sex, but has told others that he considers himself a girl, according to several people who know the family.

He had begun wearing girls' clothes, Huff said, and an approaching school event would have made the child's gender identity an issue, according to Lauer, who declined to discuss the matter in greater detail.

In the April 21 letter to parents, Chatham Park principal Daniel D. Marsella wrote that a transgender child is one whose biological gender does not match his or her gender identity. Marsella assured parents that the talk with students, held two days later, would use "developmentally appropriate language" to explain "how we need to help this student make a social transition in school."

When the guidance counselor, Catherine Mallam, spoke with the children, she explained that one of their classmates looked like a boy on the outside but felt like a girl inside, according to a summary of her remarks prepared by the school for parents. She asked them to accept the student as a girl and not make unkind remarks.

The students seem to be accepting their classmate's change, Lauer said. The child is doing well but some comments on the blog have upset the child's parents, Huff said. . . .

Not all transgender people have sex-reassignment surgery in adulthood, and such surgeries are not typically performed on children, said Sharon Garcia, president of TransYouth Family Allies, a non-profit group that helped the Chatham Park student and school officials devise a way to explain the situation to parents.

So far, 49 families have contacted TransYouth Family Allies asking for help with a transgender child, Garcia said. Most of the children are between 6 and 10. . . .

Some medical experts think parents should not let a child change gender roles at a young age.

Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist and professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studied sexual reassignment surgery in the 1970s, said a school's decision to support a student's transition could have long-term psychological consequences.

"They do not have a right to stop the child, but it's different when they gather everyone around and say, 'Johnnie is Jeanie,' " he said. Society, he added, should not support the decision of an immature person.

There is no evidence that the transition ultimately helps the person, he added.

McHugh said he reached his conclusions after studying the issue for 30 years, especially in the 1970s, when Hopkins was pioneering sexual-reassignment surgery.

"People came to us saying that if we changed them, we'd solve all their problems," he said. "So we changed them, and their problems remained." - - - -
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A "dying" lake may look clean on the surface, while algae and decay spreads in the dark water below. But by the time the scum stains the surface, most of the lake is corrupt.[3] Sad to say, a similar process is transforming America.

Today we see the signs of spiritual and moral corruption all around us. The latest warning seems especially shocking, because the children are so young. Only eight to ten years old! Yet, they have already learned to despise authority, trust their feelings, and shamelessly follow their own destructive way.

This particular conspiracy involved nine "learning disabled" third-graders at Center Elementary School in south Georgia. Wanting revenge, they actually conspired to attack and harm -- apparently even kill -- their teacher. As a team, they had planned their roles and were armed with the tools and weapons needed for "success." Some were assigned to stand guard and clean up after the attack.

"We're not sure at this point in the investigation how many of the students actually knew the intent was to hurt the teacher," said Police Chief Tony Tanner. "But because they are kids, they may have thought this was like a cartoon - we do whatever and then she stands up and she's OK."[4]

It makes sense. In the "creative" minds of many children today, there is no real separation between reality and fantasy. The surreal worlds of television and role-playing games [RPG] seem far more familiar and exciting than the physical world they actually inhabit.  - - - -
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Child Development Experts Say Parents, Schools and Poverty to Blame
ABC NEWS (US) [Disney] - By Susan Donaldson James - January 24, 2008
Janine Butler, a 28-year-old New Jersey teacher, knows something about out-of-control students.

One girl threw objects, threatened Butler with knives and tried to bite her. Another boy was "just rude, rude, rude," pulling down his pants and swearing at her. The final straw came when another student scratched and hit her.

Butler's students were barely out of diapers - 3- and 4-year-olds - and their public preschool in Trenton was not allowed to expel them. . . .

Tantrums, aggression, biting and kicking are becoming increasingly common in preschool, according to child development specialists.

With bad behavior on the rise, so are preschool expulsions, according to a Yale University study published earlier this month.

Author Walter Gilliam, director of the Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy, told ABCNEWS.com that he didn't set out to study preschool expulsions. But when he was analyzing publicly funded prekindergarten policies at 3,898 schools in 40 states, he found expulsion rates three times higher than for older grades. . . .

Gilliam reported 6.7 expulsions per 1,000 preschoolers in the United States, compared with 2.09 per 1,000 for students in kindergarten through grade 12. In data collected from 2002-2004, rates ranged from zero per 1,000 students in Kentucky to more than 21 in New Mexico. . . .

Researchers identified a wide range of anti-social behavior - from cutting computer cords as a way to "liberate the mice" to hair-pulling. Biting was the most common offense.

"Nobody knows why," Gilliam said. "A lot of people blame parents. A lot of people blame the schools or an education system that pushed programs to preschool that are not developmentally appropriate. Now the stakes are higher in preschool." - - - -
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LONDON DAILY MAIL [Associated Newspapers/DMGT] - By Laura Clark - May 21, 2008
Classroom troublemakers as young as five will be removed from school and put in "sin bins" to avoid expelling them, ministers revealed yesterday.

They will be sent for a spell in a specialist unit where they will be given anger management classes alongside normal lessons to prepare them to return to their schools.

Children's Secretary Ed Balls said the aim was to prevent pupils getting into serious trouble by giving them intensive help before  they force schools to suspend or expel them. - - -

The measure forms the centrepiece of a Government blueprint for overhauling the 'forgotten service' of 450 pupil referral units  -  so-called sin bins  -  for the country's most disruptive youngsters. - - - -
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PALM BEACH POST [Cox Enterprises] - By SARAH PROHASKA - August 8, 2008
FORT PIERCE - Two teenage girls told police they were attacked by a group of 30 girls outside a nightclub early today and that three suspects - whom they identified as "The Rock Star Girls" - beat them with high-heel shoes, including a pair of 8-inch stilettos.

The two teens said they were at Club Crunk, 1702 Delaware Ave., at about 1:30 a.m., but they couldn't get into the club because one of the girls was only 17. They were standing in the parking lot when three girls they recognized and identified to police later as "The Rock Star Girls" and "The Cheerleaders" approached them and began kicking and punching them, they reported.

They said the three initial attackers took off their high-heeled shoes to hit them in the face, the report states.

One victim said she was struck three times in the head with a brown, 8-inch stiletto. The other victim said she was struck two times in the head with a silver, 6-inch heel. She reported that her attacker said: "I fight to kill," while hitting her with the shoe.

An officer reported that the two girls had deep cuts on their heads and faces. One girl's mother took them to the hospital after they talked to the police, according to the report. The attack case was forwarded to detectives for further investigation, the report states.
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North Texas school district will let teachers carry guns
ASSOCIATED PRESS - August 15, 2008
HARROLD, Texas - A tiny Texas school district may be the first in the nation to allow teachers and staff to pack guns for protection when classes begin later this month, a newspaper reported.
Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District approved a district policy change last October so employees can carry concealed firearms to deter and protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting teachers follow certain requirements.
In order for teachers and staff to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun; must be authorized to carry by the district; must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and have to use ammunition that is designed to minimize the risk of ricochet in school halls. - - - -
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US: Breathalyzer Tests Now The Law At N.J. High School
Pequannock Ratchets Up Alcohol Zero-Tolerance Policy
WCBS-TV2 NEW YORK [CBS Corporation] - By Jay Dow - January 4, 2008
- - - At Pequannock High School --- Getting checked for alcohol is now the rule at dances and other social events.
Pequannock also has an active Breathalyzer test, similar to what would be used during a police traffic stop. It's a little more intrusive, but administrators believe it sends a clear message about their zero-tolerance policy on alcohol abuse. - - - -
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Christmas shocking: Girl gets porn-filled MP3 player
Family angered after 10-year-old turned on gift purchased from Wal-Mart
WORLDNETDAILY - December 29, 2007
A father is considering legal action against retail giant Wal-Mart after an MP3 player he purchased for his 10-year-old daughter for Christmas was found to be loaded with X-rated sex scenes, violence and explicit songs.
Daryl Hill of Cookeville, Tenn., said his daughter was thrilled with the gift until she turned it on.
"Within 10 minutes, my daughter was crying," Hill told Nashville TV station WSMV.
The player, which came from the Wal-Mart store in Sparta, Tenn., had been returned by a previous owner who loaded it with pornography, graphic war scenes and songs about drugs. - - - -
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Agents warn of new drug hitting U.S.
Federal officials say 'extreme Ecstasy' is a potent drug laced with methamphetamines
THE DETROIT NEWS [Gannett] - By Santiago Esparza - January 4, 2008
Federal agents are targeting a turbo-charged form of Ecstasy that is gaining in popularity, fearing it will lead to fatal overdoses similar to ones experienced a few years ago caused by heroin mixed with fentanyl.
Michigan and nine other states along Canada's border would see the first wave of any such overdoses, and officials are warning that the so-called "extreme Ecstasy," which is mixed with methamphetamines, is becoming a problem.
"They (drug dealers) are remarketing and packaging it and trying to glamorize it," said Scott Burns, deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "We just went through this issue with fentanyl. We learned a lot of things from that. We have to get on it early and get on it aggressively." - - - -
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ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Jocelyn Noveck - July 27, 2008
NEW YORK - When Amy Morris' twin boys, then 11, went on an academic trip to Washington last year, she agreed to give them cell phones at the program's request. But this summer she was dismayed to learn that girls at her 8-year-old daughter's day camp were using cell phones they'd taken along in their backpacks.

"We were outraged," says the Connecticut mother, who adds that the camp didn't know. "These girls think it's a cute game. But it's inappropriate, and it's unnecessary."

It's a signature parenting dilemma of the wireless age: Should kids have cell phones? And how old is old enough? It pits our understandable desire to keep tabs on our offspring-not to mention make them happy-against the instinctive feeling that it's simply, well, wrong for youngsters to spend their time chatting and texting over the airwaves.

Now, there's further ammunition for Morris and other reluctant parents like her to stand firm: The warning last week by the head of a prominent cancer research institute to his faculty and staff. Limit cell phone use, he said, because of the possible cancer risk-especially when it comes to children, whose brains are still developing.

The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, was based on early, unpublished data and came despite numerous studies that haven't found a link between increased tumors and cell phone use. But it's struck a nerve among parents who already have other reasons to resist their children's entreaties. - - - -
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Science Writer Malcom Ritter contributed to this report.
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