Rapid Depreciation: Cars & Textbooks

We're used to hearing about how any vehicle you buy new will depreciate faster than you can write its monthly payment. What we don't hear a lot about is how much faster college textbooks depreciate.

My friends from Serbia bought a text book on June 30 for her Environment and Man biology class. It's your typical general education course that can meet the biology requirement for a liberal arts degree. Anyway, she pays over $100 for a new text for this four-week summer course. Today, she tried to tell it back. Are you sitting down? The bookstore clerk offered her $16 for it. Now, I rounded down to $100 to make the math easier, but how did that text lose 84% of its value in less that four full weeks?

Let's play with the number for a bit, shall we? The class met 20 times. 84 divided by 20 is 4.2% per day, each day the class met. Imagine if your brand new $40k SUV (can you get one for that?) lost value at the same rate as this biology book! Purchased on December 1, 2006, your new gas-hog would be worthless to the dealership before you went to bed on Christmas Eve.

I'm not upset at the local bookstore people, don't misunderstand me. They are following company guide lines for buying back books. What distrubs me is that if that edition of the text will be used this fall semester, this now used text will be resold for over $80.

Fred

Whatever Happened to..Those TV Hit Show Actors?

With the pleuthora of channels on TV these days, the competitition for ratings is fierce. New shows must score big quickly to make the cut and avoid cancellation. I am no network exec, but I can imagine that for every show that actually makes it onto the small screen, there are a zillion that never made it past the concept stage.

There are shows that grab out attention early and we begin to develop a "relationship" with the characters. This takes a season or two, and about the time we think we know the ensamble cast, the network cancels the show. The real shame here is that some very talented actors disappear (unless you watch every movie ever made). Even the stars of long-running shows go underground after their series are finally axed.

Don't think I'm niave about things in TV World. I know that...

• Some shows need to end (sooner than they actually do, in some cases)
• Popular actors from hit shows may want more money for a new show than a network wants to pay
• Those same actors, after long series runs, want to rest and spend some of the money they've earned.

Here are a few actors that I miss and wonder when they will resurface. If you know of their whereabouts, please let me know! Thank you!

• Simon Baker (aka Nick Fallin of CBS's The Guardian)
• Kelli Williams (ABC's The Practice and NBC's Medical Investigations)
• Kelly Martin (NBC's ER; okay she's on "Mystery Woman" now)
• David James Elliot (JAG)
• Catherine Bell (JAG; she's too pretty for radio or Broadway - limited audience)
• Elisha Cuthbert (FOX's 24 and film "The Girl Next Door" - which I've not seen, BTW)

I could go on, but you get the idea. Say, what actors do you miss? What actors are hiding that you know the scoop on? Reply to this blog and we'll find out together!

Fred

MySpace "Dangers"

I first heard of myspace several months ago when it started getting negative press on American Family Radio as a portal to various vulgar and profane things on the Internet. I immediately became anti-MySpace; fearful that young people (okay, young girls like my 13 y/o daughter) would be solicited online. In uncharacteristic fashion, I let my jury render a verdict based on heresay evidence.

Then, I went to wedding in May and found that an entire family of a friend was "on" myspace. Soon after I returned, I was encouraged to join MySpace to I could stay in touch with my friend and others. I did. Early on, it was just another novelty. No big deal really; oh, the comments were cute and all, but I would much rather chat on IM than mess with MySpace.

Now, if you expect to me confess to becoming a MySpace junkie, you're going to be let down. Sure, I've searched the web for backgrounds and posted maybe a dozen comments total to the four friends I have out there. (Yes, only four!)

What are the dangers? I see a few...

1. Crude and Raunchy Comments: The "nice" comments members go after to send each other are comingled with a lot of crude and raunchy comments. Such sites have not warnings on their homepages stating that the content may be offensive. Expletives and sexually suggestive themes are prolific as is the profanity (four letter words are common place).
2. "Propositional" Invitations: One of the supposedly fun things about MySpace is the ability to look at other member's profiles and, based on what you see/read, you can ask permission to be their "friend." This gives you permission to post comments and other functions to those who grant permission. About two weeks into my MySpace career, an attractive young lady asked to be my friend. Before I rejected her invitation, I scanned her profile and learned that she had a live webcam on another site that I would be able to access to see "more" of her. One day last week, I received eight requests from potential "friends," PYTs all, each of them providing a thumbnail pic in a reveal and/or provocative pose.
3. Anonyimity: There is nothing that I have seen that forces a person to truthfully identify themselves by age or gender. This opens the floodgates for perps who would disguise themselves in order to gain access (vitual and actual) to children and/or teens.

Parents of underaged children, beware! Even if your child or teen is as wholesome and pure as apple pie, he or she is highly likely to see the unwholesome side of our culture through MySpace. Minds that young are probably not mature enough to filter out the trash in order to enjoy the treasure that is out there. I'm new to this cyber-socializing thing, but I hope someone with the resources will create something suitable for children and teens so they can enjoy the it without being exposed to the crude and raunchy aspects of MySpace.

What options do you have if your children are already hooked on MySpace? Find a place online like Geocities that allows persons to build their own limited website. It's free. Or for less than $50 bucks a year, you can get 'em their own website with a .net domain name. What is your child's innocense worth?

Am I going to abandon myspace? No..not for now; just like I'm not abadoning PG-13 movies (and yes, I have shut some off recently..or left the room). Am I offended by the crude and the raunchy? Yes; I wish it wasn't there. Will I jump at the chance for another more clean-cut cyber socializing option, yep and I'll take as many of you with me as I can.