Keep Your Hands on the Wheel! Love, Mom’
I’m sure you’ve heard statistics about teen drivers and texting, but just in case, let me repeat a few. First of all, according to a poll conducted by AAA, some 94% of teens acknowledge the danger of texting while driving, but more than a third admit to doing it anyway. They just can’t get that […]
Video Games and Successful Failure
We’ve heard it so many times before, from our parents, our teachers, from success gurus. “Learn from your failures,” they say. But, of course, every time we fail miserably our brains tell us, “Boy, I never want you to do that again.” Here’s the thing, though. All the greats down through history who changed the […]
Scarlett Johansson and Not Natural Things
In a recent interview with Playboy magazine, actress Scarlett Johansson was talking about her second marriage—now her second former marriage—and she offered up a now much-quoted opinion that marriage and monogamy are simply not natural. Here’s the Avenger star’s full quote: I think the idea of marriage is very romantic; it’s a beautiful idea, and […]
Easy Instagram Perfection … Not
Your Instagram account got you down? You know, the fact that it feels like all your pals have such casually picture-perfect lives while your impromptu shots always make you look like a disheveled version of near-death on a cracker? Well, here’s a little vid that suggests that “picture-perfect” isn’t quite as casual as it looks, […]
Introducing the Lead Balloon
Here we are at the beginning of a new year. And, of course, that means it’s time for the entertainment industry to look ahead to all the great things they will create, while cranking out awards for themselves in recognition of all the incredibly fabulous stuff they painstakingly have crafted over the last year. It’s […]
App-y Holiday, Mom
The holidays are here, moms and dads are making their lists and checking them twice, and kids are hitting the sack with visions of smartphones and hand-held tablets dancing in their heads. And odds are, a lot of them are gonna see those high-tech dreams come to a Christmas morning reality. Of course, with techy […]
Game Goods 2016: Bob Hoose’s Year-End Picks
Just when you think you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s trending in video games, bam, along comes some stuff that shakes everything up. Augmented reality and virtual reality really hit the big time in the last six months or so. And on top of that, there were some pretty great regular old reality […]
Smartphone Parental Controls and You
Here we are once again about to celebrate the holidays. And, as we all know, that means kids with a lot of time on their hands—and generally a gadget or two in their hands. And if one of those said gizmos also happens to be an internet-connected one, such as a smartphone, you might be […]
The Dating App Conundrum
Ever stop to think a bit about dating apps? The truth is, you don’t have to be using them to see that they’re having a big impact on our social media-driven world. And a lot of people are saying so. Last September, Vanity Fair published an article by Nancy Jo Sales called “Tinder and the […]
Send Me In Coach, I Play Video Games
Let me distract you from the agonies and ecstasies of the political season for a moment to address an interesting tidbit from the land of gaming. We all know that we live in a video-game-friendly world. And as gaming systems have gotten more powerful and game creation has become more nuanced, we cheery button-crunchers can’t […]