iterating toward openness

A rare Sunday post for me. Today in the semi-annual LDS General Conference, Elder Oaks quoted research from a recent study at Columbia’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse about the relationship between teens’ academic achievement and how frequently they eat dinner with their family. BusinessWeek summarized the findings as follows:

Their research has found that children who have a regular family mealtime are less likely to smoke, drink, use illegal drugs, experiment with sex at a young age, and get into fights. Further, these children are at lower risk for suicidal thoughts and are more likely to do better in school. Teens that have frequent family dinners are more likely to be emotionally content, to work harder, to have positive peer relationships, and to have healthier eating habits. Family mealtime is the single strongest predictor of academic achievement scores and low rates of behavioral problems, regardless of race, gender, education, age of parents, income, or family size.

I just want to highlight the last sentence there - Family mealtime is the single strongest predictor of academic achievement scores and low rates of behavioral problems, regardless of race, gender, education, age of parents, income, or family size. The study compares teens who eat dinner with their family five or more times per week with those who eat dinner with their families two times or fewer per week. You can complain about traditional family values all you want, but there’s something here.

Twice in the last week I’ve heard the phrase “free knowledge.” I understand that there are many people with more influence in the world than I who like this term (e.g., Jimmy Wales’s “Free Knowledge requires Free Software and Free File Formats“). In fact, I heard Jimmy use this phrase last week at the Shuttleworth/Soros/Hewlett-sponsored meeting in Cape Town. He was describing why he doesn’t like the term “content.” Because “content,” he said, sounds like a static something that can be packaged and shipped. And so he prefers the more living, breathing, dynamic term “knowledge,” which he uses to characterize sites like Wikipeida. Now, fully understanding that many of you could care less, I have to get this off my chest anyway… Continue reading ‘There’s No Such Thing as Free Knowledge’