Funny eggs

Lucinda told me about this funny short animation series called I Love Egg (www.iloveegg.com) that appears on Cartoon Network here. I think it's from South Korea.

The eggs go to "Egg School" and there are little stories about each one of them. The English translation is a little silly. Here are some frames from the website.




Here's a storyboard, or whatever it's called, in Korean for a short animation called "Revenge."


And a strip called "Good Conduct".

TV and teen pregnancy

Scanning the web for Monday's news, this WashPost headline certainly caught my eye!

Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies

Of course one can suspect such things, but statistics leave a much more powerful impression. Here's the lede:

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 3, 2008; Page A01

Teenagers who watch a lot of television featuring flirting, necking, discussion of sex and sex scenes are much more likely than their peers to get pregnant or get a partner pregnant, according to the first study to directly link steamy programming to teen pregnancy.

The study, which tracked more than 700 12-to-17-year-olds for three years, found that those who viewed the most sexual content on TV were about twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who saw the least.

"Watching this kind of sexual content on television is a powerful factor in increasing the likelihood of a teen pregnancy," said lead researcher Anita Chandra. "We found a strong association." The study is being published today in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

All I can add is: Wow.

Super Bowl Monday

I'm watching the Super Bowl right now - at 9:09am on Monday morning! My Super Bowl snack is a breakfast bowl of cornflakes and milk.

We can watch big American sports events (Super Bowl, World Series and baseball playoffs) on the NHK channel, Japan's public television station. We hear the American announcers and play-by-play, but there are no commercials.

So while Americans are pitched by Budweiser or Apple or Chevy Trucks, we hear three minutes of background noise from the stadium and see replays or a random video feed of players waiting on the sidelines or on the field. This makes for a much quieter Super Bowl experience.

Electric Company

Television is very limited here for English-speaking children. We are stuck mainly with Disney Channel Japan (with shows like "Kim Possible" and "Lilo & Stitch") and a few things on the Cartoon Network (like Snoopy specials), plus The Simpsons on the Fox channel - all shows we wouldn't watch if we were in the U.S. (The Simpsons is funny, though.)

Fortunately, we can download some, though also limited, PBS programming from I-Tunes, like two seasons of "Arthur". Even better, I've just discovered a collection of "Electric Company" shows that I watched in the 1970s!

I'm just now watching our first Electric Company with the kids, and it's hilarious to see these sketches again: "A Very Short Book," "Jennifer of the Jungle." (Click the links to see those shorts on You Tube.)

I didn't remember how focused this program was on reading and literacy - an older version of Sesame Street - perfect for Lucinda, though Arno declared it "boring." I also never knew that Rita Moreno, Morgan Freeman, Irene Cara and Joan Rivers were part of the cast.