Undisputable Cartoons

Well i am doing post graduation and the blog title will question the relevance of the article. Cartoons sound rather frivolous at this age and stage of life. As percipient lets consider what the toddlers are watching now a days. In India popular cartoon channels are Cartoon Network, Pogo, Hungama, Nick, Disney channel and Jetix. Cartoon Network is still the leading channel with close competition from Pogo. Nick and Hungama are close competitors for the third position. The time slots given to various cartoon programmes is dominated by Disney series or many new Chinese and Japanese cartoons. If we examine closely a lot of these cartoons depict violence.

Toddlers watching violence at such tender age deters my notion that "cartoons are good for children". Cartoons like Flash blade, Flash Gordon, Ninja Turtles has great impact on the kids. I have personally witnessed how kids are willing to throw unacceptable tantrums to get the Ninja Swords or small weapons used by some famous cartoon characters.

The various facets that should be taken into account are Mental and psychological effects, Subliminal Messages, increased risk to children's safety and the marketing strategies of various companies that exploit the popularity of cartoons.

Psychologist suggest that children watching television more than 4 hours develop a retarded development of social interaction. A child develops personality which is influenced by parental nurturing as well as environment. It is essential to provide a healthy and serene surrounding.Subliminal Messaging as defined by the Oxford dictionary as"Below the threshold of conscious perception, inadequate to produce conscious awareness but able to evoke a response."These messages might adversely affect the behaviour of children when they are adult.The various accident cases which happen as children try to imitate the charaters is of grave concern.The various marketing strategies especially cartoon merchandise are a huge source of revenue.This is evident from the existing plethora of Harry Potter merchandise. The companies use various cartoons to promote their products. Children are infactuated and tend to buy these products and sometimes want to possess those products as status symbols. Its on us to decide now where to draw the line...

We ought to use discretion while kids watch various cartoons and efforts should be taken to modify unnecessary violence or subliminal messages in the cartoons.Every coin has two sides.A flip side to cartoons!!!

Information Bomblast

Today was a hectic day just managed to glance through the paper. There is so much information there. I came back and was going through some blogs and i am overwhelmed with the kind of information that is available at our disposal. Technology sure has grown by leaps and bounds how else i would have known the list of the words searched for most number of times through out the world. The list published by Google and yahoo. Amazing isn't it. But lets just consider the flip side.

Information is knowledge and power. Information literally makes or breaks individuals. Its not just important to make use of the common sense or have high IQ but to have a knowledge base pertaining to everything that makes sense to Homo sapiens and things that do not make sense to the mortals. The question is where do we draw the line ?? Have we defined any periphery or we just behave as mere bludges. We are residing in a society where it is necessary that we reflect on the small, changes around us. I have not come across any blog on" why we see less of butterflies now days?" The intellectuals will mock and smirk at this statement of mine, and might even question "how does it matter??" or rather "to whom does it matter??"

This is a very practical world driven headstrong by Technology, Information and Religion who has time to experience the joy of writing diaries, or letters or a simple act of enjoying the rain. If it does rain, all we do is discuss about potholes, worsening drainage system and evergreen "Blamegame" begins.

I know the importance of information and technology which go hand in hand but my fellow beings do you ever not wonder why now you cannot enjoy and value small things like silence, rain or the warmth of Sun( ignoring the UV rays increase which leads to cancer).