Kansas.com: News2Use

Etiquette for texting at school

TONY GONZALEZ — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 01:40 CDT

Beneath the desk, agile fingers flit across the keypad. Above, eye contact with the teacher never breaks. The cell-phone text message is sent, unnoticed. Or noticed.

Then it's up to teachers to offer a warning, or confiscate the cell phone, and almost unavoidably disrupt class time -- yet another text-messaging distraction that teachers and administrators see as a growing nuisance.

The Pew Research Center reported this year that 71 percent of American teens own a cell phone (compared with 45 percent in 2004), that 50 percent of teens sometimes use informal capitalization and punctuation in school assignments and that 38 percent have used texting lingo (such as "LOL," for "laughing out loud") in schoolwork.

During class, teachers see students texting on phones "hidden" in pockets. High-pitched ringtones, which adults can't hear, add a new challenge.

To avoid such gruesome punishment, parents and students may heed the advice of teachers and administrators, who offer the following warnings and suggestions for teen texting etiquette at school.

Heart attacks can sneak up on women

KATHY VAN MULLEKOM — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:42 CDT

Cindy Steger completed a 5K race in August 2004, finishing in her normal time. She went to a friend's house where she suddenly felt a sensation of heat begin at the small of her back and work its way up to her neck, making its way all over her body. She was also lightheaded and felt faint.

Bad feelings -- chest tightness and shortness of breath -- continued into the next day, so she took it easy when she couldn't get in to see her physician right away.

On Day 3, the Williamsburg, Va., resident felt better but still visited the doctor where her blood pressure and pulse were normal. The next day, she felt fine and cleaned out a small gutter. Within 15 minutes, arm pain and chest pressure returned. She made it to the bed and passed out, waking up to continued pain.

On Day 5, the physician finally did an EKG and sent her to a cardiologist who referred her to the hospital for blood work. That evening, the cardiologist called to tell her she had had a heart attack and needed to go to the hospital immediately.

Q: Your symptoms?

Tips for lowering tension at work

JUDI LIGHT HOPSON, EMMA H. HOPSON, R.N., AND TED HAGEN, PH.D. — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:42 CDT

Is there a lot of tension at your place of work? Do you dread hearing the flack about the boss, potential job losses, or how bad the economy is?

If so, try to take the lead in cooling some of the tension. Keep in mind that a bad situation cannot be managed by negative talk and feeling down.

"Emotions are catching, like a cold," says a business consultant we'll call Marcos. "Don't play into negativity, or you'll see the results play out in your own life."

Marcos was recently hired to cool tension at a company where one employee threatened to kill another employee.

"What's scary," says Marcos, "is that I could see both sides! The person doing the threatening was a petite lady who probably wouldn't hurt a fly. But, I was hired to defuse the tension and get this company back to a relative calm state."

Study: Spanking often coincides with worse abuse

MANDY LOCKE — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:40 CDT

Parents tempted to treat Junior's misbehavior with a lashing from a tree limb out back or dad's leather belt are being urged to think again.

A recent study by doctors at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill finds that parents who spank their children with an object -- such as a belt, switch or paddle -- are nine times more likely to abuse their child through more severe means. Also, parents are much more likely to beat, burn or shake their children if they spank frequently, according to the study which is being published by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.

"Parents get angry when they're spanking and it's not working," said Adam Zolotor, lead author of the study and a pediatrician at the UNC-CH's Department of Family Health. "If a child gets spanked so often, they just don't care anymore and will misbehave anyway."

It's the latest finding in a growing body of research suggesting parents should use their voice, not their hands or household tools, to keep children in line. This study rests on anonymous admissions of 1,435 mothers of children from North and South Carolina randomly selected to share details of the discipline they and other caregivers use in the privacy of their own home.

Rates of abuse, the researchers found, are alarmingly high, even in a survey dependent on parents owning up to behavior that could cost them the right to raise their children. Twelve percent of mothers who reported spanking a child's bottom with an object also admitted engaging in behavior researchers classified as physical abuse. Also, 12 percent of those who spanked 50 or more times in the last year admitted abuse such as beating, burning, shaking or hitting the child with an object about their body.

How to protect yourself when shopping online

JORDAN ROBERTSON — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:39 CDT

One of the biggest risks in shopping online is clicking on a link to what appears to be a legitimate site but is, in fact, a forgery run by criminals interested in your credit card number and other personal information. An estimated $3.2 billion was lost to such "phishing" sites in the United States last year, according to a survey by Gartner Inc.

Watching out for fraudulent sites isn't hard, and is the crucial first step in a secure online shopping experience. The key in most cases is to type in the Web site's address independently, and not to follow links sent in e-mails, because those can often be malicious spam sent by the creators of the bogus sites.

Most Web browsers will alert you when you're navigating to known phishing sites or those serving up viruses, but the key word there is "known." Many harmful sites are set up and dismantled within 24 hours, so it's often a cat-and-mouse game to identify and block them before the criminals have a chance to inflict too much damage.

Also look for your browser's address bar to turn green; that's a sign the site you're visiting has paid for -- and passed -- an extra layer of background checks to verify it's a legitimate business. The so-called Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer certificate is a new feature that also indicates the site is sending your data securely using proper encryption methods.

If a site doesn't have that feature, look for the traditional SSL padlock when you get to a site's order page, and click on that if you have doubts about the site's authenticity. It will identify the site's owner and the agency that issued the SSL certificate. The padlocks are not always foolproof, however, because scammers can spoof them.

Modify a budget for college living costs

KAREN BLUMENTHAL — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:43 CDT

The biggest freshman class ever is headed to college in a few weeks. But there's one big issue that many parents have yet to resolve: How much should they give their kids for spending money?

It can be mind-boggling to think that the kid will require even more dough after you've paid thousands of dollars in tuition, room and board, purchased a new computer, and budgeted for books and transportation. How much can a teenager really need, other than necessities?

A fair bit, it turns out. Toiletries, printer cartridges, dorm decor and school supplies can take a chunk, for starters. And while many campuses are teeming with dining options (including food courts) and cheap entertainment, students want to go out occasionally to see a movie, shop, go on a road trip or just take a break from the monotony of institutional food.

"You don't want to be the kid who sits in the dorm room and does nothing," says Kim Richards, who will be a sophomore at Emerson College in Boston this fall.

Even if your student has a generous financial-aid package, these costs most likely will be borne by one of you, since most packages require some combination of parent contributions, loans and student jobs. For parents, the challenge can be finding the right balance between being too frugal and too frivolous -- providing enough money for your child to eat, but not quite enough to drink.

Making passwords memorable as well as secure is tricky

DAVID MIGOYA — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:40 CDT

Little Jackson Reynolds thought he was getting even with his parents for limiting his daily computer time to just a half-hour.

By changing the access password to the family's Macintosh computer, Jackson would finally be in charge. For once, his folks would need his permission to get on the computer.

Problem is, the 8-year-old forgot the magic word.

So for the past three weeks the family has been without access to e-mail, bank accounts and just about everything else needed to manage in today's technology-based world.

"When our password didn't work we quickly identified the culprit," said Sarah Pekkanen, Jackson's mom. "We're desperately trying to find a Mac genius, but they're hard to find on short notice."