Interesting perspectives, and I think I'd like to add to the fire a little, because, although I was being a little silly with the addition of the "article" about boomers and computers.

First of all, the cult of fear that expresses itself in wanting to be "safe" is fed, managed and grown by the news media industry, which, I need not remind many here, is in business to sell advertising, not to make you feel good.

You can't get eyeballs to screens with news stories about yet another shooting in some poor urban neighborhood - that's a dog bites man story - so they constantly seek the edge cases - and they inject primal fear directly into your brain stem with the one, horrible, improbable and utterly unexpected thing that happened to a few of the 6 billion people on this earth. Maybe there was an ebola outbreak. Maybe a bridge collapsed. Maybe some new bacteria is eating the eyes out of people's heads. And even if 10,000 people are affected by New Horrible Thing, in the grand scheme of things, that's not many people, but it makes good news.

Grow up on a constant diet of new fears piped in on your 42" screens that are never off and couple that with the instinctive desire to protect your kids from harm, and you end up with kids wearing helmets to walk to the end of the driveway because once a tree branch fell and hit a kid just right and killed him.

And yet...and yet...

Fortunately, I think that the "dumbest generation" (and I like that term) is self-limiting. Yes, the USA has passed some sort of milestone of leadership in the world (we think we're #1 in so many areas - we're not when it comes to education, prevention of infant mortality, literacy, and many other measures) and we may never regain that lead (I personally think it's China's turn - again - to be The World Power).

But it's not all bleak.

I was at the Maker World Faire in New York City last week. There were tens of thousands of people there - in fact our very own Charlie was there (but I missed connecting with him) as well as many other people I connect with online.

The Maker Faire was the opposite of the safety obsessed world we live in. They had Jet Powered (valveless pulse jet) metal pony rides. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUYlC-ECS3U

Note the warning sign in the background on the right. "This Ride Will Kill You"

Note the crowd (which included me)standing close. There were plenty of people who wanted to ride.

My kids enjoyed the various things to do there, and there was no padding anywhere. There were sharp metal edges and fire-spewing canons 3' from my son's head on the human-powered carousel. There were aerial nylons suspended as a swing over asphalt - if you fall, it's gonna hurt. Some kids did fall. They bled. They got cleaned up by their parents. They went back to play. No lawyers, just band aids and new skills learned.

What I'm saying is the cult of stupidity is not as big as you think. There are plenty of people who, like us, tell their kids "if you can do it, you are allowed do it. You might get hurt. Be careful. Ask me if you're not sure what to do."

There are plenty of people who know that skinned knees and broken arms aren't typically life threatening. My son participates in speed-roller skating - you should see all the kids out there! And when they crash, it's at 18 to 25 miles per hour, they hit hard.

We don't see these kids - until they fail - and then we're all reading "what irresponsible parents" let their 16 year old sail around the world, who would let their 13 year old operate a tractor? who would let their 11 year old go on a 6 mile bike ride along the canal? who would give a 16 year old a rifle?

There are plenty of people who tell a kid "here's a rake, get to work" and there are plenty of 15 year old kids I've met at the firehouse who are able to figure stuff out.

But it seems that these kids don't excite the news media as much, so we don't see them much (although our Canoe Parade with the Canalligator was in the local paper paper !)

Anyway...it's not all bad.