How to bond with your kids and be cool at the Same Time

I grew up middle class and happy. We had a TV which we were only allowed to turn on once a week to watch either the Brady Bunch or My Three sons. My dad had a state of the art Sony reel to reel which we were not even allowed to touch. We also had a record player with a needle so delicate that it would scratch the vinyl if you even moved so we had to sit very still. Until this day I can't dance. When I hear great music, I just sit very still and listen – scarred from early technology.

I have such strong memories of those first few albums. Not just the music but the memory of experiencing the excitement with my family. Fighting over favorites, whose band was cooler, which song on the album was the best. It was great family time which I'll never forget.

When I was about eight my dad bought home Help by the Beatles. What a great first album, it has everything, great songs like Yesterday and Dizzy Miss Lizzy. That was the start of a lifelong obsession with good music that I now share with my kids. We had a Jonny Cash Album that was a real eye opener - Boy named Sue etc . He was a wild man and a great introduction into Country Music.

As we grew older we started hanging out with the other kids in the street – we each had to choose a band to support and having little knowledge of the world of rock, I chose deep purple because I liked thecolour purple. My brother was a Zoot fan and my friend was into the Stones. My dad was into Burt Bacharach, but he wasn't allowed to hang out with us.

Those were great times, and it might have continued that way forever if not for the dark clouds of disco...but that's another story.

Now I'm all grown up with kids, and if I had a job, we would be middle class too. When they were little, I sat them down on the couch and forced them to listen to Dark Side of the Moon. The Beatles of course form a central part of their syllabus as do some of the great Jazz musicians, also bands like Led Zeppelin and Elton John, the Beach Boys and Bowie. They love it all. My theory is that if its good, really good, it will always be good and we'll always appreciate it.

As a family we also watch TV and movies together and that's great fun too. Yet it's not the same, there's something special about the music. With TV we all sit around like zombies, but with the music there's a buzz, an excitement, its interactive and its fun. We don't just listen to the old stuff, three teenage daughters bring plenty of new music to listen to and believe me, there are plenty of great musicians like Amy Winehouse, Elliot Smith and Kanye West. There's always something new to experience

The hard thing is to do it together as a family because it's something kids usually do with their friends and it's not so cool to hang out with your parents. Still if the music is good, its good and they get it and we have fun.

With today's technology there's no excuse for listening to bad music. Computer download sites give us a huge choice - every style and every artist. We don’t even have to listens to whole albums we can pick and chose our favorite songs. Don't forget to use good speakers and download from a reputable site like this one where you can download free music.

by Gavi Eskin

Teenagers and the Ethics of file Sharing

My sixteen year old daughter is a typical teenager – sometimes she's rude and arrogant, but most times she's just asleep or grooming herself- If only she worked at math like she works on her hair. Like most teens she loves music. I have tried to broaden her appreciation of different genres by submitting her to music she wouldn't normally listen to. I've had some success with Billy holiday and Louis Armstrong and even some classics like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

As well as musical appreciation I have also tried to give her an appreciation of ethical behavior, and even though she exhibits none of her own, I think she gets the concept on the whole. Yet when it comes to downloading and file sharing, it all falls apart, after all 'sharing is caring' - what can you say to that? I tell her that she wouldn't steal a CD from a friend. She tells me no but she would borrow one. I don’t reply because I can't even remember if that's legal or not. The way she sees it is that she's simply borrowing music from other peoples files and not making a CD, and again I don’t know if that's legal or not.

Now I'm trying to tell my kids to behave ethically but I cannot understand the technology and the legal implications. I'm beginning to appreciate the annoying piracy ads on DVD's - at least you know where you stand. It's hard to keep up with the changing technology and now it seems to be changing again. Now we have so called legal free download sites.

I know I'm stretching things when I ask my sixteen year old if she's worried about artists maintaining their artistic integrity if they are being paid not for their work but instead for selling ad space on the internet. A little, she admits, well that's something I think. But then she continues I don’t really care; I just want to relax and listen to some music. What about the message in the music? But I've already lost this one, and I don’t even understand the argument myself.

Not only that but I feel like such a hypocrite having enjoyed a few downloaded movies with the kids – it seemed too innocent at the time. OK I concede, let's just try stick to the legal download sites, at least to avoid viruses.

by Gavi Eskin

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The Next Music revolution

Last week they were playing Bob Dylan on the radio, and as I listened to him mumbling out the saddest song, I cried. This is crazy, because I was never even such a fan. I have no regrets about that- going through his work, I couldn’t help but think, what’s the big deal? I mean, he must be putting that on, no one could understand that. Now all is forgiven, and he makes me cry. Maybe I’m just getting old and sentimental but these days I’m touched by the music. Not like when I was seventeen, when the music told me what I was feeling,in a more mature way, where I hide in the car, sobbing.

I guess that’s what the point is - and its working because now I’m desperate to find that CD. In the old days, I would have considered buying the album, occasionally splurging thirty dollars. In these days of Illegal Music Downloading my stingy nature is too strong. Why should I pay thirty dollars when everyone else is getting it for free? But I have a few unfortunate ethical problems with stealing music off the internet so in the end I usually end up with nothing but the car radio.

But times they are a-changin’. A friend told me I can now legally download free music but now I’m really in trouble. It’s not the money, and its not the ethics. I have to finally admit I still haven’t figured out how to use the computer.

Actually I’m still waiting for truly user friendly software which basically does it ALL for me. I mean, isn’t that the purpose of computers? If they’re so smart, what do they need me for? Why can’t I just mutter to the monitor, “Download that song I heard the other day, will you? I forget the name but the chorus goes like this, kind of…”

Surely they see that we are a whole untapped technophobic market? And even if it’s only five or ten percent of the population, that must be a huge number. Anyway, my point is this- if even I’m about to start downloading free music, then I guess everyone will be doing it. How will this affect the world? It’s basically a revolution, it will change everything. Music has the power to affect us individually, and politically. Music helps us to feel, think and relate to each other. When the music changes, everything changes.

Historically, the music industry has been held ransom by the market (of fourteen year old girls and ruthless record producers. So how is that about to change? Firstly, the demographics. We will see a broader market, enjoying unlimited access to all genres of music. If we are lucky, we might see the end of the era of Britney clones (perhaps sacrificial style, ala South Park). At the very least we will see a resurgence of quality music as other consumer groups re-enter the market place.

In the end perhaps it’s not the style of music that really matters. The important thing is that more people, of many ages will be listening to a broader range of music. If the whole world is getting into their favorite music we might just chill out a bit and start thinking about what’s really important again - chics, cars and drugs !

by Gavi Eskin
download free music

The end of The Muisis Industry - the Ultimate Sellout

Experience has shown that ‘free’ products have often backfired as a marketing strategy. Take for example ‘Linux’ a free windows alternative. No one's buying it, and perhaps it's because no one has to pay for it. The accepted thinking is that people don’t trust anymore, its too good to be true - if they’re giving it away there must be a catch. This might not always be the case - perhaps if the music industry was run by the ‘Amish’ it might have a little
more credibility, a lot less excitement, but we'd trust it.

There’s an old story about an island where the streets are littered with diamonds. At first the new visitor scrambles to fill his pockets with them, but pretty soon realizes that here on this island, they have no more value than common stones – simply because they are available, plentiful and free.

There’s another reason we might lose interest in free music - respect. We used to look up to the artists, Dylan, Lennon, Neil young. These guys were real – no bull. If nothing else, at least the music was true and buying the album was like being a part of it, supporting the often anti-establishment cause in some way.

When Radiohead released their last album ‘In Rainbows’ for free, they asked their fans to donate money if they wanted to which was a great marketing strategy. People don’t want to throw their money but they do want to support a cause and it’s the
music and artist that represent that cause. We are happy to pay if we believe in the message and the product. But what happens if the artist sells out -can we still believe in the message?

Now we all know that no ones going hungry over the abundance of available online free music, but where the money coming from? The advertising industry.The artists have sold out to the advertising companies, to the same establishment it was raised to protest against(at least in the marketing). That may be nothing new but now they’ve dropped all pretense. Now they’re just selling ad space.

It’s the final stake in the heart for the music industry. The revolutions come full circle and eaten itself from behind. How is this going to effect the music, just turn on your radio (if you’ve still got one). The demise of radio was not caused by video, but by the fact that music just turned bad, it lost its credibility. We just couldn’t buy it anymore.

Now I’m no pessimist, in fact I think it’s a good thing. The music’s been dying a slow death for years, its time to relegate the last fifty years of music to history - Its time for something new. And it will come – it always does – the new thing. Something that will rock the boat again.and shake the industry out of its slumber. It won't come through music owned by add companies and multinationals but from some ADD kid in a suburban garage.

And when you hear it you’ll know and you’ll be running to spend your thirty dollars. In the meantime you might as well grab some free music because after all, we all sell out sometime.
Free music download

Confessions of a free Music downloader

The problem is that I am going to go to the special level of hell reserved for child molesters,people who talk at the theater and those who download free music .
Me, and every single other teenager who has access to an over-priced MP3 player and the internet. It’s like nose-picking. Everybody does it.

I started when I was about fourteen, when my buddy called me up and said,
‘Dude, you heard the new Ashanti single?’ I said, ‘No, I was going to buy it,
but it was either that or a Legolas poster. Guess who won?’ And she said, ‘Okay, listen. I’m gonna tell you something, it’ll change your life. But keep it on the low-down, and if you get any computer viruses,tell you parents you caught your little sister looking at porn.’

‘I am positively quivering with anticipation,’ I said to my buddy. ‘Do tell!’‘Okay,’ my buddy whispered conspiratorially into the phone. ‘It’s called Kazaa.’ Well, that was just the end of me. No more browsing through hip record stores in Bondi. Good bye, future CD collection. Hello, Illegal music downloading! And I haven’t bought a CD since.

I’m going through my iTunes list, and the Top Most Played Song is a song called Orange, by the Dandy Warhols. I don’t even like that song, but someone in the family must because it’s been played like, one thousand, five hundred and three times since I downloaded it from Limewire in 2005. Along with four of their other albums.

As I write this, I’m listening to Gone For Good, by the Shins. Got all of their
albums, too. And Elliot Smith’s. And Radiohead’s. Portishead’s, Bright Eyes (don’t blame me, I was fourteen and he’s a good lyricist.) Buckley’s, Gorillaz’s… And I didn’t pay a cent. For any of it. Why should I? Music should be for free, like love. And air. And the musicians only spend the money of DRUGS, anyway. I don’t want to be supporting their drug habits, I have my own to attend to, God.

But what if, because of our financial boycott, the musicians stop taking drugs and
the quality of their music flounders in the pit of mediocrity that is the music industry? Maybe I do want to support their drug habits? Oh god. I’m starting to see the light. I should have paid my $9.99 AU for Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm three years ago. I have single-handedly destroyed Rock n’ Roll. Damn.

Special Hell, here I come.

the File Sharing Phoenix

There was a time in our house when Kazaa was the word of the day. My teenage daughters were delirious at the thought of being able to download whatever music they wanted for free and even though we parents took the moral high ground warning that it was illegal, somewhere we were thrilled to see the power of the mighty music
industry brought down a notch or two. After all we were a generation held ransom to the ever escalating costs of CD's despite a reduction in the cost of their production.

The music industry, dominated at the time by the "big four" (Sony Music Entertainment, Universal, EMI and Warner) watched music sales drop from approximately $38 billion in 1999 to $32 billion in 2003, during the years that peer to peer (P2P) software was launched. The artists were no-doubt affected but no-one cared all that much because ultimately we all knew it was the 'suits' that
were suffering, and we were able to access music freely, not just free of cost but free of form too.

"Music, like love" said my sixteen year old daughter, "should be free", and off she went to download the Dandy Warhols latest song. She was not alone. In a paper presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, September 2008,
Mark Cooper, Director of research presented the following idea. He suggested that the dramatic decline in record sales had perhaps less to do with piracy and more to do with the natural changes brought about by the technology , ie. Consumer demand for singles over albums - made available now by the new technology.

Prior to this revolution, consumers were dictated to by the industry who decided when and how single songs were made available. How many albums have been purchased for want of a single track. In the conclusion to his presentation, he proposes that "technological change shifts the balance of interest between private rights and social goals and frequently triggers"piracy panics," wherein the gatekeepers of content feel the financial security of their intellectual property is at risk. These panics play out in furious legal battles."

In a series of vicious legal battles between the music industry and peer to peer software companies, such as Napstar and Kazaa, the record companies supported largely by a surprisingly conservative media put themselves forward as victims of piracy. The poor record companies were losing their monopoly and they didn't know how to deal with the revolution made possible by a technology they knew
nothing about.

Now we faced a real conflict. The media, traditional supporters of the underdog had done an about face and were supporting the record industry we had pushed up against our whole life. Where was the progressive forward thinking social conscious of the day, surely not in the lapel of Sony and EMI record producing magnates?
And so we continued to download free music.

Today it seems a new story is emerging. The record companies have joined the century using the same technology that seemingly threatened its margins just a few years ago. Peer to peer software is now being developed to redirect traffic to legal music files for downloading. The legal file is available for purchase with charges billed into internet costs by way of Internet Service Providers, and everyone is happy again.

Will this stop my teens from downloading free music, probably not, but it will hopefully be used to also stop other more harmful and illicit file sharing, and for that the rejuvenation of peer to peer software, with a legal and moral backbone, and the support of the industries that tried to bring it down, must be praised. Technology moves on, reinventing itself to serve the needs of those who use it, if sharing music is one such outcome, let the world join in and sing.

Music Industry Embraces Peer To peer technology

Remember when Napstar and Kazaa were like secret words passed around in code by teens at risk of getting busted by their parents for downloading music for free online? While parents for the most part were more concerned about protecting their computers, even then we understood that file sharing was the next big thing to take
the IT world by storm and any attempts to contain it were futile.

The music industry, dominated at the time by the "big four" namely Sony Music Entertainment, Universal, EMI and Warner accepted no such pretext as they watched music sales drop from approximately $38 billion to $32 billion over the same
three year period that P2P software was launched.

While we felt for the poor artists who were no doubt being short changed in royalties, we all knew it was the guys at the top who were suffering the most, calling foul play in the names of the musicians they represented. No one cared that much,record producing suits never impressed sixteen year olds, who just want to listen to music without having to work hard for cash that's hard to come by.

My teenage daughter shrugged her shoulders saying music like love should be free, and off she went to download her favorite song. Even though legal action was being taken against students on campus's across the states, kids and even the odd parent, continued to download music for free. As much as the cost, it was the form that was so tempting. You could download your favorite songs and not be held ransom by
the record companies packaging of single hits on expensive albums filled with songs nobody wanted to listen to.

In a paper presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, September 2008, Mark Cooper, Directorof research presented the following idea. He suggested that the dramatic decline in record sales had less to do with piracy and more to do
with the natural changes brought about by the technology ,ie. Consumer demand for singles over albums. He proposed that "technological change shifts the balance of interest between private rights and social goals and frequently triggers"piracy panics," wherein the gatekeepers of content feel the financial security
of their intellectual property is at risk. These panics play out in furious legal battles."

What followed was exactly that - a series of 'furious legal battles' between the music industry and peer to peer software companies, such as Napstar and Kazaa. What was most surprising was the media's lack of support for the technology that would ultimately be embraced. An older generation of reporters backed an even more out touch record industry who refused to acknowledge that peer to peer software was already embedded in the consumer psyche, and that no amount of money wasted in messy court cases could prevent its use.

Kids continued file sharing, new content sharing sites emerged,and even though Napstar and Kazaa lost their battle in court, the war on the frontier of technology vs piracy was won - with record companies now embracing the technology that once threatened its very existence. Peer to peer software is now being developed to
redirect traffic to legal music files for downloading.

Will my kids stop downloading music for free, probably not, but if the software proves to be able to redirect traffic from other harmful sites where illicit files are shared in the same way it redirects consumers to legal music download sites, the great battle will have been worth it. Perhaps then the media will get on board and support the inevitable fact that we have to work with what we have not against it.

download free music

There's a Lion in My Living Room - The wonderful world of cables

My seven year old son wants to know why he can't download Disney movies while I'm working. I explain to him that when he downloads videos, it takes up all the space in the cable leaving no space for any other information to come through. He wants to know what happens to my computer, why and how downloading affects my work. "I need to have aces to websites because I write stories and send them to websites so people can read them" I explain. He is satisfied with my simple answer, but I can tell that the cable concept is not quite grounded in reality. How does the Lion King himself get through the cable and land in our living room, in color and singing to the beat of an African drum?

The truth is I don't really understand it myself. I get lost somewhere between 'sound floats along air waves ' and 'information is reduced to digital signals'. I grab for the remote, the chocolate biscuit, the telephone, really anything that will distract me from the inevitable fact that there are some things I will never understand. Still something fascinates me about all that information flying through wires and landing up in our living room. The cables themselves are only wires and plastic coating. Maybe some are a better quality than others, copper a better conductor than aluminum, but still pull apart the cable and no pixie dust comes out to explain this magic flow of information that allows us to receive the wonderful world of Disney with surround sound, color and light as if we were sitting in the private viewing theatre of the head of a Hollywood studio.

There's something almost mystical about the concept of cables. In fact many mystical traditions use the analogy of a cable to explain how the physical and spiritual worlds are connected, how we are connected to our ancestors or even to a greater spiritual Force. The cable that sends information from the brain to the body is equally fascinating, complex and awesome in concept. The split seconds that it takes for my hand to type this word offers an illuminating example of the brilliance of the cable by way of the nervous system and as technology is fast discovering, it's all about speed.

As technology delivers more sophisticated media into our homes, cables are required to deliver information faster and more efficiently. Todays high definition cable HDMI Cable delivers information at a speed of six billion bits per second, which is six times the data rate required for playback from a standard DVD - still not as fast as information is delivered from my brain to my hand. I guess the difference being that in time, my delivery apparatus will be significantly diminished, and while I'm slowly making my way across the lawn of an aged care facility, the cable in my grandchildren's play pen will have Timon and Pumba themselves swinging from the light fittings and having Hakuna Matata.

Meanwhile the Disney channel clogs up my cable and technology continues to suggest that some things are better done the old way, on my disconnected laptop where the "world wide web" is just a glorified out of reach thesaurus. Later when the children are all in bed and Simba and Nala are all tucked in for the night, like Peter Pan I will once again fly through my limitless cable at ludicrous speed.

HDMI Cable
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The Digital Pop Machine

Anyone born during the sixties remembers the decade digital music swallowed pop. The transition from weary rock to synth pop was as fast as the technology that fed it would allow. In 1980, Devo, Blondie and Joy Division topped the charts with their digital pop synth sound and video clips that boasted special effects made possible only by digital video technology. Drum kits were reduced to a single lone stand with a thin boy in a striped shirt playing in time to a pre-recorded overproduced sound of a Roland drum machine. The theatrical piano replaced by a sorry single digital keyboard. Even the guitar was reduced to a mere accompaniment to the digital pre-recorded sequences of a machine that could reproduce the sounds of a thousand instruments.

In 1981, Roland released their first synthesiser supporting the MIDI format. MIDI (Musical Instrumental Digital Interface) is an industry standard protocol that allows musical equipment and computers to communicate with each other. In the early eighties, MIDI, developed sequences which allowed one to record, edit and play back. Soon after interfaces were released for the Apple Macintosh, Commodore 64, PC-Dos and the Atari ST. In 1991 the MIDI was tweaked to allow all types of media control devices to communicate with each other. A number of music file formats based on the MIDI-byte stream are used today to store music in the very compact form used for ringtones and video games.

Today the music industry has come full circle with the decline of record and CD sales and the marked growth of digital music sales in the form of mobile phone ringtones. Full circle in that Joy Divisions "Love will tear us Apart' has made a digital comeback, and can be heard from many a teenagers mobile phone, betraying the anonymity of the caller, and full circle in that once again, music has been reduced to its lowest common denominator. Simple notes on a simple scale encoded and decoded in the simplest possible way.

Yet, there's nothing simple about the digital music business. In July 2008 New Motion Inc (now Atrinsic) a leader in the internet advertising, mobile technology and entertainment industry announced that for a mere $6 million plus, it had acquired the asset of Ringtone.com, a valuable internet domain that receives over 1,000 sign ups per day for the downloading of mobile content.

Burton Katz, the Company’s CEO, commented saying “Ringtones are the historic growth driver behind worldwide mobile content sales. Over the past year and a half, there have been fundamental shifts in the subscription based business model supporting these services creating unique opportunities in a business continuing to see strong consumer demand."

At the same time, Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), an organization that collects royalties for song writers and publishers, is forecasting that overall ringtone sales in the US will fall 7 percent in 2008 to approximately $510 million. That drop indicating an 8 percent drop in 2007 to $550 million. BMI claimed that the market hit its peak in the US in 2006 with sales of $600 million.

CEO of Advertising web Service Steven Bermeister remembers recording music on his Roland Jupiter-8 keyboard. His family established one of the first retail computer shops in Sydney where the now retro Atari ST, with MIDI interface was sold. Even then his love of technology merged comfortably with his love of music. These days he's on the other side of the music business selling digital music and all its applications online through peer to peer networking.

Realizing that the ringtone business in the US was about two years behind Europe in terms of off-deck mobile content plays, in 2003 he established The Ringtone Channel. He wanted to get in early to be well positioned to "ride the wave of success that was seen in Europe and Australia when the US market caught up."

Bermeister says "The heat is coming out of the Ringtone market which means that the flood of players who came into the market late and have been losing money are getting out." He believes that will stabilize the business and bring down the cost of acquiring customers. The players that remain (those who got in early) will divide the market between them.

Madonna's Hung Up was almost certainly written to be downloaded onto a mobile phone and Britney knows it's her Prerogative to join the ringtone game too. The pop industry has fully ingested the digital music platform and is now spitting it out in ever devolving incremental bursts of half digested compositions, catchy enough to dance to and just short enough to forget.

Low Definition Kids in a High Definition World

Gone are the days when you would pull your new TV out the box, plug it in, connect the bunny ears and escape into the wonderful world of television? When our family first migrated from South Africa to Australia in the late seventies, we were mesmerized by the large colored TV that commanded central place on the green shag pile carpet in the living room of our rented Sydney home. In an attempt to maintain control of its apartheid system the South African government censored much of the social progress that was taking place in the rest of the world through conspicuously tight media control of newspapers, radio and the non-existent television of my childhood.

The Dutch Reform Church proclaimed television as the "devil's own box for disseminating communism and immorality". However after the country listened to one of the most spectacular world events - man's first steps on the moon, on radio alone, the government was forced to cede defeat. In January 1976 South Africa joined the century airing limited selections of mundane programs divided into English and Afrikaans during viewing time which ran for a mere five hours per night.

We were elated to arrive in a country where television was an accepted part of life and where four channels aired free from the early hours of the morning all through the night - in English. Perhaps the church was right but as far as we were concerned, the Fonz ruled! We would plonk ourselves down at the end of every school day to eat space food sticks and watch "Happy Days". After dinner we would return to the holy entertainment box filling our heads with new and useless information and over stimulate our senses with the barrage of advertising material, music, action and drama.

Today I watch my children memorized in the same way as they watch Star Wars on our High Definition TV. The picture quality is infinitely better, clearer, sharper, the characters larger, the sound booming through their little psyches, altering their imaginative play forever. A stick in the bush, is transformed into a light saber, the fairy queen is now princess Armedala.

The quality of this larger than life media is delivered into our humble home through a High Definition Multi-media Interface cable HDMI cable that allows the technology of video games consoles, personal computers, digital audio devices, computer monitors and all things high tech, to connect producing state of the art sound, picture and imaging. The home theatre is no longer the simple screening of a rented movie on a Friday night projected onto a white wall in a playroom where cousins and grandparents gather to watch Paul Newman and Robert Redford swindle their way through the west. Today the experience is an all consuming sensory onslaught from which it is almost impossible to disengage.

I remember my sister's indignation when she tried to participate in a visualization exercise that asked her to imagine she was walking through a forest." Disney stole my imagination!" she cried out at the end of the exercise – for she was able only to imagine a young Mowgli wondering through the deep forests of The Jungle Boy. I imagine today's High Definition TV is stealing more than our children's imagination, it's certainly stealing their time. As I watch their little eyes grow in awe at this larger than life, overly defined backlit world, I wonder about the reality against which they will be able to define themselves.

HDMI

Campus Life - the Sober Way

One of the greatest pressures on kids on campus today is the pressure to drink and take drugs - to party. Getting 'out of it' is part and parcel of college life and some might say everyday life too. All cultures have some way of releasing the tensions, relaxing the senses and experiencing alternative perspectives of reality. It would be more productive if our methods of escape were healthier to include meditation, dance, yoga and sport, but campus life is already set in a mold which young adults fine hard to resist. College is also the time when young adults truly experience freedom and coupled with their eternal sense of invincibility, use of drugs and alcohol have become an integrated part of the culture of campus life.

The more mature, the more sensible, the more serious kids might focus more on their studies and less on the background party that accompanies college life, but they too, in all likelihood will celebrate the end of a semester, the end of the year, holidays and week-ends with a small amount of alcohol or the use of soft drugs. In Anthony Wolf's book entitled "Get Out Of My Life But First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?", he describes how children who are more attached and have close relationships with their parents often rebel the most pushing against their family norms to individuate. College is the perfect place for this expression.

I recently met a kid who had graduated from a College in California called Sober College. It's an educational and therapeutic institution that supports kids who have drug and alcohol addictions and for whom regular college life is not possible because of the inherent culture of drink and drug use. This young man had completely changed his life, undergoing drug rehabilitation, counseling and even 'surf therapy'. He was completing a law degree when I met him. He had learned new ways to manage his stress, to release the pressure. They included surfing, swimming in the ocean and studying music. I was struck by his raw emotional honesty, his mature perspective and his appreciation for the opportunity to transition from alcoholism to sobriety in a supported college environment.

Recently DePauw University expelled the national sorority Delta Zeta because the group got rid of over twenty members because they were considered overweight and socially inept. The social immaturity, the lack of integrity and the blatant discriminatory values expressed by the sorority reflect a campus culture that increasingly pressures kids to devalue themselves. By comparison, the young man from Sober College was infinitely more interesting, intelligent and hopeful. He would not allow himself to be a pawn in a social system that encouraged negative behavior. Now a mature student, he was a fine example how productive a sober college life can be.