Amen to that!: "It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber."— George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 10, 2002

A Star Analyst Exits Loudly. Others Hide Backstage. [New York Times: Technology]: "Sure, he made $20 million a year urging investors to buy untested telecom stocks even as they nose-dived. And yes, he is walking away with almost $32 million in cash and stock even after most of the companies he followed are in tatters. Still, Mr. Grubman wants you to know that he, too, is a victim."

The big, bad internet

Radio, rock and roll, television, pinball, video arcade and then computer games, and now the internet -- anything new and not understood by an older generation is always the source of evil for the latest generation of kids. "It's always something," as Roseanne Rosannadanna, the late great comedian Gilda Radner's newscaster character on Saturday Night Live, used to say in every broadcast.

The media is ridiculously happy to chase after any story that might serve as a burning example of such vague fears and usually such stories are presented in an incredibly patronising and sanctimonious way, either treating adult readers as gullible children who don't understand the real nastiness of the Net, or telling them off in a scolding way that implies we've all been way too lax about this internet thing.

This has been very true in Britain and Ireland as we've watched the terrible tragedy unfold of the abduction and murder of the two 10 year old British girls, Holly and Jessica, over the past week. Right after their disappearance the police began to investigate whether the girls, who like many 10 year olds use a home PC, might have gone off to meet someone they met in an internet chatroom. This was an obvious and correct line of enquiry for the police as they searched for any possible clue in their investigation. But the media pounced upon it as an opportunity to run endless and depressingly predictable background stories that attacked 'the internet' -- as if it was just one big seething nasty chatroom full of paedophiles -- and to play upon parents' fears in an irresponsibly vague way. In contrast to their kids' ease with all things digital, parents often do not use or feel comfortable with their home PCs and the Net.

So we had lots of interviews with sociologists on the phenomenon of the chatroom and paedophelia. And lots of interviews with kids who hang out in chatrooms. And bless 'em, the kids all sounded perfectly well-informed about the dangers of giving out names and addresses to anyone who made them feel uncomfortable and could easily spot the sleazier occupents of chatrooms. They seemed slightly surprised that adults were asking them about something so obvious -- in the same way that my generation of kids would have thought adults were pretty dumb to think we didn't know how to spot the creepy-crawlies who would say things to us as we played in the local park. Most kids know the score. Those that don't -- and hey, even those that do -- need supportive adults who don't get hysterical about what kids are doing every minute of the day, but explain clearly that there are very strange and sometimes very bad people out there. Kids need guidance about what to do or not to do when on the Net just as they need guidance from parents in other areas of their lives.

After the flurry of stories on chatrooms --and the implication and often assumption in media coverage that the internet had led to the children's abduction -- the police announced the kids hadn't been in a chatroom at all and that this aspect of the enquiry had led nowhere. So were there any "gee, the Net's not guilty after all" stories to follow up? Of course not. At the moment the key suspects in the case are the groundsman and his teaching assistant girlfriend, both who worked at the girls' school and knew them. So will we now have a flurry of stories about the evil potential of all schoolteachers and school staff? Children told not to ever talk to their teachers outside of class time? Of course not.