Tees and distracted driving.

*cell phones have become increasingly important fixtures in Americans’ lives and public concern over their use while driving has grown.2 At the time of the 2006 survey, just 35% of adult cell phone owners said they used the text messaging feature on their phones. By April 2009, the use of text messaging by cell phone owners had nearly doubled to 65%.3

*Several states including California, Connecticut and Oregon have already passed laws to ban all texting or talking with a handheld phone while driving, and the Senate is now considering a bill that would provide federal funding to states that enact similar laws.

*According to the latest research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2008 alone, there were 5,870 fatalities and an estimated 515,000 people were injured in police-reported crashes in which at least one form of driver distraction was reported. Distractions among young drivers are of particular concern, as the highest incidence of distracted driving occurs in the under-20 age group.

*New research released in July 2009 by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) examines a variety of tasks that draw drivers’ eyes away from the roadway and suggests that text messaging on a cell phone is associated with the highest risk among all cell phone-related tasks observed among drivers.

*In September 2009 U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood convened policy makers, safety advocates, law enforcement representatives and academics to address the risk of text-messaging and other “distracted driving” behavior. At the conclusion of the summit, Secretary LaHood announced an executive order from President Obama that forbids federal workers from texting while driving government vehicles or their own vehicles while on the job.

The state of music online:

*Music critic Sasha Frere-Jones has referred to the plight of the music industry as the “canary in the economic coal mine,” citing it as “a small example of the enormous financial buckling that is now global.”

* Napster arrived at a time when tightly controlled access to new music was still the norm. While online radio stations were starting to flourish, music lovers were becoming disillusioned with the homogenizing effects of terrestrial radio consolidation that was enabled by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Their frustrations were made clear when the Federal Communications Commission reviewed these rules in 2003 and opened them up for public comment. The FCC received more than 15,000 letters, emails and other documents.

*The revolutionary file-sharing application created by college student Shawn Fanning officially launched in June of 1999. By November, the file-sharing network had grown so popular that it had attracted the first of many peer-to-peer-focused lawsuits from the RIAA. And by the time the Pew Internet Project fielded its initial survey on music file-sharing in July 2000, nearly one in four adult internet users said they had downloaded music files, and most of them (54%) had used the Napster network to do so

Alan Khazei

*Alan Khazei is running for U.S State Senate. Along with him, Rep. Mike Capuano, Attorney General Martha Coakley, Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca are other candidates for the position..

* Alan Khazei co-founded City Year in 1988 and served as its CEO until 2006. Alan left City Year in 2006 after 19 years and is now the Founder and CEO of "Be the Change", an organization committed to building broad-based non-partisan citizen support for systemic solutions to our nation's problems that leverage the experience of social entrepreneurs, civic and community leaders, and national service alumni.Mr. Khazei has received numerous honors for his leadership in the nonprofit sector - in 2006, U.S. News & World Report recognized Mr. Khazei and Michael Brown as among America's Best Leaders, and the two leaders of City Year have also received the Reebok Human Rights Award and the Jefferson Award for Public Service. Mr. Khazei currently serves on the Board of Directors of Citizen Schools, Harvard Alumni Association, New Profit, Inc., Share Our Strength, and on the Advisory Board of America's Promise, the Partnership for Public Service, and the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. An honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Mr. Khazei currently lives in Jamaica Plain, MA with his wife and daughter.

*Alan came to our school, American International College to advertise and express what he would do to help our community out. His main concern for us was health care. He stated that "health care is a personal issue."

Teens and technology

*According to the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project telephone survey fielded in October and November 2004, 87% of American youth aged 12 to 17 go online. That represents roughly 21 million teens who use the internet in some aspect of their lives. The online teen population has increased by roughly 24% since we last asked this question in a survey in December 2000. On the flip side, 13% of American teenagers do not use the Internet. About half (47%) of teens who say they do not go online have been online before but have since dropped off.

*Parents of teens are also much more likely to go online than the average American adult. Some 80% of parents who have teenagers go online, compared to 66% of all American adults. Parents with teenagers who use the internet have even higher levels of connectivity, with 84% of them reporting internet use.

*Starting Junior High seems to be the moment when most teens who were not previously online get connected. About 60% of the 6th graders in our sample reported using the Internet. By 7th grade, this number jumps to 82% of teens who are online. From there, the percentage of internet users in the teen population for each grade climbs steadily before topping out at 94% for all 11th and 12th graders. Much of the lag among 6th graders appears to come from boys. Less than half (44%) of 6th grade boys report going online, compared to 79% of 6th grade girls.