"I remember a Christmas as a boy where I was given both a bicycle and a copy of The Hobbit, and strict instructions to make immediate progress with both. [My dad and I] continue to find it very easy to choose birthday gifts for each other." Mainly linked just for this paragraph.

"My 12 year old daugh­ter uses a com­pletely unfil­tered Inter­net con­nec­tion. She also has root access to the net­work at home and to the com­puter she uses. Yet she’s never encoun­tered any of the prob­lems Sen­a­tor Con­roy and the likes of Sen­a­tor Field­ing seem to believe are ram­pant — no nas­ties, viruses, stalk­ers or any other unde­sir­able in sev­eral years of using the Inter­net unfil­tered and mostly unsu­per­vised. And you know why? _Good rules and decent par­ent­ing_ (well, cer­tainly the first and hope­fully the second)." Man, Australia's conservatism is getting rather scary.