As long as we're on the topic, I hate that we depend on ratings to figure out what is and what is not safe for children to watch. It's just like the parents who complained to George Lucas because Revenge of the Sith was rated PG-13. "Now we can't let our kids see it, and they wanted to so bad!" as if this giant number 13 was suddenly blocking the door of the movie theatre, and there was nothing the parents could do about it. Parents should make up their own minds about what they feel is appropriate for their children, not let some number system do it for them. Each child is different and is at different levels of maturity, so we don't need to fall into some stupid form-fitting system.

And I especially hate television ratings, but that's because they are annoying to look at. I watched some tapes I recorded back in 1997, and it's amazing how tiny the rating was back then. I was still annoyed with it blocking the screen then, but as of June of this year, have you noticed that the ratings are now huge at the beginning of the show? They take up nearly a quarter of the screen, and then they show a smaller rating when they come back from each commercial break. It's just so stupid. Anybody who actually cared about the TV ratings (which is no one in my household) could already see it easily enough without it covering up the entire screen. The whole thing is just stupid.