Communication

When Pink Floyd first took its concept album "The Wall" to the concert stage more than three decades ago, even lead singer and chief songwriter Roger Waters couldn't imagine a day when rock music might get any bigger. But 32 years later, his magnum opus about the battle between individual freedoms and authoritarian oppression has magnified beyond Waters' own expectations of yore. Now the man who once excoriated the voluminous expansion of the rock concert experience has helped institutionalize it. "I famously hated playing to large numbers of people and playing in stadiums," Waters, 68, said from a tour stop in Austin, Texas, earlier this month.

That stereotypical image of the American teenager glued to the phone needs an update. A new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that 37% of Internet users ages 12 to 17 participate in video chats using such applications as Skype, Google Talk and iChat - and girls are more likely to engage in them than boys. "As more and more devices in our lives have video capabilities - as laptops and computers come with built-in video cameras, and many smartphones have cameras that allow for video chatting, for taking videos - teens are taking advantage of that," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist with Pew Research Center.

Gov. George Deukmejian has signed legislation requiring pregnant teen-age girls to obtain parental consent to have an abortion. He claims this will "encourage" communication. What I want to know is why the father of the fetus doesn't have to inform his parents? Shouldn't teen boys be "encouraged" to communicate with their parents too? Aren't they equally responsible for their actions? It seems to me that once again women are taking all of the consequences. This legislation gives teen boys the message that they won't be held accountable for their actions.

Laurie Tragen-Boykoff rocks on her feet, holding on to a large sign, her hands trembling. The international arrivals ramp at LAX is empty, but that only fuels her anticipation. She's waited 25 years for this. On the sign is a blown-up black-and-white photograph of a somber-faced boy. His name is Nicky Mutoka. Below, in large black letters, the Agoura Hills social worker has written: "NICKY!!! I'M LAURIE. " She lifts the sign, her face disappearing behind it. But she is smiling. In 1987, she began what she saw as a most unlikely pen pal correspondence.

"Only connect," E.M. Forster advised. He had no idea. I once worked for a company so wired that the boss told me, "The real test of a relationship is how quickly you can get out of bed after making love to check your email. " That was a decade ago. Now almost everyone I know is armed with an iPhone or a BlackBerry, and the better question is whether you'd interrupt sex to read a tweet or respond to a text message. My bet: Most would. Indeed, as I watch people madly pecking on tiny keyboards or announcing their locations as if they're human GPS devices, there's really nothing people won't interrupt in order to connect with … well, just about anybody.

Military public relations has advanced remarkably since Douglas McArthur discovered what a little newsprint and film could do. Wednesday, April 23, the Marines at Tustin's air station mounted a unique frontal assault. In face-to-face communication with the community, the Marines demonstrated that the explosive situations they're capable of defusing aren't only in combat zones. They can definitely hold their ground in their own neighborhood. With their second "flight operations seminar," Col. David McEvoy and staff demonstrated that eyeball-to-eyeball communication improves relations with citizens unnerved by the noise of helicopter operations.

Is a picture still worth a thousand words in a world with cell phones, e-mail and satellite TV? Whether it's verbal or nonverbal, visual or written or electronic, communication has changed dramatically from the cave paintings, stone carvings and smoke signals of long ago. Explore the history of communication and the many ways people have expressed their ideas through the direct links on The Times' Launch Point Web site: http://www.latimes.com/lauchpoint/

Fine articles like that of Miles Corwin on the Loved Ones of Homicide Victims group ("For the Longest Time I Just Wanted to Die," May 18) can help open the lines of communication and humanity among all of the L.A. area's communities so we can reach over the boundaries that have separated us for much too long. I'm sure I was not the only person deeply touched by this heart-wrenching story. Can you tell us where we can send donations to the Loved Ones or to Virginia Davis so that she can buy a headstone for her son?

The quirk factor Re "A husk of its former self," Column One, Dec. 1 I find it so sad that roadside attractions such as the Corn Palace in South Dakota are battling for their survival. Speaking as a foreigner, I must say that these quirky attractions are part of what makes the United States appealing to the rest of the world. The U.S. has had a long history of tolerating and even embracing the eccentric. These imaginative places should not be allowed to vanish, as already far too many have.

Being annoying, offensive or maybe even provocative online could become illegal in Arizona if legislators move forward with a bill. Arizona House Bill 2549 would amend the telephone harassment section of the state's anti-stalking law to include the communication technology of the day in an effort to combat cyberbullying. The portion in question reads: "It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.

The New Orleans Saints, already reeling from the bounty scandal, were confronted Monday with a different type of explosive allegation. According to ESPN, Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis had a device in his Superdome suite that allowed him to listen in on the game-day communications of opposing coaching staffs and did so in his first three seasons in New Orleans, from 2002 through 2004, before the device was dismantled in 2005. Loomis is suspended through the first eight games of next season for his role in another debacle, the club's improper pay-for-performance program and cover-up, in which players were offered cash bonuses for injuring opponents.

OAKLAND - Aaron Negherbon remembers the plaintive email he received from a Marine sergeant in Afghanistan. "Aaron, I don't know if you can do this," it read. "Our supply truck was blown up and all the gear from my nine medics was destroyed. " The sergeant was requesting surgical kits, gauze, equipment for cutting into tracheas and "all the etc. " Negherbon, 38, founder and president of TroopsDirect, a nonprofit organization, had the supplies gathered, shipped and in the hands of front-line troops within 10 days.

SACRAMENTO - A coalition led by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. is backing legislation that critics contend would strip the state Public Utilities Commission of its last vestige of regulatory power over basic land-line telephone service. The bill, authored by the powerful chairmen of the Senate and Assembly committees overseeing utilities, would ensure that state agencies have "no regulatory jurisdiction or control" over telephone calls that involve sending voice signals over the Internet.

The new Greek film "Attenberg" follows a young woman as she cares for her father while he struggles through the final stages of a terminal illness. A 23-year-old virgin, she finds herself coming to terms with impending grief just as she is also feeling an emergent lust for a stranger she has just met. Sex and death, old mysteries dealt with in new ways. While those themes have long fascinated independent filmmakers, Athina Rachel Tsangari, writer and director of "Attenberg," which opened in Los Angeles Friday, puts a unique and rather odd twist on her coming-of-age story: The film features a number of sequences in which the lead character, Marina (Ariane Labed)

Being annoying, offensive or maybe even provocative online could become illegal in Arizona if legislators move forward with a bill. Arizona House Bill 2549 would amend the telephone harassment section of the state's anti-stalking law to include the communication technology of the day in an effort to combat cyberbullying. The portion in question reads: "It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.

Nokia Corp. is taking steps to make sure that you never miss another phone call, text or email alert again: The company has filed a patent for a tattoo that would send "a perceivable impulse" to your skin whenever someone tries to contact you on the phone. According to the patent filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the phone would communicate with the tattoo through magnetic waves. The phone would emit magnetic waves and the tattoo would act as a receiver. When the waves hit the tattoo, it would set off a tactile response in the user's skin.

How many times have you had a reasonable, clear and seemingly conclusive discussion with a colleague who closed the conversation by asking: "Would you send me a memo on that, please?" This isn't only irritating and an enormous waste of time. It also reflects an unfortunate bias in modern organizations toward overvaluing literacy, underplaying verbal contracts and the simple honesty they require, and creating layers and layers of meddlesome paper-pushers.

A 20-story Atlas V rocket built by United Launch Alliance lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and carried a 15,000-pound communications satellite into orbit for the Navy. The satellite was initially slated to blast off last week but was pushed back because of bad weather. The spacecraft, part of the Mobile User Objective System, was launched at 2:15 p.m. Pacific time Friday from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape.  Watch the launch here. The new system, dubbed MUOS, will provide more than 10 times the capacity of the Navy's current UHF Follow-On constellation, which provides communications for aircraft, ship, submarine and ground forces.

Now it's Facebook's turn to share. The social networking giant that coaxes 845 million people to divulge the most intimate details about their lives is one step closer to cashing in on its meteoric rise in what could be the largest initial public offering to come out of Silicon Valley. Facebook Inc. filed papers Wednesday with the goal of raising $5 billion in a public stock sale that could come in May. The offering would be the largest among Internet companies, eclipsing Google Inc. in 2004 and Netscape Communications in 1995.