For the yutz putting a coat over his head to watch tv instead of flying the plane, he should stay home or take a cattle car. That mentality has no absolutely business anywhere in the world except on the sofa at home. Bored kids in the backseat, fine, but the pilot? If I were sitting next to him, I'd be solo in about 0.2 seconds because I'd slap him clean throught he side of the plane without unlatching the door. If one is suicidal that's fine go for it, but that behavior actively threatens other uninvolved people which is completely unacceptable.
tdager said:
I certaily subscribe to the sterile cockpit methodology for takeoffs and landings. I also understand being attentive while flying...however I also want flying to be enjoyable and fun, not all "work", so why would I not want to have conversations with my passengers, or listen to music if plugged into a system that will automatically cut it off whenever it sends or receives communications?
How about approaching the have fun flying mentality from a completely different point of view? It's simple: Enjoy flying the plane. Nothing more, nothing less.
I grew up around airplanes literally from day one and the whole sterile cockpit/multitasking concept is a sick joke. We have never used it at all because it's completely unnecessary where I come from. If you think about it for a minute, the sterile cockpit idea is based on the fact that you'd rather be doing something else and flying the plane gets in the way of your prefered activity so you have to block out time for flying in order to not kill yourself. So-called multitasking is done just like a computer does it; Little pieces of one task are done at a time while forgetting all the other tasks then jumping to the next task in the sequence. If you don't believe multitasking is done that way, ask yourself why people run redlights without realizing it while yakking on the phone - the junk software forgot to jump back to task #1.
In the countless hours of flying alone and with family and friends, going flying has always been about flying. No videos, no stereo, no yakking about non flying stuff and it didn't matter if it was a half hour goofing around the local hills or on a 1000 mile XC. It isn't sterile cockpit nonsense. It is just what we do. No one I've been in a plane with has ever gotten bored from it and it's actually really fun being completely immersed in the flying experience at the time.
IMNSHO if you want to talk about who's doing what, what happened on last night's sitcom, listen to the stereo or watch tv, you can do that at home as a couch potato. If transportation is just an annoyance between point A and point B, flying airplanes is a really bad hobby to pick because flying is actually about the journey between those two points.
I'd go as far as saying if you dump the outside distractions (experimental prototype spacecraft aside) flying a simple a Cherokee 180 or CE150, something like 90% of the pilot induced ballups, missed preflight items and getting lost would go away even without the use of checklists and GPS/glass cockpits. I mean, seriously, how many actual things are there on the right wing of a Cherokee that you could possibly miss during preflight if you're paying attention at all? There's not a lot of pieces to it. (In my best Foghorn Leghorn voice: "Pay attention here son, this is important.")
..Just one crazy caveman aviator's opinion...
Signed,
Normal.
Next time I go to the grandparents' for TG, I'm flying! 
Then they talked about a mom with two kids and a Columbia doing just that on their trips! 