Wired: Son, Call Me Big Brother
July 12, 2006
While the issue of what the Philosopher Kids see and do online is a few years away, this short article is an important reminder that we need to keep tabs on what our kids and teens do on the web.
Mr. Know-It-All remembers when all his parents had to worry about was his pen-and-paper diary. It would have been tough to read in any case – it was hidden under a stack of Green Lantern comics and written in secret code. But that was a gentler time.
Now things are more complicated. Odds are you’re worried about the public implications of your kid’s behavior online – such as whether your tween is passing herself off as a sultry 19-year-old on MySpace, or he’s nursing an outta-control Internet poker and porn habit. Or maybe you’re concerned that Google’s cache will cough up their explicit blog to a prospective employer in 2016. “In a teenage brain, impulse control is still under construction,” psychologist David Walsh says. “The job of the parent is to act as the surrogate prefrontal cortex.”
It is important to understand the technologies that kids are using to find information and to express themselves online. Parents need to know how MySpace, Flickr and MSN Messenger work. As with many things, the most important thing is to work at keeping an open dialogue with your kids.
Ban on gay marriage denies justice to children
July 11, 2006
The N.Y. court says marriage is good for kids. Then why doesn’t my daughter deserve the same legal protection as the children of opposite-sex parents?
Although some keep pushing for a free vote in parliament in the hopes of repealing bill C-38, the issue is essentially settled here in Canada. When will you guys catch up to the rest of the world?
Avoiding Punishment Is Its Own Reward
July 11, 2006
To give your child an incentive to take out the garbage, you might offer to buy her a treat, or you might threaten to withhold her regular allowance. Does the child respond the same way to reward as it does to avoiding punishment? Psychologists have evidence from certain kinds of behavioral experiments to believe that avoiding punishment is itself a reward.
This one is tricky, but it seems as though the same part of the brain is activated when one earns a reward or avoids a punishment.
New Model Of Brain Sheds Light On Triggers Of Autism
July 11, 2006
Approximately 1.5 million children and adults in the U.S. have autism and it is estimated to be the fastest growing developmental disability with a 10 – 17 percent increase each year. While much is known about the symptoms of autism, the exact cause of the condition is not yet defined.
This new model shows that autism spectrum disorders (Wikipedia) result from the breakdown of specific neural pathways that prevent the brain from learning how to recognize and differentiate between concrete things and abstractions. For example, an autistic child might learn to understand that when Mommy smiles she is happy, but will be unable to have an abstract understanding of smiling. When another person smiles, the child will not necessarily be able to interpret the emotion.
Cool Jews | Salon Arts & Entertainment
July 10, 2006
Cool Jews | Salon Arts & Entertainment
Leonard Cohen is a Jew. But he’s not just any Jew: He’s dark, mysterious, unabashedly prurient and eternally hip. This is a troubling prospect. Not because of what it says about Cohen himself, but rather because of what’s been left in his wake. Which is nothing. My interest in Leonard Cohen’s music was rekindled by “I’m Your Man,” a documentary and concert film that further entrenches the poet and songwriter’s status as one of the coolest dudes around. After reacquainting myself with a body of work that includes darkly beautiful and richly evocative classics like “Hallelujah,” “Bird on a Wire,” “First We Take Berlin” and “Famous Blue Raincoat,” I began to wonder where I could find some contemporary examples of Jew-man coolness. I didn’t know where to turn. Looking for poets, I found only pishers. Shmendriks abound, sex symbols are few and far between. Where have all the cool Jews gone?
ScienceDaily: DDT In Mothers Linked To Developmental Delays In Children, UC Berkeley Study Finds
July 6, 2006
ScienceDaily: DDT In Mothers Linked To Developmental Delays In Children, UC Berkeley Study Finds
Since the 1970s, scientists have known that when DDT accumulates in a woman’s tissues it can be transmitted to her developing fetus across the placenta. Now, a new study led by a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that such in utero exposure is associated with developmental delays in the young child.
The more we learn about how the environement affects our long term health and development, the scarier it gets. In some places, notably heavily industrialized areas and in the far North, the levels of dangerous compounds in some women’s breastmilk is so high that many are being actively discouraged from breastfeeding.
Technorati Tags: DDT, environment, breastfeeding
News For Parents.org – Mercury Emissions
July 6, 2006
16 states are taking the EPA to court over mercury emissions trading.
New Jersey’s attorney general filed a court petition Monday on behalf of 16 states challenging the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s new mercury pollution rules.
The petition asks a federal judge to reactivate a lawsuit filed last year challenging a rule known as ‘cap-and-trade.’
Cap-and-trade allows power plants to buy emissions reduction credits from plants whose emissions fall below target levels, rather than installing their own mercury emissions controls. It is to go into effect in 2010.
The lawsuit was put on hold in October after the EPA agreed to reconsider the rules, but on May 31, the agency’s announced revisions didn’t included cap-and-trade.
‘After six months of stalling, EPA not only failed to address the grave dangers posed to communities and children by its cap-and-trade program for mercury emissions, it made the program worse by further weakening standards,’ New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber said. The petition was filed in federal court in Washington.
At least someone is taking the initiative.
Technorati Tags: Mercury, environment, pollution
Inflatable pools for big people
June 29, 2006
ScienceDaily: Kids Who Blow Bubbles Find Language Is Child’s Play
This study looked at 120 children and cross referenced their vocabular at 21 months with different playing skills at the same age. Not surprisingly children who could do things like blow bubbles were better with langauge. Both require good oral-motor control. The research also observed that children who were better at playing pretend were better at language as well, suggesting that there is an important link between imagination and langauge.
Technorati Tags: language, development, parenting, children,
Bodyhack – Stem Cells from Baby Teeth
June 28, 2006
A company in Austin, Texas has opened the first baby tooth stem cell bank. Scientists found stem cells in baby teeth in 2003.
Just in case you thought there was perhaps a similar effort somewhere else in the world, here’s what BioEden has to say about that:
BioEden , Inc. is the first company of its kind anywhere in the world open for business in response to overwhelming public interest in new source of stem cells.
Make no mistake and accept no cheap imitations! But also keep in mind that like umbilical cord banks, personal storage of stem cells has been called it a rip off because it’s unlikely you’ll ever need the cells. Also, public banks (similar to blood banks) will likely have you covered should the need arise.
P.S. The service is considerably cheaper than cord blood banking.
The actual likely hood of your child needing their own stem cells is about 1:200,000 and the chance that another direct family member will be a match are much small than that.
If you chose to bank cord blood, what were you reasons?
