By Cory Doctorow at 9:59 am Friday, May 25
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Here's an undated ad from "Sugar Information, Inc" (our old friends), warning mothers that if they include their kids in their sugar-free, dieting lifestyles, they will be depriving the poor kiddlees of vital sugar and exposing them to "exhaustion." Obviously, this was before the cancer scares and other stuff about artificial sweeteners, because surely that's the major reason to keep your kids away from artificial sweeteners. I love the fact that they recommend sugar for dieters, too: "gives you the va-va-voom you need for all those exercises!"
Sugar!
By Cory Doctorow at 2:00 pm Wednesday, May 23
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Celeste Kidd from the University of Rochester writes in with news of a new study on PLoS One, which attempts to quantify the amount of stimulus that is optimal for amusing and engaging babies:
This video discusses the results of eye-tracking study we recently did at the University of Rochester that explains how babies organize their search for information in the complex world (and thus make their learning process much more efficient). The findings suggest infants look away from experiences that are either overly simple (and thus contain no new information from which to learn), or overly complex (and thus too overwhelming to learn from efficiently).
Infants in the study reliably preferred scenes that contained just the right amount of information--that is, those that were a little bit, but not too, surprising. We dubbed this attention pattern the "Goldilocks effect". These findings could have broad implications for human learning at all ages, and we hope the research will facilitate the development of more effective educational policies and diagnostic tools for attention-related
disabilities (such as ADHD and autism).
Also important, especially for parents and teachers, is the fact that this study demonstrates that the same response--namely, disinterest or boredom---may result from two different, entirely opposite mechanisms. Children are likely to become disinterested if the learning material is either too simple, because the material is either already known or may be picked up and understood quickly; however, they'll also show that same response of disinterest if the material is overly complex, likely because such material is just too overwhelming.
The Goldilocks Effect
(Thanks, Celeste!)
By Cory Doctorow at 12:09 pm Sunday, May 20
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Simonhac sez, "Today I armed my kids with unrolled paperclips and asked them to pop the two-week-old helium balloons that have been kicking around our house at ground level since my daughter's birthday. I was not aware that my 8 year old daughter had given the balloons personalities and was really not happy with my plans for them. She was so upset she couldn't talk, but marched into the room and gave me this note. Bad Dad!"
would you like it if just because you were getting old you got popped?
(Thanks, Simonhac!)
By Cory Doctorow at 4:00 pm Friday, May 18
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Redditor Surprisemailbox posted this image of a note left by a seven year old for her parents, regarding security policies at home: "If you put a pasword on that I will make your life a nitmare."
The day Poesy leaves me a comparable note, I will have validation that all my parenting was not in vain. (Of course, that's assuming she doesn't just shoulder-surf the password and leave me in a fool's paradise.)
My friends 7 year old sister left this note for her parents on their computer.
(via Neatorama)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:55 am Saturday, May 12
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Here's Kitt and his delightful progeny cleverly disguised as a tauntaun and Han Solo on the frozen ice-world of Hoth: "His tauntaun even had removable guts to warm your hands with."
Happy House Warming, Kitt!
(via Super Punch)
Jon Cotner from
the Hairpin tells Boing Boing, "To celebrate Mother's Day, my fiancée Claire Hamilton and I talked with 20 moms during an overcast, leafy walk through Brooklyn. We asked them to describe memorable moments of their motherhood.
Here's the link."
— Xeni
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm Thursday, May 10
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Saipancakes, who normally makes astounding pancakes like the ones above, had a rather spectacular pancakefail (right), prompting him to inaugurate an ugly pancake contest: "Rules: 1. It must be mostly pancake batter, and cooked like a pancake; 2. You (or someone) must eat it. You have until Saturday, May 19, to send me a photo of your creation. Winner will be chosen by my 4-year-old son. Honorable mentions will also be included on the site. Send your photo(s), title, and explanation to..."
Ugly Pancake Contest
By Cory Doctorow at 10:05 pm Monday, Apr 30
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Last September, Moosie made a kick-ass soda-bottle toy jetpack for a flight-obsessed toddler:
Step 1: Spray plastic bottles with plastic primer (I used Krylon Fusion). Let dry.
Step 2: Spray bottles with your favorite silver spray paint (doesn't have to be plastic specific.) Let dry.
Step 3: Adhere bottles to a piece of cardboard, approximately the width of the bottles next to each other. Let dry.
Step 4: Use ribbon to create backpack-like straps. Adhere. (I used duct tape. That shiz works for everything!)
Step 5: Cut crepe paper strips to create flames. Glue the tops of the strips to another piece of crepe paper. Let dry.
Step 6: Accordion fold the top strip of the flames. Glue to the inside of the bottle tops (which are actually the bottom of the jetpack.) Let Dry.
Step 7: Run around the house making flying sounds with your mouth (or let your kid handle this step)
Jet Pack
(via Neatorama)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:51 am Monday, Apr 30
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Southlandification and his brood perform a high-Wayne's-World orthodox Bohemian Rhapsody ceremony every day on the way to school:
It has become a morning habit to sing Bohemian Rhapsody on the way to school in the morning. Depending on traffic, we can usually start the song as we pull out of the driveway, and pull into the school just as the song ends.
Bohemian Rhapsody On The Way To School
(Thanks, Mojo Texas!)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 am Tuesday, Apr 24
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Daniel Pinkwater, a much-loved living treasure of children's literature, has a new book out today. It's called Mrs Noodlekugel and it is a simple, silly pleasure that feels like the end-product of a lifetime of telling children's stories, carefully removing all the elements that are extraneous to young readers' enjoyment until nothing but the essentials remain. I like to think of Pinkwater's books that way, a kind of skeletal Jenga tower, every extraneous block removed and used to make the structure taller.
Nick and Maxine live in a high-rise apartment building, and one day they discover that one window overlooks a tiny, old fashioned cottage in a small green between their tower and several others. The building's janitor tells them that this is Mrs Noodlekugel's house, and when they quiz their parents about it, they are forbidden to go there.
So they go there. And Mrs Noodlekugel is a sweet old lady who has a talking cat and four nearly-blind mice who get the crumbs from their tea-parties, and she is perfectly pleasant and tells them they're welcome the next day for a gingerbread baking project that the talking cat is undertaking. When the kids tell their parents about this, their parents reveal that they knew all about her, and that she is their new babysitter, and the kids realize they've been tricked.
But they don't mind. They've got Mrs Noodlekugel and the baking. The mice help. And the gingerbread mice -- which the real mice roll around on -- come to life when they come out of the oven. Everyone's delighted by this, and then the crows eat them. But that's OK. They were only gingerbread. And besides, it would be unsanitary to eat cookies that the nearly blind mice rolled around on.
The End.
Adam Stower's illustrations are just a little old fashioned, enough to make them seem, you know, a bit classy, but without losing any of their kid appeal. And Pinkwater is, as always, the Fred Astaire of weird, making the fantastic seem effortless. Reading Pinkwater as a boy made me the happy mutant I am today. Reading Pinkwater today keeps me happily mutated in the face of the world's relentless insistence on normalcy.
Mrs Noodlekugel
Read the rest
By Cory Doctorow at 11:39 am Saturday, Apr 21
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On Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews, a smart, to-the-point commentary on legalizing sex-work:
And, of course, I’m open to the question of whether legalization results in more trafficking (it seems to vary by country), and so on, but I’ve never heard a decent rejoinder to the idea that men and women can decide to have sex with each other for any, any random/shitty/nice reason they want (boredom, vengeance, lust, love, can’t afford movie tickets, hatred, etc.) EXCEPT for this one: one of those people has money to offer, and the other person needs the money...
And I’m particularly aggravated, when I support legalizing sex work, and people say triumphantly: “would you want your daughter to be a sex worker?” as though that should matter. I’d rather she not be a lobbyist, or work in a sweatshop, or a coal mine, or be a malpractice lawyer, either. But it doesn’t have a lot to do with me, either way, and if she were to do any of these things, I’d like her to be able to call the cops on someone attempting to take advantage of her, and be able to use Turbo Tax at the end of the year to report her income.
There’s a Big Thing On Legalizing Sex Work
By Cory Doctorow at 11:35 pm Wednesday, Apr 18
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My daughter and I share a trick memory for lyrics. Part of our bed-time ritual is singing three songs -- two "new" songs (that she hasn't heard before) and one "old" one (from a previous night). It's really challenging to come up with two new songs whose lyrics I can remember (or fake) well enough every night. Last night, I found myself singing Desi Arnaz's "Cuban Pete," as performed on I Love Lucy, and we both agreed that it was a keeper, particularly for the "chick-chicky-boom" refrain (not to be confused with the likewise excellent and legendary "CHICA CHICA BOOM CHIC" refrain from Carmen Miranda). YouTube being the collective memory of a large slice of the species, it naturally has a clip of Desi and Lucy performing "Cuban Pete" from the 1951 I Love Lucy episode, "The Diet."
Cuban Pete
By Cory Doctorow at 12:01 pm Wednesday, Apr 18
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Love and Lots of Sugar has documented some of the creation of a remarkable Captain America fourth birthday cake that, in cross section, displayed the stars-n-stripes. It's a really sweet bit of topology-based baking, and, judging by the photos, was a smash-hit.
The last picture I posted hit it big on Reddit. Some really nice things have been said.
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:10 pm Tuesday, Apr 17
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From John W Campbell Award-nominee Mur Lafferty, an open letter to her (delightful) daughter, decrying all the ways in which the deck is stacked against girls and women in our world. It's a pretty much perfect summation of every fear, aspiration, and upset I feel on behalf of my own daughter.
You should know that you are hated.
I’m not sure why they hate you. You didn’t do anything to them. You don your princess crown, take up your sword, and pretend at Pokemon. You read your books and you learn how to draw comics and dragons and you play piano and practice kung fu. You delight in pretty dresses and weaponry. You love me when I nurture you as a mom, train with you as a warrior, and play video games and card games with you.
“You throw like a GIRL!” – obnoxious drunk asshole behind us at a Durham Bulls game (Apparently he threw 75mph)
There is nothing worse than being a girl. I’m not saying this as a former girl- I quite liked being a girl. I’m saying this from the POV of the entire rest of the world. There was a lovely feminist TED talk – A Call To Men – where a man discussed his conversation with a twelve year old boy, and the boy said he would rather die than be called a girl. And the man thought, Good Lord, how do these boys view girls, if being compared to them is the worst thing in the world?
Dear daughter…
mama_faelynn writes, "My husband and I made an Epic Minecraft CaseMod for our 8 year old. 1200 1/2" blocks, weeks of time, flashing harddrive creeper eyes, our kid is over the MOON!"