Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category:
Let’s Get More Excited About Space Travel
Here’s an idea. Instead of endless reports about Justin Bieber and other mindless crap, let’s get more excited about space travel.
(This isn’t a picture of real space travel. It’s Captain Video and His Video Rangers. Old TV show.)
Live streaming video by Ustream
(By the way, the latest Bieber news, as of this writing, is that Usher flew to be by Justin’s side and offer emotional support or something. In case you’re curious. Who says this isn’t the DaddyTips age of having your cake and eating it too?)
On January 23, 2014, three days ago, NASA launched a Next-Generation Relay Satellite. No, not Star Trek: The Next Generation. Something real. The TDRS-L Satellite. Launched by NASA. Frickin’ NASA! And they broadcast the launch live on Ustream! And I didn’t even know! (The video is archived and embedded above. I was wrong. The video embedded above appears to be NASA’s live Ustream channel. Sorry. Here is a link to the video of the launch.)
Nobody cares. Why doesn’t anyone care? We should really care about this a lot more than we do.
Why should we care? Read more »
No Vaccines Means We Get Diseases Back
This NPR article is upsetting, and not only because looking at the constantly moving graphic is giving me a headache.
(This isn’t a full-on rant, but me expressing my opinion tends to lead to someone feeling like I’m ranting. Hence the graphic.)
I used to write a lot about the anti-vaccine folks. Here’s a post from 2010 that links to a piece I wrote for AOL ParentDish about the retraction of the Lancet study linking vaccinations to autism. And here is the very first Babble Podcast I did way back in October of 2008.
In that podcast I discussed how perhaps Jenny McCarthy is not the person to whom we should be looking to for medical advice of any kind. (I also wrote and recorded the theme song. I’m very talented.) McCarthy was very vocal about the link between vaccines and autism. Her proof was debunked. More on that in a moment.
Ante Up For Autism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In addition to being the year when I recorded a podcast, 2008 is also when the Council on Foreign Relations began “tracking news reports” of disease outbreaks. Diseases that had been all but wiped out, if not wiped out entirely.
From NPR.org:
Since 2008 folks at the think tank CFR have been plotting all the cases of measles, mumps, rubella, polio and whooping cough around the world. Each circle on the map represents a local outbreak of a particular disease, while the size of the circle indicates the number of people infected in the outbreak.
As you flip through the various maps over the years, two trends clearly emerge: Measles has surged back in Europe, while whooping cough is has become a problem here in the U.S.
Whooping cough is back? Seriously? Preventable diseases should stay prevented. So much of the anti-vaccination information has been proven to be 100% false. (It’s possible that all of it has been debunked; I don’t know and therefore am not going to make such a broad statement.) What’s left is parental fear. Statements like “I believe vaccines are bad” don’t have any basis in scientific reality. Are doctors always right? Of course not. I don’t have a gall bladder because a certain doctor couldn’t be bothered to examine me for six months. Eventually the thing grew to the size of a football, became gangrenous, and I needed immediate emergency surgery or I would have died. Does that mean I no longer go to the doctor? Well, I no longer go to THAT doctor. But I haven’t thrown out all science, or the scientific method. Nor do I pretend that I am a scientist.
We should all be able to agree that whooping cough is bad. Whooping cough was gone. That was good. Now whooping cough, which is bad, is back. That is bad. Why is whooping cough back? Because some parents, based on bad information disseminated by a number of people, Jenny McCarthy being one of the more famous ones, are afraid of vaccinating their kids. That’s not good. At all. Stop it.
Here is a Public Health Report document from 1916. The text is as follows:
PATERSON, N. J.
Whooping Cough — Prevention of Spread — Affected Children Under 10 Years of
Age Required to Wear Arm Bands. (Reg. Bd. of H., Mar. 7, 1916.)1. No parent or guardian of any infant under 10 years of age suffering from the
disease commonly known as whooping cough shall permit any such infant to appear
in the street or in any other public place within the city of Paterson, N. J., unless
such infant shall wear and expose upon the arm a band of yellow material bearing
upon it the words “Paterson health department — Whooping cough.” The band
shall be in a form to be prescribed and supplied by the board of health, and shall
be worn for a period beginning with the earliest recognition o” the disease and con-
tinue until danger of infection is over, but in no event less than six weeks.2. No parent or guardian of any infant under the age of 10 years suffering from
whooping cough shall permit any such infant to board any street car or other public
conveyance or to visit any house other than the house in which such infant resides,
or any store, school, Sunday school, or building of public assembly.3. Any parent or guardian violating any of the provisions of this ordinance shall
be subject to a fine of $10 for each offense.
(Source: Internet Archive/JSTOR)
Armbands for kids! Doesn’t that sound fun? That was the best we could do in 1916. It is now 2014. We’ve come a long way, baby. Get vaccinated.
Zero deaths. That’s the goal.
(Above image from The Prelinger Archives.)
How Vaccine Fears Fueled The Resurgence Of Preventable Diseases : Shots – Health News : NPR.
Bring Back The Cry Room To Movie Theaters
From Mental Floss, a trip down movie theater memory lane for some, a history lesson for others (the stuff on this list is before my time, despite what my kids may think). It’s worth reading, but I was drawn to the last item, The Cry Room:
Those elaborate movie palaces had many amenities that not every neighborhood theater had, including “cry rooms.” A cry room was a soundproofed elevated room in the back of the theater with a large glass window in front so Mama could still watch the movie (and hear it over a public address system) while trying to calm down a fussy baby. Many theatres that provided cry rooms also came equipped with electric bottle warmers, complimentary formula, and a nurse on duty.
Anyone who has ever experienced someone else’s cranky kid at the movies would likely welcome the return of The Cry Room.
Now let’s all go to the lobby!
via 11 Things We No Longer See in Movie Theaters | Mental Floss.
Why Kids Shouldn’t Be On Reality TV
This story, if true, illustrates something I’ve said for a long time. Children shouldn’t be on reality television shows.
This Daily Mail article, taken from a report in the New York Daily News, says that Kate Gosselin told her daughters, “You embarrassed mommy,” after they didn’t “defend her” during an interview on NBC’s Today Show.
I know I’ve said it to people I know, and I think I’ve written about it and/or talked about it on podcasts. What have I said? That kids shouldn’t be on reality shows. It’s not fair to them. They aren’t able to make an informed decision about their privacy.
Now, what do I mean by “kids”? I would say “18 and under” but that’s both unrealistic and a little silly. What would be reasonable, though, is 13 years old. That’s the age used by COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
COPPA establishes rules for websites collecting information about children under the age of 13. Seems reasonable, right? Maybe we could apply the same cut-off age to whether or not a kid is allowed to be on a reality TV show.
Now, you might say, “what about child actors?” Well, there are laws about child actors — the hours they are allowed to work, what happens to the money they make so that unscrupulous parents can’t spend it all. Also, those kids are ACTING. They don’t have cameras in their homes recording their real lives.
Yes, I am aware that “reality television” isn’t reality. These shows have writers on staff, and much of what is purportedly real is staged. (I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before by hundreds of other people. If this is the first time you’ve heard it, my apologies.) Still, would you like to grow up and discover that you were a reality TV star when you were two years old?
Here’s an idea. As the Marx Brothers said, there is no sanity clause.
But maybe there should be. It doesn’t seem fair that young children should be allowed to have their lives broadcast on television, even with parental consent. Many news outlets fuzz out the faces of kids in photos. Why? Presumably because they respect the idea of a child’s right to privacy. Why not extend this same right to reality TV?
Kate Gosselin tells twins they ’embarrassed mommy’ at Today show appearance | Mail Online.
Tiger Mom And The Triple Package
I need to read deeper into “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua‘s new book “The Triple Package” because I don’t want to rant about something based solely on a blog post.
If she’s the Tiger Mom, does that mean she has the Eye of the Tiger?
However, my time is limited, and the shelf-life for news gets shorter every day. Seriously, there’s stuff in my blog queue from… I’m not even going to look. Therefore, I’ll write what I can now and get back to it with more info if/when I can.
Here is what Gawker writer Jordan Sargent says about Chua’s new book:
The New York Post has a review of her new book The Triple Package —co-authored by her husband, Jed Rubenfeld — which says that there are eight groups of people superior to all others: Chinese, Cuban exiles, Indians, Iranians, Jews, Lebanese-Americans, Mormons, and Nigerians. Remember, her daughter got into Yale and Harvard so it has to be true.
“Groups of people superior to all others”? Seriously? This is something that we’re allowed to say now? Because I thought that was, you know, like saying men can’t be primary caregivers (cough, SAHD WAHD, cough cough), or something far more obviously offensive. (I tried to come up with an example that felt not completely racist/sexist/jerky but I couldn’t.)
Gawker’s Sargent goes on:
According to Chua and Rubenfeld, there are three reasons — the so-called “triple package,” please bear with me — why those eight groups reign over everyone else in the world: superiority complexes, insecurity, and impulse control. They believe (“believe”) that true success is reached because you think you’re better than everyone else, but also not really, and that you can resist temptation as you strive for a larger goal. Oh, and also that you haven’t “yet bought into mainstream, post-1960s, liberal American principles.”
Sargent is critical of Chua’s ideas, as is the NY Post’s book reviewer Maureen Callahan. Sargent then calls Chua’s… output… “pop psych trolling”. I don’t know what that means. I do know that declaring a race/ethnic group/nationality/person who holds certain religious beliefs to be superior based solely on that criteria is the slipperiest of slopes. “Asians are smarter.” There we go. That one is positive. “Jews are good with money.” Also positive. But do either of those statements sound OK to you? Because they don’t sound OK to me. More importantly, would you want your children to say “Nigerians are more successful because they are Nigerian”? I wouldn’t. If that is indeed the premise of “The Triple Package”, that’s bad for a variety of reasons.
NOTE: As of this moment I haven’t read the Post’s review of Chua’s book, nor have I read the book. (To be fair, the book doesn’t “drop” until February 4, 2014. That’s what the kids say, right? Drop?) This is due to the fact that I have kids to feed and stuff. Like I said, I may do an updated post later.
UPDATE: Here’s a quote from the Amazon description of “The Triple Package”:
It may be taboo to say, but some groups in America do better than others. Mormons have recently risen to astonishing business success. Cubans in Miami climbed from poverty to prosperity in a generation. Nigerians earn doctorates at stunningly high rates. Indian and Chinese Americans have much higher incomes than other Americans; Jews may have the highest of all.
So yeah. There’s that.
UPDATE 2: Amy Chua has written other books besides “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother“. They sound more academic and less “pop psych” oriented. I haven’t read any of them. If you have, let me know. Anyway, here are other books by Ms. Chua
Infamous “Tiger Mom” Returns To Troll the Entire World (Gawker)
(Amazon)New DaddyTips Comic – Land of Blue
DaddyTips is proud to present a new comic, created, written and drawn by Thing 2. Welcome to… Land of Blue.
This is Land of Blue #1. For the record, the character named Jim is a girl. The rest you should be able to figure out on your own. Enjoy.
The Hunger Games Trilogy eBook Only $14.99
This is a hot steaming DaddyDeal right here. The Hunger Games Trilogy
I’ve enjoyed both of The Hunger Games movies so far but the books are way better. It’s not a fair comparison; the books are told from Katniss’ point of view, something that would be impossible on screen. That said, there’s a propulsive nature to the narrative as written on the page, or in this case on your own personal screen… Hmm. I’ll have to re-think that phrase, “on screen”, as it relates to book-to-movie adaptations. An eBook is, of course, on a screen. It’s just not a big movie screen. But you can watch a movie on Kindle Fire, or even a really small screen, like an iPod Classic. (I do this often when riding public transportation; usually I watch The Avengers again. And again. Have I mentioned that I really like The Avengers movie?)
Anyway, whatever. This is becoming a stream of consciousness thing and all I wanted to do was inform you that it is possible to purchase all three of Suzanne Collins’ excellent books for your Kindle at the low price of only $14.99. That’s a damn good deal right there.
Amazon.com: The Hunger Games Trilogy eBook: Suzanne Collins: Kindle Store.
