Some Atheist Scientists With Children Embrace Religious Traditions
Via ScienceDaily:
Some atheist scientists with children embrace religious traditions for social and personal reasons, according to research from Rice University and the University at Buffalo — The State University of New York (SUNY).
The study also found that some atheist scientists want their children to know about different religions so their children can make informed decisions about their own religious preferences.
“Our research shows just how tightly linked religion and family are in U.S. society — so much so that even some of society’s least religious people find religion to be important in their private lives,” said Rice sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund, the study’s principal investigator and co-author of a paper in the December issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
The researchers found that 17 percent of atheists with children attended a religious service more than once in the past year. The research was conducted through interviews with a…
Parents Using Facebook to Trade Viruses In the Mail to Infect Their Children
Right, because you’re “afraid” of vaccines, let’s deliberately put pathogens in the mail. Reports KPHO CBS 5 News:
PHOENIX — Doctors and medical experts are concerned about a new trend taking place on Facebook.
Parents are trading live viruses through the mail in order to infect their children. The Facebook group is called “Find a Pox Party in Your Area.” According to the group’s page, it is geared toward “parents who want their children to obtain natural immunity for the chicken pox.”
On the page, parents post where they live and ask if anyone with a child who has the chicken pox would be willing to send saliva, infected lollipops or clothing through the mail. Parents also use the page to set up play dates with children who currently have chicken pox. Medical experts say the most troubling part of this is parents are taking pathogens from complete strangers and deliberately infecting their children.
Mother Bear Kills Cub and Itself to Escape ‘Crush Cage’ Torture for ‘Bear Bile’
Photo: SlimVirgin (CC)
AsiaOne reports:
The Chinese media has reported on an extraordinary account of a mother bear saving her cub from a life of torture by strangling it and then killing itself. The bears were kept in a farm located in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall bladders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a remedy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
It was reported that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to manoeuvre and are literally crushed. The bile is harvested by making a permanent hole or fistula in the bears’ abdomen and gall bladder.
As the hole is never closed, the animals are suspect to various infections and diseases including tumours, cancers and death from peritonitis. The bears are fitted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill themselves by…
Should Parents Lose Custody Of Fat Children?
If your twelve-year-old is a 300-pound diabetic, have you failed as a parent to the point that your child should be taken away for his or her own safety? Health experts at Harvard say yes, it’s time to get tough and start removing fat children from their homes. It boggles the mind that we live in an age in which this is a pressing issue. The Atlantic Wire reports:
As the Western world gets fatter and fatter, the solutions to slimming it down get ever more draconian. Today, a pair of Harvard scholars writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association advocate stripping away the custody rights of parents of super obese children.
“Despite the discomfort posed by state intervention, it may sometimes be necessary to protect a child,” said Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard’s School of Public Health. The study’s co-author, David Ludwig, says taking away peoples’ children “ideally…
Restaurant Bans Children Under Six
Starting July 16, McDain’s, a Pittsburgh-area restaurant, will ban children under the age of 6 from its dining area. Restaurant owner Mike Vuick said the policy came in response to complaints he’d received from older customers about kids causing a ruckus. In an email to his clientele, Vuick wrote, “We feel that McDain’s is a not a place for young children … and many, many times they have disturbed other customers.” Via ABC News:
[Story continues at ABC News]
Nearly One in Three American Children Live Without A Father
Via the Huffington Post:
The number of children living apart from their fathers has more than doubled in the last fifty years, from 11 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 2010.
That’s one of the key findings from a new report on fatherhood in the United the States that was released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project — just in time for Father’s Day.
The findings paint a grim picture of many fathers’ lack of involvement in their children’s lives, using data from over 10,000 people to determine the percentage of “absent” or “non-resident” fathers in America, which the report defines as those who do not live with their children.
A decline in marriage rates may be partially to blame. In 1960, 72 percent of the adult population was married; that share had dropped to 52 percent by 2008. Eighty seven percent of children ages 17 and younger were living with two married parents in 1960 compared with 64 percent in 2008.
According to the report’s co-author Gretchen Livingston, an increase in divorce rates over the last half-century may also play a role.
Two Idiots Name Their Baby Girl ‘Like’ After the Facebook Button
Jesus Diaz writes on Gizmodo:
Lior and Vardit Adler just had a baby girl. She’s probably all cute and wrinkly! But they hate her soo much that they named her Like, in honor of the Like button in Facebook. Of course, they explain it differently:
To me it is important to give my children names that are not used anywhere else, at least not in Israel. If once people gave Biblical names and that was the icon, then today this is one of the most famous icons in the world, he said, joking that the name could be seen as a modern version of the traditional Jewish name Ahuva, which means “beloved.”
I believe there will be people who will lift a eyebrow, but it is my girl and that’s what’s fun about it.
Yes, dear readers, you are totally right: These parents — who live in Hod Hasharon, a town north-east of Tel Aviv, Israel — are idiots. Idiots, idiots, idiots. Idiots. Idiots who named their first two children Dvash — Hebrew for honey — and Pie. Compared to Like, those names seem as normal as John and Jane.
Video: Are We Training Kids To Believe That Total Surveillance Is Normal?
Via TED Talks, Cory Doctorow discusses how parents’ and schools’ constant and total monitoring of kids’ internet usage and conversations trains young people to accept a complete lack of privacy, and total disclosure of their lives, as normal and good. Are today’s parents raising their children in a manner that plays into the hands of Big Brother?
How Ayn Rand Ruined My Childhood
In keeping with the Ayn Rand ruins everything meme in honor of the release of Atlas Shrugged: The Movie, enjoy a blackly amusing recollection of what can happen when your Rand-obsessed parent attempts to raise you by the dictates of Objectivist philosophy. (Big mistake!) Alyssa Bereznak writes in Salon:
It was odd growing up in an objectivist house. My father reserved long weekends to attend Ayn Rand Institute conferences held in Orange County, California. He would return with a tan and a pile of new reading material for my brother and me. While other kids my age were going to Bible study, I took evening classes from the institute via phone. (I half-listened while clicking through lolcat photos.)
“We were wondering if you would petition to be emancipated,” he said in his lawyer voice. “What does that mean?” I asked, picking at the mauve paint on my hands. I later discovered that for…
‘Three-Parent’ IVF Babies On Their Way
Oocyte with surrounding granulosa cells.
Jessica Hamzelou writes for New Scientist:
A review of technologies that create three-parent embryos to avoid mitochondrial disease has found no evidence that the methods are unsafe, calling for further research. Medical charities have followed up the report with a call to the UK’s health secretary to prepare to regulate the technology in clinics.
A fertilised egg has 98 per cent of its DNA held in its nucleus. Half of this will be from the mother and half from the father. The remaining 2 per cent is what’s known as mitochondrial DNA – DNA in the cells’ “powerhouses” that are found outside of the egg’s nucleus, and are inherited solely from the mother.
Gene mutations in a woman’s mitochondrial DNA can cause mitochondrial disease in her children. The effects can range from mild, almost symptomless disease to serious and often fatal conditions. Researchers are aiming to avoid these serious…
Killing the Unborn … With Radiation
Via Washington’s Blog:
Preface: I am not against all nuclear power, solely the unsafe type we have today.
The harmful affect of radiation on fetuses has been known for decades.
As nuclear expert Robert Alvarez — a senior U.S. Department of Energy official during the Clinton administration — and journalists Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon wrote in 1982 in a book called Killing Our Own:
In recent years controversy has arisen over the particular vulnerability of infants in utero and small children to the ill-effects of radiation. Exposure of the fetus to radiation during all stages of pregnancy increases the chances of developing leukemia and childhood cancers. Because their cells are dividing so rapidly, and because there are relatively so few of them involved in the vital functions of the body in the early stages, embryos are most vulnerable to radiation in the first trimester — particularly in the first two weeks after conception. This…
What’s Your Hobby? Knitted Breasts Created By 91-Year-Old
Via Newslite:
You might expect your granny to knit you a woolly jumper, but one pensioner has been defying expectations by using her needles to craft amazing knitted breasts.
Coral Charles-Dunne, 91, from Birmingham, has knitted dozens of the unusual educational tools as part of a project to inform expectant and new mums about breastfeeding.
She says spends about two hours creating each of the woolly boobs and makes them in a range of sizes, knitting for up to six hours per day.
The knitted breasts are then used by expectant moms to learn techniques for breast feeding … their partners probably use them to create an unusual game of football.
21st Century Youths: A Nation of Wimps
Hara Estroff Marano writes for Psychology Today:
Maybe it’s the cyclist in the park, trim under his sleek metallic blue helmet, cruising along the dirt path… at three miles an hour. On his tricycle.
Or perhaps it’s today’s playground, all-rubber-cushioned surface where kids used to skin their knees. And… wait a minute… those aren’t little kids playing. Their mommies—and especially their daddies—are in there with them, coplaying or play-by-play coaching. Few take it half-easy on the perimeter benches, as parents used to do, letting the kids figure things out for themselves.
Then there are the sanitizing gels, with which over a third of parents now send their kids to school, according to a recent survey. Presumably, parents now worry that school bathrooms are not good enough for their children.
Consider the teacher new to an upscale suburban town. Shuffling through the sheaf of reports certifying the educational “accommodations” he was required to make for…
One Out Of Ten People Weren’t Fathered By The Man They Believe Is Dad
The following is the second chapter from my disinformation book, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Volume 2, published in 2004. For more on me go to The Memory Hole or follow me @RussKick on Twitter.
Geneticists, disease researchers, and evolutionary psychologists have known it for a while, but the statistic hasn’t gotten much air outside of the ivory tower. Consistently, they find that one in ten of us wasn’t fathered by the man we think is our biological dad.
Naturally, adoptees and stepchildren realize their paternal situation. What we’re talking about here is people who have taken it as a given, for their entire lives, that dear old Dad is the one who contributed his sperm to the process. Even Dad himself may be under this impression. And Mom, knowing it’s not a sure thing, just keeps quiet.
Genetic testing companies report that almost one-third of the time, samples sent to them show that the man…
Iraq Toys With Polygamy As Solution For War Widows
Roula Ayoubi reports for BBC News:
Years of conflict in Iraq have left the country with more than one million war widows and a shortage of young unmarried men — pressures that may be bringing about the return of polygamy. Iraqi woman and child Politicians have suggested financial incentives for men who marry widows
Hanan lost eight members of her family in the war, including her husband, and was left to bring up three children alone.
The experience has not broken her. She continues to work as a hairdresser in her noisy and lively home on Haifa Street in Baghdad. But she still needs a “man-shelter”, she says — and this is why she ended up married to a married man.
“When he proposed to me, he said he was divorced,” she says. “But after we got married, he got back together with his first wife, because he has children with her.”
He now stays…
Why Rich Parents Don’t Matter
Interesting article from Jonah Lehrer in the Wall Street Journal:
How much do the decisions of parents matter? Most parents believe that even the most mundane acts of parenting — from their choice of day care to their policy on videogames — can profoundly influence the success of their children. Kids are like wet clay, in this view, and we are the sculptors.
Yet in tests measuring many traits, from intelligence to self-control, the power of the home environment pales in comparison to the power of genes and peer groups. We may think we’re sculptors, but the clay is mostly set.
A new paper suggests that both metaphors can be true. Which one is relevant depends, it turns out, on the economic status of families.
For a paper in Psychological Science, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia looked at 750 pairs of American twins who were given…
