Oh, wait. Yes, they will:
H.P. Lovecraft’s elder god Cthulhu is supposed to be terrifying, hideous and awe-inspiring—but whoever knew he could be this darn cute? Check out 14 toys that take a slimy monster and turn it cuddly.
Cthulhu My Little Pony
Cthulhu Christmas Wreath
H/T to John Kovalic for the link.
There’s a reason that studies that depend on direct observation/measurement often differ in their results from studies that depend on self-reporting by the group being studied — because people lie:
Many mothers are under so much pressure to appear like perfect parents that they cover up how much television their children watch or what they cook their families, according to a survey.
Such “white lies” also extend to how much “quality time” mothers spend with their partner, website Netmums said its survey of 5,000 people suggested.
The parenting site said mothers often made each other feel “inadequate”.
[. . .]
Almost two-thirds of those surveyed said they had been less than honest with other mothers about how well they were coping and almost half covered up financial worries.
Almost a quarter of mothers admitted to downplaying how much television their children actually watched — and one in five “span a yarn” over how long they played with their children.
If you think typical western parenting styles have not served children well, you might be interested in Amy Chua’s new book:
The Tiger, Chua explains, is “the living symbol of strength and power”, inspiring fear and respect. And as a “Tiger mother” herself, she assumed the absolute right to dictate her children’s activities and demand rigorous academic standards of them at all times, ridiculing them if necessary to spur them on to greater efforts.
Her children were never allowed to attend a sleepover, have a playdate, watch TV or choose their own extracurricular activities. They were also expected to be top in every subject (except gym and drama) and never get anything other than A-grades — because, Chua explains, Chinese parents believe it is their responsibility to ensure their children’s academic achievement above everything else.
Chua argues that western parents. with their emphasis on nurturing their children’s self-esteem and allowing free expression, have set their children up to accept mediocrity. “Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently,” she says. If their child doesn’t achieve perfect exam results, the Chinese parent assumes it’s because he or she didn’t work hard enough. “That’s why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child,” Chua says. And it is crucial for a mother to have the “fortitude” to override her children’s preferences, because to enjoy anything you have to be good at it, to be good at it you have to work, and children on their own never wish to work, she adds.
Update: Barbara Kay disagrees with Chua about the need to oppress your children to get them to excel:
This article and the book will spark furious discussion in the media. Coincidentally, in today’s Post, Dan Gardner’s column, “From Haiti to Harvard, culture matters,” bolsters the idea that culture is the single greatest predictor for academic success, and it is well worth reading in tandem with “Why Chinese mothers are superior.” He is right, of course, even though political correctness forbids us to say so, and even though Ms Chua’s extreme methods are unnecessary, as the Jewish experience — high expectations, high sensitivity to children’s psychic needs — proves.
It’s too bad Ms Chua’s extremism will become the focus of interest. The larger issue is worthy of respectful attention. As Gardner notes, the reason Asian students are so wildly disproportionately represented in universities (3% of the population, about 25% on campus) is because they came from homes in which “Chinese mothers” ruled the roost. It isn’t racism to say so.
Update, 23 January: Lawrence Solomon thinks the threat of “Tiger Mothers” is overstated:
The statistics seem to bear her out — Asians disproportionately make it to elite schools in the West — they represent 5% of the U.S. population but 20% of the student body at Ivy League schools, for example. No one can but marvel at the uniformly successful students turned out by the “tenacious practice, practice, practice” and “rote repetition” that she considers “crucial for excellence.”
But such statistics don’t tell the whole story. In truth, Chinese Mothers fare poorly in achieving excellence compared with western mothers, even western mothers burdened by political correctness.
[. . .]
Practice and rote learning have their limits. While imposing single-minded discipline on children will dramatically raise test scores and technical proficiency, and for most children may represent the best strategy for accomplishment and satisfaction, it can come at the cost of curbing the creativity necessary for true excellence. Chinese Mothers make great moms, as evidenced by the unusual cohesiveness of the Chinese family: Chinese kids clearly understand whatever berating they absorb as the tough love intended. Chua is justified in saying western parents are doing their underperforming kids no favours in failing to confront them.
But Western parents retain the edge in producing the next generation of creators — those whose breakthroughs will cure cancer or supplant the Internet. Here, too, Chua may be pointing to the right balance in her personal life, by choosing as her husband and father of her children someone who is anything but single-minded. Jed Rubenfeld, an American Jew determined to avoid a career in academia, waffled as a student, starting with philosophy and psychology at Princeton, switching to acting at Julliard, then moving to law at Harvard before accepting an academic position at Yale, where he is now professor and assistant dean of law.
Update, 2 February: Bryan Caplan (who has an upcoming book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids) addresses the downside of the Tiger Mother approach:
No wonder Chua confesses that, “For the first few weeks after Lulu’s decision [to radically reduce her musical practice time], I wandered around the house like person who’d lost their mission, their reason for living.” If I’d lived through thousands of hours of drudgery and cruelty for nothing, I’d be despondent, too.
But hasn’t all the musical practice indelibly shaped Chua’s children’s characters? Highly unlikely. Behavioral genetics finds roughly zero effect of parents on personality. And contrary to teachers’ fantasies about changing their students’ lives, learning is highly specific. Practicing X makes you better at X — and little else. Furthermore, the effects of environmental intervention erode over time — that’s fade-out for you. Chua seems to know this on some level: She favorably quotes a music teacher who says that, “Every day you don’t practice is a day that you’re getting worse.”
But all social science aside, Chua’s own life history raises severe doubts about the character-shaping power of mastering an instrument. Yes, she practiced piano as a child, but not to excellence. And what became of her? She became a Yale professor and best-selling author anyway!
In the most insightful passage in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, cost-benefit analysis finally makes an appearance:
Why torture yourself and your child? What’s the point? If your child doesn’t like something — hates it — what good is forcing her to do it?
But Chua immediately represses her thought crime: “As a Chinese mother I could never give in to that way of thinking.” My response: You can and should give in, because this way of thinking is true. Cost-benefit analysis is not a Western prejudice. “Give up when the costs exceed the benefits” is one of the universally-valid maxims that allows millions of Chinese businesses to survive and thrive. Why shouldn’t Chinese mothers use it too?
If you hurry, you can just get your Santa’s Visit Application in before the deadline tonight!
As I posted back in January, one of the problems western troops have in dealing with Pashtuns in Afghanistan is the radically different sexual culture, including barely concealed pedophilia:
The vast gulf between U.S. and Afghan attitudes about homosexuality and pedophilia has generated concern among U.S. advisers in Afghanistan since the American presence there began to expand.
In late 2009, U.S. and British forces ordered a study of Pashtun male sexuality. They were worried that homosexuality and pedophilia among Afghan security forces and tribes could create cultural misunderstanding with allied troops, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Examiner.
[. . .]
“I know Marines and soldiers who have refused to work with Afghan military or police,” said one U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s not about homosexuality as much as it is about the young boys. Some of them like to show pictures on their cell phone — that should be illegal. Some of the Afghans have their own young boys they use for sexual purposes and we can’t do anything about it.”
[. . .]
“Homosexuality is strictly prohibited in Islam, but cultural interpretations of Islamic teaching prevalent in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan tacitly condone it in comparison to heterosexual relationships,” the study states.
For a male to have sex with a boy is considered a “foible,” the report said. By contrast, having sex with an “ineligible woman” would set up “issues of revenge and honor killings.”
Years of living under that cultural construct have greatly altered sexual attitudes, the study said. “One of the country’s favorite sayings is ‘women are for children, boys are for pleasure,” the report noted.
Apparently, British parents are so fearful of the disapproval of their own children that they’re afraid to say “no”:
Retailers selling sexualised products aimed at children could face new restrictions under plans being considered by the government.
An inquiry to explore whether rules should prevent the marketing of items such as “Porn star” T-shirts or padded bras to children has been set up.
A code of conduct on “age appropriate” marketing and a new watchdog are among plans being considered by the review.
Children’s Minister Sarah Teather said parents faced a tidal wave of pressure.
She said: “Parents often find themselves under a tidal wave of pressure, buffeted by immense pester power from their children for the latest product, craze or trend.
“I want this review to look at how we can equip parents to deal with the changing nature of marketing, advertising and other pressures that are aimed at their children.”
Parents need the government to step in and protect them from “pester power”? Pathetic.
Daniel Tencer says that the TSA’s guidelines for calming children are the same things sexual predators use:
An expert in the fight against child sexual abuse is raising the alarm about a technique the TSA is reportedly using to get children to co-operate with airport pat-downs: calling it a “game”.
Ken Wooden, founder of Child Lures Prevention, says the TSA’s recommendation that children be told the pat-down is a “game” is potentially putting children in danger.
Telling a child that they are engaging in a game is “one of the most common ways” that sexual predators use to convince children to engage in inappropriate contact, Wooden told Raw Story.
Children “don’t have the sophistication” to distinguish between a pat-down carried out by an airport security officer and an assault by a sexual predator, he said.
The TSA policy could “desensitize children to inappropriate touch and ultimately make it easier for sexual offenders to prey on our children,” Wooden added.
H/T to Cory Doctorow for the link.
A report in The Economist looks at a recent study which may explain the cause of autism:
One suggestion that does pop up from time to time is that the process which leads to autism involves faulty mitochondria. The mitochondria are a cell’s powerpacks. They disassemble sugar molecules and turn the energy thus liberated into a form that biochemical machinery can use. Mitochondrial faults could be caused by broken genes, by environmental effects, or by a combination of the two.
Nerve cells have a huge demand for energy, so a failure of the mitochondria would certainly affect them. The question is, could it cause autism? To try to find out Cecilia Giulivi of the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues studied the mitochondria of ten children, aged between two and five years, who had been diagnosed with autism. They have just published their results in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
[. . .]
The children in question were randomly selected from a previous study on autism. They were matched with ten children of similar ages and ethnic backgrounds who were developing normally. Dr Giulivi found that mitochondria from children with autism consumed far less oxygen than those from the control group. That is a sign of lower activity. One important set of enzymes — NADH oxidases — used, on average, only a third as much oxygen in autistic children as they did in non-autists, and eight of the autistic children had significantly lower NADH-oxidase activity than is normal.
The mitochondria of the autistic children also leaked damaging oxygen-rich chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide. These are a normal by-product of mitochondrial activity, but are usually mopped up by special enzymes before they can escape and cause harm — for instance, by damaging a cell’s DNA. The level of hydrogen peroxide in the cells of autistic children was twice that found in non-autists. Such high levels suggest the brains of autistic children are exposed to a lot of oxidative stress, something that would probably cause cumulative damage.
While such a mechanism may allow better treatments to be developed, it also implies that those who already suffer from autism may not benefit as much (or at all) from such treatments, as the cellular damage will be a much tougher challenge to reverse.
On the other hand, if the pattern can be detected early enough, it may allow treatment well in advance of serious damage.
We have a name for people who pursue rare moments of bliss at the expense of their wallets and their social and professional relationships: addicts.
Children regularly give parents the kind of highs that only narcotics can rival. The unpredictability of those moments of bliss is an important factor in their addictiveness. If you give animals a predictable reward — say, a shot of sugar every time they press a lever — you can get them to press that lever quite regularly. But if you want irrational and addictive behavior, you make the reward unpredictable. Pressing the lever produces sugar, but only once every 10 tries. Sometimes, the animal might have to go 20 or 30 tries without a reward. Sometimes it gets a big jolt of sugar three tries in a row. If you train an animal to work for an unexpected reward, you can get it to work harder and longer than if you train it to work for a predictable reward.
[. . .]
I suspect oxytocin works the same way. The unexpected, kind, and loving things that children do produce chemical surges in their parents’ brains like the rush of the pipe or the needle. Like addicts, parents will sacrifice anything for the glimpses of heaven that their offspring periodically provide.
Shankar Vedantam, “Parents Are Junkies: If parenthood sucks, why do we love it? Because we’re addicted”, Slate, 2010-11-16
Christopher Booker says that Britain’s bureaucracy to look out for the interests of children is badly off-mission:
For parents who fall foul of this system, often on no more evidence than malicious hearsay, the first shock is to find themselves treated like dangerous criminals. To seize children, social workers seem able to enlist the unquestioning support of the police, who arrive mob-handed, six or eight at a time, beating down doors, tearing babies from their mothers’ arms, holding parents in custody for up to 36 hours while their children are removed into foster care.
The parents must then wrestle with a Kafka-esque system rigged against them in every way. They find themselves in courts where every normal principle of British justice has been stood on its head. Social workers may give written evidence to a judge which the parents aren’t allowed to see. The most outrageous hearsay evidence may be accepted by the court without the parents even being allowed to cross-examine on it.
A key part is played by evidence from supposed “experts”, psychiatrists or paediatricians who may be paid up to £35,000 for their reports, and who receive regular work from the social workers involved. Parents are forbidden to call their own independent experts to challenge a case made against them. They are, all too often, pressured into being represented by lawyers who, again, work regularly for the council, who fail to put their case and who turn out to be just part of the same system.
Parents may be forbidden to testify on their own behalf, but must listen for hours, even days, to everyone else involved — including their own lawyers — putting what amounts to a case for the prosecution. The guardian appointed to represent the interests of the child may never have met the child and merely endorses whatever the social workers say.
Not surprisingly, these bizarre practices are so geared to the interests of a corrupted system that, in the latest year for which we have figures (2008), of 7,340 applications for care orders made by social workers, only 20 were refused.
Meanwhile, the children themselves are handed over to foster homes, which receive £400 a week or £20,000 a year for each child, and where many are intensely unhappy and not infrequently abused. Foster carers and social workers routinely conspire to tell bewildered children that their parents neither love them nor want them back. Children and parents meet at rigorously supervised “contact sessions”, where any expression of affection or attempt to discuss why the children have been taken from home may be punished by termination of the session or denial of further contact.
Another link from Chris Myrick: Bad move, A&E.
The A&E Channel has a new show coming up: Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal. Sounds awful already, doesn’t it? But it’s worse than you think: they’re looking for disturbed kids who think they’ve got magic powers, and then they’re flying in “professional psychics” to coach them in dealing with their awesome powers, i.e., indulge their delusions, get off on feeling superior to unhappy kids, and collect a paycheck for psychic child abuse.
They’re putting kids in the hands of a creepy skeevo like Chip Coffey, all for your entertainment.
This is quite possibly the most loathsome thing I’ve ever seen on TV, and my cable gives me access to the Trinity Broadcast Network, so that’s saying a lot.
Skepchicks are mobilizing the skeptic hordes. Call or write to A&E and let them know that their schlock has reached a new and despicable low.
By way of @muskrat_john (John Kovalic), who wrote “Love the Pogues. Love my Subaru Forrester. Saw Forrester commercial use Pogues song. Surprisingly, I died a little inside.”:
Mark Frauenfelder has the book to give to your child before going to the airport:
Got to start ’em early . . . by the time they’re full-grown, they’ll accept any intrusion from government officials as a matter of course.
The original version (in French) is here.
Now that we can get kids to turn in their parents for pot possession:
Two parents are facing drug charges after their child took their drugs to school and told a school officer his parents were breaking the law.
WBTV is not releasing the names of the parents or the name of the school to protect the child’s identity.
The 11-year-old student is in 5th grade at a an elementary school in Matthews. Police say he brought his parents’ marijuana cigarettes to school when he reported them.
Matthews Police say he reported his parents after a lesson about marijuana was delivered by a police officer who is part of the D.A.R.E. program, which teaches kids about the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.
Well, thank goodness that this kid’s parents have been saved! I’m sure they’ll just get a stern talking-to from Officer Friendly, they’ll see the error of their ways, and everyone will go out for ice cream sundaes afterwards!
Poor kid. A brief moment of “doing the right thing” may well have ruined three lives. Nice work, Officer Friendly!
Police say both the 11-year old and a sibling have been removed from the parents’ house by social services. Police say they are staying with relatives.
If there were no relatives handy, the two children would probably become wards of the state. And that is something to wish on nobody.
The actual article is behind a paywall (“Who’s the Daddy?” by Melanie McDonagh), so I haven’t read all of it. Andrew Stuttaford quotes a most disturbing paragraph, however:
DNA tests are an anti-feminist appliance of science, a change in the balance of power between the sexes that we’ve hardly come to terms with. And that holds true even though many women have the economic potential to provide for their children themselves . . . Uncertainty allows mothers to select for their children the father who would be best for them. The point is that paternity was ambiguous and it was effectively up to the mother to name her child’s father, or not . . . Many men have, of course, ended up raising children who were not genetically their own, but really, does it matter . . . in making paternity conditional on a test rather than the say-so of the mother, it has removed from women a powerful instrument of choice.
So, she’s against DNA testing to determine paternity because it reveals the truth? I’ve always discounted stories about women deliberately choosing to lie about who the father of a child is, but if this opinion is common, I’ve been mighty naive.
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