Link Banana

A very interesting daily chart from The Economist. The basic analysis:

Those [children of international parents] craving an unhealthy diet should make for America, where more than half of the expat parents said that their children had eaten more junk food since relocating. Keen gamers should consider China and Canada, whereas telly addicts should nag their parents to move to the United Arab Emirates or India.

The epic battle that accompanies every children’s toy.

(via clusterflock)

So found Cornell researchers:

This research shows that meaning-based memories are largely responsible for false memories, especially in adult witnesses. Because the ability to extract meaning from experience develops slowly, children are less likely to produce these false memories than adults, and are more likely to give accurate testimony when properly questioned.

(via Boing Boing)

Weemade’s a charming tumblog that features nothing but drawings by kids. It’s purpose:

we find the artwork and creativity of kids inspiring, thought provoking, entertaining, and unpretentious. We think that reminding ourselves how children see the world is a valuable and enlightening process.

(via Neatorama)

I — like you — love and loath that little kid videos are so popular. I still feel obligated to share this one.

(via Daring Fireball)

I don’t usually like things like this, but this one’s surprisingly funny and it’s been a day surprisingly devoid of other things worth posting here.

(via kottke)

Annie Paul takes on a difficult and contrevesial topic: can a fetus feel pain? The implications — especially for the always-contreversial topic of abortion — are large, but she handles them deftly.

In their use of pain to make the fetus seem more fully human, anti-abortion forces draw on a deep tradition. Pain has long played a special role in how society determines who is like us or not like us (“us” being those with the power to make and enforce such distinctions). The capacity to feel pain has often been put forth as proof of a common humanity. Think of Shylock’s monologue in “The Merchant of Venice”: Are not Jews “hurt with the same weapons” as Christians, he demands. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” Likewise, a presumed insensitivity to pain has been used to exclude some from humanity’s privileges and protections. Many 19th-century doctors believed blacks were indifferent to pain and performed surgery on them without even that era’s rudimentary anesthesia. Over time, the charmed circle of those considered alive to pain, and therefore fully human, has widened to include members of other religions and races, the poor, the criminal, the mentally ill — and, thanks to the work of Sunny Anand and others, the very young. Should the circle enlarge once more, to admit those not yet born? Should fetuses be added to what Martin Pernick, a historian of the use of anesthesia, has called “the great chain of feeling”? Anand maintains that they should.

This has to be seen. I can so no more than that.

Alison Buckholtz has a interesting look into the world of a synesthete — herself. Synthesia, which has always fascinated me, it essentially the mixing of senses. Like, as Buckholtz describes, numbers having innate colors.

I didn’t worry about colors for many years, and though I retained all of my lifelong synesthetic associations, I only rarely generated new ones. Occasionally, I met a person whose color was obvious and unmistakable, and I couldn’t shake the connection. In fact, I named my daughter Esther, in part, because her color matched her name, which to me is pink. Even now it brings me deep aesthetic and emotional satisfaction to know that she and her name are so well-paired.

Finally, in my early 30s, I read a short piece on synesthesia in a scientific journal. Decades of tension I never knew I’d carried instantly lifted. My freakishness had a name. And actually, I wasn’t a freak at all. I wasn’t the only one perceiving my surroundings in technicolor. I recognized myself in sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph.

This little video is an entertaining distraction and cure for whatever it is that’s ailing you. Part of it’s appeal is that it’s got cute small children, part of it’s that they’re British. I can’t even count all the parts, and if I did it would take more time than watching it will.