And in Other News

[Haggis@wk]

Okay, I’m starting a new “news” thread titled, appropriately enough

….And in other news

I encourage you to find articles and invite comment on those articles. They can be about almost anything but they need to be quirky and invite comments.

Hopefully, the comments will be as tasteful and as thought provoking as most of my comments are

(Ed. “TASTEFUL? THOUGHT PROVOKING?”

Well, I thought I should open on a higher moral plane than…..

Ed. “TASTEFUL? THOUGHT PROVOKING? HIGHER MORAL PLANE?”

Well, maybe we can drop some of those…..

Ed. “TASTEFUL? THOUGHT PROVOKING? HIGHER MORAL PLANE?”

Quit saying that! Okay, Okay, tasteful, thought provoking, and higher moral plane will be optional, happy????)

The only rules at this time, (I reserve the right to expand them as required) is that the articles must be genuine, linkable and, above all, NOT anything likely to hurt feelings. Since most of us are adults (quick glance at OT……) I’ll let you be the judge of what that would be.

I’ll start with the following

And in other news..


Study: Cuter kids better cared for

” If University of Alberta researchers in Canada are to be believed, parents take better care of attractive children than they do ugly ones.

The researchers carefully observed how parents treated their children during trips to the supermarket. They found that physical attractiveness made a big difference.

They noted whether the parents belted their youngsters into the grocery cart seat, how often the parents' attention lapsed and the number of times the children were allowed to engage in potentially dangerous activities like standing up in the shopping cart. They also rated each child's physical attractiveness on a 10-point scale.

The findings, not yet published, were presented at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.

When it came to buckling up, pretty and ugly children were treated in starkly different ways, with seat belt use increasing in direct proportion to attractiveness. When a woman was in charge, 4 percent of the homeliest children were strapped in, compared with 13.3 percent of the most attractive children. The difference was even more acute when fathers led the shopping expedition.

In those cases, none of the least attractive children were secured with seat belts, while 12.5 percent of the prettiest children were.

Homely children were also more often out of the sight of their parents, and they were more often allowed to wander more than 10 feet away.”

Comments:

That theory would explains why my parents used to "accidentially" leave me at the shopping center, put me up for adoption, and started encouraging me to run away from home when I was about 10

[Shapley]

How's this one:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7734025/

They're finally giving decent prizes away in those cereal promotions!

V/R
Shapley

[Angie Parkes]

Maybe the kids' parents knew all about the snake, but the boy isn't all that attractive....

Thank goodness my kids don't look like me. As a baby I was left at the post office, a co-op store, and a lumber yard. The latter is particularly poignant (get out your hankies) because my dad had specifically taken the infant me in the pram to the lumber yard so that he could wheel the lumber he needed home on the pram, rather than carrying it (we didn't have a car). When my mother saw him coming up the path with the lumber on his shoulder she asked, "Why didn't you bring it home on the pram?...By the way, where IS the pram?"

The other explanation, equally as disheartening, is that I got my memory from my dad.

[Shapley]

Angie,

It sounds better than being crushed by the lumber placed on top of the pram you were riding in.

In any case, I think a corn snake would be better than another Scooby Do figurine. I wonder what else they're packing in cereal boxes in Britain?

V/R
Shapley

[Angie Parkes]

Shap, there was no worry. This was in England and in an English pram. You could have put a hod of bricks on the top without them touching the passenger or even flexing the suspension. Montgomery was going to have some shipped to North Africa for the war effort.

It makes sense to put a corn snake in the cereal box. A "puff" adder in the toilet paper, maybe? A rattler in the disposable diapers?

[OperaTenor]

Hi Angie,

Do you still have the pram? Have you seen ours?

This, in today's Sandy Eggo U/T:

Feed your head

My favorite part:

"M&M's and color variations: Two people are each given a bowl of M&M's to nibble while they watch a video. The only difference between the bowls is that one has seven colors of M&M's, and one has 10. The person whose bowl has 10 colors will eat almost 20 more M&M's than the person who has seven colors. He'll eat more because he thinks the additional colors add variety, even though everyone knows all M&M's taste the same.

Conclusion: The perception of variety makes us eat more. "


PS. I feel glanced at.................

:p

[piqaboo]

I wonder if ugly babies grow up to be more independent and adventurous?

So people will snack more on multicolored snakes?

[Serenity]

Originally posted by piqaboo:
I wonder if ugly babies grow up to be more independent and adventurous?

I dunno, ask The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Elephant Man?

[Schmeelkie]

As a relatively new mom living in a state that just enacted a law saying kids have to be in booster seats until they're 6, I'm more concerned about the low number of kids getting stapped into their seats in this study. How old were these kids? Anyone know what the child safety seat laws are like in Canada?
And how many of us did long trips with our parents rolling around in the back of a station wagon (me) or covered truck bed (my husband). Now they don't even let you into the front seat until you're 12!
Our poor restricted (but I guess safer) kides!

[Shapley]

Schmeelkie,

I remember laying down on that large flat surface under the rear window of the car (remember when they had those?) and riding like that.

Of course, I remember when there seat belts weren't standard equipment on all models.

V/R
Shapley

[Haggis@wk]

Schmeelkie,

You have to read it a few times but I think it refers to shopping carts and not cars.

Heck, I just threw the kids into the carts and gave 'em a bag of M&M to keep them pacified while I shopped.

"even though everyone knows all M&M's taste the same."

I thought if you put red M&Ms in a coke it became an aphrodisiac. or was that aspirin?

I do remember thinking that as a barefoot 7 year old kid in Canton, Mississippi on a hot day, a pack of Planter’s salted peanuts in a cold bottle of Dr. Pepper was just about the best feeling in the whole wide world.

...And in other news

Woman sues tattoo shop over piercing

"Kaitlin M. Brew, 20, said an employee at Tattoo America pierced much too deep, poking straight through to Brew's stomach. The injury, which went undiagnosed for more than two years, caused months of constant pain and eventually required exploratory surgery, Brew said.

"It's not a pretty thing whatsoever, I have to admit," Brew said yesterday, describing her experience."

Parents all over the English speaking world are printing this out to use in future arguments with their kids over piercing and tattoos.

Unfortunately I think it is genetic. There are people who get tattoos and body piercing and those who don't.

But if you want to know where all this body piercing and self mutilation is going, read Hebert's "Dune" series (shudder)

[Schmeelkie]

Oops - should have read that a little closer.
I can kind-of understand not using the cart seat belt. Sometimes it takes a while to find a cart with a good belt. and my 19-month old son can twist himself backwards in the seat and scoot up on his knees with the belt on - and if you make it tighter (if you can) so he can't do that - he objects...loudly. I still use the belt, but can see not using it if it makes for a happy toddler.
I still can't understand the attractive/not attractive findings - don't all parents think their child is beautiful and perfect? I have no doubt that my son is the cutest boy who ever lived!

Moving on M&M's - I always liked to save one of each when I was getting to the bottom of the bag and eat the brown ones first, then the yellow and orange, finally the blue and green. Don't know how I hit on that...

[Haggis@wk]

"I remember lying down on that large flat surface under the rear window of the car (remember when they had those?) and riding like that."

I can remember being 5 - 6, lying on that shelf riding at night looking up in the sky watching all the shooting stars. It wasn't until years after that I found out the "shooting stars" were ashes from Dad's cigarettes.

What we didn't know in those days could have killed us a hundred times over. I guess our kids are "lucky" they never got to experience that, or chewing tar, or putting a can over a lit firecracker to see how high it would go or holding a "lady finger" firecracker by the tips of your fingers and letting it go off ("I double dare ya!")

Do kids even play marbles anymore? "Keepsies" or otherwise?

Play with cap guns? Or cap rockets" (remember Shape? You put a cap in the nose and threw it up and it came down and exploded?) Don't remember now what, exactly, the thrill was but it was there at the time.

Now we have 30 ”rules” telling us how to have fun during Summer


(Ed. "While you're traipsing down memory lane let’s not forget polio, Whooping Cough, Tetanus.

Remember Gary Maltezzo's mangled little finger?

How about the 14 days of hospitalization with poliomyelitis when you were 6? Can you still remember the four penicillin shots you got every day?

Nostalgia is a luxury permitted to those who survived!!”

Yeah, you’re right but still………)

<small>[ 05-05-2005, 11:12 AM: Message edited by: Haggis@wk ]</small>

[Shapley]

Ah! Yes! We used to have "bottle rocket fights", shooting bottle rockets at each other from a "gun" made from a board with a groove in it, and a long nail on the bottom for a handle. Sparklers were fun, too. A real kid can hold his third-degree burns.

Rule #2 advises us to stay indoors in really hot weather. That was when we went outside, since it was stifling hot in the house, with no air conditioner. We found a shady spot to play, or dug 'fox holes' and covered them with plywood and dirt to make a hideout. They were nice and cool, so long as they didn't cave in or become home to the snakes.

V/R
Shapley

[OperaTenor]

When I grew up in Arizona, air conditioning came in the form of swamp coolers, which work great in dry climates(Need a cool, refreshing drink on a hot summer day? Take a swig from the cooler drain!). We ran around outdoors all summer in nothing but a pair of cutoffs, and being tough was being able to walk across the 150° asphalt barefoot in the middle of the afternoon. Foxhole digging would have been a good idea, except our soil was mostly caliche(sp?), the stuff used to make adobe. When it's dry, you can't dig a hole in it with a pick.

In '69, we took a road trip to Sandy Eggo for the zoo and Wild Animal Park, then to Disneyland(I clearly remember my 10-year old sister, standing in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle, tears streaming down her face, with a fistful of "E" tickets, screaming, "You never take us anywhere!"). That would be nine of us, and at least five of those were adult-size, in a '67 Bonneville. I imagine we broke some passenger safety rules on that trip.

I always thought the green M&M's were the aphrodisiac...

<small>[ 05-05-2005, 11:47 AM: Message edited by: OperaTenor ]</small>

[Angie Parkes]

Originally posted by OperaTenor:
Do you still have the pram? Have you seen ours?

I did see the pic of you and Altoid on your maiden voyage. Absolutely the epitome of a fine English pram. I expected you to be in a black Edwardian dress with a small lace cap.

Heavens no, my parents didn't keep the pram. Sometime after the lumber incident my folks were transferred to Canada where my dad acquired a 1955 Chevy Bel Aire. It went back to England with us, and then when we emigrated back to Canada my folks shipped the car -- jammed full with all the household effects that could be shoe-horned in. The pram would have been a definite liability and was probably sold to help with move.

Originally posted by Shapley:
I remember laying down on that large flat surface under the rear window of the car

We used to call that bit a "parcel shelf". Is that a Brit/Canadian expression or have you American folks heard it before?

Schmeelkie, when my kids were little I bought my own safety belt for shopping carts. That way I could take any cart I wanted. And like Haggis, I brought treats and toys.

[OperaTenor]

BTW, the tech term for the rear shelf on a car is the "rear deck".

JFYI.

For Altoid, a friend gave us what I call a shopping cart/highchair condom. It's a padded liner with it's own belt, that is tailored to fit in a shopping cart, but will also work in a restaurant highchair. We thought it was silly when we first saw it, but now use it almost daily.

"Edwardian dress with a small lace cap." I'm having a really bad visual there.

Our pram is a Wilson. It was made in 1972, and at the time their models were named after Rolls Royces. Ours is a Silver Shadow. The bonnet and rain apron are covered with real mohair(stinks when it gets wet). Someday I will need to get the bonnet recovered(I'm thinking of trying a shop that does convertible tops), and new tyres for it(they're made of solid natural rubber!).

[Angie Parkes]

Apparently one of the benefits of being a Canadian is that we get Smarties AND M&Ms.

I bought a cap rocket for my boys!

One of the ways I can be identified as a bad mother is that I don't schedule anything for my kids during the summer unless they hear of something really cool they'd like to do. I'm fortunate in that Rob is mostly home in the summer, but I expect my kids to ride their bikes, do stunts on the playground that would probably induce cardiac arrest if I actually saw them, laze around, and oh yes, blast electronic thingies to smithereens. When I'm asked, "So what are your kids doing this summer?" I usually say "Nothing."

Of course, they have much less summer than kids in the US. Canadian school years don't end until June 30. My younger boy goes back to school around August 15, my older boy the first of September, generally before Labour Day. Canadian summers seem so short that I'm not at all interested in scheduling the kids.

On the up side, we're far enough north here (about 3 hours' drive from the 49th parallel) that in high summer, there's still light in the sky at 11:00 pm. During Stampede there are fireworks every night but they can't start before about 11:30 pm. My nine year old likes to sit in the back yard after 10 pm and breathe in what he calls "the smell of the night". That he can do this in a city of about a million people is one of the summer's great blessings.

<small>[ 05-05-2005, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: Angie ]</small>

[Angie Parkes]

Originally posted by OperaTenor:
For Altoid, a friend gave us what I call a shopping cart/highchair condom. It's a padded liner with it's own belt, that is tailored to fit in a shopping cart, but will also work in a restaurant highchair.

I had one of those, too. It was invaluable.

Our pram is a Wilson. It was made in 1972

I was born in 1959, so the pram my folks had could have even been pre-WW II. There would have been no production from 1939-1945, and precious little non-industrial production until well into the 50s. There was food rationing in England until 1954. I can't imagine my folks having much money to buy anything even "newish". Dad went into submarines after I was born just to get the danger pay.

[Schmeelkie]

Anyone notice that there is no #26 on the list of 30 things to do in the summer? So annoying that half those things on the list are followed by tons of safety information - how did our parents and ancestors ever survive?

On the topic of overwhelming safety - my husband and I honeymooned in Ireland. We were castle hunting one day and found one (near Shannon) that the front wall, roof and most of the floors were missing. There was just a sign in front telling the history and nothing to stop you from climbing up to the top - no fences there to stop you from falling off either. We of course, climbed to the top and wandered around. We got lots of great pictures and figured something like this would never be allowed to exist in the US - too many lawyers....