Calm, relaxing autumn weekend with the kid? Not if the publicizers of these stories from the worlds of science, medicine, education, safety, and parenting have anything to do with it:

• What better way to start the Friday Freakout than an interactive Stray Voltage Map, which shows you all the energized objects on the streets of New York City? You can zoom in from 1/4-mi. to your-kid's-armlength-scale in just a few clicks! [strayvoltagenyc.org via dt reader brent]


• Thinking of taking your kid to China? Wait, let me rephrase the question, Atlantic Magazine-style: "Thinking of filling up those little lungs" with hazardous levels of microparticulate pollution the likes of which haven't been seen in the US in decades?" [theatlantic.com]


• Holy smokes, a German study of the "melody contours" of newborn cries in France and Germany found that babies pick up the language of their mothers' mother tongue in the womb! This supports the famous 1993 "Je vousdrais aller au salle de bains study by Baldwin, Farley, Sandler, et. al., and proves once and for all that strapping a $150 Walkman on your pregnant belly will get your fetus into Harvard. [breathless press release]


• Except that the German researchers cherrypicked the data, which was gathered in a speciously non-rigorous way; they fudged the analysis; overstated the results, ignored the inconvenient fact that their claimed melody contours don't actually match adult French of German, and refused to publish their actual data, said a UPenn linguist this morning. And then he had breakfast. [languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu]

It started this summer, and so it has nothing to do with having kindergarten friends who take riding lessons. But otherwise, we are unable to account for the intensity of the kid's current horse-and-unicorn fixation.

The one bright spot is that we won't have to worry about buying Struts Runway Magic Ponies, introduced by Playmates Toys in the Spring of 2008. Whether it was because of the immediate public uproar over the vapid, oversexualized, body image disorder-inducing My Slutty Little Pony knockoffs, or just because someone woke up to what a #$*%ing stupid and awful idea these were, by 2009, all the Struts had been taken out behind the Fisher-Price barn and shot.

If you want to painlessly relive the outrage and demand that Struts be banished to the same kidwarping hell as Baby Bratz and Club Libby Lu, you can follow along on Princess Sparkle Pony's hilarious blog. Looks like good times.

Mar '08: PSP Worried about Slutty New Pony Rivals [sparklepony, thanks abe]
More Pictures of the Wonderful New My Little Slutty Pony Toys
Jul. '09: UPDATE: These Whorses are Ready for the Glue Factory

The funny thing is, I could look at Damien Hirst's bisected calf in formaldehyde while eating veal carpaccio. I could grind my own hamburger next to his installation withmaggots and a rotting cow's head. I could lose myself in the truly unexpected beauty of his massive paintings coated thick with the carcasses of a million dead flies.

But for some reason, this new edition, Innocence Lost, a pork sausage submerged in a baby bottle filled with alcohol, just grosses me the hell out. It'd sure put me off the idea of having my son circumcised, though, I can tell you that.

alternate reading update: from dt reader td, who had problems with the comment [sorry]: "what happens when alcohol and table saws mix?"

Innocence Lost, 2009, Ed. of 35 + 5 Artist Proofs, engraved on the bottle with the artist's stamp, signature, and edition number, £5,200, including VAT [othercriteria.com via afc]

Jason Avant of Dadcentric is representin' for the dadblogging community at a lavish Ford Safety press event in the US Virgin Islands this weekend. Now that he's livetweeted the big news--inflatable rear seat belts!!--he has the entire weekend free to frolic on the beach with all the mombloggers, maybe take a boat over to Virgin Gorda for a day. Nicely played.

CORRECTION: Apparently the event is not being held in US Virgin Islands. It is in Dearborn. Repeat, Dearborn, in the US Suburban Islands. Daddy Types regrets the error.

I know that when fans read in Paste Oct '06 that The Decemberists' Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis would put out a children's book "about a talking cat who lives in turn-of-the-century Butte, Montana," many people stopped uploading greenscreen videos to YouTube and hustled to have a kid in time for the "mid-2007" release. And I also know that they've all been all, "Uh, I have this kid now, where's my book??" about it ever since.

Fret not, because Carson revealed an illustration [dead Turks! in Butte!] last week on her blog, and said that the book, now titled, The Unfortunate Demise of Whitley Rackham "seems on the horizon" and is at the printer. Unfortunately for all but about 150 of you, the printer is the quaint, little, limited-edition letterpress-to-the-indie-stars outfit Stumptown Press. The rest of you will just have to print out this picture and insert it into a children's book you already own. I would suggest the "nobody" page of Goodnight, Moon.

We <3 Stumptown Printers [carsonellis.com via paste]

So awesome. At The Morning News, Giles Turnbull has gathered several families' names for various Lego parts into one fascinating chart. Fascinating, yet useless, of course, since your own lingo is probably different:

"Dad, I'm building a roof for the medical pod, but I need a hinge-y bit to make it open up. You know, one of those four-er flat hinge-y bits."

Raimi often builds spaceships but has never referred to the pieces by name, until prompted by his father--at which point he reveals that he possesses names for all of them in his head.Yes I do know. I'll keep my eye out for one, I say. And do you want this flat groovy piece to go on the top there, behind your lasers?

"Oh, thanks Dad."

I've been spending a bit of time recently in the Netherlands version of Google Earth, and the geometry of the Dutch landscape is really distinctive. And educational! Thomas de Bruin has assembled the entire alphabet, upper and lower case, plus numbers and punctuation, using only Dutch sites on Google Earth. They look fantastic. They should be in a book. Or two.

After all, Stephen T. Johnson won the freakin' Caldecott for his 1995 book of found letters, Alphabet City, and he got a follow-on out of the deail, too, City by Numbers, which is alright. [Johnson's images are actually photo-realist drawings, very nicely done. Whether the children's book industry or Johnson's artistic muse wouldn't let him just go with the original photos in 1995, I don't know.]

What I do know, though, is that Johnson's latest book, A Is for Art: An Abstract Alphabet, is a horrible, pretentious mess. Letters are hidden in awful Pop-inflected paintings or sculptures, which would be acceptable if they were just illustrations.

But if Johnson actually thinks that he's making good work by treating contemporary art history as a stylistic dress-up box, he's deluded. And if he is doing it cynically, as the traditionally trained artist's bitter critique of the current art world's preference for "anyone could make this crap," then it's a disservice to kids. Either way, it sucks. [But we appreciate the sentiment, Mom, and have tried to turn reading it into a teaching moment.]

UPDATE: Thomas de Bruin himself adds [or I add, since the comments weren't working, sorry] a challenge to all the residents of Google Earth:

Thanks for mentioning my alphabet. You're right about the geometry of the Dutch landscape being distinctive. I really like flying around my own little country in Google Earth.

I'd like to see more people creating a Google Earth alphabet for their country.

Thanks,

Thomas de Bruin

UPDATE UPDATE: Surprisingly, even with that parenthetical, there was a bit of blowback from Grams over saying the book she gave us sucks. Who knew? I tried to explain that it was Johnson's art that sucks, not the gift. What it boils down to, though, is that the FCC's new blogger freebie disclosure regulations destroy families.

Google Earth Alphabet - The Netherlands photoset in Thomas de Bruin's flickr stream [flickr via boingboing]
de Bruin also provided a KMZ file for doing your own alphabetic flythrough in Google Earth [keyhole.com]

So while an Illinois mom breastfeeds in the nursery at all hours of the night and day, the dad chats with the new dad neighbor about how they must have the same brand of baby monitor, because they can totally pick up each others' signals, wonders if that means his neighbor is checking out his wife, and then files a class-action lawsuit against the manufacturer and Babies R Us, claiming fraud and invasion of privacy.

If I were a glass half-full type, I'd say this was an encouraging sign of a mom and dad working hard to balance the challenges of parenting. The presence of an army of contingency lawyers is just a bonus.

Lawsuit: Baby monitor invades privacy [chicagonow.com via wired]
Seriously? That's it? Read the court filing in 10-30-09 Denkov vs Summer Infant [pdf via docstoc]
Summer Night's Day & Night Baby Video Monitor only has two 900 Mhz channels [summerinfant.com]

The NY Times has a great article discussing some recent research on the involvement of fathers in raising kids, including the work of Dr. Kyle Pruett a child psychiatrist at Yale, who is one of the leading researchers on fatherhood, and his wife Dr. Marsha Kline Pruitt, a professor of social work at Smith.

Their basic finding: dads are different from moms, and those differences are important to kids. Kids and families do better when both fathers and mothers are equally engaged in parenting.

It's interesting stuff, hope it sinks in.

Fathers Gain Respect From Experts (and Mothers) [nyt via @workingdad]
Related: Making Room for Dad, from Lisa Belkin's NYT blog, Motherlode [parenting.blogs.nytimes.com]

The Baby and Me video game for the Nintendo Wii is only launching in Australia, but who cares? You can make your own right at home.

Here's the concept for the Australian version:

Your baby reacts by giggling, gurgling or crying through the Wii remote
Ten Baby Mode games including feed baby & send baby to sleep
Eight Play Mode games including rattle, catch, clap & balloons
Balance Board support: rock baby to sleep, burp baby, teach baby to walk
Customise baby with new clothes, accessories and playrooms

Baby and Me special edition puts everything else to shame [aussie-nintendo.com via ew.com, thanks dt reader jason]

Het ABC voor Holland's Kleintjes met 156 Plaatjes, by Daan Hoeksema, 1923

Bibliodyssey's found another incredible trove of vintage children's books, this time at The Memory of The Netherlands. The digitized collections of libraries and institutions spanning 160 years--including full books--are all brought into one online spot.

PK has an excellent selection of covers, including Daan Hoeksema's ABC book. [Does Dutch have 130 extra letters? No wonder it's so hard to learn.]

Then there's Gouden Vlinders/ Golden Butterfly, a 1923 book of poems by S. Franke with de Stijl-influenced illustrations by Lou Loeber [above] and a book about Aajpes-land by the classic modernist toymaking collective Ajo--that looks, unfortunately, like some of the racist caricatures of Africans you'd recognize from old Looney Tunes. Give it a few more years, though, and the fat, white chickens of Kippen-land will look vaguely offensive, too.

Dutch Covers [bibliodyssey]
The Memory of The Netherlands [gehegenvannederland.nl]

"Small children must be held": It sounds so sweet and loving, the saying on this little t-shirt. It's only when you learn it's from the front door of the self-important SoHo design emporium Moss that you realize they left off the rest of the warning: "Or we'll roast them like a Maarten Baas credenza."

Moss kids and baby t-shirts, in pristine white or charcoal black, $20 [mossonline.com]

Runners wear them, all those UnderArmour guys wear them, skiers wear them, dancers wear them, Spiderman wears them, and according to Laura, an expat American mom of a 4-yo boy, every boy in Germany wears them.

So what's the big deal with tights for boys, such as these Cars Strumpfhose, just EUR7.95 from H&M? [hm.com/de]
tights for boys [baroque babies]

"Whoop! Ahhhh. Whoop Whoop! Aaahh Ahhhh. Apple pie catch."

K2 is wandering around the house singing the Carl Sagan song.

Darth Vader and the Death Star, originally uploaded by andibob909.

Wow. The Force is strong with this one. [pregonaut via boingboing]

Because you can only worry about razor blades in apples for a few more hours, here are some headlines from the worlds of science and parenting to freakout over the rest of the weekend:

• 610,000 cheap-ass Halloween flashlights sold at Target in the last two months have been recalled because they can overheat, melt, and burn the little hands holding them. [cpsc]


• Here are the 100-and-counting products and companies the FDA has called out for making fraudulent H1N1 flu prevention or treatment claims. [fda.gov]


• When they're not busy abusing their kids, British parents are now 2-4x as likely to be abusing drugs or alcohol, say professional estimators of such vice. [sciencedaily]


• A connection between some rare testicular tumors and genetic disorders which are more common in children of older fathers seem to indicate that certain genetic mutations happen at certain stages of life. [eurekalert]


• A very rare mutation on the 16th chromosome has been linked to both schizophrenia and autism. [sciencedaily]


• Iron-folic acid supplements during pregnancy lowered child mortality by 31%. [sciencedaily]


• More than 2/3 of American kids have Vitamin D deficiencies, and it's even worse the browner the kid gets. That's due partly to the additional exposure to the sun required for darker-skinned people to make Vitamin D, and partly to the researchers' proposal to jack up the daily recommended dose by 50%. [sciencedaily]


• Vegetables [not root vegetables] during pregnancy prevent childhood diabetes in Sweden. No one knows why. [sciencedaily]


• Vegetables don't prevent the flu. Antioxidants in vegetables prevent the flu. [sciencedaily]


• The CDC reports that two infants infected in 2008 with Cronobacter in New Mexico got it or probably got it from powdered infant formula. One died, the other's got brain damage. [cdc.gov]


• Sperm may play a key role in HIV transmission, say Argentine researchers. [eurekalert]


• The cereals marketed the most to kids are the worst for them. Come here, Honeycomb, you can hide out with me. I'll take care of you. [consumerreports.org via murketing]

You know what might turn BRIO's fortunes around? Bringing back this molded plywood rocking ox with the red horns and foot rests and the blue felt seat that they introduced in 1967. Seriously, stack those things like Pringles and ship 'em around the world.

Schaukelochse/ Rocking Ox/ Boeuf a Bascule, from Brio, published in Form Magazine 037, c.1967 [form.de]

It's been a while since the CPSIA has been in the news, or at least since anyone's sent me anything about it. The CPSC's new lead and phthalates restrictions and testing requirements for childrens' products kicked in earlier this year, and though some details are still to be decided, the contours of the new American toyscape are becoming clearer: giant toy companies manufacturing overseas and testing and certifying in their own labs are going to do fine. international toymakers and independent and handcrafted types are screwed, as are the secondhand and thrift shop industries.

The New York Times has a front page story today about the plight of the Handmade Toy Alliance, the trade group founded to protest the CPSIA's requirement for third-party lead testing and certification for basically every childrens product, including things that would never have lead to begin with, like beeswax-finished, carved wood toys.

The Times piece is nothing new, and I can't quite figure out what prompted it to appear right now, but it at least serves as a reminder that the CPSIA is still a badly crafted regulatory threat to thousands of conscientious small businesses.

Meanwhile, DT reader Caitlin reports that the owner of their local mom&pop toy store told them BRIO, the venerable Swedish wooden toy maker, is pulling out of the US altogether rather than incur the expense of third-party CPSIA testing. Brio is best known for their high-end wooden trains, which have been pummeled by the multi-channel, cross-promotional branded juggernaut of Thomas the Tank Engine. Which of course, were the toy that kcked off the big Summer of Lead Toys Scare in 2007.

Brio's been struggling with its business anyway The company was faced with bankruptcy earlier this year, and has restructured itself into three separate divisions, all focused primarily on the Northern European markets. So maybe they're getting run over by the CPSIA because they had a heart attack on the tracks.

Burden of New Safety Law Imperil Small Toymakers [nytimes via dt readers eric, john, and jc]

As everyone knows, the United Kingdom was founded as a prison island for criminals exiled from Camelot. Given the population's well-established propensity for child abuse, a national paedophile database is being set up, and everyone who gets within 100 rods of children will be required to confirm they are not on the list. That now includes parents at adventure playgrounds in Watford, a suburb north of London just off the M25.

Mother-of-five Marcella Bergin, 35, has been visiting with her three eldest children, Christy, 15, Seamus, 12, and Chloe, 11, for many years without any problems.

She said: "It's like they are branding all parents potential paedophiles which is disgraceful - 99 per cent of people are great parents and certainly not child abusers.

Council Bans Parents From Play Areas [telegraph.co.uk via dt reader ted]