Iowa First Lady on S-E-X (shhh its a dirty word) talk tour!

March 10, 2010

” If you’re not willing to talk about it [sex] in a public place, it’s like a sin of omission.”

This is the message of Iowa’s First Lady Christie Vilsack, who is also Executive director of the Iowa Initiative, an education initiative that aims to get teens talking frankly about sex and family planning.

Vilsack claims up to 50% of pregnancies in women 18-30 were unplanned, and that teen pregnancies not only affect taxpayers but parents and grandparents as well, making this a social problem. Vilsack is traveling the state to “open dialogue and make this a mainstream, main street conversation.”

It seems a no brainer that comprehensive conversations about sex, dating, relationships and family planning are required to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.  And yet we live in a country where the Iowa Initiative, and First Lady Vilsack’s efforts, are needed.  We need more public figures and people in government getting on board!

article here


Sleeping Beauty As Christ Allegory

March 9, 2010

I’ve recently been examining the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty (for professional purposes), and something struck me as I was analyzing the script. The story is a fairly obvious allegory in the form of an inverse passion play.

An exalted princess is born, but Aurora is not just an ordinary baby. She is so special that she is visited by three special fairies who bestow gifts upon her. Despite the gifts, Maleficent, a demonic witch, curses the child to an untimely death. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather can easily stand in for the three astrologers who visit the newborn Jesus; indeed, the fairies were astrologers in the original version, The Sun Moon and Talia. Just as young Jesus disappears from scripture, so does Aurora, who becomes Briar Rose.

And when Briar Rose pricks her finger on the spinning wheel, a crown of thorns wraps around the castle. What fitting imagery for our soon-to-be resurrected heroine. When Briar Rose collapses, the entire kingdom slumbers with her, and they awake when she wakes.

Aurora’s resurrection has changed considerably from the earliest version of Sleeping Beauty. In “The Sun Moon and Talia”, a king follows his falcon into the castle where our heroine is slumbering, rapes her, and leaves her there as a traumatized coma patient. While he’s gone, her slumbering body gives birth to twins, one of whom sucks the offending flax seed from her finger, searching for the nipple. The babies are named Sun and Moon. The king has a new wife, who is pissed about her new rival, the narcoleptic rape victim. Unfortunately, the rapist wins in the end, and his jealous wife is thrown into a bonfire of her own creation.

It’s not an accident that a spinning wheel becomes Aurora’s instrument of fate. The mythical Moirae, otherwise known as the three fates, were depicted as prophetic seamstresses. Clotho would spin lives into existence, Lachesis would measure the length of their lives, and Atropos would take her little scissors and decide when those lives would end. Interestingly, Clotho the spinner, was known as Nona by the Romans, who saw her as the goddess of pregnancy.

The flax seed that pricks Talia’s finger is also an important symbol. Flax seeds were used to spin burial linens, even in ancient Egypt. Linens have also been associated with purity and sleep.

I bet you’ll never watch Disney’s cartoon the same way again…


Podcast TWIPS: Episode 2

March 8, 2010

Every week, we’ll post links to the discussions we have on Podcast Beyond Belief in the segment we call “This Week in Parenting Science”. We hope that if you haven’t listened to the podcast, you’ll check out our discussion on these topics. And if you have listened to the podcast, you’ll appreciate having these links as a resource for further information.


FAQ: Episode 2: Dr. David Elkind

March 6, 2010

Check out our second episode of Podcast Beyond Belief, where we interview John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants about his new CD, Here Comes Science.

Also, we interview Dr. David Elkind, author of The Hurried Child and The Power of Play.

He was kind enough to answer my Mom’s question…”How Can I maximize my toddler’s learning potential?”

Well, first of all, I think the most important thing for parents is to know your child. You should follow the child’s lead. At this age, children really know what they need to learn.

Second, at this age, children are just beginning to talk and just beginning to assert themselves. We call it the terrible twos, but it’s not really terrible. It’s that children are trying to define themselves by putting themselves in opposition.

And then I think it’s so important to spend time talking with children, reading to them, writing poetry, or playing. There’s such a tendency today, I think, to put children in front of mechanical devices and toys. The most important thing that we can give a child at this age is our interactions. Your developing their auditory skills, their conversational skills, their social skills.

Famed inventor, really, of kindergarten, Friedrich Froebel said something that I’d like to put on the refrigerator of every parent who has a child, “Children need to learn the language of things before they learn the language of words.” Children really need to explore the real world before they explore the virtual world.


Water, water, everywhere, but how much should I drink?

March 6, 2010
Giant Water Mug

Giant Water Mug in its Natural Habitat

Pop quiz: How much water should we drink each day?

You already know the answer, right?  Eight glasses, I hear you say.  Eight eight-ounce glasses, in fact, I hear you say.

I know.  We all know.  It’s been drilled into our heads since…  since…  since time immemorial, right?

So much so that a couple years ago I bought this mug you see to the right.  This really big mug.  The idea was to find a mug for use at work that would hold my daily water requirement – that magic 64 ounces that we all need.  And I even found one at my local Super-Mega-Hyper-Mart™ that fit the bill perfectly.  Trust me, this sucker is big.  I’ll admit, it’s hard to appreciate the mug’s presence and stature without reference objects, but if I had put anything too close to it, said object would be irretrievably trapped in the mug’s gravity well.

But that’s not all — not only is GargantuMug big, it’s informative, too.  It mentions the 64-ounce guideline, tells you what things could go wrong with you if you get dehydrated, tells you to drink this much in a day, and even gets silly now and then.  In upside down text, it reads, “If you can read this, I need more water!”

So clever!  So useful!  And yet…

Maybe not so useful…

An article in Scientific American from last June sheds some light on the story.  Physician Heinz Valtin, MD, from Dartmouth Medical School, found no evidence of any science indicating a reason to drink that much water, and also saw no evidence in the general population of their being chronically dehydrated to the point of needing to drink 3½ gallons of water each week.  He did locate what is believed to be the origin of the “8×8 rule”, and it’s interesting, to say the least (emphasis mine):

Valtin thinks the notion may have started when the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended approximately “1 milliliter of water for each calorie of food,” which would amount to roughly two to two-and-a-half quarts per day (60 to 80 ounces). Although in its next sentence, the Board stated “most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods,” that last sentence may have been missed, so that the recommendation was erroneously interpreted as how much water one should drink each day.

To quote Mr. Spock..  “fascinating”.  A misinterpretation of a recommendation back in 1945 has resulted in the commonly-held belief that we all need roughly a six-pack of water every day.

It goes even further.  Of course, we also all know that the 64 ounces have to be actual water, right?  That soft drinks — especially caffeinated soft drinks — don’t count, right?

Think again.

Finally, strong evidence now indicates that not all of the prescribed fluid need be in the form of water. Careful peer-reviewed experiments have shown that caffeinated drinks should indeed count toward the daily fluid intake in the vast majority of persons. To a lesser extent, the same probably can be said for dilute alcoholic beverages, such as beer, if taken in moderation.

And really, when it comes down to it, the whole “caffeinated drink doesn’t count because it’s a diuretic” idea doesn’t really pass the sniff test.  Think about it.  The idea was that the diuretic effect of the caffeine it made the drink not count.  Would a 12-ounce can of caffeinated Coke really make you urinate an extra 12 ounces?  That seems unlikely (Of course, that’s easy to say now, given that I’ve just quoted the results of experiments backing up that point).

Basically, I see two takeaways from this.

One is about the water – if you’re thirsty, drink something. If you’re not, don’t. If you like water, drink it. If you’d rather drink something else, that’s good too. Just stop stressing about it!

And the other has to do with science in general. I’ve had people say that science is too rigid, and once its mind is made up (science has a mind?), it doesn’t change. But honestly, nothing could be farther from the truth. When supplied with evidence, science changes, and that’s an important point to teach our children. T-Rex models look different now. Pluto is no longer a planet. There’s water on the moon. The coelacanth is not extinct. There’s life on Earth in ridiculously hostile environments. And most people don’t need to drink 64 ounces of water every day.

When science is viewed as a process, not a book of facts, it becomes alive and exciting. Let your kids in on the amazing way our knowledge changes thanks to science.

..Rob T. is going to scratch all the incorrect information off of his GargantuMug – and then only drink about 3 ounces out of it!

References:


True Blood Stories

March 5, 2010

Sasha found blood in the toilet yesterday morning and rushed to me in fear that some injury had befallen one of us.

I calmly explained that mommy is messy this time of month, to which she asked, “What the heck?! Is she a vampire or something?” After I stopped rolling on the floor laughing, I explained to her that adult women make tiny eggs in their ovaries every month, and that when those eggs aren’t used they sluff out of the vagina.

Then, I showed her pictures of human eggs on the internet.

We talked about how human eggs are different than chicken eggs. She drew a picture of a human egg to give to a much embarrassed Mommy upon returning from work.

“Daddy, I just have one more question. What does ’sluff’ mean?”

“Um… go ask your mother.”


One In Four = One Depressed Skeptic

March 2, 2010

One in four surveyed parents wrongfully believe that vaccines cause autism. One in four have been convinced, despite any supporting scientific evidence, that their child could suddenly collapse into a heap of neurological disfunction when being treated with the best preventative medical treatments the world has ever known.

This startling statistic comes despite the fact that Andrew Wakefield, the bloke whose research sparked the debate about whether the MMR vaccine could cause autism, has been scolded by the General Medical Council for being dishonest and irresponsible.

This startling statistic comes despite the fact that even the best cases for a link between MMR and autism were rejected by the vaccine court in the autism omnibus proceedings.

This startling statistic lands limply on my desktop despite the fact that numerous studies have disproved a link, despite the fact that thimerosal has been removed from childhood vaccines without a subsequent decline in autism, despite the fact that “mother’s intuition”, conspiracy theories, and imagined toxins are the best that vaccine opponents can provide.

And yet, despite the 25% survey respondents who were suckered by the rhetoric of antivaccine activists, 9/10 still believe in vaccines enough to say that they are a good way to prevent diseases for their children.  So, at the least, I can go to bed knowing that, for now, a semblance of common sense prevails, despite the hysteria and anti-medical propaganda being promoted by my ideological opponents. It’s little comfort, but I’ll take what I can get.


FAQ: Episode 1 – Dr. Harriet Hall

February 27, 2010

Podcast Beyond Belief, our new freethought parenting podcast, features a segment called “The FAQ”, where we answer your science-based questions via qualified experts. Dr. Harriet Hall was kind enough to answer Laurie Tarr’s curious queries about late season flu vaccine…

Back in the fall, people stood in long lines to get H1N1 flu shots, and serum was in short supply. Now it is late February, and serum is readily available, but flu season only lasts until April. If you still haven’t been immunized, is it important to get an H1N1 flu shot now? What about a seasonal flu shot? Is it “too late”?

It’s not too late to get either the H1N1 or the seasonal shots. Flu is still active and the season is far from over. Three more children died of flu last week in the US: two of these deaths were associated with laboratory confirmed 2009 H1N1, and one death was associated with an influenza A virus for which the subtype was undetermined.

If your child comes down with the flu, should the rest of the family hurry to get immunized if they aren’t already, or will the shot not “kick in” until weeks later?

“It’s still useful to get vaccinated after being exposed to the flu, as you might not catch it that time. Depending on how soon after the exposure, receiving the flu shot can lessen the symptoms a little bit.” http://www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom/Site1339/mainpageS1339P351sublevel466.html

If you have had the flu already this season, should you still consider getting the vaccines?

If you’ve already had the flu you’ve only had one type of flu and are still susceptible to other strains. And you probably don’t know for sure which strain you had, so it makes sense to consider getting both shots.

What is on the horizon for next flu season? Will H1N1 continue to be such a threat? Can they combine the vaccines in to one shot?

There is no way to predict what will happen in the next flu season. There should be only one shot next year. Every year the experts try to develop a seasonal flu shot with the strains they think are most likely to spread. This year the H1N1 outbreak occurred too late to incorporate it into the seasonal mixture. If it had shown up in Mexico a couple of months earlier, it would have made it into the regular vaccine and there would have been only one shot.

Thanks to Dr. Harriet Hall for taking the time to share her expertise!


Introducing: Podcast Beyond Belief

February 26, 2010

Sorry, we haven’t had the time to post lately. All of us have been busy with a new project that we’re finally ready to reveal.

We’re proud to announce that Science-Based Parenting, in affiliation with Foundation Beyond Belief, will be producing a weekly parenting podcast for skeptics and secular humanists. Podcast Beyond Belief features the contributing writers of this blog, Laurie Tarr from Rational Moms, Heidi Anderson from She-Thought, and Elyse Anders from Skepchick.

Each episode will feature a round-table discussion of the latest parenting science news, in addition to interviews with well-known science advocates and secular humanists. We’ll also have a regular feature called “THE FAQ”, where we’ll forward on your toughest parenting questions to qualified experts and report back their up-to-date science-based answers.

Our first episode includes a discussion with Dale McGowan, the founder of our “parent” organization, Foundation Beyond Belief. You might also remember him as the editor and co-author of Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers. Dale spoke about secular humanism, and how those principles fit with the foundation’s ideals. We expect to have some listeners who may not understand what it means to be a secular humanist. It’ll be nice to have Dale’s explanation (and example) of humanist philosophy on our first episode to provide context for people new to the concept of freethought.

Be sure to also check out our second episode next week when we sit down with John Flansburgh from They Might Be Giants, the duo who created the new children’s album “Here Comes Science“. The interview went in unexpected directions, and before I knew it, Flans was talking about vaccines, Andrew Wakefield and 9/11 conspiracies.

If you have questions for the FAQ – please send them to podcastbeyondbelief@gmail.com. We’ll pick our favorites to send to the experts for their answers.

We hope you enjoy the first episode. Not to be too apologetic, but please keep in mind that most of us have never produced anything like this before. Please give us some time to get our feet on the ground.  We’ll continue to evolve as we become more confident with the process.


SciGirls – I’m having deja vu!

February 9, 2010

Wow. If you look at my last post, I’m talking about an animated girl guiding other girls through a wonderful world of science. It’s only been a day, and I’m already talking about the exact same thing.

OK. What is going on?

PBS is launching a brand new science series for girls called SciGirls. It’s like Sid the Science Kid for tweens. Apparently, the new series will begin this month and be sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Since it worked so well last time, I’ll just say that I hope there are many  more projects like this. Awesome!