Two Things At Once






Howdy folks. Sorry for the long break, but I did warn you. I have gotten past the most intense time of the year, job-wise, with sanity and babies generally intact. Woohoo! Today I bring you two babies in a play gym. This will be followed by a rant. Feel free to skip it, but then you might not learn something today...

The play gym is a Baby Einstein product given to us by the fine Deacon household. Let us hear a shout out. The Baby Einstein business plan is to take shakey child development theory, extrapolate it far beyond even that weak scientific foundation, market a product based on this wild extrapolation as a tool that will make your child smarter and more well-adjusted, and then charge too much for it. The real Baby Einstein is the CEO who every night rolls around in a bed covered in money that has been dredged directly from the dreams of well meaning parents.

As of 2001 the company was purchased by Disney, making its evil nature official. That all being said, I am sure I will continue to buy their products, because hey, I want a genius baby as much as the next guy.


The Gym, as you can see is basically a colorful, padded mat with criss-crossing bars that go overhead. The bars come with handy places from which one can hang roughly one zillion things, reducing the baby to complete sensory overload. These items include rattles, mirrors, animal pictures with text (both photos and cartoon representations), squeaking birds, and the centerpiece of the whole aparatus: A star that plays music and lights up the tips of its star in rhythm with the music. I can't quite place the tune, but it is not a lullaby. Imagine high energy gypsy music. The philosphy is clearly the more stimulus the smarter your baby will be. Next I am going to get one of those freak-out chairs from Clockwork Orange (or LOST) and pin their eyes open.

In practice it is a nice alternative to the Mobile for something to engage their attention and reduce parental strain. As they get older the two of them will probaby interact with it more and it will go from Baby TV (passive) to full-fledged interactive toy (Baby XBOX). Also note they hold hands in most of these pictures. That is some cute-ass stuff, right there.

The weak connecting thread of this blog is the question of whether the typical person can hold two ideas in their head at once. Up top is a toy based largely on information overload. Does that prepare us for the world, or simply begin the bombardment at a younger age. A common symptom of info-overload is the inability to absorb useful information at all. Like the explorer who tries to hold too many items (lantern, mail, a grue) , he may just end up dropping them all.

Case in point and my present pet peeve: Global Warming and Ozone Depletion. Despite what appears to be the majority public opinion, these are not the same issue. There are TWO significant things human activity is doing to our atmosphere. Sadly, the average American seems unable to keep the two ideas in their head at the same time. Partly this is because they never really understand the problem, and partly because of info-overload. The details (like there are two separate atmosphere problems) get lost along the way.

Quick Primer:

The Ozone Layer is a section of triply connected oxygen (normal oxygen is doubly bonded) that lies roughly at the top of our atmosphere. It is valuable because it absorbs

a large percentage of the harmful ultraviolet rays that hit the Earth from the Sun. Without the ozone you would sunburn in a fraction of the time you presently do. Certain chemicals we make, most famously chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), float up to the top of the atmosphere and destroy ozone. One rascally CFC molecule can break apart a huge number of ozone molecules, making them doubly pernicious. Huge holes in the ozone have opened up over the poles (north and south), which scientists believe are related to this release of CFCs. CFCs are being phased out in the United States, but are still wildly used around the world as a cheap way to run air conditioners and produce foam products (like a seat cushion). At one time they were used as propellant in aerosol cans, which is the image a lot of people connect to it... and to global warming for some perverse reason.

Global Warming is the steady increase in the average temperature around the world because more and more greenhouse gases are being sent into the atmosphere. This occurs for basically for the same reason your car warms up hotter than the air around it on a sunny day. Light comes in through the window (atmosphere) gets absorbed by the seat (ground) and then is re-emitted as infrared heat which can't escape the window (atmosphere). Carbon dioxide is called a greenhouse gas because it does not let the infrared heat out, warming the planet. There are many ways to make CO2, but the easiest is to burn something. Like oil. Or natural gas. Or trees.
Burning trees is a double whammy, as it also destroys plants that take CO2 out of the air. By the way, freakishly cold winter days are not evidence against global warming. Increases in temperature cause increases in volatility. That is a fancy term saying things will go up and down more. So while the average day gets hotter, you will actual have more freakish days -- both super hot and super cold.

There is a bit of confusion because CFCs are also greenhouse gases (they absorb heat), but they make up a tiny percentage of the problem compared to CO2.

What has set me off is an article in the New York Times. The original article title was: "As Asia Keeps Cool, Scientists Worry About Global Warming". It was about the huge rise in the use of air conditioning in India and China, which all use CFCs because they are so much cheaper. So the clever title was misleading. In fact, if you read the article is makes no mention of global warming at all. At some point someone besides me must have thrown a brick at the Science Editors head, because now the title says they "...Worry About The Ozone Layer". Not as clever, but not as misleading. And this was the N.Y. Times. Supposedly some of the best print journalists around.

Now before anyone has a conniption, yes, air conditioning tends to be one of the largest power hogs around. Power takes electricity. Electricity is more often than not generated by burning things. So it is an issue for Global Warming as well, but the article was about the ozone issue. A DIFFERENT issue.

But modern mankind can't seem to keep two ideas in its head.