Seven for Saturday: News You Can Use 3/26

Off to IKEA today. Say a quick prayer for impulse control, for the sake of my wallet.

Genes tweaked, cows will now give ‘human milk’

Chinese scientists have engineered a herd of genetically-modified cows that produce milk with the characteristics of human milk. The Frankenmilk will allegedly be available for purchase in two years, and on supermarket shelves within a decade.

While I get that this is probably backlash from all those melamine-tainted cans of formula, wouldn’t it make more sense to provide support for more humans to produce human milk? Aren’t most Asians lactose-intolerant anyway?
The Dangers of ‘Nerfing’ the World for Our Kids

“Getting the Chicken Pox, having a runny nose, and making mud pies are a part of any healthy childhood. Short of wrapping your offspring in cellophane and foam rubber, there is no way to prevent every single misfortune that may come along. The only thing we will succeed in doing is making sure the common cold becomes a killer.”

Well said.
Calif. P.E. Flops With Only 1 In 3 Of Kids Passing Fitness Test

This is hardly surprising; the article also reports that “the World Health Organization found last year that kids everywhere are too sedentary, with only 25 percent of boys and 15 percent of girls getting enough exercise.” Depending on school P.E. classes to fix the problem of childhood obesity, however, is just not going to cut it.
Stink bug population spreading across USA

The video claims the epicenter is in the Mid-Atlantic, but I’ve got photographic evidence that the epicenter is actually in my attic. Researchers at the University of Delaware are investigating whether introducing killer wasps, the stink bugs’ natural predator in China, into the population will create its own set of problems.

(The video is interesting, but I will admit I think it could be so much better with the Honey Badger treatment.)
Facial expressions, weight may sway kids’ eating

A French research team found that kids were more likely to want a food they dislike, if presented with an image of someone enjoying that food. But, seeing a person “disgusted” by a food— even one they already like— turned them off to that food.

The lesson here: kids are picking up on everything you do, including wincing when eating your veggies.
The power of lonely: What we do better without other people around

This article on the benefits of solitude has been sitting open on a tab in my browser since it was published 3 weeks ago. I touched on this subject a while back in a post titled Alone, and I don’t think I have enough new material to warrant a whole new post. But I wanted everyone to revisit the question of whether our kids get enough alone time.
The Godmother of Chick-Lit

Francine Pascal is back, and Sweet Valley Confidential picks up a decade after Sweet Valley High left off. Diablo Cody (who wrote Juno) is working on a Sweet Valley movie. I’m not sure what to think of the re-emergence of the Wakefield twins and their matching gold lavaliere necklaces; even as I devoured the books as a tween I recognized the fact that they were fluff drivel. ADDICTIVE, HUGELY SATISFYING fluff drivel, but still. Did they need to come back? Doesn’t this generation deserve mass-produced, committee-written, cliché-laden “literature” of its own?

As an aside, I once told a girl that she looked just like Jessica Wakefield— she totally did— and she had no idea what I was talking about, which made me feel about 80 years old.

Bonus:

This video about the creation of an animated pop-up book, a 3-D effect brought about by projecting images onto a pop-up “world,” is one of the most hauntingly beautiful things I have seen in a while.