Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL Wise Bread

Being a baby sucks: all you do is eat, sleep, poop, and watch helplessly as someone changes your diaper over and over again.

How humiliating.

So it's understandable that a baby would scream its head off whenever it gets tired, hungry, or bored.

Doctors and friends (and everyone else with an opinion) all say that "the baby needs to cry," but that's no consolation at the end of a long day when baby is screaming her pretty little head off and mommy and daddy have had enough.

If a diaper change, feeding, and a nap don't solve the crisis, then it's time to bring in the big guns.

The most effective technique I've found to calm a baby comes from one Dr. Karp and his book, The Happiest Baby in the Block. In it, Dr. Karp points out that babies are born prematurely and still need to develop outside the womb for a "fourth trimester."

During these three months, the secret to calming a baby is to trigger the "calming reflex."

The secret to triggering this reflex is to make the baby feels like they're back in the womb. The Five S's that trigger the calming reflex are:

1. Swaddling
2. Side/stomach laying
3. Shushing
4. Swaying
5. Sucking

Sounds like a lot to take in? I used to think so too, until I saw the DVD version of the book (which I highly recommend), and what I saw floored me. In it, the good doctor Karp puts the ninja moves on crying babies and — wouldn't you know — they stop crying on the spot.

Take a look for yourself at the good doctor in action:

Here's video of a regular Joe using the five S's:

I've tried this myself and usually I only need to do the first three S's for my baby to suddenly stop crying. It's a little creepy at first, but it's also the most beautiful sound in the world.

Enjoy!

For more on Dr. Karp and his technique, take a look at his site, The Happiest Baby.

ShareThis

Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL Woot! - One Day, One Deal

As an expectant father, I've taken it upon myself to play the role of He Who Must Choose The Master's Playthings. It's fun! You get to sit on the couch next to your pregnant wife (mostly due to the crying fit you threw when she told you the baby was too young for a Lego Millennium Falcon set), and cruise the Internet for all kinds of strange and wonderful things that she'll deem inappropriate! It's not so much about the baby anymore, so much as seeing what it takes for her to curse her decision to ever touch me in an intimate way.

For instance:

 

 

Sure, they look like the same cute plushies you see just about anywhere, but deep within their stuffing-minds something is broken. That squishy little turtle hasn't known joy in a very long time due to severe depression. Inside the heart of that adorable wide-eyed sheep, lies another personality, dark and feral, just underneath the surface. And that crocodile isn't clutching that pillow in hopes of coming to a slumber party. Oh, no. That's how he deals with his hypersensitive hallucinatory perception.

Welcome to the world of The Asylum Psychiatric Clinic for Abused Cuddlytoys, a magical land where you and your child can attempt to heal these "patients" and make them normal members of society once again. Each one comes with a detailed medical history and treatment plan help guide your cuddly patient on the road to recovery! Doesn't that sound like a freakin' blast?

I thought so. And now my wife won't allow me to be alone with the baby until he's five.

[via Slate]

 

Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL The Consumerist

The makers of Jewly Bandz, a Jewish-themed knockoff of those Silly Bandz things that kids today are into, are having to do some explaining after the Internet noticed that, along with recognizably Jewish icons like a menorah and a dreidel, there is also a dollar sign included in its Chanukah Set.

The company's owner had this to say to the ladies of TheGloss, who originally broke the story:

The dollar sign in the set is there to symbolize the "Chanukah-Gelt" - which is an old Jewish tradition. During Chanukah Jewish children all over the world are given coins or chocolate coins (to symbolize the real coins). The Dollar sign in the set comes to remind us of that. By the way, they were created by Rabby Moshe Rabin. Maybe it is not the best choice, but this is what the manufacturer chose for that symbol (probably if he would have tried to show coins it would just be a round silly band - and that would defeat the purpose).

Has the Jewlybandz Website Been Hacked? [TheGloss.com]

Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL DOGHOUSE

They ate them because they didn’t have to pay $17 for a can of’em.

Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL Solipsism

nevver:

Van Gogh

Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL ScienceBlogs Select

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return." -Unknown

Someone showed me a picture yesterday, and my initial reaction was simply, "WOW!" See for yourself:

But, as a physicist, I look at something like this and I immediately need to figure out what's going on here.

First off, you notice that this is clearly some type of fighter jet, being photographed from below with the Sun illuminating it from above. A little google-fu reveals that the silhouette matches that of an F-22 Raptor.

This plane is easily capable of supersonic speeds, and I wouldn't be surprised if its speed wasn't exceeding (or at least approaching) Mach 1. The fact that we're moving somewhere around the speed of sound is important, and we'll need to remember it for later.

But the star of the top picture is clearly the rainbow trail behind it. Most of you have seen such a rainbow trail before, similar to when you have the Sun shining on a film of soap or oil in a puddle on the street.

But the thin-film rainbow, above, caused by light refracting into the oil, reflecting off of the water beneath, and then making it to your eye, likely doesn't have anything to do with the one we're seeing. The closest thing we have to what's going on, coming in at number 8 on a list of top 10 strangest natural phenomena, is the Fire Rainbow.

The Fire Rainbow happens when you have high-altitude sunlight (58 degrees or higher) hitting special types of ice crystals known as hexagonal plate crystals, found naturally in very-high altitude cirrus clouds.

The light enters through the top face of a horizontally-oriented hexagonal crystal and leaves, after some internal reflection(s), through the bottom face. It produces a spectrum of colors, visible only to an observer who sees the ice crystals at an angle of 46 degrees.

But what's going on with the plane is an incredibly special example of this.

(I managed to track down the original: copyright 2008, Bernardo Malfitano.)

Now, did you remember that this fighter plane was moving close to the speed of sound? When an aircraft approaches the speed of sound (Mach 1), the air pressure above the wing becomes very, very tiny, and the airflow behind the airplane becomes very turbulent, and filled with vortices.

This is in contrast to the air elsewhere around the plane, which is at a relatively normal temperature and pressure. When you have two regions of air touching each other, one with normal temperature and pressure and one with practically no air in there, something really interesting happens. The air rushes into the region with practically no air, and because it's practically a vacuum, it cools tremendously! This ultra-fast cooling is so powerful that it can not only pull water vapor out of the air and turn it directly into liquid water,

but it can immediately turn that liquid water into the special form of -- you guessed it -- hexagonal ice crystals!

And the turbulent motion of the airflow combined with these oddly-shaped crystals, with the Sun at just the right angle, combines to produce this spectacular rainbow effect! And that's the physics of where this rainbow comes from!

Read the comments on this post...

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL STFU, Conservatives

Submitted by nikkikoala90.

Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL Solipsism

Rule 27

Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL Pink Cake Box Wedding Cakes & more

This wedding cake is inspired by the webcomic xkcd. I had not heard of this comic before, but was able to find out more about it after talking to my husband. Apparently the comic mixes romance, sarcasm and some math all together in a single comic strip that appears every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on the website.

The top of the cake includes cutouts of the comic characters with a red heart on a wire between them. The entire cake is covered in white fondant with black thin bands at the base of each tier. Equations inspired by this comic decorate the remaining tiers. (You can buy the t-shirt of this comic here.)

We also included some unusual flavors including banana cake with coffee & chocolate mousse and vanilla with raspberry & strawberry mousse. The wedding cake was delivered to the Hyatt on the Hudson in Jersey City.

Here’s the image from the xkcd site that inspired the cake:

Thanks to @hissasa for translating some of the equations. My math is a bit rusty:

I hope you noticed that it says: sqrt(<3) or the root of love; cos(<3) the cause of love; and [1 0; 0 1]<3 the identity of love.

or maybe I just a huge nerd. Basically, I want this for my wedding.

Google Reader Shared Post - Source URL Design Milk

I just wanted to post this photo because as geeky as it is, I love it. I found it on Like Cool.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

---

© 2010 Design Milk | Posted by Jaime in Art, News & Events, Technology | Permalink | 5 comments | Tweet This | Share on Facebook