10,000 Brilliant Ideas

Donate your living body to research! That's what the banner ad will say on your facebook page. What it means simply is that you are willing to give access to your full facebook and other social site history to researchers who can use it under certain conditions (guarantee of anonymity for example). I'm not talking about research of social media which is already plentiful. I'm talking about traditional research that needs to have you remember something about your past. For example, a study trying to determine if yo-yo dieting leads to diabetes. The researcher could contact you, pay you the nominal fee as is done in research studies, test you for diabetes, and then look in your facebook history to see how many times you mentioned being on a diet. Currently these studies suffer from recall bias because it's hard to remember what you did 5 years ago, much less what you ate. But if you're one of those facebook people who posts every time you eat a hamburger, well the

My kids when very little, loved Baby Einstein. If you missed the release in theaters and it isn't yet out on Blu-ray in your area, I'll describe it to you.  A camera is locked down (ie doesn't move) looking at infinity space (that white space where you can't tell where walls or floor are). And into this space come or are put, toys and sciencey gadgets that are colorful and repeat. Each thingy is displayed for like a minute at a time (although it seems like 10 minutes), while Mozart plays in the background. The kids love it. (And I'll admit that I have literally watched the whole show with them several times. It's mesmerizing.) Some parents, such as myself, are totally sold on the idea that injecting the high-culture art of Mozart in the kids brains must have some benefit. But perhaps there lurks in the back of some parent's minds, that watching toys is stupid. Or at least can't have the same long-term benefit as Mozart. What are we new-age parents