Happy NYE

[clevermanka]

Apparently there's been some discoveries about Really Early People eating cooked vegetables. There's a ton of news articles out there. Pick one. This, of course, has prompted several paleo bloggers to post their thoughts on the findings. I've skimmed them, but I'm no longer interested in reading what early hominids ate. I learned what I needed to from that, made adjustments to my diet, and found what works for me. To tell you the truth, it wouldn't matter to me if suddenly someone found proof that we'd been eating Twinkies for a quarter of a million years. Cutting grains and sugar from my diet makes me feel great, and going off plan usually results in my feeling gross and uncomfortable. That's the reason I eat this way.

Found on ontd_science: Psychology Today reports that baby talk hinders learning.

"Does Johnny have to go potty?" "Do you want some wa wa?"

Speaking to young children this way sounds sweet and motherly, but it may also slow down language development. A study published in Cognitive Psychology suggests that speaking in complex sentences to young children may set a better example and improve their language skills.

Jesus H., this required a study? Also, it does not sound "sweet and motherly." It sounds fucking stupid.

This morning's thunderstorm (btw, wtf thunderstorm) woke me at just after 4:30. I decided to get up and enjoy the novelty of lightning and thunder on New Year's Eve, but alas, the whole thing had blown over by 4:45. So now I'm tiredly awake and quite glad that I didn't have plans to go out tonight because wow I'm gonna be sleepy early this evening.

I was feeling...inspired...yesterday afternoon and continued to hold that motivation until the house was clean. So my big plans for tonight are already wrapped up. This means I can devote as much of the evening as I want to arty stuff*. That'll be a great way to wrap up the year. I might venture out to the hardware store today to pick up the clear coat (the one I said I was going to buy days ago), but other than that, I'm sticking close to home for the next 72 hours. Bliss!

Update: I am not going on any errands today. I finally opened the front curtains at 8:49 this morning and good god, what a nightmare that street looks to be. As soon as mckitterick is awake, I'm going to ask him where the de-icer pellets are because the sidewalk looks 100% hazardous.

How are you all bringing in 2011?

* Working on arty stuff will also allow me time to finally listen to the TacFit Warrior Q&A video blog that Scott Sonnon did several weeks ago.

Comments

[orrin.livejournal.com]

We've got a couple of friends coming over and we are, apparently, going to play board games. To which I do not object.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Have a great time! I hope everyone wins. =)

[femfataleatron.livejournal.com]

Goldilocks approach. Paleo™ is a fine dieting approach, it works well for me. Anthropologically speaking it becomes pretty clear that it bears almost no relationship to any testable hypothesis of how people actually ate. From an evolutionary standpoint? Also no testable hypothesis. in practice this is not really important, but if your practice works and your theory doesn't…
As for baby talk, I feel pretty sorry for what passes for science today. I think this is largely a media problem rather than a science problem per se, but maybe I'm just being overly optimistic. Whatever happened to first principles?

[femfataleatron.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akk5EvTMGKo&feature=player_embedded
See!! this is what I'm talking about!!!

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Oh, you just had to find something like that where her name was Lydia, didn't you?

Also, couldn't the parent/guardian/whomever have waited until that child was over her cold to film that?

Signed,
Someone who doesn't get her energy from pastel colors

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

in practice this is not really important, but if your practice works and your theory doesn't…

I'm curious what comes after your ellipsis.

Whatever happened to first principles?

Funding. And possibly fearfully conservative religious nut jobs.

[femfataleatron.livejournal.com]

... Then your theory is crap and needs to be replaced. working practice/non-working theory, is a sign of some sort of ideological bias, usually. Protestant work ethic is a great example. Hard work is a consequence of being saved? This is a kind of reverse logic that appeals to folks interested in compliance rather than effectiveness.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

This is a kind of reverse logic that appeals to folks interested in compliance rather than effectiveness.

Or folks desperate for reassurance of their superiority.

"I'm a white xtian, so I work harder than those dirty brown people who worship Mary."

[royal-spice.livejournal.com]

Speaking to young children this way sounds sweet and motherly, but it may also slow down language development.

Well, thank the gods--cause I definitely wasn't going to be able to do that shit. ;)

I have a 3-day weekend too! *BLISS* And I'm not doing *anything* that I don't wanna. Also, lost 6 pounds this week. :D Life is good.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Woo hoo! Good times all around!

[e4q.livejournal.com]

trouble is that i talk to my dog as if she were an adult human, so other adult humans think i am talking to them. i ask brightly 'are you hungry?' and 'do you want biscuits?' and i hear some visitor from another room saying 'yes' and i have to say 'NOT YOU'.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

You can rest easy in the knowledge that, should Poppet ever decide to talk, she'll be ready to do so in complete sentences with proper syntax.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

true. but she also might reveal her thousand and one names. which might blow people's minds.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

You mean, those few who weren't already blown away by the talking dog part? Although, I suppose, when it comes to such a lovely clever doggie as Poppet, the talking part really wouldn't be much of a surprise. Right?

[e4q.livejournal.com]

well, to be honest, people seem to nearly faint when they see her in shoes, so by the time she is done talking they probably won't care that she has 1001 names and may well be a godhead.

[athenaartemis.livejournal.com]

Did that study mention ages of the children studied? In all the linguistics classes I've been talking, we've learned that "motherese" (which has been renamed to "Parentese" and "caretakerese" as different groups of people have pointed out that they talk to children, too) is actually essential for children learning to speak, because the pitch and intonation is one they hone in on really quickly, and the simple sentence structure helps them acquire basic syntax. But if the study is talking about parents who talk like that to their 3, 4, and 5 year-olds, then, yeah, not having complex sentences to mimic will harm the kids.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I haven't read the entire article. I'm trying to avoid spending too much time online today! Here it is, after noon already and I haven't done a lick of arty stuff!!!

[geekmom.livejournal.com]

This was talking about preschool kids in a classroom setting, so yeah, probably right in the demographic that should be getting more advanced sentences from their teachers. I remember my kindergarten teacher using baby talk structure with us "Mrs Barton would like a cookie," and it drove me nuts even then.

I've never done the "wa-wa" crap, but I do stress particular words for my son. He's six, but he's autistic and this is the first year he's routinely spoken in sentences. I've noticed that my language has become more advanced as he's become more advanced in comprehension, but again, he's not a typical example or part of the group they studied.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Thunderstorm = the border where a cold air mass and a warm air mass collide. So yes, it was a perfect day for one.

The meteorology of mystery is the SNOW thunderstorm.

[nottygypsy.livejournal.com]

We have company, so the house is CLEAN, we're checking out some parties tonight weather permitting. Making food tomorrow and hosting some Salsa dancing lessons since one of our guests is a Salsa Dance Instructor!

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Have fun with the dancing! So exciting!

[nottygypsy.livejournal.com]

You'd be welcome to come, but I know that would involve leaving your house.

[poincaraux.livejournal.com]

I think I've made a mini-rant on here before about the "reasoning" behind the paleo stuff before. I'm all for a diet that seems to work for quite a few people, but the bogus evolutionary justifications are completely useless.

I mean, first, there's the fact that there's no reason to assume that "Really Early People ate X" implies that "X is better than Y". Second, we know quite about biochemistry these days, and we have lots of real live humans. Why not just study how diet affects them instead of making stuff up?

Blah blah blah. Perhaps my New Year's resolution should be to stop preaching to the choir :)

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Why not just study how diet affects them instead of making stuff up?

Ding!

And then not fudge your results so that the sugar and/or corn lobby and Big Agra still profit enormously, despite the fact that they're killing us.

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

I second your reasoning on diet. Yes, do what is right for you. Cutting the majority of sugar and junk out of my diet had very similar results.

ontd_science is quite behind the times on that study, I heard of such things it seems a decade ago. While I very much second your opinion on such language, and my mother didn't use much baby-talk on us (as it turns out), I do try to be a bit patient that it is possible that having children (sort of like pets; see David Letterman) may affect humans in peculiar ways.

New Year: champagne & caviar!

Jealous, no thunderstorms at all for me!

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Heck, I talk to my friends in a stupid voice sometimes. I've got a beef with people who talk to their kids like this exclusively, so the kid thinks that thing that covers you while you're lying in bed is called a "binkie" until someone tells them differently in first grade.

I haven't have caviar in ages. Oh, man... mmmmm. Enjoy a spoon for me, ok?

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

nono! A "blankie" cover ums, a "binkie" is a pacifier.

I never talked baby talk to my son. He was doing compound sentences before he was 2.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

LOL! Well, there you go.

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

Yeh Mum says I used to look blankly at people who spoke with me thusly, and would tell them "I don't speak BabyTalk"
Funnily enough, that same woman speaks to her cat in that speak now, and refers to me as "your sister". Ugh. What happened?

I'm more of the Eat Right for Your Type camp. No One size fits all in food either.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I can kinda understand speaking it to your pet. Sorry about the sister thing, though. That's pretty gross.

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

I turn it into a joke... we used to have an expression for being really mad... "your dad will have kittens!"
So I ask who got mad enough to have a kitten that became my "sister"? LOL

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. =D