Interesting Links for 05-06-2014

[andrewducker]

• Teens being too soft for WW2 ‘not a massive problem’
  (tags: wwii funny )
• “Eat Less, Exercise More” Isn’t The Answer For Weight Loss
  (tags: diet weight health )
• Three-parent babies 'safe' to be born
  (tags: parenting children genetics )
• The Architecture of Open Source Applications: LLVM
  (tags: compiler programming )
• I would like to see this wolf

Comments

[drdoug]

The children's stories not to write is mostly very funny, but it does have a few ringers on it. It seems to me that "Dad's new 'wife' Greg" is only a scary/bad thing for kids if you're homophobic and/or transphobic. And "The Popup Book of Human Anatomy" sounds utterly awesome, and I'm genuinely disappointed to find that it does seem to be fictional. I can also imagine that "Grandpa Gets A Casket" could be extremely helpful to kids if one of their grandparents did pop their clogs, which is a thing that happens.

In fact my kids already have several books that match those titles, and they're ones I made a special effort to get hold of. There are several ones that feature parents in same-sex relationships, of which my favourite is maybe One Dad Two Dads Brown Dad Blue Dads. We have multiple anatomy books, including an Usborne lift-the-flap version (although sadly no pop-ups), and two about sex specifically. And we have "Goodbye Mog", which is the one where Mog dies and (spoilers) the family get a new kitten.

I really don't think this stuff is a big deal for kids unless the adults make it one. It's like that copypasta that goes something like:
I was forced to explain homosexuality to my young kids because their uncle has come out gay. The conversation went like this:
'Why do you always see Uncle Bob with Greg?'
'Because they love each other, like me and mummy.'
'Oh, Ok. Can I have a biscuit?'
They're traumatised for life, I tell you!

It seems terribly unfair to set kids loose into the world without having had lots of good chances to learn about anatomy and about sex in a safe context. You can get by in life without literacy or numeracy (although it's hard), but you can't get by without a body. And there's no avoiding death either (yet), and it seems one of the more important aspects of human existence.