Upper-class People More Likely to Take Candy From Babies [research study]

Entitlements inspire this study of adults taking candy from babies: “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 11, 2012, pp. 4086-4091. The authors, at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of […]

Appreciating the Ig Nobel Prize-winning momma-to-baby vaginal music communicator

The inventors of Babypod, the insert-into-your-vagina device that helps a pregnant woman play music for her developing fetus, produced this video ad: The 2017 Ig Nobel Prize for Obstetrics was awarded to those physician/inventors—Marisa López-Teijón, Álex García-Faura, Alberto Prats-Galino, and Luis Pallarés Aniorte—for showing that a developing human fetus responds more strongly to music that is played […]

Can trends in baby’s names foreshadow major social events? (new study)

“Before 1992, the names ‘Hillary’ and ‘Hilary’ had been increasing in popularity for several decades. After 1992, however, their popularity dropped suddenly 10-fold.” – explains Stefano Ghirlanda who is Professor of Psychology, Biology, and Anthropology, Brooklyn College, CUNY, and Founder and fellow, Centre for the Study of Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University. With this in mind, […]

Multifunction baby carrier exercise device (new patent)

“The care of a newborn baby is virtually a 24 hour a day job, leaving very little time for new parents to engage in traditional exercise. The lack of exercise runs contrary to traditional and prevailing medical opinions.” Fortunately, inventor Scott Krass of San Diego, California, has invented (and just received a US patent for) […]

From the mouths of babes: An existential statistic [British]

The UK’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey includes a variable called “resbby — Whether respondent is baby“. The July-September 2011 survey reports that the value of this variable is YES for 228 of the 105488 respondents. Here is the pertinent detail from that report: Here is that same detail, this time including the full graph: A year later, […]