Reading
ddobbs | January 13, 2009Someone finally did a review study on TV -- including "educational DVDs" -- and infants. Among results that should not surprise ...
Watching TV programmes or DVDs aimed at infants can actually delay language development, according to a number of studies. For example, a 2008 Thai study published in Acta Paediatrica found that if children under 12 months watched TV for more than two hours a day they were six times more likely to have delayed language skills. Another study found that children who watched baby DVDs between seven and 16 months knew fewer words than children who did not.
is at…
ddobbs | December 13, 2008For, well, about 6 months now I've been meaning to riff on this riff about internet writing from Steamboats Are Ruining Everything. As I can't seem to get in tune, or plugged in, or somehting, I'll just let Steamboats take it away:
If I were to interpret those tugs, I would say that writing on the internet tends to be more popular when it satisfies the reader's wish to be connected—the wish not to miss out. The writer, too, may have such a wish. I admit that I love it when another blog links to mine; there is great consolation in the feeling of having a posse. And of course many readers…
laelaps | October 29, 2007
It was bound to happen sooner or later; books were starting to overflow onto the floor and living room table, so a great bookcase reorganization needed to be undertaken. This is a snapshot during the carnage, my little cat Charlotte coming to help ("help" meaning crawl all over the books and push them out of the bookcase). I've still got a little bit of space at the top and most of another bookcase for 2008's accumulations, so if nothing else this serves as something of a visual progress report for my personal library (since you can't see half the books on the bed I'll have to take a picture…
laelaps | October 25, 2007I have to admit that I've been somewhat lazy when it has come to sharing my thoughts on my current reading material since I moved to ScienceBlogs. On Laelaps Mk. 1 I would usually update every few days on what I was reading and what I thought about it, but since I've started writing here I've completed several books and haven't said very much about any of them. While this post is not going to be a massive offloading of knowledge gained from my extracurricular reading, it might at least offer up some suggestions for those looking for some new reading material;
The Horned Dinosaurs by Peter…
laelaps | October 12, 2007Progress on my chosen books for this past week has been a little bit slow; I had a very busy weekend and a presentation on the paleoecology of Laetoli, Tanzania at ~3.5 mya (which will soon become a post), so I haven't been able to read as much as I would like this past week. Still, I'm about halfway through the Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and hopefully I'll finish it over the weekend (I think I can polish off 300 pages before Monday). I'm also about halfway through Molnar's treatment of the huge varanid reptile Megalania prisca (Dragons in the Dust), although I probably won't get to finish it…