Didn't find any relevant pics but if anyone's interested the research group's webpage is http://www.helmholtz-berlin.de/forschung/grossgeraete/mikroskopie/index_en.html.

I can believe that a phone could be more distracting than a crying toddler. Unfortunately they mostly scream rather than cry which is considerably more distracting. Also, phones don't throw things at you.

And no books either. Unless you get 3D glasses for your babies and buy those special 3D baby-books.

My understanding was, that it's not so much that tv is bad for children's development, but that it's not good, so that if they spend 2 hours a day watching tv, that's two hours that aren't spent playing, talking or doing something beneficial. An 18 month old banging on a computer keyboard is practicing physical skills just as if they were playing with blocks.

I don't think it's worth setting up something elaborate for an 18 month old, all they really need is something that looks like a computer so they can feel that they're doing the same thing as mummy and daddy do. An old laptop works well, or one of the cheap toy computers. My son is three at the moment and sufficiently self-controlled to be allowed to play with my laptop. I set him up with a text editor and let him "type".

What is needed is a big public information campaign on the benefits of placebo medicine. Official NHS sugar pills could be manufactured and advertised. There would be no reason to be dishonest. Simply list all the benefits that placebo medicine has been shown to have, but make it clear that this is all psychosomatic.

People would expect their placebo pills to be effective, and so they would be effective, and so people would continue to expect them to be effective. . If we could perpetuate the circular logic necessary for this to work it could be a very useful treatment. I think adverts with colorful dancing placebo pills would help.

I'm fine with grounded american plugs, but the ungrounded ones never stay in the socket properly. They hang half out, while still live. It's impossible for me to vacuum the living room without creating a death trap for my kids. Shuttering w

I think that mostly comes from it being such an emotionally intense decision. Whether you choose to go back to work or stay at home with the kids, you tell yourself that you've made the right decision. A lot of people take it one step further and tell themselves that the opposing camp of working/stay-at-home mums made the wrong decision. This helps them to feel better about themselves but can lead to down the nose comments.

Although it seems unlikely, the possibility of a constraint upon the universe shouldn't be entirely discounted. It is possible that humans will have a significant effect upon the universe, or at least that we'll create something that will. A constraint (for example an end of time boundary condition) would then have effects upon current human society. It's something to keep at the back of one's minds when interpreting such experiments even if it shouldn't be taken too seriously.

I have the same prepaid plan with T-Mobile. I use about 5 min/day so it works out about $15/month which is still much cheaper than most plans. I did lose my phone once, and T-Mobile gave me a new SIM card without charging me. My remaining balance (about $95) was transferred onto the new card. The total cost was just the $50 to buy a new phone. (The old one turned up a month later in the closet, so now I have a spare.)