I have seven children. We almost never had to let a child cry themselves to sleep, but I do suspect that may have to do with our kids' individual wiring and that crying to sleep might be the best solution in other situations. Most of our infant sleep problems were resolved when we realized our kids were much hungrier than experts predicted and started feeding them a lot more! Giving the baby another bottle turned out to be the number one way to get our babies to fall asleep with less fuss. When they get a little older (around 3-4 years) there are occasional times when a temper tantrum goes right into sleep.

I applaud any attempt to bring neuroscience and other scientific insights to bear on childrearing, but I question the idea that somebody who is an expert in one of these sub-issues would also be an expert in the others. Sounds like we are committing the logical fallacy of assuming that because one person is an expert in one field they are an expert in all. Maybe these are all related, but it just seems to me that neuroscience is complex enough that an answer to one of these questions doesn't have a lot of bearing on the answer to others.

I'm a father of seven, and I do a lot of work with my kids that could be called timeout, although I don't know if it fits anyone else's idea of what timeouts are. I make my children follow the same rule I was given for myself from a clinical psychologist: when you are angry or upset, don't say or do anything until you relax, because everything you are thinking of saying or doing is a bad idea. Over time you build up the habit of relaxing in the face of frustration, and when you do your brain stops putting so much energy into angry outbursts and starts putting it into actually solving your problem. Also you are a lot less likely to whack somebody that you want to be friends with for the rest of your life. I have a hard time believing that neuroscience would yield any results that say this is a bad idea for child rearing, but maybe they mean something different by "timeout."

I'm religious, fundamentalist, and I agree with you.

Oh, man, this guy and I were cut from the same OCD cloth. I know it just looking at his pictures of Atari 2600 game boxes all sorted first by box style and then alphabetized. I used to do that when I was a kid and when I finally get the thing out of storage I'll bet a bunch of the games are alphabetized.

I have seven kids all homeschooled and we love to fire up Mame, and I've kept my Atari 2600 although they haven't gotten to play it yet and I need to bring it out of storage. And I love to have them go through interesting pieces of twentieth century history in chronological order - right now we're watching through old Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons together on Saturday mornings, in order. Next year they are going to watch all six Star Wars films in the order they were released, before we see Episode VII.

BTW, it's kind of adding insult to injury that the Pac-Man screen on that article doesn't match the actual console that is shown. I wonder what the kid thought of various ports of Pac-Man.

Why does your child have to be a scientist? How is this any better than a 20 year old boy whose parents want him to be a doctor and who disown him because he chooses to be a musician?

As a father of seven children, I believe you'll make better parenting decisions if you learn to let go, and spend lots of time deliberating and negotiating with your wife so that the wisdom of both of you can be brought to bear. If you really want your children to be counter culture in some way, and you are both enthusiastic about it, you might look into homeschooling.

I pick forums that have a level of moderation that suits my needs. In the past I tended toward more laissez-faire moderated places and just ignored what I didn't like, but as I've grown older for a handful of subjects I've needed forums that are little tighter. That's the great thing about freedom: you can pick what suits you, and get away from everywhere else.

The problem I see is that if Gnome doesn't defend their trademark, one day Groupon may come around and sue Gnome for their pre-existing non-infringing use of the same name for a different product - and there's a chance they could win. If I understand correctly, going on the record now trying to defend the trademark reduces the possibility that Groupon could win if they were to turn the tables and sue Gnome in a few years.

That's one of the best reasons ever for eliminating copyright - let the differing visions compete on their merits, rather than on what is "official" according to the copyright holder.

I loved the Thrawn trilogy, but at some point I realized they could never be movies because they were just too long. Which is a shame - I would sit through them with joy, but the general public wouldn't. Back in the day, everybody I knew thought that the Thrawn trilogy was 7, 8, and 9.

I don't know if today's grown Star Wars fans will ever be happy. Nowadays it's popular to blast even Return of the Jedi. I think the sophisticated fans feel that only IV and V, or even only V, were any good.

My memory is that when TPM came out, everybody on Slashdot posted that they loved it for about a day - and then suddenly the hate came in. I never figured it out. Suddenly it wasn't cool to like TPM, so everybody hated on it.

In that case I'd say he was both. He was made a pioneer by his intentions. He wouldn't be the first pioneer to be abused and mistreated, just as he is not the first pioneer to give his life trying to get humanity to the next frontier.

May we mourn the loss of this brave pioneer and honor his or her legacy. I think this is a perfectly appropriate time to quote these words:

You wouldn't believe how destructive it is when a philandering spouse wants to maintain a secret second life and uses this to guilt you into not checking up on them.

Well, you shouldn't strive for it, because it's your mate that has to strive for it. The feeling of trust is a feeling that is created by the mate's actions. You check up on them to see what they are doing, and if they are behaving in a trustworthy manner, eventually you feel trust.

One of Harley's major premises is that as a psychologist, it's easier to change behavior than feelings. The change in feelings comes after your spouse changes behavior (which sometimes comes after you yourself change behavior - for example, by starting to check up on them).

Well, he goes on to say that trust is still irrational, and to insist that it is not trust that makes a marriage successful. Since a big part of his work is about motivation, he's very careful to word things such that people don't feel like they "ought to" trust. In fact, trying to make a spouse feel like they "ought to" trust and that something is wrong with them if they do not is a common tactic for spouses in an affair who do not want to be discovered.

"Widely considered" is an interesting standard of expertise to use about relationships, since the vast majority of relationships and marriages fail. In fact the vast majority of people who get counseling report that it didn't help them.

Dr. Willard Harley is the author of His Needs, Her Needs, one of the few relationship books that was indicated by a study to actually be successful, and he has actually applied statistics and science to measure the success of his approach to marital counseling. His approach is successful in saving relationships and restoring the feeling of romantic love (or creating it if it did not previously exist).

Harley stands outside of mainstream advice on a number of issues, but as I just said, mainstream advice hasn't been demonstrated to be particularly helpful. Dr. Harley's opinion on trust is that you should not trust each other in a relationship but that instead you should invite each other to check up on each other to whatever extent you choose. In his words, snoop until snooping is boring because you've snooped enough that you know you won't find anything. When you get to that point, you'll feel trust, rather than forcing yourself to feel it irrationally (i.e., without evidence, or in contrast to what the evidence actually says).