There are oh-so-many studies and expert opinions evaluating the ways our parenting choices affect our kids and oh-so-few considering how we grown-ups will fare. Read enough of them, and you’ll be misled to believe that parents are fixed entities with little capacity to feel or grow.
This is particularly the case when it comes to time management. We’re told that children need lots of unstructured time, and it’s up to us to cultivate it. But we’re also told that children need to be challenged and inspired, and it’s up to us to arrange it. So off we go to karate and violin and religious school and soccer and dance, while making sure there is enough time in there for wandering in the woods or building a treehouse, or whatever else passes for low-pressure character-building these days.
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As a parent of a 5- and a 1-year-old, I’m fairly new to the scheduling trenches. And yet a small voice has emerged, a faint chant from the back of my brain, repeating: Where do my needs fit into all this?
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Parents are “thinking about what works for the kids, but they also need to think about what works for them,” an author says.
This is how bad things are in the Catholic Church right now: The Pope’s top adviser on clergy sexual abuse canceled a trip to Ireland for a papal event because he has to investigate sexual misconduct in his own seminary.
And Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, isn’t alone. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, another key papal ally embroiled in the sex abuse crisis, has also canceled his appearance at next week’s World Meeting of Families, a spokesman told CNN.
A mind-controlling parasite found in cat feces may give people the courage they need to become entrepreneurs, researchers reported Tuesday.
They found that people who have been infected with the Toxoplasma gondii parasite are more likely to major in business and to have started their own businesses than non-infected people.
The parasite, which makes rodents unafraid of cats, may be reducing the fear of failure in people, Stefanie Johnson of the University of Colorado and colleagues said.
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A new study links the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, found in cat feces, to entrepreneurship.Justin Sullivan / Getty Images file
It’s a shame that Merwin K. Hart’s life has drifted into obscurity, because in his prime he was a real dazzler, one of the brightest stars from the Golden Age of American Paranoia.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Hart ran an organization called The National Economic Council. Neither a government agency nor a laboratory for research, the NEC served as a propaganda funnel for the anxieties of the postwar corporate elite. Men of fortune, like the du Ponts (chemical magnates) and the Pews (of Charitable Trust fanfare) would turn over large sums of money to Hart, who would in turn blast out warnings about the “three million” immigrants who had entered the country “illegally” at the close of World War II, causing a “housing shortage.” Or the “deceit” of international Jewry. Or the hidden subversive content in certain college textbooks.
Hart’s favorite freakout was socialism, and how terrifyingly close the United States was to a socialist dystopia. “Our country grew great through freedom,” he warned hundreds of university trustees in 1948. “Do we want the United States to drift into a Socialism like that of Britain ― which many of us feel is only a transitory stop on the road to State Absolutism such as that of Russia?” Once upon a time, England and the Soviet Union were considered comparable evils on the American right.
A solar-powered drone that can stay aloft for weeks or months at a time could one day replace expensive satellites in space for certain tasks, such as monitoring the environment and snapping photos from super-high altitudes.
The latest model of the so-called Zephyr drone was revealed by Airbus last week. The drone embarked on a test flight on July 11 and has been circling high above Arizona, miles above the weather and regular air traffic, ever since. The drone is slated to land in early August.
Solar panels on the drone’s wings power its electric motors and charge its batteries during the day. At night, the motors are driven by the batteries alone.
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Airbus’ Zephyr drone can stay aloft for at least a month. A company spokesman said future versions could fly for up to four months at a time.Ben Stansall / AFP – Getty Images
Scientists at MIT have created a four-legged robot that can climb debris-ridden stairs and leap almost three feet into the air, but the ominous-looking catlike bot — dubbed “Cheetah 3” — is intended not to hasten the robot apocalypse but to help bring about a new generation of first-responder robots.
As seen in a video released by the university, the 90-pound, retriever-sized robot navigates with touch sensors rather than cameras — a bit like the way humans feel their way when it’s too dark to see.
“Cheetah 3 is designed to do versatile tasks such as power plant inspection, which involves various terrain conditions including stairs, curbs and obstacles on the ground,” Sangbae Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and one of the robot’s developers, said in a statement.
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MIT’s Cheetah 3 robot can climb stairs and step over obstacles without the help of cameras or visual sensors.Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Puerto Rico has conceded that Hurricane Maria killed more than 1,400 people on the island last year and not just the 64 in the official death toll.
The government acknowledged the higher death toll with no fanfare in a report submitted to Congress this week in which it detailed a $139 billion reconstruction plan for the island.
That quiet acknowledgement was first reported Thursday by The New York Times.
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AFP Contributor via Getty Images
A man wades on the water while pushing his bicycle through a flooded street in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Catano, Puerto Rico on September 22, 2017.
Scientists in England trained a tiny spider to jump on command, but they didn’t do it just for the bragging rights.
The University of Manchester researchers trained the spider, a cute little arachnid they named Kim, because they wanted a better understanding of how spiders jump — so they can create spiderlike robots that one day might be used to kill crop-eating insects.
“There are lots of different spiders, and they are doing a good job in nature,” said Mostafa Nabawy, a roboticist at the university and the lead author of a paper about the research published May 8 in the journal Scientific Reports. “If we have armies of spider-inspired robots, instead of using harmful pesticides we can use them to hunt the pests.”
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By studying how a spider jumps, researchers can build robots that mimic the extraordinary abilities of arachnids.University of Manchester
Rick Gates, the prosecution’s star witness in the federal fraud trial of Paul Manafort, testified Tuesday that he once had an extramarital affair that involved maintaining a London apartment.
The topic came up as Kevin Downing, Manafort’s attorney, tried to paint Gates as self-motived and untrustworthy by hammering away at his admitted practice of filing doctored expense reports.
Downing asked about “the secret life of Rick Gates,” inquiring whether Gates had kept an apartment in London and if he had engaged in an extramarital relationship there.
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Rick Gates, a former campaign aide to President Donald Trump, departs federal court in Washington in December 2017.Joshua Roberts / Reuters file
About 20,000 people have lost their homes and many moved to unaffected areas of the Indonesian island of Lombok after a powerful 6.9 magnitude earthquake left nearly 100 people dead.
Boats were sent to evacuate about 2,000 tourists from the nearby Gili islands.
Witnesses spoke of chaos and terror during Sunday’s quake, with thousands of buildings damaged, and power and communication lines cut.
Aid agencies said the priority was to provide shelter for residents.
Many are said to be too scared to return to their homes.
The agencies said the impact was far bigger than another quake that hit Lombok last week, killing 16 people.
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Image caption Moment the quake struck caught on camera
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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James' World 2 