"iPad baby seat inspires campaign to stop the parenting apocalypse."

Check out the Fisher-Price the Apptivity Seat. Link goes to an article in the L.A. Times, not to Amazon, as you might suspect, but if you want to buy one, here's the Amazon link. The L.A. Times article includes some snark from comments at Amazon, stuff like:

"This product is great. Exactly what I was looking for. Everyone should own one of these. Fisher-Price does it again. Hail Satan."

But let's be fair-minded. Let's compare this product (with the iPad inserted) to the usual distract-a-baby devices. There's television and there are those horrible mobiles people hang over cribs. Here, for example, is the Fisher-Price Discover 'n Grow Twinkling Lights Projector Mobile. Why would we think that is better than an iPad? First, you need to ask, what are the iPad apps for babies?
Check out Infant Visual Stimulation By Think Design Studio and Early Sensory Stimulation for Your Infant. These things look better than the DVDs of Disney movies or episodes of "Sesame Street" that people put on the TV for babies, and they seem immensely better than those nightmarish mobiles.

Here's a NYT article — "New Milestone Emerges: Baby’s First iPhone App" — with some info on how much time babies spend in front of various screens. (American Academy of Pediatrics says the amount for children under 2 should be: zero.)

The survey found that children under 2, on average, spend an hour a day in front of screens — engaging in activities like watching television, using computers, viewing DVDs, playing with mobile apps. Children ages 2 to 4 averaged two hours a day, and those 5 to 8, two hours and 20 minutes.

It seems to me, in the real world, an Apptivity Seat with a high-quality baby app is a pretty good idea compared to the alternatives, unless the alternative is holding the baby in your arms and talking and singing or whatever the real, old-time human interactions were. Of course, we still do that much of the time, but not all of the time. In that off-the-lap time, what's the baby supposed to do? Not for too long, of course.

NOTE: If you told me it harms the development of the baby's eyesight, I would completely change my mind on this. Personally, I believe staring at the computer caused me to start to need reading glasses, but maybe that would have happened anyway, and I had the bad habit of locking on to the computer screen, for many hours a day, often more than 10 hours a day.

The nightmare of flying just got a little more complicated.

"The Federal Aviation Administration will allow airlines to expand passengers' use of portable electronic devices during all phases of flight, the agency announced today, but cell phone calls will still be prohibited," says a "Breaking News" email from CNN.

I'm guessing the cell phones are still prohibited because we really cannot tolerate a plane full of people yakking on their cell phones. And yet... flying on a plane is an ordeal in the toleration of other people. Those of us who are too sensitive to endure it are not on that plane, which means that if you are, you're there with a plane full of insensitive people.

I know that's not completely true. Some people are forced to fly. Or rather: everyone on any plane has some reason to be there that outweighs the unpleasantness of the experience. It just takes more for some of us than others. And now we can use iPads and laptops to watch movies and play video games and work work work. The question for any given would-be passenger is: Does that add to the pro or the con side of flying?

In the future, the planes will be full of people who are there having weighed the pros and cons under the new rule. And when you see (or think about) what that's like, you'll have to redo your own weighing of reasons to fly against the unpleasantness of the experience. Am I going to be sitting between 2 guys playing video games while someone behind me pounds away on a laptop on the tray-table attached to my seat?

ADDED: I do realize that today's rule change relates only to the takeoff and landing phases and that devices have been common on flights for a long time. The "now" in paragraph 3, above, was intended to refer to the way things have been recently and awkwardly to the new extension of freedom to use devices. As for weighing the pros and cons of the new rule: If the absence of the use of devices was a comfort, it was only a small comfort, in part of the flight. Changing the rule at least ends the pestering by flight attendants. Overall, I like the rule change. I need reading or listening material on a plane, and I don't want to have to think about or to carry the weight of a paper book to tide me over during the takeoff and landing phases. I especially don't like being woken up half an hour before landing to be told to turn off the audiobook that enabled me to fall and to stay asleep.

"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks..."

"... because that’s what you needed on the farm."

That's an analogy from Steve Jobs, quoted in a NYT article about the newest iteration of the iPad. Is it really true that the earliest cars were truck-like? I didn't believe that. I Google. I get to Wikipedia. I'm amazed and call out this question to Meade (who is editing dog video in the next room): "When do you think the earliest thing that could be called a car — an automobile — was?" He says 1910, then re-guesses 1890. I say: "1672."

Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built the first steam-powered vehicle around 1672 as a toy for the Chinese Emperor. It was of small enough scale that it could not carry a driver but it was, quite possibly, the first working steam-powered vehicle ('auto-mobile').

Yes, you can say that doesn't count. But if it doesn't, we've still got things in the 18th century:

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrated his fardier à vapeur ("steam dray"), an experimental steam-driven artillery tractor, in 1770 and 1771. As Cugnot's design proved to be impractical, his invention was not developed in his native France. The centre of innovation shifted to Great Britain. By 1784, William Murdoch had built a working model of a steam carriage in Redruth, and in 1801 Richard Trevithick was running a full-sized vehicle on the road in Camborne. Such vehicles were in vogue for a time, and over the next decades such innovations as hand brakes, multi-speed transmissions, and better steering developed. Some were commercially successful in providing mass transit, until a backlash against these large speedy vehicles resulted in the passage of the Locomotive Act (1865), which required self-propelled vehicles on public roads in the United Kingdom to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn.

When do you think was the earliest law stopping progress?

"The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon, and the Big Six Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight."

Publishers Weekly has put out a $1.99 ebook.

Little did Apple know when it introduced the iPad in 2010 that it would be setting itself up to land in federal court on price-fixing charges. This blow-by-blow account charts how five of America’s six largest publishers, afraid that bookselling powerhouse Amazon's $9.99 price for Kindle e-books would undermine the industry, spent a few frantic weeks in early 2010 deep in negotiations with Apple to introduce a new business model for e-books, just in time for the launch of the iPad and the iBookstore.

ADDED: I was dreaming when I wrote this/Forgive me if it goes astray/But when I woke up this morning/Coulda sworn it was judgment day/The sky was all purple/There were people running everywhere/Trying 2 run from the destruction/You know I didn't even care/They say two thousand one zero party over/Oops out of time/So tonight I'm gonna read like it's nine point ninety-nine...

"Do you want to be near people or away from people?"

The restauranteur asked Governor Deval Patrick, the day after the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. 

"I said, ‘As far away as I can.’ So she put in the corner, me and my book on my iPad, and she starts bringing me things. Some of them edible. In fact all the food was edible. She starts bringing me things to drink as a celebration. And by the end of the meal, I was actually quite drunk, by myself.”

"When a marital therapy book looks promising, Mr. and Mrs. Dash buy two copies, one for each of them."

"When they’re both finished, they exchange copies to see what their partner has underlined. They never underline the same passages. It’s like a pair of photos by two different photographers, where you can’t tell that they’re of the same landscape. Two soothsayers reading the same entrails and foreseeing two entirely different fates."

A super-short fiction by RLC, written a few years ago, but long after the time when I was married to him. These days, books are bought as ebooks, so you don't have to buy 2 copies of everything, you just have to authorize 2 Kindles/iPads on the same account — which is what Meade and I do — and the husband and wife can simultaneously read the same book or — as in our case — the same 300 books that we wander around in endlessly, perhaps eventually encountering a passage that we'd underline electronically if the other hadn't already done the underlining. Are there any marital therapy books? Not unless "Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank" counts. Or "Lady Chatterley's Lover." Or "The Obamas." Or — this has a self-helpish title — "How to Be Alone."

"Rules for Radicals"? Rule 13: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." There's marriage for you!

Why was I reading that old post? Because when I read that wonderful garden club politics article out loud, I said it was like a compressed novel and Meade said it was like one of RLC's super-short fictions which you can read the best of in book form or read at his blog. The one about married couples reading marriage therapy books simultaneously is just what's at the top when you click the "fiction" tag.

I was also considering blogging "If We Could Only Understand a Pink Sock" — a propos of the fuzzy pink socks that played a central role in the news story of the week, how North Korea is about to drop a nuclear bomb somewhere Mitch McConnell's people considered quoting things Ashley Judd wrote about herself.

"I don’t want to give them the iPads at the dinner table, but..."

"... if it keeps them occupied for an hour so we can eat in peace, and more importantly not disturb other people in the restaurant, I often just hand it over... Do you think it’s bad for them? I do worry that it is setting them up to think it’s O.K. to use electronics at the dinner table in the future."

Did Planet Fitness violate its own "no gymtimidation" rule...

... on this lady who's miffed that they cancelled her membership when she wouldn't get off the phone?

"[The general manager] as enraged,” Asmar said, adding she didn’t want to leave the workout area because her iPad was plugged into the elliptical machine. “I said I’d be off in a minute. He said, ‘I said now.’ His demeanor was very threatening. I said, ‘Oh, please, please step away from me,’ and he continued to say, ‘No, I need you to hang up that phone now or I’m going to cancel your membership.’ ”

This Oh, please, please step away from me lady is the owner of Santoro’s Sicilian Trattoria, so going public with her dispute affects the reputation of her business. Here's a 2009 review of the place in the Boston Globe, which says it's "the sort of place that feels and smells as if you've entered your grandma's kitchen."

What kind of character was your grandma?

I subscribed to the redesigned New Republic website, but I can't get it to work... [UPDATED].

... on my digital devices and I can't find subscriber help on the website.

When I go to the website in my browser from my desktop computer, I can see that I'm signed in. I am certain I know my sign-in information and my password. I've downloaded the iPad app, but when it asks me to sign-in, it doesn't recognize my information. When I go back to my desktop computer and search the website through my browser, I can't find any relevant place to go for help with my subscription.

I subscribed because I wanted to have the app experience on iPad. I thought Chris Hughes, having succeeded in co-founding Facebook, would have the functionality worked out in a lovely way. The display of articles actually is pretty nice, and the free app works without a subscription.

I know they want to make money, and I was willing to credit Hughes — if he pulled it off — with finally figuring out how to make traditional print media into a digital experience worth paying for. I would have given this project good press if I could, but I'm getting nowhere.

Another thing. When I filled out the form to subscribe, I filled in many blocks of the form — name, address, credit card number — before clicking to continue. The page refreshed with a completely empty form and the information that I'd done my credit card number wrong. I can't believe I bothered to do the whole form a second time.

It's incredible, after all the Hughes hoopla, that they didn't test out the site in advance to see how it worked with ordinary people attempting to use it intuitively.

UPDATE: I sent an email to the address that thanked me for subscribing. I explained the problem, and I got a response saying that "the current issue on the iPad is free and therefore requires no login. So we've disable [sic] this for the short-term in order to give everyone a chance to read our relaunch issue. You'll be able to log in as normal when we release our next issue in two weeks."

So the message I was getting saying they didn't recognize my login information was misleading. They really would, presumably, recognize it, if it were needed, but it's not needed yet. This was incredibly annoying!

This also means that my statement "the free app works without a subscription" is wrong. 

The ultimate reason to switch to ebooks.

Bedbugs!!

That's hot news in the NYT, but of course, insects have been enjoying the nourishment of books for a long long time, and book-readers love to use the metaphor of insects-feeding-on-books for themselves. What do you think a bookworm is?

Bookworm is a popular generalization for any insect which supposedly bores through books. Actual book-borers are uncommon....

A major book-feeding insect is the book or paper louse (aka booklouse or paperlouse).... It is not actually a true louse.

Many other insects, like the silverfish (Lepisma saccharina) or cockroach (various Blattodea), will consume these molds and also degraded paper or the starch-based binding pastes – warmth and moisture or high humidity are prerequisites, so damage is more common in the tropics. Modern glues and paper are less attractive to insects....

Even less attractive: iPad, Nook, and Kindle.