Gotcha!

[Admiral Yi]

I'm going to read Gor to my sons.

Gor, leader of Internet Clan?

[Ed Anger]

I'm going to read Gor to my sons.

Gor, leader of Internet Clan?

When they break through to another world, who'll be laughing then? They will, as they crush their enemies bones.

[Ideologue]

Cabot?

I'm going to mine Houellebecq: "Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless."

That should send just about the right message.

[Barrister]

Cabot?

I'm going to mine Houllebecq: "Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless."

That should send just about the right message.

Just you wait - kids are pretty insistent about what they like, and what they don't.  You try reading a book to a kid that they aren't interested in and it won't be pretty.

[Ideologue]

OMG OMG Gavin Bowd's translation of La carte et le territoire is already out OMG my pants are a depression factory!

[Malthus]

Now that my kid is old enough to express some degree of preference in his books, all he wants us to read are books with nothing but pictures of autos and trains, with no story to speak of.   Oh how I long for the days I could at least read his Dr. Seuss.

Vaguely Dr. Seuss-ian: Go, Dog.  Go!http://www.amazon.com/Dog-Read-Myself-Beginner-Books/dp/0394900200/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325714051&sr=8-1  I have fond memories of reading it as a small child and having it read to me.  Also, nice catch by dps on the lack of good people to judge.  I was going to throw out a wretched hive of scum and villainy quip about Languish, but he beat me to it.  Well played, sir.

Apparently my first sentence, prompted by viewing a rotisserie, was "many chickens go round and round".

It was a literary reference to Go Dogs Go. 

[garbon]

What do you parents think? Agree/disagree?

I was always in the nature camp.  That is not to say that all boys have some or all of the traits we associate with boys or girls with girls.  Of course they do not, but they generally do.  And think about it, if this was all socialization and not traits you are born with why would there be transgendered people?  Did socialization fail for them?  No that was just how they are.  Likewise being boyish is just how most boys are.  Being a parent and seeing it in action just reinforces it for me.  There was something very noticeably male about my son very early on.

Perhaps I come from a family of strange genes then. My siblings and I always had a hodge-podge across the spectrum. As far as I know, my sisters watched Thomas the Tank Engine just as much as myself.

[PRC]

"Go Dog Go" was one of my early favourites as well.

[grumbler]

How can you tell?  There would have to be some good among us for you to check to see if they liked you.

[dps]

Just you wait - kids are pretty insistent about what they like, and what they don't.  You try reading a book to a kid that they aren't interested in and it won't be pretty.

When we have kids, I've been thinking about using Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as bedtime reading.

[jimmy olsen]

First what you said and the second one is the show is meant for boys.  In shows meant for girls every character is a girl except for a few token boys and the opposite for shows for boys.  So her harping on the gender imbalance was pretty funny.  I was thinking 'did this woman never watch TV as a child?'

Maybe I'm just confused but I thought there were shows marketed to both genders.

I honestly do not know if girls like Thomas or not. Every boy I know does. For some reason, boys seem to like things like trains and cars more and girls things like stuffed toys and dolls more. A show composed of trains is likely to have an audience of boys whether its creator intended that or not.

I used to think this was all socialization and kids themselves would like both equally if they weren't prodded one way or the other by their parents or peers. I no longer believe this to be the case. In my experience it simply seems too ingrained and shows up too early and too strongly to be socialization.

What do you parents think? Agree/disagree?

Studies have shown that young male monkeys play with toy cars and young female monkeys plays with rag dolls. It's completely nature based.

[Eddie Teach]

Studies have shown that young male monkeys play with toy cars and young female monkeys plays with rag dolls. It's completely nature based.

link?

[jimmy olsen]

Here you go. There's a video after the link.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys.html

It's thought of as a sexual stereotype: boys tend to play with toy cars and diggers, while girls like dolls. But male monkeys, suggests research, are no different.

This could mean that males, whether human or monkey, have a biological predisposition to certain toys, says Kim Wallen, a psychologist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Wallen's team looked at 11 male and 23 female rhesus monkeys. In general the males preferred to play with wheeled toys, such as dumper trucks, over plush dolls, while female monkeys played with both kinds of toys.

This conclusion may upset those psychologists who insist that sex differences - for example the tendency of boys to favour toy soldiers and girls to prefer dolls - depend on social factors, not innate differences.
Guys and dolls

"A five-year-old boy whose compatriots discover has a collection of Barbies is likely to take a lot of flak," Wallen says.

Social factors undoubtedly influence children's preferences, he says, but in general boys tend to be pickier with toys than girls.

To try and tease out the effects of nature over those of nurture, Wallen and his colleagues studied a group of captive rhesus monkeys. His team reasoned that the choices of the monkeys wouldn't be determined by social pressures. Most of the study animals were juvenile (age one to four years), but some sub-adult and adult monkeys were included.

"They are not subject to advertising. They are not subject to parental encouragement, they are not subject to peer chastisement," Wallen says.
Monkey fun

Wallen's team offered the monkeys two categories of toys: "wheeled" and "plush". The wheeled toys, intended to be masculine, included wagons and vehicles. The more feminine plush toys included Winnie the Pooh and Raggedy-Ann dolls.

Two toys, one wheeled and one plush, were placed 10 metres apart. At first the monkeys formed a circle around a toy, but eventually one would snatch the toy and run off. Other monkeys soon joined in the fun, Wallen says.

The researchers captured play sessions on video and measured how long each monkey spent with plush versus wheeled toys. The team found that the males spent more time playing with wheeled toys, while the females played with both plush and wheeled toys equally.
'Compelling results'

Wallen cautions against over-interpreting the results. The plush and wheeled categories served as proxies for feminine and masculine, but other toy characteristics, such as size or colour, might explain the male's behaviour, he says. Or the male monkeys might seek out more physically active toys, he says.

But the study ties in with a previous experiment with green vervet monkeys showing that males favour masculine toys.

"Together the results are compelling," says Gerianne Alexander, a psychologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who led the vervet monkey study.

She thinks that biological differences between sexes start the ball rolling toward learned preferences for play toys.

"There is likely to be a biological tendency that is amplified by society," she says.

[Eddie Teach]

Wallen cautions against over-interpreting the results. The plush and wheeled categories served as proxies for feminine and masculine, but other toy characteristics, such as size or colour, might explain the male's behaviour, he says. Or the male monkeys might seek out more physically active toys, he says.

Hmmm, maybe they could test wooden blocks shaped like a gun or a car(without movable wheels) vs. talking dolls or ones with movable parts. 

[garbon]

I like how Tim's article doesn't support his assertion that it is "completely nature based".