I'm a little disturbed by this Seed Magazine article on some pretty amazing new scientific discoveries.

It's about a woman, Professor Elizabeth Gould, who proved that our brains keep growing new cells and, more importantly, forging new cell connections as we get older. The old wisdom was that you had x amount of brain cells, and once you reached a certain age,... more

The Hague:

OK, because of distractions (as previously noted), this will be a briefish overview of this commentary on this mammoth document of international law.

Ethica has some problems with the way the Hague Conventions have been written into the regulations in the United States:

In several critical areas of child and family protection, the regulations may actually... more

What's going on? A friend of mine has gone to Changsha, marveled over a crib and put a baby in it. Fun!

Meanwhile, in other corners of the internet, people have been discussing inducted lactation. (Or "induced"... more

Welcome to the fourth installment of grant's substitute for therapy Troublesome Fictions, where grant talks about stories he didn't think much about before meeting his daughter, but which now make him feel weird.

This week, we're being trampled under the hooves of the Great Army of King Mouse and the lowly girl who turned out to be his greatest general... that animated ingenue in armor, that sweet, smiling sword-maiden of the Magic Kingdom, Mulan

Who is this?: Hua Mulan, The Magnolia Flower, The Woman Warrior, Heroine of the Middle Kingdom,... more

Children and Youth in Adoption, Orphanages and Foster Care: A Historical Handbook and Guide by Lori Askeland (ed.)

This book, available on Amazon here, is part of the Children and Youth: History and Culture series. It's basically an authoritative guide, a textbook, really, for the cultural issues surrounding adoption. (Full disclosure: the editor, who also wrote some sections, is a friend of mine. She's super-smart, and an adoptive parent herself.)

Askeland's intro explains what the book is better than I can:

This book provides a historical and multicultural overview... more

I'm normally not that much of a Chris Hitchens fan, but his latest column (it's at the LA Times among other places) is pretty interesting.

It's about Henry Louis Gates (of whom I am normally a big fan, thanks to The Signifying Monkey) and his discovery, thanks to modern genetic science, that he's Jewish. Or, at least, has a Jewish ancestor on his mother's side.... more

Back when I was still in the Long, Long Wait for my first Chinese daughter, I sort of refused to read all the parenting books that many of my wait-mates were plowing through. Instead, I absorbed as much Chinese history as I could. At the same time, being vaguely academically inclined, I started paying more attention to discussions that involved race, especially, like, Asians in America, since hey, I was about to be in an Asian-American family. Then, I discovered Jane Jeong Trenka's blog (now just a webpage), tied to her memoir about growing up as a Korean adoptee in lily-white rural Minnesota.

It was on her blog that I... more