Bunchland

What we’re reading today:

1. The teddyphone. It’s a cell phone for kids, but can also be a child monitor when you push SOS. Is this a great safety device, or does go a little too far?

2. One mom says she’s a bleeding heart liberal, but she’s not comfortable with her 6-year-old son kissing his best friend Max. Is she a hypocrite?

3. Finding it hard to choose a baby name? Why not let the fetus name his or herself? Here’s a handy app. This could prove very useful; Leonardo DiCaprio named himself in a similar fashion, kicking in utero while his mom was at a museum checking out Da Vinci’s work.

4. What’s the use of a spelling bee with spell check on all our devices?  Read more...

What we’re reading on the blogs today:

If you want a boost in making Santa more believable, download this Elf Cam app for iphone/itouch. If you point your phone towards the North Pole, you can hear what’s going on in Santa’s workshop! And you can capture Santa in night-vision. No wonder this app is so cool, it was made by elves. (via BoingBoing)

If you’ve been humming Tchaikovsky in the recent weeks and days, you might be interested in this brief history of nutcrackers on Slate. Here’s an excerpt:

The dolls symbolize good luck in German tradition—one popular origin myth, related by Rittenhouse, holds that a wealthy but lonely farmer who found the process of cracking nuts to be detrimental to his productivity (efficiency even pervades German folklore!) offered a reward to whoever could come up with the best solution. Each villager drew on his own professional expertise—a carpenter advocating sawing them open, a soldier shooting the suckers. But it was the puppetmaker—a profession that seems to loom large in European tall tales—who won the day, building a strong-jawed, lever-mouthed doll.  Read more...