Carseats

Yikes.

Here's Steven Leavitt saying he's got a study that says it's actually safer to put your kid over two in a seatbelt than it is to keep him in a car seat.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/07/levitt-replies-to-critical-letter.html

We just moved our kid (seven now) out of the car seat, because she finally got tall enough, according to the obsessively rigid criteria I had been following (given to me by one of my students who had done obsessive research for a second-semester paper on child-restraint systems, which is where I get most of my data on most things, obsessive students doing research), plus she has learned to buckle herself, by the way, so yay, so the point is all moot in our case, but still.

Lots of parents have lots of kids out there.

I'd really sort of like it if someone would do some actual research into this -- good research -- because it would be good to know, frankly, what we ought to be doing, seatbelts or booster seats. Instead of just guessing.

I'm thinking of that whole butter/marg thing. Remember?

Doctors telling us margarine was really, really better for us? So quit eating butter? So we all did? For years & years?

Then it turns out margarine is made with trans fatty-acids, nigh on the worst thing we could be putting into our mouths, and we ought to have been eating butter all along, and why didn't anyone know that?

Didn't do any research, that's why.

I want RESEARCH, damn it.

(Someone told me recently that I seem to have some anger issues. What do y'all think?)