GOT MILK?
Berjuan Toys is already selling its Breast Milk Baby online ($70) and expects to have it in stores later this year. The doll works by the child-”mother” donning a halter top with flowers positioned as nipples, and when the baby comes into contact with the a flower, sensors mimic sucking sounds. Although dolls that demonstrate toileting functions are already on the market, breastfeeding activists are more enthusiastic about this one, hopeful that girls’ comfort with breastfeeding will result in decreased bottle-feeding later on. Opponents have denounced the doll as forcing girls to “grow up” too soon and with choices too complicated for their age, which according to the manufacturer is as young as three.
THE CONTINUING CRISIS
Frances Ragusa, 75, was back in court in Brooklyn, N.Y., in June claiming child support she said was never paid by husband Philip Ragusa, 77, in their divorce settlement of 33 years ago. (The “children,” of course, long ago became adults, but the $14,000 judgment has grown, with interest, to about $100,000.) Frances told the New York Post in July that she called Philip several months earlier to discuss the amount but that Philip merely began to cry. “Don’t let this case go to trial,” she recalled telling him. “[I]f you think I’m going to forget it, Phil, you’re stuck on stupid.”
CRIME DOESN’T PAY
Carole Green was fined $1,000 in July by a court in Leavenworth County, Kansas, for littering the property of the same Bonner Springs resident “most afternoons” for the past two years. Green apologized and said the charge was a complete surprise. She said when she starts out in her SUV every day, and drinks a bottle of tea, it just happens that she finishes it at about the same spot on her journey—in front of Gary Bukaty’s property—and that’s where she tosses the bottle. She promised to stop.
UTOPIA FOUND
Rules to assure correct, “progressive” behavior were recently proposed by the San Francisco Commission of Animal Control and Welfare and the Colorado Department of Human Services. The San Francisco agency would ban the sale of all pets in the city limits, from dogs to gerbils to goldfish. (“Why fish? Why not fish?” asked one exasperated commission member, bristling at criticism.) Animals sold as food for other animals would be included but not animals sold as food for humans. Day care centers in Colorado would be required, if it made dolls available at playtime, to have dolls of three different races.
YIKES!
Southampton (England) University researcher told an academic conference in Stockholm in July that his work, demonstrating that women who stop smoking even after becoming pregnant will have healthier babies, is important because he found that pregnant women rationalize continued smoking, in part to have smaller babies that will be less uncomfortable to deliver.
PLAN B
Jonathan Schwartz called 911 in New York City in July to report that he had stabbed his mother to death. A few minutes later but before police arrived, Schwartz called back 911 to report a correction: “No, she committed suicide.” The mother’s body was found with multiple stab wounds, and police, notwithstanding Schwartz’s “correction,” charged him with murder.
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