Fun_People Archive
17 Aug
Baby Think It Over

Date: Wed, 17 Aug 94 10:28:55 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Baby Think It Over

Forwarded-by: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: guy@netapp.com (Guy Harris)

The August 3 New York Times reports that an aerospace engineer

    ...has developed a high-tech doll to give people a realistic sample
    of parenthood.  The doll is programmed to shriek at random
    intervals day and night.

       Teen-agers, as a class assignment, take the eight-pound doll
    home for three days to get an idea of life with a newborn.  The
    only way to get the doll to stop crying is for the assigned
    "parent" to hold a key in its back for 20 minutes -- the
    approximate time needed to feed a newborn.  A microprocessor in
    the doll monitors how long the baby cried before it stopped and
    if it was handled roughly.

© 1994 Peter Langston