21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 If You Really Want to Know, You Go to Science

[I]magine you want to know the sex of your unborn child. There are several approaches. You could, for example, do what the late film star ... Cary Grant did before he was an actor: In a carnival or fair or consulting room, you suspend a watch or a plumb bob above the abdomen of the expectant mother; if it swings left-right it's a boy, and if it swings forward-back it's a girl. The method works one time in two. Of course he was out of there before the baby was born, so he never heard from cust...
Folksonomies: science magic
Folksonomies: science magic
  1  notes

Sagan uses the example of a watch swinging over an expectant mother's belly to determine the sex of a fetus.

08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus

 Seeing the Baby on the Ultrasound

There’s no doubt that seeing one’s future child on an ultrasound monitor is a powerful experience, the first visual evidence of the fetus in a culture in which seeing is believing. The encounter can be so compelling, in fact, that some medical providers are using it not just as a diagnostic tool, but as a treatment in itself. Zack Boukydis, a professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has been working with doctors for almost a decade to expand routine screenings into...
  1  notes

As the first touchpoint, experience as a parent.