Pictures from the past.

I never got around to presenting my dissertation data at the primary conference in my field - mostly because by the time I finished the damn thing, the research I was doing was completely separate from my dissertation topic. I always had HIV stuff to present at the Society of Behavioral Medicine. Besides, it's not a conference that tends to bring in many people with either child/developmental interests, or disability interests, so my dissertation topic was off the beaten track for the meeting.

But this year I thought, what the hell. I submitted an abstract based on my dissertation research, and it was accepted for presentation as a poster. (I knew I wasn't going to be offered an oral presentation, given the off-the-beaten-trackness.) Now I'm putting the poster together, which means, among other things, that I pulled out the photos of misbehaving children which I used for our analog measure of abuse potential.

There's a lot more information about the analog task at that link, but essentially, we showed parents slides of various child behaviors and asked them how they would respond. Some of the photos are normal kid stuff, and some of them are really not. There's a mix of normal behaviors, rule violations, destructive behaviors, and dangerous behaviors.

[photos removed]

I thought people might be interested in seeing the photos, so I uploaded about a dozen of them to my Flickr account. You can see the whole set here. (Photos have been taken down.)

Because they're research items, I'm only going to leave them up for a few days - so look now, if you're curious.

Pleasantly surprised.

"March is National Nutrition Month!!" said the announcement. It went on to explain that the hospital dieticians would have informational displays outside the cafeteria every Thursday in March. Boy, was I ever thrilled to look forward to a month of "you should be ashamed of how much junk you eat, you big fatty!" at lunchtime every week.

I am delighted to report that my fears were completely unjustified... at least, so far.

The first week, the focus was on eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. They set up a tasting table with samples of unusual fruits: I tried cherimoya, uglifruit, starfruit, and blood orange. They raffled off fruit baskets and tubs of fruit salad. They had brochures with recommendations on how to fit more servings of fruit and vegetables into your diet, and booklets of vegetable recipes.

A side table offered cups and pens that said "100% fad free," and brochures explaining that popular diets typically aren't based on scientific research and are often lacking in nutrients.

I missed the second week, which was on protein foods. Today they were focused on grains. They had a lovely display of about twenty different kinds of grains, in glass jars. There was a whole-grain bread tasting table, with your choice of butter or olive oil. A guy from a local organic bakery was there giving away unbelievably delicious rolls - made, he told me, with six different whole grains, plus flax seeds. They handed out recipes for kasha, bulghur, and other uncommon grains. I also noticed a number of brochures about gluten-free cooking.

Both times, I made sure to let the dieticians know that I appreciated the positive focus on tasty, enjoyable foods, instead of a shame-and-restriction focus on "bad" foods. Because really, in a culture where most people only ever use the word "sinful" to describe desserts, this is not what I expected.