Thursday, October 13, 2011

Dangerous children's books

Stephen Law is writing a children's book.  I was entertained by this part
The discovery that electricity is what makes our muscles move was discovered a long time ago – back in 1791, by Luigi Alysio Galvaniby. He found that the muscles of dead frogs twitched when they were struck by an electric spark.
In fact, when someone’s heart stops beating, doctors sometimes use a machine to restart their heart with a jolt of electricity. The patient is brought back to life with an electric shock.
Why does electric shock work? Well, the heart is a big muscle that pumps blood around the body. Your heart beats each time it gets a little electric shock from your brain. So when it stops beating, it can sometimes be restarted with an extra big shock of electricity.
But beware. A big shock of electricity can stop your heart beating forever. Electricity is dangerous stuff.
The writer's train of thought is almost in neon.  Kids, electricity, wires, applying high voltage to body parts, electrocution of young ones, lawsuits against author of children's book, disappearance of any profit from book, possible homelessness etc.

Stephen (judging from the photo on his blog) is from that generation who remember plugs that you could unscrew and thus easily get access to copper wires with high voltage, so you could see which things explode when you electrocute them. First, this is no longer possible, as plugs are just solid plastic now.  Second, kids aren't interested in stuff like electricity any more, except insofar as it powers computers and moronic video games.

Also, why is anyone writing a book for kids, these days?

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