Your Kid’s Fearless? Hide the Silver.

An authoritatively large and long-term study reports that kids who are unusually fearless as toddlers are likelier to grow up into criminals than easily spooked kids are. The researchers say their work reinforces evidence that structural problems in one portion of the brain, called the amygdala, are to blame: They’re shared by both kids with behavior problems and psychopathic adults.

I can’t say I find this completely surprising. The ability to go about one’s work without panicking would be an asset if you (let’s say) rob banks for a living. But I do wish someone had studied, or will study, the opposite effect. Do these unscarable kids also grow up to be corporate titans, entrepreneurs, Formula One champions? Because high-demand professions call for some of the same instincts. I’d very much like to see a scan of Bernie Madoff’s amygdala.

Except that the amygdala is also implicated in the condition known as hypersexuality, and as we all know by now, Bernie was not so gifted in that department.

The Entire World Is Evil, Why Should Hotels Be Different?

Interested in drilling your child in the finer points of false altruism? Thanks to Ritz-Carlton and its “Give Back Getaways,” you can do just that. The Getaways are the luxury hotel chain’s ridiculous effort at voluntourism, or a vacation that allows you to achieve self-congratulatory happiness and a dark, rich tan all at the same time.

Here’s how it works: you and your child, while guests of the Ritz-Carlton have no shame. In that context you decide that there is nothing disgusting in a “vacation program offer[ing] … an exceptional opportunity to give back to the community in a way that is meaningful to them and to the lives of others,” all while enjoying high tea, turn-down service, and happy endings in the hotel’s spa.

My favorite is the “Giving Children Hope” package in Jamaica, where you can frolic with orphans on a “lush corner of the island,” planting coconut palms and marijuana native vegetables, all while making it back to the hotel in time for cocktails and the premature death of your child’s sense of morality.

Best of all, you get to pay for all this stuff, $75 per adult, $50 per child ++, not including room, board, hole in your soul, etc.

Horrible Children Will Steal Our Jobs

It’s bad enough that the old-media conglomerates that pay us Dadwagoneers are struggling to make it through 2009, but now Gawker warns us that a half-dozen rugrats are angling for our positions—and will probably get them.

To these kids, I say: Fine, take over. But enjoy it while it lasts. Because it won’t be long before some zygote amasses 3 billion followers on whatever network supplants Twitter and Facebook and links our brains together via some yet-to-be-invented 7.5G communications technology. Then you’ll know how I feel.

In other words:

🙁