I hate taxes as much as the next dad, but taxes are sometimes good. They raise prices and change behavior, such as smoking. And often, legislators best efforts to tie taxes to consumer education (anti-smoking campaigns) or health effects (cancer research) are reversed when new legislatures need the cash to fund other pet projects (remember when lotteries were only to be used to fund education?) Often too, they are regressive, affecting poor people disproportionately. Price elasticity is real however, and anything that gets people off the sugar drink habit has to be good. People are still free to drink a Coke now and then, but are de-motivated to drink Coke for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which is sometimes the case.

PARIS — France’s top constitutional body on Wednesday approved a new tax on sugary drinks that aims to fight obesity while giving a boost to state coffers.

The Constitutional Council approved the new soda tax, announced in August as part of the government’s fight against obesity and within the framework of a broader austerity programme, after it was passed in parliament last week.

The tax, which works out to one euro cent per can of drink, is expected to bring in 120 million euros ($156 million) in state revenues.

[From AFP: France approves soda tax]

Disagree? Let me know!

Maybe at this point, it’s just piling on, but sometimes things people do with or to kids, supposedly thinking it’s all in good fun, are just too much. Here a single dad saw his daughter playing with packing tape and decided it would be funny to wrap it around her legs and hands and over her mouth and post a picture on Facebook. To make matters worse, he labeled the photo “Here’s wut (sic) happens when my baby hits me back. ; )”

And, now of course, he is clogging the courts with an aggravated assault charge. He can’t have contact with his daughter or any child under 18 while the case is pending. He is also not allowed on the Internet.

Amazingly stupid and lacking any humor for a dad whose mom says her son is a “big jokester.”

[From Dad charged with binding girl with tape ‘feels awful’ - Chicago Sun-Times]

Some days it just seems like there are too many rules. Take a look at this list compiled by Yahoo! Shine’s Piper Weiss on crazy rules set up around pregnancy, baby names, schools and travel. Some seem a bit over the top and more than a few downright unnecessary, but in a world more and more focussed on the individual, it’s not surprising some organizations are trying to herd the cats. Happy reading.

2011: The Year in Kids Bans

·         Baby photos: A Maryland hospital banned baby photos in the first five minutes after a child is delivered. The hospital explained that family photographers were causing risky distractions, though those in opposition to the policy believed it was put in place to avoid malpractice lawsuits.

·         Brown-bag lunches: A Chicago public school banned kids from bringing food from home, forcing them to eat the cafeteria lunches or nothing at all. The school says it’s healthier for kids but not all parents agree. They’re also not in agreement on the price-point, considering home-made leftovers are a lot less money than the daily cafeteria fee.

·         Baggy pants: Schools districts from Florida to Pennsylvania banned students from wearing baggy pants. In Orlando an actual “baggy pants” law suspended students who “exposed underwear or body parts” with a little loose hanging fabric.

·         Babies on planes: When Malaysia Airlines banned babies from some first class flights, the hospitality industry took note.

·         Babies with the name Lucifer: New Zealand courts decided to crack down on parents’ rights, banning the name from the baby books because of it’s satanic association.

·         Kids expressing themselves creatively: It really sucked to be a high school student in Florida this year. By the summer, Lake County’s school district decided to ban “extreme” “unnatural” hair color and “bold” makeup, citing such mainstays of teen culture as causes of class distraction.

·         Teachers-student Facebook friends: Social networking has been a minefield for teachers. In Missouri,
state senators came up with a band-aid solution. Fire any teacher who accepts a student’s friend request on Facebook. They probably shouldn’t retweet anything from a student either, just to be safe.

·         Cheerleader uniforms: At a San Jose high school, cheerleaders are required to buy a micro-mini uniform if they make the squad. But they’re also required to take it off when they go to class, because it’s way too short. Paging the office of mixed messages.

·         Saying ‘bless you’: A teacher said his class got so out of hand with sneeze follow-ups he banned the verbal courtesy from his classroom.

·         Tanning teens: First no fur, now no leather skin. That’s probably a good thing. California passed a law banning the use of tanning beds by anyone under 18.

·         Choosing your birth date: Hospitals in Massachusetts, New York, Arizona, Texas and California ban elective C-sections and inductions before 39 weeks gestation due to serious health risks.

·         Dakota Fanning holding a bottle of perfume: The British Ad Council banned this ad suggesting it’s borderline pedophilia.

·         Skinny jeans: At Brigham Young University-Idaho, students are getting turned away from their exams on the grounds that their jeans are far too form-fitting.

·         Happy meals: In San Francisco, fast food joints can no longer bribe kids with toys. (Unless their parents want to spend an extra 10 cents.)

Add it to the list: no more laptop on your knees if you’re trying to have a baby.

A new study, published in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility by researchers from Argentina and the U.S., found that semen samples placed a little more than an inch under a Wi-Fi-connected laptop experienced more DNA damage and mobility issues than regular sperm. The samples were taken from 29 healthy men with an average age of 34.

[From Laptop Wi-Fi Might Cause Male Fertility Issues]

I would think the heat alone would be a warning sign, but this is even worse.

Before you type anything else into your keyboard, consider this: Keyboards, on average, are five times dirtier and have 60 times more germs on them than toilet seats. They are 150 times over the acceptable limit for bacteria.

[From 16% of Cellphones Have Poop on Them]

I guess that’s what happens if you talk on the phone and change diapers at the same time. The phone is eventually going to fall in.

Lisa Belkin, who has written the Motherlode blog on NYT.com for years, has decided the grass is greener over at The Huffington Post. This in itself, I find kind of sad, since Lisa has built her reputation attached to the New York Times brand, but so goes the world of new media. But the story has made an interesting turn since Ms. Belkin used the move to change the name of her column from Motherlode to Parentlode. Whether she did this, as she says, because ‘“Motherlode” doesn’t really fit in an era when fathers are every bit the parent,’ or because she needed a new name, is anyone’s guess. However, the NYT doesn’t agree that this is a good name, or at least that it doesn’t run up against their trademark on the use of “motherlode” for a column of this type.

NYT lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Huffington Post yesterday, WWD reports. “While we are flattered by your focus on our blog and your apparent fondness for its name, we obviously cannot permit you to adopt a name whose sole purpose is to create an association in the minds of readers with our ‘Motherlode’ blog…” NYT lawyer Richard Samson wrote. “This is a transparent attempt to capitalize on the fame and reputation of the original nytimes.com blog, and constitutes an obvious infringement of The Times’ rights under U.S. Trademark law.”

From NYT Says Huffington Post’s Parentlode Is A Load Of…Well, You Know

We’ve always enjoyed Lisa from her days doing the Preppy Handbook, and we wish her continued success, whatever she calls herself.

We’re still at the early days of this change in buying patterns between moms and dads, but it’s nice to see AdAge start to cover what many of us have been seeing in the past 5-10 years.

A Yahoo survey late last year of 2,400 U.S. men ages 18 to 64 found more than half now identify themselves as the primary grocery shoppers in their households, but only 22% to 24% feel advertising in packaged-goods categories speaks to them.

[From Marketing to Dads: Men Increasingly Influential in Purchases | News - Advertising Age]

The simple reality is that there is no monolithic “mom buying group.” Moms and dads switch roles and constantly confer with each other because neither knows who will be doing carpool or making dinner tonight. The mom who makes all these decisions alone will find herself alone pushing the flowery stroller to the pink minivan.

Interesting here is some data showing where dads clearly are the decision-makers, in home entertainment, theatre, sporting events and concerts. I know in our household, those roles go about 50-50, but with my wife often traveling on business, I’m the one choosing what I’ll make for a week of dinners and school lunches.

One cynical note by the rather conservative New England Consulting Group is an idea that men over-report on how much influence they have. The New England Consulting Group believes that moms still make 70% of buying decisions. I think marketers can believe that at their own peril and risk missing out, or alienating men as buyers. I was once the Marketing Director of Unilever’s Ragu unit and I’m actually surprised they would do something as stupid as going out of their way to alienate dads in their recent campaign. Sometimes packaged goods executives can look too closely at ad testing scores while missing macro trends in the real market.

Good on AdAge for covering this, though I’d love to see dad marketing as an ongoing feature for them.

After four years of discussion and recommendations, the rules went into effect this week. The French government has banned ketchup in all schools and colleges, as a way to promote healthful eating. The decision was likely made easier because the French would prefer you don’t put ketchup on your croissant with ham.

I’m sure most Americans will say, “Oh those French…” But food habits start early and putting sugar (yes, ketchup is tomatoes plus corn syrup) on your food just teaches you to eat that way. It doesn’t help parents when schools serve cookies and juice boxes when they aren’t at home.

Ketchup banned in French cafeterias?

There are few celebrity deaths that strike you. Most die in their time and are often just a nostalgic memory by the time of their passing. However, this one has me reeling. I guess we all suspected that Steve’s days were numbered (how many CEOs does one refer to by their first name?), but I thought we were counting in years and not days or weeks since he stepped down from the helm of Apple, the company he founded, lost, and resurrected.

I’ve long said the Steve Jobs is a one in a million CEO, who will be remembered for a century for what he did at Apple and Pixar. Unlike other star CEOs whose stars immediately tarnishes once the PR budget disappears (Meg Whitman, Jack Welch, some day Donald Trump), Jobs was worth every penny of his salary, which is exactly how much he was paid to come back to lead Apple (in addition to billions in stock options).

I’ve been happy to be an Apple loyalist since my first Mac Power Book in 1992. I lived through the years of declining fortunes and Mac clones, through a succession of CEOs who didn’t seem to really “get” Apple, and through dinner parties when I’d be told I was a naive fool for believing in a company and idea as ludicrous as Apple. But still, I hung on, booting and rebooting my crash-prone machines, but glorying in what a pure joy they were for a non-geek to play with and look at. Ah, the things they could do that were only dreamt of by skeptical friends. Finally, Steve came back and I bought my first iPod, which was a miraculous toy for someone of the generation that still created mix tapes as a romantic gesture.

And now Steve is gone, and we all wonder what next. Apple announced his death after the markets closed, knowing that the news will affect the market’s view of Apple’s future. Hopefully, what Steve created; machines, culture, and a vision of computers made with human beauty, will long outlive him.

Ah, imagine a simpler time when people actually had time to invent solutions for problems that don’t exist, instead of sitting around all day fretting about problems that appear insolvable.

Educators came up with the idea during a brainstorming session, as a way to foster a “calmer and inclusive atmosphere in the classroom,” the Daily Mail reports. Students, ages 7 to 11, are instructed to give a thumbs up and cup it with their other hand rather than wave a hand in the air.

[From Can Banning Hand-Raising Promote a Calmer Classroom? - TIME NewsFeed]

Does anyone out there remember anything negative about raising your hand in school? I remember some days being too bored to bother, or being amazed at the velocity of which some kids could throw their arms around, but I don’t recall ever feeling that hand waving was in some ways disruptive.