Metaboston

Video Games Good and Bad for Kids?

Game developers will hear from two doctors on the influence of games on kids, a subject where games are usually the latest scapegoat.

"Boston Post Mortem is happy to welcome Drs. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson, authors of Grand Theft Childhood, a book released earlier this year that talks about the sometimes counterintuitive ways that video games both help and harm children. Kutner and Olson are based out of Harvard Medical School and Mass General Hospital, so we are extremely excited that they've agreed to present some of their findings to the local dev community!"

Info:
Wednesday, May 14, 7pm
The Skellig, Waltham
Free

Gloucester Pregnancy Pact?

Perhaps not!

"Whether there was such a plan in this overwhelmingly white city on Boston's North Shore is in dispute. After Gloucester High School witnessed 17 pregnancies this school year – more than quadruple last year's average of four – the school principal attributed the surge to a "pact" among "seven or eight" girls in a Time magazine article. But at a press conference Monday, school Superintendent Christopher Farmer said there was a "distinct possibility" that the girls simply decided post-pregnancy to "come together for mutual support.'"

Movies to blame.

Gloucester Pregnancy Pact

Weird, with 17 pregnancies so far:

"School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together."

More Multiples in Mass.

Moms in Massachusetts are more likely to have more than one baby:

"Women who give birth in Massachusetts are more likely to be older -- and more likely to have multiple births -- and to be using techniques to assist conception which also increases multiples." (Image:  Dionne quintuplets).