Foetuses offered vaginal music streaming service Mums to be who subscribe to the idea that a few choice tunes have a positive effect on their unborn nippers*, and who don't mind having a bit of Mozart piped directly into their vaginas, should check out Babypod – described as "the only device that has demonstrated to stimulate vocalisation of babies before birth with music …
@Graham Marsden - (laughing self silly) Oh, I had no idea, hadn't heard about that. I was never particularly 'into' Motorhead (more of an L7 grrrll, me), but it's nice to know that they were so, erm, ' into' giving fans a good time. My Steampunk hat is off to you, Lemmy - still able to raise a smile from beyond the grave!
It's pretty much a Ben-Wa ball with speaker built into it, so there is no reason it wouldn't work. Kind of pointless to spend that much money though when there are other cheaper and more 'efficient' products on the market.
*I paid for school by working as an electrical engineer for a sex toy company
"could have been worse..."
I loved that job, $15k per year (in 1984 money), and it gave me access to all sorts of interesting equipment, such as equipment for soldering dies directly to PCBs; a thermal camera; and many, many cabinets of parts. The company was riding the wave of semiconductor miniaturization along with the increase of social acceptance of sex toys, so they were pouring piles of money into R&D.
I had enough resources to build a prototype that used PulseOx sensors and EEG/EKG probes to determine the current state of arousal and act accordingly. The problem of the sensors and computational power required would be solved now, we ran into problems during testing, apparently it was too effective and caused some of our test subjects to go into cardiac arrest or seize (turns out it is possible to overdose on serotonin and dopamine from only neurological production), not that they minded it too much, too bad the FDA sure minded it...
The company was bought by shortly after that by some massive Japanese manufacturing concern and then stripped apart and the pieces sold to dozens of different companies after the Japanese Stock Market crashed.
"Any good stories for, say, 'On Call' or the bootnotes section?"
I have a few. Here is the one I remember the most:
With our computer-controlled prototype, the programmer didn't see my note about a change to the motor control chips, we also received the wrong motors (I misread the order-number decoding table in the manufacturer's catalog). The newer controllers could handle quite a lot more load than the older ones, plus had finer-grained control over each motor (which used a different byte format, more on that later). We were also using a different motor configuration to improve efficiency.
Test day came around, a dozen motor clusters taped into place on our test rig (A silicone anatomically and proportionally correct model of a woman). System is booted up, all tests come back successfully. The motors are turned on to their lowest settings and all is going as planned. Next comes time to to bump the motors up one, at which point three things became clear to me: one, the programmer hadn't changed the endianness of the data going to the motor controllers; and two, the motors are orders of magnitude more efficient than my calculations would have suggested; and three, the motors that I got were, in fact, capable of handling the level of energy I was pumping into them. The motors started going crazy and started pulling up the tape while I was trying to shut the system down (and finding out that ctrl-C does not clear the motor controllers, but keeps them at the last state...). Before I could unplug everything, the motor clusters had successfully released themselves and now there were about a dozen metal eggs flying about, tethered to a control box and its power supply (Which also had its power outlet right next to it). I had to crawl being my chair, using it as a shield, to get over to the workbench and unplug the thing. Even with the shield, I still ended up quite a few bruises on my body and my office / lab ended up trashed.
The lesson here, I suppose, is to always, always double check your numbers. The motor part numbers were made up of a force ID, plus number of brushes and a lifetime factor. So intended to buy motors with an ID of 200, 6 brushes, and lifetime of 9, so ordered motor part 20069, when I should've gotten 269 and thus ended up with motors of a force/load of 20 times as large.
Although that wouldn't have been too much of a problem if I had confirmed the numbers coming from the output: The initial test should have outputted 0x1000 0000 0000 0001 (-1) with the second test giving me 0x1000 0000 0000 0010, rather the endian change didn't happen so the motor controller received 0x1000 0000 0000 0001 (-1) for the first test and 0x0100 0000 0000 0001 (16,385) for the second test.
Even at power levels of the intended motors, that value would be deep into our "for the most-experienced masochists and only with proper supervision" territory and normal safe limits being in the 1024-1536 range, but with the power being 20 times as much...
My eldest son had a difficult birth. Some time after he was born, we received a baby gift of "relaxing womb sounds." The normally placid little chap reacted with considerable distress when the disc started to play, and settled only when it stopped.
Being a scientist, I had to try another couple of times to see if it happened again --- it did. Being a father, I wasn't going to do it more than thrice --- I didn't.
Now, I wouldn't normally want to infer something from a sample of three. However, might it be possible that some ill-timed music during foetal distress could result in a baby who would be distressed by such music?
On a related note, I'm now wondering whether my parents travelled back in time with some Kanye West tracks?
Some time after he was born, we received a baby gift of "relaxing womb sounds." The normally placid little chap reacted with considerable distress when the disc started to play, and settled only when it stopped.
When MrsConfused was expecting our first little one there was a load of publicity about playing music to your unborn children so she thought we'd have a go. A pair of head phones pressed gently to her tummy (just like your picture) and some soothing Beethoven. Well this resulted instantly in some serious kicking.
Experiment not repeated.
Interesting that the above commenters' babies reacted negatively to music, because according to my mother, when I was a foetus way back there in the dim and distant 60s, she found that putting a particular piece of music on the record player would actually quieten me when I was restless in the womb. Of course, that was with ordinary (60s-era) loudspeakers, not headphones pressed against her belly - or anywhere else... ;)
The piece in question is the Scene from Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" - which has been my all-time favourite piece of music since as far back as I can remember, and it still makes my blood fizz when I listen to it today. According to my mother I loved it before I was even born!
The thing that got me - what study has been done to ensure there is no damage to baby's ears?
My mom, a radiographer (and does ultrasounds on expectant mothers) discourages mothers from having them for curiosity and wanting to see baby growing (you can pay privately).
She cites all sorts of research and suggestions where the baby's hearing can be harmed.
A quick google: http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/crr_pdf/2001/crr01343.pdf
I'm not an evangelist for the research but rather wondering what will baby be like after listening to music at a-volume-it-would-ever-hear?
Seems stupid.
The article states that "The app comes with four free songs to get you started, but there's no indication of what they are" which is patently incorrect. A brief search reveals that the Babypod comes with a CD containing the following musical delights:-
1. Something From Nothing (Foo-Foo Fighters)
2. Don't Fear The Reaper (Bearded Oyster Cult)
3. I Hate This Part (Pussy Cat Dolls)
4. The Beaver Song from 'Space Teens'
5. The Camel Toe Song (Korn)
6. I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby (Captain Beefcurtains)
7. Kids In America (The Muffs)
8. See My Baby Jive (Wizard's Sleeve)
9. There She Goes Again (Vulvet Underground)
10. Fanny You Should Ask (The Front Bottoms)
<Coughs>
Or Roger Waters (have broken) with "Music from The Body" featuring:
Side 1, track 8 - "The Womb Bit"
Side 1, track 9 - "Embryo Thought"
Side 1, track 10- "March Past of the Embryos"
Side 1, track 11- "More Than Seven Dwarfs in Penis-Land" (err... for when there's a visitor)
Side 2, track 7 - "Embryonic Womb-Walk"
Side 2, track 10 - "Give Birth to a Smile"
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