Remember Lisa Simpson trying to get Maggie to spell "gnu?"

These people (don't click, It only encourages them) have been flooding my inbox with come-ons for their "babies can read" program persistently enough to make me miss  "is your equipage capacious enough for the lassies?" (What happened to those? I don't think I've seen one in months.)  They are filling me with mini-rage.

I think it's actually entirely possible that babies can read- I haven't asked them-- but why the hell should they? Don't they have enough stuff, baby stuff, to accomplish during the dizzyingly short baby years already? 

What really pisses me off about these people, though, is that they commit the sin of pseudo-science while attempting to shake $199.99 out of parents worried that they are not doing enough to ensure their children's college and workplace success while the little slackers are still in diapers. "The most natural time to learn any aspect of language is during the infant and toddler years" is vaguely truthy, but I'd be surprised if there turned out to be any research proving that forcing them to take on an age-inappropriate skill set at that natural time does anything to promote "enhanced learning ability," let alone "future success, " as the ad goes on to claim. "If that's a hat," a very funny local-to-me writer once memorably wrote, "I'll eat my head."

Don't believe the hype! Free the babies!

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