Working in Movement

Penny Singleton died recently. She's mostly known for acting in the title role in all those Blondie movies of the 1940's. But she was also the voice of Jane Jetson in The Jetsons, an animated television series set in the distant future. It sure seemed like the way-far-off distant future when the show originally aired in the 1960s. But maybe not so much anymore. FuturePundit brings us a post on the effects of drugs and stress on brain development. It reports on a rat study that ties adolescent stress to later undesired effects in adult brain structure. Assuming there are similar effects in humans, what do you do about it. FuturePundit suggests

Picture at some point in the future nanotech sensors injected into a child's body to provide Mom and Dad with a daily report of whether the kid is feeling enough stress for it to have a harmful effect on cognitive development. If that happens the kid will be put in stress-dampening drugs in order to protect the brain. Sound far-fetched? Sensors will eventually become sensitive enough, small enough, and sufficiently long lasting for that part of this scenario to work. A sensor reader could be mounted on the front door or perhaps in internal house rooms with the sensor data getting routed to the house computer.

Sounds like "his boy Elroy to me." Rest in peace Jane.