Web Reads: Do your kids have too many Christmas toys?

Overloaded? Do you think your kids have too much stuff? In 2012, blogger Ruth Soukup thought so, and she wrote about the day she took all their toys away. Her follow-up a year later answered questions from skeptical parents. Another article reports on parents who claim their children’s behavior improved once they reduced the number of toys and other distractions in their homes.

Tough job ahead. David Rothkamp writes at Foreign Policy about foreign policy problems in the Obama administration that will cause trouble for Ashton Carter, the nominee for defense secretary. He describes a bloated National Security Council that tries to do what the State and Defense departments used to do, and a tight group of White House advisors—“national security consiglieri”—who actually make decisions. Perhaps more serious is what he terms the Yogi Berra problem: “Because Berra is the one who famously offered up the credo of all who want to avoid tough choices, to whenever possible have things both ways: ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it.’”

Experimenting on the poor. Is it ethical to run social science experiments on the poor to get them to do what the World Bank wants? In Mind, Society, and Behavior,the World Bank encourages development professionals and policymakers to incorporate into program designs insights from behavioral economics, psychology, and sociology. The report “draws on findings from many disciplines, including neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, behavioral economics, sociology, political science, and anthropology” to figure out how to get poor people in developing countries to change behaviors.

Community hub. New Yorkers play soccer, bicycle polo, basketball, and tennis at Sara D. Roosevelt Park, a seven-block-long park on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Built in 1934, the no-frills facility has seen neighborhood change and has changed along with it. Here’s how the park functions as a community meeting place for all ages and ethnic groups.

No love, just babies. What could go wrong? Here’s a story about people who want children without romantic entanglements. Here’s an example: Fabian Blue is a gay man who “made a documentary about his efforts to find a co-parent, called The Baby Daddy Project with the clever tagline, ‘No Sex, No Marriage, Just the Baby Carriage.’” He apparently found a woman who wanted the same thing. She was 40 and thought her biological clock was ticking down: “I’m going to make this happen, whether I find a guy or not. I’m not going to wait on guys anymore.”