Finally, an excuse to not teach your child to speak. To quote:
The WhyCry monitor is a baby cry analyser. The monitor listens to the baby’s crying for 20 seconds then digitally analyses it before indicating why.
The device then illuminates one of five crying “expressions” telling you whether the child is hungry, bored, tired, stressed or annoyed.
The WhyCry analyser comes with a comprehensive user guide and a symptoms chart so that once the cry has been translated the chart can then give pointers as to how to rectify the situation.
WhyCry has been clinically tested in Europe, with a success rate of 98% when used in conjunction with the accompanying symptoms chart.
Sometimes real life is more absurd than parody. I’m reminded of that episode of The Simpsons where Herb, Homer’s brother, invents a machine that does this very thing. Once again this proves my theory that anything can be associated with a quote from The Simpsons.
Herb: It measures the pitch, the frequency, and the urgency of a baby’s cry,
and then tells whoever’s around, in plain English, exactly what the
baby’s trying to say! Everything from “Change me” to “Turn off that
damn Raffi record!”
Intrigued like any good psudo-scientist, I clicked on the link to the How the Why Cry Works page. I mean, does it use some kind of sophisticated computer algorithms? Do you have to “train” it by having it record cries then enter in your best judgements of what’s wrong so that it learns over time? Or does it communicate with a database of continuously updated cry information taken from hundreds of ongoing clinical trials? The answer, it turns out, is so complex it needs a simplifying picture to communicate itself to you retards out there:
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Oh, so that’s how it works! Crying to microphone to digital processing of signal to indicator lights! It’s all so clear now. I was really just hoping for a circle labeled “magic” but this is way more scientific.
My favorite part of this whole ridiculous sham, though is that the product has been “clinically tested in Europe.” I don’t mean to bag on the continent as a whole, but why does this excuse of “used in Europe for ages” or “tested in Europe” always seem to affix itself to some of the most bogus of claims, most often made on cable television in the wee hours of the morning? Someone once tried to defend the use of handwriting analysis to select job applicants by saying that it was “used in Europe.” Why is that? Is it just because we want to believe in something and labeling it as different and ineffable makes it easier to not question what commen sense or rational thought should otherwise tell you?
Maybe. Until then, I have a cheaper alternative to the Why Cry Monitor. First, take a sheet of paper and write the following, each on its own line: Hunger, Boredom, Discomfort, Sleepy, Stress, and Annoyed with Europe. Label each line one to six. Then when your baby cries, roll a die and refer to the handy-dandy table. Works just as well.
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