What's the last time you heard from the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar? Not recently, you say. Well, that's because he's been busy cooking up a plot to destroy America increase the amount of energy our country gets from wind turbines. Salazar told the Associated Press he's confident America's largest wind energy project, Cape Wind, will break ground this year off the coast of Massachusetts.

But Salazar and the pro-wind movement are running into some fierce headwinds in the form of one scientist-cum-activist who believes wind is dangerous to human health.

NPR recently profiled Dr. Nina Pierpont, a physician trained at Johns Hopkins who now lives in upstate New York. She's made it her mission to sound the alarm over the undetectable sounds produced by wind turbines. In her self-published study, she concludes that "infrasound" can lead to a host of health problems including, "headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, ear pain, and difficulty sleeping."

Though many think Pierpont's claims of "wind turbine syndrome" are hot air, her thoughts were partially vindicated by peer-reviewed researchers in the U.K., who found infrasound might actually affect people in adverse ways.

Still, the U.K. researchers warn that they weren't blown away by the conclusions of their study.

"We think infrasound causes problems in the inner ear and we think wind turbines produce infrasound," one researcher told NPR. "But we can't stand up and put our hands on our hearts and say 'Wind turbines cause wind turbine syndrome.'"

Without further research to back her up, Pierpont and her claims might just be left blowing...in...the...wind.

[Image via Getty]

That faint rumble you heard on Friday afternoon was the sound of a thousand gleeful conspiracy-theorists firing up their webcams (and bobbing excitedly in their desk chairs like a kid at a toy store) as Vice President Joe Biden used the term "New World Order" when describing trade laws at the Export-Import Bank Conference in Washington.

Speaking as he was turning the page of a mostly unscripted speech, Biden said the following:

The affirmative task before us is to create a new world order because the global order is changing again...

The New World Order, along with being an outstanding late-90s wrestling stable, is a favorite of the conspiracy-minded the world over, who believe it to be a code-word for the rise of a totalitarian one-world government, orchestrated by the powerful and elite who would like to officially replace the sovereignty of individual nations (as opposed to unofficially, as they mostly do now). Used initially during the upheavals of the early-20th century by figures like Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill, the NWO theory became popular among right-wing extremists following the use of the term by President George H.W. Bush in a 1990 speech describing a post-soviet world. Televangelist Pat Robertson (of course) helped popularize the theory in his 1991 book, The New World Order, which outlined the evils of the Federal Reserve and Wall Street.

Alex Jones, speaker of unadulterated truths, hopped onto his site, InfoWars, to call out the VP for his admission of the approaching one world government:

Vice President Joe Biden threw caution to the wind Friday as he shockingly declared, "The affirmative task we have now is to actually create a new world order," adding yet another admission to an already long list of documented globalist bragging of plans for a centralized, one-world global government.

To Jones, the list is long of nations working with multinational banks to come to terms on how to govern and trade with one another. Which is true! Very true. Unfortunately for unhinged conspiracy theorists like Jones, the actual source of this coordination isn't some nefarious, highly intricate plot by the Illuminati or some secret one-government cabal that uses FEMA camps to detain and reprogram American citizens, but simply the entire basis of global capitalism.

Still, Friday was a banner day for conspiracy theorists everywhere, as a blunder from a Vice President known for making blunders has reignited another failed discussion of how to understand the world.

Where's the beef?

According to the big agricultural corporations who control 84% of our beef, 66% of our pork, and 58% of our chicken, the biggest problem in our food system isn't that companies are treating animals badly, but that activists are documenting them treating animals badly.

Big Ag companies have been pushing bills over the last few years that could lead to jail time for anyone who secretly records anything on a farm and posts it on the internet or hands it into an animals rights group. Some of the bills would also make it illegal to not disclose any history of being an animal rights activist on a job application.

Iowa, Utah and Missouri passed "ag-gag" bills last year. Pennsylvania and California are currently considering the bills. Indiana and Tennessee will likely pass bills within the next few weeks.

The agriculture lobby's justification for the bills seems to be that animal handlers aren't doing anything wrong, much like open-heart surgeons aren't doing anything wrong, but the videos may make it seem like they are, so it's best to just not see the videos in the first place.

"They could be performing a perfect procedure, but you would consider it abhorrent that they were cutting a person open," Kelli Ludlum of the American Farm Bureau Federation told the New York Times.

Ohhhhh. Wait, what?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of the legislation was drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group with a name so vague, you know it's evil. ALEC drafts model bills for lazy conservative lawmakers that sometimes get passed wholesale or with very little modification. Many of ag-gag bills seem to be modeled on ALEC's Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act.

Also unsurprisingly, animal rights groups are up in arms. According to the Times report, many videos that have led to charges against animal farmers were based on videos shot by undercover activists from places like the Humane Society. Now, many of those videos could lead activists to jail.

China's president, Xi Jinping, said Sunday that "no one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain," obviously (but not directly) referring to North Korea's latest round of saber-rattling that has put South Koreans and the United States on high alert. North Korea is looking to provoke other countries enough that they are given further aid and an end to sanctions against the isolated, despotic country, while observers become worried that it might launch a new missile this week.

China, an ally of the DPRK, has been pretty much quiet on the recent stirrings of its neighbor, giving all the more weight to Xi Jinping's declaration that the situation is of "grave concern." China is caught in the uneasy position of either working with North Korea to quiet down its threats, or dealing with a larger American presence in the Pacific, a long-time goal of the Obama administration.

China has asked North Korea to protect diplomats in Pyongyang, after it told them on Wednesday that their safety "could not be guaranteed."

From the comments made by its president, it looks like China will play the role of the sober-minded friend who stands between a hothead and the gigantic army that is about to beat him up.

The common wisdom when it comes to mass shootings has been to get the hell out of the way and call the cops. But according to new research, it might be better to take an active role when a crazed gunman starts firing.

An analysis of 84 shootings reveals that when people actively try to stop the shooter, they have a better chance of surviving than if they just wait for police.

In 16 of the attacks studied by the researchers, civilians were able to stop the perpetrator, subduing him in 13 cases and shooting him in 3 cases. In other attacks, civilians have obstructed or delayed the gunman until the police arrived.

According to the study, not all action has to involve fighting back. At Virginia Tech, one teacher told his students to jump out the classroom window while he barricaded a door so the shooter couldn't enter. The teacher was eventually killed, but his actions saved the lives of many students.

Some police have been advocating this strategy for months. Houston's police department put out a video advising that every workplace and educational institution have a strategy for a potential mass shooting. According to the video, your first option should be to run to a safe location, then hide. But if that doesn't work, the video recommends you fight back.

While the new study may seem counterintuitive to some, it's important to note it's not advocating what the NRA has been trying to push since the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The NRA's Wayne LaPierre said shortly after the shooting that, "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." That's been proved emphatically not true.

[Image via Houston Police Department on YouTube]

Ross Douthat, the young conservative on the Times op-ed page, weighed in today on Susan Patton's totally fucked-up advice for Princeton women. His piece, which lays out that the Ivy league represents the kind of compromised meritocracy that caters to elites like Patton, especially because they give the elite a chance to preserve their wealth and status, is both nuanced and thoughtful. But it's coming from a person who tends towards the right. And attacks the type of meritocracy that has privileged most of the readership of the Times. In other words, commenters are having a really hard time trying to figure out what to make of the piece.

Twitter user Jon Gabriel has been tweeting some of the more choice comments on Douthat's piece (which he describes as representing some "haughty butthurt"), and they are hysterical:

"educated people marry educated people not to perpetuate inequality... but because they like the same philosophers and poets and composers"

— Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) April 7, 2013

"[Is Douthat saying] intelligent people should squeeze themselves into a relationship with people of more limited cognitive abilities?"

— Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) April 7, 2013

"[Why would an] English major share his/her love of literature with an uneducated bank teller... a math professor with a beautician?"

— Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) April 7, 2013

And if you're thinking, like much of the younger set, that these comments are steeped in irony... think again! It's New York Times commenters, silly — it's like getting texts from your mom.

"Frankly, I don't understand what the author wants. Does he WANT a regression toward the mean?"

— Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) April 7, 2013

"Should a summa cum laude Harvard graduate feel socially obliged to fall in love with, marry, and have children with a high school dropout?"

— Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) April 7, 2013

Were you a summa cum laude at Harvard? Who knows! Who cares? Obviously the biggest takeaway from this searing piece is that any challenge to the elite should be dismissed out of hand (by the elite).

We're busy dealing with our own censorship issues here in the United States, but people in Bangladesh are kicking it up a notch (BAM!), by calling for the death penalty for any blogger that insults Islam.

On Saturday, about 200,000 protestors marched in the capital city of Dhaka, and shouted slogans like "God is great - hang the atheist bloggers," according to Al Jazeera.

Two people were killed in the protests when the larger group of fundamentalists from the Hefajat-e-Islam group clashed with the more moderate protesters.

While the size of the protests is unprecedented, the tension is nothing new. Conservative Bangladeshis have been criticizing the media ever since a group of bloggers began a campaign to get members of the country's largest political party tried for war crimes dating back to the 1971 genocide that left one million or more Bangladeshis dead.

While many think an anti-blasphemy law mandating the death penalty has little chance of passing in Bangladesh, that hasn't stopped the government from arresting journalists for saying anything that's perceived as anti-Islam. Sheesh.

[Image via Al Jazeera]

A new study published in the British Medical Journal concluded that reducing salt intake by 50 percent per person could prevent 100,000 premature deaths a year in the United States.

That might seem like a big salt restriction. But considering you only need a couple hundred milligrams of salt a day to live, and the fact that the average American consumes 3,600 milligrams per day, maybe a 50 percent cut wouldn't be that bad.

According to the study, decreased salt intake was linked with a decrease in systolic blood pressure. Lower blood pressure means fewer heart attacks and strokes.

Like pretty much every problem in the world, this one can be blamed on the food industry. According to the researchers, 80 percent of salt that Americans eat comes from processed foods. Seriously, even a can of string beans has about 600 milligrams of salt.

Eating all those processed foods could be why 80 percent of Americans are now destined to die early.

And speaking of salt, here's a bear holding salt and pepper shakers! That'll get those depressing stats out of your head.

[Image via ABC News]

IKEA's massive food scandal continues. Six weeks ago, the Swedish furniture store ran into some trouble after its famed meatballs tested positive for horse DNA in several European stores. Then, one week later, it was revealed some of the chain's almond cakes contained a bacteria normally found in shit.

Now, in a reverse of the "unexpected ingredient/bacteria discovery," the store is recalling 17,000 containers of moose lasagna from stores in Europe after traces of pork were found in a batch in Belgium.

Making the scandal somewhat worse, the recall of the pork-tainted moose-filled pasta wasn't announced until Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet published an article about it on Saturday.

"We have more information now. That's why we choose to inform now," [IKEA spokeswoman Tina] Kardum said.

But, "why moose meat?," you ask? Here's the Associated Press to explain.

Moose meat is common in Sweden though it's not typically used in lasagna.

So there you have it. No word on why pork was such a problem — maybe it's a religious thing? We should all just be eating horse meat anyway.

[Image of Moose-Free Lasagna via Shutterstock]

A 52-year-old man who took several people hostage at Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign office in 2007 has escaped from jail. Authorities noticed Leeland Eisenberg was missing during an afternoon headcount at Calumet Transitional Housing Department in Manchester, New Hampshire. Eisenberg was serving a 3 ½ to 7 year sentence for parole violation and was eligible for release in August.

In 2007, Eisenberg entered Clinton's Rochester campaign office armed with what he described as a bomb strapped to his chest and held five workers captive for five hours. Eventually, he surrendered, and it was discovered the bomb was actually a collection of road flares.

In an interview with CNN in 2007, Eisenberg said he took the hostages to raise awareness about mental health issues.

"I wanted to sacrifice myself for mental illness and bring about the discussion about mental illness," Eisenberg said. Furthermore, he said, "I wanted the police to kill me."

He was sentenced to three years for multiple counts of kidnapping, criminal threatening and false reports of explosives, but was released in 2009 after serving just two years. Less than a year later, he violated his parole by removing his GPS monitor.

Eisenberg was also sentenced to 10 years in 1985 for rape. He escaped a year later and committed another rape, for which he was sentenced to another 11 – 20 years. He was released from jail in 2005.

Despite the serious nature of Eisenberg's past crimes, authorities say they don't consider him armed or dangerous.

[Image via New Hampshire Department of Corrections]

A 64-year-old woman in Chicago was arrested and charged with hiring her grandson to murder her husband. Police say Janet Strickland hired her 19-year-old grandson, William Strickland, to gun down her husband, also named William Strickland, in part because she was "sick" of him and in part because she, as his sole beneficiary, wanted his money.

William Strickland Jr., who was arrested and charged with first degree murder on March 30, allegedly shot his grandfather six times from behind as the elder Strickland was on his way to his dialysis appointment. According to reports, Janet Strickland generously rewarded her grandson for killing his grandfather.

Afterward, Janet Strickland - a beneficiary of her husband's savings - bought her grandson a car and home furnishings, prosecutors said. The younger Strickland also allegedly bought himself tattoos, gym shoes and a new phone.
…
Mario Farmer, 50, said he saw the younger Strickland with a new red car with no tags about two weeks after the shooting. At one point the young man was putting in a new sound system with a group of friends, said Farmer, who lives two doors down from the family.

"He was hooking it up, but I was surprised he had it so quick because he wasn't working," Farmer said.

The alleged hit had been in the works for some time, according to prosecutors.

Assistant State's Attorney Jacqueline Kwilos said Janet Strickland and her grandson "discussed on numerous occasions killing the victim. [Janet Strickland] stated numerous times to her grandson that she was sick of his grandfather and that she wanted her husband dead. She stated she wished he was not here and she wanted him gone."

In the months prior to the shooting, the younger Strickland had been living with his grandfather. He was charged with first degree murder and armed robbery; he was denied bail. His grandmother was also charged with first degree murder and armed robbery. Her bail was set at $500,000.

[DNA Info/Chicago Tribune/NY Daily News]

Baroness Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the 20th century, and the first and only female prime minister, has died of a stroke at age 87.

Thatcher was among the best-known foreign politicians in the U.S., likely because of her close working relationship with Ronald Reagan, with whom she shared a reactionary worldview and utter lack of compassion. She was also similarly transformative: In the 11 years of her premiership, between 1979 and 1990, Thatcher sold off billions of pounds worth of government assets—privatizing even industries for which no real competitive market existed—used an unnecessary and avoidable war against Argentina to manufacture enough jingoistic sentiment to earn her re-election, and broke the power of British trade unions, calling the miners who participated in a 1984 strike directed against her politics "the enemy within." Modern Britons are still living within the social, political and economic structures she built, and suffering from the absence of the structures she disabled. Millions of people in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales (and in South Africa and Cambodia and Chile) will be celebrating tonight. (To be fair! Many will be mourning.) (Also celebrating: gay people!)

On the other hand, she helped invent soft-serve ice cream.

[image, of Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Savile, a powerful radio DJ, via Getty]

Note: an earlier version of this obituary wrote that Margaret Thatcher "manufactured" the war in Argentina. While we stand by the general sentiment, the wording has been changed to more specifically reflect her role.

Your baby boy loves to cry. Loves it.

You could find a way to patiently and lovingly console him and coddle him until the latest tantrum passes, but that's no fun.

Here's a much better idea: Start a blog with the sole purpose of photographing him every time he cries, and caption each photo with the asinine reason he's crying this time.

That's what one particularly dog-tired dad did when he launched "Reasons My Son Is Crying."

There is, of course, some debate over the impact this might have on the child, but those comments are likely being left by people who are either not parents themselves, or else lack the sense of humor necessary to survive those first few years of parenthood.

Besides, in a few short years, they'll be on Tumblr themselves, writing their own whiny blog.

I wouldn't let him drown in this pond.

I turned the volume of The Hokey Pokey down… from "ear-splittingly loud" to only "mind-numbingly loud".

He is in a giraffe costume.

[H/T: Reddit, photos via Tumblr]

You know that dream you used to have where you'd suddenly find yourself standing in front of the entire school dressed in a shirt, bow tie, and golden booty shorts, twerking it all over this one girl you really like in the hopes that she'll agree to go to prom with you?

Well, for one Palisades High student named Senn, two of your dreams came true in one day.

(Oh, and if you want to show T.C. the Security Guard some love, this is his Facebook page.)

[H/T: Viral Viral Videos]

While visiting Germany today, Russian President Vladimir Putin was confronted by a topless protester from the organization Femen. This is the face he made in response. Here's a GIF:

Hold on! Is that a... let's go to replay:

Yes, folks: that is a thumbs up.

Later, Putin laughed it off:

"Regarding this performance, I liked it," grinned Putin at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, adding that it had helped to promote the trade fair though he suggested that the security men could have been "gentler".

"I did not catch what they were shouting, I did not even see if they were blondes, brunettes or chestnut-haired ... I don't see anything terrible in (the protest), though I think ... it is better to be dressed if one wants to discuss political matters."

The anti-government secrecy site Wikileaks is embracing a peculiar new role: Excitedly publishing already-available declassified government information. The site's embattled honcho, Julian Assange, announced the release this morning of its much-anticipated "Project K," which turned out to be the "Kissinger Cables"—1.7 million diplomatic communiques covering the period from 1973 to 1976.

Historically interesting, to be sure, but hardly of the same moment as Wikileaks' previous hauls from Iraq and Afghanistan. (BREAKING: While planning the overthrow of Allende and the prolonging of war in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger sometimes joked about doing illegal, unconstitutional things!) "The period of the 1970s in diplomacy is referred to as the 'big bang,'" Assange said in Monday's announcement, defending the release.

What's more, the Kissinger cables have already been available to the public for years—reviewed and released by two government agencies, and saved as accessible PDFs in the National Archives, as Wikileaks concedes in its press release. Is the group going soft, depending now on the beneficence of official government declassifiers instead of whistleblowers and leakers?

Wikileaks has merged the Kissinger files with its previous Cablegate dump to provide what it's calling the Public Library of US Diplomacy, or PlusD—a fully searchable database of 34 years' worth of American statecraft secrets (and, obviously, not-so-secrets). That's an unquestionably valuable service—which is why a bevy of institutions like George Washington University's National Security Archive already do something similar.

Assange and Co. could be sitting on a valuable infrastructure, if they can find leakers to fill PlusD out with documentation from the US's other 203 years of diplomacy. Perhaps that's their hope in today's release: If you build it, they will come. That's a fine dictum for attracting Bradley Mannings, but it does little to attract the worldwide news consumers Wikileaks really wants. They subscribe to a different dictum: If you oversell what you've built, they will leave.

An alleged sexual assault of a 19-year-old male is sparking debate in Canada and around the world after it was revealed that the suspects being sought in connection with the crime are four women in their thirties.

The crime reportedly took place on March 31st near a nightclub in downtown Toronto. The victim told police he left the club in the early morning hours and was offered a ride home by the suspects.

However, instead of taking him home, the women drove the man to parking lot where they proceeded to sexually assault him.

Following the attack, the man was driven away from the scene and then ordered to exit the car — "a silver Honda SUV-type vehicle."

The suspects were described as being four white females in their thirties, each approximately 5'4" in height and weighing between 190 and 200 pounds.

They were all dressed in short black dresses and high heels at the time.

The victim also noted that the driver had short blond hair and a tattoo of wings on her nape. She may also have had a British accent. Another woman was said to have long dark hair that was dyed red "at the bottom."

"Although the majority generally is females that are victims or complainants, it is not completely unusual for a male to be the victim of a sexual assault," said Toronto Police Sex Crimes Unit detective Thomas Ueberholz.

Some 8% of all adult sexual assault victims in Canada were men, according to a 2003 report, but that number might actually be much higher.

Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres coordinator Nicole Pietsch said stigmas often prevent men from coming forward.

"Other men will say for example, ‘Oh, he's so lucky,' like that was actually a positive thing when it wasn't," she told the National Post. "I think that that just feeds into the myth that sexual violence is something the victim wants."

Toronto is known, among other things, for being the birthplace of the now-global SlutWalk protest marches.

The first SlutWalk protest took place in the city's Queen's Park after a Toronto Police officer suggested women could avoid being raped by not "dressing like sluts."

[tweet via @TorontoPolice]

TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington has strongly denied a host of recent public allegations from an ex-girlfriend, former colleagues, and former friends that he has a history of violent behavior toward women. The string of claims began late last month with a Facebook post leveled by his ex-girlfriend, Jenn Allen, who wrote that Arrington had assaulted and threatened to kill her. Gawker followed up last week with a story reporting on claims from a former co-worker that Arrington was investigated by a former employer for assaulting a female colleague, as well as claims from that he threw an ex-girlfriend into a wall.

Now Arrington is pushing back, and friends have begun speaking up in his defense. In a statement on his blog, Arrington wrote that "all of the allegations are completely untrue." He says he's hired a law firm and contacted the police about the allegations.

His full statement reads:

There have been some extremely serious and criminal allegations against me over the last week. All of the allegations are completely untrue, and I've hired a law firm to represent me in the legal actions against the offending parties.

I know this isn't, for now, much information. I will have a full and complete response to these allegations sometime later this week. My goal will be to direct as much sunlight as possible on the issues so that the absolute truth can be known and I can begin to put my life back together.

I've also asked my attorneys to contact appropriate law enforcement agencies about these false allegations. Given the gravity of the claims, I think it's important that the police be involved in this now.

Arrington's statement doesn't specify which claims he is disputing, nor does it name the crimes he believes have been perpetrated against him. But a longtime friend of Arrington's who has spoken to him since the allegations broke offered more details today that purport to call Allen's credibility into question.

Nik Cubrilovic, an entrepreneur and programmer, lived with Arrington at the time he was dating Allen. In an email to Gawker, Cubrilovic said that after speaking to Arrington he is "100 percent convinced now [Allen] is lying." He painted the picture of an obsessive ex-girlfriend whose only aim is "to destroy Arrington."

Cubrilovic wrote in an email:

The story is that Mike completely cut her off around the middle of last year and wouldn't respond to emails or calls or messages anymore (even before it would take 5-6 messages for him to finally respond, and he only would when he was between relationships) since he started a long-term relationship and had somebody move in with him. It took 8-9 months of unanswered emails and calls and messages for her to reach her breaking point and accuse him of hitting her.

On Facebook, another friend of Arrington's, Patrick Gallagher, who has said he has known Arrington since 1989, came to his defense. "I have never seen him physically threaten or harm anyone, woman or man and can't imagine him doing so." Gallagher also worked at RealNames, where Arrington was investigated over allegedly assaulting an ex-girlfriend. Gallagher claimed on Facebook that the woman in that case was also "obsessed with Mike."

Like Arrington, Allen has declined our repeated attempts to contact her. On Facebook her only acknowledgement of the story is a single blog post about her claim, posted without comment.

We have not been contacted by any attorneys representing Arrington.

Update: Jenn Allen has responded on Twitter: "You know everything I said and posted is truth and true."

@arrington You know everything I said and posted is truth and true. How can you do this to women and lie to everyone. Reflect for once. #fb

— Jenn Allen (@JennAllen) April 8, 2013

[Image via Getty]

Seven palettes of Nutella totaling five metric tons (5.5 tons) were lifted off a truck in the central German town of Niederaula over the weekend.

The same town was hit with a massive coffee heist just two weeks ago, when thieves made away with some €30,000 ($39,000) worth of day-starter.

Though police still have no clue who might be stealing these items and why, they do appear to have at least one plausible theory.

"That's what it looks like," responded Hessian police spokesman Manfred Knoch when asked by The Local if the thieves were perhaps "stealing the ingredients for an enormous breakfast."

Whether accurate or not, there is at least some merit to allowing for the possibility that these grocery bandits are having a hard time getting up in the morning.

The last item stolen en masse from a truck in Niederaula: Several tonnes of Red Bull.

[photo via AP]

For the past few years, the only thing preventing Williamsburg babies from sleeping soundly at naptime was their crippling #FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). A sleeping baby can't check out Mateo's great new loft space. A sleeping baby can't purchase a $4 locally brined pickle.

Now, though, the babies' naps are being interrupted a foe even more disruptive than their neuroses: power tools.

DNAinfo reports that construction on Williamsburg waterfront's Giant Luxury FutuRoboCondo Development is already scarring the childhoods of the children who will one day play in its curiously-shaped shadow.

"It's annoying to be outside with a baby, it's loud and dusty," said Northside Piers condo resident Vanessa Vellucci, who said construction has put a damper on spring walks with her 1-year-old Angelo and that it recently ruined his naps.

The babies, all of whom have recently moved from independent planned communities located inside their mothers, were dismayed to discover that in Williamsburg all incoming noises are not muffled through a layer of skin, muscle, and amniotic fluid, and also you're not just warm and sort of floating all the time, and also it's very bright. Many have privately expressed a desire for the neighborhood's economic growth to stall, so that they might sleep until Dora in peace.

Their mothers, meanwhile, have taken to modifying their Mommy-baby walktime routes so that they don't pass through areas where construction is under way. One woman said she avoids the noise outside her condo by taking her baby to a nearby cafe for naps, which is a great way to teach your child normal restaurant behavior.

DNAinfo has a comprehensive photo gallery of noise-plagued mothers posing next to their babies, if you need a refresher on what ladies and babies look like.

[DNAinfo // Image via Shutterstock]