In my five years as editor of Connect for Kids, a lot has changed. As I prepare to take my leave -- this will be my last entry to this blog, as I head off for some new adventures with my family in Nairobi, Kenya -- it's fun to look back and see how far we've come.

Imagine this. It's 2086. An earnest young graduate student in anthropology turns on his camera, and turns to the stooped, white-haired gentleman sitting across from him.

"Tell me more about this game 'tag' -- how was it played exactly?"

The No Child Left Behind law is supposed to address "the soft bigotry of low expectations," by holding schools and teachers accountable for teaching all children, regardless of their race, home language, learning style, gender, economic status, etc.

Census data shows that the fastest-growing household type in the U.S. is the "multigenerational household," one that includes members of three generations or more.

It's not exactly a new idea -- and while in this individualistic age it may be the disadvantages that leap to mind first (Who wants to hear, "You're going outside in that?" at the age of 35 or so?), it doesn't take much deep thinking to see the advantages, particularly for children, too often deprived of close relationships with their grandparents, and for young parents starting out, for whom housing and child care costs are a major burden.

Is Brian Woods of Akron, Ohio a) a great dad, or b) a scofflaw?

Daniel Woods, Brian's autistic son, probably would go for a). Unhappy with the quality of Daniel's education, Brian sued the school board and won several changes in Daniel's educational plan and about $160,000, according to a recent article in the New York Times

More than $22 billion -- that's how much researchers estimate underage drinkers spent on alcohol products in 2001. That's almost as much as was spent by alcohol-dependent adults -- $26 billion. And together, these two groups of people (who according to law and convention shouldn't be drinking at all) account for more than a third of the alcohol industry's sales.

There's nothing quite like the first days of daylight savings time to remind us that no matter how plugged in we get, how wired our homes and our lives, we've evolved in tune with the sun, moon and stars. It's hard to get up in the dark; hard to sit down to dinner while the sun is shining brightly. Near impossible, as a young child, to go to bed on a midsummer night before the sun has truly set.

Every day, it seems, technology opens up a fertile new market that never existed before. Take online gamers. Certainly a diverse crew, weighted a bit towards the male, but representing a wide range of ages and interests. But three-year-olds? Just never occured to me. That's one of the many ways that I am not like Disney, which is launching a new $50-a-year subscription service for preschoolers.

Scientists, for some reason, never seem to rise to the top -- or even very far from the bottom -- of our society's list of role models. Which is odd, because what could be more exciting than trying to answer the really big questions? Today I read something about research coming from an Italian neuroscientist -- Giacomo Rizzolatti of the University of Parma -- that gave me a bad case of white-coat envy. (Rizzolatti's on-line faculty profile includes links to some of his work.)

The first study to actually measure fitness levels in a representative sample of Americans is out, published in JAMA today. And there's no more room for denial: based on the results, about 20 percent of Americans aged 12 to 49 are out of shape and at greater risk of disease and early death. That's about 16 million people.