I think they all died....whenever they died. We know when some of them died because we saw it on the show; we have no idea when Hurley, Kate, Claire, et. al. died. That was the point of Christian's speech at the end--to make it explicit that the sideways world is unrelated to the rest of the timeline on the show. Whatever happened happened. Incidentally, I immediately thought of American Beauty at the end. Anyone else?

Right--it's indiscriminately spiritual, but still always spiritual--from the beginning--man of faith vs. man of science and all that. Damon and Carlton seem to be universalists.

it's not on yet here! Still local news! I am not happy.

:iagree: LOST has always been an unequivocally spiritual show. I don't thinks it's at all out of place that is has two endings, essentially--one in the "real" world and one in the spiritual world. The sideways world was only half of one season; I don't see it as at all the same as if they'd said at the end that they'd all been dead the whole time.

and, see, I think, in the end, that's kind of the point...the relationships between people are what really matters. The island keeps going--it's this cycle of good and evil and the battle between them, but in the end God is love. Umm, yeah, I had several beers during my LOST finale viewing experience. But I stand by my God is love as key to LOST thesis. That's why the Desmond/Penny episodes always totally rocked.

I thought what they were getting at was that the bomb was when they "made" the place for them all to meet up again. They all died whenever--Jack at the end, Boone and Shannon earlier, Desmond and Penny at some point much later presumably. Things are still repeating on the island--Hurley's the new Jacob, people come, people go, someone needs to keep the cork there, it only ends once, etc. The sideways world was just a hey, there's something more out there sort of thing. I think--tentatively--that I'm okay with it because the sideways world wasn't there to answer any of the big mysteries of the island; it was a separate story meant to put things in perspective.

I think I'm good with it. Still digesting.

I don't see Koko as analogous with those things, either. She is, after all, an actual gorilla who uses signs. There's no debate about that. The debate is to whether she uses signs in a way that constitutes language. And there is debate. Saying, "I've observed Koko and disagree with her trainer's assertion that she's using language" is completely different from "the idea of quilts as signals on the underground railroad started out as part of a fictional story but has since been repeated as fact many times." And anyway, whether or not Koko uses language, her paintings are awesome. :D

This thread just reminded me of the time I toured the House of Seven Gables in Salem, MA along with a group of friends from grad school. The tour guide was some young kid--maybe 18 or 19--and not, it turned out, a particularly good Hawthorne scholar. So here we are--a group of English ph.D. students--and he tells us solemnly about how, in The Scarlet Letter, the people in the village made Hester Prynne so mad that she decided to wear a big red A on her chest. Umm. We didn't correct him, but it was pretty hard to keep a straight face. I sometimes correct people; sometimes not. It just depends on the situation--my mood, how well I know the people, my read of how the information will be received, etc.

I read Michael Pollan's Second Nature a few months back. It's his pre-Omnivore's Dilemma take on how humans and nature intersect...he talks a lot of trash about Thoreau in it (you know, in a intellectual sort of way); I think it would be interesting to read Walden followed by Second Nature.

My youngest saw the original 3 Star Wars movies when he was three, largely because he has 2 older brothers (none of them has seen the newer ones). Sigh. I remember musing at the time that I'd better not have a fourth kid or I'd be letting him watch Scarface by the time he was two. But, really, said three year old handled it fine; he was a bit bored, but not traumatized.

I think people just have a very limited repertoire of things to say about babies: "Wow, he's big!" "He's so tiny!" "How is she sleeping?" "What a cute hat!" I got "so alert!" with one of mine and "he sleeps so much!" with the last one (that was nice while it lasted!) Those seem to be the only two things anyone can think of to say about baby behavior.

IME, chickens are easier to find petsitters for than anything else, since they come with free eggs! They're as easy as cats; you just need someone to come by every other day. We have 3 dogs and 2 cats on top of our chickens, and we've never had a problem finding a housesitter; we pay someone to stay, but if we only had the chickens I'm pretty sure we could work out a trade easily.

DS just mowed the lawn for the first time yesterday; he'll be 9 next month. He's really been wanting to do it (to earn some extra money), so we let him give it a try, and he did a great job. DH was outside supervising the whole time.

I say cart now, though I grew up saying buggy. Then I lived in Boston, where they call them carriages. I couldn't bring myself to do that, so I went with the universally understood cart.

Look at my sig to see why such threads terrify me. My almost 9 year old already eats an adult meal at a restaurant and immediately says, "I'm still hungry." 3 boys, with a 4 1/2 year total spread. And they're HUGE. The smallest one is in 90th percentile for height, 80th for weight. I didn't realize the consequences of marrying a tall guy until it was too late. 9 1/2 pound babies who quickly turn into bottomless pits. Thanks a lot DH ;)

3 dogs, 2 cats, 9 chickens

I'm using the first one with my almost 7 year old. I bought it at the beginning of the year, and then kind of forgot about it for most of the year. We've pulled it back out and done a few lessons over the past couple of weeks, though, and we've really been enjoying it. The fables are written simply enough that he can read them himself, so it doubles as reading time. The concepts are introduced in a fun way. I'm planning to go through all 4 of the books and then start him on Grammar Island in 3rd grade.

One of ours regularly lays eggs like that and has for probably at least a year now with no problems.

I think we could. DH wasn't making much more than that when he started teaching a few years ago, and we did pay for some of our insurance (and DH's mandatory retirement plan) out of that. In fact, I used to have a $200/month grocery budget back then (for 4 of us, one of whom was a nursing baby). We have a lot of stuff working in our favor, though; mostly that we made a lot of money when we sold our house in Boston, so that we could buy cars with cash and put a ton down on this house when we moved here--our mortgage payment is really low.

Bill's made his position clear in past threads.

Actually, most, if not all, states have alternative certification routes for people with a degree in something other than education. My husband has a math degree and switched to teaching after a few years as a web programmer. I'm also a little surprised to hear that we should be basing salaries on the IQ one is born with rather than on, say, how hard he or she works. Either way, though, I'm pretty sure my DH is due for a pay increase.

But this thread isn't about "standard" FGM (which I'm fairly certain the AAP has no intention of condoning); it's about a "nick" to female genitals. I really can't see how to have a discussion about whether that is acceptable while ignoring the elephant in the room that our society widely accepts a much more invasive procedure on baby boys.

:iagree: And this too.

There's a difference between saying they're exactly the same and saying one can make comparisons. For me personally, the fact that they both involve cutting a person's genitals without consent is a pretty important similarity.