It's only off topic if one accepts your premise that the two are not comparable. Given that both male and female circumcision inarguably involve cutting someone's genitals without his or her consent, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to argue that there are comparisons to be made.

Most all of Andrew Clements is a big hit here. We read two of his books for a book club I ran this past year. His books are a rarity in that they give youngish kids (the reading level's appropriate for most 3rd graders, I'd say, and there's nothing inappropriate in them for that age group) really meaty, non dumbed down issues to grapple with.

You can turn any song you have on itunes into a ringtone; it costs 99 cents. I haven't set special ringtones for particular people, but it can be done. If you go to your contacts and click on a name, it has an option to set the ringtone.

This is a picture of his grip, taken when he was 4, btw (I can never explain it, so I just took a picture): http://holcombepomerance.pair.com/milohand1.jpg

My DS6 (almost 7) has a weird grip. I've pretty much decided it's not a battle I'm willing to fight. His handwriting is perfectly good for a 1st grader, he's not uncomfortable writing a reasonable amount for his age, and he draws really well. I think the deciding factor for me was that my husband's sister saw his pencil grip and said, "hey, that's weird--he holds his pencil just like I do!" and went on to talk about how her teachers always tried to fix her grip and she never understood what the problem was. So you see, it's genetic!

Mine's up!

I'm very glad I'm watching, and I try hard not to think about this time next year when there will no longer be a Lost night.

yes, but rarely. once a week at the most. I like to have a coke when we go out for pizza, for example, but I don't keep it in the house. I drink seltzer all the time at home.

At least one of ours made it to the top of our six foot fence once or twice when she was younger, but the full grown chickens definitely can't make it over (nor would they want to; my observation is that chickens are very much creatures of habit; once they know where "their" area is, they have no interest at all in leaving it and freak out if you try to make them). And FWIW, we've had no trouble whatsoever with hawks even though we see them all the time. I'm not sure why; maybe it's the fact that our chickens sometimes share the yard with our dogs, maybe it's the heavy tree cover reducing visibility, maybe it's how close the chickens our to our house or the fact that they have our deck to hide under?

I think I've worn them about three times in my whole life. Apparently, I was way ahead of the times ;) They never made any sense to me. Why? I still don't understand. Tights, I get. Tights are one of the reasons I sometimes wish I had a girl.

IME, it's pretty tough to get reliable information about how long a chicken's natural lifespan is (for obvious reasons; most chickens don't get to live out their natural lifespan). As best I can tell, 8-12 years is about what you can expect. And they slow way down laying eggs after the first few years (our oldest are 2 1/2 and haven't slowed down significantly yet; I'm not sure exactly when to expect it. Commercial layers are usually only around for 1 egg laying season, I believe). We've only had one die, and we buried it. I'm not sure if that's a sustainable practice long term, though, with as many chickens as we have now.

Of course you want chickens ;) We have 12 at the moment, though 3 of them are probably leaving soon (we ordered more chicks than we needed to meet the minimum shipment). 5 are older, and 7 are chicks (10 weeks old today). I like getting all different breeds, because 1. it's pretty 2. it's fun to pick them out and 3. you can tell them apart that way, which makes naming them easier. Picking out chicken names (and seeing what names the kids come up with) is one of my favorite parts. Right now we have: Nedcy the Buff Orpington: friendly and sensible, has very distinctive egg song Super the white leghorn: a bit neurotic but fun. Flannery the Barred Rock: noisy and curious Violet the New Hampshire Red: very tame Sidekick the other NH Red: very skittish and not terribly bright the new batch of chicks consists of an Australorp, a Golden Laced Wyandotte, a golden campine, a Welsummer, an Easter egger, and a Blue Andalusian. So far the Blue Andalusian (Numbers, for Lost) is my favorite of these; she's super friendly, curious, and spunky. Re: broodiness: you DON'T want a broody hen unless you'd like to get some fertile eggs to stick under her (which might be fun; I'd like to try it some time). It's kind of a pain to deal with a broody hen, but it's not that big of a deal. I wouldn't avoid broody breeds, though, since they're often very nice hens. And I wouldn't put too much stock in what breeds are supposed to be broody anyway. Our broodiest hen by far is our leghorn, who apparently did not get the memo that she's supposed to have had every ounce of maternal instinct bred out of her. I have or have read a few different chicken books. Keep Chickens! is a fun, easy read. Honestly, though, you can find out everything you need to know (and then some!) on the web. The free e-book on My Pet Chicken is a really good intro.

Most of Kate DiCamillo's books The Invention of Hugo Cabret some of Andrew Clement's books

It just depends, really. I only spent around $30 on a present for my 4 year old last year. My older kids both want an itouch (and I want them to have them, too, as we're doing a 20 hour car ride this summer ;)), so it will be a good bit more. We don't normally spend nearly that much on birthdays, although I'm not sure how that will change as they get older.

Later, but only by one day. My first was 3 days before my due date, 2nd was 2 days before, 3rd was 1 day before.

I didn't read the other posts, so as not to bias myself: I say beagle and rat terrier!

He thinks that because he's a man. IME, men can just wake up one day and say, "I think I'm going to cut back to only 2 Dr. Peppers a day!" and immediately lose 20 pounds. It is not very fair (says me, with my skinny DH who eats what he wants, never exercises, and has freakishly good blood pressure).

I answered "they loaned money," but the answer probably requires clarification. For our first house, they didn't help, except in the sense that a generous wedding gift from my in-laws probably made it possible for us to come up with a down payment sooner than we otherwise would have. But the gift wasn't earmarked for a down payment and they would have given us the same amount no matter what we used it for. When we moved into our second house, we had just moved to another state and DH didn't yet have a job here. We could have gotten a loan on our own, but we would have needed to get a no income verification loan (although we would have refinanced within a few months when DH started his teaching job), so the interest rate would have been higher. My FIL offered to, essentially, be our mortgage company. He loaned us the money and we send him a payment every month, with the same interest rate we would have paid to another lender with a regular loan. So he did loan us the money, but it's an investment for him as well as a way to help us out. It saved us some money in interest in the beginning, and now I figure we can be pretty sure we won't get foreclosed on if DH loses his job ;), but other than that it's the same as having a regular loan.

I think I initially rejected the Billy shelves because they look like they sit on the floor, but I just checked the picture again, and it looks like maybe you can leave off the little piece on the bottom front and there'd be a gap? Hmm...good idea. I'm not sure--I'll check around! The LACK cases have the right on the floor issue that we keep running into. It becomes a big problem when you tend to line your entire room with shelves, like I seem to.

He's not especially handy, but he's a fast learner :) ....I don't think that would work with our current collapsing shelves, though...it's hard to explain, but it's just sort of bowing in all directions. It's a combination of the shelves bowing under the pressure of the weight and then the brackets not being long enough and the sides of the shelf being very flimsy. It actually might be possible to somehow extend the brackets from underneath somehow...like add some support going across...I'm not sure. I need to go look at them again.

I have two giant Grevback bookcases from Ikea in my schoolroom right now (along with some other shelves, but those aren't causing me any problems right now). They were pretty cheap ($80 each, and they're over 3 feet wide and 6 feet tall), and they look nice. Well, they did look nice, until they started collapsing. The shelves first started falling down not long after we got them (we've had them maybe 2 years now), but we managed to limp along awhile longer by getting new brackets. They've completely collapsed again, though, and I'm pretty much over it. Turns out, the maximum weight on each shelf is 44 pounds. I don't know exactly how much weight we put on them, but, well, it's more than that. Apparently these are book shelves designed for hollow books. So...who has wonderful bookcases that cost almost nothing? Or as close to that as possible? I've scoured Craigslist a bunch of times, but haven't had any luck yet. I want them to be tall, because I need to fit a ton of books on this wall. I don't care that much how they look, although looking nice wouldn't hurt. And they need to sit up off the floor a bit so they don't cover the vents (this is what rules out the Expedit shelving at Ikea). Any ideas?

Have you checked the state laws to be certain he's not eligible for services? In Georgia, the public school systems are required to provide services for special needs homeschool students (my son had speech therapy at our local school for a short time), but it varies by state. Probably you've already looked into it, but thought I'd mention it just in case.

I am, ahem, a big fan of civil disobedience when it comes to ridiculous prohibitions like that, so I say go for it. Unless your kids would be devastated if you got the goat and wound up having to find a new home for it at some point down the road.

Reya--are you suggesting that the only racism in the early 20th century is "scientific racism"? That there was no economic basis to racism? Maybe I'm misreading you, but it sounds like you're arguing that populism and racism are wholly unconnected. Baiting race for class is a time-honored tradition in American politics, and I don't really see Hakim arguing for more than that in the passage you quote. Certainly racism has multiple causes, but I've never heard anyone argue that there's no connection between economics and racism.

Ours is up! (link in sig)