Interesting! But even if it can not be tied to a specific region of the brain, suffering can still be measured through certain physiological changes, yes? I'm arguing, perhaps ineffectively, that suffering is a real, tangible phenomenon. (And that is why not causing others to experience it forms the basis for moral behavior.)

What if there was an objective measurement -- such as an area of the brain linked to emotional/physical pain -- would this moral guideline then become an "absolute"?

Originally Posted by momof7 mine is that man is different from the rest of creation and therefore that life is sacred. But every species is by definition different from the rest. So are they not all sacred?

Thanks Reya! I will keep researching, but I think I'll just go ahead and experiment on myself. ;) It will mean I'll be spending a LOT less time on this board, and others, for the next month, but that's probably not a bad thing. The state of my house might actually improve. :lol: I really want to give it a try. I've always had rather thin and weak wrists which are prone to injury. Handwriting hurts me worse than typing, but anything I can do to make it more comfortable is probably a good thing. Thanks for the encouragement and the kick in the butt that I needed to just take the plunge and do it! :001_smile:

Earth Shoes. They have great arch support, but what's unique about them is that the heel sits a bit lower than the rest of the foot. This forms the foundation for better posture. I have found that they help my lower back problems tremendously, and dh found the same for his plantar fasciitis. I highly recommend them! http://www.earth.us

Latin is required. But I told her she's free to choose whatever other language(s) she wants to learn. So far she has dabbled in Chinese and German. Dabbling is just fine as far as I'm concerned. My primary goal is that she's a fluent Latin reader by the time she graduates. The rest is icing. But that's just me!

I use RightStart and love it. It takes 20-40 minutes per lesson, depending on the level and how quickly your cd work. There is a workbook with each level, but the work is pretty minimal for Level A and gradually increases. We're in Level C now and there's considerably more than there was before. The way it is set up makes it so easy to use. Each lesson is roughly scripted. It tells you what to do and more or less what to say, though it's easy to make minor adjustments to make the style your own if you prefer. Each lesson also tells you which materials you will need. So it's very easy to just grab the book and go. It's very easy and fun to teach, and it's also very interactive. What I mean by that is that you're interacting with your child for most of the lesson. This is *not* a hand the workbook to them and they teach themselves kind of curriculum. Some people call it "teacher intensive" for that reason. Personally that doesn't bother me one bit. I think it's fun and *I* have improved my mental math skills by teaching my daughter! The combination of a hands-on Montessori-based approach with Asian mathematics teaching methods is just brilliant, imo. I can't recommend this curriculum highly enough.

n/t

Thanks for elaborating. It's great to talk to someone who has actually btdt. I was pretty good with qwerty back when I was taking typing classes in high school. I was typically in the 70's. But I couldn't maintain that for very long, certainly not with any accuracy. That's my main problem -- it's not that I can't type fast, it's that I make a lot of mistakes. I hit the backspace key many more times than any decent typist should! And I wonder if I would be more accurate with Dvorak since there's less weird movements that your fingers have to do. Also, mostly just wondering about it for my dd's sake. Well, I'm just rambling now but wanted to thank you for your help. Oh, and I read about that world record too -- it was over 200wpm! Pretty amazing!

Thanks for your perspective! It only took you a month to get back up to the speed you had with QWERTY? Wow, that seems pretty fast. I've been putting off making the switch myself because it seems like it would be sooooo hard. Maybe I need to just take the plunge. A month isn't that much to sacrifice!

I get the impression that some studies say Dvorak is better, some say it isn't, so I don't know what to think about that. The main thing that got me thinking about it is a friend who switched and said that she loves it. She finds it much more comfortable to use, and said she can type a lot faster now. But this is anecdotal of course, and there doesn't seem to be much hard evidence. Sure! :001_smile: I still haven't decided what I should do. :confused: Maybe I'll experiment with learning Dvorak myself first, and then if I think it's better, I'll teach it to my dd. If it isn't noticeably better though, then there doesn't seem to be any reason to teach her something non-standard.

I voted other because I've used RightStart from the beginning and it's the curriculum purchase i have been MOST HAPPY with in my three years (so far) of homeschooling. But if you're using Miquon, I don't advocate changing gears unless there's something wrong that needs to be addressed.

n/t

Thought you might be interested in this summary, from the Wikipedia article about Dvorak: The Dvorak layout was designed to address the problems of inefficiency and fatigue which characterized the QWERTY keyboard layout. The QWERTY layout was introduced in the 1860s, being used on the first commercially-successful typewriter, the machine invented by Christopher Sholes. The QWERTY layout was designed so that successive keystrokes would alternate between sides of the keyboard so as to avoid jams. Improvements in typewriter design made key jams less of a problem, but the introduction of the electric typewriter in the 1930s made typist fatigue more of a problem. This caused an increase in interest in the Dvorak layout.[citation needed] Dvorak studied letter frequencies and the physiology of people's hands and created a layout to adhere to these principles: Letters should be typed by alternating between hands. For maximum speed and efficiency, the most common letters and digraphs should be the easiest to type. This means that they should be on the home row, which is where the fingers rest, and under the strongest fingers. The least common letters should be on the bottom row, which is the hardest row to reach. The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed. Digraphs should not be typed with adjacent fingers. Stroking should generally move from the edges of the board to the middle. An observation of this principle is that, for many people, when tapping fingers on a table, it is easier going from little finger to index than vice versa. This motion on a keyboard is called inboard stroke flow.[3]

The difference is that with Dvorak, you don't have to move them as much. 70% of the typing is all done on the home row, so there's much much less reaching out and movement of the fingers. I would imagine that repetitive stress injury is still a risk, because it has to do with how long you're typing every day, how many breaks you take, and I'm sure lots of other factors as well. But I believe that's the basis for the claim, just fyi.

Thanks for all these links! I only knew of about 1/3 of them! Does anyone happen to know if Writing Tales and Lively Latin are secular? I haven't seen any religious references on their sites or in the samples, so I'm thinking (hoping) they are. Also, it's interesting that RightStart Math isn't listed on any of these secular resources lists. I am wondering why. We've used levels A, B, and half of C and have never encountered any religious references.

The Denim Jumper is great. There's also a number of secular homeschooling groups on Yahoo. Some are just general secular homeschooling, some are secular Charlotte Mason or secular WTM, etc. Just do a search there and you'll find several. As far as resources go, Galore Park comes to mind, especially for Latin and English. I believe they have a history program too, though I haven't heard as much about it. I'm sure there must be tons of others, but since I haven't started formal grammar and writing yet with my dd, I haven't looked into it much. Also, you might want to check out this secular homeschooling magazine: http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/

Thanks! I can't wait to check out these links.

:iagree: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DEBT of $9 TRILLION = $29,926 per PERSON, and rising Our nation's founders were against debt. At the writing of the Constitution they were concerned about debt incurred to finance the Revolutionary War, and it was their intention to promptly pay it off. Alexander Hamilton (federalist paper #7) called for the "extinguishment of all debt." Thomas Jefferson later wrote, "I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared." "Foreign interests have more control over the US economy than Americans, leaving the country in a state that is financially imprudent. More and more of our debt is held by foreign countries – some of which are our allies and some are not. The huge holdings of American government debt by countries such as China and Saudi Arabia could leave a powerful financial weapon in the hands of countries that may be hostile to US corporate and diplomatic interests.†Quoted from: http://home.att.net/~mwhodges/debt.htm

When I read the title of the thread, i automatically thought of T-Tapp. But it doesn't meet your other requirements. It's 45 minutes long, and there's no variety, it's just the same workout over and over. It's also ridiculously overpriced for the quality of the production. That said, however, nothing has ever worked better for flattening my abs and tightening up my mid-section. I thought I'd throw it out there for your consideration, but maybe others will have suggestions that will work better for you.

Please, enlighten us. Tell us what it is you know that the environmental scientists who have dedicated their professional lives to studying this topic haven't figured out yet.

My hubby and a coworker were apparently having a rather heated debate about this last week. I'll ask my dh what some of his favorite information resources are and get back to you tomorrow. And I think that taking steps to conserve energy has so so so many benefits, beyond just saving money. I think there's a lot to be said for self-sufficiency and the satisfaction of growing and raising your own food (not to mention the health benefits of the increased nutrition). I don't know if there are enough untapped oil sources still out there that we haven't reached peak oil yet. But even if there are better ways of extracting the oil, burning the oil still has the same environmental impact. I'm all for reducing usage, whether we're at peak oil yet or not.

It is so strange to see this question posed here tonight, because just last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was thinking about Heath Ledger's death for about the thousandth time, and about how no celebrity's death had ever affected me so deeply. I even thought about posting here to see if anyone else felt that way about him! He was so talented that I really feel he could have (would have, should have) gone on to be recognized as a truly great actor. I'm talking the kind of actor that only comes along once a generation or so. He was so young, I just weep at all the life that was stolen from him.

http://www.howtoteachscience.com/index.shtml

... and we always allow any *registered* parent to go along on overnights. But you do have to be registered as well, which costs, as mentioned, $10. We have really high parent participation in our troop. Parents are always happy to register and to help out with cookie sales and field trips and such. But I'm sure this can vary a lot by troop. You might have to "shop around" to find one that you like. There is a lot of variety in the way troops are run. Some troops do few or no overnights anyway, so this might not be an issue. Registering is not the only expense, however. In our troop, every girl buys her own uniform with the basic insignia on it like the pin and the troop number and such. If she wants a handbook or badge book, she also buys that herself. But the troop pays for the badges the girls earn. Also, this probably varies by troop as well, but our policy is that we pay HALF the cost of events and trips out of troop funds, and every girl pays the other half herself. I was advised to do this by the previous troop leader because she said she had initially paid for everything out of troop funds, and then lots of people would sign up for events but not bother to show up, and the troop had to pay for it. So this is just a way of ensuring that people only sign up for events that they are truly interested in and intend to show up for. Events can vary a LOT by cost. We do a lot of great things (council events) that only cost a few dollars. We have a few events that cost $15 - $30. And summer camps can range anywhere from $70 to several hundred dollars. But some of the girls just aren't interested in those anyway. Also, your daughter will earn "cookie dough" if she sells cookies, and that money can be used to buy uniforms, pay for council events and summer camps, etc. It cannot be used to register, but basically anything else. My daughter earned $50 in cookie dough this year. HTH