Same when I used to babysit...in 1995. Geez, inflation people. $40 is cheap for an infant, especially considering you just can't leave him or her alone. Even while sleeping, an infant needs to be monitored for reflux, SIDS, breathing issues, etc., especially when in a new environment. That's 6 hours of constant vigilance. If someone offered to watch my baby for so little, I'd have reservations about what kind of effort they'd put into his care. You get what you pay for. And childcare is already a generally undervalued sector of labor.

I'm sorry for your loss, Faith. Please take care of yourself, and don't let the toxicity of some relatives poison your spirit. Funerals are notorious for giving disgruntled relatives the access needed to grind that axe. You are doing what's best for you and your immediate family, and owe no apologies for that. Hugs.

He's gorgeous!!

My dh did a lot of research into NZ, and we're both very impressed with the country. My hesitancy to move there is not just the distance, but it's also our of a real respect that NZ is not a mini US or alternate England. It is quite different and distinctive in its culture and its socio-political make-up. And I'm honest enough with myself to realize at this point in my life, uprooting and starting all over in a place that has many differences from what I am accustomed to would be hard emotionally and psychologically. Hope that makes sense.

That's what I meant, packing and shipping stuff over. I'd probably ditch most everything and just get new stuff there. If you have a pet, that's also a real fun process, due to their requirements for quarantining up to a month from any countries that have rabies.

Don't know, I've only ever used this name on the board. When life gets too hectic, I just don't post. No time or energy.

Understood. He might need 2-3 hours daily exercise to really wear him out though. My standard poodle required at least 1.5 hours exercise and vigorous play until he was over a year and a half. Otherwise...chewing books and shoes and carpet and...lol. This is maybe why he got rehomed so many times, the others didn't expect a pup with so much energy. It really is like taking care of a baby!

I second this. Get on your bike and make him run alongside. Good for your health, great for tiring him out. Your pup is so destructive because he is going nuts with too much energy. Hounds are bred for traipsing about all over tarnation.

That's what my research has shown, too. Few countries are that open if you don't have a desired skill set, and the process costs $$$. Also, the US still taxes you while living and paying taxes elsewhere. Unless you want to surrender citizenship - which costs have been skyrocketed in the last few years from $450 to now about $2400 per person. And you to to prove you're not doing it to avoid tax penalties. And are subject to audits going back 10 years. And all taxes are immediately due upon surrendering said citizenship. Yay America. That said, New Zealand looks promising, but the move there would be a bitch.

Anon, that's a really tough place to be in. I don't know how to fix your dh's illness, but I do think you need a trusted confidant, who is independent of the situation. Have you considered counseling for yourself, to help you with the strain you're under? I would seek that and maybe a massage or other stress relief activity. I say this because you are basically a caretaker in the trenches and you need help, too. Speaking from experience, mentally ill people tend to be very self-absorbed to the point they will run your health into the ground along theirs. You gotta hold on for yourself, your kids, and hopefully for a future healthy dh. Take care of yourself!!

Not to derail the conversation, but... Rural areas, like where this accident occurred, have far fewer people spread out over much bigger areas. Those areas which do have bus service usually have long transit times, long waits very early or late, and long walks along unsafe roads to get to the bus or train stop. And public transit is expensive even in urban areas where there are far more people in a smaller area to cover, to pay for it. I read an interesting article a few years ago by an engineer who plans city water, roads, and waste, etc. He pointed out that rural communities almost never have the tax base to pay for such infrastructure, so they rely on low interest federal loans and subsidies from urban areas to pay for their projects. In the same way, unless rural communities can find outside sources of financial underwriting, rural public transit, at least, is unfortunately a pipe dream. Not to mention, IME, a lot of rural communities are frequently politically orientated against such options, for many reasons. I think Lyft or Uber or car pooling may probably be their best bet for now, until self driving cars become more available. Not even sure if such would have been an option in this case. Mental illness is already stigmatized, and the same people who are opposed to expanding health care to them at public cost would likely be opposed to expanding public transit options as well. Ironically, the people on that bus were in the same demographic subset that are frequently politically opposed to either either option. We all pay the costs for mental illness no matter our individual stances on how it should be treated. Or not. ETA: Here's an interesting article about the cost of public transit in and around the Twin Cities, where I live. http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/04/12/reality-check-light-rail-subsidizes/

And yet, I have encountered the claim that having more children "does not really cost all that much" several times. We live in a high COL society, that is virtually punitive towards having children, financially speaking. Housing, clothing, medical care, food, schooling, extra curricular activities....you can't even have a pet these days without spending $$$.

Without knowing the specifics of the principal's hiring practices, I couldn't absolutely say anything for sure. These are just my projections based on the information shared and my own life experiences. I do know that it's risky to implicate people like that, especially as filling positions is almost never straightforward business. Is this situation something that could follow her, reputation-wise? As I said, it's almost guaranteed he got his own position via inside political butt kissing. His indignation would really be the least of my concerns. I'm thinking of potential repercussions for Deb. What her conscience dictates is also something not to ignore. She should have a realistic view though of the system and how it goes. Next interview, she may be going against someone else who has all the questions.

Yes, I do understand that Deb suffers from some scrupulousity regarding the secretary's misguided attempt to help. But it's one thing to report a person who broke the rules for selfish reasons. It's another when you report someone who broke the rules trying to help you or someone else out. The other party might be said to have poor judgment, or playing favorites, but you end up looking like you are disloyal and an ingrate, and possibly willing to sell out another to score political points. Tell me which sentence sounds worse? That secretary has been there for, what...15 years? If she has serious defects of character, I guess they would know about them. I bet she's got some friends and allies, too. I really don't see how ratting her out is a win for anybody.

Nothing, but you do run the risk of being seen as virtue signalling. And also that you don't know how to keep confidences. And possibly, that you are the type to want to police the workplace, which is a huge headache for HR and management. Basically, unless she was exceptionally diplomatic in how she divulged the info, she would, ironically enough, have her character questioned as much or more so than the secretary's.

I say this gently, but you do not seem to understand that most professional workplaces do not hire on an even playing field. Most workplaces already know who they will hire. Nepotism, connections, networking, "a foot in the door," whatever--it all boils down to you know somebody who knows the inside game. I work as a data systems technician in a large tech company, not because of my degree (which is in a completely different field anyway) but because someone I am related to put my name forward to his manager. I had to prove myself an a trial basis but the fact I even got that trial everything to do with having that connection. Tomorrow, my dh has an interview for a job that his friend has definitely leaned on the inside for him. He also gave dh interview pointers. You could say that's not fair, but that's how the system works. I understand that any position I might apply for, if I don't have a personal connection with someone already on the inside, that job's going to someone else who's a "known quantity" before me. Regarding the principal's response to the secretary's sharing of interview questions, it's more likely that any anger would be related to having a hard copy of the questions floating around versus just verbal sharing of information. I would say the secretary would have been wiser to give Deb a verbal rundown, versus handing her a copy of questions. Even so, any blowback is unlikely to change the outcome, as again, the school had most likely already determined that Deb was their person, before she ever stepped foot into the interview. If the principal was actually angry at the sharing of interview questions, period, then he's a self righteous hypocrit, as I can pretty much promise you the political nature of selecting school administrators guarantees he had his nose up several butts on the inside.

Mostly harmless. And not as cool as Minnesota.

I saw it today. It was ok. Two stars out of four. The CGI/ special effects just didn't carry the original characters well, and the overall effect was flat. I love Emma, and B&B was always my favorite Disney movie, so I wanted to like this movie. It just lacked the magic and connection of the 1991 film for me. Sorry! :(

Sorry for the delayed response, Sadie! Work projects and school prep and everything else means I don't get much time on the board. I think maybe you misunderstood the gist of my post. Unless you believe it's "dangerous" and "irresponsible" to even define the terms of debate? Or to consider that maybe expecting people to completely divorce their religion from their public life leads to unresolved cognitive dissonance? (Also, I know how p-values are derived - my undergrad is in epidemiology, after all. It was not meant to be a scientific statement, just a recognition that we don't seem to have any systematic way to derive socially common values outside of bouts of Twitter rage.) None of this is to say I want or desire religionists or traditionalists to set up a caliphate, a Catholic monarchy, or some other theocratic state. Hell no. If that's what you took from my post, you thoroughly missed my point. That is, there are different types of people in the world, and only a minority are fundamentalists and extremists. The rest are open to the idea off finding common values in a consortium of global communities. They understand that finding a mutual basis for public policy need not mean that we must all consign ourselves to societies which are sterilized and purged from any hint of religious/ philosophical/ metaphysical idiosyncrasies. I understand of course, that you, yourself, take a strictly scientific/ utilitarian/ Epicurean approach to understanding life and the cosmos. I take a similar view as well. I really don't have much appreciation for any worldview that is stubbornly set against empiricism, and which rejects the progression of human knowledge as dangerous to old ideas, and demands intellectual assent from its adherents by requiring submission of their own judgment to some esoteric divine "law" that was set down millennia ago by people who just knew the brain's main function was cooling the body. The point is, I get it. I get what you're saying. But, do you also get that a fundamentalist mindset is any one that cannot tolerate or abide any difference of opinion, or deviance from orthodoxy of the majority? It's not the result of any particular religion - although some religions seem to "grow" more of these types than others for sure - and it's not even a religious phenomenon. But if you cannot even abide having a conversation about how reasonable, moderate types from different religious backgrounds, may foster a healthy presence in the public sphere along with seculars, than how can you accuse of others of irrational thinking? If you reject the Islamic, and Catholic, and Jewish, and Buddhist, and Hindu, and all the other religious type fundamentalists out there, you need to be equally scornful of that attitude from yourself and other seculars. Because there are a lot of secular fundamentalists out there - and they are just as eager to oppress, remove, segregate others who take a different view as any Islamist or anti-Catholic Protestant or anti-Semitic Catholic. Again, fundamentalism is a state of mind - it rejects reason, it conflates any deviation of opinion as automatically dangerous or harmful, and it is an inherently prejudiced mindset. So. How do we find a way to keep our societies on the path to a scientifically- and technologically-advanced progressive future? Well, we have to first acknowledge that it is societies - plural, not singular - which comprise the whole of the human race. And that part of the effort to retain a diversified humanity is to retain vestiges of the art, the language, the culture, and yes, the religious practices and customs of different groups. Did the religious leaders of hundreds and thousands of years ago understand what Germ Theory is? Did they know the physics of how to put a satellite into orbit? Could they conceive of artificial intelligence and computer processes that dwarf the speed of human thought? No, they didn't. That doesn't mean they were stupid. That's why today, many Christians, for example, reject the story of Adam and Eve as myth, and yet still value some of the observations that were present even back then. Such as, wondering why when humanity reached a critical mass in terms of intelligence, that the male of the species learned to treat the female as yet another resource in a hostile world to be exploited. Such as wondering about humans began evolving, and their brains grew to the extent that they had to be prematurely born to fit through the maternal pelvic outlet -- that yes, childbirth became an even more painful and dangerous affair. That the serpent represents to many the inner voice that causes us to question conventional wisdom and "arguments from authority." The curiosity and inner drive of the species. The yearning for simple "paradise garden" that we imagine our species started out from, and yet just as utterly reject as too quiet and bucolic for our restless spirit. Science is fantastic for explaining much about the world around us. It's a powerful tool, and I agree, it should be the basis of things like, whether we protect ourselves from the flu by washing our hands and developing vaccinations, or whether we blame spirits and make a burnt sacrifice to keep our kids safe from viruses. But how do we decide what direction to take scientific knowledge? Science gives us the ability grow embryos in the lab. Eventually, we will have ectogenesis - the ability to completely gestate a human outside of a uterus. Can we grow 'extra" embryos from assisted reproduction for parts to harvest? Can we use them to develop new cures for cancer and ALS and other terrible diseases? Can we use our knowledge of DNA to genetically modify our children? To what percentage or extent can we modify a potential child? What about artificial intelligence? What if we are able to give computers and robots the ability to feel emotions - to feel desires and disappointments. Are we free to manipulate those? Do we owe any care or consideration to what a robot would like to devote its energies and thoughts to? Can a robot have "thoughts?" What is a thought? What is its composition? Where is it born? Where does it go? Since memories are changed with every single recall, how do we even know how to recognize our own thoughts? Ok, so I know I've gone wildly off the tracks with this train of thought - hehehe - from what the OP asked about. What I am trying to say is the question of sharia, what it is, what it entails, is just part of a bigger question in my mind. How do we incorporate what do we understand scientifically about ourselves, with what we understand about ourselves, non-scientifically? Do we adopt a complex and dialogue-heavy public policy, which admits the personal religious beliefs of engaged individuals in some shape or form? Do we go with a raze-and-burn policy of just shoving anything that smacks of non-empirical thinking outside of the public space? Do we just go with a "majority wins the pool" and whoever has the greatest numbers strong-arms the rest into compliance? I don't know what option we'll ultimately end up with in North America (U.S., Canada). What I hope for is the moderates acting as the "adults" to work out a solution that respects religious and philosophical conscience. If fundamentalists dictate the conversation, there is no scientific rationale or philosophical argument that can override that retrograde mindset.

Part of the issue is the definition of "secular government." There are many Christians, Jews, Buddhists, etc., who would vociferously defend secular government as the only way to ensure religious freedom. In the case of a devout believer making this argument, I believe they are defending the understanding of secular government as a kind of "neutral observer" whose function is to protect the free exercise of religion in all spheres of life, private and public. This includes the exercise of individual belief in schools, workplaces, government agencies, in law and politics. In this scenario, a secular government is not atheistic, but is merely non-sectarian. This perspective works inasmuch as the majority religious traditions are able to find enough overlap in the Venn diagram of moral rules to form a viable public space together. It's also why many the Protestant-majority U.S. was quite distrustful of a Catholic Presidential-candidate John F. Kennedy. It stood to reason that if Protestants could shape and mold public policy based on a view informed by personal religious beliefs, then Catholics might also act according to their personal beliefs - which included loyalty to a certain Bishop of Rome. We all know how that played out - Kennedy basically had to assure voters that he would compartmentalize his personal beliefs from his political actions, thereby assuring the voters that they would not be subject to policies shaped or influenced by some foreign theocratic state. That concession has carried forward to today - where voters look suspiciously on anyone from a religious background perceived to be in competition with Protestant / secular America. On one hand, we had Barack Obama having to assure people of his religious identity as a Christian, and this was meant to refute questions of his suitability mainly coming from the political "right." They very much did not desire to have a practicing Muslim in office of POTUS. Then, we have Joe Biden and his "I'm personally against abortion, but pro-choice politically," which is sort of a code message to people on the "left" - "Hey, I know my Church is anti-abortion, and I believe that's the right position to take, but don't worry about me trying to enforce that on the rest of you." Of course, depending on what side one takes on Muslims and Catholics in office, probably influences the degree of cognitive dissonance expected from a politician or other public servant, who also happens to be a devout believer. So, that's the religious side of it. The atheistic/ agnostic side of things has put a whole new patina on this "secular government" business. Whereas many a believer has held that "secular" = non-sectarian, now, secular is increasingly coming to mean "a-theistic, naturalistic, humanist." So, it's not a competing religious perspective, like Protestant versus Catholic, so much as a competing religious philosophy. It's not Rome versus Luther, or the Moors versus the Crusaders. It's not even Pope Paul V versus Galileo (as Galileo, a man of science, as also a man of faith, himself). It's Epicurus' primitive physics (atomism) versus Aristotle's forms. The state is to form its rationale, its laws, and judgments based upon empirical evidence, not religious/ philosophical proofs. That is, the secular state is not only to refrain from entering the realm of religion, it is to refuse to even acknowledge its existence outside the boundaries of the private sphere of life. And, when religiously-tainted practices and rationales are discovered outside their private domain - in public education, in courtrooms, in places of (corporate) business - they are scrutinized and weighed against the greater freedom of the public to be "free from the sphere of religion." Speaking as a secular (agnostic) humanist, I value individual freedom and individual conscience. I, personally, have no desire to live in a society where, if I walk without my head and body covered in loose clothing, and without a male relative, I'm regarded as "loose" or "dishonorable" to my family. Such attitudes do derive from persistent cultural and religious beliefs (Adam and Eve, anybody?). That attitude I described, by the way, would have been at home in most medieval Christian societies. (It turns out that misogyny and patriarchalism are shared moral values in all three Abrahamic faiths - not surprising given their Bronze Age, desert-bred origins). However, I also do not desire to live in a monochromatic society where morals are expressed as the p-value derived from crowd sourcing. Religious and philosophical traditions represent a cornucopia of human thought and imagination. A society that lacks fluency in religious and philosophical thought is a society that lacks a valuable discipline in cultivating critical thinking skills. For much of human history, our understanding of the cosmos was necessarily derived from observation, speculation, and philosophical arguments and logic, because we lacked the modern tools of science. But now that we have the scientific methodology, and the powerful tools we built from an empirical understanding of the physical universe, we seem to have decided we've arrived. That we know so much more from science that that is all we will ever need and we will find all our answers through the rigors of evidence-based study. The problem is, we've limited our sources of evidence to just what we can empirically test. There is an infinite number of things we do not know about ourselves or the cosmos. It seems rather one-dimensional to limit our approach to finding some of those answers to only what we moderns accept as scientific evidence. I think we cultivate a tremendous amount of knowledge but not a lot of wisdom. And this goes for believers as well. Many, if not most believers I know, have only a passing familiarity with the logic underpinning the doctrines they embrace. They'd rather find a 30 second YouTube video by some polemic talking decrying the "immorality" of all those godless New Atheists and how they can't possibly have any sort of moral system apart from the Bible. Do they carefully investigate the claims of both their belief system - in this example, Christianity - and the articulated position of their opponents? Have they ever looking into the arguments for and against the other side? This kind of push-pull between intelligent and informed opponents is sorely missing from US political dialogue. And honestly, I think it's missing from most Islamic countries as well - I don't see a lot of evidence for examining their own system of beliefs. Many are so focused on defending their culture from Western hegemony, and sending out their own sound bites - "Islam is the Answer!" - that any disagreement risks retribution and ridicule. So, I guess the question of how I view sharia is related to the overall picture of how Muslims present themselves. IME, many of the conservative Muslims strike me as very similar to conservative Christian Protestants and traditionalist Catholics. That is, they are interested in imposing their worldview on the surrounding society, to solve its problems. I would prefer that Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, believers and non-believers, all -- sought instead to inform public policy and law through thoughtful dialogue, careful restraint of baser instincts (racism, clannish mentalities, aggression, etc.) and sensible compromise. As long as "compromise" remains a dirty word, and it's vogue to demonize people of a differing worldview, we will continue to see mistrust fostered between believers and non-believers. If people can come to some sort of synthesis of common understanding, then a government which acknowledges both and gives space to both secular and non-secular practice, is possible. But if religious people continue to try to wrest back their majority through power grabs and secular people continue to scoff at all religious arguments as "stupid" or "ridiculous," then to maintain stability one or the other will be forcefully ejected from the public sphere. Right now, it's looking like religionists are losing that battle, for weal or for woe, as they say. I don't see Islamic societies really faring much better. The truth of the matter is secularism is sweeping the entire globe, not just Western societies. What Islamic societies frequently will not admit is that many of their own populaces are privately de-converting. There are many stories about how Muslims are immigrating to Europe and changing the social fabric -- there is not much said about the 15 - 20% of such Muslims who secularize within the first generation. The attrition is greater with subsequent generations. And this does not even touch on those who act as cultural Muslims in Muslim countries, but who privately do not believe, or may even be atheists. They may live under sharia, but that does not mean they agree with it or prefer it. So that divide between religious law and public policy is going to be tested and is being tested, all over the world. The evolution of human social conventions with the internet and information, combined with the huge increases in scientific discoveries means that we are all facing the question of how to meld the old ways with new understanding.

Yes, this is correct. The socio-political opposition to same sex marriage stemmed primarily from organized alliances between the LDS church, the American branch of the Catholic Church, and evangelical Protestant groups. I'm not familiar with the philosophical underpinnings of LDS jurisprudence, but the Catholic position was and is heavily undergirded by its theological definition and interpretation of natural law. Protestant groups inherited the same legal basis of argument from a shared historical understanding of natural law as well. All this boils down to is: a theological doctrine on human relations framed within a historical perspective on natural law, and therefore presented as universally binding upon society as a whole. Basically, same sex marriage should not be legal, because natural law - which contrary to its name does not speak to naturalism, but is premised upon human rationality as a divinely gifted rational soul - asserts such behaviour is "disordered." So essentially, it is a movement by a religious subset of the population to protect and build upon theologically based law, to which all citizens are subject. That isn't theocracy, because there is a separation between Canon church law and secular law. But it is a secular legal system which still inculcates a certain amount of Western theological (classical Christian) jurisprudence. Islamic sharia seems to me be a very tight marriage of "church law", as it were, and its version of natural law (moral laws which are universally applicable).

Not sure why so many here refer to Western law as secular. Certainly, our interpretation and understanding of law is has effected a more secular application in modern times. But much of Western law was historically predicated upon natural law, which is heavily influenced by Catholic jurisprudence.

I see sharia law as the Islamic/ eastern packaged equivalent of the Catholic Christian/ western concepts of natural and Canon law.

Illy dark roast espresso, a bit of sugar, vanilla, and heavy cream.

Just saw the new Ghostbusters. I wasn't expecting much after all the negative talk about it. It turned out to be really freakin' funny! The theater was packed and was full of LOL moments the entire movie. If you need a quick cheer up, go watch it.