Yep, it is Spanish for "vamoose".

I wonder if we are too focused on trying to figure out which side is completely, 100% exactly what happened, and which side is 100% deceitful, fabricating from whole cloth. What if the real story is somewhat in the middle? For example, I could completely imagine drunken swimmers accidentally breaking fixtures in the bathroom, and not thinking too much of it, or even noticing it, due to inebriation. (Doesn't make it right, of course). Then, out of the blue, to them, the gas station security guards, carrying guns, and maybe kind of looking like police officers, start yelling at them in Portuguese. I'm sure none of the swimmers speak Portuguese. The guards want them to pay for the damages (and how do they know how much the damages are, by the way?) The English speaking swimmers finally understand only that these guards want money, and hand it over, feeling like they've been robbed.

What a great educational opportunity -- many modern computers have power supplies that can use 240 volt or 120 volt inputs, and either have a manual switch, or automatically detect the difference. You should have him read up on the specification for the component that he bought -- you may just need a physical converter to plug the computer into the wall.

I would say it is no more or no less appropriate that the rest of the canon. BUT, DO NOT READ IT BEFORE READING THE CANONICAL BOOKS. (excuse the screaming).

I hope I'm not too late on this thread, but I just finished HP & the CC, and I was really disappointed. I came in with low expectations, and even so, was let down. Before I read the script, many people claimed that the fact that this was a script, and not a novel would be a problem for many readers. I was surprised at how much this *wasn't* a problem for me. Although, I was surprised by the large number of very short scenes. It seems like that would make it hard to stage. I didn't keep track, but some acts had something like 20 scenes? Still, what I think I like best about the HP world is, as Farrar said above, is JKR's world building. Her world is so rich, with details added in every book about how the wizarding world works, from banking to sports to household chores. Almost nothing new was added in this script, almost no new interesting characters, except for the Trolley Witch, again, who may have been the best part of the book. The major magical device in the play is just a rehash of a device we've seen before, the time turner. And the time travel was problematic on several levels. Revisiting old JKR scenes seems like creative cheating, because we're always looking for new details about the world. I would much rather have read about Scorpius and Albus having some new adventures together at Hogwarts or elsewhere, not involving you-know-who, or even their parents.

Agreeing with everyone else, I would stick to my guns, and say no. I would, though, at least thank the students (or their parents?) for having the common courtesy to ask you beforehand, and not just sign up, and come in with an entitled attitude that because they have paid (peanuts, probably) for the class, they get to make the rules.

It is an improvement (not perfect, mind you, but an improvement) because districts aren't uniform, and can vary widely. Austin, for example, isn't like the rest of Texas (or anywhere else on the planet, some might argue). California is a solidly blue state, but reliably elects Republicans in some districts every election.

There hasn't been a big push, but if people like us keep talking about it, maybe there is hope? And I think this change is a long shot, but nonetheless possible, whereas I don't expect to see any meaningful constitutional amendment in my lifetime.

Both Maine and Nebraska assign their electoral college votes on a per-district winner-take-all, not per-state winner take all. If every state did this, it would be a step in the right direction, IMHO, and not require a Constitutional amendment, or any other changes at the federal level.

The local public school district here has a lot of half days, seems like one a week, either late start or early dismissal. This is a headache when scheduling extracurriculars especially because the half days are spread out among the schools even within this one district -- one may have it on Mondays, another Tuesdays, etc. I believe our school district has a required number of instruction days, but not total hours, so all these half days count as much as a full instruction day.

Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but how do you teach something like physics without a text?

Very few colleges have JV teams. Most colleges, though have club sports teams, which are student-lead, without paid coaches, practice regularly and compete against club teams from other colleges. These club teams require much less commitment of students. Frequently, the student may need to pay some fee to participate in club sports.

Change is hard. Do you have a meet coming up soon? There's nothing like swimming on a relay to make friends and feel like you are part of the team.

It's one thing to claim to have accidentally "shot the wrong guy". Then he handcuffed the "wrong guy" he shot -- was this an accidental handcuffing too?

I share you skepticism, so I did a little research. These numbers are based on a somewhat obscure paper titled "A limit on the energy transfer rate from the human fat store in hypophagia", which is based on a study of men fed a starvation diet and kept to little or no physical activity. So, who knows how this applies to the real world. What the paper really claims is that if you burn more calories than you consume, only 31 calories per total pounds of fat in your body per day can be burned from fat stores and turned into energy. The remaining energy would come from burning lean body mass. So, it would take 100 days to lose one pound of fat, only in the case when you only had one total pound of fat on your body, in which case you'd probably be dead. Perhaps this holds true in a very controlled laboratory environment, but I remain skeptical of the real world applicability

While I think that on average, flying has gone down in price, I notice that on her ticket she posted there were something like $60 in taxes on a $400 ticket, and spot checking current fares from JFK to FRA show more than $200 in taxes on a $600 flight, so there's a big chunk right there.

What's that in percentage of total students in the class?

I was chatting with an acquaintance the other day who has a rising high school senior about colleges. This student attends a large (3,000 student) local public high school generally thought to be "good". I take that with a grain of salt -- most high schools find some way to be above average by some metric or another. She was expressing concern that her son wouldn't be able to get into the colleges of his choice because his GPA was so low -- 3.8 something. I was a little surprised that she considered this low, and she told me that after junior year, 20% of her son's class had a 4.0 grade point average (unweighted). I know that grade inflation is rampant, but are these statistics common?

This is kind of a new thing, but seeing as exactly $0 of your internet bill goes to Wired magazine, I can't blame them for trying to find some way to fund their operations.

I don't know where the OP is flying, but because of great circle routing, and the requirement that commercial airline remain some maximum fixed distance from a landing field, even a transatlantic flight can cross over a fair amount of land, and interesting landforms at that -- Greenland, Canada, the UK, etc.

Depending on what kinds of tablets you have, it should run on those.

There's a new app for airplane travelers called "Flyover Country", where you pre-load your route on your device, and as you fly, it uses the GPS to display points of interest and geological features as you go over them. Might be fun for the right crowd.

I wouldn't worry about this for the transcript so much, but I would encourage your son to bring it up in any college interviews he may have. e.g. when asked about how it could ever be possible to homeschool upper-level math, he could say "I was lucky to have a wonderful one-on-one instructor with whom I could focus on working out proofs. My favorite proof was this-one, because it seemed difficult to proof, but I worked hard, and thought about it a lot, and used so-and-so methods."

What's that in terms of per-hour of work?

Ah, that would make more sense. I would also be careful to measures the costs of having a very part-time job -- commuting, wardrobe, laptop/phone/technology, etc.