If it is your photo, it doesn't matter how the company got it. Facebook has an easy to use form to report copyright violations to facebook. (google for it) Fill out the form, and the photo will be gone fast.

The Greek Golden Age? (Sorry, just can't help myself...)

"Fluency" is a word that is over-used and under-defined. What, exactly do you mean by this? Will he take AP Latin test after the 4th year? 3rd year? To my way of thinking, even a 5 on AP Latin doesn't mean fluent, not by a long shot. Most rigorous high school FL programs are one hour a day in class, and maybe a half hour or hour more of homework, so this doesn't sound like too atypical. However, 7am to 4pm every weekday (with no additional "home"work?) seems roughly equivalent to a public HS schedule, perhaps a little less than a rigorous high school, so I wouldn't say that it is too much, at least not without knowing more. Doing science in Latin just strikes me a gimmicky. For example, probably most biological terms post-date latin, so you just need to use neologisms to talk about them. And using classical texts for science is just wrong -- I mean, the Greeks thought that the stomach was the locus of cognition.

Really depends on what you are into. Taliesin West is very interesting for those into architecture. The Musical Instrument Museum is a little-known treasure. The Heard museum has a national reputation. Scottsdale has high-end shopping. Might be interesting for you to try a Sonoran-Mexican restaurant, which is very different than Tex-Mex. While there's interesting hiking in and around Phoenix, it may not be the right time of year for it. Phoenix itself is kind of like LA, I don't know that just driving around without a destination is going to be as fun as, say, San Diego. There are lots of day trips, from Bisbee and Tucson Southward, to Sedona, scenic canyons, Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon northward. The higher elevations as you go up to Flagstaff result in a much lower temperature.

If you also have Wheelock, you won't need anything else than Lingua Latina per se Illustrata: Familia Romana (that's one book). Both it and Wheelock are enough work to get through by themselves. Contrary to other opinions, sometimes you do need to look up some grammar or vocab outside of LL, as it is hard to get enough detail from the context.

I'm curious what diet this is? -- the protein seems very low, and the carbs very high.

I believe the conventional wisdom, that 3500 calories burned is one pound, but with some caveats. Food scientists measure food energy (calories) by literally burning food, and measuring how much energy is released. Obviously, this is not the way our digestive systems work, so some food calorie measurements may be off. Also, measuring body weight is an imprecise measure of health. It is much more accurate to measure inches at the legs, hips, abs and arms. The body can take a varying amount of time to fully digest different food based on all kinds of factors. If you've gained two pounds on a scale the day after eating, say, 1000 extra calories, I don't think you've really permanently gained two pounds. Rather (and I'm trying to be delicate here), I think that your body hasn't fully digested that food and fiber, and that some of the weight will be leaving soon.

I could not more strongly agree with you, and also with birthday cards. Finding a regular birthday card for an adult seems well-nigh impossible. They are either "You are so old, I can't believe you aren't dead, HA HA", or "Here's a picture of some half naked guy, you'll like that".

Avoid going to the observation deck at the Sears tower (Now called something else, can't remember). There's lines to wait in lines to wait in other lines.

The thing I like about the WTM is that SWB's writing just oozes authenticity. She's been there, and while her methods may not work for every family, it has worked for hers. One thing I've come to appreciate is that education is incredibly pragmatic. For all the theories we have about the brain and cognition, no one really knows how it works, and all our educational theories have to face the facts of the real world. When I read TJed, way back when it first came out, I didn't get this same feeling at all. It was just philosophy, and I didn't get the feeling that the author was the one doing the teaching. Is Oliver DeMille the one doing the teaching at home? How old was his oldest when the book was written? ten years old? That alone makes me skeptical.

The $8 general admission to the Shedd is a bit of a secret. Last time we were there, it wasn't listed on the price list, but if you asked for it, they'd sell you the general admission ticket. Folks we talked to who paid extra (a LOT extra) for the show said that it was incredibly cheesy and very disappointing.

CC's are all over the place in terms of rigor. Some are great, but most are terrible, and really teach at a remedial high school level, even the "college level" classes like Calculus. Isn't it telling that the Chemistry class at your CC taught one third of the AP curriculum? Unless the college in question is familiar with the particular CC in question (because of locality), I would strongly recommend the AP class ASSUMING THE AP CLASS HAS A GOOD RECORD WITH THE AP TEST. (sorry for the yelling). There are many non-rigorous so-called "AP" classes taught at the high school level, whose students can't get more than a "2" on the AP tests, or worse, who don't even bother taking the test because they know they will do poorly. Taking a class labelled "AP" without the AP test, or a bad grade on the AP test doesn't help competitive college entrance at all.

It's not just the number of stages, but the material in each stage in Cambridge Latin III is much harder than II. The fourth book is much harder than the third, especially the last half where it switches to original Latin authors. In my opinion, the first book goes much too slowly, as I recall, it don't even cover all five of the major Latin cases. I think the typical high school sequence is the first two books coverr year one, then book three for year two, and book four for year three, then AP Latin for year four.

Might be a bit young, but the "Fairy Realm" series by Emily Rodda was a big hit here. Oh, and for an older reader, "Watership Down".

I think this is one of those books that you love or you hate, and there's little in between.

I'd be more curious about AP test results. I don't think there's much inflation there.

I just wanted to add that although this sounds like it might be stressfully tight to make it to the Statue of Liberty, I like dh's idea: If you are unlikely to return to NYC in the near future, it kind of sucks to have to hang out in the airport for 9 hours without seeing anything interesting. So close, and yet so far. Maybe a better question to ask is: "Given that we've got a 9 hour layover in Newark, what's a seminal New York experience we can have without risking missing our connecting flight"? I'm not a NYC person, but maybe the observation deck at Rockefeller Center is more doable, or Grand Central Station, or ... ?

How much carry-on luggage do you plan to have, and what will you do with it during this excursion?

No. These schools he is referring to are well-known for ripping off both government and student. Their training and degrees are worthless. Congress is looking into tightening laws to restrict them from their pernicious business practices. Tara I think his argument would have been much stronger if he had actually named some of these new 'high end, un-accredited , BRANDED schools'. I didn't get the impression that he has talking about the for-profit schools like University of Phoenix, as you rightly point out that Congress is considering going after. Clearly, UoP and their ilk aren't 1) new 2) cheaper 3) better. So what's an example of a school he is talking about?

Something I've been thinking about a lot is just the cost of college education. I know that sounds trite. Too often these threads boil down into the usual arguments about "classical liberal education is good and teaches you how to think, and you can do anything with it, I know 10 people from my college days who graduated with degrees in art history and each of them now rule the earth" vs "anyone stupid enough to graduate with $200k in debt and no career path is a moron and gets what they deserve". Just to be clear, I'm a WTM devotee, and strongly believe in the abstract value of education. However, that value has a limit, and I don't place the monetary value of such an education at the price of more than one house in my area, or a lifetime of debt. Also, I'm not entirely sure than government backed loans are the source of the problem, but I would be willing to listen to compelling evidence for better proof. I'm so not interested in that discussion again. Here's what I am interested in: Why the heck is college so expensive? Consider the online school, Lukeion. The charge, something like $300, for what all acclaim to be a very good high school Latin semester. Generally, two high school language semesters are equivalent to one college semester of a four credit class. So, this is roughly equivalent to $150 per college equivalent credit hour. And here's the kicker: The Lukeion class sizes are probably smaller than any class a college freshman would take, with more direct tutoring and feedback. I suspect they are just as rigorous as any four year school college, and probably more rigorous than most community colleges, the typical "budget" option. I don't have any direct involvement with this organization, and I suspect there are a dozen similar, if not even better. $150 per credit hour times 120 hours for a BA is $18,000, which is still a lot, but only (only!) $4500 a year, which seems doable with a summer/part time job, and escaping without a ton of debt. Obviously lab classes are more difficult online, but seems like if someone wanted a traditional liberal arts education, there's not reason it needs to cost six figures.

It is funny you chose this metaphor, because the radical unschoolers say that you should indeed allow you kid to eat whatever they want, whenever they want. If they want to stay up to 4 in the morning every day playing video games eating junk food, the parents' job is to make "monkey platters" of high cal food always within reach of the child, so they can grab and eat without any distractions for the video game. Somehow the child will learn that this food makes them feel ill and will voluntarily switch to a healthy diet. I am not making this up.

FWIW, we got our folks one, and it completely failed after a month or so. Several other people, with other brands from ours (sorry, forget which) also reported early failure. Maybe they've gotten better over time, but this was a big disappointment.

???? Ignoring the current thread subject, how else could this work? Let's say that the US & Canada want to negotiate a treaty wherein tourist citizens of either country would be allowed visit the other for 30 days without a visa. If the two federal governments can't trump local laws, then every single state would have to negotiate with every province? Or every village?

At our library, you can put a hold in the "suspend" state. When a hold is suspended, you still work your way up to the top of the queue, but the book isn't delivered to you until you "unsuspend" it. I think it was designed for people going on vacation, but I use it a lot, especially for series of videos. For example, I'll put all parts of a video series on hold, and suspend all but the first one. By the time we're done watching the first one, we're usually at the top of the queue for the rest, and I unsuspend them in order. Works great.