Kames, No, the site is not down, but I recognize that problem. Have you changed the zoom text setting in your browser? For some reason, selecting to zoom just the text gives Drupal (my content management system) fits. If that is not the problem, email me at rob at krampf.com

I am sure this is way too obvious, but just in case, have you tried finding something that he will really enjoy reading? At first, forget about educational reading, and teach him to read for the joy of reading, or the joy of finding out things. What does he REALLY like? Video games? You can get a guide to just about any game ever made, filled with tips, hints, and secret information. Science experiments? Let him read the instructions and do the experiment himself. Sports? Again, there are kids books on just about any sport ever invented. If you can find the subject that he REALLY loves, and show him some of the marvelous information hidden in books, he may learn to love reading. Also, think outside the book. Text based computer games take the work out of reading, and stimulate not just word recognition, but reading comprehension. You have to read the screen to play the game. Does he like to cook? As a child, I love cooking, because I could make the food I like, exactly the way I liked it. Reading a simple cookie recipe is great practice, and there is a tasty reward at the end.

Faraday's lectures are amazing. Chemical History of a Candle is my favorite, but his lectures on The Forces of Matter are very good to. You can find them free online at: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1859Faraday-forces.asp

Florida's textbooks were written for Florida by National Geographic, to fit the state science standards. The ones I have seen (4rd, 4th, and 5th grades) are OK as modern textbooks go, but like others, they seem to fill up a LOT of space with photos and graphics, instead of with text information. You can find their info here" http://www.ngsp.com/tabid/271/Default.aspx

Wish you were closer to Florida. I have two sweet potatoes sprouting in my kitchen right now, and was just thinking of putting them in water to photograph.

What a marvelous thread! Lewelma, you have done an incredible job of explaining and keeping things on track.

As a science educator, I REALLY dislike the "Walking with" videos. In an effort to make the videos entertaining, they mingle science with imagination, and then present it as fact. As a video producer, I love their animation, but I have to turn off the sound to enjoy the program.

I have to disagree with you here. Answers in Genesis has improved. I was very pleased when they added their page on Arguments Creationist Should Not Use, but they have buried it, so it is hard to find. These are all arguments that AIG has used in the past, and surprisingly, articles on their site are still using many of the arguments that they say Creationists should not use. In spite of improvements, their science is often either inaccurate or misleading. There are other Creation oriented sites that do a much better job.

Thanks to the help of some homeschool families, I am making good progress. They volunteered to review and critique resources as I develop them, to help make the site more useful.

For the science/evolution side of things, I highly recommend the University of California Museum site: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/index.shtml It has clear explanations, lesson plans, links to explore further, and interactives. It is scientifically accurate and updated regularly.

Did you read the first page, second paragraph: As a reference for the common maternal ancestor, he cites: Behar, D. M. et al, The dawn of human matrilineal diversity. Am J. Hum. Genet. 82, 1130-1140 (2008)

That is why I also mentioned the transition from Latin to Spanish and Italian. No, my example is not an explantation of how the change happens. It is an analogy, to explain how scientists see evolutionary change. Here's a quote from Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species... First, continue reading past the end of your quote: Taking the quote in context changes the meaning quite a bit. Second, quite a few geologic discoveries have been made since Darwin wrote The Origin of Species. All of those discoveries fit the current version of evolutionary theory. As I said in an earlier post, it would only take one human artifact found in Paleozoic rocks to turn evolutionary theory upside down, but with all of the paleontologists, petroleum geologists, structural geologists, and millions of amateur collectors, no one has ever found a single human artifact or fossil in those rocks. It would not even have to be a human artifact. Finding a fossil rabbit, elephant, ostrich, whale, horse, cow, duck, or other mammals or birds in those rocks would revolutionize evolutionary science. Again, with all of the millions of people looking, none has ever been found. That does not mean that it won't happen, and if such a discovery is ever made, it will be a very exciting time to be a scientist. Scientific revolutions are so much fun.

The University of California Museum of Paleontology has a great site that explains micro and macro evolution: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/index.shtml Under Speciation, their section on defining a species paints a very good picture of the challenge of determining "completely different species." If you are looking for a specific (:D) example, read about the hawthorn fly, Rhagoletis pomonella. This is speciation that is occurring naturally, not in the lab. If you REALLY want to do some reading, this is the scientific paper: ^ Feder JL, Roethele JB, Filchak K, Niedbalski J, Romero-Severson J (1 March 2003). "Evidence for inversion polymorphism related to sympatric host race formation in the apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella". Genetics 163 (3): 939–53. PMC 1462491. PMID 12663534. Hope that helps. As always, give a yell if that raises more questions.

To a paleontologist, most fossils would qualify as transitional fossils. No credible scientist believes that a fish suddenly produced offspring that were half fish and half salamander. The evolution of a species is much like the evolution of a language. Spanish and Italian both developed from Latin, but there was not a point in time which Latin speaking parents suddenly discovered that their children were speaking Spanish. Instead, the language changed slowly from generation to generation. You can easily see how the same thing is happening to English. Just read some old English: Fæder ūre þū þe eart on heofonum Today we would write it as: Father of ours, thou who art in heaven Looking back at written documents, we can see the gradual change, but there is no clear line where a linguist could draw a line, saying that everything before this point is Old English, and everything after this point is Modern English. If you asked for a transitional document, pretty much anything written between 1000 AD and today would work. That is very much the way that scientists see the process of evolution. Finding a fossil that was half fish and half salamander would be like finding an old document that started a sentence in old English and finished it in modern English: Fæder ūre þū thou who art in heaven Does that help? More questions?

Again we are back to definitions. The folks over at TalkOrigins are fairly rigorous about scientific definitions. Take a look at: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html Getting back on track, I do not see anything in the article you indicated that supported your statement that: I may have missed it. Can you direct me to the section you were basing your statement on?

If you want to turn it into a science project, this is from one of my Experiment of the Week posts. Bad Chocolate? Two weeks ago, I mentioned that I had a lot of fun experimenting with carbonated soda (and drinking it) and that I should do an experiment with chocolate. I got quite a few e-mails suggesting experiments with chocolate, but this one was the most common. It has to do with the white discoloration that you sometimes find on old chocolate. For this week's experiment, you will need: - a plastic food storage bag - chocolate - I used chocolate chips and bar chocolate, using milk chocolate and - semi-sweet chocolate. First, eat some of the chocolate. Notice the taste and the texture. Since we are going to change the chocolate, we need a control to compare the results with. Keep plenty of chocolate handy, as I found it necessary to refresh my memory frequently. I ate almost an entire bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips just to be sure I was familiar with their flavor. Next, we are going to cause the chocolate to "bloom." That is the term that is used in the chocolate industry to describe the changes that happen in old chocolate. To do this, put some chocolate into the plastic bag. We want to heat the chocolate enough to partially melt it, without turning it into a puddle. I placed the bag on the dashboard of my truck and left it there for about 5 minutes. This worked much better than using the microwave, which tended to melt them too quickly. The chocolate should be soft, but should still be in a lump, not a runny liquid. If the chocolate melts completely, then get some fresh chocolate and try again. So as not to waste the over-melted chocolate, I put it on some sliced bananas for a snack. Once you have some partially melted chocolate, place the bag someplace where no one will eat it. By the following day, you should notice quite a change. The surface of the chocolate probably is lighter color and has very light colored blotches. Break off a piece and taste it. Don't worry, the light splotches are not mold. While the taste has not changed much, you will notice a big difference in the texture. Instead of being smooth, the chocolate now feels grainy. Be sure to eat some more fresh chocolate to compare the two. What has happened? The light colored patches are cocoa butter, one of the main ingredients in chocolate. When cool enough to be solid, cocoa butter forms crystals. It is polymorphic, which means that at different temperatures, it forms different kinds of crystals. For chocolate to be smooth and creamy, the crystals must be very small. When we melted the chocolate and let it cool again, it formed larger crystals, giving it a grainy texture. Cocoa butter is monotropic, which means that even if it does not melt, over time the small crystals will slowly change to the larger form. To prevent this, chocolate should be kept in a cool, dry place, but not in the freezer. If frozen, condensation can leach out the sugar, again causing white blotches. I feel that by far the best strategy for chocolate is to eat it all quickly, before it has a chance to go bad.

Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me. Harvey (My favorite movie of all time.)

I'm trying hard not to be argumentative, but you seem to be misusing the word "theory" too. In science, a theory is an explanation of phenomena, based on a body of tested principles, laws, and facts. The fact that the sun will rise tomorrow is just that, a fact. It is not explanatory, so it is not a theory. I read the article (You can get it cheap here.), and while it is quite an interesting study, it is far from "beyond question" proof of your previous statement. It is a single study, and even the authors do not claim that it is absolute proof of anything. Those of us on the science side of things have to hold ourselves to the same standards that we demand from those that support Creationism. Actually, we should hold ourselves to an even higher standard for accuracy, since we are claiming to represent the views of the scientific community. We have to be very accurate in the way that we use scientific terms and make scientific claims, and be sure that we have significant documentation for those claims. If we don't, then we are doing a poor job of presenting science.

As a strong advocate of science literacy and evolutionary literacy, I have to comment one of your statements. Science does not prove things "beyond question." As Einstein said, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." Pending replication by other institutions, the recent LHC neutrino experiments might just do that. This is one of science's greatest strengths, allowing our perception of the universe to change as we get new data. That applies to all science. As strongly as I support evolutionary literacy, if valid remains of a Bronze Age village were discovered in the Precambrian rocks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I would have to reevaluate my scientific views. Of course, I don't expect that to happen, but then Newton didn't expect our discoveries in quantum physics when he formulated his Laws of Motion. Second, can you point me to the journal article that was the source for this information? I am curious about the claim that there were a minimum of 10,000 individuals in the original breeding population that evolved into H. sapiens. Unless their behavior was drastically different from modern primates (small, family groups with large territories), that number seems awfully large.

Clairelise, thanks for your great comments. My comment was influenced by growing up in a fundamentalist church. They would never dream of saying "Physical evidence shows that this scripture is incorrect, so we have to either rewrite the scripture to correct it, or remove it from the Bible." That is the approach that science takes when a flaw is found, but I have never heard of a religion doing that.

Coming from a background in geology, I am sorry to hear that you are not enjoying earth science. What part of the country do you live in? Looking at your local geology can be a great way to make the subject come alive, and starting a mineral collection can be beautiful and exciting. Try growing crystals to see how mineral deposits form, or "reading the rocks" to look at the history of a highway road cut.

First, bravo for you! Many people refuse to expose their children to anything that does not agree with their personal beliefs. I doubt that you will find a text that does a good job of explaining evolution, creation, and intelligent design. The creation/ID books always seem to make a mess of the science, and books on evolutionary science don't address religion, because religion is outside the scope of science. Books that cover both always come across as quite arrogant towards views that don't agree with the author. That is a shame, because that arrogance usually causes anyone of the other belief to immediately stop listening. I have had several long, pleasant conversations with creationist ministers, with the goal of understanding things from their point of view. The first, big step is finding common ground on definitions. If you compare definitions for words such as theory, species, law, evolution and science, you will find that the two sides of the conversation have very different definitions for the same words. Once both sides agree on what the words mean, it suddenly becomes much easier to carry on a meaningful, civil conversation. That does not mean that we resolved the difference between evolution and young Earth creationism. From a scientific point of view, evidence is everything. No matter how much scientists may want something to be true, if the evidence indicates otherwise, the idea is either changed or discarded. We may see that if the recent neutrino experiments show that e=mc2 is not correct. If the physical evidence did not support the idea of evolution, it would be discarded. On the other hand, religion puts scripture above physical evidence. If the physical evidence does not support the scripture, then the evidence must be wrong. You can't rewrite the scripture to make it fit what you see, and there is no evidence that would convince a religion to discard its scripture. I'm sorry this got so long, but it is a subject that is important to me. If there is anything that I can do to help with your study, please let me know.

No, it does not increase the risk if he has them both at the same visit. None of the radiation remains in your body after an x-ray, so the risk is the same (VERY small) whether you have them the same day or spaced apart. You may want to ask for a copy of the x-rays. Most Drs will give you a CD with digital images.

Hold Your Nose is a fun way to test this.

As we used to tell parents back in my museum days, it is OK to be afraid of spiders and snakes, but try not to pass your fears along to your kids. They should have a healthy respect for any creature (more people die from bee stings than from snake bites), but it is very easy to instill an unreasonable fear into them at an early age. Once that fear is in place, it can be very hard to overcome.