Ah ha! I would have never figured out the idiom. BTW, you may want to look into Skype recording just so that later you could rewind to ask about another weird phrase like this. Especially if it comes up time and again. Congrats on getting your guess so close to what he actually was saying!

ah ok. You're probably going to need to ask the teacher then.

http://www.aboutonlinetips.com/free-skype-call-recorders-3308/ Also, you can use a plugin for recording skype sessions, which might make transcription easier. I've used the first on this list.

It's possible his reference to substitution is "integration by parts" which would be covered later in a high school calc course. This could be likened to taking pieces apart like layers of a cake, then putting them back together. Or it could be related to the chain rule. Without more detail, it's all I got.

And yet reasoned presentation of evolution convinced me of it. Shrill tirades against religion (PZ, et al) didn't. In fact debating with people such as that have strengthed my religious beliefs. So if they're right, they're not terribly effective. Except I don't claim that A&E were the sole progenitors of H. sapiens. See what I mean?

Oof. Unfortunately, PZ Myers is so abrasive, it might be hard to stomach. (Also, dangermom tells me he's wildly against homeschooling.) In my experience, Michael Shermer is much better at explaining this stuff in a more respectful way. He grew up Baptist, but is now atheist, and a luminary in the Skeptic movement. His politics are closer to mine, since he's libertarian, and that makes him easier for me to read and listen to. Sadly, everything I've found in the Creationist/ID vs. Evolution camp is talking past each other. The evolution side tends to have a childlike understanding of religion (Myers, Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.) and the ID side has a tendency to have a very limited understanding of evolution, scientific method, etc. or haven't been honest in their explanation of evolution (Ben Stein being a prime example, but also Michael Behe). I've read a number of ID supporters, and have been disappointed to find huge flaws in their reasoning, as well as intentional deception (sigh). I actually read the 700 pages of Behe's testimony in the Dover ID trial and IMO he's not an honest broker. I read "Of Pandas and People" and found it to have terrible reasoning (I have some notes on it somewhere). Whereas Dawkins writings on evolution are quite good from what I've seen, I read his "The God Delusion" and found it to be a childish understanding of what we actual believers in God believe. Let me point you to Shermer's "Why Darwin Matters" -- which I haven't read personally, but he's the only person I've found to address the topic reasonably and with minimal polemic. My personal background was growing up a Young Earth Creationist--I don't recall anyone teaching me that, but it's what I believed. It caused me massive religious worry in high school when I saw the tons of evidence for the age of the Earth and the Universe (I come at things more from the physical sciences). I eventually resolved the concerns and believe more strongly in God as an adult. However, I wish the evidence for an old Earth hadn't been ignored by my teachers and family -- I think if I'd been presented with an absolute choice of Young Earth vs. God I don't know if I would still be a believer today. I now believe in an old Earth, and evolution as a scientific explanation of the process of how life came to be. However I believe that God authored the laws of physics, that Adam & Eve were real individuals, that Jesus performed miracles and that miracles still happen. And most importantly that without Jesus' sacrifice we could not return to God. I also believe that Genesis was never intended to be a science text, and that we teach our children otherwise at their peril.

Slight correction: it was the Father's plan, in which Jesus answered the call to be the Savior.

Not insulting at all! Honest questions are welcome, not insulting. I think you're referring to this comment: The word "worship" can be a bit loosey-goosey. We pray to the Father in the name of the Son, and are influenced by the power of the Holy Ghost. We don't pray to Jesus, because we believe that He taught to pray to the Father in His name. (See Matthew 6:6-13, John 15:16, 16:23, and in the book of Mormon in 3 Nephi 18:19-21.) We believe Jesus is our Savior, Redeemer and Exemplar, just as the rest of Christendom, hence His prominence in LDS paintings, nativity, etc. We cannot enter into Heaven without the saving grace of Christ. We do believe that to accept His grace we must do as He asked--receive the ordinance of baptism by water by one with authority, strive to keep his commandments and repent when we fail, etc. Because we don't have a formalized catechism, we often don't have defintions quite as precise as other churches. The part of Trinitarian doctrine we reject is the idea of "homoousious" (the greek word constructed during the Arian controversy to mean "same-substance"). We see the three personages of the Trinity (we typically use the term Godhead) as one, but their one-ness does not diminish their separateness of personage. (Side note: many protestants I've talked with think of the three personages in a way that was techincally defined as the heresy of "modalism" which is a way to wrap your head around the one-ness of God.) We also reject the councils of Chalcedon, etc. which more formally define the man-ness and God-ness of Christ, etc. (Thinking of Christ as "lesser" is an important part of what split the western and eastern churches -- if you're familiar with the "filioque clause" then you know what I'm talking about. If you're not, the wikipedia entry is actually pretty good. We tend not to sweat stuff at this level of detail. Personally, I find the history of the Ecumenical Councils to be fascinating, but most LDS (and I suspect most Christians generally) don't delve into them into great detail because they tend not to impact our daily life.)

If the LDS church made rules for all possible situations, the "tithing handbook of answers" (my made-up name) would be a legalistic tome bigger than the US tax code. My eyes were seriously opened once I started my own business. I didn't have a regular salary. I didn't have income tax withholding, etc. I had to pursue answers in prayer about how to fulfill my tithing obligation. At the end of each year we have a process called "tithing settlement" in which we talk with our Bishop about tithing and he asks a simple question, roughly "does this constitute a full tithe?" It's left between you and the Lord. The Bishop records it and that's that. As far as your friends go, it may be more complicated than you think. For instance, if they work for a company and the company provides them a car, do they pay tithing on what an equivalent lease would be? (The US tax code makes you pay taxes on that as income, but less than half of LDS membership is in the US now.) What if they own their own business and pay for a car that's used for business out of business funds? What about my case in which I have a 50/50 partner -- is the cost of leasing office space tithable income? Do I pay only half of it? This is a great question, and I suspect you'll get slightly different answers from each LDS you ask. Each of us believes we'll stand before the Lord someday to make an accounting of what we did with our talents and stewardships. Rather than attempt to chronicle all the minutia, LDS leadership has left it up to the Lord to say what an honest or full tithe is.

Active cancelling works pretty well for common background noises (fans from computers, lawn mowers, etc.) but my experience is that they're poor at damping out human voices. This is helpful on the plane so you can converse but block out the drone of the engines & wind. I use simple marshmellow-soft earbuds to reduce noise. I get them at Wal Mart typically for $15 to $20. I wear them on the airplane and for mowing the lawn and they do a great job. Essentially they're like earplugs but with a tube for audio.

I suggest a doctor costume. Have your ds in full scrubs, mask and nitrile gloves (the blue ones without latex). Problem solved without trying the impossible task of educating everyone in the neighborhood.

I loved it as a 6-yr-old boy. There's no fist-fighting or swearing. The fighting is done with discs that are thrown. Remember, it was made in 1982, which is Disney nearly 30 years ago.

Once you get them, be sure to verify that they're aligned correctly. Cheapies are hit and miss, so if you verify that the alignment is good, then you're fine. If bad, you can return them. It's easy to get a decent pair of 7x at Walmart or Target. BTW, don't get anything with more magnification -- 7x is about the best you can use without steadying yourself against an ojbect. I use 16x sometimes for stargazing, but I have to lean up against something or use a tripod mount. To align them, focus on a bright star at night after adjusting the eye distance. Then open and close each eye (still looking through the binoculars) and make sure the star doesn't move at all. If it does, return them.

You're going to need to be more specific. What Computer OS are you using (windows XP, Vista, Win7, Mac, etc.)? What browser are you using? Who is your internet service provider? What are the symptoms of "getting kicked off the internet" and how do you correct the problem afterward?

Sadly, Stein went about this movie under false pretenses with many of his interviewees. He misrepresented a lot of what people believe. As irritating as I find Richard Dawkins, I actually disliked Stein's effort here even more.

Well, for one reason, no one other than dangermom has permission to do anything in my name. It's presumptuous if nothing else.

The key part of science that makes it science is comparing your idea to reality via experiment. It is irrelevant where the idea comes if it can be verified experimentally. Different paradigms are irrelevant, because the only paradigm that matters in science testable reality. A hypothesis may come from a dream, from a hallucination, or from space. If it tests out against reality, it wins. That's the point of science, and why it's been so successful. Testing is the great equalizer. From what Keller has written, it seems to me (Dr. Keller, please correct me if I'm wrong) that anything short of reproducing every step of abiogenesis and evolution will not qualify as proof of evolution. This is a fallacy that's common among creationists (the so-called "god of the gaps"). I only found it because it was the first hit on a google search about the curriculum, and happened to address the question of ID to some degree. Since the cache was from less than a month ago I was surprised it was missing. The posts in question were from 2007 and your current archive appears to only go back to 2008. I didn't realize that you were talking specifically about your child, until I went back and reread your post. My comments were about cures generally, not anything so personal. That in order for a medical intervention to be verified as a cure, the work has to be done to determine that it was the intervention that fixed the problem. I don't see how these quotes are relevant. The scientific process is not affected by the religious beliefs of Kepler or Newton, nor by the atheism of Einstein or Feynman. The process is what comes after the inspiration. My personal belief that God wrote the laws of Physics and that Jesus performed miracles matters not when testing what hypotheses I may have against what nature actually does. That's my concern: your view on science. Especially if your personal belief about ID is that it's a valid hypothesis, worthy of being presented alongside evolutionary theory.

Indeed, to make sure the Nova special presented Behe fairly in the Dover case, I read the 700 pages of his testimony. I believe the Nova account to be fair. In fact I found out about the ID movement before the Dover trial. I read "Of Pandas and People" at the time and said "this looks like erudite pseudoscience" and later found out about the typo (the term "creationists" was changed to "design proponents" generally, but in one case the beginning and end of the original word "creationists" were accidentally retained, so that "creationists" became "cdesign proponentsists"). I don't like being tricked. I don't like lies. I also don't like people trying to teach their religion to my kids (see, that's my job). ID is the same thing as creationism and I distrust those who claim they're different because they're likely trying to trick me. Ben Stein's movie is a perfect example of that trickery. I want to know how wedded Dr. Keller is to science, because if she's trying to trick me, I will be quite put out.

I find this to be somewhat nonsensical. Also, your response is largely similar to the blog entry I found in the google cache (note my post above)--but the blog is gone now. Why'd the blog go away? The practice of science includes finding out what works. That means any "cancer cure" would be determined scientifically. The inspiration for looking into the cure could come from anywhere and is irrelevant to the scientific process. As far as evolution goes, it's been scientifically investigated. ID has even been adjudicated in court to be no different from creationism ("Of Pandas and People" had a copy/paste error the proved it was "creationism" before it was "intelligent design"). A key part of the process of science is honest, open debate and criticism. Your reluctance to share your agenda runs counter to that and gives me pause to wonder at the level of your sincerity in your application of the scientific method.

If my conclusion is correct, that she's scrubbing her history off the net, I doubt we could have an honest discussion. It's not usually the sign of an honest person.

She also apears to have deleted her blog (http://gravitashomeschool.wordpress.com/) . Fortunately, it's still recent enough to be in google's cache. Here's the results my search. Here's the cache of the blog, while it lasts (I downloaded a copy from the cache). Here's a quote from a disturbing post (I've left italics and bold as in the original): This is what I was worried about, just like Behe. Hiding your bias is not honest. I know we'll not be using this curriculum in our home. I'm deeply religious personally, yet I believe that however God created life, evolution was involved. And I'm angered that someone who also believes in God would lie to insert their bias into a curriculum.

And just to clarify -- I'm very religious myself. Hiding your motives (especially hiding your religion!) is what I find reprehensible. I'm unapologetically religious, and would never hide it if it were a motive for my reasoning on something.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can opine about Behe. I read the several hundred pages of his testimony in the Dover trial, and whatever he is, he is not a secular scientist, nor is he an honest broker about ID and evolution. He was completely discredited on that stand, and he was obviously hiding a belief in God (which I also find to be reprehensible).

Keep in mind we husbands can be a little thick. Have you laid it out this clearly? Not hints or fragments, just being as clear as you have been in this thread? If I knew that dangermom was suffering like this I'd move heaven and earth to do what was necessary for her to feel better, even "sucking it up" myself. Let me toss out something personal. When we were talking about having a second child, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to handle it as a dad. I was stressing enough giving up the selfishness of having one kid--but two? It took me a little while, but I finally realized that if I required being ready for kid #2, we might never have her, so I sucked it up and we had kid #2, who is now utterly devoted to me and who I love dearly. If I hadn't jumped in, I would have really missed out. Yes, it's scary to give up the perceived security of the job, but it's only perceived security. If you have a breakdown, you'll not only lose the income but need help as well. Life is uncertain, and total financial security is simply impossible. The fact that you have months of savings shows prudence in your finances which is the best you can hope for. Can you two agree on a goal which, when achieved would signal the time for you to stop working? If there's no way to tell when you've reached it, you're going to be in limbo indefinitely. Maybe if he realizes that you're at the end of your rope he'd be willing to set a goal? If not, maybe he's like I was, and can realize that if he waits until he's ready, it'll be past your limit? Hopefully some of this helps, but my biggest recommendation is to clearly say how much on the edge you are, and what you feel you need. Sometimes we guys need to hear things spelled out before we truly understand the situation. I'd recommend that if you feel you need to quit, to at least warn him ahead of time. Doing it without informing him could damage the trust in your relationship.

I've been on Lexapro for a few years. It's made a huge difference for me and I've never had shakes like you describe. However, I'm over 200 lbs at 20mg dosage. I'd definitely contact your doctor right away.