But if you can get into Harvard, you can likely get close to a full ride from your state flagship (depending on your state, of course), or another state's state flagship.

You're a moderate in today's sociopolitical climate in America. In relation to most of the world, you're quite liberal. In relation to most of the world throughout history (that is, take the last say 500 years of humanity), you're an extreme outlier. You only think you're a moderate because you more or less agree with what the average person thinks and believes today, here, now. If you lived in a society that believed women shouldn't vote, or that slavery was acceptable under some circumstances, would you still be a moderate? If you'd been raised in that society, probably so (and you'd see modern American "moderates" as ridiculously misguided). ETA: you'd likely be just as intolerant of women's rights advocates as you are now of people who think women shouldn't have rights, or as intolerant of abolitionists (if there were any) as you are now of people who think slavery had a place.

Wow, when I read the quote I thought surely he was writing a hundred years ago!

Aboslutely joint agreement, with all family members proposing names. DH and I both have complete veto power and so far we've been fine. Two kids were renamed at the hospital - they were born and we both said, nope, name we picked out does not suit, and chose a second one that day. My maternal grandmother and grandfather had a funny agreement. The first child born was my mom (a girl, obviously), and my grandmother said okay, here's what we'll do, I'll name all the girls and you (grandfather) can name all the boys. Worked for my mom, she has a nice name. Next 4 kids (the rest of their kids) were boys, and boy do they have some doozies.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. What we're biologically programmed to do is eat all the calories we can when they're available, then suffer through periods of low calorie availability, then eat when we can again. We're also programmed to make the absolute most calories out of a piece of land and figure out how to store them through a difficult winter - this is how Europeans, at least, and others living in hard winter climates survived and prospered. Unfortunately, we've gotten very good at it, and we've also gotten very good at not having to expend physical labor.

When we lived in the Midwest, nearish to regentrude, no one walked to school. We all walked when I was a kid (same school, same neighborhood) but by the time DD was in K, everyone drove. Two blocks from school and people would drive - and wait in a car line 3 blocks long! They'd have to drive past the school just to get in line for the car pickup. When I was a kid, we all walked if the weather was decent, and I lived a mile from the school. Here in Colorado, people do walk. The whole neighborhood near the local elementary walks. It's not a mile, but at least they aren't driving 2 blocks. They also get out more on trails and etc. as far as I can see - but then, there are more places to get out and walk here, so that helps.

When we were poor, fresh produce never went to waste. If we had green beans, or apples, it was a Very Good Day and everyone ate them right up. We were too poor for packaged foods. Calorie-for-calorie, they are more expensive than rice and beans. What we could afford was largely rice and beans, and homemade bread, and homemade popcorn on the stove with oil (the oil was caloric). Biscuits and sometimes eggs for breakfast, peanut butter and bread for lunch, beans for dinner. Once a week we bought a salmon and a salad to take to DH's grandmother at her nursing home/apartment thing, and that was something we saved for all week and occasionally borrowed money to do. when we couldn't do that, we did lentils and salad (about half the time). Salad was a head of lettuce and green onions - she kept dressing in her apt. We could have lived without the salmon but boy was it tasty. When we were splurging we'd buy eggs, canned salmon, and crackers and make salmon croquettes. There was no money in the budget for prepared packaged foods - they are not cheaper than whole foods, they just aren't. Now, eating that way does rely on having a working stovetop and ideally oven (for the bread). It is also zero fun. Once DD was in public kindergarten, I felt I had to send food that looked good enough to keep up appearances, so I spent a fair amount of money we didn't really have on pretzels and bags of mini-carrots (which she didn't like) and sandwich bread. Every day she took a peanut butter sandwich, pretzels, and carrots. The good thing about the carrots was that they looked like I was sending a veg., but she hated them, so she'd bring them home and I'd send them again for 2 or 3 more days until I just ate them at home and sent new carrots. I thought that was pretty genius. It would have been much cheaper and probably healthier to send beans and rice but I didn't want to ostracize her or hear from the K teacher or CPS.

We're 2/3 or so of the way through Lukeion's Latin 1 with Amy Barr (which I'm sure has many reviews elsewhere on the forums, but reviews were requested here so I am posting them). Background: DD is 12, in 7th grade, highly gifted (but not profoundly gifted - i.e. quite bright, but not a genius). She has good natural self-control and executive functioning and works a few grade levels ahead in verbal skills. She was motivated to take this class as she's always liked the classics and been interested in Greek and Latin. She took Barbarian Digrammarian (henceforth BD) with Lukeion last year and so got somewhat used to weekly classes, quizzes, quia (their online class software thing), etc. She likes Latin 1 better than she liked BD. Part of this is the subject matter, part of it is the class - I think she identifies with a few classmates. There's not a ton of time for student interaction but they open the chat several minutes before class and talk to each other then. I don't watch the classes, monitor studying or homework, remind her to wake up for class or turn in quizzes, or anything. I know nothing about Latin. I am 0% involved except for paying. She studies, she says, about 2 hours a week. Class is an hour and the homework and quiz both take about 30-45 minutes, so call it 5 hours a week or so. She does very well in the class on a consistent basis. Grades for quizzes are not public, exactly, but the top three scores (often obtained by more than 3 individual students) are listed along with the students who got them and medals are awarded. So each week an email goes out that might say something like (names made up): Gold: Harry P., Cornelia F., Jane A. Silver: Michael D., Connie W. Bronze: Eric C., Edward B., Marissa L. And then a breakdown of scores: 90-100: 15 students; 80-90: 25 students; below 80: 7 students. I really like the last part, with the general breakdown of scores, because if DD has had a difficult week she can see if the class on average has had a difficult week or if it is just her. She is also motivated by the weekly medals. In Latin 1, Gold medal for a quiz is almost always a perfect score or a perfect score + getting the bonus question right. From what I've seen walking by the computer very briefly (and asking her now), the teacher talks while showing powerpoint-type slides that are sometimes animated. She often asks questions and students type the answer or click a multiple choice answer. DD says she's very clear. Lukeion as a provider and this teacher in particular are not waffly at all about deadlines. They are very clear about that and part of what has been good for DD in this class and BD last year is the necessity of keeping herself organized. She has missed a few classes; in theory you can ask for a password to a recording but DD doesn't generally want to. She self-studies from the book on the rare occasion she misses the class. I should say that they advise a lot of specific ways of studying and interacting with the class that DD doesn't do right now. I've told her she may need to for Latin 2. They suggest (strongly suggest) making flashcards and taking notes during class; DD does neither. I think that in the next year or two she will need to make flashcards. There are a variety of games provided on the class website to reinforce grammar and vocab skills. DD does some of them sometimes. Overall grade is weighted heavily towards quizzes and the midterm and final; part of it is also homework/participation/doing the online games, but not a large part. The only thing I don't like about the class is that you have to ask for a password to the recording; I wish they were just available automatically.

The bolded is also true for me. And I don't mind characters that make bad decisions, or situations that are not ideal, as Bluegoat said - it's not that that bothers me. It's setting such a thing in a context of "this is the ideal and normal way for these things to function" that upsets me. It would be like if in Clan of the Cave Bear, instead of being horrified along with the main character at her rape and the structure of that society, she were happy about it and complacent and things went very well for the rapist - if it were clear the narrator approved of him and of the social structure, and promoted it as a superior social structure to one in which women are not routinely raped. THAT is the kind of thing I want to avoid.

My mom watched Star Trek TNG and my dad watched Sanford and Son :) Re: the idea that kids can recognize that authors are experimenting with ideas and not necessarily promoting the relationship paradigms they describe: this is true to some extent. I didn't get the idea reading Clan of the Cave Bear (I must have just read the first one) that the social situation in those books was some sort of ideal. But in a lot of current lit, the morals of the sexual liberation movement are presented as things to take for granted, as the natural and right way that men and women interact.I would be more okay with this if it weren't also the message presented in most other media and throughout the culture; it's clearly not a thought experiment for most writers but just a reflection of the current paradigm. Similarly, if you lived in a very repressive society compared to this one - say a very conservative religious community, like Saudi Arabia 5 years ago - and your daughters had to live in that paradigm, where women couldn't drive or have most jobs or walk around with their hair showing or etc., and also the vast majority of the books available to her had women in roles where they were perfectly obedient to men all the time, got beaten if they didn't obey, never wanted to drive or do whatever else isn't allowed of women there, never questioned their religion, etc., you might want to avoid the books just because they are so thoroughly a reflection of a social structure you don't want your kids to internalize any more than necessary. I'm not saying that the conditions for women in Saudi Arabia are equivalent to conditions for women in the US - I'm just trying to find a situation that would be as alien to your own worldview as much of modern American sentiment is to mine, if that makes sense.

I like a dining room, but not for eating in - I just like having a room, sort of separate but not entirely walled off, with a big table and some chairs and a side table and a lamp and etc. For eating, I like eating in the kitchen or in an area next to the kitchen (like the breakfast nook in ArcticMama's new house, which would be our dining room). The less distance my kids need to cart their little plates of hummus and vegetables and frozen blueberries and corn chips, the fewer hummus/blueberry/chip messes I have to clean up. If it is all one floor and an easy to clean one (read: wood or tile), I am okay with a sort of combined space. I do like the living room area/office/sitting/fireplace, whatever you call it, to be near the kitchen (so I can see what the little goobers are doing in there) but separate enough so that no one is particularly inclined to bring a bowl of blueberries over to the computer table. I spend a lot of time figuring out how to minimize the spread of frozen blueberries.

I think it is only the Tortall ones that I've read (or tried to read); Alanna is a familiar name. Yes, we won't be buying Clan of the Cave Bear. I mean, most of what I oppose in modern YA lit is basically what I see as sexual revolution liberalism, and I'm a fan of more traditional/socially conservative structures and patterns of male/female interaction. But not quite THAT traditional, jeez. I found Anne McCaffery to be a weird mix of the two (and I did read them as a kid, gift of the same grandmother). In this case Judy Bloom was somewhat right, because when I reread them as an adult as a pre-read for DD12, I was pretty amazed at how much sex there was, esp. in the Rowan books. I must have glossed over most of it. But she had this weird dynamic of sexual liberation - Privacy and having sex without a lot of social regulations and having sex pretty much as soon as it was legally permissible, etc. - combined with a not-quite-rape-but-man-as-dominant vibe that feels strange to reread. Plus it's kind of unclear whether the dragonriders are willing participants or not - they're clearly not willing in a conscious sense, as they have no real choice as to time or partner - but none of them seem hugely dissatisfied with this, and none ever say for instance, hell no, I quit, get me out of here. Which seems weird. Then there's the idea in the Rowan books that you can have regular casual sex with just anyone, but you have to have kids with someone at about your Talent level (which is not intelligence, by the way- intelligence matching makes some sense, but Talent is analogous to being double jointed or something), and ideally have as many kids as possible. It's just a weird combination of sensibilities. It's too bad, because the world-building and coming-of-age stuff in the Rowan was pretty good.

Not that that scenario is necessarily unrealistic for prehistoric man - heck, I have no idea. Makes some sense, I guess. But I didn't want to read about it in fiction at 12, kwim? I still don't really want to read about it in fiction, honestly.

I read Clan of the Cave Bear as a kid (maybe 12) - my grandmother gave me all kinds of things too young, imo - and it was and still is disturbing to me. The one thing I remember from the book(s?) is the situation in which the main character, female, has to basically bend over and be raped by any man who comes across her and gives her some signal; eventually she gets pregnant and bears her cruelest rapist's child (do I have this right? I was 12.) I don't remember those books as sexy at all, but I might have been so horrified by that one scene that I blanked out anything positive.

Yes, I should make the qualification that for me, it is not the graphic description of sex that is problematic (generally speaking) in YA, it's what I consider morally questionable social structures or behaviors that are promoted or at least tacitly approved.

Yeah, I have no trouble holding a grudge against the generation as a whole, but individuals who take as part of their agreed compensation retirement benefits after a certain age, but still want to work after that age instead of sitting around or travelling or volunteering or whatever - I can't have a grudge against them, they're just doing the best they can. I mean, you have to figure that because of market dynamics, if they hadn't gotten a guaranteed $x pension after Y years of work, they would have gotten higher salaries. Granted, it would have been nice for the people buying the goods or services then to pay for them (in higher salaries at the time) instead of passing the buck to the next generation, but it's not the fault of the people who agreed to the terms and then followed them.

But I quite deliberately didn't refer to people killing an animal for food vs killing it for entertainment (or profit); I referred to factory farming, which is not killing an animal but torturing it. The difference between killing a deer for food and keeping a pig in factory farm conditions is, to me, similar to the difference between killing an animal for food vs killing it for entertainment - in one case, you're justified by at least the need to eat, maybe. In the other, you're causing suffering to an innocent creature for no good reason (cheap bacon? it tastes good? trophy on the wall? etc.)

If she's not skipping other activities that are unnecessary but benefit her, I'd hesitate to pull her from a previously made volunteer commitment that benefits others unless they don't need her. Some volunteer positions are more dependent on consistent volunteers than others, though - if there are lots of people ready and willing to pick up the slack, then I would be more inclined to let or have her give up the hours to someone else. If they really depend on her, though, I wouldn't keep her home unless I were also sacrificing things that were serving her, like the gymnastics.

$24k is very hard to live on in just about any area (although government benefits can bump the effective income to something a lot closer to $40k, which is liveable)

The thing is, asking someone to not take the benefits they agreed to/were contracted with when they took the job or continued in the job is kind of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. When Boomers made these agreements they thought they were taking less salary now in return for more benefits later. It was part of the negotiated total compensation agreement, right? So then if you get to retirement age and you don't want people to retire just because they are able and willing to keep working, you're saying well, I know you agreed to X salary plus Y retirement plus Z benefits, but you don't really need Y retirement so it's immoral to take it. If it is immoral to take it, then it was immoral to offer it as part of the compensation package in the first place and they should have just negotiated a higher salary. All of that said, the problem of people living rather a lot longer than originally anticipated - so they're drawing retirement not for 10 years but for 20 years - and healthcare costs going up, both because people are less healthy and because they live longer in poor health or with chronic conditions is that these agreements have ended up costing more than the institutions expected, and someone has to pay. In terms of universities, I guess the cost is largely passed on to Gen X and especially Millennials - surprise!

I'm not making it as a joke, I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of wishing a hunter to die by being eaten by the animal he's killing when I would guess 98% of people saying "poetic justice" would not like to suffer from a similar poetic justice of their own (sanctioned) cruelty. In reality I would feel badly both for the hunter eaten by a lion and the fast food eater eaten by a pig.

Now for the day when factory farmed pigs escape and eat everyone at the local fast food joint.

When my mom retired and then took a half-time position doing the same job at the same place, they offered her a payout to retire that year (I think it was like 3 months' salary, maybe) and continue working part-time. Then they hired someone else to work the other half of what had previously been her sole position. She works for a community college as a librarian; she has worked for 20-30 years as a reference librarian with an MLS. So anyway, for the community college, it was cheaper to have her do this than to have her continue on as a full-time worker at her previous salary for the next 5-10 years. So she retired, but works part time at the same job and is paid both for the part time work she does now and gets her retirement money. I think part of the reason for this is that keeping her on alone full-time was a higher salary than either she or the other part time person makes hourly now. For my mom, it makes a lot more sense to work part time as a librarian than part time as a WalMart cashier, because it pays better and she knows the work. She also works part time for the local library system (for whom she worked, briefly, 20 years ago), so she really works 40 hours a week while drawing retirement. She could not support herself without the work. When she retired, it was retirement from the official salaried position - similar to a professorship - which required her to do meetings and graduation and advising and taking other peoples' missed shifts and volunteer work with this or that group and etc. She was 65; she is now 70. she will probably work like this just as long as she physically can.

Yes, when I said sexual relationships I didn't mean just sexual intercourse. I wasn't sure how to word it, though, there might be a better way.

I suspect you and my mom have similar perspectives on sex and relationships and women's roles and etc. :) What's funny to me is that my mom, knowing I'm very socially conservative, keeps sending me these books for DD that promote an entirely different worldview. It would be like if I sent my mom all Christian romantic fiction, and not modern stuff (does that even exist? I dunno) - I'm not Christian, but her worldview is probably as separate from a "don't have sex until married, don't have abortions, don't cheat, don't have sequential or concurrent romantic relationships, don't have women inhabiting mens' roles and the reverse, etc." as possible. She would consider me a little dense if I sent her book recs like that - and yet I get Holly Black and Cassandra Clare and Tamora Pierce, it's so weird. That's pretty funny that we have completely opposite views of acceptable YA lit and yet there's something out there for both of us (even if the majority of YA is still unacceptable).