I saw it last night and loved it. This morning I visited the website to get some more information on the actors. I found a section on the daemons, including a quiz that selects one for you. Here’s mine (be patient, loading takes a moment): http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?826661

Now I have to read the books.

http://www.freerice.com/

It is a vocabulary game (with the correct answer provided if you get it wrong) that through its advertisers donates rice to the UN World Food Program for every question answered correctly.

If anyone knows of any more of these, please drop me a line saying so.

Yet another post that has nothing to do with homeschooling in its stricter sense. It’s about lessons so important that they aren’t covered in curricula.

This morning, I watched the PBS cartoon Arthur with my daughter. It started out about how annoying it is for kids to hear so many ‘no’s. Then the episode was about how important it is to be able to say no when you want to, or need to.

That’s a timely topic.

My friend’s wife’s daughter was just murdered by her abusive boyfriend. She stayed with him for three years, off and on, till he finally killed her. The whole time her family told her to end it, they supported her, but she still always went back. As a child she’d witnessed her father beating the crap out of her mother many times, till her mother finally said NO MORE and left. Unfortunately the daughter was never able to say that herself.

When I was in high school, my friend’s mother killed herself. She had finally left her violent husband, but her culture was against divorce and her younger kids and husband pressured her to get back together with him. She didn’t want to reunite with him, and didn’t want to tell them all no. So she jumped off a high rise instead.

I chat with women in a family group online. A few of them say their husbands are sometimes violent. Some others have guys who manipulate them deliberately. Almost invariably, these women stay in those relationships.

Their reasons are twofold:
1) “But I love him.”
and
2) “I’m not perfect either.”
which I guess means either that they think no one else will want them, or that they aren’t in a position to fairly criticize.

Since I can’t reach through the computer to smack these women, I’m going to answer them here.

1) A healthy relationship includes love, trust, and respect. One of those alone is not enough. Do you trust and respect a man who hits you? I couldn’t. If you don’t, get out. You’ll love again, and you’ll be loved again. Unless you stay with this violent guy–he might just kill you, and then you won’t care much about love anymore.

Are there others in your family that see the violence and suffer its effects? If you love them, get out, because they are being as victimized as you, even more so.

2) So freaking what if you aren’t perfect? You don’t have to be perfect to object to having someone hit you. Unless you are violent towards your partner too, the reasoning doesn’t work.

The last argument is the most ridiculous of all. Would you rather be happy alone or scared and angry in an abusive relationship? If those are the only two options, isn’t it a no-brainer?

Get out, get therapy, and swear off dating for a year till your head is on straight.

I know I am oversimplifying. I know that domestic violence is about control, and that the hitting is just one piece of a larger picture of mental domination. I suspect the victims (of both genders) don’t leave because they feel dependent on their abusers and think they need them.

But I am sad, and frustrated at a problem that, on its face, is easy to solve and yet that traps so many.

Anyway, that’s why my thought for the day is: teach your kids to say no.

I’m turning the blog pink for October, though the theme is so beautiful I may just keep it.

The folks at breastcancer.org have a lot of great information on their site, including symptoms and instructions on how to perform a monthly self-exam. The people at the Susan G. Komen Foundation have a great sit as well at www.komen.org. Check them out!

When I was in college I had the incredible opportunity to take a seminar with Walter Mischel, a prominent psychologist. One thing he said about the process of evaluating what we read or were told has stuck with me ever since. He said the key question to ask ourselves was this: how do you know?

I wish someone had told me that a long time before. But we don’t seem to cover critical reasoning in school. I had a top notch education, and I didn’t hear this till college. Many people never do, and as a result most people just don’t seem to understand science at all.

I was flabbergasted recently when another mom, an intelligent and educated woman, asked me if I believe that vaccines cause autism. What does belief have to do with it? Facts are. They don’t give a damn about our belief. Try disbelieving in gravity sometime and see how that works for you.

The facts are that as of this writing there is no causal relationship established between vaccines and autism. I’m sorry if that steps on anyones toes, but that’s the reality. The relationship is correlational, which is as far from causal as Latin is from Urdu. Might we discover that there is a causal relationship? Perhaps–though I suspect that this isn’t the case, I am perfectly willing to be convinced otherwise by data. And by data I mean evidence, not opinion.

I have no agenda here either pro or anti vaccine. I could not care less what the cause of the rise in autism is, though I very much want it found and fixed. But it cheeses me off to hear people debating supposed facts and evidence, when they don’t have the slightest understanding of what those are.

Here’s a definition of “evidence” from wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn:
your basis for belief or disbelief; knowledge on which to base belief

In other words, evidence is what answers the question of how you know. What that means is that no one will ever convince me of something just by saying it a lot. I can scream 500 times at the top of my lungs that its raining, but that won’t make it so. It also means providing me with 50 different links to opinion pieces as “evidence” that vaccines cause autism (or that there were WMDs in Iraq, or whatever) won’t convince me. Because that isn’t evidence. It’s opinion.

In the past few years, and mainly in the past few months, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to think about being ill. A couple of years ago I was having periodic abdominal pains, often not very bad, occasionally severe. my doctor talked to me and diagnosed me with reflux. So I ignored the pain and toughed it out. Turns out it wasn’t reflux, it was gall bladder disease. Because I hadn’t known what was wrong, I hadn’t taken care of my gall bladder, and I ended up having it removed.

I don’t see that doctor any more.

Last spring I began having pain again, along with chronic diarrhea. I’ve been to two MDs, 3 gastroenterologists, had tons of bloodwork, 2 ultrasounds, and other labwork done, and had a colonoscopy. The first two gastros I saw diagnosed me with IBS as soon as they laid eyes on me. They wanted to do colonoscopies to confirm their diagnosis, and what they told me was that if they found nothing wrong in my colon, that meant I had IBS. In other words, they’d already decided. And their treatment for IBS? I should shut up and deal with it.

I don’t have any time to waste on morons, even if they have letters after their names. I know good diagnostic procedure when I see it, and that ain’t it. FIRST you get the data, THEN you make the diagnosis, not the other freaking way around.

I still don’t understand all of what’s wrong with me, but one big problem was lactose intolerance. Which, oddly enough, doesn’t show up in the colon. Imagine that.

I know another woman who has been having all kinds of health issues. The docs were clueless. She posted her problems on a website we are on, and the membership, none of whom are medical professionals, diagnosed her with everything from celiac disease to ms to lyme disease. Eventually she remembered that she’s been in a car accident several months before the trouble began, and began to insist on an MRI. The results were abnormal, and now, after months of feeling awful every day, she can begin to get some help. This woman has been going to see specialists and her regular doctor for months now, her insurance company has been paying for all this unnecessary testing, and all they had to do was an MRI.

Good patients do as they are told, accept everything the “expert” (a doctor or random strangers on a website, pick the authority figure of your choice) says, and does not push. A bad patient thinks about things, questions what she’s told, and pushes for what she wants. Bad patients live longer. Be a bad patient.

If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. That’s all the sense I can make of this whole thing.

This hard-core conservative Senator, of whom I had never even heard before the scandal broke, has been in federal politics for over 25 years, and been a Senator for 17. And now he’s gone. Why? Because he pled guilty to disorderly conduct?

The town next to ours has just elected a convicted FELON to the board of education. My local city councilman was arrested for DUI and refused to resign or even apologize, and he had the support of his fellow councilmembers. Paris freaking Hilton waltzed out of a prison sentence for drunk driving on the basis of being rich and famous. Clinton had that whole Lewinsky affair. And here poor Craig foolishly pled guilty to a misdeamenor. Other things being equal, who would you rather have as your rep, a felon, a career politician who may never been convicted of corruption but who you know perfectly well *should be*, or a guy who cops to misdeamenor disorderly conduct? I know who’d have my vote. Of course, I’d never vote for Craig regardless because I disagree with his politics, but that’s beside the point.

Disorderly conduct isn’t really what this is about, and we all know it. If he’d endangered the lives of everyone around him by driving under the influence, that would have been okay. He’d apologize, enter a posh rehab for a month, and win reelection. If he’d solicited a female he’d be dreadfully embarrassed but probably still employed. The problem is that he’s accused of being gay.

Why is that even an accusation?

Nevermind that now, point is the guy is accused of being gay. And that one accusation, coupled with his guilty plea, is what sank him. His good Republican friends couldn’t turn on him fast enough–otherwise they might catch the gay cooties. Romney, the GOP, the Governor of Idaho, they all wanted him gone.

According to Ontheissues.org Craig voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage, NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation, NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation, NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes, and YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. And, of course, there’s his comment that he isn’t gay and never has been gay.

Why would a gay man take such pains to deny his gayness? Why would he turn on other men just like him, and then want them to have sex with him in a public bathroom, a place I barely want to wash my hands? Why would someone so smart and educated and powerful hate himself so much? Who taught him that being gay was that bad?

If Craig had been out about his sexuality, if he’d moved someplace with where voters consider sexual preference a private matter, he might never have gotten himself arrested, and he’d certainly still be a Senator. Craig may hate who he is and have hooked up with others who felt the same, but all that’s left him with is nothing.

If I accomplish little else, I hope to teach my daughter to accept herself for who she is. Because Larry Craig is the alternative.

For an interesting article on men like Craig, read this short article:
http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics/story/257536.html

I’ve rattled around a fair amount on the internet looking for homeschoolers. What I’d love is to find a group of supportive, knowledgeable HSers to virtually hang with.

I’ve found some great people. I’ve also found lots of foam-at-the-mouth fundies.

On a home school message board I belong to, largely populated by Christians (most of whom are not like this), we had the following conversation, more or less:

OP: Are there secular resources out there?
Lots of secular comments follow
Fundie 1: I just want to share that Jesus told me to homeschool. Also that he said that the only way to Heaven was through him. And that I should wear more V necks. I’ll pray for God to help all of you (poor benighted fools).
Christians who use some secular curricula: We believe in stuff! We’re not heathens!
Me (silently): I don’t think you know what that word means.
Fundie 2: Love the Lord! You’re all gonna burn in hell!
Secular folk: Ya know guys, this is actually kinda rude.
Fundie 3: Wah! You’re persecuting us for talking about Jesus.
etc.

WHAT is WRONG with these people? Do they think I’m suddenly going to say, ‘hey, I’ve been a Goddess lovin’ pagan for over 20 years but now that these incredibly rude folks who can’t even quote their own holy book correctly have screamed at me, I want to be just like them?’

Guess what, folks, it ain’t gonna happen. Feel free to carry on making fools of yourselves, though.

*********

Just as a postscript, I want to add this–I call these folks foam-at-the-mouth fundies to distinguish them from other Christians of all sorts. Over the years I have met many people of many different stripes, including all manner of Christians, some of whom were fundamentalists. The vast majority of them are lovely people, many of whom remain close friends of mine. The mouth-frothing ones can be distinguished by their consistently obnoxious attempts to inflict their world view on the rest of us. A conservative Christian of any stripe might make their kid wear this to the pool: http://www.wholesomewear.com/page-4.html. The ones I object to want to force my kid to wear it too. I don’t like bossy people.

The upshot, though, was that I met some other secular home schoolers who are funny, smart, and nice. So maybe its a good thing that all this happened the way it did.

It’s something tots do naturally. We browbeat them not to when they become kids (I’m doing this right now with my 4 year old. I forbid her to talk about farting outside the house). Then, if they are lucky, they learn how to again as older teens or young adults. At least that’s how it seems with girls. Maybe boys are different, I don’t know.

Some people just aren’t going to like your opinions. And some of them won’t like you, just for disagreeing with them. You can see that a lot on the internet. It’s pretty impressive the insults you can get for not liking a book or restaurant. Of course, that’s all the stupid stuff. Disagreeing at school or work is a much bigger problem.

My own opinion has always been that I like to discuss things and I like to talk to people who don’t share my perspective. I don’t mind being disagreed with, so long as its done politely and not as an excuse to insult me. Those who can’t tolerate not having their opinions chiselled in gold on my walls needn’t bother to speak.

So it was with some amusement that I saw my Amazon reviewer ranking. It’s 206829. Now, I’m not big on reviewing products–I’ve only got 14 reviews up. But I noticed that my ranking is based on the votes of readers on whether or not they found my reviews “helpful”. Which of course means whether they agreed. I have a lot of no votes from one book I panned (probably too tersely. I tend to be too terse). Anyway, this thing is a diet book called Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less by Mollie Katzen, who is apparently some kind of big name author, and Walter Willet. It got great reviews. So I bought it, regretted it, wrote about it, and pissed a lot of people off.

I can live with that.

But I did go back and give everyone who *I* agreed with a positive rating.