3 Ring Binder

In Parents pick prayer over docs; girl dies , Nicholas Provenzo discusses the role of the parents’ faith in the death of an eleven year old girl. As the post and subsequent comments elaborate, the question becomes one not solely of mysticism vs. science, but of individual rights: the parents’ versus the child’s. This is a fascinating subject to me and one about which I have more questions than answers the more I explore it. I have posted on the role of parents as educators here regarding objective standards in government of monitoring or intervention in the education of children. Given that government schools don’t seem to be losing any strength of entrenchment within our society, the premise of mere government oversight is an illusory one at this point in time. However, it is still worth attempting to define by what possible political philosophy could government standards regarding the education of a child be enforced under the umbrella of the individual rights of the child as applie...

I'm not posting this to froth anyone up - god knows, we atheists need no frothing, but rather to present the hero curator, Kirk Johnson . Johnson, who grew up with a similar religious background to the children in the video, was able to make empirical observations on his own and come to devote his life to science. He further alludes to the fact that the despite the tour guides being wrong about the science, presenting a diametrically opposed opinion is a pretty American thing to do. Secure with his background and knowledge, he is one cool customer. There is a particularly disturbing bit within the first 2 minutes (1 min 45 sec) where one of the tour guides sees that a young girl cannot follow his leading logic regarding the likelihood of a dinosaur praying and fasting for Eve to fall from grace so that he can eat meat (did you follow that?), he says, “Everybody say it with me now”, nodding his head up and down, “No.” If that don’t beat all hell.

A friend of mine sent me this the other day. Tell me, is there anything more frightening than the image which shows the beautiful city lights across America turning off simultaneously (at about 1 min 56 sec in the video)? Tomorrow night between 8-9pm EDST, I will be turning on all the lights in and out of my house for one hour. I will be supporting the idea that man should never go back to the dark ages. I'm calling it ManHour 2008. Have the organizers of EarthHour asked themselves how their Mother will accommodate all the little consumers produced during that hour? After all, what else can people do during with the lights out?

A friend sent me this article in the NYT on the plight of bats in the Northeast region. I’m concerned by this devastating loss of bats in my area. As one who sees the extensive loss of species as a potential loss to mankind, and as one who swells to nearly 4 times her normal size at the site of insect bites, I’m worried about the billions of extra mosquitoes that will congregate in my yard with impunity now!

This article in last week’s Houston Chronicle is worth reading. It tells the story of a young woman whose heart was failing and her tough decision to not have a heart transplant. Luckily for her, she lives in an age where the best and brightest minds are working on alternatives for ailing hearts. She not only avoided the transplant, but now she has her life, and her heart, back! Parties responsible for this good news: the brave young woman, her doctors, and the designers at Thoratec. After having read the comments to the article, I think my post title would have served as a better title – geesh!

Danny Kaye is a master story teller as well as a singer, dancer, actor, and kind of a treasure in his own right. When I was growing up, this album was my very favorite! I had searched for it for years without any luck and then I finally found this site at which many old children’s albums have been downloaded as MP3s. I'm not certain about the legal issues of this site, but I think that since these albums are not available any longer, it is not an infringement issue. If someone knows better, please tell me and I will remove the link. I have really enjoyed sharing these stories with my children. Maybe you’ll find an album that you’d like to share with yours.

In his post entitled In Defense of “Heroification” (Part 1), Scott Powell presents an excellent refutation of the ideas in the popular book, Lies My Teacher Told Me . As a parent of one of Scott’s gigglers (upon seeing the Horatio Greenough statue of George Washington) I can attest to the fact that children who have a grasp of the real heroism of George Washington do not fall prey to the type of hero worship condemned in the book. I eagerly await the second and third installments of Scott’s posting on the proper heroification of George Washington which will also be found on History At Our House .