If Barack Obama wins the U.S. presidential election in November at the age of 47, he will become one of the youngest Americans to assume the presidency.
But Barack would still be older than these guys. . .

Putin's protege now running Russia is years younger than my kid sister?? Why didn't I know that, I've gotta get out more! :)

Here are kings, presidents, prime ministers and Ph.Ds. This New Generation of world leadership isn't just younger but more colorful and complex -- one is an Olympic weightlifting multi-medalist and another is openly living in sin with his girlfriend, and Jesse Jackson probably resents them all too, if he's educated enough to notice any reality beyond our petty domestic power struggles.

On a related note, Dana at Principled Discovery has been reading about the history of education this summer, and today takes a hard look at the history of homeschooling and its "pioneers." Shall we continue to worship the veterans as larger than life leaders, as they bide their time off-camera and snarl under their breath at us like Jesse Jackson?

Or shall we learn from this next generation of young leaders, how to change history by refusing to believe that the past is the future already?

It's a sad story y'all. Seems there's no ivy-covered campus any more, where kids can grow into real-world lives under the nurturing educator eye of their protective professors and administrators. Nope, in loco parentis is long gone, and now kids and their private education information are valuable commodities to be reeled in, signed up, sold out and shackled to eternal debt service.

And worst of all, it's right here in my own backyard (among other colleges and universities in Florida and across the country, of course.)  Thank goodness my own alma mater isn't implicated (yet?) but several Florida universities are in bed with the Bank of America to feed the kids to the monster on unfavorable terms -- unfavorable to the kids, I mean, favorable to Big Business and Big Education!  Oops, sorry, was that redundant?

I doubt we've heard the last of this, considering that Congress is taking testimony on how college kids are aggressively screwed by Big Business and Education with student loan debt, too, supposedly to "help" them get that gosh-darned higher education that will secure their future earning power, doncha know.

Well, it better. Because they're gonna need it. They'll be up to their eyeballs in debt before they ever get off campus, and probably never know who sold them out in the first place!

Btw, in the interest of full disclosure (because I learned integrity at home, not at school?) the crusader who independently investigated this story and will be following up with more, shares a name with me and has helped homeschool our kids. Including Favorite Daughter the college student headed for this local university, who had BETTER NOT be getting her private info sold to the credit card monster in the name of her educational best interests.

It's bad enough she keeps getting those military recruiting brochures from every imaginable branch of service . . . understand, I was an Air Force brat myself and proud of it.  My dad went to Clemson when it was still an Air Force academy, a Depression baby who never had a dime for chewing gum much less whatever kids charge on campus credit cards today, had to hitchhike to and from home in Cool Springs NC just to see his family on holidays.  So the college debt he graduated with was to the Air Force, which he honored in Korea.  But it was honorable debt, all aboveboard and honest, all agreed to, all very clear.  Think how sneaky it would've been to secretly set him up for that on an opt-out basis, and then to hit him with the military debt at graduation. Oh by the way son, you owe us six years in uniform . . .

So this isn't a blanket objection to the military or business (he became a UF business professor when he got out!)  It's a homeschooling mother's very specific outrage at how Big Education, Big Government and Big School Sports have become indistinguishable, and ganged up on our kids.

To paraphrase Henry James: It’s a complex fate, being an American girl.

. . .The company’s stated goal is “to create girls of strong character,” a mission as unimpeachable as it is vague. And the American Girl cosmos can be, to an outsider, a fascinatingly contradictory place.

Its starchy traditionalism is balanced by a savvy, up-to-the-minute multiculturalism. The commodity fetishism on display in the stores coexists with a fastidious concern for historical accuracy and, in the books, a clear educational intention.

Huh?

. . . Kit is brave, smart, determined and kind, but never off-puttingly full of herself or intimidatingly superior. You would want her for a friend. You could easily imagine yourself in her place.
. . . As the son and husband of feminists, I can’t entirely suppress a tremor of unease.

Is the brand reflecting tastes, or enforcing norms of behavior? Is it teaching girls to be independent spirits or devoted shoppers?

Probably all of those things, and more. I have spent a lot of time, over the years, with Felicity and some others of her kind, and I still haven’t figured her out. . .

A typical American girl, as far as I can tell.

George Carlin's seven aren't the only words so scary we're taught to officially pretend they don't exist.
(Here are seven interesting words in coverage of his passing last week: "He was educated by priests and nuns. . .")

And my shocking blog news today is sadly neither shocking nor even really news; I've blogged N-word ignorance before, how our own history revealed in language -- in this one reductionist noun particularly -- now scares us so much that even in historically "true" fiction on stage and screen, we'd rather rewrite it or just cancel it, than face it honestly and explain it to our children so THEY can understand.

Well, I'll tell you what scares ME.

"You take that word out of this story and you invalidate my history as an African-American male," said Perry.

"Do I like the word? No. But to pretend nobody said it is wrong. I wouldn't even consider doing that," Perry said. "Context is everything, and it's not gratuitous, it's not for shock value.

"How can we learn about our present if we don't educate people about what happened in our past?"

We did this show here four summers ago.

With Every Single Word and Note. It was stunning, rocked my world and this whole community, nothing short of heart- and record-breaking. I saw it five times, laughed and cried and wrung myself inside out every time. Smash sell-out, universally acclaimed, lines around the building (in the Florida summer sun!) just hoping for standing room at the matinee, people still talk about it!

"I'm just terribly saddened . . .for this to happen in this manner, it's just disappointing.
I guess the best way to say it is it really reflects the times we're living in, in relevance to the show, and I think still the work that needs to be done on a lot of levels."

Forget evolution, Ken Ham's Creation Museum and the public school science teacher burning crosses into eighth-graders' flesh for Christmas. Ignorance isn't just about failing to master the rigors of science and math; ignorance in the liberal arts and humanities might be even more dangerous.

And what I am furious about today isn't even about school kids and their stupid parents, teachers or principals. This news is about The Racially and Rationally Challenged Real World, out in grown-up free America where all the scary ideas and words and human differences are right there on every street corner and no one is in control of the script.

Dickens (not Darwin) wrote that between Ignorance and Want, Ignorance was more likely to doom mankind. The reason I happen to know and appreciate the true nature of his fanciful fiction isn't because of science or math but because I am literary, and I mean to use the precise word literary, and not merely literate much less merely [shudder!] literal.

I'll spare you the whole rant all over again but I suggest you read "School Theatre and Citizen Censorship" in conjunction with this truly ignorant news story. Maybe follow up with this and author/ theatre geek Marc Acito's "Playing to the Puritans."

I guess no school budget ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of its kids or community. Here are two of these very backward stories, and there are others. The only apparent good news here is that the Catholic school is apparently less repressive than the public school!

ERIE, Pa. (AP) - Cathedral Prep high school in Erie must try to sell tickets to its upcoming school play without referring to its title — “Urinetown: The Musical.”

Erie Catholic Bishop Donald Trautman does not object to the play itself — but a diocesan spokesman says the bishop is concerned with the title “Urinetown” being connected publicly to the all-male Catholic high school.

Because altering the name of the Broadway show is illegal, the priest that is directing the play — Father Michael DeMartinis — says he has the unenviable task of producing tickets, posters and programs that don’t use the play’s name. . .

I'm excited, so much to learn, so little time! Might quibble about his title though, isn't this gaining a new religion instead of losing one? Like gaining a son or daughter when your child marries?

Beginning now, I am launching a nationwide search I might call "So You Think You Can Be My Religion" and I plan to audition prospective religions as potential leads for my story, so feel free to tutor me in yours if you like. Always unschooled Favorite Daughter is minoring in religion, so she'll be my research consultant.

I realize that not everyone knows as much about religion as I do, not that I’m an expert. But my lack of any definitive religion makes it possible for me to see all religions without the filter of dogma.

I take my irreligiousness not as a free ride to ignore the faith of those around me; on the contrary, I try to know as much about their doctrines and cultures as possible. I think that’s just being responsible.

. . .Maybe we should all pay more attention to details.

"Pastafarianism" is out for me I guess -- maybe not for you though? -- because I've already been part of that, and Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian all are out too.
Which leaves everything else. :)

EVERYONE knows that babies crawl before they walk, and that tricycles come before two-wheelers. But at what age should children get their first cellphone, laptop or virtual persona?

These are new questions being faced by 21st-century parents, and there is no wisdom from the generations for guidance.

. . .What’s the right approach? Studies of child development offer some middle ground. Long before the invention of the first microprocessor, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget identified four stages of cognitive development by watching his own children.

His theories bring some logic to the debate about how to support your child’s growth with the latest technology.

I like the way this story is broken down to match various technologies with specific ages and social stages, some reasonable ideas as a starting point for your own family at least. Then the last line is:

If he were alive today, Piaget would probably advise parents that for a young child, everything — whether it has batteries or not — is a discovery waiting to happen. But toys work best when they are matched to a child’s level of development.

Favorite Daughter never played video games but got her first cell phone at 13, I think, just to call us when rehearsal was through so we could come pick her up etc. It was a prepaid dollar-per-minute Virgin Mobile clunker apart from our family cell phone service. I was afraid it would be lost or stolen, so hoped to limit our exposure to the $25 at a time we'd load on it. At a dollar per minute, it was definitely used differently than the tricked-out phone and all-feature service she uses so much now, at 18. Which is a mere accessory to her constant companion, la laptop. And she is VERY put out about all this which I guess reflects her fourth-stage cognitive understanding of adult politics and economics? ;-)

Now that Young Son is the age she was then, he doesn't seem ready even for that kind of phone (I asked, he shrugged) although he and his dad custom-built him his own computer on which he plays RTS war games that I can't even decipher when he shows me exactly what's on the screen and why. (At least I still know more about cell phones than he does!) And he already has his own iPod and downloads-updates his own playlists. I can't do that; the kids have to patiently do it for me when I ask.

What about your family, as you face constant changing both in technology and your kids?

That’s the way the caricature crumbles — one person at a time.

Not to mention that you'll learn a useful new way to define liberal and conservative, which if you're a Thinking Parent, might even make you rethink how you think of yourself.

I've been doing a lot of that myself, come to think of it:

I connect these in my own mind — small towns and big hearts, racial and social and economic justice, words and music and story with real meaning for real people, characters we care enough about to “step into their skin” for a little while and begin to understand, and become better ourselves for it.

In my life parenting has been a real education. So I guess without kids, I'd just be uneducated!

This is funny to me now, in light of all the formal schooling I had under my belt before I had kids. By 30 I had earned my doctorate and some worldly responsibility for other people's children, for the structure and process of THEIR educations.

If I didn't have children of my own to think about, I'd still be thinking about kids and education and getting paid for it, but my own education would have a big black light-sucking hole in it and I'd probably never even know it.

And without having kids who changed my life, would I be a systems thinker? What I've learned by living this life as mom to these children, is that moms don't only give life to their kids. We give life to ourselves in the process. Family life IS life itself, not a separate unit or system apart from the real world, not a straight line with ancestors and descendants going up and down in a family "tree."

Family is organic process, not inert structure. Ever see the movie "Mindwalk" with Sam Waterston, John Heard and Liv Ullmann?

A Cartesian would conceptually take the tree to pieces but a systems thinker would see the seasonal exchange between tree and earth, earth and sky, the breadth of life, the life of the tree in relation to the life of the forest, and as a home for insects and the fruits it produces - not as something separate, but a member of a larger living system.

Interdependence.
Web of relationships is the essence of all living things.

This is a scientific fact. The theory of living systems is an outline of an answer to "what is life?"

I couldn't know without actually having them but I've learned well by now, that being a mom to these kids is the essence of my life, the central hub for my web of relationships. I can't take it to pieces to see how it works, or swap the parts around, put it back together again in alternate form to see what might have been.

I think in the process of learning so much from having these kids, I've learned to respect the unknowable, to be humble before its power. That isn't a religious statement to me. It's just life as I know it. :)

What JJ thinks about this topic:
See Doc's Domain for a better post on this than you're likely to see, at least from me. Although hmmm, maybe I could take it in a completely different direction then, write a limerick or do a parody of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life". . .no, wait, that literally WAS about what he'd be doing if he'd never had children . . .

But it seems in this century, Lost Girls too are a looming concern for civilized humankind. Not just their technical, physical purity as in ancient cultures, but also their relationship rituals and stories and dreams and knowledge and attitudes all must be carefully climate-controlled now -- if not hermetically sealed.

Conservative men protect girls and women from our coarse culture, fighting for female purity and passing it from man to man throughout a daughter's life. Purity balls are back in the news this week -- just in time to juxtapose with liberal moms sounding much too much like those conservative dads, fearing Hillary Clinton's flower of womanhood hasn't been similarly protected and that they and their daughters will suffer for it, that it shows our coarse culture to be hostile to the Feminine.

Oh, but for the sake of today's argument, just IGNORE this story about using the modern world's coarseness to lure kids to church, or tell yourself it applies only to boys. :evil:

“Teens are our ‘fish,” he wrote. “So we’ve become creative in baiting
our hooks.”
. . .The alliance of popular culture and evangelism is challenging churches much as bingo games did in the 1960s. And the question fits into a rich debate about how far churches should go to reach young people.

Where were we then, before antisocial church-sponsored video games as proper patriarch training distracted us? Oh yes. . .

Is this rare agreement across the political (and sexual) spectrum, that the best answer is an elaborate separate-but-equal system of special social protections for female flowers, shielding them from a culture hostile to womanhood?

Daryl discusses the online feminist vitriol here, and the NYT Sunday Magazine takes it very seriously in "The Hillary Factor."

I really need to think more about this.

First, the power of story that never-never leaves my own mind, is the cultural ravaging of Terri Schiavo, that eerily media-perfect symbol of helpless, infantalized girl-womanhood. Men -- her father and husband and some exceedingly creepy spokesmonk in a rope-belted robe and sandals -- fought publicly and pretty coarsely against each other and the paternalistic courts (and Governor) to control her very life and death, all while her mother wept bitter tears that helped no one and saved nothing, and while her grown and married daughter never said a word, just smiled that passive, vacant smile.

Another way to tell this Lost Girl story is to remember the culture's real disservice to Terri Schiavo started by distorting her self-image as a girl and woman who had to physically conform to public standards of girlish beauty to be loved, leading to her bulimia-inspired "ice tea diet" that caused her own story to (mercifully?) end long before the Men's protracted battle to write her epilogue-epitaph.

Second, Hillary Clinton married a Lost Boy and did have a daughter, now well-educated and self-possessed yet still unmarried and under Momma Clinton's fierce purity protection program in word and deed, prohibited from choosing even to speak for herself while making political speeches, even to cute little girls in public much less Men with Pens Phallic or Otherwise, and even though she's pushing 30!

Is it still paternalism when Mom (rather than Dad) Avenger wields the sword to keep the culture and public from your daughter's purity, or is it the same old paternalistic pantsuit just cut way wider in the hips?

The former first daughter always has been off-limits to the media, especially while she was growing up in the White House. But pressure to burst this protective bubble is likely to grow as the soon-to-be 28-year-old campaigns across the country. . .
Even a fourth-grader apparently can't get through to the press-shy Chelsea Clinton.

And we all know what coarse public reality Chelsea needs to be protected from facing -- sex!

And here's the question Mom and Dad are likely protecting her from not being able to answer: Monica Lewinsky was someone's daughter too and many years younger -- still college-aged -- but was publicly called "that woman" in the same sentence with the word "sex" by Chelsea's dad (God knows what Chelsea's mom called young Monica!) Daddy Clinton wasn't too worried back then, about staying pure for his daughter, when she actually was a young girl who arguably needed her dad's example and focus on his family, his stalwart commitment to moral purity, not just for her but for himself.

“Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,” Mr. Wilson, 49, told the men. “They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.”

. . .“I promise to God and myself and my family that I will stay pure in my thoughts and actions until I marry,” said Katie Swindler, 16.

(Wait -- why would her thoughts and actions stop being pure when she marries? Is this a young girl's lack of worldly understanding and ability to reason, or more a revealing reflection of the true message being received by these girls, about knowledge and sex and thinking for themselves, about their worth and purpose as females at any age?)

Every half-hour, Mr. Wilson stopped the dancing so that fathers could bless their daughters before everyone.

I know the feeling. I'm tempted to stop every half-hour and bless Favorite Daughter before everyone! She is both pure and worldly, flowering in abundance, young and fresh even as she is wise and very grown-up, feminine and unfettered, strong and beautiful, knowledgeable and whimsical, happy and unafraid. Her perspectives on power of story at 18 leave me in awe. :)

Except my parenting really is about HER and not me, about who she's become and how she's already grown up enough to understand and embrace all the stories. It seems to me the only thing Parents of Daughters have to fear about NeverLand is the Never-Never part itself. Truly, daughters aren't Lost Girls at any age unless that's the story we write them into.

Too bad it's not the same college town I grew up in -- Go Gators! -- but that's a minor point compared to the difference between living in any college town, and not. We'd miss a lot in our unschooling, if not surrounded by all these creative community resources both human and institutional.

What about you?

"Journey On" was the theme and Favorite Daughter again was hired to write the script tying the pieces together into an artistic whole. Power of Story! And she and Young Son both then were cast as voices, professionally recorded acting out the show's soundtrack. So now we're all happy but more than ready for some idle amusements and unstructured downtime.

It was notable as our last show after ten years at this studio -- Favorite Daughter is all grown up and immersed in collegiate challenges, and Young Son is increasingly drawn to other styles of performance, especially those bagpipes arriving day after tomorrow!

The next show our family is focused on will be in two weeks, a formal senior voice recital for our beautiful soprano at Florida State University College of Music, all light opera and musical theatre. She's preparing Yum Yum's solo and two trios -- including Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and Die Fledermaus -- and also will join into a couple of big ensemble pieces.

Here's the rotten vegetables he and his trolls are flinging at dear Alasandra:

If you have a chance, go over to this site and tell this girl that she should change the name of her blog post. I don't mind that her post is a parody of a post I wrote. I mean really, I'm made out of rubber and she's made out of glue ... etc. etc. ... But she really should not use the term she uses in the title of her post. This girl has shown evidence in the past of being a bit of a follower and I think this term is used a lot by "Doc" the home schooling mommie. But still, she should know better.

At heart I think she is a good person, if also a bit mean spirited, terribly misguided, and, well, not very smart. So if a few people tell her that derivations of the word "retard" are not OK, maybe she'll have a learning moment. . .

I connect these in my own mind -- small towns and big hearts, racial and social and economic justice, words and music and story with real meaning for real people, characters we care enough about to "step into their skin" for a little while and begin to understand, and become better ourselves for it.

ENDORSEMENT: 2008

Dear Friends and Fans:

LIke most of you, I've been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit.
A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."

At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams From My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President.

Bruce Springsteen

And here's how Harper Lee fits into our story, as homeschoolers and booklovers:

From "Choose Nine Books for Your Gift Box":

6. To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, because that was Favorite Daughter’s first love affair with a book . . . AND because Harper Lee supports homeschoolers, and she explicitly wrote Scout as almost accidentally learning to read well at home, which pissed off her officious second-grade teacher. . .
I see now what a strong southern river runs through my list
Also without planning it or noticing, I see my female authors have the edge, 5-4.

And there’s the “home” thing, with Scarlett needing Tara as the home that sustained her through war and the loss of everyone she’d ever loved, Patchett’s proclivity to set her books at home, and Lee’s Scout learning to read at home from watching her dad absorbed in reading the newspaper at home. Max coming HOME to his very own room, where he found his supper waiting for him, and it was still hot!

Probably this historical fiction reflects “home” as theme too, if we think of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Pimpernel and Ragtime’s characters all leaving home either to defend home, extend home, or create a new home?

I can easily see the stories of both Springsteen and Obama as fitting into this "home" theme too.

Dr. Kaminski and her colleagues Vladimir M. Sloutsky and Andrew F. Heckler did something relatively rare in education research: they performed a randomized, controlled experiment. Their results appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

Though the experiment tested college students, the researchers suggested that their findings might also be true for math education in elementary through high school, the subject of decades of debates about the best teaching methods.

Rapt regular readers will recall that in all those decades of debates or touted teaching tracks, nothing ever made math manipulable for Favorite Daughter.

Probably this kind of "randomized, controlled experiment" in math education won't help any individual learn math better, since it is geared to the institutional classroom and switching to a new standard rather than switching out of standard mode in the first place. At best this kind of "science" about math education then, will just illuminate better ways to manipulate the subjective minds of the generalizable aggregate to meet the objective standards of the generalizable aggregate. I can't glean much from it for helping my own two unschooling children compete in schoolish math and science standards step-dancing, but that was never our educational focus anyway.

So it rivets me not as unschooling mom but as former education policy pro and Lifelong Thinking Citizen, to notice this as a way I can learn more about how we the American people obsess over -- and subsequently overvalue -- school math instruction and test performance, as a scientifically defensible merit ranking mechanism equally applicable between individual children, classrooms, schools, cities, states and countries across the globe.

(Often this is statistical competition between humans with little more in common THAN standardized reporting of school math testing. So does that make such global comparisons more controllable and scientific, or just less relevant to real individuals learning real math for real reasons? Why would we even care unless we're international social engineers?)

Ohio State researchers have begun new experiments with elementary school students.

Other mathematicians called the findings interesting but warned against overgeneralizing. “One size can’t fit all,” said Douglas H. Clements, a professor of learning and instruction at the University of Buffalo. “That’s not denying what these guys have found, whatsoever.”

. . .“It’s a fascinating article,” said David Bressoud, a professor of mathematics at Macalester College in St. Paul and president-elect of the Mathematical Association of America.

Not to criticize or judge or fuss at ALL, honest, but I wouldn't take so lightly this casual meme that all moms naturally want to throttle a mouthy, sullen, resistant or recalcitrant child, or wish they were little and cute and easily manageable again, instead of growing and changing and challenging us (and themselves) in all directions at once.

No unschooling family is perfect, in sync and joyously giving to each other every moment, but it really does seem mine has been that way. I beg you not to set your expectations by the usual, when unschooling relationships can be so extraordinary.

Speaking from experience with an 18-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son, I've never even known "I could just throttle him (or her)" moments, much less months or years of that feeling. Mostly I suspect it's a choice, an attitude, a belief, a reality you create in your own mind first, or not at all. It IS possible, except of course if you already believe it isn't.

Colleen, just put this in your unschooling pipe and smoke it along with all the other comments and counsel you get, but I would hate to see you believe it has to be this way, that nothing better is possible NOW.

There are times when a chorus of cheerful reassurance that no one else has it any better, and somehow we survive, can be comforting and help us go on, get through life's unavoidable blows, like illness or loss.

But this isn't one of those times imo. Many unschoolers have had and do have it MUCH better, and mothering teens is not one of life's blows!

I don't think distance and disillusionment in the relationship between mother and older child is inevitable. And I don't think it should just be endured (thus perpetuated?) as normal.

Unschooling moms really do have a whole different perspective on (and experience with) mom-teen everyday relationships. So it might be a good time for you to really relate to the way Pam Sorooshian and Sandra Dodd write about their unschooling through the teen years?

Like everyone, I'm completely confident you will be fine and do well no matter what. But please don't just "settle" for the usual or the mediocre, when you really can go for the gold.

What does that actually mean, though?
And why am I asking?

Favorite Daughter drew a stranger's comment about her math disability revelation -- yes, revelation is a religious word, not scientific, if we're compartmentalizing concepts -- purporting to be from a young "miss" just like her (but in tone and message more like the male trolls that female blogging tends to attract.)

Btw, for World Autism Day CNN has just spent the whole morning on current science, belief and family experiences with autism. How much respect from either science or religion would this comment's POV deserve, if it proclaimed autism non-existent, just some kind of bogus excuse for bad parenting or stupid kids?

The comment so oddly seems to rely on personal belief as objective science, the better to disprove the science of Favorite Daughter's belief IN science. Very strange. It was a know-it-all tone preaching false school gospel, chapter and verse, not the comment of a true seeker in either belief OR science.

Does it immutably equate religion and science then, the commutative correctly used as simple, logically coherent mathematical expression? Sure seems to.

So, are they being expressed academically as equally true? Or perhaps the opposite, equally subjective, equally true and real yet created by the supernatural, "given" yet equally unproven and unprovable?

I hadn't thought much about it until now but I've just had an epiphany (yes, that's more religious terminology but my version of academic freedom is using the words that come closest to capturing the truth of what I really mean, rather than twisting all the words and meaning around in some inner-circle sophist code.)

It doesn't equate religion and science at all, it's not simple mathematical logic. It's a hidden fallacy, which if I knew more formal logic I would name for you -- "the undefined middle" perhaps? (I never studied formal logic yet I do believe in it and confidently accept it as "true" and objectively demonstrable.)

Consider -- one college student already so certain of his/her own beliefs as to pronounce science itself suspect and likely wrong, simply because it leads another college student like FavD to beliefs about herself at odds with the commenter's personal beliefs, all of which are of course scientific! Is that religion or science, or one confused as the other, an unholy amalgam, maybe neither one and if not, then what IS it?

Whatever it is besides trolling, it seemed designed to pronounce her weak and weak-minded -- imposing human certainty by superior force of will, in the quest to dominate both belief and science with immutable human certainty. Whether the imposed certainty is right or wrong doesn't matter, has little or "no-no" meaning, not when the very definition of "right" and "true" just means whatever convicted dominionists can impose, as either science or religion.

Back to the question:
"There are political voices claiming religion is science, and science is religion.
What does that really mean though? "

In common conversation these days, it means "our" religion is real and true, immutable scientific fact, created and given by our immutable god.

"Your" science is just irrational belief, a false religion no better than all those untrue, unscientific religions that don't accept the scientific FACTS of "our" one true religion.

The only science I know as fact and believe to be true, in teaching that convoluted belief as science education, is political science.

p.s. - Favorite Daughter is now minoring in religion, power of story studies for which she has discovered enormous personal aptitude and interest, absent struggle much less disability. I wonder what this same commenter would pronounce her weak and wrong about, in that collegiate discipline, and with what authority other than (his or her) personal opinion?

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, words without end, amen.

For years, I’ve been telling people that I was - hmm, I believe the
phrase I used when I was middle-school-aged was “math retarded.”

My mom told me many times over the years, sometimes rather sharply, not to say that. She didn’t want other people to think of me that way, and she didn’t want me to think of myself that way. . .Turns out my original assessment of “math retarded” is probably closer to the truth. . .

Read her whole post when you can, because it lays out what she's been through in her own words, from inside who she was born to be.

Then she wrote and posted a poem that made her mother cry:

"On Leaving a Book of Poems in the Math Building"

There is nothing quite so terrible
as losing a notebook of poems
in the math building.

I am dizzy, frantic, wondering
what horrors those numbers people
will enact on my scrawled characters.

They might translate them to binary,
or try to convert all of my metaphors to fractions
to see if they are truly equivalent.

They might grade them, disfigure their structure,
mark them in bright judgmental red,
or add the lines together and average out the vowels.

They are short-sighted, hungry beasts, eager for the universe
to give up all its secrets, now, and to show its work besides,
they spend their time trying to count the seeds in the center of a
sunflower
rather than capture what a sunflower means.

They know the numbers which make up the Fibonacci Sequence,
but know not the delight in saying “Fibonacci,”
over and over, feeling it in your mouth, caressing it.

They have never tried to make “Fibonacci Sequence” an anagram,
they don’t know how difficult it is when there is no R,
Even if you make “equine bison,” which I did,
you still have an A, E, and three Cs left, an untidy remainder.

They might write them as decimals.

It tickles me to imagine what schoolbook snobs would think if they loved Shakespeare as she does, for what he really wrote rather than what school taught them to believe he wrote . . ."

See some cool stuff at the official site too, including video interviews:

March 19, 2008
‘John Adams’ Is a Star on HBO

By Brian Stelter

The first two parts of the HBO miniseries “John Adams” drew high ratings for the premium cable channel.

The first segment, which was 70 minutes, drew an average of 2.5 million viewers on Sunday, and the second segment, at 91 minutes, attracted 2.8 million viewers later that night.

The ratings represented HBO’s best miniseries debut since 2004, Broadcasting & Cable said. The results do not include on-demand viewings, typically an important segment for HBO.

The series, starring Paul Giamatti as America’s second president and Laura Linney as the first lady, is based on the author David McCullough’s biography of Mr. Adams. The miniseries will continue to unfold Sundays at 9 p.m. through April 20.

Do you know the word "ceilidh" btw? Suddenly I'm learning stuff I didn't know I didn't know! It's pronounced kaee-lee -- sort of, I think -- and it's the same sort of folk-community dance that I remember from my own heritage-steeped summers as a girl in Highlands, GA, clogging and square-dancing at the Dillard House.

Our revelry started Saturday, still going so for now, so let me just say we're getting in touch with Celtic roots that reach deeper and in more directions than I'd imagined. . . ;-)

Meanwhile, here's a lilting taste of the Scottish family turning Young Son into a real bagpiper: The McIlroys.

If anyone was wondering about the relevancy of that information, I would like to:

1) ask that they wait for all to be revealed in the blinding light of my brilliance, and

2) inform you all that this is not, in fact, JJ, but her "Favorite Daughter," which seems to be the name by which I am best known, despite the fact that I, personally, never refer to myself as such.

JJ is presently "on assignment," as the reporters say, and by "on assignment," I mean "running errands in the car while listening to The Sean Hannity Show."

I keep telling her not to do this, it can only end in tragedy. Sean Hannity is probably one of the leading causes of road rage in this country, at least for anyone who has a functional frontal lobe.
(Note: I have no problem with conservatives per se, I have a problem with illogic!)

Anyway, my mom JJ was listening to the show just now, and apparently a thirteen-year-old boy called in. Presumably after beginning with the creepy and obligatory greeting of, "Hi, Sean, you're a great American," he informed Hannity that he'd just received an email that said homeschooling was now illegal in the state of California.

I like to imagine the sound of this call: how tearily the boy must have whispered, "Help, Sean. Help."

Also, I really hope this kid isn't homeschooled, because he's doing a fabulous job of displaying his lack of critical thinking skills. That's just the publicity we all need, Sean Hannity and "I read it in a chain email, it must be true!" kid.

Please, don't help us.

Anyway, Hannity then proceeds to rant about how this was yet another move by commie-pinko-sex-ed-teaching-movie-making-Scientology-believing California to stamp out Jesus or something.

I wasn't there, but I can infer.

Anyway, Hannity continues to rant about California outlawing homeschooling for about the next half hour, despite the fact that California has not outlawed homeschooling.

Nice verification of sources, Sean. I'm not sure which is stupider, "I read it on the internet, therefore it must be true," or "A random thirteen-year-old I've never talked to in my life read it on the internet, therefore it must be true."

Probably the latter.

But it gets worse - I've just been informed that NPR has announced that there was a ruling about the legality of homeschooling in California, and they will be covering it as it develops. NPR for Godssakes.

Anyway, this has been fun, we should all do it again sometime. I'm sure JJ will be back within the next hour or two to explain it much more eloquently.