The Common Room

I like it. More here.

WE ARE ON

We have an extraordinary bit of running around to do today (in our unairconditioned 12 passenger van). The HG, of course, is in Texas nannying for a family with 11 children The 11th was delivered by C-section yesterday morning, and while their mother is in the hospital, the HG is caring for the other children, who are 13 and under. Three of the children at home are still in diapers (there's a set of youngling quads).
She's off to a good start. Yesterday the older boys blew out the power in two bathrooms trying to solder something. She asked what the smell was and they told her only, "Well, we plugged something in that we forgot we aren't supposed to plug in. But we aren't using it anymore so the smell will go away soon." She was in the midst of toddler duties and somewhat distracted, so she didn't follow up immediately. Then she found them examining the breaker box, and insisted they cease and desist any electricity related activities until their father got home. That's when he discovered they'd melted the outlets, and hence, couldn't pursue their soldering any further. I believe he's told them to dress and bathe in the dark, as they deserve.

Jenny, Pip, and the FYG went to a girls' Bible study and relationship building night hosted by an older lady where we go to church, and we have to head down to pick them up.

The Cherub is being fitted, at long last, for a new AFO, or plastic leg brace. This is a process that has been a long time coming, as for a full year our insurance and Medi-care were spitting at each other and we got caught in the cross fire. It was finally resolved, although not entirely to our satisfaction. We cannot choose not to have Medi-care- it's simply not an option. Our insurance, which is supposed to be pretty comprehensive, won't cover a thing if we don't have Medicare, because the Cherub is eligible for it. We have to pay 100 dollars a month for insurance we shouldn't need, but there it is. At any rate, things are resolved and we are back in the insurance company's good graces and the Cherub can be seen again. Besides the insurance issues, she had to complete a number of other steps before we could get to the leg brace stage.

The HM has an appointment to discuss some business issues with somebody while we're down south, and we hope to fit in some shopping at the Asian grocery store and possibly the day-old bread store.

The Equuschick, recovering from a head cold she refuses to acknowledge is a head- cold (she says it's 'contagious allergies), has a riding lesson to give this morning and she'll be supervising the Boy, who remains at home.

While there are a few scheduled posts already set to go up automatically, I and most of the Progeny really aren't here, although we hope to be back in time to make my appearance here:

England not only has 1,000 laws permitting the state to enter private homes
, they can listen in on private conversations, too:

Bonnet tip Gates of Vienna

Shrimp and other warm water fossils discovered in Antarctica.

Should we go the way of high school and have universal access?

And if we do, will college go the way of high school and become universally devalued? Will Master's Degrees and PhDs become the new gold standard for employment at the grocery store?

As well as another book to add to my growing list of books to add to my reading list....

The book is Government Pirates, and you can read more at Hugh Hewitt's blog.

Part I

This bit of self-aggrandizement isn't even a little bit better. It made me gag a little bit.
Tip to Josh Marshall

We had a clothesline in our old house- the little one where Shasta and the Equuschick will live. We had a clothesline at our house in Colorado- the HM put it up for me. We had one, in fact, at every house we've ever lived in that I can remember. I love them. In addition to the energy savings, there's just something wonderful about the smell of sun-dried clothes that nothing else can duplicate. I don't think they are unsightly at all- I think they are a thing of beauty and a joy forever. But I guess it's like the smooth expanse of green velvet grass, devoid of all the lovely wildflowers- in the eye of the beholder:

It's good stuff- you should read it all. Did you know there's even an organized 'right to dry' campaign to protect home-owners from bullying covenants that prevent line-drying?

We've had a clothesline just about everywhere we've lived, and we used it, too. My great-grandparents had almost no yard at all, but they installed a retractable clothesline from their detached garage to the back side of their house- on laundry day, the clothesline could be pulled out and attached, crossing the driveway, and when the laundry was done, the clothesline was retracted. There were clotheslines strung across the ceiling in the full basement, too, so in wet weather and during the winter, the clothes could still be air dried.

Our yard is so shady and so full of holes (Donovan dog likes to dig) that we just haven't figured out a good place- but I had a brainstorm this month. We do have a second story deck. And we have all those trees around the perimeters of the yard. So why not install a pulley system like I've seen in pictures of old New York City tenements?
Lehman's has one for 35.00 (If you haven't shopped at LEhman's before, you should take a look- they have some very practical things). Amazon also has something I think would work.
We'd attach one end to the deck- or to a taller support the HM will attach to the deck, and the other end to a tree across the yard. That would raise the lines (and clothes) out of the way of the shade, the passing dogs, the dust the Donovan dog digs up and sends flying, and some of the inevitable insects you get when you line-dry. The deck gets full sun all day long (an over-sight on our part, but it could be turned to good use)- so we could even dry clothes from the deck when the weather is cooler.

I don't think you become a politician because of your healthy dose of humility. I don't expect politicians to be genuinely self-effacing.

But isn't distributing these fliers to the public so they'll show up with them at your campaign rally in Germany just a bit, well, strange? Or do those of who did not grow up in the Facebook age just not relate to this kind of self-branding and self-promotion?

If that's the case, I'm in good company. The Anchoress has much more to say about it- and she's more coherent, too. Lots of good links.

Patrick Ruffini has something say about it, too:

The Obama people previously said this wasn't a political event. But then again, I don't expect politicians to tell the truth, either.

What a novel idea:

To print out this list of commonly misused and abused words and phrases ('give up the goat?') to hand out to people who make me wince when they misuse and abuse one of them?

Yes, I thought it might.

Thanks, Meredith, this was fun!

Um, since I am a home-schooler and am on a couple of homeschooling email lists, I did check that I am an active member of a child study group.

Like Meredith, I fail to wash the lid of the milk carton.

I was able to say that I do not slow up card games with chatter- but fortunately for me they didn't ask about the way I do slow up card games- with singing. It's a sort of game the girls and I sometimes play, whereby via random association and stream of consciousness we see who can keep up the conversation by responding with the most snatches of song. It's hard to explain, but I understand it can be extremely bewildering to the uninitiated.

I took it for my husband, too:


Which is no surprise at all.

Here's a pretty detailed article, but what stood out to me is this one point:

This is the idea I like:


The tolerated bit is what needs to change. While my husband can't do most of his job from home, there are some things he can do from home with a laptop and cellphone. He asked for those things when he was hired, and his boss said no. His boss is a very, very nice man- he has been so good to us I can't even talk about it without getting choked up- and I know when I have tried to think him, he gets choked up. He's a good man. So why did he say no? Because technological awareness is just behind the times in our area- five years ago our local ISP told us there were about 100 high speed internet clients in the entire county. When I joined the local homeschool group and was asked to volunteer to run the phone chain, I asked why we didn't have an email group instead- and the majority just looked at me with blank stares. They didn't know what an email list was or how one worked.
Incidentally, the HM's boss eventually came around- last year the HM got the laptop and cell phone, along with a company vehicle and a gas card, which has amounted to a steady month paycheck increase as gas prices have mounted. He hasn't been able to stay home a full day- but as the regional manager for stores in five different cities, the the laptop and cellphone have saved him some unnecessary trips.

Shasta's job, on the other hand, is one he could do entirely from home, every day of the week. He could probably show up quarterly, and work from home the rest of the time. His employers say no, which makes us very sad, and is the reason this article caught my attention. To make telecommuting more feasible, employers themselves are going to need to be educated on the benefits, and they'll need to be foresighted enough to set up the business to work that way in the first place.

It's kind of hard to talk an employer into telecommuting when the employer has thousands of dollars invested in a physical location and office equipment, supplies, and materials that could become redundant if everybody works from home.

There are other things we can do, of course, and Scott Kirwin goes into them. More fuel efficient cards- which is not much of an option for a family of nine with three large dogs. They don't make them fuel efficient and capable of transporting large families and their friends.

We can walk or bicycle more- but when you live 9 or 10 miles from town in an area with blizzards in the winter and thunderstorms in the summer- that's not terribly feasible. Oh, plus there's the 9 members of the family issue again- and now we have to account for those too young or too incapacitated to bike.

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.=)

Meanwhile, we stay at home more, cut back on trips, and combine errands. Except we've already been doing that for years.

This is a story about a story- Mark Stricherz at GetReligion comments on a NYT story:

And, indeed, it is a well written story and it bisects a handful of Common Room interests (of course, we're nosy sorts, we're interested in just about everything). Stricherz notes, however, a curious omission from Lewin's story, one indicative of a rather large blind spot typical of the Times and other media. Berea does what it does the way it does because of its underlying philosophy, because of the sort of school it is- a Christian school. And Lewin never mentions that.
Stricherz gives us the preamble to Berea's mission statement:


On the 'About the College' Page of Berea's website one may read the following:

Incidentally, in another point where this story crosses one of the many topics of interest to The Common Room Denizens, this story's genus was in this action by the Senate Finance Committee:

And Berea's President Shinn points out that decisions made for his college by politicians miles removed from Berea by both space and worldview have unintended consequences- like so many political decisions:

Thee, after all, is merely the hoi polloi. Me, in this case, is the DNC Committee members in Denver:

From LaShawn Barber:

What would that look like?



More at LaShawn's, with links.

I'm a bit baffled myself. What did he mean?

The Grand Jury has issued sealed indictments against Warren Jeffs, who is already in jail, and five members of the FLDS-- their names are not yet released, probably pending their arrests:

The state collected at least 599 DNA samples. They had approximately 450 children in custody, so that means around 150 DNA samples were from adults. And they found four adults to accuse of marrying under--aged girls, in a Grand Jury process that I've been told could result in indicting a ham sandwich or Mother Teresa if that's what the DA wants.

I was going to hazard a guess as to the sixth person was, the one charged with failure to report child abuse. But then I thought better of it, since I could be wrong, and this is how slander, libel, and gossip get started. Not only that, but it seems I was certainly wrong, as my guess for the sixth person was a female, and according to this story, it's a man:



This may not be the last of the indictments:

Look, I'm not going to defend the marrying off of child brides, but I don't see how this is a 'win' for the state of Texas. Whatever they find now does not retroactively justify the removal of the 450 children in the first place. They aren't getting the evidence they are using to indict these men from the children- they are getting it from documents removed from the ranch in the early days of the raid- documents they could have seized without holding the children (and a number of adults misidentified as minors).
Finding FLDS Member B guilty of marrying a 15 year old is not going to justify holdilng a 37 year old woman in custody and refusing her access to an attorney because the state insists that 37 year old is a minor child.

YOu know that saying about two wrongs not making a right? Well, here's another point- whatever the FLDS members may have done, they did as private citizens. What the state did, it did under cover of law.
Several of the women called to testify apparently pleaded the fifth, and I will hazard a guess that this probably had as much to do with possible bigamy charges as anything else.


A few more details here:


Teresa Jeffs is still trying to get a different attorney:

I don't think at this point it really matters whether Malonis is doing her best by her client or not- Malonis told everybody that Teresa had a baby- and she didn't. Malonis waited until the weekend had passed before seeking to have the records on Jeffs' most recent court involvement sealed- and those records included her diaries and love notes she wrote. There is almost no 16 year old girl in the world who would trust her attorney again under those circumstances.


Brooke Adams looks into the Lost Boy story:


It appears to me that the biggest issue with the Lost Boys isn't that so many of them are kicked out- the facts just don't seem to support that there's a huge discrepancy between the numbers of boys who leave or are forced out of FLDS homes and the number of boys in the same situation in Non FLDS homes. What might be a problem is that FLDS boys who leave or are kicked out are less prepared to fit in to mainstream society. Because, um, their parents weren't planning on them fitting into mainstream society- they were planning on them fitting into FLDS society.

Another problem would be that the FLDS boys stand out as members of a group- the same ratio of teens may end up running away or getting kicked out in other families (which is not to say I approve of it- I just know several families where the boy chose the highway when given the 'my way or highway' option.)- but the others are seen as individuals, rather than representative. That's just my guess, btw.


Thursday, at 3:00 ET, Jeri Lyn Ward is devoting a streaming internet broadcast she does at Right Talk Radio to the upcoming hearings where the Senate is hearing from everybody with a vendetta against the FLDS, and none of those who are actually in the group. She'll be talking with Kurt, Bill Medvecky, and, if we wrap up The Cherub's appointment to be fitted for a new leg brace in a timely manner, Yours Truly. I expect to sound like a blithering idiot and I'm kind of cringing (have I mentioned I write MUCH better than I talk?)- but if you're interested....

------------------
Update: I meant to add this information from these two stories, as well:
From mysanantonio:


In addition to testimony from Teresa Jeffs, the state heard from:

Although I've read elsewhere that Annette Jeffs wasn't called in to testify after all. We've written about Sarah Barlow Draper before- she's a very lovely lady, but no, I don't think she looks like a 16 year old. She does look young- I would have guessed late 20s at most, and she's 37.

Modern Pharisee suggests that the state has played some serious hardball with the two women above who have children- if they are jailed for contempt of court, the state could take away their children again, and after what they've just been through, that's that threat would be all too real.
Incidentally, the members of the Grand Jury all come from the local community, which has been trying to oust the FLDS ever since they arrived, and has been responsible for some of the most contradictory and strange rumors about the group (the crayons story, for instance).

Texas hopes to extradite Warren Jeffs, and says it will pursue the other subjects of indictment 'aggressively.' After appearing before the Grand Jury, Willie Jessop said

I wonder if the other men will, like JEffs was, be put on the FBI's ten most wanted list. For a little perspective on that- The crime Jeffs was accused of committing was accessory to rape, which was the action of performing the wedding ceremony of a 14 year old girl to her 19 year old half-cousin (they had the same grand-father, but not the same grand-mother), and fleeing from justice. Meanwhile, a member of the bloody LeBaron polygamous group who was accused of murder (the LeBaron group is known to be responsible for almost three dozen murders), and has been on the run for years was only just now placed on the FBI's most wanted list- and she still hasn't made the 'Top Ten.' There's something just a little skewed about this.

I think it's quite understandable that the FLDS feel persecuted-


Yep, they're sure to feel like they're getting an unbiased judgment here.
The SLTrib, after an embarrassing gaffe last night when they said there were no indictments, has corrected their story and added a bit more detail:
You can even call in to ask questions, at 1-866-884-8255 (TALK). Please be gentle.

And what happens if your pepperoni supplier changes the formula for their pepperoni, or your canned tomato sauce company starts adding more corn syrup to its products, or your restaurant serves friend food and the cook on Monday uses more oil than the cook on Tuesday?

More at Reason.

And why it's not very fair.

Be who God made you to be. When God made His unique plan for you, He tailored it to the unique person He intended you to be. If you fight your identity as God created it, you fight His plan for you. His plan can't work if you aren't you.

Do you limit God? By no means. God will have foreseen your failure, and you had best believe another will come to fulfill the purpose that should have been yours. But you, you will always feel your purpose to be frustrated.

550 metric tons of it.

From Josh Marshall:

I recently confessed that I bought Weird & Gross Bible Stuff, by Rick Osborne, Quentin Guy, Ed Strauss, and I'm still not really sure what I was thinking.

But we are using it, and I thought I'd explain how. There are a lot of things I don't care for about it, and this particular section illustrates almost all of them (I also think the illustrations are ugly):

That constitutes the entire section on this episode. The next paragraph is about Zimri, king for a week who burned down the castle over his own head. And the paragraph after that is about Jezebel being tossed out the castle window, her body eaten by dogs (including the suggestion that she probably gave them indigestion and bad breath).

Sigh. So, among other things, the accounts are choppy, incomplete, lacking context, and sometimes irrelevant, also irreverent. I can't fix that last. But all these things that make the book to flawed for us to use as a stand alone do make those paragraphs good introductory comments before plunging into the actual biblical account, and since he reads it in the KJV, I hope that helps a bit with the style and reverence issues.

To begin with, I gave the Boy a small ruler and a couple colored pencils. I bookmarked the verses mentioned in the introduction and instructed him to look them up as he read the intro, and to underline certain ones in yellow. Then I gave him a list of easy questions to answer about those verses to ease him into it.
Answer me
these questions three:
1. Three of the verses you looked up were in the Old Testament. Who was the subject of the New Testament verse? What are the ways that He grew? (the verse was Luke 2:52, and Jesus grew in wisdom....)
2. Where do we read of a naked prophet?
3. What is a merry heart like?

For the first two chapters, instead of bookmarking the verses, I wrote down the page numbers where they are found in his Bible. But instead of reading only the one or two scant verses referred to in the book, he had to read the whole account (sometimes an entire chapter or two, sometimes just a dozen verses or so). I wrote a question or comment about the passage in question on a sticky note and put it either in his Bible or in his book. So, for the Jeroboam section transcribed above, I wrote in his book, "Page 469 in your Bible. Read 13:1-10. What else did Jeroboam learn?

In one section the book says that the way king Herod died is so gross they can't even tell the readers- but they don't give a verse. So I wrote there, "Ask Mom to show you how to use the concordance so you can find out how Herod died."

In another passage, the Bible refers to Judah and Simeon going to war, but it's the tribes of Judah and Simeon, not the two brothers, so I wrote down, "After you read this go see Mom and ask her to tell you more about Judah and Simeon."

At the end of the first chapter there's a list of bullet points:

For the first bullet point I asked the Boy to name a leader from the Bible who did things Gods way.
For the second point, I ask him to name some ways his Daddy takes care of and cares for the people he leads, either at work or at home.
For the third point, I asked him to name a king who failed when he started thinking the reason for his success was because he was all that.

After a couple more chapters, I 'll stop adding the page numbers and he'll have to find the references on his own. We'll incorporate more work with the concordance and mapwork, and add a few figures to the timeline from time to time. Sometimes I'll give him a verse to add to his copywork book, and other times I'll ask him to choose one. He'll continue to read entire chapters instead of two verses, and he'll be asked to narrate the story from the Bible rather than from the Wird and Groos book. And we'll keep using the choppy paragraphs as introductory interest grabbers rather than complete readings.

All of which is not intended as a hearty endorsement, but as one example of how you can take a flawed and disappointing text and make it work for you.

(Another would be to use it for kindling, but I get hives when I think about burning a book.)

Call directly to somebody's voicemail and leave a message. Is it tacky to leave a message saying, 'Call me back?'

Probably.

THE FORGER'S SPELL

A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
By Edward Dolnick

Another book on my reading list, which list strangely does not shrink no matter how much I read.

Here are some excerpts from the review at Washington Post:

Well. Who could read that and not be curious to know more?

Vermeer was increasingly popular during the Nazi era- Dutch collectors wanted to keep their National Treasure's work out of Nazi hands, and Nazis, of course, hated to have anything kept out of their hands. Since there are only about 36 known Vermeers, this mad competition drove prices into the stratosphere. Like a good capitalist, Van Meegeren figured out how to help create a supply to meet the demand.

Then he had to develop the processes that gave his recent work the patina it would have acquired over the three centuries since Vermeer last painted.
Critics had scorned his original work, so it must have been gratifying to turn around and deceive the world while raking in massive sums of money.

For those interested in the release online of the Codex Sinaticus, you might also enjoy perusing this website, where you can look at an older fragment- Paul's letters, dating from 200-300 AD. That could be a fun homeschooling assignment.

I put this in the comments of the earlier post, but I'll repost here with a couple revisions:
what's really interesting about this (to me) is the date of the oldest single MS of a complete NT- 350 AD. In addition, we have fragments that are from the end of the 1st/beginning of 2nd century, and we have individual books from the 2nd and 3rd century.
There's a fragment of Matthew from AD30-70 (the Magdalen Papyrus) (whoops- I looked further, and this particular dating is somewhat controversial, most put it at around 100-200 AD); one of Mark and Romans thru Hebrews from AD 70.

For some context, the oldest surviving manuscript for about half of Plato’s dialogues is from 895 AD (in the Bodliean)- that's a gap of around 1200 years between the original and our oldest copy, and only one surviving MS that old.

The Iliad was probably in existence in the 8th century BC, but the oldest surviving copies we have are merely fragments from six hundred years later, the 2nd or 3rd century BC.

Then there's this really fascinating bit of manuscript history

Archimedes lived in the 3rd century B.C.- so we're talking about a gap of 1300 years between when he lived and wrote and when we have the oldest surviving copy of what he wrote, and only a single copy at that.

The New Testament, like no other ancient book, is attested to by hundreds of surviving copies within 300 years of the originals. There are some interesting tables here to give this some context (note: I was interested in the tables comparing dates and copies of other ancient manuscripts, I'm not reading the entire page, and can't tell you whether I agree with the rest or not).

There are some 650, roughly, surviving manuscripts of the Iliad- and that's the most for any other ancient book except one. Next would be copies of works by Demosthenes (200, most incomplete), and Sophocles (193). For the New Testament? Try 24,000.
Since there are so many thousands more copies of the New Testament manuscripts than there all the other ancient books put together, naturally there are also more variants than in other books.
However- the variants are largely issues of word order, spelling, and other minor issues that do not alter the meaning of the text. Not a single one would alter standard orthodox Christian doctrine.


The single passage which is most questionable- going merely by issues of date, scholarship, and which manuscripts it appears in- is that favorite story of unbelievers everywhere- the one where a woman caught in adultery is brought before Jesus to be stoned, and He says that the one without sin should cast the first stone. All the accusers slink away, and He tells her that He won't condemn her, either, but she should go and sin no more (that part always seems to be missed by those who don't actually believe in the Christian Jesus but want to quote this passage anyway). The fact that of all the New Testament, this single passage is the one with the least historical support tickles my obnoxious funny bone (for the record, I believe the passage belongs in the Bible, I'm not questioning it- I just think it's ironic that the one most favored by unbelievers is also the one with the weakest scholarly support- the other would be the last 12 verses of Mark).

And this is interesting, too:

The Anchoress has a very good collection of links and summing up of just what this particular brouhaha is all about- and it's not really about McCain, it's about the press, again.

It's not like the media hides it's light o' love for Obama under a bushel, either. voters had already noticed.

Crimson Wife at Bending the Twig notes that several homeschool organizations now suggest that California homeschoolers should stop using the term ISP and instead use