Nightingale

Gotta love Amazon.

I think they should actually make her read the book Fahrenehit 451.

funny... last I checked, I fell into a pretty liberal part of the political spectrum.

Yep. While I do think kids should get age appropriate information about subjects, I don't think any subject should be completely off limits.

I met Michele when I was an AFF student. She was a couple of levels ahead of me, or had just passed AFF. I'd posted about being nervous about my first AFF jump, and she went out of her way to talk to me that day. She was such a sweet person. I'd like to be on the ash dive, but I think my jump numbers are probably too low for a large group jump, so I'll be on the ground watching.

There are a lot of things that can cause that. First thing that came to my mind was Bell's Palsy, but a stroke might do that too. http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/DS/00168.html

I just sent the school a new copy of the book via Amazon.com I hate censorship.

IIRC, the amount of injuries dramatically increased after helmet laws were put into place, simply because many of those injuries would have been fatalities were it not for the helmets. Therefore, one could make the argument that helmet laws actually cost society more.

Super glue was originally made as surgical glue.

on the last excavation I worked on, we found dinosaur skin from a duckbill. It was really cool looking...you could see the scale pattern.

Yep. He did the Simpson's theme. It's an incredibly complex piece of music if you listen closely. Tons of stuff happening all at once but somehow coming together to sound really cool.

If it got to the point where I felt that the US had completely abandoned the principles set forth by the constitution, to the point where it was virtually unrecoverable, I'm out of here. However, we're not at that point yet, and I hope we never will be. My loyalty isn't to the land of the USA, but to the principles it was founded on. If those principles no longer existed, the USA, as it was founded, would no longer exist either. It would be a very different, very scary place. At the moment, I'm not embarrassed by my country, although i am sometimes embarrassed by its leader.

It's not the job of the government to protect individuals from themselves. To protect individuals from others, yes, but not from themselves. People need to be responsible for the consequences of their own actions. The government needs to be a government, not a parent.

when in doubt, go to the doc. stitches will leave you with a smaller, less painful scar.

Was against it when it began, still think it was a really bad move. However, I think we need to stay and clean up our mess.

Honestly, would you really want that guy watching your back on a battlefield, though?

Chapman Law in Orange, CA

I think helmet laws should be repealed... simply because if someone wants to be stupid, let them be stupid. We have too many laws that protect individuals from their own stupidity and waste government time and resources on enforcement. I think the decision about Terri Schiavo should rest with her husband and it isn't anyone else's business.

From the FAQ at http://66.99.255.20/osa/FinancialAid/FAFAQ.cfm#taxable Are student loans taxable income? No. But, some scholarships and work-study income are. Make sure to carefully read any forms or contracts. If you have questions about something you are expected to sign, talk to a Financial Aid Officer before you sign. See the IRS tax publication 970 for more information. IRS form is found here: http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache:poo9vVNGi7MJ:www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p970.pdf+irs+tax+publication+970&hl=en

No, I don't believe it's counted as income. The IRS site says nothing about it, and there are a lot of people out there living on student loans. However, check with a tax professional to be certain.

Talk with your financial aid office. If you can't get more workstudy money, there are loan companies who will give student loans to students with no co-signer. Sallie Mae is one. There are a bunch of others. It depends on which ones deal with your school regularly.

Bank of America has a loan called the "education maximizer loan" which is meant for use for stuff like living expenses. you can borrow up to 30K per academic year, but you need a co-signer. That's how I'm paying my rent through law school. With regards to working... just don't tell them you're leaving after a month.

My 7th grade geography/history teacher, Virginia Gannaway. She was amazing. She taught us that history could really be fun, that it was like the world's longest storybook filled with fascinating people. She taught us about different places, and she'd visited every single place we learned about. Instead of looking at pictures in a book, we looked at her vacation slides. When we started a unit, she'd greet us that day with the native language, dressed in the native clothes (or a reasonable school-appropriate version thereof), and we'd get to eat the native foods. I owe my love of travel and history completely to her. If it wasn't for her class, I'd never have gone to half the places I've visited, and would have missed out on a lot of wonderful moments and knowledge. She was the most amazing teacher I ever had, and my friends and I were sad when she retired, because of all the kids that won't get to benefit from being in her class.

if its someone I know, or something that happened at my home DZ, I try to send a card if I can find the address. I usually won't call or visit the hospital, because that should be for close friends and family, and the nurses won't give you an update on the patient unless you're family anyway (or even tell you if they're a patient, most of the time). It wouldn't occur to me to ask the DZ for someone's contact info. Due to privacy issues, I figure they probably wouldn't give out someone's info unless they'd been specifically told it was ok. If it was a good friend, I'd definitely go visit, and call at least once a day to say hi and find out how they're doing.

Listen, but recognize that, as a friend, you're probably only hearing one side of a story. My standard advice to a friend who's having relationship problems is to listen to their partner, try to show that they care, make time to be alone with their partner, and go see a counselor. I've seen couples on the verge of divorce go to counseling and truly try, and fix their relationship. I've also seen couples go to counseling, realize that the relationship wasn't working or wasn't healthy and decide to divorce after knowing they gave it their best shot, and the counselor was able to work with them so that their own issues didn't affect the way they raised their children, because even though they weren't marriage partners anymore, they still had a partnership for raising their kids. Whichever way things go, I've noticed that the couples that go through counseling tend to be happier later on, because whether they stay together or split up, they know that they really gave it their best shot, so there's no "what if" question, which, I think, makes it easier to move on, either together or separately. Counseling can be a really rewarding field, but it can also be really emotionally draining. I know several counselors who are excellent at what they do, but their own lives are a mess, because they put all their emotional energy into helping other people's relationships and have no energy left to help their own. It's also very hard to see relationship problems when you're the one in the relationship, so make sure you don't discount going to counseling yourself if you need it, because you may feel like you have the tools to fix things yourself, and that isn't always the case. If you know any counselors, call them and ask for a real, day to day description of their job, before you go through years of school. You might discover it isn't for you, or you might have your decision reinforced and be certain that it is what you want. (this is coming from personal experience...I've got a master's degree in a field I'm not going to work in. I was very interested in teaching as an abstract idea, but the classroom reality was not for me. So, I'm probably going to go into education/school law, but I could do that without the masters and just my law degree). Grad school is very interesting, but it can be damned expensive, so make sure you're choosing a course of study that will help you to do what you really want (and then once you're doing what you want and making money at it, you can always go back and take those other classes that interested you along the way).