My kids have a idiosyncratic food reaction to corn and corn syrup. (We discovered it when they were infants.) We pretty much don't have anything in the house with corn. I hated to give up corn bread, corn chips and popcorn but with me the only one eating it (my wife gave it up too while breast-feeding) it was easier.

No processed foods, no fast foods (all their buns mostly have corn syrup). and just a few sodas now and then that don't have corn syrup. Only a few brands of ice cream without it.

We had trouble finding BBQ without corn syrup but found a few brands. Trader Joe's now has a brand of catsup without corn syrup but we did okay without it for a long time.

I made marshmallows from maple syrup so our kids could have s'mores at camp.

It has been a pain but it has also made us more aware of the sugar in foods and we just make our own or do without. Avoiding processed foods is the easiest way.

You mean like Thomas Jefferson who edited his own bible where he focuses on the teachings of Jesus and removing the supernatural? http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefJesu.html

Or take a look at the list of quotes from the founding fathers on religion. http://skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id9.html

ASL is an actual language with its own linguistic rules. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language_grammar

Manually coded English (the more proper identification of Signed English) usually has significant trouble with homonyms and often has trouble with words built like "ice cream." Instead of using the ASL sign for "ice cream" I've seen people sign /ICE/ then sign /CREAM/. Which makes no sense when you could just use the sign /ICE CREAM/

It's written component was developed by William Stokoe for research purposes much like the International Phonetic Alphabet is used to transcribe spoken speech.

There's a lot of grammar encoded in facial expressions and body position have information much like vocal pitch and inflection convey in spoken language.

I will say that there is a continuum of languages from ASL to Signed English that most signers can flow from one to the other without too much trouble.

You are a bit behind the times. Private insurance is now paying less than medicare reimbursement on many E&M codes. See link http://www.physicianspractice.com/index/fuseaction/articles.details/articleID/1434.htm

Medicare used to be the floor but it's apparently becoming the ceiling now.

I have been telling my congress critters that a public option is important to me. I'd love to start my own business but I can't afford to pay for insurance for my family without getting it through an established company.

Secret ballots are a help to prevent vote selling. If you don't know how I voted you don't know if I voted the way you paid me to vote.

In some ways it's actually worse. My wife overheard parents talking about all the tough projects their kids had to do and how the parents ended up doing most of the work. When they asked my wife what she did with her kids, she told them, "We just make them do the work. How else will they learn?"

This was for elementary school. I was shocked as who cares about the kids grades in elementary school? This is the time to learn and do it yourself. My kids do their own planning for science fairs, pinewood derby, and school projects. We help and advise but they have to do the work.

Some where along the line people have forgotten how important failure is. You learn more by failing than getting it right the first time.

I was able to visit one christian private school in the San Francisco Bay area was and looked at one of their geology text books. The chapter on the Earth structure started out saying that since God created the Earth and because people can never hope to fully understand God's will, mankind can never understand the structure of the Earth. I feel sorry for the kids who went to that school.

As someone involved in developing children's software in the mid to late 90s at The Learning Company, we designed games to match standards and tried to avoid multiple choice questions (which is really just one of the lowest levels of Bloom's Taxometry of Learning) and try to move up the hierarchy. The problem is that you really need some kind of intelligence to interpret a child's answers when you get into more sophisticated learning.

Early games that had more sophisticated problem solving like Rocky's Boots or open ending exploring like Millie's Math House got left behind as the things turned mass market and it became important for marketing purposes to put a year in a box.

Games like Lemonade stand teach lots of things having to do with running a business. Predict your sales, market your product, price your product appropriately. Some versions are more sophisticated than others.

Sure Oregon Trail doesn't handle issues when the players diverge from what would be expected behavior on the trail and in a classroom where you are leading a unit on the Oregon Trail teachers should be watching something about what the children are doing. But if you are just playing a game then sure play to win.

And young kids should be using chalk, crayons, and other tactile objects instead of spending too much time on computers. I remember letters from parents and teachers who used my products and it helped kids learn to read but I wouldn't use those programs as a substitute for a teacher but using computer programs and a good teacher are beneficial.

The second to last sentence in the article. Maybe they have. "I want to be the president of China," said three-year-old girl, Liu Xiao Liao. "Then people will be scared of me."

NPR the main organization gets about 2% of revenues from the government. All in competitive grants.

Member stations might get as much as 14% from government (individual stations) and I'll bet most of that goes to stations that service areas thinly populated but I can't find figures.

As for bias, it will depend upon your on point of view but the best NPR shows have a bias to the truth. Air Talk with Larry Mantle has had some of the best reporting on an issue and he is comfortable calling out speakers who don't tell the truth on the air.

I've seen that very few NPR shows will call out a speaker's comments when they contradict fact, no matter if the speaker is conservative or liberal.

As long as the news is just a mouthpiece for groups to put their own spin on facts, truth suffers. We need more reporters like Larry Mantle who call out speakers who don't tell the truth.

No body likes the truth-sayers though (ask any whistle blower) and I doubt there's much of a business model for truth these days.

German or Designer board games often balance things by auctions or player choice. There are still first move advantages but auction do help balance.

Though different game groups often have different balance points. I've played with some groups that valued items differently in Princes of Florence than my usual group did.

Some games like Power Grid reverse the turn order to give advantages to players behind.

And Agricola has different players all picking from exclusive actions where each player is trying to follow their own strategy based on some of their cards (minor improvements and occupations).

Designer board games are fairly well balanced but skill will generally put you ahead. They are often designed to play with the entire family (most have rules about the youngest player going first usually a kid playing against parents).

Sure some of these games can be considered lightly themed, but the interesting part of the games are the mechanics not the theme. Some of the better games have mechanics that go well with the theme. Other games are less successful in matching theme to mechanic. Some of us are more interested in the mechanics though.