Day by Day Discoveries

The Importance of Mathematics

2008-05-09T17:49:00.001-07:00

Over at Math-Blog there's a post with a lecture from Timothy Gowers about the importance of mathematics, not simply in terms of practical application but also in terms of culture. It's fantastic and will give you an itch to start colouring nodes and play with prime numbers even if you don't think you're a math person.

Pick a time when the kids are gone or asleep and grab some chocolate, a cup of tea and listen. You'll enjoy it.

Why We May Need to Consider Sending the Kids to Public School

2008-05-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

3 accused of using corpse head to smoke pot

The headline (no pun intended) says it all except for the fact that the three boys are all homeschooled.

I'm convinced. I'll be enrolling the kids in the fall. I can't have them going through life not knowing how to construct a proper bong.

One of Those Brag Posts

2008-05-09T06:51:00.001-07:00

Catherine drew a picture of a mermaid for a project her Guides troop is working on. She lost it and drew another picture. We later founf the mermaid picture but we're both pleased that, for a time, we couldn't find it because here's the second picture:

Pretty damn nice. It's got depth, focus and composition. The colours are good and the facial expressions on the beasts hint at a story.

Just awesome.

A Request From My Daughter

2008-05-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

Catherine has eagerly started Key to Algebra and was working away at factoring this morning when she asked me this:

"Do you know what I would really like? I'd like a book like The Story of Science but all about math and that I could read myself."

Um. Yes. That would be really neat. Unfortunately I don't think I've seen a book like the around. Certainly The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way itself is pretty heavy on math history. If anybody has any suggestions of non-fiction books that talk about the history of math, please let me know!

Unexpected Evolution of a Lesson

2008-05-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since we actually did an honest to goodness science experiment. I set out to fix that today by suggesting a realy simple one that will also go towards one of Catherine's Girl Guides badges - Invisible Ink.

I googled invisible ink and found quite a few different ideas. While it was the old lemon juice one I needed I also found ones involving baking soda and corn starch so I think we may have to explore this a little more over the course of the week.

About.com had a good page on the matter so Catherine read it and gathered what we needed. Then she and Harry got down to business with paintbrushes and lemon juice.

After the juice had dried I lit a candle and we applied heat to the pictures. The lemon juice turned brown as expected. Lesson learned. But of course then we saw the swirls of soot on the underside of the paper. Harry stuck his finger on one dark patch and found it was just a thin and fragile layer of soot. Catherine wanted to try more soot pictures so we held paper above the candle and moved it around to get interesting patterns. As we did so we watched the way the smoke from the flame rolled up and off the paper.

I think that's a good thing to remember with kitchen experiments sometimes. What you may set out to do may be neat but given some fun materials the kids will explore and experiment and reach farther.

There's another way to make lemon juice ink appear with salt and crayons and I think we'll try that tommorrow. I'll also take down the litmus paper and strew a few more interesting things on the kitchen table and see where the kids take it.

The 10 Year Old Tutor.

2008-05-04T18:02:00.000-07:00

My daughter had a friend, I'll call her Annie, over today. Annie is a great kid and lives right next door (although it took them a year to finally get to know each other). I've been thrilled because although she has other friends around, this girl is special. She likes Bratz and Barbies, painting and reading and even, and this is the best part, grabbing the butterfly nets and magnifying glasses for extended bug hunts.

Today they came in and after some playing Annie asked Catherine if she could write cursive. Catherine said she couldn't. They both decided to play school and Annie would be the teacher with the dry erase board.

Ten minutes later I came into the room and Catherine had done more work on cursive writing in those ten minutes then she had ever done before. And it was legible too. Annie simply wrote examples on the dry erase board and asked Catherine to copy them which she happily did.

She is now Catherine's cursive writing tutor. That's what I told her anyhow. Catherine offered to teach her the ancient Greek alphabet. Kids teaching kids. Hopw fun and sane is that?

A Move to Wordpress?

2008-05-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

I like Blogger, I really do. It's suited me for quite some time...Except when I worry about what would happen to all my posts if Blogger went down for good, or simply lost my blog. Or when I think of the security measures I can't have that Wordpress users do.

But I do find Wordpress a little intimidating. I have not the first clue what to do and I'd have to (I assume) pay for hosting.

Anyone want to help me out on this one?

I Guess I Took a Break!

2008-05-03T14:20:00.001-07:00

It's been overcast and cloudy for the last few days. I'd get up feeling lousy and tired, have a nap halfway through the day and still feel horibble and sad. I could barely manage a smile. I managed nothing blog worthy. I think I've been in a bit of a depression.

However, today I woke up early to a bright sun and blue sky and holy cow, what a difference. I've got energy and good spirits and my brain is now running at a decent speed. Apologies for not posting but I think I'm back in my groove now.

More posts to come!

Argh! Bar Models.

2008-04-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know. I just don't know.

We did a word problem today. With algebra. Yes, yes, I know I posted awhile back that Catherine finally got the bar models in Singapore Math. Thing is, she got them but she doesn't like them.

We read the question. We determined what the unknown was. Catherine whipped up an equation, 2a plus 3a over 2 equals 1044.(I wrote it out because I don't know how to knock out "over 2" on a keyboard). Sure, it could have been simplified a bit but she created it so we did the math. I then did a bar model (it was so much easier for me!), decided it was 1044 divided by 3.5 and did the math. The answers matched.

Now granted, algebra is coming much easier to me these days then it ever has before but how come she finds it so easy?

Just a note. It wasn't all roses. Her multiplication was sloppy and her spelling (on a worksheet)...Oh my. I just won't mention that. At least she's not shy about trying to write anymore. But oh my.

Dreaming Big

2008-04-28T02:24:00.000-07:00

It's finally hit home with both my husband and me. If we get out debt paid off by the end of the summer and if we knock down our mortgage in the next year and a half we can build a house. We can not just build a house but we can build an off-the-grid house.

I've been wanting to do this for awhile but two things made me think it wouldn't happen. One, the power and heating systems I've looked at would cost quite a bit up front and we just didn't have that kind of money. Two, I thought Shannon had no interest in it.

One problems was solved with Shannon's new job. The other was solved last night when we were watching a show featuring green houses. Shannon and I were talking about what we'd like to do if we built. Geothermal heating, constructed wetlands instead of septic...And then I said, "Living off the grid would probably be asking too much of us."

Shannon shrugged and said, "Why? I think we could do it."

So now, off the grid is our goal. We have two years to research and plan. If anyone has any resource they want to share I'd be grateful!

One More Thing on the Lessenberry...

2008-04-23T18:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, more than one thing.

First off, Jack Lessenberry has a great last name. It's just fantastic. I mean, Downes or Laden...Not the same ring at all. I like his name so much I'm sort of thinking of incorporating it into my everyday speech. The next time someone tells me that the only homeschoolers they know are social freaks I'll say, "Don't be such a Lessenberry!" Or maybe when I read the next editorial that claims homeschoolers are all adoring Ken Ham fans or else frontal-lobeless hippies I'll think, "That sure was a Lessenberry."

Yup. Love the name.

Next thing is that not only does Doc have the post I should have written but chickened out of (and I'm glad of it. She did a much better job then I would have) but Summer is joining in on the fun with How to Hate Homeschoolers Properly. She got her hands on The Anti-Home Education Guidebook and is letting us in on it's secrets.

Lastly, and more seriously, there's a post that relates deeply to much of the Lessenberrying that goes on. It's by Elisheva and it's called The Anointed and The Benighted. As usual, while the rest of us are splashing around on the surface she's gone deeper to explore what's behind the phenomenom of Lessenberryism:

Sowell (go read her post to find out who that is!) goes on to say that those who hold the Vision of the Anointed, take it upon themselves to characterize those they deem "them" to be not only factually wrong, but morally inferior. Because the Anointed ascribe to themselves only the best of motives, they do not feel the need to define their terms or to present logical arguments or empirical evidence for their rightness. They are right because they are the caring and compassionate few, the Ones Who Know What is Best for Us All, and if only we would let them get on with the business deciding momentous questions on the basis of their Vision, we'd all be led to the Promised Land.

Damn. She's good.

Break Time!

2008-04-23T08:30:00.001-07:00

Catherine's finished Key to Decimals book 2, worked her way up to adverbs in Winston Grammar and learned the whole ancient Greek alphabet. Time to set aside learning new things in those three areas and concentrate on practicing what she's learned. The weather has been absolutely beautiful anyhow so why coop her up in the kitchen with more texts, eh?

So I think we'll try daily practice.

- Daily practice from Daily Math Review.

- Set of mental math problems from Mental Math Sheets.

- Half a dozen questions on operations with decimals and long division. I'll get worksheets at Worksheetworks.com.

- Three word problems from Challenging Word Problems, Primary 3.

- A problem involving critical and logical thinking, probably from Brain Maths Volume 1.

- Daily grammar practice from I-don't-know-where-yet. I'm thinking lots of Mad Libs and maybe Daily Grams.

- Editing. Hopefully Catherine will write something near the start of the week, bring it to me, we'll edit it and then she'll rewrite it. We'll edit again the next day and she'll type it out. I stress the hopefully part.

- Greek? We'll probably go back to the Greek Hupogrammon after a break.

We'll try this anyway and see how it goes.

Another Day, Another Homeschooling Critic

2008-04-23T03:48:00.000-07:00

I had a big long post with a point-by-point rebuttal ready to go on this essay on homeschooling by Jack Lessenberry. His post has all the usual assumptions, leaps of logic and vague emotional appeals that we've come to know and love from people that want us to know we're doing a bad thing but can't be bothered actually learning about what it is we're really doing. Nothing too challenging. The fact that such a sloppy argument comes from a journalist of 30 years is a little surprising.

Then I looked at the comments. There were a number of good ones. What was Mr. Lessenberry's response? He invoked the Spelling Defense (sister tactic to Godwin's Law):

Ms Kelle, I did not say you are unqualified. however, you spelled both invoked and argument wrong, and have inadvertently helped prove my point

So I guess that if I were to assert journalists aren't qualified to write then his lack of punctuation and capitalization would prove my assertion?

Then someone points out, "you should have at least spoken to some public school teachers, or met some homeschooled kids, before penning your article."

Mr. Lessenberry provides this howler in response:

I sleep with a public school teacher, every night, and have for 31 years. I remain convinced that, if anything, I was too kind to the homeschoolers.

Talk to one public school teacher and you've talked to all public school teachers, eh? I'm mean, they're all connected to the mighty Mother Brain, right?

From his profile:

Jack has always said that the thing he loves about journalism is the fact that it's all about people-about connecting with and learning from them.

"I want to create intelligent dialogue about the problems we face. I think we need to think about and talk about who we are as a country and people, and explore those things."

I call bullpucky. His essay is by someone who has decided he knows enough. Someone who's given up on curiosity and settled on pontificating. His comments to those who try to engage in an intelligent dialogue show he wants no such thing.

So why did I shelve the big long post with point-by-point rebuttal? Mr. Lessenberry did all my work for me. In two comments he revealed his ridiculous leaps and sloppy attitude to research and learning better then I ever could have.

UPDATE: Doc did the research I, and Mr. Lessenberry, didn't in this excellent post. She takes his essay apart quite nicely and introduces the wonderful term, edutard.

Operations with Decimals...And Lizards!

2008-04-22T03:42:00.001-07:00

Catherine was doing work with decimals yesterday. She had to work through addition, subtraction and multiplication problems, keeping in mind what she had to do with the decimal. It didn't go so well. The first time through she moved the decimal as you do in multiplication on every single question, subtractions and addition included. I pointed out her mistake, erased all the wrong answers and asked her to do it again. She did and got most of them right but still didn't have a firm idea of what to do.

I thought about it for a minute and drew a snake to represent how decimals moved in the answer to a multiplication question:

I couldn't come up with an image for addition and subtraction so I gave Catherine some paper and 15 minutes to come up with as many pictures as she could that would represent what to do with the decimal in different operations. Here is some of what she came up with:

I was surprised by the different images and the cleverness of some of them. The dolphin is definitely my favourite.

Right after she had left the room to draw those pictures I came up with an image for decimals in adding and subtracting:

Catherine's drawing went into her math book and mine went on a poster I'm making of math symbols and ideas:

(Would anyone be interested if I did up some PDF's of our math visuals?)

Catherine now knows what to do with the decimal in different operations. She still doesn't get the why of this however. The pictures help her remember what to do but not the reasons for doing it. We'll conquer that later.

Carnivals!

2008-04-22T03:32:00.000-07:00

The 2nd Carnival of Canadian Homeschoolers is up at Jacqueline's Jabberings. If you're a Canadian homeschooler with a blog make sure you contribute a post to the next one!

Dana is hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling. My pick for most interesting is More Grousing About Children's Literature at Sometimes I'm Actually Coherent. He points out the frustrating pattern of fathers being painted as buffoons by books, TV, advertising, etc.

Have any Left-Brained Epiphanies to Share?

2008-04-21T04:17:00.000-07:00

Out in Left Field wants to know about any right-brainers out there who've had left-brained epiphanies. This was brought on by frustration with Hollywood's obsession with just the opposite:

Two movies released this week feature introverted, soul-deadened, betweeded professors who are as academically eggheaded, i.e., as left-brained, as they are clueless about all that right-brained stuff: human relationships and spirituality...In the stories we like best, it always seems to be a right-brained epiphany.

I shared a little of my story of my left-brained epiphany. How I've lately discovered the joys of rational and systematic thought and the fun of mathematics. Now OILF wants more stories so if you're a right-brainer who has at some point woken up to the wonder of things more generally associated with left-brain thinking please pop over and leave a comment!

Trip to the Park

2008-04-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

My husband just came back from a two week trip so we packed the kids up and headed up to our local wildlife park for some family time. I, for once, took the camera.

The white tailed deer are near the entrance and a huge draw because there are food dispensers where you can get bit of food for a quarter and feed the deer through the fence. My best picture of the day was this one.:

Up a bit, after some arctic foxes and reindeer, is what's essentially Predator Alley. Artic wolves, timber wolves, bobcats and lynxes. The coyotes are in behind those four and are generally a lot harder to spot. They were especially hard to spot today since their section was closed. Ah well. Here is a timber wolf:

The moose pen was undergoing some renovations so no pictures of those beasts but after some horribly smelly fox pens we got to my favourite part of the park. The birds! A small sampling:

As always there were peacocks running free everywhere. The otters gave a great show and the black bears were, luckily, right down at the front of their pen so we all got a very good sense of how big they really are.

There were also some pens with eagles, falcons and owls. The park isn't simply a zoo but it also takes in sick and injured animals. The birds of prey they house are always ones that can't be returned to the wild due to their injuries. However, they're still spectacular:

Here's a video of one more of the injured birds that the park cares for. His disability is pretty obvious:

How Does Your Brain Work?

2008-04-18T04:40:00.001-07:00

At the most excellent blog Out in Left Field the question was asked, Are all epiphanies right-brained?

Two movies released this week feature introverted, soul-deadened, betweeded professors who are as academically eggheaded, i.e., as left-brained, as they are clueless about all that right-brained stuff: human relationships and spirituality...In the stories we like best, it always seems to be a right-brained epiphany.

I left a comment letting the author know that I had indeed had a left-brained epiphany.

Then I started really looking at math while homeschooling my kids and engaging in demanding debates and suddenly I've had a blossoming of rational thought and a found a lot of joy in numbers. It has been wonderful.

I've always thought I was a right-brained thinker. I tended to be empathic and artsy and well, I am left handed. All the things associated with being right-brained right?

Well, first there was the epiphany and then some tests that Lefty provided in the comments on Empathy versus Systemizing.

I took the Systemizing Quotient test.

0 - 19 = low
20 - 39 = average (most women score about 24 and most men score about 30)
40 - 50 = above average (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score in this range)
51 - 80 is very high (three times as many people with Asperger Syndrome score in this range, compared to typical men, and almost no women score in this range)
80 is maximum

I'm a 34. That's within average but quite a bit higher then what most women score and even higher then what most men score. That's a challenge to my notions about myself.

I then took the Empathy Quotient test.

0 - 32 = low (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20)
33 - 52 = average (most women score about 47 and most men score about 42)
53 - 63 is above average
64 - 80 is very high
80 is maximum

I scored 52. That's more like it. A little above what most women score and what I expected.

Okay. Then I took the Autism Spectrum Quotient test.

0 - 10 = low
11 - 22 = average (most women score about 15 and most men score about 17)
23 - 31 = above average
32 - 50 is very high (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 35)
50 is maximum

23. 23!

I had always chalked up my interest in drawing, singing and the arts in general to some vague right-brained artiness. The first two tests had me questioning that. The more I think about it my interest usually lies in the structure of a piece or a song rather then what emotion it evokes. Is it maybe not the interest in art the points to how you think but rather, what excites you about art? I remember seeing a piece of art that basically looked like a close up of backlit window blinds. The person I was with said it left her cold and dismissed it. I thought it was fantastic and kept poring over the details - the structure.

The tests also had me reflecting on my childhood and I was surprised to learn that the images I often called up were ones that supported my previous idea that I was an right-brained thinker rather then a systematic thinker. The emotional attachment to paper scraps, the empathy for other kids. What did I often not recall? Things I don't quite know how to even explain. Like an an obsession with counting things and needing them to end in even numbers or having to mentally reconstruct scenes I was looking at to make them symmetrical or follow a consistant pattern. I haven't even thought much about those so I don't know how to properly communicate what I was doing but I did realize I've cherry-picked my memory to conform to my idea of myself.

I don't know how accurate the tests are. What I do know is that they've challenged me to think about myself and who I think I am. To not whittle myself down to some personality type but explore the possibility that I'm probably a person that encompasses a whole spectrum of personalities types. I suspect the same is true for most of us.

Restraint and Scheduling

2008-04-16T04:23:00.000-07:00

I read a blog post not too long ago about giving up responsibility to our kids (I can't remember the blog now, darn it). It got me thinking about how much responsibility I hoard for myself in our house. How I barely portion it out to the kids at times because frankly, it's easier for me to do it myself. What a shortsighted and petty thing to do.

My first thought was to have some kind of big discussion with the kids on responsibility and portion up chores and have lists and...Go overboard. Thankfully, I've noticed lately that I tend to go overboard for a day or two and then nothing comes of that. Instead I started Monday with restraint.

Catherine and I talked about what she wanted to do next in math. She decided she'd like to go back to decimals. She's halfway through Key to Decimals book 2. We sat down and counted out the pages left. 20. She thought she could do that fairly quickly.

"This week?" I asked.

"Yep."

We divided the pages by 5 and she took out an old student planner I picked up last fall and wrote down the pages she had to do for each day. Then she decided which days she'd like to do Greek and Grammar and wrote those down. We didn't go any further and that's pretty much where her formal work stops. And I'm trying to be restrained. No awesome grand plan that covers everything.

We'll see how it goes.

If it Looks Too Good to be True...

2008-04-14T15:59:00.000-07:00

I've been seeing some blog plugs on K-12 Free Homeschooling pop up and was getting ready to write something but noticed this most excellent post from The Home Education Magazine's Editor Blog on Mimi Rothschild, the head cheese of K-12 Free. From the blog:

I’ve waited two days to write this post, believing it’s best to err on the side of caution when the stakes are potentially very high. Having waited two days, and having considered all the harassing phone calls, all the blisteringly-written letters, all the provoking emails, all the threatened lawsuits… well… enough is enough.

Mimi Rothschild contacted our advertising manager last week “seeking to run a large ad campaign in Home Education Magazine.” Knowing our lengthy history with this individual - her last contentious email and phone call were in February - our advertising manager contacted us and asked if we wanted to run her advertisements. We said no, we did not want her advertising in our magazine, for reasons which can be readily identified through our past communications with Mimi and her multiple dbas and aliases.

The post goes on to detail lots of interesting things about Mimi including a great series of infomative comments about her on a HE&OS thread. I'll add a couple of sources that I often use when I notice homeschoolers asking about K-12 Free Homeschooling or any of the other sites run by Ms. Rothschild. Both have lots of information that you can follow up on.

Hawaii Virtual School - Apparently people searching for them had experienced some confusion and ended up on Mimi Rothschild sites. They put up this page with a lot of info, including links to articles and court documents (!).

Homeschool.com thread - This details some troubles some members of the forum had had with K12 Free. Search for "mimi" and you'll find more threads on the same matter.

When we're looking for education options for our children we've got to be careful. Before you sign up for something, take a few moments to plug the name into Google. Even better, pair the name with "complaints" and see what comes up. Make sure you do your research because even something that seems free can cause a whole lot of pain and heartache.

They're Either Blind or Handing Out Blinders.

2008-04-14T04:35:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to develop two uncharitable ideas about why people think homeschooling parents must have some form of qualification in order to teach their children.

They are:

1) I couldn't trust myself to do that.

2) People can't be trusted to do that.

Number one is probably the one I see most often. They don't trust their own knowledge when it's unaccompanied by a $40,000 piece of paper. They don't trust their ability to judge the knowledge of others. They don't trust that learning can happen without a teacher leading them by the hand. They often don't even seem to trust that they can learn at all once out of the environment of school.

Number two generally represents those people who don't have a problem trusting themselves. They're very sure of their own abilities and knowledge, they simply know that everyone else can't be trusted. This is because we aren't them.

One group has been molded by the system of education to think they can not function without it. The other group has become the system.

My Freaky Son

2008-04-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

I had heard about the Red House before. This is my 6 year old's other house and it often is where he has, "many of Thomas stuff," and where his Red House family lives. I found out yesterday that Red House was actually a planet and on this planet Harry's other mother and father had, "died in a 'splosion."

"Oh?"

"Yes! It was huge! They were made into bones and they died."

"I'm sorry to hear that!"

"But I have many of brothers and sisters and they didn't die. They were in tent, a metal tent. But my parents died so I came to this planet."

"Well, we're sure happy you did."

"I'm glad too but I miss my brothers and sisters. I need to build a portal so I can go get them."

"How will you do that?"

"Hmmmmm....I know! I can use my Digivice!"

This is the point where Catherine and I stopped exchanging weird looks and started laughing. A Digivice is a a tool from Digimon. Now we were in familiar territory and the conversation that was previously freaky and morbid was now turning out to be about Digimon. Pokemon and dragons soon made their way into the story as well. I have no idea where the Red House planet or the crispified parents came from but I'll simply assume he picked up some images somewhere and incorporated them into what he thought was a thrilling and dramatic story. I look forward, I think, to more.

Ants for Geeks

2008-04-13T05:06:00.000-07:00

I was at my local thrift store last week and picked up Simant. This is an old game (the jewel case assures me it will work on a 286 running Windows 3.0) and one I'd never played myself but I did remember hours and hours of fun with Sim City (by the same legendary designer, Will Wright). I picked it up and a few days later Catherine installed it on her computer. This is what it looks like:

(couldn't find a decent pic with an english screen!)

I wondered a bit whether she's like it. Those graphics are pretty old school. No problem. She worked her way through the tutorial and got swept up in the game in no time. When we were talking about it last night she was enthusiatic, describing it as awesome and, "one of my most favourite games ever!"

While searching for a picture I found a neat article from the Zooilloogix blog that has some absolutely spectacular pictures of ant nest molds. Click on over to see what I mean.

Rural Kids

2008-04-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

I had a knock on the door last night. I answered and saw a boy, about 7, whom I hadn't seen before.

"Does a little boy live here."

"Uh...Yes,"

"Can he come out and play with me?"

"Sure. Harry!!"

Harry got his shoes on and ran out and they screamed and ran happily for the next hour.

Turns out the boy lived down the road a little. His family had been there for a little while but we hadn't connected. He found out about Harry and marched up to our house to see him.

This is Rural Parenting. Shove them out the door in the morning. Forget about them. Call them in at night.

It makes for confident and intelligent kids.

Go Get a Pelvic Exam

2008-04-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a radio show today called White Coat, Black Art. It covers a lot of really interesting aspects of health care that the end users, us, rarely think about. It's a Canadian show but I'm betting most of the issues are applicable to US listeners as well and I heartily recommend you subscribe to their podcast. The one I listened to today was about pelvic exams:

The sound of the running water. The metallic speculum bills tapping against one another. Suddenly, you feel your sock-covered feet in the stirrups. Well, at least half of you know what we're talking about. Today, on White Coat Black Art... the perils and the puzzles of the pelvic exam.

It's a good one and had me in stitches for much of the show. Besides, haven't you always wanted to know where the oldest speculum in history was discovered and hear the term, "satanic vagina"?

Anyhow, it got me thinking about a post Andrea wrote a little while ago:

If it has been more than a year since your last checkup, do me a favor. Tomorrow morning, instead of checking in my blog or surfing a few sites or even buying a bunch of daffodils to raise money to cure cancer, pick up the phone. Call your doctor and make an appointment. Yeah, it’s a hassle, I know. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your family. Do it for me.

Andrea's right. Go get it done. It's not a big deal and should be an essential part of every woman's health regimen. Listen to the show first though. The story about the flying speculum is priceless.