Dina Felice

Most of the restrictions on donating bone marrow have to do with risk to the recipient. Fair enough: who wants to get cured of cancer only to get HIV?

Others have to do with risk to the donor. Also fair: we don't want to kill a healthy person in exchange for saving a sick one.

But obesity? Given that the sites encouraging donation make a point about how low-risk donating is, why is obesity in-and-of-itself a problem? I understand why common complications associated with obesity (like diabetes or heart disease) would be an issue, but (to put it bluntly) what if someone is just fat?

As someone who has been obese virtually my entire life, I don't understand this one. I am 29 years old with blood pressure on the low side of normal, normal blood sugars, normal cholesterol and I rarely get sick. Oh, and I've been a regular blood donor for 12 years (yes, since I was 17).

If my little brother (or someone else I loved) needed marrow, I would insist on being tested as a match and, if I matched, I would insist on being allowed to donate, regardless of risk. But how much risk is there really? And if it is a relatively low risk, shouldn't I be allowed to decide whether I am willing to take that risk on behalf of a stranger?

This is a book I remember reading probably 10-15 years ago. But I don't remember what it is called. Some help?

It is set in a time when the world has gotten very cold. There are 2 social groups: the elites and the slaves. The slaves work in the mines to get enough of the 'firestones' (I'm not sure if that is the correct name) in order that everyone can survive.

The main character is a young slave girl...maybe 16? Like all the other slaves, she was branded with a flame in a circle on her forehead when she was a child. She gets chosen to be the handmaid/assistant of the man who has the power of being able to find new mines. He is taking a social risk by choosing her, and is trying to improve the lot of the other slaves.

The story follows her travels with him, and the abilities she develops along the way.

Ring any bells?

These fruit flies have a sex-linked recessive eye color mutation. The color ranges from nearly normal to orange to white. I had a hard time differentiating the 'orange' and other dark ones from the wildtype: to figure out whether a particular fly was a mutant or a wildtype, I looked for the dark spots on the eyes (normally present in wildtypes, they were absent in our mutants).

Any ideas of what this mutation is called?

Given: Hemophilia and colorblindness are 10 units away from each other on the X chromosome (i.e. they are sex-linked and, if a chromosome has both of them, there is only a 10% chance that they will be inherited separately).

A colorblind man married a woman who has one 'clean' X and one X that carries both hemophilia and colorblindness. They have a colorblind daughter. What are the chances that

1-she is a carrier of hemophilia and

2-she will pass the disease on to a future son?

If you live in a state with stringent regulations (e.g. New York), how on earth do you unschool, or even do stuff at your child's pace, without running afoul of the regulations? Does anyone have any experience with this?

Please Note: I am not currently homeschooling, I am not going to be homeschooling anytime soon (one generally needs to have some kids around first)--I am just curious. So I am much more interested to hear how you deal with the situation, rather than just hearing the suggestion to "contact your local homeschooling group".

How do homeschooling parents manage, both finacially and time-wise? Where I live, everyone comes from a home where both parents worked...it almost seems inconceivable that one could stay home full-time, just to teach the kids. And then recently, I mentioned homeschooling to my mom and a friend of hers (offhandedly, in the course of conversation) and they both immediately said that it was better to send kids to a private school (which they felt would be more cost-effective anyway).

Also, I always assumed that even if you could have one parent stay home, the other would necessarily have to go to work...but it looks like some of you are single parents. How on earth do you manage?

Note: I am 25, I do not need to be homeschooled, I do not need advice on how to get my mom to homeschool me, I'm just curious...maybe for my future children?

In case you are wondering, it stands for Species, Genus, Family, Order, Class, Phylum, Kingdom, Domain.

Please, don't give me one in the reverse order, I really want to do one for this order.

Personally, I'm leaning towards starting it with "Seven Girls..." or even "Seven Girls Found..." Any ideas?

Seriously, every time someone on this board asks anything that has any slight relationship to social skills or whether people should try homeschooling, people come streaming out of the woodwork, saying that high school teaches good social skills. This isn't even a complaint about people who think that homeschooling creates anti-social loaners, what I want to know is why they (or you, if you are one of them) think that high school is a good place to learn social skills?

High school traps people in cliques, allows bullies to harass (or do worse) in ways that would be illegal if they weren't in school, is more racially segregated than almost anything else (yes, much more than private schools), does nothing to help shy kids become less shy, and everyone they meet is from the same basic background as they are.

So where's the good part?