A friend asked a group of us online the following:

Do any of you keep track of the silly rules you make up during the day?
C'mon, 'fess up. As moms, we're necessarily going to come up with some
stupid-ass rules that our kids have to live with. I'll share mine if you
share yours!

To which most poeple responded WAY too seriously. My reply:

Hmmm:

"No colouring in Sharpie on Daddy's computer desk, we ALWAYS use
paper!"
"CHLOE! No Chapstick on your butt"
"No whining before 10 AM, and any whining after that must be done in
your room"
"No spending 8 hours straight on the computer!" (of course Phil and I
are the offenders of this as much as Phoebe)
"No spending 9 hours on the potty, finish your business and get the
fark off!"
"You spill it, you clean it" until you realize that Chloe's just
swimming in it.
"Stop trying to snort through your completely occluded left nostril
and just breathe through your mouth!"
"No playing with mommy's shots"

THere are more... but you get the gist.

And then she posted her own, which cracked me up as well:

Here's what we
currently have on our fridge:

1. We don't bite people's socks off.
2. We don't take forks in the shower.
3. Forks stay in the kitchen.
4. We don't poke Paul with forks.
5. We don't poke anybody with forks. *(Don't you just love when your
kiddos find gaping loopholes in your rules?)*
6. We don't spin knives around at the table.
7. We don't pull Paul's ears.
8. We don't pull Paul's hair. *(Keep in mind that Paul's hair was
about 1/4 inch long at the time. It's HARD to grab hair that short!)*
9. Chairs stay at the table.
10. We don't climb on bookshelves.
11. We don't drill babies.
12. We don't drill anybody.
13. We only pinch people's butts if they ask us to.
14. We don't put Tabasco in Daddy's coffee.

I am REALLY laughing over the fact that these rules are on their FRIDGE! Mine were just things I remembered popping off with in the last week.

Philosophy is kicking my butt. It's FUN, but does it ever talk in circles.

So we are currently looking at the questions of "what is knowledge?" and "what is science?". The question of "What is knowledge?" seems to be the basis of much philosophy. It is a question that (ooh, I HATE this word, but I'm gonna use it anyway) underpins research, and the different individuals responses to this question underpins different styles of research.

Therefore, trying to understand knowledge leads to how we perform scientific research, and what truly makes a science.

I grew up the daughter of a physicist and a public defender. I ALWAYS knew (there's that word again) that physics was a science. In fact, to me, it was the mother of all sciences... because it was the basis of what is in the world around us.

Now in philosophy we're being asked to question this presupposition. Because some of the assumptions of physics aren't empirically testable. In fact, in some ways it's more like a religion. We're asked to believe on faith that submicroscopic particles exist and make up aspects of the universe.

This leads to the fact that the law fits into the role of science as well, which was NEVER something I believed. I was never asked to. And yet, the hypothesis of an event is being tested, and a jury has to look at the evidence available and must REJECT the hypothesis if there is a reasonable doubt that such event occurred. This fits far better into the mold of the scientific method of creating a null hypothesis and trying to disprove it than does much of the testing done in physics.

My core is absolutely rocked.

My mom is the scientist, and my dad more of a parascientist - or to go further, a minister?

I must go lie in the fetal position and suck my thumb for a while before I write my paper on Descartes and non-pharmaceutical pain management.