A Thank-You Note to the Real Heroes of History

Well… I’m back. We left on a lengthy (almost three-week long) vacation to Hawaii in mid-October. The day before we returned, I came down with a bacterial infection (in three different areas of my body – no, the doctors don’t know how that happened): I spent several days in the hospital on an IV drip. Fortunately, I’m now pretty much recovered.

Anyway… when I get a chance I’ll blog about homeschooling on a Hawaii vacation – there are lots of things to do in Hawaii, many quite educational, besides swimming and snorkeling (yes, we did also swim and snorkel). And, I have a lot of other topics, from teaching complex numbers to kids to a possible scandal concerning global warming to the idea of natural rights that I want to talk about. I'll also try to reply to some of the comments I missed during my absence. So, back to my regularly scheduled blogging…

Oh, and I am really grateful to the people who invented antibiotics in the middle of the twentieth century. We tend to forget that infections that are now an inconvenient nuisance once used to kill people in very, very large numbers.

The real heroes of history? Those who invented anesthesia (imagine a root canal, much less abdominal surgery, without anesthetics!) and the folks who discovered antibiotics.