the art of writing is discovering what you believe
Do you have any favorite children’s gifts your children have received or been given? Any timeless ideas you’d like to share?
If you have come across something really good, please leave it a comment on this page. Please tell us the name, a description, where you found it, and what age child it would be best suited for. And if you need some ideas, I hope there are a few here to inspire you.
Thanks!
I have gotten probably 100 or more comment spams today: only a couple made it through. WPBlacklist deletes them within a second before they even see the light of day.
Feh. I didn’t do an installment yesterday, due to a feeling of oppressive gloom.
So over the three actual writing days, I am at 4900 words. Even divided by 4, it’s not too bad.
Now playing:Barracuda (Rehearsal Tapes Version) by Sonic Youth from the album “Dirty (Deluxe Edition) [Remastered]”
well, it didn’t take long to find the information I wanted. How read this chart:
If it’s a negative number, you lose: you’re giving away more than your get, in California’s case, $58 billion. But if you’re in Alabama, say, you win: you collected $10 billion more than you contributed. And hey, look at Virginia with almost $22 billion in federal funds: you’d think one of the oldest states would have figured out how to generate a surplus by now.
|
States’ Balance of Payments with Washington, 2001
(dollars in millions) |
|||
|
Taxes Paid
|
Spending Received
|
Surplus/Deficit
|
|
| Alabama |
22,437
|
33,205
|
10,768
|
| Alaska |
4,200
|
6,685
|
2,485
|
| Arizona |
30,057
|
32,392
|
2,335
|
| Arkansas |
12,476
|
17,469
|
4,993
|
| California |
264,344
|
206,245
|
-58,099
|
| Colorado |
33,898
|
26,618
|
-7,280
|
| Connecticut |
36,416
|
25,351
|
-11,065
|
| Delaware |
5,750
|
4,632
|
-1,118
|
| Florida |
110,294
|
107,395
|
-2,899
|
| Georgia |
52,225
|
50,822
|
-1,403
|
| Hawaii |
6,903
|
10,185
|
3,282
|
| Idaho |
6,683
|
7,977
|
1,294
|
| Illinois |
96,686
|
71,520
|
-25,166
|
| Indiana |
36,733
|
34,630
|
-2,103
|
| Iowa |
16,725
|
18,523
|
1,798
|
| Kansas |
16,503
|
17,806
|
1,303
|
| Kentucky |
20,509
|
27,210
|
6,701
|
| Louisiana |
21,371
|
29,249
|
7,878
|
| Maine |
6,904
|
8,643
|
1,739
|
| Maryland |
41,779
|
50,966
|
9,187
|
| Massachusetts |
59,779
|
48,188
|
-11,591
|
| Michigan |
67,886
|
56,185
|
-11,701
|
| Minnesota |
36,519
|
27,384
|
-9,135
|
| Mississippi |
12,094
|
21,023
|
8,929
|
| Missouri |
33,718
|
41,452
|
7,734
|
| Montana |
4,359
|
6,910
|
2,551
|
| Nebraska |
10,415
|
11,469
|
1,054
|
| Nevada |
15,014
|
10,631
|
-4,383
|
| New Hampshire |
10,315
|
7,006
|
-3,309
|
| New Jersey |
75,115
|
51,657
|
-23,458
|
| New Mexico |
8,487
|
17,156
|
8,669
|
| New York |
166,554
|
126,990
|
-39,564
|
| North Carolina |
47,579
|
47,748
|
169
|
| North Dakota |
3,288
|
6,169
|
2,881
|
| Ohio |
69,127
|
66,341
|
-2,786
|
| Oklahoma |
16,667
|
23,790
|
7,123
|
| Oregon |
21,241
|
19,826
|
-1,415
|
| Pennsylvania |
83,052
|
84,880
|
1,828
|
| Rhode Island |
6,990
|
7,458
|
468
|
| South Carolina |
20,799
|
26,070
|
5,271
|
| South Dakota |
4,293
|
6,095
|
1,802
|
| Tennessee |
33,225
|
38,986
|
5,761
|
| Texas |
134,809
|
121,571
|
-13,238
|
| Utah |
11,358
|
12,139
|
781
|
| Vermont |
3,731
|
3,984
|
253
|
| Virginia |
52,858
|
74,802
|
21,944
|
| Washington |
49,651
|
40,233
|
-9,418
|
| West Virginia |
7,793
|
13,064
|
5,271
|
| Wisconsin |
34,609
|
28,966
|
-5,643
|
| Wyoming |
3,583
|
3,824
|
241
|
Unfair? Perhaps. The federal system is supposed to benefit everyone without quibbling about who generates a surplus or a deficit. But the divisions aren’t my invention: again, if people can speak for the president and his party and deprecate the ones who generate the tax revenues that subsidize their base without fear of correction, why should we put up with it?
OK, I can see why there’s some indignation here . . . .
Cory Doctorow:
iPod Download is an iTunes plugin for moving music off your iPod onto your Mac that Apple had removed from the Internet by means of a series of lawyer letters. Then Apple shipped a disingenous “update” to iTunes that contained a blacklist of disallowed plugins, including iPod Download, because apparently Apple knows better than you which software you should use with your iPod after you’ve bought it and paid for it.iPod Download has been updated to version 1.1, and it works with iTunes again. Get it before Apple uses the law to take away your rights again.
(via Engadget)
but if you follow the links and see how trivial it was to re-enable the plugin and regain access to the files, I have to wonder if Apple is doing just a little more than playing along. Consider that “breaking” the DRM is as simple as burning a CD from iTunes and ripping it. Does that sound like a draconian regime or is it more like someone playing “wink wink nudge nudge” with clueless RIAA cartel?
I admit the whole idea of copy protection/DRM is nasty and has proven to be technically unworkable: the idea of the RIAA getting into an intellectual arms race with hackers isn’t worth betting on — unless you bet with the RIAA on them winning.
Now playing:The Bottom Line by Big Audio Dynamite from the album “This Is Big Audio Dynamite”
Well, what a pleasant surprise. An old debate adversary — now a fellow member of the community at GrabTheMic — sent me an iTunes gift certificate for a generous sum. So something good came out of Ohio, for me anyway . . .
Now it’s up to me to be gracious in defeat. It seems I should stay in practice . . . .
Any idea why Yahoo!, et al, don’t disintermediate this service?
TinyURL.com – where tiny is better!:
Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then you’ve come to the right place. By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.
Who really wants to copy — or worse, type — this mess: http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/freecycleseattle/lst?.dir=/1912+Smith+%26+Barnes+piano&.src=gr&.order=&.view=t&.done=http%3a//briefcase.yahoo.com/ ?
A friend and former colleague at CNN.com writes:
Peak hits/min: 3 million
Peak page views/min: 1 million
4 million hits/min peak (sustained for 15 min, 23:05-23:20)
Max response time for cnn.com: 0.6 second
Dunno yet what total page views for the day wound up at. I picked 275M in the pool but we blew past that shortly after 10pm.
346,416,000 page views
3372 words out of 50,000.
So far, so . . . .
This is harder than it looks, unless you think it’s really hard. In which case, it’s just as hard as it looks.
I should have seen this coming . . .
Record a solo album in “NaNoWriMo for musicians”:
Cory Doctorow:
The fifth NaNoWriMo — the national novel writing month that challenges individuals to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days — has just kicked off, and good luck to the NaNovelists!
But what of the musically creative? They need not suffer in silence any longer: Lacunae has just floated “NaSoAlMo” — the national solo album month, for “brave souls who are up for it will write and record an entire solo album in the course of its 30 days.”
Q. So, for the purposes of NaSoAlMo, what exactly is a solo album?
A. An album of music you have written, played and recorded entirely by yourself*. The shortest inarguably awesome album I can think of offhand that a lot of people have heard is the first Ramones album, which is 29:09 long, so your solo album must be at least that long. Beyond that, its form and content are up to you.
*Since Ramones includes a cover of “Let’s Dance,” your NaSoAlMo album may, if you wish, include one cover of somebody else’s song.
(Thanks, Lalitree!)
Jeez, you’d think they could have picked a different month, though. What if you wanna do both?