Friday, February 27, 2009

Working on a Post

I am working on a post with more cool graphs but I wanted to weigh in on the stimulus.  I visited http://www.recovery.gov/ the website that is supposed to provide transparency on how the money is spent.  I found it interesting that most of the money will go to "* Tax Relief."  

Notice the star?  I did.  The footnote is learn more, so I did.  I clicked on the link and saw a nice bubble chart showing the proportions of the money and "* Tax Relief" is the largest bubble.  At the bottom of the page there is the following:

Tax Relief - includes $15 B for Infrastructure and Science, $61 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $25 B for Education and Training and $22 B for Energy, so total funds are $126 B for Infrastructure and Science, $142 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $78 B for Education and Training, and $65 B for Energy.

Hmm.  So $126 billion for Infrastructure & Science not $111 billion, and $142 for Protecting the Vulnerable that was put into * Tax Relief.  Do you know what the total spent on tax relief is after subtracting  all this out?  $105 billion. (By the way $8 Billion for Other.  What does that mean?)

So the bar chart on the homepage looks like this:

Where is Your Money Going?




When it should really look like this (pardon the small fonts):






More to come on the economy. GDP figures are out today. interesting stuff is on its way.

UPDATE So I had to post an update to this post because recovery.gov changed their home page (and it's not on the way back machine). I did find something interesting which once again proves the devil is in the details of a boring technical document. This Page has a map of the US showing how many jobs the stimulus bill will save/create. I was interested in their methodology and read "The state jobs estimates are inherently more speculative than the overall estimates" which means that the information in the map is speculative. The overall estimates are not available. Does this seem Orwellian to anyone else?

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Valentines Day and more

One of Caleb's projects was a colored sand jar made from fruit loops. First we had to sort the colors.

Then he had to crush the fruit loops. He liked pounding them but he like sorting them better (more ended up in his mouth)

Caleb's finished product.

Mason was excited to open his Valentine bag

Caleb put together special bags for family members for Valentines Day. These are lollipop mice.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

January Activity Highlights

5 Senses - Sight Day - We made binoculars



FHE treat - Crunchy the snowman



Matching lowercase and uppercase letters


Letter P = Pom Poms


White Day - shaving cream drawings


treading marshmallows on licorice

Rochester Museum of Play




FHE treat - Waffle brownies






Letter Q= Quilt


Book Theme Challenge - The Mittens by Jan Brett
Treading mittens

Painting mitten toast with colored milk for a snack


FHE treat - skiing snowmen



5 Senses Day - Sound - Make tambourines


Color Day - Brown- We made a hat


Chinese New year - Made lanterns


Letter S = Sandpaper

FHE treat for Chinese New Year - Fortune cookies with fortunes by Caleb

Reading theme challenge foe Chinese New Year - We read "D is for Dragon Dance by Ying Chang Compenstine" In the book each letter stood for something that helped celebrate Chinese New Year. The R stood for Red envelopes so we made our own to help us celebrate (Year of the OX)

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Mason's Birthday

We celebrated Mason's birthday two days after his actual birthday so that family could be there. So on his birthday I made Mason and Caleb sheep cupcakes.

Mason loves the bathtub and water. He crawls into the tub as soon as he hears the water. So for his cake I made a bath tub.




Yum! Birthday cake!

He got a wagon for his birthday. All of the kids love it, Mason climbs in and out of it constantly.