Too much TV?

Other than his story-writing in MS-Word, Z also keeps spreadsheets and an MS-Money file, and plays pretend stuff with those. His Excel spreadsheet has tabs that are similar to the spreadsheet I use for a budget.

The other day, he was asking about something I was doing and I showed how I could sort expenses to see what category was highest, which led to this conversation:

Me: See, so taxes is the biggest number, even more than we spend on this house.
Z: Then you better not vote for Marva Armstrong.
Me: Who?
Z: Marva Armstrong will raise your taxes.
Me: I'm not sure. I don't know who she is, but her opponents will say those things. You can't believe it all.
Z: Well, she wants to raise taxes on movies-tickets and restaurants and stuff

A few days later, I caught the same TV ad!

Little Researcher

As I mentioned before, Z loves to read and also loves to write. The other day he said to me that maybe he'd like to grow up to be a researcher.

"What type?" I asked, "researchers usually research some subject, like History or Biology and so on."

"I was to research all sorts of stuff, to make books like these for children", he replied, holding up a copy of 'Great Mammals of the Ocean'.

Today, asked, "What sites on the internet can I go to, to do some research?", and before I could answer, he added, "Oh! yes, I know. I can simply go to Google and search". And, with that, he was off.

I should check that Google's "safe filtering" is set to "strict" on all three computers, because he flits from one to another.

Book worm

Z loves books. Yes, he loves to read, but that's not all I mean. He actually loves books, in an almost physical way. He pores over them and notes all sorts of little details: like the stuff about Library of Congress, whether it has a dust-jacket, how the contents are organized, whether chapters always start on a new page, how the pages are numbered.

He sometimes says that he's considering being an author when he grows up (because "creative writing" is his favorite subject in school). He will sometimes sit for hours at the computer creating "books". If one looks closely, though, an adult would conclude that his real career is going to be as a typesetter, printer, page-designer, editor, or publisher.

He does not just pore over his own books. He loves poring over mine too. He will take any book I'm reading and study it. He doesn't read it, but he'll study various aspects of these "big people's" (i.e. more real) books. Sometimes, he'll remember some crazy detail like: "Dad, wait, let me check" (runs away and comes back with an investment book I was reading four months ago), "Yes, I thought I remembered that. See, this book also has a chapter called 'Mister Market'".

Yesterday, he told me that one of my books was completely superfluous. "You don't need this book", he said, "because everything in it is in other books you have". Turns out that he had just gone through my "Ayn Rand Sampler" and cross-checked that all the essays were from books that I already own!