Book For The Week - 11/30/2010

Nature

by


Ralph Waldo Emerson

While visiting Concord Massachusetts on vacation this fall I made myself a promise that I would alternate the more popular fiction I listen to on audio with works by some of the people whose homes I have visited.  One of these people was Ralph Waldo Emerson.  I finished listening to his essay "Nature"  while walking on the treadmill after work tonight.  While I enjoyed the book it seemed that I would hear a line that would make me want to digest it and off my mind would go and when I returned to listening I had missed too much.  So I think this is the type of work a person would want to read a few lines and think about and then read a few more lines.  I do not think it lends itself to audio.   I tried starting to listen to the beginning again, thinking the second time through I would do better,  and again there is so much that is thought provoking my mind would not stay with the reader.  As always click on the author's name and title to learn more.  Also, I think I have figured out how to embed the player of the actual audio book I listened to.  Since it is over 75 years old the book is in the public domain and there is no copyright issue.

http://ia311040.us.archive.org/2/items/nature_0909_librivox/nature_4_emerson_64kb

http://ia311040.us.archive.org/2/items/nature_0909_librivox/nature_4_emerson_64kb

Which States Are More Socialist?

This is a cut and paste from CNBC - I was going to link only but the text was too small.  HERE is the link if you wish to go to it. 

"The Most Socialist States in America

The Street | November 26, 2010 | 01:47 PM EST

When the Democratic Party took over the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2008, conservatives were quick to warn their supporters of a coming era of socialism led by President Barack Obama.
Indeed, that message was a constant in the debate over the health care reform bill as well as the Congressional midterm elections, when Tea Party conservatives made taxation a rallying cry for frustrated Americans.
As the narrative of the country’s purported move toward socialism persists, MainStreet decided to evaluate which states were the most and least socialist, to get a picture of how diverse the country is in how states manage their finances.
What is 'Socialist,' Anyway?
To evaluate the degree to which different states manifest socialist principles, we started from the core definition of socialism as a form of government in which the state owns the means of production and allocates resources to its citizens at its discretion.
In other words, a purely socialist state is one in which the state is responsible for 100% of economic output and spends all of it on social programs.
Since no part of the U.S. can be considered purely socialist, we measured total expenditures as a proportion of total economic output to compare the size of the public sector in each state. Using recently released 2009 state gross domestic product figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and total state expenditures for fiscal year 2009 from the most recent report of the National Association of State Budget Officers, we have come up with the 10 most socialist states in America.
Read on; the results may surprise you. (Or jump to — Alaska?!)
10. Rhode Island
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $47,837,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $7,587,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 15.9%
On the list of most socialist states, tiny Rhode Island takes the 10th spot. Progressive on many social questions (the state was the second to abolish the death penalty, and was the third to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes), its residents have voted for Democrats in eight of the last nine presidential elections.
Economically, Rhode Island continually ranks among the states with the highest tax rates. Its property taxes, sales tax and income taxes are all above the respective national averages, not surprising for the 10th most socialist state on our list.
9. Hawaii
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $66,431,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $11,822,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 17.8%
8. Arkansas
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $101,818,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $18,403,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 18.1%
7. Wyoming
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $37,544,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $7,123,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 19.0%
6. Mississippi
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $95,905,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $19,380,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 20.2%
5. New Mexico
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $74,801,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $15,455,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 20.7%
4. Vermont
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $25,438,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $5,341,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 21.0%
3. Alabama
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $169,856,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $46,558,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 27.4%
2. Alaska
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $45,709,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $14,315,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 31.3%
1. West Virginia
Gross Domestic Product (2009): $63,344,000,000
Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $20,362,000,000
Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 32.1%
Despite the fact that Republicans won two out of three House seats in the 2010 midterm elections, West Virginia has been a Democratic state for most of its existence.
In fact, Congress’s longest-serving member ever was Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who, at the time of his death last year, had represented the state for 57 years.
On the state level, four of the past five governors have come from the Democratic Party, which could explain how the state’s expenditures have come to account for 32.1% of total output.
- Greg Bocquet is a writer for MainStreet, part of TheStreet Network."

Book For The Week - 11/25/2010

Oryx and Crake

by

Margaret Atwood

Library Journal:

"The doyenne of Canadian literature (she's won both a Booker and a Giller Prize), the versatile Atwood has an uncanny ability to write in a number of literary genres. Like The Handmaid's Tale, her latest work is set in a near future that is all too realistic and almost too terrifying to contemplate. Having once led a life of comfort and self-indulgence, Jimmy, now known as Snowman, has survived an ecological disaster that has destroyed the world as we know it. As he struggles to function without everything he once knew, including time, Snowman reflects on the past, on his relationships with two characters named Oryx and Crake, and on the role of each individual in the destruction of the natural world. From its opening scene, in which the children of Crake scavenge through debris, to its horrifying conclusion, this novel challenges the reader, cleverly pairing familiar aspects of the world with parts that have been irrevocably changed. A powerful and perturbing glimpse into a dark future, this is Atwood's impassioned plea for responsible management of our human, scientific, and natural resources and a novel that will cast long and lingering shadows in the reader's mind, well after the book is closed. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03.]-Caroline Hallsworth, City of Greater Sudbury, Ont. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information."

(I chose to listen to the book  "Oryx and Crake" after reading a review here on MP of another novel by this author called "The Year of the Flood".  It seemed like "The Year of the Flood" was a sequel to "Oryx and Crake" so I decided to purchase "Oryx and Crake"  first.  I finished listening to this book on audio on my way home from work tonight.   It has been a story that I will not forget.  During parts of the book I felt I did not like it because it seemed like the author could have alluded to some of the perversity without the complete details.   But by the end of the book I had forgiven the parts of the book that I would have edited out and was totally pulled into the story.   I am not a big fan of science fiction as historical novels are my favorite.    Never the less,  I will choose to listen to books by Margaret Atwood in the future and I would recommend "Oryx and Crake"  to a friend.  As always click on the author's name and the title of the book above to follow the links to more information. )

Strangers On Your Flight

http://www.capsteps.com/sounds/tsa-strangersonyourflight.mp3
From Capitol Steps

Dinner and A Matinee

My daughter Nicole visited today. I made dinner for the noon meal, we went for a walk in the park and came back and enjoyed a movie. I enjoyed the day very much.

Stolen From Kitty

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
Instructions: Copy this. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.  

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (no because my daughter still doesn't have the 1st so am not starting)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible 

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
 27: Crime and Punishment by Dosteovsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Graham

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma-Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwa

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dicken

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno – Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Fair Oaks Dairy Farm

These are the towers where they take the cow poop and turn it into both fertilizer for their fields and electricity for their buildings.

Today a friend and I visited Fair Oaks Dairy Farm. http://fofarms.com/

From The Email Bag Tonight

 .
 THE BASIC RULES FOR CLOTHESLINES:

1. You had to wash the clothes line before hanging any clothes- walk the entire lengths of each line with a damp cloth around the lines..
 2. You had to hang the clothes in a certain order, and always hang "whites" with "whites," and hang them first.
 3. You never hung a shirt by the shoulders - always by the tail! What would the neighbors think?
4. Wash day on a Monday! . . . Never hang clothes on the weekend, or Sunday, for Heaven's sake!
 5. Hang the sheets and towels on the outside lines so you could hide your "unmentionables" in the middle (perverts & busybodies, y' know!)
 6. It didn't matter if it was sub zero weather . . . Clothes would "freeze-dry."
 7. Always gather the clothespins when taking down dry clothes!  Pins left on the lines were "tacky!"
 8. If you were efficient, you would line the clothes up so that each item did not need two clothespins, but shared one of the clothespins with the next washed item.
 9. Clothes off of the line before dinnertime, neatly folded in the clothes-basket, and ready to be ironed.
10. IRONED?! Well, that's a whole other subject!

 A POEM

A clothesline was a news forecast
 To neighbors passing by.
 There were no secrets you could keep
 When clothes were hung to dry.
It also was a friendly link
 For neighbors always knew
 If company had stopped on by
 To spend a night or two.
 For then you'd see the "fancy sheets"
 And towels upon the line;
You'd see the "company table cloths"
 With intricate designs.
 The line announced a baby's birth
 From folks who lived inside -
 As brand new infant clothes were hung,
 So carefully with pride!
 The ages of the children could
So readily be known
 By watching how the sizes changed,
 You'd know how much they'd grown!
 It also told when illness struck,
 As extra sheets were hung;
 Then nightclothes, and a bathrobe, too,
Haphazardly were strung.
 It also said, "Gone on vacation now"
 When lines hung limp and bare.
 It told, "We're back!" when full line sagged
 With not an inch to spare!

 New folks in town were scorned upon
 If wash was dingy and gray,
 As neighbors carefully raised their brows,
 And looked the other way .. . ...
 But clotheslines now are of the past,
For dryers make work much less.
 Now what goes on inside a home
 Is anybody ' s guess!

I really miss that way of life.
It was a friendly sign
When neighbors knew each other best
 By what hung on the line

Book For This Week - 11-10- 2010

Shutter Island

by


Dennis Lehane

From the Publisher's Website:

"The basis for the blockbuster motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island by New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane is a gripping and atmospheric psychological thriller where nothing is quite what it seems. The New York Times calls Shutter Island, “Startlingly original.” The Washington Post raves, “Brilliantly conceived and executed.” A masterwork of suspense and surprise from the author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, Shutter Island carries the reader into a nightmare world of madness, mind control, and CIA Cold War paranoia and is unlike anything you’ve ever read before.  The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new ­partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple-murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades—with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is remotely what it seems. "

(Having just finished listening to this on audio tonight,  I can emphatically say that I would never have finished it had it not been the selection of the month for December at my book group at the library.   I can't say that the story didn't suck me into it,  but never the less it was a frightening experience to listen to and I have to say having finished it now -  I do not get it.  I have no interest in seeing the movie either.  The trailer will follow.   Again I do not recommend this book.  As always, click on the author's name and the book title to learn more)

Book For This Week - 11-8- 2010

The Deeds Of The Disturber


by


Elizabeth Peters

From the author's website:

"Can fear kill? There are those who believe so -- but Amelia Peabody is skeptical. A respected Egyptologist and amateur sleuth, Amelia has foiled felonious schemes from Victoria's England to the Middle East. And she doubts that it was a Nineteenth-Dynasty mummy's curse that caused the death of a night watchman in the British Museum. The corpse was found sprawled in the mummy's shadow, a look of terror frozen on the guard's face. What -- or who -- killed the unfortunate man is a mystery that seems too intriguingly delicious for Amelia to pass up, especially now that she, her dashing archaeologist husband, Emerson, and their precocious son, Ramses, are back on Britain's shores. But a contemporary curse can be as lethal as one centuries old -- and the foggy London thoroughfares can be as treacherous as the narrow, twisting alleyways of Cairo after dark -- when a perpetrator of evil deeds sets his murderous sights on his relentless pursuer . . . Amelia Peabody! "

(I finished listening to this book on audio a couple weeks ago and promptly hit the WeRead button at that other site I am on,  but neglected to get over here to Multiply and do a post on the book.  This book on CD was a gift from one friend here on Multiply and the fact that I even know this series of books exists is due to another friend here on Multiply who shared them with me.   Every time I listen to one of the Amelia Peabody books I think that the current one is my favorite of the series.  I find them all just delightful.  No doubt,  any time I need a fluff book,  or a little trip to somewhere away from stress and day to day hassles,  I know that Elizabeth Peter's will supply that reprieve in her characters antics in these books.  I highly recommend these books.  And as always,  click on the author's name and the title of the book to follow the links and learn more.)

How Much Does Each State Get Back From The Federal Government VS What They Pay In Taxes?

The following is stolen from HERE   but I have to say that I could not have said it better myself.  I kept thinking as I watched Rand Paul's acceptance speech   that those folks in KY have to get more federal money back than they pay in.  I went searching.  Seems like they do.   See the following for which states come out how on that scale.   Funny how the states that are most progressive are carrying the ones that are more conservative. 



"
How much does your state get from the federal government?

---

I hear sometimes that a big outrage is that money is sent to Washington and "we" don't get it back. One can value what government provides as one wants, but a simple way of looking at is to take the actual amounts sent by each state's taxpayers to Washington and then what Washington sends back in actual amounts to that state. This information is compiled by the somewhat non-partisan but essentially conservative Tax Foundation - taxfoundation.org. They tend to protect that data but they now have the 2005 numbers available for free. Here is a link.

So what does this show?

Here is the list, ranked by dollars back to dollar sent:

New Mexico $2.03
Mississippi $2.02
Alaska $1.84
Louisiana $1.78
West Va $1.76
N. Dakota $1.68
Alabama $1.53
S. Dakota $1.53
Kentucky $1.51
Virginia $1.51
Montana $1.47
Hawaii $1.44
Maine $1.41
Arkansas $1.41
Oklahoma $1.36
S. Carolina $1.35
Missouri $1.32
Maryland $1.30
Tennessee $1.27
Idaho $1.21
Arizona $1.19
Kansas $1.12
Wyoming $1.11
Iowa $1.10
Nebraska $1.10
Vermont $1.08
N. Carolina $1.08
Pennsylvania $1.07
Utah $1.07
Indiana $1.05
Ohio $1.05
Georgia $1.01
Rhode Island $1.00
Florida $.97
Texas $.94
Oregon $.93
Michigan $.92
Washington $.88
Wisconsin $.86
MA $.82
Colorado $.81
Delaware $.77
Illinois $.75
Minnesota $.72
NH $.71
CT $.69
Nevada $.65
New Jersey $.61

Sorry for any formatting issues, but I have no patience for that.

The list shows:

1. Income matters. The states with higher personal income send more to Washington DC than states which are poorer. Texas, for example, has become richer and thus it has dropped relatively recently below $1 back for every $1 sent.
2. There is a general transfer of wealth in this country. BUT, it runs from the richer states to the poorer states and runs almost exclusively from Democratic states to Republican states.

I point this out again: one major wealth transfer in this country runs from Democratic run states to Republican run states. It's not even close. Look at the list. Break even is RI and that is #33. Look at Illinois; they get back 3/4 of every $1 they send.

What this also means is that when S.Carolina (#16 at $1.35) uses incentives to draw business from Washington state, they're in part being subsidized by Washington (#38 at $.88). Competition between the states may be a great idea but it's certainly not being done on an even playing field.

I've heard offered the idea that states should get back what they send. I'm all for it: the GOP run states would be crushed and would have to change their policies to generate higher income, perhaps by investing more in human capital and not trying to keep wages and benefits as low as possible. My state could really use the extra 18 cents per dollar we send to the federal government.

An irony, of course, is that we hear this kind of rhetoric almost exclusively from GOP run states. The governor of Texas has complained notably about this and yet Texas is barely below $1 back - and only crossed that line in recent years - and every single state below them on the list is Democratic , with the possible exception of Nevada (and sometimes Colorado). And yet Republican run states are clearly the ones who benefit from the current system.

So again, let's equalize funding so each state gets what it sends in. I'm all for it.

"