Will’s Words

Good: Name the composer

Better: Name the composer and the work it comes from

Best: Name the composer, the work, and the scream in measure 40 

Click the triangle below to listen:

THANK YOU Christopher Beam of Slate magazine for an answer to this question. It has been bugging me every time I heard about the recent toy recall because no one would ever explain in their reporting what would motivate someone to intentionally put children at risk of lead poisoning. The basic answer is that it is “…bright, durable, flexible, fast-drying, and cheap,” and the most surprising part of the article is that the yellow stripes on our roads are loaded with the stuff.

Study: Food in McDonalds wrapper tastes better to kids - CNN.com

This is a scary thought. I think we’ll continue laying off the McDonald’s for a while.

Does anyone know of any good walking trails around Lee’s Summit? We need some exercise.

But I want to test out the WordPress in Facebook application so here I am, writing nothing.

When I add a page break in a Word document and then type in a heading (with heading 1 style), why is the page break symbol on the previous page glued to my heading by having the same style? And then, when I delete that page break later, why does it mess up the formatting of my heading? Why oh why?

I just thought of a feature I would like in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc…

Sometimes I get a section of text just how I want it. In other places within the document I have just started or the copy is really rough, but I want to come back to it later. It would be nice to be able to flag sections of documents/slideshows/spreadsheets with an indicator that tells me what I’ve finished and what still needs work. That way every time I open a document I don’t have to get all reacquainted with what needs work and what doesn’t. It would also make it easier to jump around the document when I work because I wouldn’t be afraid of leaving something undone.

It could be something as simple as highlighting the text and choosing “needs revision” or “final version” from the right-click menu. It would be like a text style, except that it wouldn’t change the style of the text — it would just give it a semantic tag. Maybe I could use bookmarks for this in Word, and regions in Excel, but I don’t know how I would do it in PowerPoint.

(This post would be tagged as “needs revision).

BooksForKidsBlog: Family Flicks: The Best Old Movies for Families

Here is a useful post for parents who are looking for some good ideas of what to add to their movie rental cue. The post is a book review, but don’t miss the comments where people have added their own favorite movies.

Honey, the baby’s spacewalking - CNN.com

A woman turns on her baby monitor and sees images broadcast from the space shuttle Atlantis. I wonder what went through her head when she first saw the images on the screen where she expected to see her baby!

RC2 Corp. Recalls Various Thomas & Friends™ Wooden Railway Toys Due to Lead Poisoning Hazard

When I heard about this on the news it made me mad. Although my kids love these trains, they are quite expensive, so you would assume they wouldn’t have problems like lead paint. You can see the exact list of what was recalled at the linked website.