The Leap Pad has been the one game system out of all the rest that has held up the best. My kids have had their Leap Pad for at least 4 years. There are many games for this system that range for age 3 to 9 years of age so this system can be used for many years. After 4 years of rough play by my son his is finally starting to give out. I guess my son taps very hard on the screen with the pen that comes with it so the bottom half of the screen is almost blank. Even thought my kids have had this already for many years they still love to play with it so we are planning on buying them the newer version this year.

Having used both Delorme (2010) and MS Streets & Trips (2013), I can say that both have their points, but if you want POIs, there is no competition: Delorme wins hands down. They both provide directions well enough. I had no problems with either one. One might think that the familiar Windows desktop versus the more DOS-based-looking Delorme would be an advantage, but the over-use of menus to me overrides the benefit. Obviously, you can't interactively use either one while driving. For this and other reasons, I found using MS Streets & Trips a bit more cumbersome. Once you understand the Delorme desktop, it shouldn't be a problem. Then again, you may be so used to Windows, you will find yourself a bit overwhelmed at first. Both require configuration with the GPS. You have to know which com port it uses, which you find in the Device Manager under ports, and coordinate that with the program. This can change too depending on devices you have plugged in. All in all, I would choose the Delorme. Since the Plus version includes phone-number lookup for the entire country, that adds to the value of Delorme for me. Few of us have internet in the car (though I'm waiting for Google to come with that one for the masses!). One more thing: with MS, once you activate, you're out of luck activating it on another device. Not so with Delorme.

In my opinion, this book is more than useful. It gives tips about the market as well as insightful interviews with leading professionals. In addition, there is a plethora of resources from literary agents to contacts for the art world. I highly recommend this for anyone who is serious about writing or illustrating books for children.

Many years ago, I read Murray's earlier controversial book, The Bell Curve. When I read Coming Apart, I was reminded of what I liked and did not like about The Bell Curve. The author is a top notch writer and weaves a great story from the enormous range of statistical studies that he draws upon. The problem that I have is that the inferences that he draws from the statistics in order to support his thesis are far too broad. The data that he pulls together are really important. They support the idea that white America has split into very different camps and he focuses on two extremes. The first of these is the Ivy League yuppie types who live in their little enclaves, totally insulated from reality. I live in one of the places that he describes and he astutely challenges his readers to examine their own positions and lifestyles and notes that probably the readers of his book are overwhelmingly in the new elite. And here we already run up on some of the limits of Murray's thesis. He asserts but in no way proves that the demographic enclaves of the white educated and professional upper middle class are made up of a homogeneous group of private-school-educated upper-middle-class elites who have never seen nor understood the world beyond theirs. The fact that most Ivy Leaguers end up in these enclaves does not mean that everyone there has the same background. There is a critical flaw in the logic. Yes, the author's caricature of well-educated well-off yuppies who are comfortably ensconced in their safe smoke-free world is entertaining and may hit a nerve or two, but the statistics are used to support the story rather than the story emerging from the statistics.