Last Week

We listened to Trumpet of the Swan read by E. B. White in a day. Such a great book. We also finished the Eragon sequel Eldest. Jacob wrote a short piece on the shogunate in Japan and did a nice job.

Caitrin and Jacob also started a podcast called "Intelligent Conversations." They go to into it, Johannah joined in as well. Jacob has spent a lot of time this week working on our .mac account and is learning how to make iDVDs and slideshows.

We watched the Oscars, we watched "Winged Migration" and lots of TV shows, including our usuals: American Idol and Survivor.

Liam and I took Rocky for a walk yesterday and these are the questions he asked me and what we discussed:

Why do we call some countries "Third World?"

I explained the innate heirarchy implied in this construction of the world and we discussed "developed" and "less developed," we looked at the "1/3" and "2/3" constructions and whether those were more just in how they framed the argument.

Aren't there any "Second World" countries?

I got to share about eastern Europe and communism and the fall of the USSR. Liam already know about the USSR (what it stood for and what the results of the fall were). So we then branched off to discuss how a country can have that kind of control over other countries as the USSR did over eastern Europe. He was so interested!

I'll ask him for more of our discussion when he gets up. It was long and satisfying.