Actually that's not right. The New Years Honours list has been drawn up by the political party that's in government for decades and not the Queen at all. This was what caused the "Cash for peerages" scandal a few years back. It was long known that honours went to the i) media-popular as in the over-weight of sports stars in today's list and ii) the correlated worthy-achievers who just happened to be on the same side of the political spectrum as the government in power when they get their honours. Liz II might get an input but it is pretty minor.

At not even two years old, a child is still totally grappling with training its motor functions. A tiny keboard is a rubbish interface for a child of that age. Using a mouse (a trackpad is no good for this) with child-related software is as much as you can do but at not even two they are too young for this as well. You mistake that the Fisher-Price type stuff looks like a rip-off and is bad but the point is that it's also taken into account creating interfaces that are actually helpful and child-friendly. Get your child some interactive books / systems that are specially targeted at development and which you can sit and do with them. Leapfrog have graded kit from 12-36 months and up in age brackets thereafter. http://www.leapfrog.com/en/families/leapster/leapster_learning0/leapster.html . My 3 and 6 year old have had this stuff from an early age and the ability to use laptops, pcs and Nintendo DS etc. I found that between the ages of 2 to 4 / 5 they still preferred the Leapster etc.

The Baroque Cycle is just an utterly different (huge) work to anything like Snowcrash or Diamond Age. It needs an editor who isn't scared of Stephenson in places but it is one of the most fantastic feats of human imagination I have ever read. If you can only deal with sci-fi then clearly a novel about Baroque England with Isaac Newton, a half-dicked pirate king and a fabulous ex-Hareem girl turned Duchess with diverse characters and fantastical imaginings isn't going to be your thing. But I can hardly remember a book that left me more open-mouthed with the sheer imagination and achievement of the author. The B.C. is a book that will never leave me.