Happy Boxing Day -- December 26, 2015; Kirk Johnson's Alaska Beat For The NYT

If you hit a paywall, google as oil prices fall, Alaska's new governor faces a novel goal, frugality.

If you hit a paywall, google as oil money melts, Alaska mulls first income tax in 35 years.

Now that we are all on the same page, see if you can spot the ten differences between those two stories. One was published yesterday, December 25, 2015. The other was published almost a year ago, January 25, 2015.

Both were written by Kirk Johnson.

The only difference I found was the additional information in the more recent article that Alaska has $14 billion set aside:

In one respect, Alaska is also extremely lucky: lawmakers set aside about $14 billion in savings during the fat years, which Mr. Walker has called “a bridge,” which must be trod gingerly. Tapping too little of it, he said, would force even more drastic spending cuts; spending too much could deplete the fund before the crisis has past (sic).

Should it be "past" or "passed"? Whatever.

The state has a population of around 750,000. Each resident gets upwards of $2,000 annually from oil revenue, but to collect it, one must physically be in the state to collect it. This payout is off-budget. Sort of like in a "lock-box."

It will be an interesting story to watch.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

In an earlier post I talked about the fascination our youngest granddaughter has for anything with buttons:

Sophia's favorite items are anything with buttons: remote key fobs, smart phones, clam shell phones, iPads, computers, automatic timers inside the house, automatic timers outside the house, remote controls for televisions, remote controls for Bose radios, and I'm sure there are some I've forgotten.

The granddaughters flew into Denver Christmas Eve for a long weekend of skiing, based out of Avon, Colorado.

The first night, 17-month-old Sophia somehow managed to set off the carbon monoxide alarm. The hotel staff rushed up to the room, turned off the alarm, but were at a loss to explain how she managed to set it off. My understanding is that most of these devices, like fire alarms, are designed in such a way that if the intake port is obstructed the alarm goes off by default, as a precaution, to alert users that the alarm has been disabled.

They have now moved the alarm to an undisclosed location, somewhere in the bathroom, well out of her reach.

Sophia also was the first one to figure out how to use the hotel room's phone to call down for room service. Because the front desk staff was unable to interpret her "Minion-like" language, they sent someone up to check up on them.

"Room service?"

"Yes, two large pizzas, a banana, and a cup of whole milk in a tippy cup."   The phone has now been disconnected from the base and Sophia walks around the room chatting into a disconnected hand-held receiver.