Another Friday

CAUTIONARY TUNE: This song played in our house approximately 128 times today. (I may be understating it, actually.) Catchy tune by Tangerine Kitty. And it may save your life. :)

COVER TO COVER: Today we scored the last copy of "The Third Wheel" off the shelf at Target. It's the latest in the "Diary of Wimpy Kid" series, CJ's favorite books ever.

He started reading it for about 10 minutes between Target and acting class, and then half the the way home (with Annabelle getting the other half of the time to read), and then for about an hour once we got home. He managed to finish it off and said he enjoyed it.

Annabelle will likely finish before bedtime.

Too bad these books only come out once a year or so.

END SESSION: Today was the kids' last class for the year (sounds weird saying that) down in West Seattle. So, Bollywood, Scratch (programming) and acting are on mothballs until January.

At the end of the Bollywood class, the kids did a couple of dances for an admiring crowd (moms and siblings). And at the end of acting, the class demonstrated "You Can't Get Rid of Me," a fun improv game. One room in the house is selected as the setting, and then the players play the roles of objects in the room. One actor says they need to clean up said room, and goes from object to object expressing their need to declutter, and the object lobbies to save themselves, stating the reasons they're keepers. In the round they demonstrated, the room was a kitchen, and CJ elected to be a silverware drawer, while Annabelle was a fridge/freezer combo. Both of them made the cut. :)

BRAINS!!!!: I glanced over at Christian's computer screen tonight and saw a big ol' brain photograph. Turns out it was none other than Einstein's brain. Cool!

Naturally, I called the kids over right away, saying, "Who wants to see Einstein's brain?!!" They came running like hungry zombies. BRAINS!!!!

The photo was accompanying a story on Nature.com, a weekly journal of science.

According to the story, the photos were taken by pathologist Dr. Thomas Harvey, who, in 1955,  removed Einstein's brain, preserved it in formalin and then took dozens of photographs before slicing it up into 240 blocks.

Photos: Left and Right views of Einstein's brain, National Museum of Health and Medicine

For years, the blocks sat in a cider box under a beer cooler in his office for years. Relatively recently, anthropologist Dean Falk of Florida State University obtained a dozen of Harvey's original photos from the National Museum of Health and Medicine (a Department of Defense museum), and Falk and associates analyzed the photos, comparing the patterns of convoluted ridges and furrows of Einstein's brain to 85 other brains described in other studies.

Interestingly enough, Einstein's brain is smaller than average. However, his brain had some remarkable characteristics, that you're best off reading about in the Nature.com story here: http://www.nature.com/news/snapshots-explore-einstein-s-unusual-brain-1.11836

I HAVE A DREAM: CJ spends a fair amount of time on the computer each day. If it were all - or even most - playing games, that would be a problem, IMHO. But for him, the computer is primarily a research tool. He's way more likely to be reading about the history of a video game or character or company than actually playing the game!

In the course of a given day he probably reads dozens of articles about any number of people or things. Today, while he was writing down the rules to a new political board game he's devising, he started asking me questions about past presidents and Martin Luther King Jr. I helped as best I could and then reminded him that he could find all of his answers on the magical Internets. Pretty soon, he wound up on YouTube, watching MLK Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech, respectfully requesting silence from the rest of the household so he could hear it. And he watched the entire 18 minutes or so.

"That was great!" he said afterward.

For more than one reason, I had to agree with him.

We're Off to See the Wizard

OPEN WIDE: We started our day at the dentist. Both kids had six month checkups. CJ was complimented on his Superior Brushing Skills. According to the hygienist  he shines in comparison to his peers. Nice. :)

Annabelle asked the dentist whether or not she will need braces. He was very diplomatic. He said her teeth are still moving, so it's a little too early to tell, but that it was a definite possibility. Something to look forward to. ...

As you can see above, Annabelle did *not* like the taste of the "tooth vitamins."

As usual, we were a couple of minutes early to the dentist's neighborhood (Leschi, on the  western shore of Lake Washington, on the east side of First Hill), so we stopped at a park we love over there, Powell Barnett (named after the Leschi Improvement Council's organizer and first president).

Everything was wet and the kids were cold, but they had 10 minutes of fun nonetheless.

TALL TALE: Yesterday the kids read a passing reference about Paul Bunyan in one of their weekly Time for Kids pamphlets. I asked them if they were familiar with that folk tale and they both said 'no.' Oops. So today we fixed that by watching the wonderful 1958 Disney cartoon about the oversized lumberjack and his blue ox. (It brought back fond memories for me, as I recalled watching it while sitting on the gym/cafeteria floor at Lake Shore Elementary back in the early 1970s.) 

The story Paul Bunyan serves up all sorts of folk-lore-y information about why things are the way they are. For instance, did you know Paul dug the Missouri river so he could float logs he'd cut to the mill? And did you know waterfalls at Yellowstone served as his shower? Or that the Northern Lights are cause by Paul and Blue wrestling in Alaska? Fun stuff. 

The kids really enjoyed the cartoon and I am glad that I no longer have to feel guilty about the kids not knowing about Paul Bunyan.

THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ: A couple of days ago CJ saw a playbill for the Seattle Children's Theatre production of "The Wizard of Oz" and asked if we could go.

I told him we would be going next month, and that I already have tickets. In the meantime, however, we learned about another Wizard production not too far from home, in Shoreline. (The kids' science teacher's son is in the cast.)

The show starred 40 Shorewood High School kids, was accompanied by Shorewood's 26-piece orchestra, involved a stage crew of 30 and 150 costumes. Pretty ambitious - and they pulled it off nicely.

It was a two-plus hour production, sticking to the oh-so-familiar movie storyline pretty faithfully. It was thoroughly entertaining from opening line to the curtain falling. The kids loved the play. It brought Annabelle to tears twice, the first time when Dorothy's beloved Toto is taken away by the evil Miss Gulch, and the second time when Dorothy was leaving her trio of friends in Oz behind to return home.

Dirigibles, Trains & Automobiles

TICKET TO RIDE: Yesterday (while surrounded by 1,000 microbrews at Chuck's) we spent an hour plus playing a new-to-us board game, Ticket to Ride. In the game, players cobble together different railway lines criss-crossing the United States and southern Canada. 

Once we got the rules down, game play was fast, which kept the kids engaged. I loved that they learned some geography while they were playing. While some luck is involved, how well you do depends largely on how well you strategize, something I'm a fan of when it comes to games. (Even as a kid, I hated simple roll-of-the-dice no skill games.)

Last night Christian was the winner, but CJ and Annabelle weren't too far behind him. I'm sure we'll be playing Ticket to Ride again in the future.

SHOW AND TELL: This afternoon CeeJ and Bee took their mega periscope to science class for show and tell. It was enthusiastically received by their teacher and classmates, and they were proud of themselves.

It was fun seeing other kids' inventions, from spy devices to a kaleidoscopic. Creativity is alive and well within that group. 

OH THE HUMANITY: Awhile back I pulled a book off the library shelf thinking CJ would be interested in it. Turns out I was right. This morning he was immersed in "The Disaster of the Hindenburg"

It's been several years - and maybe even decades - since I've watched this news clip. My god, I'd forgotten just how horrifying it is. The poor reporter on the ground was so traumatized by the scene unfolding, as was everyone, no doubt. 


Watching it, I find it impossible to believe that anyone survived that, but remarkably, some did. In fact, most of them did. There were 97 people on board (36 passengers and 61 crew members), and 62 of them survived the crash (albeit many with significant injuries). One member of the ground crew was killed, which is also remarkable watching how quickly the flaming ship came down. 

One man has assembled a remarkably in-depth "Faces of the Hindenburg" site, with photos and bios of most everyone on board: http://facesofthehindenburg.blogspot.com/

RIGHT ON: We are still working our way through the study guide that goes along with "D is for Democracy." Today, the kids did a worksheet involving vocabulary, and one about the Bill of Rights. One of the questions on the latter was "Write a paragraph explaining which freedom you feel is the most important and why you feel this way."

Annabelle wrote, "I feel that freedom of religion is important because it allows people to be free to study any religion they like. It also allows them to worship whichever idol they wish to."

CJ wrote, "I feel that freedom of speech is the most important. I feel that way because we can express our feelings to other people. Also, that means we can show what we are going to do if we run for President."

Speaking of freedom of speech and presidents, I saw the most asinine bumper sticker today. It read "Don't blame me, I voted for the American." 

What a moron. But being able to have a super stupid bumper sticker is his constitutional right, so God bless America, including people born in Hawaii and the "birther" driving the Chevy Aveo. 

STARRY, STARRY NIGHT: Today a Facebook friend posted a link to this sweet video, '100,000 Stars."

It's an amazing, interactive visualization of our stellar neighborhood, including real location data of over 100,000 nearby stars. It's definitely worth taking three minutes to watch it. (And you really should watch it on YouTube on fullscreen, BTW.)


And when you're done with that, take it a step further and better and check out the phenomenal Web site http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/stars/ (its data rich, and takes a minute or so to load). There, you can control what you're seeing. (I'd suggest your first click be in the upper lefthand corner, on the circle with an arrowhead in it, as that allows you to take a tour of the site. 

Total Eclipse of the Sun

OL' SOL:  It was a grey and dreary day in Seattle, but the sun was definitely on the top of our minds todaym since we knew a total eclipse was on tap for this afternoon.

Unfortunately, it wasn't something we'd be able to see firsthand, as the path cut across a small part of Australia and New Zealand and large swaths of the Pacific Ocean. But thanks to the magic of the Internets, we got to enjoy it anyway. 

While waiting for the eclipse we watched a primer regarding the event on UStream. And to get us in the mood, we listened to "The Sun Song," by the Chromatics. They're an acapella group originally formed in 1993 at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  For years now they have been singing astronomically correct songs. :) 

Starting around noon, I started channel hopping for the best eclipse coverage. Since it was cloudy, we hopped around to a few different Web sites to check out their live coverage.  Clouds, clouds everywhere. We checked the Panasonic coverage  (they had two streams!), the Cairns & Great Barrier Reef feed on UStream,  and even the University of North Dakota's eclipse chasing team (http://www.sems.und.edu/Eclipse_Video.php). 
Clouds for everyone. Boo!

By and large, the best coverage seemed to be from the Slooh SpaceCam. They had multiple people (Patrick Paolucci, Bob Berman, Lucie Green, Matt Francis and Paul Cox) live on a Google+ hangout and many video feeds on their screen. 

Mercifully/miraculously the clouds parted just as the total eclipse occurred  w00t! Even via the Internet it was a superdupercool thing to see!

As it all went down, we talked about how absolutely freaked out people must have been before we had the science and knowledge of what, exactly, an eclipse is. 

It's pretty magical that the moon is 400 times closer to us than the sun, and it's 400 times smaller than the sun, which makes it a perfect cover in the rare event of a total eclipse. 

During the eclipse I asked the kids what they suppose people thought of such a dramatic event back before they had the science to explain it. Christian was within earshot and he said, "That's why religions were invented." 

We talked about this and that a bit and I cued up some great eclipse folktales for them via NASA. 

Storyteller Jordan Hill related eclipse folktales from Mongolia, Turkey and West Africa. They were all different and fascinating. After we listened to them, I asked the kids to come up with their own eclipse inspired folk tales. Here's CJs version. ... 

Before we existed, there were two different living beings: Gallelo and Ecteson., and one entity, Space. One day, Gallelo wanted to find someplace to live, and Ecteson thought the same thing. When Ecteson was hungry, he would create something, then feed on it. So, he created the earth and all the things we have now, and he would share a tree to eat with Gallelo. After a long time, Gallelo and Ecteson created the sun and moon, but Space was angry because he was being ignored. So every time he gets the chance, (which very rarely happens) he will block out what Gallelo and Ecteson created to get attention. So CJ's story neatly explains both lunar and solar eclipses. Nice! Here's Bee's fable. ... Once upon a time the Sun was just a lonely star in our universe, sitting there with nothing to do when alas, the planets formed. Once they formed, the sun wasn't so lonely. But Sun thought the planets might feel lonely, so far apart. So the Sun captured small asteroids and put them together to make the moons. One day, the Earth, having no moon, but life, requested a moon. sadly, this moon was formed between the Sun and Earth, creating an eclipse.  The humans on earth thought this was the sun, leaving them. Soon the sun appeared again, and a long time after, the Moon decided to play a joke on the humans and go in front of the sun again. And once he did, the humans thought once again, this was the sun leaving. They prayed for Sun to come back, and the moon revealed the sun again, teasing the humans. MORAL: Don't trust the moon. when he causes eclipses, he's just a big trickster. EXPERIMENTAL The kids were tasked with creating an invention involving carbon rubbings, mirrors or fingerprints. They brainstormed an idea together to make a periscope built for two. Yesterday we hit the Dollar Store to get some mirrors. This morning, the kids folded and taped the periscope into shape.  Happily, it worked as they planned. Here they are, hiding behind the couch, spying on Kirby, who's across the room, relaxing in the mid-century rocker.

Special Delivery

MATCHBOX MSL: Ohboyohboyohboy, lookie what we got today!! Our Mars Science Laboratory Matchbox toys. Squeeeeee! 

I pre-ordered them several weeks ago through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory online store. (Glad I ordered when I did. In looking at the site today, I'm thinking they might be out of 'em, as I can't find them listed any more.)

The toys got us thinking and talking about Curiosity and so I had the kids play the XBox game Mars Rover Landing. We downloaded it (free!) last week and this was the first time they've gotten around to playing it. 

It's fun - and challenging. Truth be told, they each crashed the $2.5 billion craft more than a couple of times. Some failed it more than others. In fact, I told CJ that NASA called, and they respectfully requested that he quit crashing their rover. LOL. 

Annabelle make an OK enough landing on her third try. Here she is, exalting.

UP, PERISCOPE:  The kids are supposed to come up with and present an invention to their science class this week that has to do with either fingerprints, rubbings or mirrors - all things they've been working with over the past few weeks.

They decided to do a project together, a two-person periscope. Today, I had them do some research, and asked them to find Web sites with instructions to build a periscope. They found some sites and read up on them. 

One site we found was Exploratorium.edu, a great site we've visited before. Their page on periscope included not just "how to" but some history and factoids. For instance, we learned the world periscope comes from the Greek words peri, meaning 'around' and scopus, meaning 'to look. Makes sense, since periscopes allow you to look around walls and other obstacles. 

We also learned that the longer the periscope, the smaller whatever you're trying to look at is. Given that, periscopes on submarines and for military use have magnifying glasses in between their mirrors.

This evening we bought the mirrors we need from the Dollar Store and we have the main tube of the periscope built. Tomorrow, we'll try to put it all together and hope like heck it works.

LIGHTS OUT: There's a total solar eclipse on tap for tomorrow. It begins at 12:35 p.m. Pacific time on Tuesday the 13th (which will actually be Nov. 14 in Australia). Unfortunately, we're not in its 'flight path,' so to speak. It will only be visible to small segments of Australia and wide swaths of the ocean. 

The good news is, you can watch the eclipse online via a few outfits, including the Slooh Space Camera. Link here: http://events.slooh.com/

Tourism Tropical North Queensland will also provide live views from Cairns via this link: http://www.ustream.tv/cairnseclipse2012

BLACK SUPERMAN: Don't ask me why, but at about 7 this morning I started thinking about Muhammed Ali. That, naturally, led to me thinking about the AM radio hit from my youth "Black Superman." It was rolling round in my head all day and around 3 p.m. I finally played it on YouTube.


The kids heard it and wanted to know what it was and why I was listening to it. And so, we talked about "The Greatest" and how he was born Cassius Clay, why he changed his name, his conscientious objector stance and what that meant to him and the nation at the time. 

"It's sort of ironic, because he fights, but he doesn't want to fight," Annabelle assessed. 

It's a lot to think about, to be sure.

We spent some time checking out Ali's wonderful Web site (www.ali.com), reading about his fights, challenges, and human rights accomplishments. 

I told the kids one of my favorite Ali moments was him lighting the torch at the Atlanta Olympic games in 1996. What a moment that was!

IT IS ROCKET SCIENCE: Today XKCD featured a Saturn 5 rocket schematic ("Up Goer Five") using only 1000 most commonly-used words in English. It's great. I especially love the explanations near the "business" end. 

 Check it out! http://xkcd.com/1133/