Narrated in dramatic staccato fashion with an absolutely overbearing score, it's rather wonderful. :)
Carpenter was grounded in 1964, after suffering an injury to his arm in a motorcycle accident. However, the unstoppable Carpenter didn't let that stop him. Instead, he became an 'aquanaut.' In 1965, he spent 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California as part of the U.S. Navy's SEALAB II experiment. He retired from NASA in '65, and founded Sea Sciences, Inc., a business dedicated to ocean studies and preserving the marine environment.
UNSTOPPABLE: An email from Scholastic let me know about an upcoming Web event about history's heroes on Oct. 16, 10 a.m. Pac Coast time. (Here's a link to the announcement: http://www.scholastic.com/dove/teachers/?form)
The live webcast will feature The 39 Clues authors Gordon Korman and Jude Watson; Andrea Davis Pinkney, award-winning author of "Hand in Hand," and Dove (as in soap and stuff) Self–Esteem Ambassador Jess Weiner.
The presentation is about how Amelia Earhart, Jackie Robinson, Mozart, and Dorothy Dandridge taught the panelists to be unstoppable.
I asked CeeJ and Bee what "unstoppable" means to them. They came up with this list of adjectives: Determined, smart, driven, strong, resilient, resourceful, spirited, focused, 'large wits,'
independent, "and a high pillar, metaphorically speaking," CJ added.
Of course, they would up reading a bunch of articles in both mags, but that's mostly OK. ;)
After 25 minutes or so of reading, cutting and pasting, here's what they came up with.
I told CJ I didn't really agree with his inclusion of 'desperate,' but he insisted it stay. I guess it was desperate in the sense of desperate to make a difference?
CHESTNUTTY: We're trying to keep up on our "New York Style" walking, and to that end, we took an hour long, fast paced jaunt this morning. Along the way, we discovered a tree shedding large, lovely chestnuts. I scooped up a couple of handfuls, and told the kids they would become the day's art project.
They had fun with it. Here's a (crappy) photo of their creations.
YESTERDAY: Thanks to all of you who took the "Eyes Have It" assessment. Interesting to hear your results and it reinforced my thought that age, experience and vocabulary accounted for CJ and Annabelle's results on the 'test.'
Here's a leftover photo from yesterday, a/k/a 'disguise day.' Yes, we bought a blaze orange leather couch. I hope it doesn't hurt your eyes. :)
MASKED CRUSADERS: The photo is rather self explanatory, isn't it?
It was disguise day at the kids' Shoreline school, so today Guy Fawkes and Michaelangelo went to a math class and a science class.
In the interest of being able to actually see, they did remove the masks during class. Here, CJ experiments with sound waves underwater. (They compared the sounds with and without the aid of an underwater stethoscope.)
NYE ON FLY BY: As I mentioned in yesterday's entry, NASA's Juno spacecraft is doing a close (less than 350 mile) flyby today in order to get a boost from Earth before continuing on its way to Jupiter.
Here's Bill Nye (the science guy) explaining the maneuver. ...
http://youtu.be/3nj_xq8nfxE
Bill makes it sound so simple. ;) Unfortunately, there was some sort of anomaly when the action took place today. During the fly by, an expected 22-minute communication blackout took place. What wasn't expected was when Juno emerged on the other side, it had put itself into safe mode.
The good news is, the craft is reportedly still on course toward Jupiter, but there will be debugging in the days/weeks/months to come, no doubt. Naturally, I can't help but wonder how this stupid government hostage situation, er, I mean 'shut down,' impacted things. Currently 97 percent of NASA personnel are off work.
OLD SARUM: We visited Stonehenge on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 15. Afterward, we drove toward Salisbury, and the roadside inn we'd be staying in that evening, The Swan at Stoford. (LOVED that place!) In their restaurant we solved the mystery of the 'jacket' potato (one still in its skin, like a baked potato in the States).
We were a little early to check into our room, so we had a lovely lunch in the onsite pub.
Afterward, we dumped our luggage in our room and headed out for Old Sarum, a settlement dating back to Neolithic times, and it was just a couple of miles away!
It was a stormy afternoon, and so traffic was sparse at the Iron Age hill fort where the Romans, Normans and Saxons left their mark. However, it old takes one fool in a motorhome to ruin your afternoon. ...
As we approached the English Heritage site, we were the only vehicle around. This is what we saw.
No trouble there, right? So, we proceeded up - on the right side of the road, which is the left side of the road in England. ;) We were more than halfway up when a motorhome appeared at the top of the driveway, from the left. And lo and behold, instead of waiting up there for us to clear the narrow road, he started heading down the hill, toward us. And he kept coming and coming and coming ...
Christian pulled our car up onto the hill to the left as far as he could, until the wheels started spinning on the wet earth. But we couldn't move enough for the motorhome, which was hellbent on squeezing down. And then, it hit us. And hit us and hit us. ... I leaned over and laid on the horn and we were all yelling, but the motorhome kept plowing forward, eventually pinning us between it and the hill. We couldn't move. Aaargh.
It was infuriating because it was so avoidable - well, at least for him, I mean. There was NO reason he had to proceed down the hill when there wasn't room and clearly no reason he had to keep ramming us. My god. The arrow marks where we tried in vain to drive up the hill, but he dragged us back down.
Here's the aftermath, after the driver, Mr. Mabbs, was kind enough to drive his motorhome to a point where we weren't pinned any more.
Afterward, we had to exchange info, and we were a bit rattled, so we went back to The Swan and regrouped and pouted for awhile, sure that although this COMPLETELY wasn't our fault, it was going to be a pain in the a$$ and cost us $$$. Sigh.
After an hour or so, we went BACK to Old Sarum. Fortunately, we weren't hit by a motorhome this time. Unfortunately, there were gale force winds, rain, and the site was closing in 30 minutes. We made the most of it!
Here are the kids, braving the winds. Honestly, it was so strong, I thought I was going to get blown over. I don't think I've ever felt wind that strong in my life.
Apparently wind isn't unusual at Old Sarum. The English Heritage site says, "People have lived on this windswept hill off and on for almost 5,000 years."
And per Wikipedia, Peter of Blois (c.1135–1203) described Old Sarum as "barren, dry, and solitary, exposed to the rage of the wind; and the church (stands) as a captive on the hill where it was built, like the ark of God shut up in the profane house of Baal."
Yeah, that's about what it felt like on the afternoon we were there. Another fun fact: Henry II of England held his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, prisoner at Old Sarum.
Old Sarum is the site of the earliest settlement in the Salisbury area. This model from 1927 shows how the settlement looked back in the day.
It's changed a bit. Here's the middle of the site now ...
Here, the kids are romping cross where a castle once stood.
Can you spot Annabelle across the way? The rolling green fields are kept closely sheared by sheep, by the way.
Here, the kids stand atop the original foundation of the castle's parapet wall.
Unfortunately, most of the ruins are, well, in ruin - as in almost non-existent any more. You have to use your imagination. One of the reasons there isn't much to see is because some of the building there were made of wood. For instance, in 1066, William the Conqueror built a huge mound in the middle of Old Sarum and put a keep or Great Tower made of wood on top. Wood structures just aren't going to last 1,000 years.
However, there were some walls remaining, and they were enthralling. I've certainly never seen anything like them.
They were rugged, rough, with the most interesting stones embedded in a slumpy, cementious material. (Apologies here for the awful photos. My lens was covered with water, and I couldn't see or breathe very well!)
I sure wish we had more time at the site to explore. These walls were, I believe, from the old "Keep" or "Great Tower" part of old Sarum.
Only a few of the stones remaining on site were of the large, chiseled variety. Below was a portal between two stone walled chambers. I believe it was the old gatehouse.
One of the most picturesque views on site was looking down toward where the cathedral used to be. If we'd had more than 30 minutes to tour Old Sarum, we certainly would have walked around that part.
Speaking of cathedrals, if you look off into the distance in this photo, in the center, you can barely see the "modern" pointy spire of the Salisbury Cathedral. More on that tomorrow!
Here, the freezing, wet kids stand in the center of it all. Love trying to picture in my mind's eye the site being a booming 'metropolis' back in the day!
And just think of the man hours that went into building the enormous banks and digging the deep ditches around the site, in order to protect humans and livestock that lived there.
Despite the brutal weather and the motor home, Old Sarum was a wonderful stop on our adventure. We're so glad we went!
THE EYES HAVE IT: This afternoon, a friend of a friend posted a link on Facebook to a New York Times story with the headline: "Can You Read People’s Emotions?"
I've always thought I was pretty good at reading people, so I followed the link and took their quiz. I have to say right off the bat, I don't consider their quiz hard science at all. But it was an interesting exercise. I scored 33 out of 36.
Curious how the kids would fare, I had them take the test, too. CJ reported his score as 9 of 36. "I find it difficult to understand a person's mental state based on their appearance," he read, from the post test assessment online.
Annabelle scored 14 of 36.
I have to say for the kids, I wonder how much their age and vocabulary might have factored into their results. And I assured them that this was just a 'for fun' thing, and definitely not a true measure of how they can read people.
If you don't mind, let me know if you take the quiz and how you fare.
DAY ONE: We started a new online class today. Called "Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science," it's offered through edX. This will be CJ and Annabelle's first edX class. All of their previous college-level courses have been through Coursera. The class' lead teacher is Michael Brenner, an applied mathematics professor at Harvard. (That's right, we've gone Ivy League!)
We enjoyed the material so much, we wound up watching the whole week's worth of videos today! They covered everything from an introduction to the properties of fats, proteins and carbohydrates to molecules to the history of science in cookbooks. All fascinating stuff.
At one point professor Brenner was talking about sugar. He talked about how hard sugar crystals are (as compared to how squishy some other foods are). Annabelle captured the fact in her notes. :)
Professor Brenner also talked about how readily sugar dissolves in water and, he said, that's one of the ways soda companies are able to put so much sugar in pop. He suggested viewers could stop the video and conduct an experiment, dissolving 2 cups of sugar in just 1 cup of water (ew, gross, isn't it?). And so we did just that (pictured atop the blog today).
Here it is, 330 plus years after Papin's invention, and I've never used a pressure cooker. They scare me. Apparently Papin had his fair share of explosions while developing his 'digester.'
The drawing on the left is Robert Boyle and Papin inspecting the 'digester.' The sketch on the right is the digester.
SLINGSHOT: I was surprised to see a Yahoo! news headline today that NASA's 8,000-pound Juno spacecraft will be whizzing by Earth tomorrow - just 350-miles overhead!
That thing was launched in August of 2011, but it's coming near to Earth for a slingshot-like maneuver to help it build up speed for its transit to Jupiter. It's expected Juno will pick up about 16,330 mph (26,280 km/h) after tomorrow's maneuver.
Juno's scheduled to arrive to Jupiter's orbit in July of 2016. It will then circle our solar system's largest planet for an Earth year, using eight instruments to study the Jovian atmosphere, gravitational field and magnetic field with eight different science instruments. Juno has three big solar arrays, each about the size of a semi-with-trailer. It will be the first solar-powered probe to visit the outer solar system. Graphics from NASA - via other sources, because NASA's web sites are still all shut down.
SHORT STUFF: Today's entry is going to be brief. I guarantee you that we did all sorts of educational thingees. Like talk ad nauseam about North Korea (CJ's favorite topic of the moment/month/year). Lots of geography talk. Government talk. And birthday talk! Specifically, Big Bro #1 has his 28th birthday today.
This weekend we made him some cookies inspired by his 'era' - the 1980s. That included Ghostbusters, MTV, space shuttles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, vintage Mariners and Huskies logos, and, of course, old Nintendo controllers. I sent them to the weekly trivia contest that Rick hosts, and Christian, who went, tells me they were a hit, as many of the trivia attendees are of Rick's circa, so to speak.
I also made a couple dozen cupcakes for Rick to take to his kiddos today - they were blueberry cupcakes with white frosting topped with metallic silver, blue and green sprinkles, in silver foils. Inspired by the Seahawks. I told Rick they would have tasted a lot better if the Seahawks had won on Sunday. Sorry, no pix of the cupcakes, but they were tasty, per my toughest critics (CeeJ and Bee). SAY WHAT?: This morning, CJ was highly involved in some Roblox happenings online when I called him over to me to tend to something. He hustled over and asked, "Is this an AFK?"
"A what?" I asked, puzzled.
"An 'away from keyboard.' Or is my character going to be idle for 10 minutes?"
I told him to relax, it was an AFK.
MIXOLOGIST: This afternoon we somehow found ourselves in Greenwood, which meant a stop at Chuck's on 85th. While it might best beer place on the planet, the kids love it more than us, as to them, it's the place to chill, play board games, and have a soda or two.
Today, Annabelle decided to mix a Diet Coke with a DRY Soda vanilla flavor.
I'm absolutely NOT a soda fan, but if you're gonna drink a soda, I think you could't do any better than drinking DRY. The Seattle-based company makes a less sweet, all natural soda with never more than four ingredients in every brew.
RIDE RESOURCES: Though she's been gone for over a year now, Sally Ride's legacy lives on. This morning we received an email announcing Sally Ride Science’s STEM Central™. In part it read, "We have reviewed thousands upon thousands of web resources for STEM
instruction, and picked thousands of those that are especially suited to
the needs of educators and students. That’s what makes STEM Central special. Every resource has been
vetted—reviewed and rated by educators, and ready for use in the
classroom. You can search by topic, grade level, rating, or by the type
of resources you need."
How great is that? Naturally, I paid the site a visit today: Visit STEM Central
Starting on Nov. 1, users can submit their own favorite links, rate and review resources listed and share tips for classroom use. Neat-o.
