Thursday, May 8, 2014

Pop, Plus

                 Library of Congress collection photo "What Flavor Shall I Make It?," circa 1900
COKE & A SMILE: Every so often (but not often enough), I remember to check out the Library of Congress' great "Today in History" Web feature. It's always full of interesting info, and today was no exception. For instance, on this day in 1846, General (and future president) Zachary Taylor defeated the Mexican army in a two-day battle at Palo Alto 

But the factoid the kids were more interested in was today marks the day the first Coca-Cola was sold. The concoction of Dr. John S. Pemberton, the tonic contained extracts of coca leaf, including cocaine, and the caffeine-rich kola nut. Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, was the site it was first sold, in 1886.  (Coke headquarters are still in Atlanta, BTW.)
There's a nice little album of (19) vintage Coke photos on the company's Web site: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/history/history-of-coca-cola-trucks. Here is one photo from the album (I'm assuming it's OK to share it, as they had lots of 'share' options on the pages, and a download image option, too. 
Per the photo's caption on the Coke site, "The Rapid Truck, made by the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company in Pontiac, MI, was the first truck in Knoxville, TN. This photo was taken in 1909."
MAJOR BUMMER: For whatever reason, while I was standing out in my front yard watching the dog do nothing this morning 'round 7:30 a.m., I had a bolt from the blue. "Hey?! Shouldn't I have heard about the Seattle Science Festival for 2014 by now?!" 

We have been HUGE Science Festival fans since its inception in 2012. That year we saw Stephen Hawking and an all star cast of scientists at the "Luminaries" event, attended a function at The Museum of Flight with a panel of astronauts, and enjoyed the festival day at Seattle Center, with hundreds of science-related activities.

The following year, we thoroughly enjoyed astrophysicist Brian Greene and others at the Luminaries event, and had a great time again at the Seattle Center festival day.

Half panicked that I had missed an announcement for this years event, I cut short the dog's milling about and hopped to the computer, only to see this on the SSF Web site:
After two successful Seattle Science Festivals in June 2012 and 2013, Pacific Science Center has determined it will not be leading a Seattle Science Festival in 2014 due to budget limitations. A subset of our Seattle Science Festival Advisory Council has been working with Science Center staff to identify other regional community-serving organizations that might lead the Festival and several promising next steps are currently being explored. It has been determined that there will not be a Science EXPO Day, Signature Programs or Luminaries Event in 2014.

Darn it! Guess we didn't miss out - everyone is missing out. :(

I do hope it's back for 2015 and beyond.

LATE NIGHT SCIENCE: I often start the day with a clip from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. This morning, I was happy to find "Science Experiments with Kevin Delaney" in my feed. 

I called the kids over and we watched it - twice! And parts of it four times. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OELiqiIHZEI&list=UU8-Th83bH_thdKZDJCrn88g&feature=share&index=12

I do believe the kids got to see some elephant toothpaste in person at the (now defunct) Seattle Science Festival in years past. They desperately want to make some of their own, so we combed the Internet for recipies. We found one on Steve Spangler's site: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/elephants-toothpaste. We need to round ourselves up some industrial strength hydrogen peroxide. 

CREATIVE FRONT: Today CJ "penned" a couple of diamante poems, with the help of a nifty ReadWriteThink template here: http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/diamante/

Meanwhile, Annabelle designed a couple of (template-free) Mother's Day cards.

JUST DUCKY: Amazing the things I learn every day from the kids. For instance, this afternoon, vocal hysterical eminated from Annabelle at her computer. She's accidentally closed her Internet browser, losing all of her open tabs, and she was in the middle of a project. However, she quickly regrouped and just and just seconds later was happily trumpeting, "It worked! It worked!"

"What worked?" I asked.

"Control-Shift-T!" she shared. It reopened the browser and all of the tabs. She says she learned it from a meme, "Actual Advice Mallard." Sweet!

In case you're wondering, Actual Advice Mallard is a photo of a duck with a helpful 'life hack' (as the kids like to call them). Here's an example. ...

Word to the wise: Actual Advice Mallard (green head) is not to be confused with Malicious Advice Mallard (a redhead).


CANDIDATE FOR IMPEACHMENT: CJ spent some time this afternoon playing "Executive Command" on iCivics, a non-profit organization dedicated to reinvigorating civic learning through interactive and engaging learning resources. They have a number of great learning games on their site, and CJ is an especially big fan of them.

Today, he was having a little to much fun being our nation's top executive. Instead of aspiring for excellence, he was trying to be the worst president ever (I could insert a certain snide comment here about how hard it would be to be worse than a certain someone who couldn't, say, pronounce 'nuclear,' but I'm refraining, snicker).

1 comment:

  1. Wonder how much the Science Center needs to put on a Seattle Science Festival?

    ReplyDelete