Saturday was billed as a special event: "Night Court." Every time Felix Hernandez pitches, there is a "King's court" section in the ballpark where everyone wears a gold shirt and roots for the former Cy Young winner. Well Saturday night, they passed out 35,000 "King Felix" shirts in hopes of revving up the crowd as the Mariners chase a play off spot.
STAR TALK: We spent some time today reviewing last night's enthralling evening - attending an event with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Without further ado, I'll just let the kids tell you what they thought of the program. Annabelle's up first. ...
On September 15, 2014, I went to see a very famous scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, in the Paramount Theater. My family and I sat in the very back of the theater, but we had a great view. I enjoyed sitting there.
He showed us many things, including which countries discovered which elements, a little speck of pale blue on a photo of Saturn that we call "Earth," and why he shouldn't get the blame for Pluto being demoted from planetary status (he told people to GET OVER IT).
He made lots of jokes, including a time where one of his images was loading, and the projection was black. He joked about how it was the first color photo of a black hole ever. Most everyone in the theater laughed at one point.
So many people came to the show it was sold out! There were absolutely tons of people watching deGrasse Tyson, and the crowd was very patient and quiet. At points, you couldn't even hear a single person talking!
He also showed things such as the earth in TV shows before we went to the moon- such as in the Star Trek intro- had NO CLOUDS! He also joked about say, an alien visiting our planet, and being like: "Hey there! What are you guys using for energy these days? We're using solar energy from a bunch of the stars in our universe!" And humans would say, "Um, well, we're kind of drilling into the ground and using oil that ISN'T REPLACEABLE," and how the aliens would laugh and laugh and LAUGH!
Near the end, there was a Q&A section, in which people asked questions, such as if he had any tips for starting teachers. One 6-year-old asked what the smallest particle in the world was, and Neil Tyson admitted that he didn't know, like a good scientist would. He even gave a woman that said he inspired her a hug!
Overall, the show was fun, entertaining, and cool. I really liked hearing Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about how many countries have science heroes on their bills and such. For instance, our country has Ben Franklin. However, he was put there as a founding father instead of a scientist.
I loved being there to see the show.
Yesterday, on September 15th, we went to see Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Paramount Theatre, a 2,807-seat performing arts venue at 9th Avenue and Pine Street in Downtown Seattle. Neil deGrasse Tyson is known for being an astrophysicist, being the current Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, and having recently hosted the primetime show “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey,” the sequel to Carl Sagan's 1980 thirteen-part television series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage”.
We arrived at the Paramount at about 6:30 P.M, but the show started about an hour later. A lady walked on the stage and introduced Neil, even though presumably the entire audience knew who he is. When Neil deGrasse Tyson actually came on stage, one of the first things he talked about was Pluto, and how he has a entire cabinet full of hate mail thanks to the fact that Pluto isn't a legit planet anymore. Children who probably aren't even in fourth grade yet and have a bizzare sense of logic sent him letters, including one child who I presume was in, at tops, second grade. That student addressed Neil as "ScIEtEst" and told him that people "might" live on Pluto and that if Pluto isn't a full planet now, they wouldn't exist. News flash: Something that once was a planet being reclassified as a dwarf planet wouldn't just suddenly wipe out all life on it.
Another thing Neil talked about was the periodic table of elements, but let's get more specific about it. Neil deGrasse Tyson had a chart of the periodic table that had a slider on it that showed how complete the table was over the years. Elements that were colored blue on his chart were known to the ancients, things like sulfur. The slider went on a scale from white to dark green, I think white was in the 1660s, while the shade of green on the right was 2003. The color an element had on his chart represented when it was discovered. In the beginning, in the 1660s, our periodic table just has a little more than what the ancients had discovered, making it pretty wimpy by today's standards. However, as Neil moved the slider along, you could see that more and more elements were getting discovered until we got to the periodic table that we use today.
Why don't we remember something that Carl Sagan said from his iconic Pale Blue Dot speech?
"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light."
Think about that statement for a moment. One thing Neil deGrasse Tyson brought up were the infamous events of September 11th, 2001. On that day, Al Qaeda became infamous for crashing some planes in a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, an event that would forever change our nation. Neil deGrasse Tyson showed us some photographs of the event that he took on his camcorder on the screen in the theatre, and I think I know the point Neil was trying to make: Humans kill. Humans are bloodthirsty. Humans have killed more living creatures on this planet than any other creature ever known to mankind, and often that is because they're looking for two things: Attention and fear of them. Carl Sagan was right when he said that “we spill so many rivers of blood just so we could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a tiny dot.”
One of the last things Neil did was say that he would read from "The book of Sagan" and he recited the entirety of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech right in front of us.
Overall, I think Neil deGrasse Tyson's presentation at the Paramount Theatre was very fascinating.
And what did I think of our evening? It was, quite simply, fabulous. Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen an audience that size so rapt. Picture 2,800-plus people enthralled by a PowerPoint presentation about the periodic table!! :) And who said nerds don't know how to have a good time?!
There was only thing that bothered me about the whole thing was the lack of children in the audience. As CJ noted, we got to the venue early, so hung out awhile pre-show, and in the hundreds upon hundreds of people we saw, I only saw two other kids, both boys, and ZERO girls. Seems to me there should have been more than a handful of kids in an audience of 2,800! We need kids to get excited about science, and no one today makes science seem any cooler than Neil deGrasse Tyson, that's for sure!
BIG BANG: Months ago, the kids both completed a short history course via Big History Project. I like them on Facebook, and today, I saw a post from them about a comic book all about the Big Bang. Cool! We spent some time together this afternoon reading it. It was a nice follow up to last night's presentation.
http://www.slideshare.net/BigHistory/bang-the-universe-verse-book-1?WT.mc_id=09_16_2014_SC-Sch_bhpfb&WT.tsrc=BHPFacebook
MUSIC MATTERS: We started our morning by listening to Caspar Babypants (Chris Ballew of The Presidents of the United States of America) perform a live set in studio at KEXP. Ballew is always entertaining.
This afternoon the kids worked on learning the Barenaked Ladies' song "If I Had a Million Dollars." The chords are easy enough, but there are lots of words, which means lots of opportunities for train wrecks. They muddled through, however.
During dinner this evening, we enjoyed a bunch of T-Rex songs. Lead singer Marc Bolan was killed in a car wreck 37 years ago today. I have to say, the music he made still sounds so sweet.
nicely written reviews of what must have been an enthralling evening.
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