HEARTS ON HIGH: It's Valentine's Day, so hearts abound! Above is a photo of the aptly named Heart Nebula. It's about 7500 light years away from Earth, in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in constellation Cassiopeia. There are lots of lovely photos of this nebula out there - just Google 'heart nebula images' if you care to see more.
Here's a heart seen from on high. It's a photo NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg took during her most recent stint on the International Space Station.
Image credit: Karen Nyberg/NASA
TESTED: "Stress! Stress! Stress! Stress! Oh my god, stress!" Annabelle declared just before launching the timed genetics and evolution midterm test this afternoon.
We've spent several hours studying for the test, and a lot is on the line, as it accounts for about half of our grade in the course.
We each had 90 minutes to take the test from the time you log in. To say it didn't go well would be an understatement.
Almost immediately, my computer crashed, HARD. It took forever to reboot. Calculators wouldn't work. Dogs barked. There were multiple questions we've never seen before in any form. The printer crashed from its shelf to the hardwood floor. Annabelle became hysterical. CJ turned into a zombie.
Such fun! And that was only the first half of the test.
Afterward, we reviewed what went very, VERY badly, and what went well (I think our math was sound, and we each did get every question answered. I pointed out to them the second half of the test almost HAS to go better, but that we're not doing it today. Enough is enough!
SUNNY STROLL: We dedicated all of today to getting caught up on our music and genetics classes, but we did take about an hour out to take a nice long stroll down to Fishermen's Terminal.
There must not be much of anything in season in the Bering Sea right now, because most of the slips for the working boats were full.
We always take a moment to visit the memorial at the terminal. And every time there's something there that gets me. Today, it was a baseball. Pitchers and catchers reported to spring training yesterday, and someone clearly brought an old baseball down to their baseball loving loved one to mark the occasion.
On our way back home, I couldn't believe my eyes when I spied a few clusters of daffodils blooming along a public parking strip on 24th Avenue. They are by far our first daffodil sighting of the year! We admired them for a couple minutes and didn't pick a single one, so others could enjoy them as well.
THE BEAT BROS.: We got back to our Beatles course, of course. Part of what we learned about today was about The Beatles clubbing it big time in Hamburg in their formative years, 1960 and 1961. George was only 17! They would play six sets a night sometimes (which led to popping 'diet pills' for energy, our professor tells us). While they were there, they recorded an album (and single of the same name) with Tony Sheridan on lead. For the project, they opted not to use the name The Beatles, as it sounds like a slang word for male genitalia in German. And so, the four were "The Beat Brothers" supporting Sheridan on "My Bonnie."
The single sharing the album's name starts the song off traditionally, but after the first verse it turns into a rockin' version that sounds very much like, well, early Beatles music.
http://youtu.be/gr35lAvW8PY
Today's lecture covered music and musicians who were popular in Hamburg while The Beatles were there. We learned 'schlager' (loosely translated as 'a hit') was a style of music hot in Hamburg. And today we were introduced to a guy named Ted Herold, supposedly Germany's Elvis. (After watching a video of him - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c58lJK9L51c, I'll stick with the U.S. version, thank you, thankyouverymuch.) Ironically of dozens and dozens of Herold videos to choose from, I randomly picked one called "Die Besten Sterben Jung." Guess those three years of German in high school didn't pay off, I had no idea what that meant. At one point Ted stopped singing and started rattling off names like Jim, Janis, and Elvis. That got me to Googling the song's title, turns out it means "the best die young."
We also listened to an instrumental track, "Wonderland by Night," from Bert Kaempfert, "Germany's Herb Alpert." The horns-heavy song hit number one in the U.S. for a few weeks in 1960. Kaempfert was the one who hired The Beatles to back Sheridan on "My Bonnie," by the way. And in another random factoid, now I know whom the Barenaked Ladies were talking about in their hit "One Week" when they said "Bert Kaempfert's got the mad hits!"
So far, it has really been enjoyable being enticed to listen to music we'd otherwise never hear, and get a better sense of the formative years of the Fab Four.
HOW BIG?: A friend's Facebook post tipped me off to a BBC Web site where you can get a good idea how large mammoth objects are, relatively speaking.
I put a purple arrow (center frame) pointing to our copper colored roof.
Clearly, the ISS is a big ol' spacecraft.
CJ was rather horrified about our odds of surviving if it landed on our block, but I reminded him, the ISS was not constructed to Earth gravity specs - it would crumple if it were here on the ground. So maybe, just maybe, we'd escape being totally obliterated.
The "How Big Really?" site has a whole list of fun comparisons, divided by categories, like "Space" and "Environmental Disasters"
CRAMMING: We spent a couple of hours studying for our genetics midterm today. I was mostly happy with our review, but we all pretty much failed miserably when it came to remembering how to infer the phase of alleles in a heterozygous parent, infer the gene order and then determine the recombination factors. Tonight, after reviewing a couple of lectures, I'm feeling more confident. We'll give it another go tomorrow. I'd love to be able to take at least half of the test tomorrow (it's broken up into two 90-minute segments).
WELL PLAYED: Bad weather has been attacking a wide swath of the US this winter, closing businesses and canceling classes. Kudos to administrators who are getting creative with their school closure notices.
DARWIN DAY: Today is Charles Darwin's birthday, so it seemed fitting we were studying genetics and evolution. We watched a couple of lectures, during which time we learned about a deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium due to something called the Wahlund effect, and how FST measures differentiation as extent of the Wahlund effect.
We also spent some time reviewing our previous' four-weeks' worth of work, as it's mid-term time. We reviewed the in-video problems, the 'thought problems' and the graded problem sets for week 1 and I was thrilled that the kids and I remembered the terms, concepts, and the answers to all of the problems. Tomorrow, we'll tackle weeks 2, 3 and 4 and take the mid term this weekend.
CURL UP: One of the most exciting events in the Winter Olympics is curling. (Hey you there, stop snickering. I'm serious - mostly.) Today, we read a cool article about the physics involved in the sport. One of the things we learned is that curling ice is deliberately made bumpy (they spray droplets on the surface, which freeze). The bumps let the granite curling stone travel faster, because there's less friction than if the stone's whole surface was on the ice.
However, the bumps also make that granite spin (or curl, hence the sport's name), so that's where the furious brooming comes in - it's to make the ice more slippery and impact the stone's curl or curve.
I love this 1909 photo of men in Ontario, Canada, curling.
This was long before anyone was wearing those fancy curling pants, like the Norwegian Olympic team.
BEFORE THE FAB FOUR: We watched another lecture in Week 1 of our "Music of The Beatles" class with professor John Covach, Chair of Music at the University of Rochester, Director of the University of Rochester Institute for Popular Music, Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Professor of Theory at the Eastman School of Music. Today, the prof focused on the British music scene before The Beatles shot to the top. We learned about skiffles - a type of music that grew out of the post-war British jazz scene.
Professor Covach singled out "The Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group" for popularizing the genre, and pointed to his 1956 rockin' version of Lead Belly's "Rock Island Line" as a breakout hit. We went and found it on YouTube, of course. Lonnie takes a while to get to it, but once he does, the song rollicks right along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI4nRD-DRpk
It will be interesting to see how we transition from Lonnie Donegan to The Beatles. It's hard to believe John and Paul met and started making music together when they were such young men - just 14 and 15 years old. Wow.
According to multiple reports, the rover failed to properly shut down/prepare for a two-week lunar night, during which cold would likely damage critical components.
In reading some of the comments on the first story, declaring Jade Rabbit lifeless, some were very critical of China's space program, claiming they rush to launch before critical details - like safety - are tended to. A couple commentators specifically cited Long March 3B, a 1996 disaster I knew nothing about.
Turns out it was a heavy rocket carrying a satellite that dramatically, horrifically shot horizontally off the launch pad, crashing into a nearby village, causing catastrophic property damage, and killing more than 500 Chinese, making it, by far, the worst spaceflight related accident in human history.
Image Credit: NASA/David Roy US of LANDSTAT: We watched online on Feb. 11 of last year as the Landsat 8 satellite launched from California last year. The map above is one of the first complete views of the US from Landsat 8. It shows up as strips because, according to NASA, "Landsat 8 collects data in 185-kilometer (115-mile) wide strips called swaths or paths. Each orbit follows a predetermined ground track so that the same path is imaged each time an orbit is repeated. It takes 233 paths and 16 days to cover all of the land on Earth. This means that every land surface has the potential to be imaged once every 16 days."
BRITISH INVASION: This afternoon the kids and I had the pleasure of starting a course called "The Music of The Beatles" through the University of Rochester. Per the course description, the six week class "will track the musical development of the band, starting from the earliest days in Liverpool and Hamburg, moving through the excitement of Beatlemania, the rush of psychedelia, and the musical maturity of Abbey Road." Sounds good! Our professor is Dr. John Covach.
I went ahead and ordered the recommended reading book, "Beatlesongs." It's a one-volume account of every Beatles album and single, organized chronologically and in running order, providing song info and Beatles' comments.
The first lecture did a nice job of introducing names of the major players in the band's evolution (the members, producers, record companies, roadies, photographers, you name it). One of the things Professor Covach was quick to point out was the birth years of each of The Beatles, and noting their ages when they 'invaded' America. John was the 'elder' statesman - at 23! The youngest, George, was just 20. W-O-W. How overwhelmed they must have been!
The kids just adore The Beatles music, and absolutely LOVE Paul McCartney and Wings. They ask me to play Wings in non stop rotation in the car, which makes me happy, as I was exactly CJ's age when "Wings at the Speed of Sound" came out, and I couldn't get enough of it. Cool that we're getting to enjoy it together, and that we will all soon have a much better appreciation for and understanding of The Beatles. SHAKE YOUR BOOTY: "Why does my gluteus feel like it's shaking?" CJ asked shortly after we finished a rigorous "Just Dance" session this afternoon.
I explained to him it's because he danced his butt off, LOL.
It really is a fun way to get a workout, that's for sure. The last song we did was Kris Kross' "Jump"
HOLY MAMMOTH!: Exciting find in the South Lake Union part of Seattle today. Officials from the Burke Museum (on the University of Washington campus) confirm that construction workers have uncovered a mammoth tusk that appears to date back to the Ice Age, between 10,000 and 11,000 years ago.
No news on what will become of the tusk, as it was discovered on private property and is not associated with an archaeological site. That means it's up to the landowner to decide what they would like to do with the tusk,
SNOW DAYS: This weekend broughtsome precipitation in a pretty form - a few inches of snow blanketing the Emerald City.
The kids had a blast playing in it, of course. Per her request, I filled some squeeze bottles of colored water for Annabelle, who painted on the snow with it. And, of course, they had to have a (rather tame) snowball fight.
Despite the snow, we managed to make it over to Rick's house to work on his floors some more. Slow, painstaking process trying to save 100 year old wood, removing and re-installing dozens of boards (to cover up where we removed wall. We're nowhere near done.
We also tackled a couple of other minor projects, including getting his washer and dryer up and running. It was handy having Annabelle around, as she could wedge into the small space between his washer and dryer and help attach the dryer's exhaust hose.
STUDIO VISIT: We were back at Rick's today, working again, but had to leave a little after 2 to make an appointment at the Pacific Science Center. There, we toured the '"The Studio" area of the center, and offered our feedback to a staffer as part of a focus group we've been participating in for about a year now.
The exhibit we toured today was all about the West Nile Virus. It was super educational. We'd all heard of the virus, but now we all have an understanding of its genesis, the threat it poses and how you can protect yourself.
The first case is traced back to Uganda. By 1999, it had reached NYC.
It didn't take long for the virus to spread across the United States.
We watched a series of five short videos about how the disease is tracked at the present. For instance, locally, researchers from Washington State University set out traps to collect mosquitoes. The traps are baited with dry ice, because they emit Co2, which the mosquitoes are drawn to.
The trapped specimens are identified by species, which is important because out of the 40-plus types of mosquitoes in the state, there are only two species of mosquitoes in Washington state which carry West Nile virus, Culux tarsalis and Culex pipiens.
We learned about hot spots in the state for the West Nile virus (east of the Cascades).
We also learned that the majority of people can get bitten by an infected mosquito and not have a reaction (represented by the green beads below), while some have a flu-like reaction (represented by the yellow). In rare circumstances, a person can become gravely ill - or even die (represented by the red beads below).
The exhibit included the story of a Washington winery owner, Paul Champoux of Champoux Vineyard, who darn near died from a mosquito bite in 2009. He's still struggling with the after effects.
MEANWHILE, IN SOCHI: We've been watching some of the Olympics since they started last week.
This morning, on NBC's Olympics' Web site, we watched a video about America's top short track speed skater J.R. Celski (a local guy!) and four-time Grammy winning artist Macklemore (another local guy). Turns out the two have a number of things in common, beyond geography. http://www.nbcolympics.com/king/video/10000-hours-jr-celski-and-macklemore?post_id=572443862_10152039777163863#_=_
