One of my morning activities was making split pea soup for the first time in my life.
Leave it to the kids to ask aloud, "Why's it called split pea soup?"
Apparently my answer, "Because the peas are split" wasn't satisfactory to them. They pressed for more details. While driving home from the store (to fetch split peas), I regaled them with a tale of Santa's elves in the off-season wielding tiny chisels, chipping dried peas in half. Apparently, they didn't believe me. As soon as we got home, Annabelle hit the Google. I was crossing the threshold as she announced, "They're already split!"
O really?!
Turns out when Pisum sativum are dried, their skin falls off and they naturally split in half. In fact, they were in two pieces all along. Who knew?!
Thanks to the work of Gregor Mendel, we also learned that green split peas are actually genetically recessive (a yy) as compared to the YY of the yellow split pea. (They hybrids, Yy, are, of course, also yellow.) Fascinating!
IN REVIEW: One of CJ's Christmas gifts this year was the book "Without You, There is No Us" (thanks G&G). He started reading it Dec. 26 and powered right through. Today, he submitted this review.
"Without You There is No US" is a memoir by Suki Kim, a South Korean-American immigrant born in 1970, in Seoul. The non-fiction book is about obtaining a Visa to go to North Korea to teach English to certain university students in PUST, or the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in the six months prior to former Supreme Leader Kim-Jong Il's death. PUST is North Korea's first privately-funded university, and the only university left in North Korea after a mass shutdown of universities across the country in which students from the universities that were shut down were forced to work at certain construction zones across the country. Kim also authored the award-winning novel "The Interpreter."
In the book, Suki Kim discusses teaching English to her students in English Classes 4 and 1. In the system at their university, for example: "Class 4" is the class for the students with the poorest English skills, and "Class 1" is the class for the students with the best English skills. Most of Kim's co-workers were Christian missionaries who either did not know or chose to ignore that Kim did not share their faith and their goal being not necessarily to teach the students, but to spread their faith around North Korea, an extremely dangerous task in a communist country such as North Korea.
The book's title "Without You, There is No Us" comes from an event the students would have to enact every day, three times a day. They would march in two straight lines, chanting the following words: "Without You, There is No Motherland, Without You, There is No Us", with the word "You" in the sentence referring to Kim-Jong Il, then-Supreme Leader of North Korea. As the dust cover of the book puts it: "It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and finds herself humming it."
The amount of obliviousness of the students in Suki's class may be unsettling, or even frightening to those who have little knowledge of North Korea's regime. For example, the students are clueless as to what the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, passports, taxes, "Frequent Flier Miles", Jet Lag and essays are, but know exactly which country the United States bought Alaska from (the Russian Empire), how much money the United States bought Alaska for (7.2 million dollars), and when Alaska was officially became American territory (October 18, 1867), which was obvious evidence that they had been taught that about imperialist America.This evening I found a link to a National Public Radio interview with Suki Kim: http://www.npr.org/2014/10/22/357632699/among-the-young-and-privileged-in-north-korea
SUPER DUPER: Most days, as I'm slogging through and hitting 'DELETE,' I curse myself for being subscribed to so many lists. Today was an exception. A gem I found on one informed me about "A Free Educational Astronomy Event for Seattle Area Students."
Instantly, my eyes widened and I sat more upright in my seat. The details read, "Meet Dr. Aomawa Shields, Astronomer and Astrobiologist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Then interact with world renowned scientists."
The fine print said students will be able to interact with leading scientists from around the world, including NASA Missions and programs, the California Institute of Technology, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Chandra X-ray Center, and corporations like Apogee Imaging Systems, Space Telescope Institute and more.
"Your students will have the opportunity to participate in hands-on demonstrations and talk with real scientists and engineers at the forefront of astronomy," they said.
Sold!
Naturally, I signed us up for the three-hour event at the Washington State Convention Center on Tuesday, Jan. 6. Turns out this student outreach is part of the American Astronomical Society's 225th(!) meeting
SCARED STRAIGHT: I just showed this to CJ and Annabelle and said, simply, "This is why you don't do drugs."
Per reports in multiple news outlets, this couple was "trapped" in an unlocked closet for two days. With a (working) cell phone. The article notes no drugs were found when they were 'rescued.' Gee, ya think? Wild guess here, but I'd bet they'd long since been ingested.
Not the best way to start the new year for either of them. Yowza. Here's hoping they get well soon.
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