Rock On

HIGHWAY TO HELL: Last Saturday night was interesting for us. Not the normal evening, to be sure. We headed southeast an hour or so, to the tiny metropolis of Enumclaw, Washington, population 11,000 or so. That number swelled by a couple hundred on Saturday night, as a number of out-of-towners made their way to the Chalet Theater to see a rock and roll show. On the bill: Black Box and Hell's Belles.

Christian's co-worker is the lead guitarist for Black Box, a '90s cover band, so that was fun. The main attraction was Hell's Belles, an all-female AC/DC cover band. CJ can tell you more about that. ...

Forming in the mid-seventies, AC/DC, an Australian rock band, has become one of the world's most famous bands, releasing fourteen RIAA Platinum-certified albums, among them a double-Diamond album (Back in Black). Since then, a number of tribute bands of varying quality have formed, among them Hell's Belles, an all-female AC/DC tribute band from Seattle, WA. Labeled by AC/DC founder and lead guitarist Angus Young as "The best AC/DC cover band I've ever heard", Hell's Belles has been active since 2000, and since then, has toured the United States, Canada, Singapore, and Japan.

On 2 February 2019, Hell's Belles played a concert at the Chalet, a theater in Enumclaw, WA. I was in attendance, along with my family, having gotten tickets before the show sold out. The Chalet is a somewhat run-down venue, albeit one that is more-or-less suited for a band like Hell's Belles.

From the start of the show, I noticed how much Hell's Belles sound like AC/DC. Granted, they're an AC/DC tribute band, but the sheer closeness of the covers is honestly astounding. For example, Amber Saxon, Hell's Belles (current) singer, sounds so much like Brian Johnson (and, by extension, Bon Scott) that it isn't even funny.

When the band plays over a dozen AC/DC songs in a row, it quickly becomes apparent just how similar most AC/DC hits (if not all of their songs) sound to each other. While this is already common knowledge, it becomes even more apparent when you're listening to them sandwiched between each other.

Nevertheless, Hell's Belles was and is very entertaining, but I wouldn't necessarily make the trip to Enumclaw to see them again.

HARSH HIVE: Today's bee education from PerfectBee involved learning how honey bees reproduce. Fascinating stuff. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the lesson is that nature - and the hive - can seem cruel. However, it's also obvious that drones dying after mating and old queens being smothered is what's best for the bees in the 'big picture. 

Here's a short video from The Guardian about the queen bee's maiden mating flight.

So there you have it: A successful mating attempt by the drone ends in his death. 

Another thing we learned today is that the queen determines the sex of all of her offspring. Part of the process is her determining whether or not to fertilize every one of the thousands of eggs she lays (about 2,000 eggs per day in her prime, by the way). If an egg is fertilized, it will become a worker or queen bee. If it's unfertilized, it will become a drone.

Queen bees live up to about 4 years, when all of their stored sperm from their mating flight has been spent. At that point, the colony begins raising a new queen, and the old queen? Well, worker bees smother an aged or defective queen to death, by balling around her so she overheats and dies. Most unpleasant, but necessary for the health of the hive.

FIRST STEPS: As recently posted here, CJ was accepted in the Washington Aerospace Scholars program for sophomores. The (online) course opened to students today. He found that two of the first things he needed to do was learn about how to create an APA format annotated bibliography, and how to properly quote works cited.

He was pointed in the direction of a couple of YouTube videos, which we watched together, since these are skills Annabelle should have in her tool kit, too. First up is the APA-related video.

Not the most exciting subject matter, but necessary! Next, we watched a video about in text citations.

CJ also has to work on a math problem about escape velocity (that has to do with how objects overcome the gravitational pull of a celestial body). As help in working toward solving his assigned problem, he watched a video on the topic. It's from the Crash Course kids series.