Day Before the Day Before

TWELVES:  Our morning started early. We were out of the house slightly after 7 a.m., in search of some Blue Friday fun. 

Why the early rise?

As I explained to the kids at one point today, you just never know when your team is going to be in the Big Dance, and when they are, you have to soak up every second.

Obviously with any sport, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If you win more than you lose,* sometimes you get to play more. But, unfortunately, the 2011 Seattle Mariners are a 
good' example of just how fleeting even a 'best' team can be. 

The 2011 Mariners were the Best Baseball Team Ever based on their win/loss record. Naturally, that success led them to post season play. There, they were trounced in the first round. In a way, it rendered their 'best ever' record meaningless. 

Lesson learned: Drink up the victories when you can. Being "#1" is fleeting, at best.

And so, back to us in the freezing fog outside CenturyLink just after 7 this morning.  It was fun seeing all the other "Twelves" milling around the stadium, spirits high.

We went to the King 5 booth, where we donated cans of food, met the King 5 mascot ... 

and scored some cool "Twelfie" sunglasses!

We also stopped by the nearby booth of the local Fox affiliate. There, they were collecting signatures on '12' flags which will be inside the stadium in Arizona on Sunday.

Our timing was such that a live remote was filmed while we were there.

 Media blitz!

The kids were both featured prominently on the live remote. #GoHawks. 

*One famous exception of the win-more-than-lose qualifier to make the post-season is the 2011 Seahawks team. With a 7-win, 9-losses record, they managed to be the top team in their division, but the lowest seed in the playoffs. Their first game was up against the previous year's Super Bowl champs, the New Orleans Saints. And lo and behold, they beat the Saints (in a game in which the term 'Beast Quake' was introduced to the lexicon). They lost their next playoff game, but they did silence those whining about them being in the playoffs to begin with.

IN OTHER NEWS: SMAPS is still upright on the launch pad, scrubbed again. They're gonna try to go on Saturday morning early, stay tuned. 

We finished up our week's worth of classical music lectures and tests. The harpsichord figured largely in what we listened to today. Music to our ears!

On a Wing

SEE HAWK:  Lovely blue skies in Seattle today, so we got out in it for a bit. Though it was clear, the wind was whipping away on the Magnolia bluff, and the brisk air made our eyes water and cheeks hurt, so our walk was cut short. However, for most of our outing, we enjoyed the company of a bird of prey flying over Puget Sound. Naturally, we immediately declared it a sea hawk. No, not the ones in football uniforms, but a real live bird that inspired the NFL team's name. 

The beautiful creature seemed to be enjoying the air currents this afternoon, floating to and fro overhead with hardly flapping its wings at all.

It soared back and forth, over the park we were in and out over Puget Sound. 

Rather majestic, don't you think?

And imagine our surprise and delight when we spied a (huge!) bald eagle perched on a branch nearby. It, too, seemed to be keeping tabs on the bird's comings and goings.

I posted the photos to Facebook and one of my friends asked if the bald eagle is considered a "Patriot." I told her it was probably one of Patriots coach Bill Belichick's minions, sent to spy on the Sea Hawk.  

But then another friend posted that he thought the bird was actually a turkey vulture. Hmm. In looking at photos of them online, the wings certainly look the same-ish.  Could be a turkey vulture. But a sea hawk sounds *so* much more regal than a turkey vulture, don't you think?

TRANSFORMED:  As previously reported, Annabelle spends a significant chunk of her daily computer time creating artwork, often related to ponies (as in the My Little Pony franchise).

Today, she created an original pony character in the style of MLP, from a photo of a real horse. 

In case you're wondering, Annabelle named the character Chestnut Clover.

GOING FOR BAROQUE: Lectures we listened to today for our classical music class were about the baroque period and the advent of opera in the Western world.

We listened to parts of Claudio Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo," which was written in 1607, and we learned what terms like libretto, recitative, ostinato, and auria mean. We also listened to three different versions of part of Henry Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas." 

A Londoner, Purcell's opera was written in English. Interesting aside: Our professor declared Purcell, Handel and Paul McCartney the three most important songwriters from England (in his opinion). 

STILL STANDING:  SMAP was scheduled to lift off early Thursday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base but high winds scrubbed the launch. They're going for it again Friday morning, 6:20 a.m. UPDATE: SCRUBBED AGAIN. NO LAUNCH UNTIL JAN 31 at EARLIEST.

In the meantime, check out this cool photo of the gantry being rolled back from the Delta II rocket.

       Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
SMAP is NASA’s first Earth-observing satellite designed to collect global observations of surface soil moisture and its freeze-thaw state. The satellite will provide high resolution global measurements of soil moisture from space, and the data will be used to enhance scientists' understanding of the processes that link Earth's water, energy, and carbon cycles.

Coverage of Friday's planned launch begins at 4 a.m. Pacific Coast time, on NASA's NTV-3 channel: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/media_flash.html#.VMrEhmjF8Yd

PARALLELS:  We took about two minutes today to contemplate the existence of parallel universes. Seems like too short a time to spend on such a mind blowing topic, but it's a start. What prompted it was a Facebook post from physicist Brian Greene.  He wrote, in part, "Without a shred of evidence for other universes, why is it that some physicists -- I'm among them -- take the idea seriously?"

We hopped to his World Science U Web site and watched a brief video where Greene elaborates on his opinion (http://youtu.be/Xm4R688pTRo).


MAKE SOME NOISE:  The Washington state governor Jay Inslee has issued the following official proclamation. "Calling all 12s. It’s time to get LOUD, LOUDER and LOUDEST for our Seattle Seahawks. I’m proclaiming three state-wide moments of LOUDNESS at 12:00 p.m. on Jan. 30, Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. Join your fellow 12s for 30 seconds each day to cheer for the World Champion Seahawks. We’ll be in Olympia on the Capitol steps this Friday at noon to kick it off. Let them hear you all the way in Arizona!"

So, I guess we have some shouting to do. :)

Taste the Rainbow

CANDY CHASERS: Our plan today was to marathon watch lectures online for our Magna Carta and classical music classes. That is, until I spied this on Facebook at about 9:45 a.m. ...  

Well, that's a game changer. Who wouldn't drop everything for a pack of Seahawks' Skittles?! ;)

We all hurriedly showered and hopped into the car. We were parking out front of Safeco Field, just south of CenturyLink stadium, where the Seahawks Pro Shop is, by 10:25. I thought it would be better to park a bit further away and hot foot it in, rather than circle CenturyLink, looking for parking. Glad we did that, as on our way out, we saw dozens of people getting ticketed for panickedly parking illegally. For Skittles. . 

We could see there was a line of a couple hundred people already, but I told the kids I liked our odds, based on how many security people there were and where they were standing, and where the 'cattle' fences were. 

This shot shows where we were and where we had to get. The blue arrow is pointing to the Pro Shop, where the Skittles station was.

Everyone in line was friendly and chatty and a few minutes before 11, when distribution was supposed to start, the line started moving at decent pace, and we were seeing folks walking away, Seattle Mix Skittles in hand!

My compliments to the Skittles team. They were friendly and efficient and made lots of people happy today.

CJ and Annabelle were pretty pleased when they got the golden ticket, so to speak.

In addition to the Extra Special Magical Skittles, we each got a pack of regular (red wrapper) Skittles, a groovy Skittles headband, and some eye 'black' (er, rainbow) patches. Sweet!

I'm so glad we shifted gears at the last second and decided to go down to the stadium on super short notice. Another fun Super Bowl XLIX memory made!

And if we were so inclined, we could have turned a tidy profit from our field trip. When I checked this afternoon, the Super Bowl XLIX Skittles were going on eBay for over $100 a pack. But we're not in it for profit. It's for love of the game. We gave Rick and Ken each a pack, a headband and some under eye patches, and we can't wait to eat our pack of Skittles come Sunday. :)

OH MY: We did managed to do more than gather collector candy today. We listened to several lectures for our classical music class covering music written in Monasteries and Convents in the Middle Ages, including the chants written by Hildegard of Bingen.

We learned about Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame, dance music of the courts back in the day, humanism in music, the musical instruments and dances of Middle Ages and Renaissance, the advent of the a cappella motet, and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation movement.

The eye-popper of the day, however, was learning that women weren't allowed to sing in the Catholic church back then, and so what to do about high parts in chorales? There were three options, said our professor: Male falsettos, young choir boys, and castratos. 

Professor Church talked a little bit about castratos, and noted that Alessandro Moreschi (1858 – 1922) was Sistine castratos. Below, is a photo of his from 1904.

We listened to a vintage recording of a 40-something Moreschi singing "Ave Maria."

It was haunting, to say the least. After the lecture was over, I asked the kids if they knew why the singers were called castratos.  

Let's just say they were NOT aware, and after I explained it to them, CJ blurted, "Pass me the mind bleach."

Indeed.

SOIL SCIENCE: Early morning West Coast launch tomorrow, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in  California. Up, up and away will be SMAP, or the Soil Moisture Active Passive mission for NASA. Once it's deployed, SMAP will produce global maps of soil moisture, which will help improve understanding of Earth's water and carbon cycles and our ability to manage water resources.

The kids and I have watched a couple of press conferences about the project. Interesting and valuable information will come from SMAP. The orbiting observatory will measure the amount of water in the top 2 inches of soil on the entire Earth surface. This data is vital as, the topsoil layer is the one in which the food we eat grows and where other vegetation lives.
This video has lots more info.

Play Time

MATINEE: This afternoon, Christian took the kids to a Seattle Children's Theatre production, "Mwindo."

According to SCT's Web site, this (world premiere!) play is a coming of age story based on a centuries-old Central African tale. Since there were there and I wasn't, I let the kids tell you more. 

Here is CJ's review ...  

On January 26th, I went to see the Seattle Children's Theatre's production of Mwindo, an ancient African folk tale. In the play, a chief of a tribe in the village of Tubondo in the forest of the Congo announces the birth of his sixth daughter to his warriors, and awaits the birth of his seventh. The Chief's primary reason for fathering several daughters is because they bring him high bride prices.

However, when the birth of the chief's seventh child is taking unusually long, he sends Spider-Cricket, an unusual hybrid creature that longs to fly, to find out why. When the chief's seventh child is born, it comes with a huge surprise: His seventh "daughter" is actually a fully-grown boy named Mwindo, who is born dancing with a magic conga scepter in his hair! He is also born with the ability to talk and walk.

However, when the chief realizes that he has just fathered a son but not a daughter, he demanded that Mwindo be buried alive in a cave. Inside the cave, Mwindo meets Cha-Cha, a hedgehog that was banished down there 10 years ago by the chief. After telling Cha-Cha about what happened, Cha-Cha decides to dig out back to civilization.

Overall, I enjoyed the Seattle Children's Theatre's production of Mwindo.

And here is Annabelle's report ...

On January 27, 2015, I went to go see a play called Mwindo at Seattle Children's Theatre. The play is about a powerful boy with a father, the chief, who does not love him, for he cannot gain money from having a child that may compete with him for the throne. His mother tries to protect Mwindo, but ultimately ends up losing him.

Along the way, he meets Cha-Cha the hedgehog and Spider Cricket, the appropriately named spider-cricket hybrid. Together they help Mwindo try to go home and end his father's evil rule. There is also a golden eagle that the Chief is obsessed with.

The story originated in India and takes place in a village in the forest of the Congo. The characters were good and I really liked the story. Overall I think the play should get a 10/10.

If you want to know more, there's a full synopsis, info about the sets, and much more in the wonderful "Active Audience Guide" resource on SCT's Web site: http://www.sct.org/Assets/Files/AAG/2014-2015/SCT-Active-Audience-Guide_Mwindo.pdf

ORANGE ROVER:  This morning, Annabelle tackled a project all by herself. The goal: Building a solar-powered rover from a kit she received as a Christmas gift. 

It was a straightforward project, and she was done within 15 minutes, I'd say.

Annabelle was quite pleased with the final result, however, today it was pretty darn miserable out, weather wise, with heavy cloud cover and dark gray skies, so it didn't start rolling yet.

Hopefully the sun will make an appearance tomorrow and the rover will be rollin', rollin', rollin'!

AD ASTRA: Today marks the anniversary of the Apollo 1 disaster, where astronauts Roger Chaffee, Ed White and Gus Grissom (left to right, below) were killed on the launchpad when their capsule was engulfed in flames.

     Photo Credit: NASA

NASA learned a lot from the mistakes that were made leading to the death of this trio, and every future manned flight benefited. 

Banner Day

FUNDAYS: What a weekend! So much good stuff to report, where to begin? 

Well, let's start with baseball, 'cause baseball in January is a nice thought. :)

On Saturday, we headed to Safeco Field for Fanfest, and off season celebration of baseball to come. There were autograph sessions and such, but the kids were more interested in things like a zip line!!! 

We got in line a half hour before gates opened at 11 a.m. on Saturday and hot footed it to the zipline station near the right field foul pole. We were lucky we got in line when we did, as it was 'only' about a 45 minute wait by the time we arrived. 

And by 'we' I mean the kids and Christian, as I was the event photographer. :)

As I watched for the whole long wait, believe you me, I thought of all the ways it would be better more/efficient if I were running the station. 

That said, the MPA gang did finally make their way to the launch zone! 

I was proud that they both, without hesitation, jumped out of the gates, despite the fact that the people launching them had the words "Clowns Unlimited" on their clothing. Super. ;)

But wait - even better than the stills is biggest brother Rick's videography of the event!

The kids also had a pre-season meeting with the Moose ...

and they shot arrows at Mariners' future opponents a la Fernando Rodney style! Sweet!

On the way out of the stadium, we saw this concrete truck. No wonder the streets of Seattle are so awful. They're paved by/with clowns.

Monday afternoon, we went to Pacific Science Center, a place where Much Good Learning takes place. 

We were there to sign a banner. :)

Specifically, some fabric that's going to fly over Super Bowl XLIX. 

#GoHawks.

Tomorrow, we're hitting classical music and the Magna Carta hard. ;)

Friday Highlights

        Source: The National Archives (UK) 
NOTEWORTHY: In order to complete this week's test in our Magna Carta class, we had to listen to four lectures and read three extracts. The extracts were from: Henry Care (1646-1688) "English liberties, or, The free-born subject's inheritance containing, I. Magna Charta (sic), the petition of right, the Habeas Corbus Act (1680)"; "Notes on Magna Charta (sic)," reproduced by Henry Care from Edward Coke's "A Commentary on Littleton)"; and "The Petition of Right, 1628." 

Fascinating reading, it was, but not exactly easily digestible. Written long ago in old-timey English, about life and times nearly 400 years ago and full of legalese, it wasn't something you could breeze through. For instance, the Petition of Right (pictured at the top of this blog post) was drafted by a committee headed by Sir Edward Coke, and was ratified by both the House of Commons and House of Lords in May of 1628, and eventually accepted by King Charles the I of England a few weeks later.

As we worked through it, I gave the kids tips about taking notes and how to effectively highlight key ideas. Naturally, one of the things I mentioned was that highlighting everything is not very efficient or effective, IMHO. I mean, look at the ink Annabelle laid down here.

  Text source: Edward Coke's "A Commentary on Littleton"

CJ didn't use as much ink, but if you denote the ENTIRE PAGE is a key idea, as he did with huge swaths of the Petition of Right, well, that's not super helpful, either!

And so, we spent time reviewing proper and improper highlighting, and how helpful jotting notes in the margins can be.

Since the excerpts were so full of new-to-us words and ideas, we took our time with them. We talked about each document, and what we thought the authors meant, paragraph by paragraph.

After working our way through the three excerpts, it was test time.However, I thought it best we check on the class' online forum first to see if there were any helpful hints there. Well, that was a mistake. What I mostly found was post after post of people complaining about how impossible the test was, how unreasonable the homework was, on and on. It wasn't exactly reassuring, and it made me wonder if we were so lame that we didn't even realize the assignment was so overwhelmingly difficult, especially given the fact that students each get three attempts at the test. Hmm. ... 

Happy to say, CJ and Annabelle got 100 percent the first time. I wasn't that perfect, and used a second attempt to get a perfect score. Yay for us!  

Truth be told, I was bit worried we might be in over our heads by taking this course, but so far, so good.

MODERATION:  Last night, CJ was talking about how "addictive" pistachios are and was asking what he'd have to do to get a lifetime supply of them. To that, Christian and I agreed that pistachios are amazingly delicious, but noted that they're meant to be a small snack, not a steady diet, and we lectured him about pistachio moderation. ;)

Today, a Facebook friend posted a video by foodie Alton Brown that I shared with the kids. It's a brief story about exactly how Brown lost 50 pounds. As he points out, he changed his diet, and it wasn't via a diet in the standard sense of the word these days. Rather, it was in the manner regarding its root in classical Greek, where diaita meant 'way of living.' Alton's take is smart, straightforward, and drives home the importance of moderation. And most importantly, it sounds like we can keep eating pistachios daily!

WORTH A LOOK: Like so many 'round the world, we at MPA have followed the European Space Agency's comet- rendezvous mission Rosetta with great interest. Buzz about the mission peaked when Rosetta launched a small craft, Philae, which managed to land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Though Philae has fallen silent (as expected), the Rosetta mission continues. Some comet close ups the ESA just released are definitely worth a look, including this one.

                                Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Per an ESA caption, "This OSIRIS narrow-angle camera image shows part of a large fracture running across Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko’s neck, in particular where it has left Hapi and is extending into Anuket. In this orientation, the Seth region is at the uppermost left and Hapi in the lower left."

More comet close ups can be viewed here: 
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Highlights/Comet_close-ups

HALLELUJAH: Whilst working around the house today, we had Handel's Messiah, as performed by The Choir of King's College, Cambridge.   We managed to listen to all two hours and thirty eight minutes of it, which was comprised of three scenes, with a total of 53 pieces, including perhaps Handel's greatest 'hit,' the "Hallelujah" chorus. 

Here's a link, if you're similarly inclined: http://youtu.be/AZTZRtRFkvk


CAN'T HOLD US: The kids finally got back to guitar today, taking on what seems like it should have been a pretty simple endeavor, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' "Can't Hold Us." There are only four chords (C, D, Em and Bm, the latter being the most difficult one). We found a decent YouTube tutorial for it, and employed the chord cards I designed to help the kids play it. However, the timing is tricky and the words are rapid fire. Let's just say it's not a learn-in-one-hour song. Here's my favorite version of it - a special one Seattle son Macklemore did for a Seahawks game on Sunday Night Football.

Go Hawks! :)

Swinging and Shaking

THE SWING OF THINGS: Look, the kids at another park. Don't they ever do any school work? 

Honestly, the swinging was in the name of science. They're working on a unit about pendulums, and swings are a perfect example. At the park, they tested swings of different lengths and  seeing how the length of the pendulum affects how many times they swung back and forth.

They conducted a related experiment at home, using string, a paperclip, a penny, some tape and a pencil to first construct a pendulum that would complete 15 cycles in 15 seconds. Then, they figured out how to make one that worked as a minute timer. 

 Bee did most of the building, while CJ was the official time keeper. 

SHAKE IT UP: Science surrounds us, even at the National Football Conference championship game last Sunday, where seismographs were used to capture the action in an interesting way.

The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network's Seismo Blog has in-depth analysis of the seismic activity in the Seahawks' stadium when they beat the Green Bay Packers in rather crazy fashion.

The PNSN's graph above shows the original "Beast Quake" (how the stadium shook during a 67-yard touchdown run by Marshawn Lynch during the 'Hawks playoff win over the Saints in 2011) in blue. Some seismic activity from this past Sunday is shown on the other lines. In green is the "Fake Quake," or the crowd's reaction to the fake field goal and TD pass by Seahawks' punter Jon Ryan.   The Dance Quake isn't from a single play, but it's the crowd's collection reaction after a late go-ahead touchdown and two-point conversion, while kicking off. The "OT TD" in gray was the jubilation when the 'Hawks scored the game-winning touchdown in overtime. As of Sunday, "Dance Quake" is now CenturyLink's largest seismic event on record. 

I loved the PNSN blog's commentary on "Dance Quake." They wrote: "Clearly while most fans were jumping up and down in unison there were many who were either not very coordinated or JUI (Jumping Under the Influence)." 

Go Hawks. :) 

Here's a play-by-play of Sunday's game (seismically speaking).

I think this type of coverage of the game is a cool way to inject some science into game day. Bravo to those involved.

CLASSY: We 'binge watched' seven lectures for our "Introduction to Classical Music" class today. Instrument families, melodic structure, modulation, tonality, cadence, musical texture, counterpoints, chromatic scale, monophonic, homophonic and polyphonic, fugues, cannons, strophic, binary, ternary, the eight style periods (from middle ages to post modern) ... we covered a LOT of musical ground today. 

I caught myself at times only listening to the music, rather than the words explaining the music. Oops. 

During the lectures, we got to hear parts of a number of works. We learned that Ave Maria is really the work of multiple people. While doing math homework today, I played an Andrea Bocelli's version of it. 

We listened to a classical music version of "Call Me Maybe" (Carly Rae Jepsen's pop music ear worm).

Honestly, I don't like either version of it, haha.

And we were reminded that Barry Manilow had a big hit in the 1970s by writing a song, "Could It Be Magic?" using Frederic Chopin's "Prelude in C Minor" (or more specifically, Prelude Op. 28, No. 20, in C minor) as its intro. 

Now that one, I loved, and remarkably I remembered every word to the song, despite not having heard it in, oh, 40 years or so.

TUT TUT: I can't even believe the news today that King Tut's burial mask has been seriously, irreversibly damaged. The account of how it went down (literally) reads like "Dumb and Dumber." The kids were aghast. Read it and weep, as the saying goes: 
http://io9.com/king-tuts-burial-mask-has-been-irreversibly-damaged-1681085211?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow