Enough

UGLY ALL OVER: Today's news was dominated by remarks made by the President of the United States on Thursday.

When the present day news is how you teach history to your kids in a large way, there's really no avoiding it. So we had to take it head on.

Forgive the president's language, but he dismissed an entire continent, along with some other economically disadvantaged nations, as being "shithole countries." This has been corroborated by several sources. 

It's not a term I thought we'd ever hear reported (over and over and over) again on national news, attributed to a U.S. president, but there it was. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, all of them. Using those words - his words. 

CNN's Anderson Cooper, who has strong, personal ties, to Haiti, had this to say about that. 


And then there was Don Lemon, on CNN. He opened with this on his broadcast Thursday night:
 ‘This is CNN Tonight. I’m Don Lemon. The president of the United States is racist.’

Then, Lemon blasted those who’ve attacked the president’s critics for pointing out his racist comments, asked, “You know what you can go do?” But rather than go low, he went high. 

"I can’t say that,” Lemon said. “But you can go read a book, a history book. Because you might learn that some of the people from those 'shithole' countries were slaves who were brought here by force to help build this country, and then start your learning process from there.” 

Lemon also called on people who are still Trump supporters to do some self-examination. “What does it say about you that no matter what ― no matter what ― you continue to make excuses for this man, for his vile behavior?” he asked. 

Excellent question. 

It's common to dismiss journalists as biased, these days, so set those two aside and let's turn to United States," spokesperson Rupert Coleville. Today, he said Donald Trump's reported remarks branding Haiti, El Salvador and unspecified African nations as "s***hole countries"  ... "are shocking and shameful comments from the President of the United States. ... There is no other word you can use but 'racist'."

It's not like yesterday's comment was an isolated incident. Newsweek has an abbreviated list of things Trump is on full record as having said during his campaign and as president.
http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-full-list-racist-comments-about-immigrants-muslims-and-others-779061

Gems include that Haitians "all have AIDS," and that Nigerians wouldn't ever "go back in their huts" after seeing America. 


It's 'easier' to say nothing, and to pretend all is OK.

But it's not. It's very NOT OK.

To be silent is to be complicit. 

It's NOT OK.

Checking in on the Neighbors

   Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA/USGS

ICE, ICE BABY: We definitely check in on what's going on on Mars from time to time, and recently, some photos from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) offered some caught our attention.  

What's shown in the photo above is a cross-section of underground ice. It is exposed at the steep slope. The scale's hard to gauge in the shot, but in the real (Mars) world, it's about 550 yards wide, and the wall drops down and away about 140 yards from the level ground shown in the top band of the photo. The blue is a color enhancement.

So far, MRO has found eight sites where thick deposits of ice beneath Mars' surface can be seen in the faces of eroding slopes. NASA scientists say the ice "was likely deposited as snow long ago. The deposits are exposed in cross section as relatively pure water ice, capped by a layer one to two yards (or meters) thick of ice-cemented rock and dust. They hold clues about Mars' climate history. They also may make frozen water more accessible than previously thought to future robotic or human exploration missions."

Obviously, having accessible ice on Mars could be a game changer for visiting astronauts. Fortunately, the sites are in both northern and southern hemispheres of Mars, at latitudes from about 55 to 58 degrees, which is equivalent to Scotland or the tip of South America, if they were here on Earth. In fact, "There is shallow ground ice under roughly a third of the Martian surface, which records the recent history of Mars," said the study's lead author, Colin Dundas of the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. "What we've seen here are cross-sections through the ice that give us a 3-D view with more detail than ever before."
The rendition is preliminary. A revised version might be provided in the first quarter of 2018.


In some of the ice masses, the exposed deposit of water ice is more than 100 yards thick. That's a lot of potential water. In fact, "Astronauts could essentially just go there with a bucket and a shovel and get all the water they need," said Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Tucson, a co-author on the new report regarding the findings. 

In other words, potentially a game changer!

MEANWHILE, ON JUPITER: A friend recently shared a stunning video of Jupiter via NASA's Juno probe. 

The footage was from December 16 of 2017, over about a three hour time span. In the video, the orbiter approaches Jupiter down to an altitude of between 3,000 and 4,000 km near the equator.

The gentleman who composed the video, Gerald Eichstädt, explains, "In natural colors, Jupiter looks pretty pale. Therefore, the still images are approximately illumination-adusted, i.e. almost flattened, and consecutively gamma-stretched to the 4th power of radiometric values, in order to enhance contrast and color."

Video credit: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / SPICE / Gerald Eichstädt
JunoCam was built and is operated by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego / California / USA.

Under the Sea

COLORFUL CHAOS: If you look around our house at any given time, you'll see projects. Many, many projects. The bulk are of the smaller-scale, artsy craftsy vein. The others are of the 'our bathroom is torn apart and we're tiling a shower' vein.

One of the things we've got going on now is a project to transform a hallway in a school into the Salish Sea. No big deal. ;)

For it, we have a 15-foot banner that will have a captivating passage about how we're all Salmon People. There will also be a 30-foot stream full of young hand crafted salmon making their way to out into the world. We also have a kelp forest going (amazing what you can do with plastic tablecloths and a can of spray paint), and then there is the octopus.

More specifically, the Pacific Ocotopus.

We've had fun taking a Strofoam (human) head, and augmenting it with spray foam insulation over a series of days to shape it into a squid head (complete with ping pong ball eyes, of course). Foam pipe insulation and some suction cups will the the octopus' arms/tentacles. 

Right now, they look like light sabers during the painting process, atop our dining room table as seen in the lead photo above.

I hope we can pull it all off. :) It has been fun (mostly, ha ha) working with a bunch of young artists on the various elements of this installation. The unveiling will be at the end of the month.

TO THE MOON: Today, like every day in my life, frankly, we celebrate David Bowie. 

But today is somber, as it is the day our Starman left Earth. Two years ago today, in fact.

A good friend posted an amazing science-meets-art lesson to my Facebook page today. I love it. It juxtaposes how long it would take to walk to the moon and uses a Bowie on Earth as a timeline. Lovely. You should watch.

Bowie Bash

BOFFO BIRTHDAY: January 8th has long been a day MPA has celebrated. It marks the birthday of three of our favorites: Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Stephen Hawking. How's that for an interesting trio?

In past years, we've made Elvis-related recipes, listened to musical marathons, watched informative videos and more.


This year, we put the spotlight on Bowie, by attending a birthday bash held in his honor at Central Cinema. They were showing the cult favorite movie "Labyrinth." 

Dressing for the occasion was encouraged, and so the kids made some custom shirt.

CJ chose a famous quote from the movie for his shirt.

You'd kind of have to see the scene from the movie for it to mean anything to you.

Annabelle went with a mash up of My Little Pony and Bowie's Labyrinth character, Jareth, for her shirt. 

For Annabelle's she created the image in Illustrator, and we printed it on an iron on transfer made for Ink Jet printers.

CJ's shirt was made using iron on material and our kind of new to us Cricut machine. 

There were just a couple of entrants in the official costume contest. The door knockers won. 

The night was full of singing and dancing and laughter and maybe a few tears. Such a fun time, and we're so glad we went!

ROSE CITY CIRCUIT: Saturday, we made a whirlwind trip down to the Rose City. Incredibly, I didn't manage to take a SINGLE photo of the trip. Wow. How lame.

We went down for a post holiday lunch date with family. We met at McMenamins' John Barleycorn location, in Tigard. Afterward, we stopped by to see a family member's nice new condo in John's Landing. 

The kids were gifted some nice presents. CJ got a rare, vintage record album . Annabelle received some great art supplies, which she loves, of course.

SHAR-T: Speaking of Annabelle and art, if you haven't checked out her ongoing Shar-Pei a Day series on Facebook, you should! She posts a new drawing daily, featuring a Shar-Pei she's drawn and some kind of Shar-pei pun.

For instance, a couple of days ago, she posted this "electric Shar."

And more recently, an the anniversary of George Washington being elected the United States' first president, she used a "This Pei in History" to post a Shar-Pei version of Washington.

Her cartoons are made using everything from crayons to colored pencils, the computer to an air brush. 

Crafts and Cards

FUN WITH FOAM: Each month, we post a bulletin board at a local school. Its purpose is to feature students' birthdays for the month, and each month, we try to come up with something a little different

It's now officially winter, but instead of hitting upon the obvious snowy theme, we thought it would be fun to picture what some critters usually pictured in snow would be doing, given their druthers. And so, the idea for "Penguin Vacation" was hatched.

The penguins and many of the elements (surf boards, a shark, and such) are made from craft foam. The rest is mixed media, everything from paper bags to printed card stock to produce netting, paper towels to Popsicle sticks.

We had fun thinking about penguins building sand castles, surfing, playing beach volleball, tanning (or burning) and even bellying up to a tiki bar.

In our case, it was a smelt smoothies bar (forgive the blurry, bad cell phone photo. Sorry!)
I loved Annabelle's little tinfoil smelt tails coming out of foam cups!

GAMERS: We've been playing a lot of card and board games lately thanks, in part, to Christmas gifts received.

One game new to us is CardLine Dinosuars.

The challenge is to take the cards you're dealt and take turns playing them according to what you guess their weight or size to be.

It's fun and educational.

Tonight, we revisited an old favorite, Hanabi. 

    Photo: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43516906

MEANWHILE ON JUPITER: My social media feeds were full of this astounding photo of Jupiter's surface.

Taken by the space probe Juno  on Dec. 16, 2017 at 9:43 a.m. PST  the image of colorful, dynamic clouds in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere. It was photographed 8,292 miles (13,345 kilometers) above the tops of Jupiter’s clouds, at a latitude of 48.9 degrees.

It's worth noting the spatial scale in this image is 5.8 miles per pixel (9.3 kilometers/pixel). Take a minute to think about that. Jupiter is enormous.

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager."

If you want to see more, JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at: www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam        

Marvelous Moon

Jamie Kinney via West Seattle Blog

SUPER START: The year 2018 started in dramatic fashion, with the year's biggest Super Moon.

"Super moons" occur when a full moon coincides with the moon's perigee, or the point at which its  orbit is closest to Earth. When that happens, the moon appears 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than a normal full moon - pretty dramatic!

We noticed the Super Moon when we were driving about on January 2. From our vantage point it looked like what I call an Apollo moon - very black and white. Not a hit of harvest gold or any other color.

For the record, it also happened to be a "Wolf Moon," because it was the first new moon of the year. It's named after the howling of wolves during a full moon.

BACK IN THE DAY: It was on this day (Jan. 3) in 1962 that the newly-announced Mercury Mark II project was renamed Project Gemini. 

Check out this cool artist's concept of a two-person Gemini spacecraft in flight, complete with a cutaway view. 

Image Credit: NASA

Per a NASA press release, "Gemini paved the way for Apollo, and had four main goals: to test an astronaut's ability to fly long-duration missions (up to two weeks in space); to understand how spacecraft could rendezvous and dock in orbit around the Earth and the Moon; to perfect re-entry and landing methods; and to further understand the effects of longer space flights on astronauts."

Winter Break

HOLIDAZE: It won't surprise anyone to read that we went missing as we got caught up in the swirl of holiday season activities.

It felt like it was a sprint from about Dec. 20 to Dec. 31. One event after another, gatherings here and there, and stuff to gather everywhere.

We ended up having some Christmas Eve snow - about four inches at our place. It was lovely to look at, but not so lovely given that we had to be at the airport at about 5:30 on Christmas morning. 

We had reserved an Uber for 5 a.m. Dec. 25, but when we upped on that day, nary an Uber was to be found. There was one lone car roving all of south Seattle, from about Boeing Field to Seatac. 

Fortunately, I had anticipated this scenario, so Christian had chained our Honda CR-V up the night before, and we carefully made our way down our steep hill and toward the airport. We arrived in plenty of time, and Seatac was a ghost town. The TSA agents were waiting on US for a change. 

Though the flight from Seattle to Bend, Oregon, was short (just under an hour), getting there was a bit of a drawn out process. Once we boarded the plane we first had to wait for well over an hour to get the plane de-iced (well worth the wait, of course), and then we had to wait many, many more minutes for a runway. Eventually, we took off about 1.75 hours after the prescribed time. It was a bit of a bumpy flight, but we made our way to Bend safely, which is what counts.

Along the way, we spied this lovely mountain outside a western-facing window.

 Check out that dramatic valley stretching out north of Mt. Hood.

Once in Bend, we appreciated sunny skies, the different vistas that high desert living provided, and wonderful hospitality.

We also got to see some of the city. Our first stop was a cool, old-school arcade, Vector Volcano. The place had a wonderful collection of old school video and pinball games. 

We also got to visit Bend's beautiful, outdoor ice skating arena, The Pavilion.

 CJ and I were spectators, but Annabelle (in a Team Unicorn hoodie) took a few spins.

 She was solo at first, but after a bit Christian decided to join her.

I spied these stones (below) just outside of the rink. I had to tell CJ they were for the sport curling.

Bend is a hot spot for micro breweries. We checked out McMenamins St. Francis, Crux Fermentation Project, Boneyard, and Worthy Brewing. 

The kids visited Santa Keg outside of super busy Crux.

Worthy even has a Hopservatory! We hope to visit again some day when it's open for some stargazing! 

It's also open for solar gazing (through a telescope with a filter) from time to time.

In checking out their website, it turns out that Worthy's Hopservatory is actually operated as a separate 501c3 non profit. 

We headed back to Seattle on Dec. 28 via the lovely little Redmond, Oregon, airport. We couldn't help but chuckle at its "Charlie Brown" type tree on the mezzanine. 

It seemed a symbol that Christmas was, in fact, over.

All in all, a whirlwind couple of weeks! 

And now, we're right back in the thick of things in Seattle. 

Welcome, 2018!