HIDDEN NO MORE: Last night, Annabelle and I were super fortunate to get to see a (free!) sneak preview of the movie "Hidden Figures" at The Museum of Flight. Annabelle's membership in their awesome Amelia's Aero Club was our ticket in. :)

Following is a short review of the movie by Annabelle:

Hidden Figures is a movie about three African-American women who worked for NASA on the Apollo missions. Back in the day, blacks were still discriminated against, and the black women worked as computers, meaning they did all the calculations. Hidden Figures focuses on Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, and their quiet rise to the top of NASA. Katherine and her friends started as computers in the segregated West Computing Room. They only had the “colored” restrooms but they were happy to be working at NASA nonetheless. In the computing rooms they had large, typewriter-like calculators and they did math all day to calculate trajectories and such. Katherine was a genius, so much so that she got into high school at 10 years old. She quickly rose to being accepted into flight operations. She was making the calculations for launch and landing at record speed, and she and her friends helped bring down the segregation in NASA. Their accomplishments allowed John Glenn to complete his orbit and gave hope to the USA. They were truly remarkable women, even if their story was hidden until now.

I'd highly encourage any and all to see the movie. These women were remarkable, and their stories remained "hidden" until now.  Imagine being the only woman in a man's world. And imagine being the only person of color in a white world. Then imagine being a black woman rising to the top in a white man's world, and that's what these heroes did. So inspirational!
https://youtu.be/aVda_e4qs2o

After the movie, a Museum of Flight rep let students in the crowd know they, too, had pathways to aerospace careers.  

MEANWHILE, IN SPACE: It's only fitting that a woman made history in space on the day we saw "Hidden Figures." Specifically Peggy Whitson.

This is Whitson's third mission on the space station; she'll soon become its commander for the second time. Age 56, she's spent more than a year of her life in space.

In the screen shot from NASA TV below, Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson are shown during their six-hour and 32-minute spacewalk. During their Extra Vehicular Activity, the two NASA astronauts successfully installed three new adapter plates and hooked up electrical connections for three of the six new lithium-ion batteries on the International Space Station. They also accomplished several get-ahead tasks, including a photo survey of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

KING CAKE: Saturday evening, a friend came over and she came bearing home baked cake. And not just any cake, a King Cake!

She has lived in New Orleans for years and knows all about the Mardi Gras traditions. The colorful cake (doughtnut shaped, and topped with colorful granulated sugar), is associated with pre-Lenten celebrations during carnival time.

None of the four of us had ever had King Cake before, so it was a treat. One of the traditions is that a baby (signifying the Christ child) is hidden in the cake. Of course, both of the kids were eager to be the one to find it. 

CJ found the baby this go round. There are different stories regarding what that means. Some say it means a year of good luck, others say it means you have to host the party next year. 

Our friend tells us that a dry/raw bean used to be used before plastic baby Jesus dolls were mass produced.

Game Board & Double Bill

ON BOARD: For the past couple of months, we've helped create a bulletin board birthdays at the kids' learning center. Last month we had a Sasquatch skiing, the month before it was a scarecrow scene. This month, we struggled to come up with an idea, and finally hit upon basing it on the iconic Candy Land game.

I worked on making the game path (a whole bunch of colored squares), while Annabelle worked on characters. CJ did a lot of cutting out for us.

Below is a slightly blurry photo of the finished product. It measures about 6 by 4 feet, I think.

People's birthdays are listed on lollipops and fudge pops and the game playing pieces. 

DOUBLE FEATURE: Thursday evening, the four of us went to two movies. 

Initially, we were all going to go to Living Computer: Museum + Labs for their first Thursday documentary. However, a few days ago, I received an email letting us know Annabelle and a chaperone were invited to The Museum of Flight that same night for a free screening of "Hidden Figures," a story about women of color who worked for NASA as "human computers" back during the Mercury and Apollo era.  

So, Christian and CJ went to LCM, and Bee and I went to MoF.

I'll let CJ tell you about the movie they saw

 C♀DE: Debugging the Gender Gap is a 78-minute long documentary that, according to a press kit from the documentary's website, exposes the dearth of American female and minority software engineers and explores the reasons for this gender gap and digital divide. To put it in Layman's terms, C♀DE is a documentary about women and minorities in the software and coding industry, and many of the problems they face in their work environment.

I went with my dad to see the film on what was probably my gazillionth visit to the Living Computers Museum + Labs. Before seeing the film, I was told that it would be about women in the software industry, but I was not prepared to be as inspired or offended as I was by the end of the film.

In the film, we are told that coding is all around us, in our cell phones, our transit systems, our computers, and even in things like pacemakers (C♀DE does not specifically list those devices. Those are just what comes to mind when I think of important things that use coding in the modern day). According to the press kit, by 2020, there will be one million unfilled software engineering jobs in the USA. However, a disproportionately large number of software engineers in the modern day are men. Several cultural stereotypes, mindsets, misconceptions, and plain bigotry have all gotten in the way of countless women and people of color who want to get in to the software industry.

One thing I learned while watching C♀DE is that during the 1980s, many girls in American schools developed a mindset that being proficient at math (and more specifically, computer science) made you unattractive, and that only being "okay" at math and computer science (somehow) made you more attractive. If I remember correctly, this dealt a significant blow to the role of women in the software and coding industry, the effects of which can be seen to this day.

Also, it is very, *very* easy to get offended by some of the things seen in C♀DE (assuming you are not a misogynistic person). For example, at the 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon in San Diego, attendees were told a misogynistic "joke" in the form of TitStare, a fictional app revolving around looking at creepy pictures of women's breasts. Perceiving ideas and concepts like TitStare to be funny is probably a result of misogynism in programming culture, which had just reared its ugly head to the public view.

C♀DE is definitely worth a watch, and, assuming the link is not dead, can be watched online at http://www.codedoc.co/watch-the-film/ (Possibly NSFW. Contains strong language and sexual references).

 You can also watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/8VVb6M8pTvE
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8VVb6M8pTvE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I'll have Annabelle submit a review of "Hidden Figures" for tomorrow's blog post. I can predict with confidence that it will be a glowing review!

Mysterious

IT'S ELEMENTARY:  Yesterday we headed to the Pacific Science Center to see the ending-soon "International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes."

We bought our tickets, headed over to the area of the exhibit, and turned back around, in search of a refund. There was an hour-long line outside, in the (literally) freezing cold. We weren't expecting or dressed for that, so it was a no go.

What a difference a day makes. Many, MANY people had yesterday off due to New Year's Day falling on a Sunday, and apparently they all went to Pacific Science Center. Today ... crickets! We practically had the place to ourselves. Hooray!

The first part of the exhibit was about the author of the series. It featured some original ink-on-paper penned pages from early Sherlock Holmes mysteries written by Conan Doyle.

When we entered the exhibit, we were given mystery 'passports' of sorts. There were tasks to complete along the way, all of which (if you completed them properly) helped you solve a mystery.

Below, CJ and Annabelle listen to a message from Sherlock Holmes instructing them about what to look for as they toured various evidence and crime scenes.

This scene prepared visitors to hone their observation skills. Sometimes things are hiding in plain sight.

From there, it was on to the crime scene. There were clues aplenty, but some extraordinarily subtle.

The exhibition was super interactive and educational. We learned about everything from bullet trajectory to blood splatters.

Elaborate displays let us analyze footprint and drag marks.

And piecing back together a busted up bust of Napoleon helped offer more clues.

Following is Annabelle's review ...

Sherlock Holmes is having part of it’s international exhibition at the Pacific Science Center. The exhibit is about how Conan Doyle’s stories affected science and culture. The main part of the exhibit was meant to feel like Victorian London, which they achieved by making the exhibit pretty dark. It was very interactive, with a huge display for the “crime scene”. They had stations where you made a rubbing of a plant found at the scene, a stamp so you can compare the blood splatter to the type of wound it would have come from, and a cool contraption with rotating “shoe wheels” to see what the tracks leading away from the scene would have been caused by. It’s fun to try and figure out what’s wrong with the police’s report and what they actually got right (and, as in any good detective story, the police are usually wrong). It’s pretty fun to figure out what really happened, and it makes you feel like part of the story. It can be pretty dark (as in the plot, not the surroundings), so I wouldn’t recommend it to young kids, but it’s still fun. I would recommend it to anyone who likes mysteries or is a big fan of Sherlock, because there are some easter eggs for fans of the originals, such as a character’s hat from one of his stories. It’s a great exhibit and I’m excited to see what Pacific Science Center has in store next.

And here's what CJ had to say ...

My family very frequently visits the Pacific Science Center, a scientific museum close to our house. Today, we visited PacSci (a common nickname for the Science Center) for their current exhibit, The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes. In case you do not know, Sherlock Holmes is a character created in 1886 by Arthur Conan Doyle, an author and physician from Scotland. Conan Doyle was growing tired of clichéd crime stories found in "penny dreadfuls" and such, which were often cheaply produced and purchased, but usually extremely predictable and often following a formula. If I remember correctly, when Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes for his stories, he wanted to make something more original (for example: Having cases be different than what they first seem to be, having the criminal do something seemingly impossible, etc). Sherlock Holmes, in Conan Doyle's stories, is a private detective with an uncanny ability to infer several details about someone's past. What Conan didn't know is that over a century later, Sherlock Holmes would be, as the exhibit's website puts it, one of the most inspiring and influential characters of all time. At the exhibit, visitors go through a newly-made "case" where they must help Sherlock Holmes solve a case involving, among other things, a seedpod, a shattered bust of Napoleon, and a man who supposedly murdered his wife and daughter.

More specifically, a man from Richmond named "Mr. Persano", after inhaling poisonous fumes from a burning seedpod, allegedly murdered his family and proceeded to try and bury them at the river near his house. While the police department is reaching their presumptive conclusion, you have to help Sherlock Holmes get a better look into the scene, and from there, reach an informed conclusion.

For example, you can go to a nearby (fake, of course) slaughterhouse to get a look at various types of blood stains. You must determine which stain matches the spatter present at the crime scene. Afterwards, you can get a rubbing of a seedpod present at the scene, and try and match it up with seeds from other poisonous plants at a nearby garden. There is an odd track in the sand from Mr. Persano's house to the river, which the police determine to be his tracks from allegedly dragging corpses in the sand to the river. Strangely, Sherlock built a "stepping machine" composed of a wheel with several shoes attached to it, so you can make a track in the sand similar to the track in the sand at Mr. Persano's house. At the end of the museum, you discover that Mr. Persano actually did not kill his wife and daughter, and broke open the Napoleon bust at the scene using a garden tool. If I remember correctly, Persano was trying to get a badge inside the bust to prove something, and he sent his family to hide in the shed nearby, creating the tracks in the sand. As it turns out, the police's conclusion is incorrect. SOURCES: http://sherlockholmesexhibition.com/

Below is a link to a podcast all about the exhibition. 

https://soundcloud.com/pacsci/the-international-exhibition-of-sherlock-holmes-now-open

While at Seattle Center, I had to take some photos of the Space Needle, of course.

Iconic eye candy.

So Long, 2016

SABERS UP: Friday evening, we headed to Seattle Center for a special send off. It was time to say goodbye to Carrie Fisher, who passed on Dec. 27, 2016. She was a phenomenal author, actress, comedienne, and fearless advocate for people with mental heath and addiction issues. Fisher was most famous for portraying Pricess Leia in the Star Wars franchise movies. That's how I first met and fell in love with her. :)

Friday evening there was a light saber salute to Fisher at (fittingly) Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center. We got there about 7:15 and milled around until the moment of silence at 7:30 p.m.

 Even the Stormtroopers had a memorial set up for the princess.

 At 7:30, the crowd of about 150 grew quiet for a time of reflection and remebrance.

 Shortly after, it was sabers up time to celebrate Fisher's life.

It was a sweat, sentimental time, with people of all ages coming together to celebrate a bright light and brilliant soul.

Members of Garrison Titan, Washington's 501st Legion, were on hand. We've seen them everywhere from the Museum of Flight to Safeco Field over the years!

TO THE ANIMALS: We had a few free passes for the Woodland Park Zoo we had to use before the end of the year, so on New Year's Eve, that's where we headed.

We entered at the West Gate, which meant we saw penguins first, as they're right inside the gate.

They didn't seem to mind the cold of the afternoon.

From there, we wandered toward the Tropical Rain Forest. Almost instantly, we encountered a jaguar on the prowl.

 It was energetically stalking around its enclosure.

This lovely creature was pacing the entire time we watched. I wished it had more room to roam, to be sure. According to the zoo's website, they have a male and female jaguar; because these animals are naturally very solitary, they are rotated in the exhibit so you will not see them together.

In the wild, they eat deer, peccaries, monkeys, tapirs, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, small rodents and domestic stock. Amazingly, they can survive on anything from herd animals to insects. At the zoo, they eat beef, mutton, chicken, rabbit, beef knuckle bones and commercially prepared feline diet, ground meat and vitamins.

In the wild, jaguars live about 11 years; in zoos, it's up to 22 years in zoos. So, a longer, but much different life, I'm sure, in captivity. 

Here are a few things Annabelle had to say about our zoo visit: "The jaguar was prowling the exhibit, and it was beautiful! It was making loops around its enclosure, and it was almost posing for photos. After that we checked out the other exhibits in the tropical rain forest area, including monkeys and very brightly colored birds. The other notable thing we saw in the jungle area was the Gorillas and the zoo’s new baby gorilla Yola. She was very playful and was walking around the enclosure the first time we saw her, but was curled up in the corner for heat when we walked around the second time."

This lovely gorilla was laying right up next to the glass, but avoiding eye contact.

Meanwhile, the one pictured below was facing the glass, looking at everyone and heavenward.

 Out of nowhere, a little gorilla appeared. It was baby Yola!  Yola is a Hausa name that means "firefly." Her mother is Nadiri, one of the gorillas at the Seattle zoo.

We didn't cover a lot of ground at the zoo. We sent more time in front of just a few exhibits. One pretty thing we saw in the Rain Forest exhibit was the golden lion tamarin monkey. It was hard getting photos, as the humidity in there kept fogging up my lens!

Outside, we loved watching a sloth bear clamber about. 

 He even stood up on his hind legs for a bit. He looked like an oversized Muppet! 

 One more gorilla (parting) shot. :)

Eyes on the Skies & Feet on the Ground

HUMAN COMPUTERS: There's a movie hitting the silver screens right now called "Hidden Figures." Based on a true story, it's about some amazing African American women, including Katherine Johnson, and how they helped NASA. 

Below, Johnson is pictured while working at NASA in 1966.

The NASA Web site has an archival story from 2008, and Johnson's 80th birthday. It noted, her accomplishments included calculating the trajectory of Alan Shepherd's 1961 trip into space, America's first. The story quotes Johnson as saying, "The early trajectory was a parabola, and it was easy to predict where it would be at any point. Early on, when they said they wanted the capsule to come down at a certain place, they were trying to compute when it should start. I said, 'Let me do it. You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I'll do it backwards and tell you when to take off.' That was my forte."

From a NASA email today, we learned about a neat-o online toolkit called Modern Figures. Its activities highlight the contributions made by the African American women called “human computers," as seen in the new movie “Hidden Figures.”

The toolkit is a collection of resources and educational activities for students in grades K-12. Each educational activity and resource includes a brief description, plus info about how the activities and lessons align to education standards. Resources highlighted include videos, historical references and STEM materials. It can be downloaded here: www.nasa.gov/modernfigures-education-toolkit.

We'll be seeing "Hidden Figures" this week, and it's nice to have this real life info on hand before we see the dramatized version!
https://youtu.be/5wfrDhgUMGI


DO THE MOON WALK: Ever wanted to do the moon walk? Or maybe "just" walk to the moon? Mission X is the way! The multi-agency program encourages students of all ages to pursue a healthy lifestyle by training like an astronaut. The mission includes six- to nine-week "challenges" each fall and spring, schools and student groups from around the world complete Mission X classroom-based science lessons and physical education activities.

It sounds like something MPA could certainly use, so I tried to sign us up (just before the program's Dec. 31 deadline, might I add).

For the "Walk to the Moon" challenge, we will have to help move "Astro Charlie" the 478 million steps (238,857 miles, or 384,403 kilometers) it would take to walk from Earth to the moon, a feat it would take one person about nine years to complete, per NASA's calculations.

Registration and more details here: http://trainlikeanastronaut.org/wttm, and the application to be part of Team USA is here: http://trainlikeanastronaut.org/usa_application. We filed our application tonight. I was kind of surprised it isn't an open-to-all-comers proposition, but it is what it is. Hopefully we make the cut. ...

For 2016, Mission X involved students in 30 countries and more than 53,000 participants. 

LOOKING FOR THE LIGHT: Oh how we here at MPA long to see the Northern Lights. We watch for notices about possibilities of them appearing, and have gotten up in the wee small hours in hopes of seeing them, but they have eluded us to date.

Perhaps it's no wonder that news of NASA's 'Aurorasaurus' Project for citizen scientists grabbed our attention. Per the notice we saw about it, "Aurorasaurus is the first and only citizen science project that tracks auroras around the world via online reports, mobile apps and social media."

Reading more, it turns out the Aurorasaurus project gathers real-time data about aurora sightings and sends out notifications to users when the northern or southern lights are potentially visible in their area. Registered users can get location-based notifications and a real-time monitor of space weather activity, and project participants can help verify tweets and search for real sightings. The Aurorasaurus website also features answers to science and aurora questions. You can check it out here: http://www.aurorasaurus.org/.

We registered for the program, and I already spent a few minutes verifying whether or not tweets mentioning "aurora" were of sightings about the Northern Lights. (So far, all other ones I've seen were about anything *but* the lights!)

USE THE FORCE: Everyone here has a cough or cold, so aerobics seemed like a bad idea, but I thought it would be good to get moving in one way or another. Enter "Star Wars Yoga for Beginners." At least that was the title of the video we found on YouTube.

The instructor was pleasant enough and her instruction was clear and sound, but can we just say that wearing Star Wars leggings and supposedly breathing like Darth Vader doesn't really make it Star Wars yoga in our book. ... It's just yoga, with a couple of quick Star Wars references.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpFV5afUrwU

Here and Gone

CHRISTMAS VACATION: We've been away from the blog for about a week, caught up in Christmas-y doings.

On Christmas eve, we hosted 20 or so people at our place. We had lots of food and fun and watched the Seahawks (lose, on the last play, might I add).

But it's only a game and we had a great time with family and friends. And, unlike the game, the gingerbread didn't leave a bad taste in our mouths. ;)

ALL GONE: In many ways, 2016 has been a cruel year. The world has lost so many icons. It started back in January, with the passing of the magical, irreplaceable David Bowie. I don't think I'll ever get over that. Also gone this year, Prince, a musical phenom, the remarkable Leonard Cohen, and entertainer George Michael, a gifted and long-suffering soul with a philanthropic heart.

But it's not just musical maestros that have passed. Last week, we lost Pier Sellers, a space shuttle astronaut and climate scientist. Sellers was on "our" shuttle flight - STS-132. We got to see him hurtle space-ward, in a column of fire and smoke, from the NASA Causeway in Cape Canaveral in May of 2010.
       CREDIT: NASA

Sellers' death came just under a year after he shared he had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I remember reading the announcement in a poignant editorial he penned for The New York Times. He wrote about how his prognosis added a sense of urgency to his work on climate change, and shared that he had decided he wanted to spend his remaining time with people he loved, and doing the work he was passionate about. 

When he was selected to the elite astronaut corps in 1996, Sellers was the project scientist for Terra, NASA's flagship Earth observing system, Terra. He took a part of Sir Isaac Newton's famous apple tree to space with him. 

All totaled, Sellers spent 35 days, 9 hours and 2 minutes in space. He also had the rare opportunity to be a spacewalker, amassing more than 41 hours on six extravehicular activities. 

On Christmas morning, Earth lost another pioneer. She wasn't a household name, but astronomer Vera Rubin's work led to the theory of dark matter. That's a pretty big deal. 

As a child in Washington D.C., Rubin was fascinated by the stars. Her father helped Vera build a telescope and encouraged her studies. In 1948, Rubin graduated as Vassar's only astronomy major. In subsequent years, Rubin pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. 

I love this Carnegie Institution 1965 photo of Rubin taken at the Lowell Observatory.

We've been reading some Rubin quotes over the past couple of days. Here is a favorite: 

"I live and work with three basic assumptions:
1) There is no problem in science that can be solved by a man that cannot be solved by a woman.
2) Worldwide, half of all brains are in women.
3) We all need permission to do science, but, for reasons that are deeply ingrained in history, this permission is more often given to men than to women."

Also, Rubin was a voice for scientific literacy at all levels. In a commencement address she once said. "We need senators who have studied physics and representatives who understand ecology." 

Amen to that, Vera!