Some End of the Year Lists:
TIME.com: 50 Coolest Websites
Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year, lead by "truthiness"
Friday, December 29, 2006
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
I'm a great fan of science, you know.
I remember a couple of things about ninth grade earth science class. We learned how geologists triangulate earthquakes. We did an exercise in which we were given the locations of some seisometer readings and had to plot them on a blank ditto sheet of a U.S. map. For some reason, I was one of the few kids who could identify the unlabeled states and so put that compass point down in the right place to start. How we really did the "triangulation," and what it's really called, I don't remember. I remember wondering how on earth my classmates didn't know which state was which, since we'd certainly all been taught that just a few years before in grade school.
I also remember that Ms. Wood encouraged us to watch a TV show called Cosmos. (That's right! A teacher encouraged us to watch TV!) Carl Sagan exuded an enthusiasm for science and a wonder about the world that seemed like a more sophisticated version of my own. I enjoyed science class -- doing Experiments! -- and was an outdoorsy kid.
As well as enjoying watching, I learned a thing or two. While his moped-speed-of-light demonstration stumps me still, I know that I "got" the exercise where you consider the history of creation as a calendar year, and that humankind arises in the last minutes before midnight, leaving our time to be the last seconds. I learned about how We are sending coded messages on spacecraft for extraterrestrials to interpret. Watching Cosmos instilled in me an enthusiasm for science and for (PBS) television programs about science that I have today.
I remember a couple of things about ninth grade earth science class. We learned how geologists triangulate earthquakes. We did an exercise in which we were given the locations of some seisometer readings and had to plot them on a blank ditto sheet of a U.S. map. For some reason, I was one of the few kids who could identify the unlabeled states and so put that compass point down in the right place to start. How we really did the "triangulation," and what it's really called, I don't remember. I remember wondering how on earth my classmates didn't know which state was which, since we'd certainly all been taught that just a few years before in grade school.
I also remember that Ms. Wood encouraged us to watch a TV show called Cosmos. (That's right! A teacher encouraged us to watch TV!) Carl Sagan exuded an enthusiasm for science and a wonder about the world that seemed like a more sophisticated version of my own. I enjoyed science class -- doing Experiments! -- and was an outdoorsy kid.
As well as enjoying watching, I learned a thing or two. While his moped-speed-of-light demonstration stumps me still, I know that I "got" the exercise where you consider the history of creation as a calendar year, and that humankind arises in the last minutes before midnight, leaving our time to be the last seconds. I learned about how We are sending coded messages on spacecraft for extraterrestrials to interpret. Watching Cosmos instilled in me an enthusiasm for science and for (PBS) television programs about science that I have today.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Fun and Games
The woman in front of me at Target this morning was buying an official cup stacking game. A box of staduim cups with holes poked in them for $30? Wow.
Track Santa on Christmas Eve, here.
I hope I won't be getting them in trouble if I say that it looked like a literacy voluneteer(?) and her student exchanged gifts at tonight's meeting. Not in a wink-wink way: just sweet.
The woman in front of me at Target this morning was buying an official cup stacking game. A box of staduim cups with holes poked in them for $30? Wow.
Track Santa on Christmas Eve, here.
I hope I won't be getting them in trouble if I say that it looked like a literacy voluneteer(?) and her student exchanged gifts at tonight's meeting. Not in a wink-wink way: just sweet.
Sagan-a-Thon Tomorrow: Write your rough draft tonight.
Cornell's invitation for all bloggers to participate, here.
Celebrating Sagan promises to post what you write, if you are blog-less and has great links.
Cornell's invitation for all bloggers to participate, here.
Celebrating Sagan promises to post what you write, if you are blog-less and has great links.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Imported
A friend from my teenhood (not childhood) left a very strong impression when she told me her father would never by a Toyota or a Honda, because he fought a war against "those people." I had notions about a global community that were based on a 1970s view of the world shaped by "It's a Small World," International Day at school, and Girl Scout Thinking Day -- I couldn't imagine that past wars meant so much, that we weren't all friends, now. (The very same friend "researched" Bangladesh with me one Thinking Day.)
Not many years later, a family member confused me by preferring American-made goods as Christmas gifts. I was still just young enough to avoid pursuing what seemed to be a touchy subject. It seems likely to me that she would have friends and family in threatened manufacturing jobs at that time. I hope she has relented that position: it went from difficult to honor to impossible, even as I have become increasingly able to afford to shop in "better" stores, stores that might be willing to stock pricier American-made goods.
One of today's errands was to buy candy canes. Step-daughter-to-be will spend Christmas with us, so, as did my Mom, I plan to put some canes on the (aluminum) tree on Christmas Eve night. She's thirteen: old enough to roll her eyes at the notion that Santa left them, but Mom only quit humoring me with that tradition a few years ago, so. . . . So, there I was in the CVS avoiding eye contact with enticing flavored treats in cane form -- nothing by Jolly Rancher for me! -- and honing in on 99 cent peppermint canes. Phiance's cookie story always in my mind, I looked to see who made them: "Made in China." Now come on: that's a long way to ship something that does not do well in the damp. I put them back. At Ukrop's, the canes said "Made in Mexico." I bought them . . . because Mexico is a less absurd distance to ship sweets? Because I think Mexicans need lucrative seasonal candy work more then the Chinese? No, mostly because I am in no mood to chase around town reading candy cane boxes.
Capital City weather: 71 degrees
A friend from my teenhood (not childhood) left a very strong impression when she told me her father would never by a Toyota or a Honda, because he fought a war against "those people." I had notions about a global community that were based on a 1970s view of the world shaped by "It's a Small World," International Day at school, and Girl Scout Thinking Day -- I couldn't imagine that past wars meant so much, that we weren't all friends, now. (The very same friend "researched" Bangladesh with me one Thinking Day.)
Not many years later, a family member confused me by preferring American-made goods as Christmas gifts. I was still just young enough to avoid pursuing what seemed to be a touchy subject. It seems likely to me that she would have friends and family in threatened manufacturing jobs at that time. I hope she has relented that position: it went from difficult to honor to impossible, even as I have become increasingly able to afford to shop in "better" stores, stores that might be willing to stock pricier American-made goods.
One of today's errands was to buy candy canes. Step-daughter-to-be will spend Christmas with us, so, as did my Mom, I plan to put some canes on the (aluminum) tree on Christmas Eve night. She's thirteen: old enough to roll her eyes at the notion that Santa left them, but Mom only quit humoring me with that tradition a few years ago, so. . . . So, there I was in the CVS avoiding eye contact with enticing flavored treats in cane form -- nothing by Jolly Rancher for me! -- and honing in on 99 cent peppermint canes. Phiance's cookie story always in my mind, I looked to see who made them: "Made in China." Now come on: that's a long way to ship something that does not do well in the damp. I put them back. At Ukrop's, the canes said "Made in Mexico." I bought them . . . because Mexico is a less absurd distance to ship sweets? Because I think Mexicans need lucrative seasonal candy work more then the Chinese? No, mostly because I am in no mood to chase around town reading candy cane boxes.
Capital City weather: 71 degrees
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Reading
Not the book club selection (Freakanomics), not the Dickens that Fforde inspired me to check out, not a YA novel, and certainly not a book I have out with a title along the lines of Weddings for Grown Ups -- but, instead, Wil Wheaton on the sunset on Mars.
Not the book club selection (Freakanomics), not the Dickens that Fforde inspired me to check out, not a YA novel, and certainly not a book I have out with a title along the lines of Weddings for Grown Ups -- but, instead, Wil Wheaton on the sunset on Mars.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Mitch got me wondering how many years I've known the advent site, below, and so I visited Decembers past and found these cool things:
- Make-a-Flake - snowflake maker
- tomorrow is the anniversary of a tiny Richmond earthquake
- good article on "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"
NEW
- Dan on Christmas cards and the like.
- And urban gingerbread.
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