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Thursday fun link
Posted by barb on Jul 14, 2005 in Memes, Etc.
Enjoy.
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Crime without punishment
Posted by barb on Jul 12, 2005 in Random Thoughts
This was interesting[Link removed 9/2015 – no longer active].
AtCenterNetwork.com, an online news site, asked abortion protestors if abortion were made illegal, what should the punishment be for women who have an illegal abortion. It’s fun to watch these protestors, many working for several years, try to come up with an answer. Despite thinking that abortion is murder, they had trouble coming to the conclusion that a woman who has an illegal abortion should serve jailtime, let alone considering the death penalty.
[via Feministe]
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War of the Worlds
Posted by barb on Jul 10, 2005 in Movies
3/5 stars
The problem, of course, is that the War of the Worlds story is so well known, that any new movie versions have to rely heavily on the telling of the story rather than just the story itself. This time the story is wrapped around Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), a not-too-great dad stuck with his two kids the weekend that the aliens attack. He struggles to keep his kids alive and get them back to their mom while trying to regain his kids’ trust and respect. Of course, the more interesting parts are the aliens and the effects. I liked it — it wasn’t great art or anything, but certainly not “horrible” as some people are saying.
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Back on the Bikes
Andrew and I finally got back on the bikes today. We’d been away for the past two weeks with, first, my Dad’s visit, and second, a nasty cold. It was good to get back on the trail! We biked from downtown Vienna up to Reston to catch the 11 AM showing of War of the Worlds. We also stumbled upon the Reston Festival, with arts and crafts booths set up in Reston Town Center, along with bands and food. Also there, was this huge McGruff the Crime-Dog® balloon:
Total miles: 14.2 miles
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Astro-E2 Lanches!
Posted by barb on Jul 10, 2005 in Science Musings
Astro-E2 successfully launched last night! This is a Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite, and on-board is a NASA instrument, XRS. When I first came to Goddard 7 years ago, I was a grad student working with the original XRS team. When Astro-E failed to achieve orbit, Astro-E2 was born. The Japanese and instrument collaborators rallied for funding and support for a new satllite.
XRS is the first microcalorimeter X-ray spectrometer to be flown on a space mission, and represents a giant leap forward in spectral sensitivity. It will be exciting to see the results from XRS in the coming months and years.
Upon the success of launch, Astro-E2 has been renamed Suzaku. Suzaku represents the red sparrow, is the southern point of the compass, and is
symbolic of renewal. What a great name!
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Wedding Saturday
Posted by barb on Jul 9, 2005 in Pictures
My co-worker’s, Lorna’s, daughter got married today in a lovely wedding in Lorna’s back yard. I’m sure Lorna was panicking yesterday as we got the leftover rains from Hurricane Cindy, but it dried up fairly well for today, and was a beautiful day (if just a bit hot and humid).
The cake was really cool — a castle for their “fairy-tale” wedding…complete with dragon:
We spend much of the wedding hanging out with JD, Laurie, and Connor. Here’s JD and Connor saying “hi” to a very stressed out mother-of-the-bride.
And the happy couple just before their first dance (Jenny was passing off her flowers for the dance).
We wish Jenny and Jeremy the very best!
So depressed…
Posted by barb on Jul 8, 2005 in Random Thoughts
I recieved an invitation today for my ATR’s 30th birthday. ATR is contract lingo, which basically means she’s the person I answer to, but who has no direct authority with my contracting company. Basically she’s my boss. And she’s just now turning 30. I’m 33, still in school, and so far behind her that it’s almost funny. And she’s just now turning 30. Ugh.
Sweetie turned 30 just a couple months ago, but she and I are on such different career paths that I can’t even compare myself to her. Besides, it’s not like she tells me what to do in my day-to-day work. She’s my best friend.
But my boss? She’s gone through grad school. She has her PhD. She’s done the post doc thing. And she’s just now turning 30. Gawd. I’m so far behind.
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The Process of Science
Posted by barb on Jul 4, 2005 in Science Musings
Science Magazine has published a list of the 125 Questions: What We Don’t Know. How cool is that?
One issue that I’ve been discussing with colleagues is the public’s lack of understanding of the process of science. In classrooms, science is taught as though we have all of the answers: gravity holds us to the Earth and sets the planets’ orbits around the Sun, the Earth’s surface is in constant motion as the techtonic plates move on top of the matle, the diversity of life that we see comes from processes of evolution, etc. And while these theories are well-supported, and accepted among all of the science community, by teaching students only the end-product of decades or centuries of debate, discussion and development, the process of science gets lost.
In the teacher focus group that I was involved with, we found that high school science teachers are hungry for cutting-edge science in their classrooms. Such science is not typically included in textbooks, because science doesn’t have all of the answers yet, so that textbook writers can’t summarize the results in a nice, neat package. Such cutting-edge science would require updates to the textbooks on timescales that most schools couldn’t afford, or supplements that schools are unwilling to pay for.
By not including this cutting-edge, not-neatly-packaged science in the high school classroom, students don’t get to see that science is very much alive. They don’t get to see what they might be able to contribute to science if they decided to pursue science. Most importantly, they don’t get to see science as a process.
One hundred years ago, the concept of “other galaxies” had not been considered, because astronomers did not have the techniques to measure distances to objects that far away. Eighty years ago it was thought that the Universe was static — not expanding, not contracting; then, Hubble showed that the Universe was expanding. Ten years ago, astronomers assumed that the expansion rate of the Universe was decelerating, but then astronomers made observations of very distant supernovae that indicated that the rate of expansion was accelerating. What will change in the next 10 years? This is Science Magazine’s #1 question.
I’m working with a group to develop a classroom activity that would use dark energy or gravitational waves to show their students the process of science — to help the students understand that science evolves as technology develops and as scientists wrap their minds around new concepts, and that healthy debate is a large part of the science process. Perhaps we aren’t going to change the world with our one small activity, but maybe other scientists and science educators will follow suit. It is imperative that we enlighten the public on the process of science. We aren’t just throwing around hunches that we hope fit the data — we are developing well-supported and well-debated theories to understand the world, and Universe, around us.
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Two Brothers
Posted by barb on Jul 3, 2005 in Movies
2/5 stars
This was the story of two young tigers who are separated from both their mother and each other early in life, and follow different paths that cross again. It’s cute, but unfortantely our copy from Netflix had problems about three-quarters of the way through the film. I didn’t want to wait for a new copy, so we ended up skipping ahead a couple times when the DVD was unplayable. Whether because of the story or our problems with the DVD, I wasn’t all that interested in the ending. It’s a cute film with lots of footage of baby tigers, but not a great story otherwise.