Archive for October, 2005
56 items.
Some time Monday the landlord is dropping by to look at the radiators. We’ve had glorious heat all weekend. Turns out that the heat was supposed to be on all last week but the person sent to check out the boiler’s health and turn it all on didn’t cut it on, they just checked its health and cut it back off. So Friday the heat was cut on and I walked back inside from talking to the landlord about not much of anything and there was, as he promised, heat wafting down from the ceiling. “You’ll need to remember to empty out the buckets,” he said to me. Small buckets hang down from our radiators in two of the rooms, to catch the drips. I told him the buckets were dry all last year. “They might be clogged,” he replied. And so he is going to drop by and check and see if they are clogged. Funny when a working radiator means it drips.
So, I promised myself I would clean clean since the landlord was stopping in. I would clean out the refrigerator as I planned to show him the door handle that simply snapped off one day. Didn’t come unscrewed, just snapped off this refrigerator which he dragged in last November to replace the old. We successfully superglued it back on and it stayed for a month or two and then snapped back off.
So I’d vowed I’d clean on Sunday. Really really clean. And I did clean some but instead I applied myself to reading up on stop motion animation, as I’d done all week. I spent Sunday evening exchanging remarks on the forum. Getting advice on what to do next with H.o.p. And I read and read while exchanging remarks, and watched stop motion animation shorts on people’s websites. I read up on this webcam and that webcam which are both suitable for stop motion animation. I had read up on stop motion animation all last week but at this forum I hit the motherlode of links and I read up on about ten more programs that are out there and my head swam. I read up on making armatures and was looking up things like electrical shrink tubing that you can put over armatures.
I was informed about tie-downs (securing puppets by screwing them into the stage area base) and I read about tie-downs and wondered how I can do tie-downs without having machine shop equipment, no saws for cutting metal. There must be a good way. I considered how we will need to be able to set up an area next to H.o.p.’s computer in which he can pursue this, tie-downs need some sort of table with no top, will have to see to that, will have to be able to move it out of the way of general living as well since this room is our “dining room” and computer room and homeschool room and now will be also the room for making stop motion animation.
$99 for a webcam for H.o.p. we can do, and it’s not meant to be professional, it’s a beginner thing, or a test camera, it’s not going to be great quality, which will in fact be just fine as it’s simple and his computer couldn’t handle a multitude of high resolution digital images dumped in to be made into a film. But I’ve still a lot of reading up on this to do, to make sure we’re getting the right thing. And then will come doing free trial downloads of the different stop motion animation software programs and testing them out and finding what is most suitable for a child.
I thought about how odd it can be sometimes always seeing to the technical end of things and nothing else. Like H.o.p.’s stop motion animation now. I’m reading up on all this, spending my time scouting out websites for him and I read all the material and then I tell him about how things are done and I show him all the little test movies on the web, the short instructional movies, lots of pictures of puppets and he eagerly drinks it all in and bookmarks them all so he can find them all later. I will be the one cutting and twisting the wire for the armatures and helping H.o.p. learn to mold super sculpey over them and paint them. But…that’s where I must step back. I can show him but I can’t make them for him. I can do the hard part that he couldn’t physically do, and can assist him, but these must be his creations. The faces and shapes he molds onto the armatures must be his. I’ll help bake them to make sure it’s done correctly. And then he must paint them as he chooses, however he chooses. I’ll look over what he’s doing, I can give him tips, I can help, but these must be his if he’s going to learn how to make them. Though I can experiment with making a few and he can watch how I use sculpting tools and learn from watching. I can drill holes in the plywood base for the stage and plot where he can do tiedowns, I can help him put together materials for backgrounds, but they must be his vision, what he sees. And when we buy the webcam and cut it on I can help him technically but what is done must be all his. That’s the only way he’s going to learn. Just like with his drawing and all his sculpting. The only way he’s going to learn is to do all his little projects his own way. His little movies are going to look awful and clumsy at first. It’s a lot of work going in to helping him to make something that is going to look awful and clumsy. I can give him tips. Buy him books. Watch movies with him and point out how the camera is used in them and how story lines are built and how emotions are communicated but other than that I’ve got to step back and let the rest of it be his. I’m hoping, if he proves to be as interested in it as he has been crazy about drawing and sculpting, that he’ll make hundreds of little movies and three years from now he’ll be building all his own armatures and doing all his own reading up on techniques and devising his own methods of making things work and coming up to me and saying too that he just can’t work with what he’s got any more, that he’s been reading up on this and that and he needs this and that, that they would be a great help for him, that he needs more processing speed, a better camera, lights, better video card.
For two years H.o.p. has had two dreams. And for a seven-year-old that’s a good portion of one’s lifetime. He’s had two consistent dreams. “I’m an artist, I’m going to be an artist,” was one of his dreams. His other dream was kind of confusing to me, I didn’t quite get it. “I’m going to build robots. I have to learn how to build robots.” I talked to him about this every so often, trying to understand what he was getting at. Real robots? I showed him the kinds of robots people currently make. No, he wanted to build real robots, he’d tell me. Robots that walked and talked and felt. Real robots. And yet whenever we bought him a robot he would pull pull out its batteries and hide its remote control. He has never wanted a robot running around on its own. And we have bought him several child-type robots over the years and never once as he permitted any of them to have batteries and has hidden the remote controls for all of them. He would instead manually move the robots, and take other toys and make “robots” out of them, moving them around, and last year began photographing them, moving them, photographing them, moving them, photographing them. Still, when he kept saying, “I want to be an artist and I want to make robots,” I kept thinking real robots and couldn’t understand why he had no desire to let his purchased robots run around (he says it creeps him out when they move on their own) and had no desire to learn about electronics (I know people who have been teaching their kids with electronic kits since they were five).
I’m so dim-witted it took me until this week to put two-and-two together. When he means robots he means the walking, talking, feeling type of characters and creatures you get in stop motion animation. Puppet robots. Like the “garbage” robot he plotted all night making. He says it must be made all out of recyclables. He wants to make a movie with the garbage robot. And of course, being seven, he wants to make a movie he says will be called “The Dangerous Forest” in which a knight in shining armor fights an evil villain that turns into a snake. And he drew a storyboard of how it will turn into a snake and I thought hmmm well we’re going to have to have a stop motion animation program that allows onionskinning with imported scans of drawings as well.
So, that’s a mystery solved. The robots he has always said he wanted to make. He sat this evening and watched over and over and over a stop motion animation of a short I’d found on the web called “Underground Robot”. I had earlier shown him some stills of it I’d found and he searched again also for the stills to examine how it was put together. And he pointed out armatures to me. “Look, that’s the armature they used!”
He acts out the scenes he wants to film and they are all ridiculous, silly, absurd. Hopping and jumping and running around. And I think how ridiculous but also think well if he does it that’s how he’s going to learn, isn’t it, making things look like they’re really leaping and flapping arms and jumping up and down.
Though he draws 18 hours a day, I wonder, when he sees how much work is involved, if he’ll want to really do it. I say, “Ok, let’s playact we’re making a film.” And I move things off the table and put two of his sculptures on it and I tell him OK one of them simply wants to get to the door, what do you think is involved? And he moves it a little bit and pretends to take a picture and moves it a little more and pretends to take a picture and moves it a little more and pretends to take a picture.
I was looking earlier tonight at the sculptures he made of the characters form Wallace and Grommit. I look at the dozens of Gumbys he made over the summer all with different facial expressions.
A big investment of energy and will be a share of money too. Maybe he’ll run with it, maybe he won’t. You never know. He could start and decide he hates it and wants to do something else.
”Comment
I am constantly amazed by this child. Hates anything that isn’t to do with drawing or (now) animation possibilities. Math? Numbers? He’s got a bit of that dyslexia thing going and also out of pure disinterest couldn’t write a simple addition or subtraction equation to save his life. He doesn’t care. You couldn’t get him to care. If I was an Unschooler that would be cool, but I don’t have it in me to be a diehard unschooler. I entice him with Flash animations of math because all he cares about is art and animation. And he sits and draws it all. Plays one brief bit over and over and over studying the animation. All the other homeschoolers are speeding along with studies and if I ask him a simple equation he gets this clouded look in his eye and either smiles brightly at me and throws out any number that pops into his head or scowls and says, “Boring!” and goes right back to drawing. I tell him he’s going to need this other boring stuff to help him out in the future with his art, he’s going to need to know math. “Hmmm,” he goes and there will be a flicker of concession to learning these other things. (He also knows more than he thinks he knows or cares to know.) Then also for sake of mom’s emotional health he’ll buckle down for a while and consider things like pints and cups and quarts and gallons, like we were working on yesterday. Day in and day out I wait for the opportune moments to squeeze a bit of that boring stuff into this brain and try like hell to make it not boring so he’ll be interested. “Put him in school where he’ll learn some discipline!” you say, but he’s disciplined as hell. Fiercely disciplined, it’s just all directed to making the characters in his brain come alive.
Last week he didn’t want me to throw out a box of styrofoam pellets. He said they were perfect eyes. He took them and went through laboriously drawing pupils in different positions on them for some of his clay creations.
I spent the last couple of weeks looking up animation and stop animation sites for him. We’ve only been to a couple, I put most on reserve so he doesn’t get overwhelmed. Yesterday (after the Zoo’s Halloween day, which he found disappointing as he admitted afterwards he was expecting stories over a bonfire for some reason, however he did love the storyteller but didn’t like the big crowd, which the animals also didn’t like) we spent at animateclay.com. He watched those little clips over and over, looked at armatures and how you craft the clay and put them on the armature. I pointed out how people use different heads for the characters and in stop animation make different mouths etc. and stop the camera and change them out. And he’s looking and drawing like crazy throughout.
Then he sits down last night and he works on sketches for a stop animation character he wants to do. And I looked at it this morning and saw how precise this little seven-year-old was being. And those little beautifully drawn arrows, and such assuredness of line. He can still barely write his numbers, just throws them out of his pen, getting them out of the way as quickly as possible. And out of that little hand comes also these incredible sketches with no hint of stutter in line, no guessing, no pencil foreplanning. In his head and onto the paper it goes. I know people out there couldn’t care less, but my jaw just drops. “Oh mi’god,” I say, “What am I going to do…?”
He was all excited afterwards. He was going to make this thing. With our help of course. He was ready to make it right then and get to work with it.
When I was seven I couldn’t have whipped out a sketch with this kind of fluidity, couldn’t have begun to. I look at just those little arrows alone and think, “Damn.”
And I think, “Damn”, because he’s ready to make this stuff and start filming. And we don’t have what he needs to do it. Believe me, if we had it, he’d be doing it, too.
He’s out this evening watching the stop motion animation feature, “The Corpse Bride”. Armatures with silicone. All digital. And I took the time to ferret out what looks like a good stop motion animation forum and joined it and am hoping they can give some advice on what to do as we can’t buy expensive armatures and don’t have the equipment needed. And he’s raring to go. I imagine many of them started out as kids in the same situation and will be able to offer some good pointers. I hope they don’t say, “Hmmmph, a kid.”
One day this summer I looked in the camera to find he was doing his own stop motion animation studies and he has me film him jumping and falling etc. so he can study it frame by frame.
So imagine this. You enter the UN building and find a seat on the floor. You’re there to hear Thomas P. M. Barnett, author of “Blueprint for Action” speak. But it’s all virtual reality. You are there in Avatar form via a computer with the hardware for it. Thomas P. M. Barnett is there in Avatar form.
What do you think about this?
I read the NY Times article on this virtual “vacation” spot called Second Life. If it mentioned Thomas Barnett I missed that part. But being a curious sort I bopped on over but the idea I got from it was all role-playing and that doesn’t interest me, nor does signing up with a credit card for something free for seven days. But I was reading about how great the graphics were. Nothing really there to show me how fine they were so I did a Google search for Second Life graphics. Of course, clicking on a pic I first found myself at a blog interviewing what may be a college student who has her own club at Second Life (you can make real estate transactions with real hard money to purchase space to construct large-scale environments). Sex, sex, sex. Lap dancers etc. You know that’s going to be big at a place like this. Not interested. I move along and I forget how I ended up reading about Thomas P. M. Barnett’s virtual appearance at Second Life but there I was and I thought hmmm this is interesting, or is it, not the book but a communal virtual presentation-talk. He’s even sent along a digital autograph for in-world signing, though what in the world that could ever be possibly be worth I don’t know. A digital autograph ain’t an autograph.
The transcript for the event is now up here along with images of the online presentation.
Along the way I got a look at some other pics grabbed from Second Life and for all the talk of how great it is I’m not very impressed, such as with the pic displayed here at Newsweek online.
Here are cyborg marsupials who showed up to protest the building of the virtual UN.
Alot of Second Life, from what I’ve observed at least in the few screen grabs I’ve looked at, is fantasy/sci fi oriented.
And a person with a blog called “Second Thoughts” didn’t like the building of the virtual UN either and commented, saying:
Thank God somebody showed up to protest this little infant Bolshevik-in-its-cradle. Why do only SOME people get to make a UN, half in secret, away from the rest of the world? Huh? Who empowered them to do this? They think because it’s a virtual world, that they can just build a pretty UN and then populate it with themselves and 39 other people on a sim — which is all the sim will hold? They say, oh, it’s just a build, just a talk, just an experiment, so shut up — but…why should I lend it any legitimacy, and why do THEY get to pick the powerful symbols of the UN?
…
Somebody else said this “UN” should have seats or “regional groups” for furries, norms, robots, elves, vampires, etc. Huh? Why? Because those are visible groupings that actually likely make up a minority of the 67,000 subscribers?
I find it uber-annoying that some high-end Internet tekkie-wiki intellectual types think they can set up democracy islands, government experiments, UN buildings and all the rest of this in SL by just parachuting into this world and stepping completely over and around all its existing indigenous social structures and groups. Some of these people are the very same ones that screamed at the appearance of grassroots SL-based (not RL-based) groups like Metaverse Justice Watch or Concerned Residents.
Now here’s what’s really trippy.
Homeland Security has staked out turf at Second Life.
“Response” is the name of a private (but publicly accessible) island that happens to be owned by a top East Coast University. It’s been built to resemble a small town in New England, not to evoke nostalgia, but to simulate and model emergency response behavior to very real dangers (fires, structure damage, and so on) in an online world. This morning, the leader of that university project (whose avatar is a cybernetic humanoid alien) will be giving a presentation on his work– which happens to be funded by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
Educators and government/military officials have been exploring the national defense utility of online and virtual worlds for years, but now that they’re doing so in a public setting in Second Life…
Hunh?
Now, of course, everybody has probably already heard about this except for me. I’m probably the last to read about it.
I have to admit, that…an example…ok, if Haruki Murukami was giving an online talk at Second Life I’d be tempted to sign up and listen and would love to hear some back-and-forth, a question and answer session. There’s something attractive about the idea of guiding an avatar into a room and sitting it down and waiting for a speaker to “appear”. But what to wear? Most of the avatars I’ve seen for individuals who would portray themselves as women (assuming some men do as well) seem to want to communicate sexy young females. I would hope they’d also have something more suitable to the over-the-hill set who isn’t inclined to play Rock Hudson “Seconds”. An aging, sagging avatar. Toss a sweater and jeans on it. Presto not-so-chango. Aging does things to one that one would prefer not, but hell it happens and I wouldn’t feel right parading around as this and then having to apologize for what I actually am. Though for pity’s sake I hope you don’t have to look at your avatar all the time if you don’t want to, would be nice if you could do a subjective POV rather than objective, because seems it would be pretty wearying and tiresome otherwise, always looking at “yourself”. Just like I wouldn’t want a mirror in front of me while I’m talking to someone else real life. I’d rather be looking at them.
There are a lot of snaps from Second Life at the above linked sluniverse. Snaps of faux beaches, lots of virtual dancing, fashion shows. People go skydiving on Second Life. They eat steak dinners on Second Life. A few very few of the tableaus presented come close to being art, though the pixel quality isn’t there; I can appreciate the direction they’re headed as far as a visual experience. But eating a steak dinner on Second Life I don’t get. Or sky diving. Or flying a kite. And I certainly don’t get virtual eating. Just like I wouldn’t get virtual sleeping.
I’m an old fart, aren’t I.
My son would love it. But it’s for adults with a special section, I think, for teens.
My son, at seven, likes the idea of being a robot. “Robots don’t get cut,” he tells me, and he likes that. I tell him robots don’t feel and that his entire body is a sensory organ. That he isn’t just his brain. That as H.o.p. he reads the world through his body and its senses. “Robots don’t die,” he says, and he thinks that’s a great idea. I tell him that a lot of people have written stories about people who don’t die and that they tend to be very sad stories. He’s seven. He doesn’t get it. He won’t get it for a while, though he has in his possession still nearly every toy he’s ever owned and hates for me to throw away anything broken. He says it’s still good, it means something to him. He’s intent on thinking up how any item in the apartment could be recycled before it’s relegated to the trash bin. “But we can recycle it!!!” he says and tells me how he can make it into a sculpture or toy.
The first book I bought for him was “The Velveteen Rabbit” because it had impressed me so deeply as a child. I bought it before he was born, and a velveteen rabbit. The rabbit came with the book and was kind of cute but mainly I got it because the rabbit in the book only grew legs after it had been loved to pieces, and this rabbit had a square legless bottom. Don’t you know, he never did take to that rabbit and it has stayed on the shelf. Instead he fell in love with another rabbit toy that he carried around for a couple of years, almost always with a plastic crocodile in the other hand, both of which were worn to bits, and we still have them. I’ve only read him the book a very few times.
Second Life. I kept thinking of John Frankenheimer’s “Seconds” as I looked at images that played up the role-playing aspects. Tony Wilson decides to cast off his life and become someone new, younger, an artist. And ends up finding his new staged life to be not very satisfactory.
But Second Life isn’t just “Seconds”. It’s not just playing around with another potential medium perhaps for art or animation. It’s not just a place for classrooms to have their own section (which they do, profs and students have their own areas). Not when you’ve got Homeland Security staking out a piece and trying it on for size. Absurd as that may sound. And then a reading for “Blueprint for Action” at a virtual UN? What’s up with that? The virtual UN strikes me as weird. The event doesn’t, a presentation-talk, except the choice of material.
From Publishers Weekly
Military-strategy consultant Barnett follows his ballyhooed The Pentagon’s New Map with this unconvincing brief for American interventionism. Echoing the now conventional wisdom that a larger, better-prepared occupation force might have averted the current mess in Iraq, Barnett generalizes the notion into a formula for bringing the blessings of order and globalization to benighted nations throughout the “Non-Integrating Gap.” A “System Administrator force” of American and allied troops—a “pistol-packing Peace Corps”—could, he contends, undertake an ambitious schedule of regime change, stabilization and reconstruction in Islamic countries and as far afield as North Korea and Venezuela, making military intervention so routine that he terms it the “processing” of dysfunctional states. Barnett’s ideas are a rehash of Vietnam-era pacification doctrine, updated with anodyne computer lingo and New Economy spin. Implausibly, he envisions Americans volunteering their blood and treasure for a “SysAdmin force” fighting for international “connectivity” and envisions the world rallying to the bitterly controversial banner of globalization. Worse, he has no coherent conception of America’s strategic interests; “the U.S. is racing… to transform [the] Middle East before the global shift to hydrogen [fuel] threatens to turn the region into a historical backwater,” runs his confused rationale for continued American meddling in the Muslim world. That Barnett’s pronouncements are widely acclaimed as brilliant strategic insights (as he himself never tires of noting) bodes ill for American foreign policy. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Homeland Security has their own little town in Second Life. And elsewhere in Second Life, at a virtual UN, Barnett talks peace through American interventionism and globalization.
I’m feeling kind of creeped out.
Some people don't have to remember to dance, they just do
October 28th, 2005 |Posted In: General, Homeschool
In the meanwhile, I try to teach H.o.p. about the earth’s yearly cycle. I’ve been telling him about it for several years and he’s been fed all the information through a number of enjoyable educational venues. Ms. Frizzle tells him about it. Astronomy disks tell him about it. He likes what the planets look like, likes that a lot, and thinking about rocket ships and Marvin the Martian scooting around the solar system. He sometimes says he’d like to be an astronaut, he thinks that would be cool, but he wants to be able to bring along all his toys and us. I see in Halloween an in to talking about the year and I inform him that if he’s going to really appreciate Halloween and its spooky history he needs to get a better grip on that yearly cycle and he’s all for that. I set up the room’s floor with an imaginary sun at the center and set out 12 points representing the months and emphasize the seasons. I figure walking it might help. Yes, yes, he likes that idea a lot. He’s already hopping up and down, excited. So I stand at the center and he stands at the place of the Winter Solstice and we start to walk out the seasons and months, my talking about the solstice and the equinoxes. He’s not paying a bit of attention, he’s grinning and hopping around. I ask him questions to see if he’s absorbing any of what I’m telling him. He looks at me and says, “We’ll say it together” which means no, and you say it and I’ll repeat it after you. He’s immediately hopping again, holding my hand, excitedly dancing from one month to the next. I get frustrated after several tours around the sun and tell him he’s hopping around, not paying attention and so he’s not going to remember a bit of what I say. And he stops and looks at me and says, “But I’m doing my dance of joy for the year.” And he’s totally serious.
Oh.
I move away from what we’ve been doing. I remember everything I’ve told him about the cycles of life. I come back and tell him he’s right. He’s absolutely right. Pick back up with his joyful dance.
Well, I will try a second time with this posting that is mainly all links to Blondesense today. I am soooooo pissed. I just did a post with a bunch of clips on different sorts of inviting and disgusting news and bam it disappears from the screen right before my eyes and my browser hops away to the “manage” page. This happened yesterday too when I was posting. And the day before that. What the hell is up with my blog and why does it keep throwing away my posts? At first I thought it was some key stroke weird new thing making it go bezerk. But no, I realized yesterday and today it’s just flinging the posts into the ozone. So I will diligently”save and continue editing” the posts every few seconds because if I don’t it may vanish.
I don’t have a virus. My virus protector tells me so.
Anyway, why did I look up at the SF Gate to see what time Venus was setting there recently? On Oct. 27th it set at 8:38 pm. The reason I was looking this up is because Blondesense has a link to an article with photos of two bright lights cavorting and mimicking one another’s movements near midnight on Wednesday night. People as far as Las Vegas saw them.
An astronomer says it was Venus and Mars.
Aaagggh! It just did it again. I had written two paragraphs yet again on another posting at Blondesense but had forgotten to save and whoosh, away into the ozone it disappeared as I was looking at it.
Back to topic. Venus had already set! What the hell are they talking about, “Never mind, it’s Mars and Venus, folks.”
Besides, when Mars was really close in 2003, we were several times down at the observatory and Mars looked nothing like that.
And aaagh it just did it again! I had written two paragraphs on another posting at Blondesense and whoosh it disappears before I think to save again. I was noting Liz’s post on the Senate voting to cut Medicare and Medicaid by $10 billion over the next five years. Santorum says we’re not hurting the little people. Instead we’re putting the big squeeze on fraud and providers. (Dirt bag.) And in the same article to which Blondesense refers, there is also noted the proposal to cut food stamps by $1.1 billion over five years, shaving 300,000 working families off the rolls, tightening eligibility requirements.
Then Peter Lonetree posts at Blondesense on a Vermont Convention meeting to talk about seceding from the American Empire, America having lost its moral authority and being unsustainable. (Save and continue editing, now.)
We were watching the cute movie “Robots” the other night. In it there’s a big-hearted inventor and corporate bigwig who’s outmoded, and a young slick thing with a rabid mom (her design seems to be based on the duchess with the piglet child in “Alice in Wonderland”) cuts out spare parts which older and impoverished robots need, instead making only available expensive upgrading. If you can’t afford the upgrade then you’re swept up and melted down. Led by a brave lad and the outmoded big-hearted inventor and corporate bigwig who has been lent the voice of Mel Brooks, the robots revolt. Yeh! It’s easy and quick. Evil mom gets dumped in the kiln. Big hugs. Everyone dances. Watching, I wonder what in the world is on Hollywood’s mind. “Revolt! It’s easy!” Or maybe to give people, through identification and on screen wishfulfillment, the feeling of revolt done, did, nothing happened but we heard your desires and here it is, taste the sweetness, now get back to work feeling just a little bit better about things because the robots are OK, they were saved. Another fairy tale. There were lots of old fairy tales about evil kings and queens getting just deserts, a lot of discontented people sitting around the fire and dreaming about tossing their rulers into prison.
Libby doesn’t begin to cut it for me. Maybe someone can tell me why I should be all excited about Libby?! I’m not. The machine rattles on. Libby, for all I care, is a fucking distraction. Sure, go after the dude but he’s not The Ones. And people keep dying. And Bush is all frisky about Syria. The machine rattles on. Doesn’t even bother with smoke and mirrors for the most part because it doesn’t have to. What happens happens and disappears into the trash bin when the next wave of revolting news hits the day following. The machine rattles on. Chug a chug. Eat eat. Chug chug. Gobble gobble. Spits the bones back in your eye and chuckles.
Talk amongst yourselves about Harriet Myers–we'll make hydrogen sulfide
October 27th, 2005 |Posted In: General, Homeschool
Yeah, yeah, I know. Harriet Myers, Harriet Myers.
Whatever. We’ll see what the Bushtroll does next.
In the meanwhile, we made hydrogen sulfide!!! And it smelled real bad. Bad enough that it chased H.o.p. from our little science lab (kitchen). “Eeeeeew, yuck! That stinks!” and he ran. It’s tough doing science when your seven-year-old flees the room.
Kids like stuff that fizzes. In this case, the stink won out over the fizz and H.o.p. fled after a brief while. Did we learn anything? I dunno.
The idea is that silver tarnishes, combining with sulphur in the air, and forms silver sulfide, the black stuff on my jewelry.
2 Ag + S becomes Ag2S
When you remove the silver sulfide with a polish compound then you are also removing some of the silver. But there is a way to reverse the chemical reaction and turn the silver sulfide back into silver. Which is one reason we were doing this. Easily available ingredients and a desire to get some tarnish off of some jewelry.
Our science experiment didn’t explain the whys of its materials so I looked them up.
Put aluminum foil in a pan. Pour in steaming water. Toss in some baking soda and salt. Place your silver in it and watch the black go. We were told to do all this but the experiment didn’t tell us what’s happening in the process.
Why do you need the aluminum foil? Because the sulphur atoms are being transferred from the silver to the aluminum in the process and this forms aluminum sulfide, which is yellow.
3 Ag2S + 2 Al becomes 6 Ag + Al2S3
The baking soda solution is the catalyst, carrying the sulphur from the silver to the aluinum. And the aluminum and silver must be in contact with each other (our science experiment material didn’t say this) because this causes a small electric current to flow between them, an electrochemical reaction.
“What’s that stench?”
“It’s from our little electrolysis lab.”
The stench was hydrogen sulfide gas formed from the reaction of aluminum and the sodium carbonate (Sodium hydrogen carbonate, NaHCO3). The aluminum sulfide formed hydrolyzed to form the gases aluminum hydroxide and hydrogen sulfide.
We heated the water to boiling. We lined a pan with aluminum. We poured in water, added baking soda (fizzzzzzzzzzz!) and salt and dumped in some of my badly tarnished jewelry. Then it began to stink and H.o.p. fled.
Why the salt (sodium chloride, NaCl)? That wasn’t told us so I looked it up and found salt raises the ionic conductivity of the water thus facillitating electron transfer. It’s a salt bridge.
If we’d had an electric volt meter we could’ve connected one end to a piece of jewelry and aother to the foil and when the jewelry was in contact with the foil we would’ve seen a small small reading on the voltage meter.
So everyone’s all ready to use electrochemical reduction to clean their silver. Except that many silversmiths don’t recommend it. They say the surface of objects cleaned in this manner will act like a sponge and more readily absorb moisture and tarnish-producing gases. If someone happens by who can tell me why this is so, I’d appreciate it.
Now, did H.o.p. appreciate any of this. He liked the fizz. He didn’t like the stink. He looked dutifully at the little yellowish particles left in the pan and said, “Wow!” because he wanted to run off and do something else, like draw. I asked him if he might remember that Silver is Ag. He said no. I said maybe he could remember Sulphur is S. He said maybe so but he wasn’t sure. He ran off and signed into Brainpop to watch a flash video. I love Brainpop. They have a flash on the Periodic Table. I encouraged H.o.p. to watch it. He said it would be boring. I said no it wouldn’t be. The flash started with Moby looking at the Table and falling over. H.o.p. laughed. He will watch that flash now repeatedly and eventually learn a little something from it. As in that it exists. Or maybe not. He says it made his brain explode and wants to watch instead the flash on “Vertebrates”. He knows what a vertebrate is but he loves their explanation.
I tell you, we’re lousy scientists and chemists. But at least I didn’t follow the experiment we were given and toss the ingredients together and go voila! and not tell him what had happened. At least I dug up all the explanations I could find to be able to tell him about the chemical reaction.
Krampf’s science this week involved exploring Newtonian inertia via the simple experiment of putting a glass over a marble on a table top, pushing the glass in a circle which causes the marble to spin in a circle, and you should be able to pick up the glass and have the marble spinning within it as described below.
It has to do with inertia. If you roll the marble across the table, inertia
keeps it moving in the same direction, at the same speed, until something
else pushes or pulls on it. That push or pull could come from friction with the
table top, which would slow it down. It could also come from a bump or dip
in the surface of the table, or from the side of the drinking glass which could
change the direction of the marble. In the case of the drinking glass, it
could cause the marble to move in a circle around the side of the glass.As you move the glass in a circle, it is pushing the marble, to keep it
rolling. The marble’s inertia tries to keep the marble moving in a straight line,
so the marble pushes against the side of the glass. The combination causes
the marble to zip in a circle around the inside of the glass.But something else is happening too. Inertia is causing the marble to push
against the side of the glass. As the marble moves faster and faster, it is
pushing harder and harder against the side of the glass. When that push gets
strong enough, you have enough force to hold the marble against the glass,
even when you pick it up off of the table.
Science experiment! So H.o.p. and I dump out the contents of one of his jars and unearthed an ok green and white marble. We got first a plastic glass that had perfectly straight sides, because one is supposed to use a glass with straight sides. The experiment’s list of ingredients called for simply a glass. I didn’t know whether a plastic glass might effect the experiment, glass glass being presumably slicker and offering less resistance, but thought we’d try the plastic glass. Yeah, I know, sounds stupid.
We spun and spun and spun and spun the marble in the glass. The marble spun and spun and spun. We picked up the glass and the marble flew across the room. We did this three or four times and each time we failed.
So we tried a glass glass that has almost perfectly straight sides but not quite.
We spun and spun and spun and spun the marble in the glass. The marble spun and spun and spun. We picked up the glass and the marble flew across the room. We did this three or four times and each time we failed. (H.o.p.’s dad later tried and failed each time.)
We failed but what happened at least does follow the laws of inertia. Things at rest tending to stay at rest and things in motion tending to stay in motion (unless acted upon by an outside force). To exhibit this I finally just took the marble and sat it down and said look, we can depend on that marble to stay there, just sit there. That’s inertia. It’s not going to get up and roll on its own initiative. It is inert. When you place a toy on a shelf in your room you are relying on its inertia to cause it to be in the exact same place when you return to your room to look for it. If there wasn’t inertia assisting in helping to keep objects where you put them then the world would be a pretty unpredictable and messy place.
I told him how people once believed the natural tendency of an object is to come to rest of its own accord. When instead an object in motion is going to keep on going unless it’s forced to come to a stop.
I asked H.o.p. to roll the marble on the floor toward our magic marker chalk-type board. He did and it came to a rest against the board. Which had greater inertia? Then he lightly tossed the marble on the floor and it bounced and went flying off but I thought it a bad idea to muss things up with bringing in factors of momentum and gravity and opposite reactions and what all.
I got a slick scarf and a plate and we put the plate on the scarf after I had H.o.p. hold them both and tell me which weighed more. I yanked the scarf out from underneath the plate. I explained that inertia is dependent on mass or weight and that it was therefore going to be harder to get the plate to move than the scarf, as long as the scarf was yanked quickly.
It wouldn’t have been a mess if I had failed because I used a plastic plate, knowing I am a bad scientist. Then we put heavy books on the plate and I tugged the scarf out from underneath it. Then I piled several heavy glass bowls on top of the plate, which had H.o.p. jumping up and down. And I held my breath and yanked the scarf. Bravo! No broken bowls.
By then H.o.p. was ready to have a go at the trick. We used the plastic plate. He made several tries and grew increasingly excited, me coaching him on keeping the scarf level and pointing out the best grip points for him. And finally he slickly pulled the scarf leaving the plate sitting on the table.
I lie. It wasn’t a table. We used instead a chair because the table is piled high with books and drawings. It was easier to use the chair.
Guerilla housing for the homeless and an art gallery
October 26th, 2005 |Posted In: General, Social Studies (the big grab bag)
Looking up the Metro Atlanta Homeless Task Force, I was reminded of the art gallery they have there for the homeless, with classes each Thursday night. Follow the link here to view an online gallery of the work of some of the artists. I hope you do. Because much of the artistry exhibited on the site is more than just plain good. It’s damn good. I don’t know how that project is faring these days. I first read of it several years ago. It bothers me that all the art at the site was posted August 3rd 2004 and that there have been no updates and that the links to works on the “artist page” are all broken and the featured artist page is also out of commission. It bothers me that the “upcoming events” and “about us” pages are both blank, the “art tips” and “publications” page links are nonfunctional, and that the page for “Classes–Thursday Night” simply reads, “Thursday night is an open night to come and draw and paint and talk to other artist (sic).” It bothers me because it makes me wonder about funding. And it makes me wonder about the health of the project. It makes me wonder about interest in the project. A semi-annual update of these few pages and check to make sure the links are functioning would not involve very much (aside from the getting good pics of the art) and I wonder why it hasn’t been done.
I did a Google search for MATSFTL and art and came up pretty dry. I located a Creative Loafing announcement for an exhibit there in January of 2003. Nothing else.
In the results came up also a page on the Mad Housers’ website which has nothing to do with the MATSFTL art gallery. But is about the homeless in Atlanta and architects and others who have loosely banded together to build what is called “Mad Houser” dwellings for the homeless–small, weather-secure cubicles placed in small already-formed homeless cities in unclaimed wooded urban areas. The Mad Housers interview clients looking for people who will take care of their cubicles, usually in the setting of an established homeless camp that is being converted or has been converted to Mad Houser dwellings.
They have a couple of interesting links on their links page. One is to a website on Dignity Village which is a homeless camp sanctioned by the city of Portland, Oregon. Another is to Modest Needs which “is a non-profit organization reaching out to hard-working individuals and families who suddenly find themselves faced with small, emergency expenses that they have no way to afford on their own.”
The man profiled in the Mad Houser Summer 2005 newsletter has been homeless in the Atlanta area for 5 to 6 years. He was a veteran, a Marine for 2 years.
The winter 2004 newsletter describes how the Mad Housers were running into difficulties with the old style of cubicle housing, in which individuals had room to stand, were 6 by 8 feet and 1o feet tall and equipped with a wood-burning stove. Whereas these had been concealed by the urban forests in the industrial zones, vigorious new development and gentrification had reduced the potential sites for this style of hut, so a new shelter was developed that was 4 by 8 feet, the front wall being 48 inches high and the back 40 inches high. The stoves in the larger huts were impossible in the new “low riders” but the combination of the occupant’s body heat and insulation is given as providing sufficient warmth during the winter.
The history of the Mad Housers extends back to the 1980s and an informal network of Georgia Tech architecture students who had observed the structures built by the homeless and wanted to come up with a design that was safer and more secure. Room for a bed, a little storage, and a door that locked. Mad Housers was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1988.
An individual profiled in the Winter 2003 newsletter had been in the a car wreck when he was about 30 that left him in a body cast for a year and in a cast for two years after that. He’d been in high-rise construction work, a job he could no longer handle following his long recuperation. His history is vague but it sounds as though he’d been homeless for the past 15 years and with Atlanta as his base had biked around the country with his belongings. Then 18 months prior he’d had a stroke which left him on disibility. He was now the proud owner of a Mad Houser hut and was planning to stay put.
He’d served a couple of years in the army.
An individual profiled in the Spring 2003 newsletter was grateful for his Mad Houser structure but described the difficulty of his life. How in September, preparing for winter months, he began making charcoal from wood for keeping warm in the winter in the stove provided. In the summer he had a garden on some neighboring land and shared the produce with neighboring Mad Housers. Getting water to the garden was difficult and he was planning to set up a device to catch rain water. He wanted more efficient lighting, at the present using candles and electricity from a car battery. “My house is my sancturary; it gives me more peace than most have and a sense of belonging. Each day I count my blessings and thank God for what he has given me.”
Another individual had lived in a Mad Houser hut for 10 years.
My husband is acquainted with a couple who for ten years had permitted a homeless individual to live on the wooded area at the back of their in town property. He was a veteran on disibility and had dropped out of society. He lived in a tent for most of that ten years than became ill, at which point the Mad Housers built a hut for him. He resided in the structure for a month then died. Another homeless person moved into the hut and has lived there since.
Yes, yes, I knew we weren't living in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood
October 26th, 2005 |Posted In: General
One thing I didn’t know when moving in here, but discovered last night, is that we have 33 sex offenders registered within 1 mile of us, 21 of them being convicted for sex offenses against children, the majority of those registered within less than a hop, skip and jump and the rest are between us and a leisurely stroll to the park.
On the bright side, there are none registered in our building or in the buildings on either side of us.
The majority are divided between a mission nearby and a homeless shelter.
Considering the number of homeless in Atlanta, the number is a small percentage but it’s still disquieting. I checked our old address and there were only 3 sex offenders within a mile, two of whom were 3/4′s of a mile away and were for offenses against children, and the third, for an adult offense, just down the street from where we’d been living, and was currently in jail.
Looking up homelessness in Atlanta, I was reminded of a couple of projects I would prefer not to put in a post beginning with the above information and will save for a following post. One of those projects concerns the homeless and culture, and the other concerns the homeless and guerilla housing.
What's up with all the police
October 25th, 2005 |Posted In: General, This Old Apartment (Building)
Half a dozen cop cars and a dozen police have someone pinned down at one of the two side entrances to our building.
Marty met a couple of our neighbors in the other building, everyone piling out to see what was going on. No one knows. A little police activity brings the people together and waiting on the street to see what’s going on they converse rather than glance-mumble-growl-look away.
“I thought it had been pretty quiet around here except for the ‘girls’,” one of the neighbors says. Marty says no, tells him about our troubles and that some of the ‘girls’ he’s referring to had been living in the building.
“You mean they were living here!?” the guy says.
Well, we might find out tomorrow what just happened.
