Zizz in Florida

Greetings, dearests-of-dears,

I love you all and miss you bucketloads.  Today I'm writing from Orlando, Florida, where I am miraculously back in Eastern Time (nothing quite says "welcome" as specially as being in the same time zone as home).  I'm exhausted from the past couple of days and ready to hit the sack for the night before driving back to Huntsville tomorrow, which will be, as they say, a trek.

Atlantis on her way from the OPF to the VAB =)

On Wednesday of this week, we (the Robotics Academy & the NASA Leadership Academy) met outside the UAH dorm lobby at 5:30 AM to begin the long haul to Florida.  We took an 11-seat van, which proved conducive to passing time quickly.  Some ways in which I passed time were sleeping, reading (The Wings of the Dove - Henry James), playing Uno!, playing Mafia, Contact, and jamming out to random songs on Joaquin's iPod.  In the evening we arrived in Cocoa Beach, Florida.  We went out as a group for Thai, and after this we went for a midnight stroll around the beach, where we saw a number of constellations and a pair of crabs.

The Launch Control Center @ Kennedy.

Thursday was our beach day (initially planned to also include a viewing of the Delta-IV launch, but they delayed that), so I spent all day on the beach - swimming, bodysurfing, sandpile-building, and... getting my very first sunburn ever.  In the evening we went out to eat as a group at a seafood place, where I had fried alligator, and after that we went to Ron Jon's Surf Shop, where we confused a little marklar[girl] who asked her marklar[dad] what marklar[we] were talking about.

Hogwarts Hogwarts Hogwarts Hogwarts Hogwarts!

On Friday we got up early to view the launch, which unfortunately was delayed to the point that we had to leave the viewing location without seeing it - we had to get to Kennedy Space Center for our tour.  I've been to KSC once before, when I was about 10 years old, and it was pretty awesome to see it again... this time as an aerospace engineer (can you believe... actually, it really blows my mind that the last time I went to KSC was a time when I had not yet decided to be an aerospace engineer, or even had the slightest interest in science, math, or engineering...).   We got to see Atlantis and Endeavour pretty close up and this was very exciting.

After KSC we drove down to Orlando, where a bunch of us relaxed in the pool at the hotel before going out to dinner at Downtown Disney, where we wandered for a bit listening to live music and eating ice cream.  I must say I'm beginning to understand the definition of vacation.  I feel like the past five days might have been all I needed to recover from last semester...

have you seen me this happy?  I don't think I have....

which brings me to today, Saturday, which we spent at Universal Studios's Islands of Adventure, which consists of Seuss Landing, Marvel-land, the Lost Continent, and most importantly... The Wonderful Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

I won't waste too many words on descriptions.  I walked through Hogsmeade.  I had lunch at Three Broomsticks.  I drank a glass of pumpkin juice.  I had a mug of Butterbeer.  I bought a wand at Ollivander's.  I flew around the Hogwarts castle... twice.  I smiled so much my cheeks hurt.

Today was a magical day. <3
Love you lots and lots and lots,
Zizzbeth.

totally turtle

This is a sad story.  It is about 2 tall boys and 2 short girls.  They decided to go to the beach.  This is where they met me.  My name is Schnappi Long-Snout.  I am a very handsome Alligator sinensis or just alligator to you folk.

I was relaxing on the sand, minding my own business, enjoying the wonderfully perfect summer day with little humidity and a light ocean breeze.  These younglings stumbled upon me just as they arrived. They were quite pleasant and playful, but talked an awful lot.  My stomach started grumbling for brunch, and I soon grew sick of their ramblings.

I first ate the smallest one.  I swallowed her whole.  She didn't have much time to react, but she sure does kick on the way down.  That got them a bit riled up.  The curly-haired one was feeling particularly chivalrous and tried to defend his fellow kiddies, but that failed pretty quick.  I grabbed a little snack from his arm before he fled the beach dripping blood all over my sand.  It wasn't very nice of him.

The other boy was a bit of an idiot.  He tried to ride me, but clearly I'm an alligator.

I did not enjoy it, but he seemed to enjoy me chomping on his leg.  It was odd.  Luckily, the rest of his body got washed out to sea.  I think the seagulls got several meals out of him too.

The last girlie tried to fight me.  She threw sand in my eyes and mouth.  It was not very nice. or effective...  I think she wanted revenge for killing her friends.  So I got my revenge on her.  I ate her in two bites.  She was not much of a meal.

All in all, it was a fairly filling brunch.  It was quite tiring though, but I got some cool yellow sunglasses out of it.  It was a good Saturday morning.


P.S. I had some good turtle ice cream to wash it all down later.
(P.P.S. More pictures will be posted somewhere else detailing the exact encounters with me. They were not appropriate to place here.)

L’été des enfants, 2ième partie

Hello Friends,

This post will be in English.

I am finding that I have a lot of time on my hands. As such, I am writing another blog post. This is to give me a break from reading things (including many papers).  Starting with the next paragraph, this blog post reads pretty much like a very bad paper.

As anyone who has worked with kids knows, kids are not adults.  The importance of this, as is relevant to this blog post, is that they are silly and say silly things.  Some of their silliness has been documented by SWHallee in his paper “L’été des enfants, 1^ère partie” (2012).  We will expound upon this silliness in this paper, including by contrasting their abilities to identify stuffed animals and animal toys to the abilities of one of the experimenters to do the same.

In one experiment, children and experimenters are shown two stuffed animals, four animal toys, and one puppet.  At the beginning of the experiment, the child is asked to name each of the animals at least once, prompted with questions such as, “What type of animal is this?”  During the experiment, the experimenter is required to identify each animal several times with very little time in between trials. A trial for the experimenter consists of picking up an animal, and reciting the appropriate dialogue associated with that animal and time point, after tagging the line with the phrase “[Animal name] says.”

In Figures 1 and 2 below, the performances of the children and the experimenter are shown graphically.  A blue box indicates the name of an animal (toy) that is actually presented in the experiment. A red box indicates an animal that is not present. The yellow box represents an answer of “I don’t know.” The arrows in the figure point from the target animal (the presented animal) to the response given.  Each blue box should be assumed to have an arrow originating from and pointing to itself.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Other relevant information includes the following:

• The dog has spots.
• The kangaroo has relatively large, pointed ears that stick up.
• The cow is spotted and has no ears (they have been ripped off).
• The horse is really odd-looking.

From these data, one can conclude the following:

•  It is difficult for some children to name animals that cannot be found on a farm, or do not have distinct onomatopoeia (or animal sounds) attached to them (see: Giraffe and Kangaroo).
•  It is difficult for some children to identify toys that bear little resemblance to the animal that they represent (see: Cow and Horse)
•  It is difficult for the experimenter to go for two hours at a time switching from one animal to another without making some slip-ups.

 I have many more things to write about … so there will hopefully be more posts from me.

In the meantime …

Love and animals,

Shaun

Greetings from Boulder, CO. This is mostly a picture post. Prepare your browsers.

So it started off in Chicago for my sister's graduation. She lives by Millennium Park, which is where the "Cloud Gate" or as the locals call it, "The Bean". Here it is below:

Lots of tourists come by. It's also really weird optically when you're underneath it. 

Also Chicago hotdogs follow the following notice:

They go for peppers, mini pickles, some other pickles and onions, etc. 

She's also really close to this:

which is a really cool place. It's also really close to Lake Michigan as seen below, if you turn left:

The first day we were there I mostly just explored, and past places like this:

And also visited the Planetarium which was free at the time:

If you're curious, the sign says "Welcome to the Universe" which I felt was really fitting for Anna.

We then went to the Aquarium, which was not free, but cheap (I think it was 8 dollars normally, compared to NE which is like 20). It was kind of like the NE Aquarium, with lots of stuff to see, including this manta ray: 

It's creepy looking from below. It looks kind of like that monster guy from Pan's Labyrinth. We also went to the Museum of Science and Industry, which was full of larger than life experiments, including the below which simulated avalanches (ie granular material that behaves chaotically when in large amounts). 

When I said my sister lives close, I meant really close (Millennium Park below): 

We then went on an architecture boat tour, and saw lots of buildings from below, like this one (Sears Tower, very famous for the glass floors that you can step out on at the observation deck at the top). 

But what we did was actually a river architecture + lake tour so we also got to see Chicago from Lake Michigan:

and lighthouses...

And then I explored around Navy Pier, which used to be a training ground until it got retrofitted into kind of an amusement park. Here's me taking an artsy far-away picture of the Ferris wheel in front:

Apparently during the.....something fair, possibly world's fair, not sure, there was a Ferris wheel double the current diameter, and a full ride (two rotations) would take an hour or something. Also something about how Chicago is known as the Windy City not for its wind, but because its politicians were wind bags when trying to convince people to host stuff in Chicago right after the Great Chicago Fire. 

Another artsy picture of Chicago from Navy Pier this time:

And here are my parents at The Bean at sunset:

So when I finally went into the Art Institute of Chicago, I found a couple goodies like the following (Erin, pay attention):

1. Goodie One

2. Goodie Two (a piece found in the temporary R. Lichtenstein exhibit)

3. Goodie Three

4. Goodie Four

5. Goodie Five

Now another picture from the roof deck of the apartment building:

And then take a 2 hour flight to Denver and you can see this in the area between Boulder and Denver:

I actually then went to Denver after spending a while in Boulder (few days). Here's the Colorado State Capital below (from below):

And then at the same time, participated in an Equalist rally (like in Legend of Korra, except not). Just kidding, it was actually Denver PrideFest. Here's a more.....controlled/reserved picture:

On my way back, I found Rory (see arms for tallies, although kind of look more like stitch marks):

So something about Boulder/Colorado/etc is that there are lots of prairie dogs. Here are some on my way to work:

There's a scout dog that then emits a high pitched squeak when danger is observed, alerting the others to go back into their holes. The ground is filled with holes. Here's another picture from the area where I work:

The clouds around the bottom may be caused by the Colorado wild fires going on right now. Not sure if they're in the right direction or not, but it looks like the white clouds stuff is actually coming from the ground.

Finally food. I felt kind of proud of this NY strip steak, potatoes, and mixed greens with yellow bell pepper I made below:

And the below picture doesn't really do the baguettes I made quite enough justice because I had to put them in the microwave to keep them high enough to not get eaten by the 3 (now 4) dogs, 2 cats and 1 kitten that are also in the house I'm in.

Also work is good. Lots of office supplies, my computer finally arrived (nice laptop and two monitors at work). Getting used to industry-lifestyle is in process. Very different compared to the sacrifice-everything way of Academia I feel.  Hi.