This is a really nice story from a elementary school teacher reminding people of how off the notion of "age-suitable" material can be, through an anecdote of teaching second graders vocabulary words "beyond their ability". Says she:

The names of four great classical artists rolled off the tongue of a boy who couldn't keep his shoes tied. When you grow up, as I did, with kids who learn from cartoons to discuss the possibilities of cellular mutation before they can read ... well, you just don't accept that certain words are too hard for children to understand.

I told a friend I'd link to 80's Movies Rewind, an archive of 80's movies with photos and trivia. I like that the reviews point out the links between a lot of the movies. If I had an infinite amount of money, I could use their movie listing as a shopping list... [via PCJM]
[6.20.03]

In one of the cooler PR campaigns I've seen, NASA has built a website posting the e-mail conversations between two LEGO "astrobots" about the Red Rover Mars mission that just launched. While the actual physical astrobots (Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust) can't be launched because they would melt, Biff's likeness has been put on a metal magnetic disk bolted to the exterior of the spacecraft. They've done a nice job forming at least rudamentary personalities, with Biff being an adventurous but fairly unknowledgeable late addition to the team, and Sandy being a dedicated space explorer who will be going on the next mission and right now is e-mailing Biff from the ground about the information details he's missed out on. (And while this does play a tiny bit into the detail-oriented woman versus go-out-and-do-it man stereotypes, they clearly needed to have an information misbalance to play out their dialog as they wanted, so no complaints from me on that count.)

NASA is doing this in part to give a more personal tone to updates on this unmanned mission, but obviously there's a big children's audience here as well. The entries so far get some good information in there, and I certainly plan to keep reading. I do wonder what they have scripted out in advance and how much they'll be trying to reflect exactly what is happening on the mission. With the children's audience, I also wonder if they've thought out what they will do if something unfortunate happens to one of the spacecraft. All-in-all, a really cool project, though - a NASA LEGO astrobot weblog could be horribly cheesy, but this one isn't. [via personal communication]
[6.14.03]

If you're one of the last people on the internet to have noticed that Brunching Shuttlecocks officially shut themselves down, you also might have been as slow as I was to notice that you can still read the best part of their site, the Ratings, at The Book of Ratings. I'll probably stop by the Self-Made Critic site occassionally, too, because I generally only read movie reviews after I've already seen the movie. This allows me to play the "were the women cute enough to warrant an extra star from Ebert" game, and to snort at lines like this from the Self-Made Critic's Matrix Reloaded review: "I'm not sure exactly when it happened, perhaps during the slow-motion montage featuring left-over footage from Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit video, but early on there was a point when it suddenly dawned on me that I was watching a bad movie."
[6.12.03]

In one of the odder results of the "war on terror", the tightening of the boarders has driven up drug farming within the US, and national parks are being combed by national-park ranger commandos for marijuana farmers, including in land under wilderness designation. It's both a public safety problem, with hikers reporting encountering masked men with automatic weapons, and an environmental problem:

"This is massive-scale agriculture that is threatening the very mission of the national parks, which is to preserve the natural environment in perpetuity and provide for safe public recreation," says Bill Tweed, chief naturalist at Sequoia National Park. "[Growers] are killing wildlife, diverting streams, introducing nonnative plants, creating fire and pollution hazards, and bringing the specter of violence. For the moment, we are failing both parts of our mission, and that is tragic."

"This is everyone's problem," says Tweed. "It's not just a question of the moral and legal issue of marijuana. It's an issue of commercial-sized agriculture devastating the mission of national parks to preserve land ... for generations.

We've already seen with computer technology the kinds of misguided laws that can come about when laws about a new technology are created on an as-it-comes-up basis and often with regards to extreme cases. Biotechnology and genetical engineering are heading the same way and again the legal system doesn't really seem to be keeping up; I'm guessing in five to ten years time the Supreme Court will be sorting these issues out as well. There's what looks like it might actually be an interesting program on PBS tonight on how far biotechnology has come and what legal questions are already pending: Bloodlines: Technology Hits Home. The associated website has some good stuff on it, including the observation that right now, these issues are largely governed at the state level (and as theoretically appealing as I find that, I think we're clearly going to need some federal guidelines here as well). I also have a more-than-idle curiosity about whether these questions will become derailed by a fetal-rights, anti-abortion agenda.
[6.10.03]

It is always striking to me that a two-week vacation from the internet results in a much higher number of books actually getting read, particularly for having been on a "working vacation". Among other things, I re-read the Harry Potter series to date in preparation for the release of the 5th book. They were all good on re-reading, though the 3rd book suffered a bit for knowing the underlying mysteries. I think it might be the weakest of the series. It was certainly the transition from lighter children's fare to the darker tone of Goblet of Fire, which is clearly intended for slightly older children.

I'm now very interested to see how the 5th book plays out. The book has clearly been set up to begin a defense (or offense?) against Voldemort despite the reluctance of the official wizarding government. I am hopeful, given Rowling's breaking of the standard fantasy divisions of pure good and pure evil with the character of Snape, that she'll give us a more Tolkien-esque depth of conflict between the Hogwarts-based heroes and a non-evil wizard government with a disagreement about the best course of action rather than simply being a tool of evil.
[6.10.03]

"Critters" for Photo Friday [full size]

"Multiples" for Photo Friday [full size]

"Packaging" for Photo Friday [full size]