If I were President… According to kids

Lauren and Thomas recently did an art project at school themed “If I were President…” — obviously right around the time of the 2008 Presidential Election.  You can see the results here…  PRICELESS!!

Speed Reading with EyeQ

Saw an infomercial on a speed reading course called EyeQ  (www.eyeq.tv).  I wonder if works as well as they advertise.  It would have been SO USEFUL to speed read when I was in school!!  Is it worth $14.95 + (3 x $83.33 payments) = $264.95?

Butterflies in DC!! — now with photos…

This time of year is especially crazy for our family… in addition to Pilgrams-Invaded-America Day and Jesus’s Birthday, 4 out of the 5 people in our family have birthdays in October. Pile on top of that family weddings x2 and a classmate’s and friend’s birthday parties… oh and Chinese school on Sundays.  Getting a free weekend is a rarity indeed, and this weekend was one such day.

We decided (my dad and I) to take the kids to the Smithsonian museum of Natural History to check out the exhibits. They always love looking at the animals, especially in the Mammal Hall.  So we picked up grandpa and were on our way.  Mommy was off doing errands.  [Update:  Photos are now available online here]

We drove downtown (although I prefer to Metro it when possible) b/c my dad was convinced we could easily find a parking space if we just circle slowly.  We did that for 30-40 minutes with no luck.  Finally I dropped off the kids and dad at the front of the museum, and went to park the car.

We checked out the new ocean exhibit, which now takes the space that the old dinosaur hall used to occupy. Frankly I didn’t get to look around too much. 3 young kids with short attention spans will do that… turns out they aren’t as interested in reading the signs and displays as I am.

We also saw old animal skeletons and the bug zoo. Apparently the Insect Zoo is sponsored by Orkin (the exterminators) — go figure.

But the star of the day was the Butterfly exhibit. It looks pretty new.  There are some insect and factual displays about how flowers and butterflies live together in harmony. But the cool thing is the Butterfly garden — I’m not sure if that’s what it’s actually called, but that’s what I call it.

They have a completely enclosed “tunnel” filled with various plants and about 300 butterflies.  Most of the butterflies are sitting on leaves or sipping juice from trays of old fruit, but they also fly around all about you. They might even land on you.

To get in, you need tickets which are purchased just outside.  They cost $5 for kids (2-12 yr, I think) and $6.50 for older kids (prices may not be exact, but it’s close). We paid and were on our way in. They give you a small orientation which goes over the basic rules…

• Don’t touch the butterflies
• Don’t step on the butterflies
• Don’t touch their food
• Make sure you check yourself for butterflies hitching a ride on your clothes before leaving
• etc.

They even offer you a laminated card with pictures and names of the various butterfly species to help you identify them. Then they let you in.  It is super humid in the butterfly garden, and quite warm. 85-90 deg F probably. Every minute of so, a blast of water vapor is shot into the air adding even more humidity.  You will sweat.
Lauren was concerned at first. She thought the butterflies might bite and didn’t want them to land on her.

Nicholas copied her and wanted to be picked  up.

Thomas on the other hand was really eager to have a butterfly land on him (which is allowed, just don’t proactively touch them).

We tried standing near where all the butterflies were. We tried holding our arms out.  We tried standing still like a statue.  But nothing was working.

All around us, butterflies were landing on other people. Landing on their clothes.  Landing on their backpacks, etc. Lauren had one land on her head. One landed on my hand… which was holding my camera – sorry, no pictures of that.  …but none for Thomas.

Poor Thomas… we were in there for about 30 minutes, and when we were about to give up, one landed on Thomas’ sleeve. I said, “Hey Thomas, there’s one on your arm” He was startled and flinched.  It flew away, and he never got to see it.
Oh well.

It was a great day, and the kids seemed to really like their close encounter with the butterflies. I’d recommend it for anyone with kids who enjoy nature!

Later I asked Thomas what his favorite part of the day was. He said when he got to see the bees making honey (the Insect Zoo includes a bee hive which you can look into thru plexiglass). …He might of had a different answer if one of those darn butterflies landed on him.

[Update:  Photos are now available online here]

Top 10 Animated Disney Movies

With three little kids in the house, I’ve seen just about every modern animated disney movie at least a dozen times, not to mention all the ones I used to watch when I was a kid.  Does that qualify me as a critic?  No – but hey, this is my blog and I can do what I want.  Based on quality of animation, music, story and overall enjoyability — IMHO, here’s the top 10..

1. Aladdin — Outstanding music, humor, animation and story. What’s not to love?
2. The Lion King — Beautifully animated, best contemporary music, great characters, but the story could be better
   
3. Robin Hood — Outstanding characters, excellent story, great music… 1973 animation.
   
   
4. Sleeping Beauty — Classic animation, great story and by far the best (near perfect) classical music. Love the magic!
   
5. Beauty and the Beast — Outstanding animation, story and humor. Good music overall.
   
   
6. Finding Nemo — Great animation, story and characters.  There was music?
   
7. Mulan — Very good animation. Great story and humor. Good music, but not superb.
   
   
8. Cars — Great animation, characters and story. Looks beautiful on an HD TV when upconverted!
   
9. Monsters Inc — Outstanding humor, characters and animation. Story is pretty good, but seems rushed at the end.
   
   
10. Toy Story – Beautiful animation and great music. Story is so-so IMHO. To Infinity and Beyond!!
    

e-Waste… you’d think we’d have a better way of handling this by now…

Check out this “slightly biased” piece on 60-minutes about e-Waste.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4586903n

more about “The Electronic Wasteland Video – CBSN…“, posted with vodpod

You’d think that we’d have come up with a better and more effective solution to this by now… or perhaps we should ask the HP, Dell’s and IBMs of the world to start manufacturing PCs and Servers which are more easily recycled.

This company claims to be part of the solution… http://www.e-stewards.org/

Chosen pic…

One of my photos on Flickr was chosen to be included in some guys article on a Night at the Baltimore Aquarium on NowPublic.

whoo-hoo…  (is that how you spell it?)

No big deal, but hey, I can be famous for 5 seconds if I want…  When the kids get older, a night at the aquarium sounds pretty cool actually.

CNN “Hologram”

Did you see all the cool 3D graphics that CNN had on election night? They may not have been true holograms, but who cares?!? They were pretty flashy eye-candy. Kudos to the CNN engineers who put those together.

Here’s more and a video clip of the “hologram” effect…

or a look behind the scenes…

Open Letter to President-Elect Obama

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Congratulations on the victory, on winning a hard-fought campaign, and on winning the election for the highest office in the Land.  It is well deserved, and as a free-thinking independent, I look forward to the months and years ahead.  While I may disagree with many of your policies/plans, I do agree with some.  I think (as has been said many times today) it is simply a day to be proud as an American citizen.

Our democracy is clearly alive and well, and you’ve been able to accomplish a great deal using it. This is not a bad thing.

I applaud your victory speech, and am sure others found it as inspirational as I did… not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans. The country is trusting you to provide the leadership needed to take us forward from here. As I mentioned, I may not necessarily agree with where you want to take us, but look forward to the journey — For I believe it’s the journey that makes achieving the end goal worthwhile.

To you, I make but one simple request…  Earn this.

Respectfully,

–Kc

Questioning CNN Election Results

So it’s finally here, Election Day.  My kids got to vote on a class pet today – fish or frog. One voted fish, the other voted frog.  The Frog won.  I hope we don’t end up with a frog in the national election.

As my kids describe it, it’s “O-Rock Obama” against “John the Cane”…

I just visited CNN.com around 7:40pm ET to check out the Virginia election results.  Here’s a snippet of what I found, and I saw something a little strange…

So the polls in Virginia just closed at 7pm.  According to this chart, 4% (FOUR percent) of the precincts have reported in… and ALREADY they’ve declared Mark Warner the winner!  I’m no statistician, but that doesn’t seem right to me… how could they declare a winner with only 4% of the vote in?  Isn’t that more like a rounding error???