Math and butterflies

 Fallen feathers, Homeschooling, Math, My Daily Life, The World Around Me  No Responses »
May 162012
 

So for the first time in a month, I actually went and picked up my Algebra book in the hopes of completing it this summer, now that the spring is mostly gone.

And to my rather big surprise, once I got rid of (most all) of my hang ups, it wasn’t that hard to do the chapter I’d been boycotting.

Most of what it wanted me to do was to write down how to convert exponents and radicals to positives or negatives depending on the problem. This took a little bit of reading and rereading the steps, but it actually made a lot of sense in hindsight.

And then after I was properly shamed by how relatively easy the math turned out to be, I went on a walk with the lovely lady basset hounds.

This, while not as academically productive as math, was much more fun. I got to catch some sunlight so I won’t burn to death this summer, and smell the wonderful smell of grass, flowers, trees and the metal depot courting fire hazards again. I got to see at least eight different kinds of birds; from the common sparrows to a kingfisher (unidentified due to being seen from about a hundred feet away) and a red tailed hawk in the middle of circling.

The sun was warm, the dogs were well behaved, the ground was the right type of firmness, solid enough not to trip me up, loose enough that I wasn’t skidding and slipping on hills. It was a beautiful spring walk.

 Posted by at 6:14 pm

The Faults In Our Stars

 Homeschooling, Literature  No Responses »
May 152012
 

Today I finished John Green’s The Faults In Our Stars, and it was an extraordinary profound book.

“Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

“Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

This is the synopsis for the back of the book, and it really is what it says it is; ambitious, heartbreaking, brilliant and tragic. There are dreams found and dreams lost. Wishes made and regretted, and wishes made and cherished. There is a sense of remembering why we choose to live, and what it means to be nearly inevitably condemned to a short life, and how it can seem to be a cruelty or a blessing to have those days cut short so that as we live them, we understand even better how fleeting it all really is.

I rocketed through the first hundred and twenty pages easily, and then was stopped by the granting of Hazel’s wish and how her ideal fell apart in the face of reality, for about two and a half weeks. Today I went and read the last about seventy I had left, and was again blown away just by the brilliance of the feelings within. I’m usually cold-hearted enough to not cry at the end of books, but this one had physical tears springing to my eyes, it was that potent.

I highly recommend it for anyone, because it isn’t a celebration of tragically beautiful innocent cancer patients who are really just “too good for this sinful earth”, or a story of death, but because it is a story of life. And those are the stories we need the most.

 Posted by at 8:39 pm

Two things not really good to do during a thunderstorm

 Homeschooling, Literature, Psychology  No Responses »
May 032012
 

A: read about serial killers and psychopaths for studying persistent mental problems in both, and B: read a book about a girl who’s currently in remission from cancer.

I think if it weren’t for my cuddly sweet basset hounds, I probably would have given up on both out of sheer depression/fear.

 Posted by at 10:39 pm

A little bit of music

 Homeschooling, TedTalk  No Responses »
May 032012
 

Today’s Ted Talk was about inspiration and leadership, told through classical music.

He pretty much left me speechless, the ideas that he brought up are still too tangled for me to put them down with coherency, but I think it’s an absolutely amazing video.

He says two things that currently are making me think the most, that echo pleasantly in my head. “It’s one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he’s leading to realize whatever he’s dreaming.” and “Who am I being, that my children’s eyes do not shine?”

Those two lines, combined with the music that he plays and my own long day are rendering me incoherent. I might see if I can get some poetry at least written.

 Posted by at 2:42 am

Three things

 Homeschooling, Psychology, TedTalk  No Responses »
May 012012
 

Today’s Ted Talk was about how a moment can change how you want to look at life from now on.

The speaker had been on a flight from New York, flight 1549, that ended up landing in the Hudson river due to running into canada geese that clogged up and broke the engines, forcing the pilot to turn about and land in the river since they didn’t have enough reaction time and altitude to land back at the airport. Through good piloting and really good piloting, no one was killed or severely injured in the crash landing, with the most major injuries being a gash on one person’s leg and mild hypothermia from standing on the outside of the plane in 30 degree weather partially submerged.

But the scars of something as terrifying as an object that we trust to be safe turning out not to be linger on in the shadows of the mind; Wikipedia states that many of the passengers reported signs of post-traumatic stress disorder; sleeplessness, panic attacks and flashbacks. Many of the passengers on the plane have talked about what it was like to think that they were suddenly going to die, that this was their last few minutes.

One of the people who did is the man of the Ted Talk video above, Ric Elias, and how he ended up changing his life afterwards.

Some of the comments below happily missed the point of what he was talking about, seeming to think that what he was talking about having done with his life was change from looking to the future, to looking only to the present, being the best that day, and deriding it as being a serious issue.

But that’s not what he was saying, not at all. What he was saying that changed for him the most in the wake of the accident, was what his true goal in life was, what thing mattered most to him. Being the best father he could to watch and guide his children as they grew up.

 Posted by at 10:42 pm

Witticisms make the math easier

 Homeschooling, Literature, Math  No Responses »
May 012012
 

So I finished redoing what were probably the most annoying two chapters in the book today, and tomorrow I am NOT going to repeat a single problem, and go onto another chapter.

I’ve been avoiding doing this book for going on four years now, rather stupidly, since it really isn’t that hard in hindsight. And it’s actually been really helpful in helping me grasp the math in a way that doesn’t make me want to shred the book up.

Why is this? It’s really easy; there are conversations between the much younger author and his grandmother, who taught him how to do algebra. Undoubtedly, they aren’t completely accurate, but they are smart, they are helpful, and they are funny.

It’s a lot easier to want to engage in that book when the explanations make me laugh.

 Posted by at 2:04 am

Texting as a helping tool

 History, Homeschooling, TedTalk  No Responses »
May 012012
 

Today’s TedTalk was about how texting can save lives.

The woman in the video sounded so optimistic about how now she and the organization that she works with could actually reach out and help those teens who need it, because those teens, whether it was bullying or cutting or rape, felt like they could turn to them for help, to get their plea out there.

And yet, at the end of it, all I could think of “Why is it that so many people can’t see where the problems with our world is anymore?”

It’s a very sad thing, to realize on a deeper level that there are people who can’t help other people because our society is so quiet about the things that need to change that change doesn’t happen. It’s a very sad thing to know that for some of these teenagers, that they are desperate enough to ask for help from an organization to help schools go green and stop wasting so much energy and consuming too much.

I could study the history behind our silent culture for all of my life, and I don’t think I’d have the answer for why it is that now words on a screen are more effective than a thousand silent screams.

 Posted by at 12:56 am

Slight copout of science, but I think it counts

 Homeschooling, Science  No Responses »
May 012012
 

I don’t want to go back and rewatch three different videos because I spent all day not having enough time to actually blog about them in a coherent way because I was chasing after basset hounds and not having support to do my homework from the one other available person at all.

This is a very petulant and rather spoiled reason to not want to go back and do it, but c’est la vie for you, that’s what I’m doing.

So the original video I watched was about the mechanics of water, and that was rather fascinating although I’d have more fun combining science and crazy and ranting about homoeopathy than anything else, but instead, I’m going to talk about the physics of futon wrestling.

If you have two lanky-legged teenage siblings wrestling for use of the futon on the futon in couch position, there is going to be much potential for feet ending up in the wrong places, re, someone’s gut or nose in this case. This can be explained by the science of hormones and limbs that seem longer than you expect; leading to something that while initially not aimed to cause any pain, still ends up doing so because those heels go farther than you meant them to.

Conclusion, sudden growth spurts and teenagers do not mix.

Next up, let’s say that these two lanky-legged teenagers are siblings. Theoretically, they should know, if they grew up with each other, where the other’s weak points in futon wrestling are. This has a massive failure rate though, because not all teenagers have had a futon and so concluding that because they are siblings, that they would know where the other’s futon wrestling weak points are is a false statement because there are many many many siblings in this world and not as many who have access to futons to wrestle on.

Conclusion, teenage siblings can not claim that siblingdom leads to successful use of the futon wrestling.

In the action of aforementioned use of the futon wrestling, the smaller of the two continually ends up trapped under the larger due to having more limb length to get in the way. Is this always something that would happen in futon wrestling? Not necessarily. While the smaller is at a disadvantage in height, they are also at an advantage. A smaller body and smaller frame does lead to less room to be able to steal, but at the same time, escaping from the clutches of others is much easier. Also, body type has an effect on this. Tall lanky rail-thin teenager versus stocky short teenager is not necessarily a height victory. In this case, it was tall stocky teenagers versus shorter rail-thin teenager, but that’s not the point. The point is that there are variables within variables to consider.

I could keep going, but I don’t feel like it, so I’ll sum up my point.

Shorter rail-thin teenager versus tall stocky teenager + newly long legs + inconclusive evidence + science + futon = I win.

So there.

I went back and tried to edit it so it sounded far less incestuous, at least I hope I got all of the vaguely incestuous implications out. I am disgusted by the idea of incest any closer than cousins, let it be heard now.

 Posted by at 12:33 am

Second thoughts on one of my chosen subjects of study

 Homeschooling, Psychology  No Responses »
Apr 302012
 

Re: I start crunching down on blog posts that I need to write and also realize that I need to go back and watch all three videos because the details are starting to blur and that’s yucky. But that’s not the point of this one.

I started studying psychology in a very loose, freeform way back in February. Since that time, I have used my skills in three different fights to hurt another.

And I really really, really hate being able to do that. It destroys things more than harsh but incorrect words, being able to poke at the insecurities of the people I love and stab them right where it hurts. It makes me feel despicable.

So my psychology study for the day has actually been considering whether or not I want to keep doing it, and if not, what to replace it with.

And I haven’t decided yet. There’s a piece of me that likes the power of being able to strike with my words right where it hurts someone. There’s a part of me that wants to know how exactly to crack into someone’s head and be a power there.

But at the same time, when I use my psych powers for good, I know what to say to help or comfort someone. I can see the hurting spots and apply ice and sugar and sweetness to them.

It’s a tough decision.

 Posted by at 11:42 pm

The delights of my family

 Aggravations, Homeschooling  No Responses »
Apr 272012
 

We’re a little bit more unorthodox than others that I’ve met. We eat some pretty specialized diets, half of us kids are homeschooled and our ideas of outings often involve walking around a graveyard for a couple of hours.

I certainly wouldn’t trade most all of this for anything, I love the wild uncertain flying of it all, of not being entirely sure what things are going to interest us next and what I’ll learn from it all.

But there is something that I would very much appreciate not being a repeat experience, and it involves the prepping of dog food.

Along with the humans in this house, we make sure that all of our wanted pets eat a healthy type of meal. The guinea pigs get lots of fresh vegetables, the cats eat fish as often as we can give it to them, and the dogs eat home chopped vegetables and raw meat with rice. I, being the lucky eldest of us gets to be the one who chops up the food and prepares it for them.

I thought that beef tripe and extraordinary bloody liver was bad enough, but the other night, we got a different kind of meat to give them because it was on sale. Given the type of meat it was, I’m not surprised. I can say that I don’t ever want to chop it again.

So for any teenagers who read this blog, if you exist at all and the people looking at it aren’t just spambots, you should be glad that your parents don’t make you chop up raw intestines from unspecified animals. Because it is disgusting.

This has been my soapboxing for the day.

 Posted by at 11:55 pm
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