Monday, July 7, 2008

Follow-up on Planet Alignment

I wrote last Wednesday about the upcoming planet alignment. The clouds cleared just enough Friday at sunset so that I caught a quick look at Saturn, Mars, and Regulus in alignment. It was just a quick glimpse, but enough to make me have my camera mounted on my ancient tripod and ready for "action" Saturday evening.

Above is the last shot I caught of the alignment. The full size image is pretty spectacular. I did have to use Photoshop to bring up Saturn, Mars, and Regulus a bit in the photo as the moon tended to overwhelm my camera's light meter. My favorite shot of the night occurred early on. I actually left the camera and tripod in place over the evening on top of the concrete cover of our shallow well and periodically snapped shots over a few hours.

The clouds returned last night, but both Saturn and Mars will be close together in the western sky just after sunset for another week or so.

Joe Rao has a related column on Space.com, Giant Jupiter Shines Bright.

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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

McCain to Lay Out Education Plan

Associated Press education writer Nancy Zuckerbrod relates that Senator John McCain "intends to talk about how teachers are paid and tutoring for poor kids" next week when he speaks before the NAACP Convention. In McCain to talk pocketbook education issues, Zuckerbrod relates comments of a McCain advisor that McCain will support merit pay for teachers tied to test scores, no additional money for NCLB, support for school vouchers, and "allowing poor students to get academic tutoring with federal money more quickly."

Rainy Wednesday

It's a rainy Wednesday with little or no education news beyond the McCain story above. So let me leave you today with this bit of sunshine I shot last month while walking under one of our apple trees. I was on my way back to the house from the barn and stopped under the apple tree to get a few shots of little green apples. For some reason, I also aimed up and shot into the filtered sunlight.

Several years ago, I added a page of free desktop images to the mathdittos2.com site, Desktop Photos. Images on that page may be used as computer desktop images without fee or permission. Teachers may also use them for non-commercial purposes in their classroom.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

More on McCain and Obama Education Plans

Another column about the candidates' views on education surfaced yesterday afternoon, McCain And Obama Sit Far Apart Over Federal Education Policies. Writer Sean Higgins does a good job of stating and comparing the positions of John McCain and Barack Obama and in noting where they've not said much or taken a position.

Why States Reject Federal Sex Ed Funding

An article in yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, State shuns sex-ed grants based only on abstinence, sheds some light on why so many states are rejecting federal Title V abstinence only sex ed funds. Alexa Chu writes:

Evaluations by the Pennsylvania Department of Health showed "that [abstinence] programs are largely ineffective in reducing sexual onset and in promoting attitudes and skills consisting in sexual abstinence."

Under the grant's restrictions, teachers cannot mention birth control or condoms, except to point out that they fail. They must teach that anything but abstinence has psychological, social, and physical harm, and that heterosexual marriage is the standard, to the exclusion of households with single parents and homosexual couples.

Hey! The Skies Cleared a Bit!

The weather cleared up long enough yesterday afternoon for me to get out into the garden. I picked our last main head of broccoli and a whole bunch of side shoots. I pick and strip off the leaves in the garden and put the pickings directly into a bucket of cold saltwater (to remove any cabbage looper worms remaining).

We grew three varieties of broccoli this year. I tried Imperial for the first time and was pleased with its growth habit and main heads. It doesn't seem to produce side shoots, however. I also grew two tried and true varieties, Premium Crop and Goliath. Both produced large main heads followed by excellent side shoots.

I find that broccoli is one of the crops we can grow and freeze enough of to meet our needs for the whole year. Even in the heat of July, our broccoli is still sweet. I generally end up munching on some of the mini side shoots as I pick. To keep the harvest going, I'll again (did it once already) pull back the grass clipping mulch and work in a bit of lime and fertilizer around the base of the plants. I'll also give the broccoli, cauliflower, and kale a good shot of Thuricide biological spray. Since the Imperials don't seem to produce side shoots, those plants will go into the compost heap. I'll replant the row after renovating it with lime and fertilizer with the remaining cauliflower transplants I have on hand.

I also dug a few heads of garlic yesterday. We grow both the regular type of garlic and elephant garlic (not a true garlic, but part of the leek family). We use both kinds together in a variety of dishes. Many of our favorites start with garlic sauteed in olive oil and lemon juice. We add chopped celery, carrots, sweet onion, mushrooms, chopped grape tomatoes, and yellow squash before adding chicken breasts (or sometimes shrimp) covered with paprika. We serve it over fettuccine on fresh spinach leaves.

And of course, it's nice to just step back and look at the main garden plot a bit. We actually have three garden plots now. The raised bed below is the main plot and carries our intensive beds of vegetables and flowers.

Another plot to the right of our raised bed has the garlic, our caged tomatoes, and our green beans and potatoes...if they every get going. We've struggled with the plot on the right, as it was gardened by the previous owner...and was pretty well spent. I've green manured it with a year of alfalfa and also let it sit out a year two different times, but I think we'll be cutting it down in size and just return part of it to yard next year.

A third plot in a nearby field left fallow by the farmer has melons and squash in it. I'd originally hoped to plant sweet corn into the plot, but the weather and another round of elbow surgery for me put us too late into the planting season to get a corn crop. The plot has just a tilled and mulched strip with butternut squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, and one caged tomato plant (not shown) in it.

Years ago when I owned a small farm, we grew and roadsided about two acres of sweet corn each year! We just put up a sign on the highway when the corn came in and let folks drive back to our farm to buy it. The one year we grew four acres of supersweet sweet corn, we'd hoped to sell it at a nearby farmers market. Unfortunately, when the day to pick came, the wholesale price on sweet corn dropped from 65 cents/dozen to 35 cents. We just put a hotwire around two acres of it and turned some feeder pigs in on it!

While on the topic of gardening, ScienceDaily has a good article about using coffee grounds in compost heaps. We've done so for years, but Coffee Grounds Perk Up Compost Pile With Nitrogen gives some perspective on why it works and how to do it best.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

California Requires Eighth Grade Algebra

The state of California has decided to require all students to take algebra at grade eight by the year 2011. The controversial decision was favored by the state board and the governor, with the state's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O'Connell, favoring a less rigorous test. "O'Connell accused the board of demanding high standards while failing to tie them to extra resources needed to fix a shortage of math teachers and prepare thousands of disadvantaged kids for the rigorous class."

• Algebra 1 to be required for all 8th-graders
• California mandates testing every eighth-grader in algebra -- ready or not

iPhone 3G

The big tech news for this week was the new iPhone 3G going on sale yesterday. Applications for the new wireless phone are available through the iTunes Store. The unit is available only through storefront Apple Stores and AT&T outlets. Apparently, massive problems with activation of the new iPhone 3G and older iPhones with a software update have occurred.

ScienceDaily Postings

Two postings on ScienceDaily caught my eye today that special educators may find interesting:

• Common Mechanisms May Underlie Autism's Seemingly Diverse Mutations
• Innovative Program Focuses On Improved Care For Children With ADHD

Hope you're having a great summer!

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