Category: Social World

How Cities Work: The City of Ember

Our librarian, Ms. Rodriguez, recommended The City of Ember, an excellent book that fits the theme from Cycle 1 of how cities work.

The City of Ember by Jeanne DePrau.

The novel, by Jeanne Duprau, is one of those post apocalyptic science fiction novels that have an isolated community trying to survive. In this case they’re in a city, sequestered in a large underground cavern. At twelve years of age, each citizen has to start working on some aspect of the city: messengers provide internal communication, the pipe workers manage the supply of water, and supply clerks regulate food distribution into the city from a massive supply depot designed to last a couple hundred years.

An interesting (and intended) consequence of the early age that adolescents start working is that the resulting lack of education severely stunts scientific progress and any other sort of progress in the city.

Duprau uses language that’s very accessible to middle schoolers, so this should be an easy read. However, it is well written; there are some wonderfully descriptive passages. The thought that went into the physical and social organization of the City of Ember make it excellent science fiction.

There is also a movie that is pretty faithful to the novel.

I only got the book at the end of the cycle so we did not use it this time, but it’s on the book list for the next time.

Saudade

Saudade:
Pronunciation: (from Forvo)
Definition: Portuguese – One of the most beautiful of all words, translatable or not, this word “refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.” Fado music, a type of mournful singing, relates to saudade. (from Jason Wire at MatadorNetwork)

The beauty of the words in Jason Wire’s list, “20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World” is that they express somewhat complex emotional concepts.

Last week I had to explain the English word, nostalgia. Its meaning was a little difficult to convey because, when you think about it, to feel nostalgic you need to have had a certain amount of self-reflection. Self-reflection is typically not a strong point of early adolescence, which is why we have Personal World every day.

Then I came across Jason Wire’s list, and there are some wonderful words on there, but the one that resonates right now is the Portuguese “saudade”. I like how it is subtly different from nostalgia, but I also like that there is an entire genre of music, fado, that embodies the word.

NPR has a great review of fado artist, Ana Moura:

Also, in looking up the pronunciation of the word I came across the Forvo website. It has recordings of people saying words from around the world, so you can hear the sounds of words from native speakers. I chose the one in this post, a female Portuguese voice (), because it seems to capture the poignant emotion of the word quite well.

Translation: The economy still sucks.

Jeremy Singer-Vine has cute little tool for translating economics jargon from the Federal Reserve meetings into plain English. The Planet Money Program on NPR used it to translate the FED’s latest plan into something much more readable without, I think, loosing much of the meaning. The design of the tool is quite nice but it must be pretty tricky to implement unless the FED’s statements are much more formulaic than I hope they are.

For example:

FED: Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable, but measures of underlying inflation have trended lower in recent quarters.

Translation: Inflation has gone from low to super low.

My favorite part of the translation:

FED: Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September confirms that the pace of recovery in output and employment continues to be slow.

Translation: The economy still sucks.

Looking up the definition of a “soul”

Our funeral pyre has sparked at least one argument about what is the soul. Now they’re looking up the definition of “immaterial”. They’re also trying to decide if all living things have a soul, including, for some reason, the dried basil, hanging from the window. Success!

Geography of Hot Springs, AK

The overlook tower in Hot Springs is a bit expensive ($7 a pop.) but offers a great view of the town and a great place to observe somewhere with the themes of geography in mind.

Hot Springs, AK.

Our bi-annual trip to Little Rock and environs could easily include a stop in Hot Springs. I swung by the Hot Springs National Park there last weekend and really liked the potential of the observation tower as a place to tie in the themes of geography. The town is small enough that you can see it all, including the reservoirs supplying it with water, from the tower. It’s something to consider.

I’ve also just noticed that the National Park Service has, on their Teachers page, a two for one deal where you can visit the Hot Springs National Park and Central High School and have your costs reimbursed. I’m pretty sure, however, that this does not include the tower.

A few things you can see.

Erosion as diffusion

Landforms in the sandbox before and after the rain.

We left the sandbox uncovered under last week’s heavy rain, and the result was a new perspective on erosion, sedimentation and the evolution of landforms.

Nice, sharp, hand-sculpted valleys were smoothed out by the raindrop splatters. The beautifully steep sided fjord on the lower left, in particular, eroded into the gentler slopes of a fluvial surface.

This process is diffusional. Sand moves from high peaks to fill in the low valley floors, evolving toward a softer, flatter land surface in the same way dye in pan diffuses from the high concentration droplet to a more uniform distribution.

There was enough rain that water pooled, for a little while, at the lower end of the sandbox. This allowed the formation of a beautiful little delta from the main river, which was most remarkable to observe while it was raining because the channel bifurcated at its mouth with running water to the left and right of the depositional landform.

Island bluffs surrounded by sandy beaches.

The standing water in the “ocean” also caused the islands to partially erode at the edges to create steep bluffs overlooking sandy beaches.

And finally, if you looked carefully at the sides of the river channel you could see where the water was beginning to cut into the banks, a little offset on either side, to start the formation of meanders.

Annotated sandbox features.

Norse pyre

Farewell It's a Fish

One of our fish has died. With permission, I’ll let Sage Beasley, the main instigator of the fish tank explain (she does it much more elegantly than I could):

A few weeks ago one of our fish died. Its name was It’s A Fish. I liked the fish. I had gotten him for a Natural world experiment and when we were done with it I put him in a tank at school with the other fish It’s A Whale. It’s A Whale is still alive and healthy. We found a religion for [It’s A Fish] (he’s Norse) and followed their ritual to send the fish into the next life. We put it in a paper boat with vegetable oil and set it on fire. We have released the fish’s spirit to where ever it goes next.
– Sage Beasley (2010), in the Middle School Newsletter.

I’ll just note that every middle school should have a sandbox/watertable.

Songs from the East Village

When sorting through the many issues around immigration and globalization it is nice to be able to highlight the small things that make it seem worthwhile.

The East Village Community School in New York City is selling a CD, as an arts fundraiser, of songs performed by its students. The songs and musicians have roots that span the globe, from Mauritius to Tibet to Spain to Ireland to name just a few.

The CD in $15 and you can order it from the School’s website.

NPR’s Weekend Edition had a nice article on the parent driven project: