LOL! Ants Can Count!

I watched a funny video about ants that can count...apparently desert ants can count - well, not really count, but they have pedometer cells in their brains that keep track of the number of steps that they walk.  It’s complicated, but it works like the pedometers people clip to their belts except that it’s embedded in their brains.  It was discovered by German scientists, ja!  Here’s the video:  Ants That Count!

Random Fact of the Day:  although the origins of the Beagle are unknown, the name comes from the French word, begueule meaning gaped or open throat because of the dog’s amazing vocal cords.

Please respond!

Liberty or Ice Cream!

Hi People,

My parents and I just got back from the most awesome time picking out our Christmas tree ever!  Do you know why?  Because my brother didn’t come along!  Woot!  This meant that not only did I not have to deal with him, but I got to cut down the tree myself and drag it back to the shed.  

And as I was dragging it my arms got tired, so I slipped the drag rope around my waist to pull it.  As we got to the shed I told the workers, “Just call me Rudolph!” They thought it was pretty funny.

This time we didn’t have to put it in the back of the car, since now we have a roof rack to tie it to.

Even better, I created a Declaration of Independence for Kids (not children, kids!).  I wrote it with yellow ink and a real quill pen.  It was so much fun!  This is how it goes:

We hold these troops to be self-evident: all kids are created equal as the world’s most intellectual species.  We hereby united agains grownups, teens and tweens for they cause misery for the kids and animals alike that inhabit this earth.  We now hereby declare our juvenile independence.  To further free ourselves from this curse that has been brought upon us we strive to create a new writing system and to take on new names to avoid any connection between us and the grownup race.  We hereby state that the rules shall be made by negotiation.  Katherine and Nicholas will be in charge of domestic affairs concerning other children and/or grownups.  We also place Nicole as advocate and group event coordinator, and Alex and Cameron in charge of clowning around ;-).  We place Austin and Reed as Supreme Chancellors to ensure that everything runs smoothly.  Michael shall be in charge of sending messages because he is the fastest runner.

P.S.  If anyone on my block I included in this declaration of independence doesn’t want to be a part of it I can find a substitute.  Thanks!

Hannibal is At the Gates!

Well, lately I've been reading a whole lot of stuff.  My favorite book recently as been about Hannibal, who ruled over the city of Carthage.  Not just the city, which was the capital of the Carthaginian Empire, but the whole empire, too.

He was a nightmare for Rome.  You wouldn't think he could defeat all the Roman legions on his own, but he depended on mercenaries for most of his troops.  Those are soldier who are paid to fight.  He also recruited Celtic tribes and Gauls, who were eager to get back at the Roman Empire.  He also had some of the finest calvary troops in the land.

Roman troops, on the other hand, followed the strictest discipline and marched in strict formation.  Another problem was that they wore heavy armor.  And where weapons are concerned they used mostly short swords and daggers, similar to those of the Carthagians.

Hannibal's secret weapon was his brain.  He managed to outsmart those Romans nearly every time.   One example of how he did this was when he was up against 80,000 Romans.  His strategy?  Simple.  Make it so that the infantry soldiers have to walk backwards to form a slight U shape while they'r fighting.  Then have your horse troops run around to form an O with the Romans in the middle.  Then, pull out your swords and get to cutting down the Romans!  The only problem was that Hannibal's soldiers had to stop after a while because their swords grew dull from slicing through so many Romans.

Another thing he was famous for was taking all of his troops and his war elephants over the Alps.  He scared the armor off those Romans when they saw the elephants.  They must have thought they came from outer space or something!  Half of the elephants died in the harsh winter over the Alps - poor guys!  But I still wish I was there to see the Romans running scared.  In the end many of them got trampled by the elephant's big feet.

Anyway, the Romans finally defeated him before he reached their capital, and eventually destroyed the Carthaginian Empire.  I recommend you read, A Wicked History:  Hannibal, Rome's Worst Nightmare, by Philip Brooks.  All in all, he was a gruesome leader.

Nomz!

It all started when I had potstickers and miso soup for lunch.  After that Pfeffer and I have always wanted Mom to make us Asian food.  Especially during homeschooling.  I get to have the best food ever!  Pfeffer claims that it is nomz!

My mom made me seaweed and rice another day and it was also nomz!

Today we bought over $45.00 of Asian food at a market called Amko so we got a free gift.  We chose a cute little plastic bento lunch box.  My mom put together some rice, chicken fingers, apple and some delicious seaweed in that cute bento box.

I don't always get to eat Asian food :-(  but whatever I get it always tastes good.

To the Museum!

Guess what?  I went to the Krannert Art Museum yesterday and it was awesome!

I got to see all kinds of art-ifacts (get it?), and I got to take pictures with my new cell phone.

A pretty piece of glass:

A vase from Japan

More pieces of pottery

Zeus/Jupiter from ancient Rome

Painting

more painting

stained glass

stone capital from a Roman column

This is a 3-D model of an H1N1 virus.  We had to wear special glasses to look at it.  They had a Playstation2 controller that you could use to look inside by zooming in.

You could see the inner proteins and the inner cell walls.

How cool!

Gotta go, time for my nap!

PS - did I mention that I have a toy frog?

Lego Storm

Hi,

I was just playing with Legos, and I started assembling a whole bunch of Lego people and cars. And do you know what? I decided to make a movie with them. It's called "The Attack of the Evil Lego Bricks." Great name, huh?

The thing is, giant Lego bricks are falling from the sky and they need to get into a storm shelter. But the driver can't start the car. And once they get it started up they need to start looking for someone who was late to get to the car place. Once they find her they don't have room in the seats. They eventually get to the storm shelter, but then a whole new adventure starts. Anyway, just watch!

Pfeffer

Hello,

This is Nicole’s invisible cat, Pfeffer, writing again.  LOL!  I’m writing about the awesome cat toy she made me.  First she cut the rim off a paper plate, then cut a spiral in the center circle.  Then she made a hole in the very center of the spiral and attached a ribbon.  Now I have the very best cat toy ever!

(Pfeffer has the ability to become visible when he wants to!)

Pfeffer loves tomatoes!

and apples

and peaches

and bananas

and Mom & Nicole

and pepper & green tea

and Mallow

Trouble with Science Experiments

Hi! Hi! Hi!  Guess what.  I've done some science experiments.  Unfortunately, some of them got a bit out of control.  One of them I did yesterday.  That was the one where I made homemade bubble bath.  I used some unscented liquid soap, a teaspoon of water, and 15 drops of scented oil.  Since I didn't have any scented oils, I used rose water.  It worked pretty well, but it didn't make very much.  In fact, I used it all up in one bath.  Of course, I had at least a foot of bubbles in that bath.

Another one I did is floating a paperclip on some water.  We put a paperclip on a piece of paper and carefully got the paper wet so it sank the paper clip floated on its own. In the end, the paper clip floated because of the water's surface tension.  It sunk once we added a drop of soap because the soap got between the water molecules and caused the surface tension to collapse.  It was pretty fun, but it only worked once.

The last one we did was a classic.  We took plastic glove filled with baking soda put over a cup that had some vinegar in it.  But you see, out of curiosity I decided to stop holding down the glove.  The glove had been holding the reaction in.  Instead of flying away, the glove just moved part way out of the way and the contents of the cup came up out of it.  The reason the vinegar and baking soda worked is that vinegar is acidic and baking soda is a base.  It was fun except for when we were cleaning up and I got vinegar in a cut on my hand.

Too much nip!

Hi, this is Nicole's invisible cat, Pfeffer, here and I have a bit of a problem.  You see, you know your owner's had too much nip when she signs up to be contractually obligated to read to a bunch of noisy preschoolers once a week!  And man, were they noisy!  I could hardly stand it...and she had to read to them which was an even harder thing because she had to talk very loudly and it made her throat hurt.  Not only that, whenever she started up on a book that she actually enjoyed, one of the kids held up a book and said, "Read this!"  How annoying!  (If you're Becca, the UPS teacher, reading this, don't get annoyed at Nicole because this is her cat speaking.)

But still, Nicole will read to them the whole year because she understands that they're really young and they'll learn.  I may just be a cat but I know that for sure.

Beanbag Puppies and Trouble with Cameras

Ohai,

Due to recent neck problems caused by looking up at the TV screen while sitting right in front of it, I brought a beanbag up from the basement.  Not only did it solve my neck problems, but the dogs love it!  I tried to get some pictures.

Unfortunately, I'm still not very good with the camera!

But at least I managed to get a few pictures of the dogs.

I also managed to take the dogs on a mile long "walk" by holding on to their leashes with one hand and my bike handlebars with the other.  It's amazingly easy to do.  Note:  professional biker on a closed course, do not try this at home.

Buddhism in Japan

Guess what? After I studied up on some Buddhism for Japanese religion study my mom asked me what I learned about it. I started telling her in pantomime. That was funny! The first one I did was better but this one is pretty funny too. Man, we'll never get that moment back! Anyway, enjoy the show!

Shedd Aquarium Field Trip

Guess what, guess what!!!??? I went to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago yesterday!  I went with my friend Garrett, and his little brother, Aaron and our moms.  It was our homeschool field trip.  Yay!

The best part is I got to witness a dress rehearsal of Fantasea, the multi-animal show.  It had dolphins, beluga whales, humans, penguins and more.  The first animal was a seal and then the humans, and then beluga whales, and penguins.  Then there were the hawks that didn’t cooperate because they wouldn’t fly across the water to a perch.  That’s ok, they told us at the beginning that there could be some glitches.  There was a human who was dressed as a hawk who flew around on cables, too.  And there was a girl in a yellow shirt who was given a present of a necklace with the aquarium’s symbol on it.  Whenever the act was changing her symbol glowed.  There was a human in a boat that looked like it was flying because it was on cables which you could hardly see.  The girl got to ride in the boat, then helped the trainers with the animals.  She danced with penguins, got to pet the dolphins and belugas, everything!  There were lots of lights and music with the things, too! 

Then we went to explore the rest of the aquarium.  It was great, too.  We saw the cute little fuzzy-wuzzy sea otters.  I got to pet a starfish!  It was awesome! 

We saw the belugas up close – two of them are pregnant.  When I heard that I thought, “Man, it must be hard to swim with a fifty-pound baby in your stomach.”  They are pregnant for 14 to 16 months.  That’s crazy!  Humans are only pregnant 9 months.  I think they’ve really earned a vacation.  But those baby belugas are going to stay with their moms for at least a year.  They probably won’t spend the rest of their lives with them because things will get too crowded in there, so the babies will probably go to a different aquarium.  The belugas were also testing a new toy – a PVC pipe filled with rocks to keep strands of felt imitating kelp anchored.  The whales kept rubbing up against the felt – it was so cute!

I also played with my friends in a submarine.  It was funny because we kept yelling, “Back to the crystal cave!” and then, “Back to the the ship!”  We also yelled out commands like, “Turn everything off!” or “Turn everything on!” “Go to the Surface “ “Go to the bottom”, “Use the squid slime!”  We were using the squid slime to scare off sharks, squids and other giant creatures.  We had scuba tanks, too, but the tanks kept falling off the frames.

We also saw a giant shark in the Wild Reef exhibit.  Oh yeah, did I mention the sea otters?  Sooo cute!

There is also local waters exhibit.  It has stuff on the aquatic invaders in the Great Lakes from goldfish and zebra mussels to silver carp that can jump out of the water and hit people giving them broken arms or legs or even concussions.  Ouch!  One person has rigged up a fishing competition to go down a river infested with the silver carp and catch them with nets.  The person with the most wins a cash prize. Other methods of stopping them include an electric force field across the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.  I suggest you go to the Nab the Aquatic Invaders website to learn about your local aquatic invaders so you can do your best to drive them out.

My favorite animal was the black and white tegu.  It’s a type of lizard.  

It was very large and had beaded skin. It was fun to pet but it felt weird.  I pulled back quickly the first time I touched it, but then I immediately touched it again. 

I learned a whole lot about it, like that it can survive pretty much anywhere.  It eats small mammals like rats and mice, and all sorts of those pests.  It also eats other things like insects and plants because it is an omnivore.  It is native to Brazil – it lives on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.  Some of the critters in the rainforest can be nasty.  They’re also really cool.

Outside the aquarium there was a big hill, and my friend Garrett and I rolled down it.  All we could feel was ourselves turning and turning.  We couldn’t control our legs  - it felt as though they were paralyzed since we didn’t need to move them to roll.  At the bottom I lying on my back on the concrete ledge and about to roll off where a bicycle would hit me but Garrett stopped me since he’d gotten down first.  The hill was so beautiful.

Once we were done at the aquarium we went to get some groceries at Trader Joe’s.  Then we were hungry for dinner so we went to an awesome store called Whole Foods.  While we were eating pizza at Whole Foods a woman came up to us and asked if we wanted chocolate pudding.  We had been talking with her so we weren’t that surprised, but it was still kind of a shock.  It’s not sooo surprising since Garrett and his little brother and I did look cute together – all blonde and laughing and joking together.   The reason she liked us is that we reminded her of her own children when they were little.  She also said that we sounded like little birds, “cheep, cheep, cheep!”  (That reminds me, what what did the canary say when his cage fell apart?  “Cheep, cheep, cheep!”)

In the car Garrett let me play his MarioKart.  I hope I get one for Christmas.

All in all it was a good field trip.  I hope that I get to take a lot more of them. With any luck my next one will be to the moon.  My mom says that’s not likely, but I’m sure it will happen one day.