HS Comments on the Fly

So who invented the radio? I learned it was Marconi when I was in school, but some folks say it was Tesla.

Wikipedia states:

In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States credited [Nikola Tesla] as being the inventor of the radio.

I have no idea where my husband learned about Nikola Tesla. The Cheney book has been seen around this house for some time, with both my husband and son reading it — and discussing it in front of me. The book is supposedly the definitive biography of the inventor.

Tesla got a little, dare I say, kooky at the end of his life, and he seems to have been expunged from books about inventors. It’s almost like a cover up or something. It’s truly a shame, though, because if you’re studying electricity you can’t just skip Tesla and pretend he didn’t exist.

When we watched The Prestige, we were surprised to see that a character named Tesla was in it. We also figured that without a prior knowledge of Tesla, we’d be a little confused by the portions of the movie that involved Tesla.

After searching a little, I found a couple of videos about him. I’ll see if I can find the titles. I got them through Blockbuster’s online program; Netflix doesn’t have them — or at least that was the status a few months ago.

Movie about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla

Documentary about Tesla by some Serbians: Nikola Tesla: The Genius Who Lit the World

If you have a high-school student interested in electricity, I think both of these shows would be fascinating. The first DVD has a quality issue, but the value of the content makes up for it, I think, but then I rented them instead of buying.

Do I recommend The Prestige? Sure, with some reservations. I found it intriguing and wanted to watch it again as soon as I had finished. But I went to bed instead. Yes, I am a party girl.

‘Tis the season to shuffle books, or maybe you’d prefer the term redistribute. Recently I sorted quickly through my books, culled 1500, and off they went to the thrift store.

I only have one year of homeschooling left and many of the books were part of our home library “just in case.” You know, just in case someone needed something to read or had a sudden interest in some event, topic, or person. It was difficult parting, though, because I still wanted to read many of them. An example would be Nina Brown Baker’s He Wouldn’t Be King: The Story of Simon Bolivar. I got rid of some really great books and a few duds, too. So now I’ve got a little more room on my bookshelves.

Last year about this time I also performed a book purge, though not as extensive. I took those to the local homeschool book swap. That was a little strange. Many of the folks selling their stuff had really good prices on their curriculum and books. However, very few people were buying. It seemed really strange. Even Sonlight and Usborne titles in immaculate condition didn’t sell for even 25 or 50 cents. I hid a nice, pretty old-fashioned-looking Henty for $5 in the middle of a box as a treat to the person willing to search. So that was fun to watch. She was so surprised to find it. I can’t remember the title, but it was one I bought but ended up not using because, for us, Hentys didn’t live up to their hype.

At the end of that sale, I donated a bunch of the books to some group that claimed to provide curriculum to “destitute” homeschooling locals and gave about 5 boxes to the thrift store to be sold at exorbitant prices. So that purge went well also.

Anyway, I feel so much lighter after getting rid of 1500 books. In just another year, I’ll get to do it again. I’m sort of looking forward to it.

I remember while growing up thinking after a certain age that it just wasn’t cool to color anymore. But that was in the olden days. Now we’ve got these coloring books that claim to be “… suitable for both the college and health professional students….”

I’m talking about the The Anatomy Coloring Book and The Physiology Coloring Book. There are other topics covered by these coloring books. I’ll see if I can find some others.

Yeah, I found these:

• Gross Anatomy
• Gray’s Anatomy (see inside the book)
• Botany (see inside the book)
• Zoology (see inside the book)
• Biology
• Microbiology

I’m not sure if I agree with the pedagogy supporting this form of learning. That much coloring would fry my brain. I don’t think I’d suddenly understand the function of the rods and cones in the eye by coloring a picture of all of them.

However! That’s just me. My daughter can’t believe she’s getting credit for coloring and seems to enjoy it. Plus she’s able to give me a reasonably well formed explanation of what she has colored when she’s done. So … Re Sult!

For the curious, she will not be coloring either of the books in their entirety. That would be overkill. She’ll color until interest lags or she’s not able to pass my tough, but not obvious, evaluation procedure.

And on a lighter note … did you see where The Foil Hat Chick called the Bluedorns “kind of insane” yesterday? I am amused.