A blog for the relentlessly nerdy. http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php My cats' names are Oedipus, Persephone, and Pandora - kind of a giveaway that I love myths. (Also puns.) When I was a kid I had a habit of reading everything in the house, down to appliance instructions and classified ads, so when I found my dad's copy of the Masks of God series by Joseph Campbell, I devoured it. Campbell spends a lot of time following the iterations of basic themes, like stories of young, doomed love: Pyramus and Thisbe become Romeo and Juliet become Tristan and Iseult become Lancelot and Guinevere. Gilgamesh swims deep looking for the reed of immortality, only to have it snatched away by a snake; immortal Adam and Eve, deceived and tempted by a snake, are punished with mortality. It's not just the shapes and forms that repeat and evolve. It's the heart of the story, the themes we never get tired of hearing about. http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!26 Rather than spending my day listening to pundits' attempts to cast yesterdays election results as a message to Dems not to be so damn progressive, I've been messing around with Open Secrets, looking at how strongly money was linked with votes this election cycle. What I've found isn't promising. http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!25 The obsessiveness of a fantasy baseball player rivals that of a World of Warcrafter. Endless hours on the computer looking up stats, constantly checking for new results, always full of regret - "I should have traded that guy! I knew he'd get injured, he hasn't played a full season yet!" As a nerd, I feel right at home in the sports community. As a woman, I do not. http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!24 Over the last month or so, the folks at Sprout have been putting together a walking machine based off of Theo Jansen's models. You can see video of us in last Sunday's Honk! parade here: http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!23 A few weeks ago, I spent the afternoon at Parts and Crafts, the learning-by-doing oriented summer camp a friend of mine co-founded. I wanted to try out a style of teaching I've been thinking a lot about lately. Inspired by role-playing and puzzle-hunting, I want to create expansive, immersive learning experiences which allow kids to "re-invent the wheel" as well as to see the cultural context in which technology is created and scientific advances are made. It's my hope to incorporate into each "experience" two or more of the following: science and technology, philosophical and political history, arts and literature, themes of social justice. http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!22 A few months I was browsing through a comic book store with my friends Orli and Skim. You'd think a nerd like me would be a devourer of comic books/graphic novels, but I've actually only read a few series. Although those series (Y: The Last Man, Sandman and Transmetropolitan, for the curious) have been pretty roundly fabulous, I've just never started reading regularly. In fact, at that point I'd never bought a single comic book. However, as we were browsing, I noticed a single bulky black-covered volume with the word LOGICOMIX written boldly across the top. After a moment's further inspection, I cried out, "A graphic novel about Bertrand Russell!", scooped it up into my arms, and brought it to the check-out counter. http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!21 I ask a lot of questions. I get curious about things I don't understand and, fortunately or unfortunately, I don't understand a lot of things around me. Sometimes I get lucky and I'm surrounded by people who can answer my questions. (For instance, last night at Sprout, I had, "How does a chop saw work?" and "What is polynomial time?" and "What is in this delicious soup?" answered quite satisfactorily.) Sometimes people don't know and just shrug. It is in these moments of great need that I turn to google. http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!20 I'll give you a hint - it's not facile science reporting. And it's not biased science. http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!19 The other day I was visiting my friend's summer camp when I saw a young camper fiddling around at the electronics table. She showed me the bracelet she had made by twisting wires together in patterns, and said she liked to have "a different take" on electronics from the boys at the camp. After talking a little bit about conductive thread (her mind, it was blown) we set about making a bracelet that incorporated a basic circuit. From our experiences, this is how you do it: http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!18 I've been an avid science fiction fan since I read Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle In Time" when I was a small young thing. Since then I've read Asimov and Bradbury, Le Guin and Heinlein, and countless others, and despite the feats of imagination and storytelling they've achieved, I have to say, you seldom see a depiction of an alien that beats real life earth creatures for their strangeness. To wit: Pistol Shrimp http://www.shaunagm.net/blog.php?display=iread!17