Sep. 26, 2008 - Show and tell~your brain on alcohol

To see more great show and tells go to Canandagirl.

My adopted sister was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  For Chemistry this morning, we did a science experiement to see what would happen to a fetal brain on alcohol.  So we took a raw egg, as the embryo, and poured rubbing alcohol on it.  The website said to use Vodka or some high proof alcohol for even faster results, but we don't have alcohol in the house.  Within minutes it started to turn white.  After two hours it was poached and was squishy to the touch.  Supposedly in a few more hours we will be able to pick it up.  Here are the pictures of the egg before and after.

Due to the damage done to my sister's brain, she is very hard to live with, and her life will probably always be hard.  She may never be able to live alone.  Spread the word!  Don't drink when you are pregnant.

TKB

Sep. 5, 2008 -

To see other Show and Tells go to Canadagirl.  This is my first time doing a Show and Tell.  I have a pet rat named Lucy. Many people  may think that having a rat as a pet is weird but rats are very fun and entertaining.  They can be taught a lot of tricks, such as coming to their name, which Lucy can do if she wants to!  These are the best pics I could take because she is very ADHD.  She has even broken out of her rat ball.

tkb

Jul. 14, 2008 - Walt Whitman

I just watched a movie on Walt Whitman. Here is one of his poems:

Did you read in the seabooks of the old fashioned frigate-fight? Did you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?

Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you, his was the English, and  there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be; Along the lowered eve he came, horribly raking us.

We closed with him ... the yard entangled ... the cannon touched, my captain lashed fast with his own hands.

We had received some eighteen-pound shots under the water, on our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead.

Ten o'clock at night, and the  full moon shining and the leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported, the master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold  to give them a chance for themselves.

The transit to and from the magazine was now stopped by the sentinels, they saw so many strange faces they did not know whom to trust.

Our frigate was afire...the other asked if we demanded guarters? If our colors were struck and the fighting done?

I laughed content when I heard the voice of my little captain, we have not struck,  he composedly cried , we have just begun our part of the fighting.

only three guns were in use, one was directed by the captain himself aginst the enemy's mainmast, two well-served with grape and canister silenced his musketry and cleared his decks.

The tops alone seconded the fire from this little battery,  especially the maintop, they all held out  bravely during the whole of the action.

Not a moment's cease, the leaks gained fast on the pumps.... the fire eats toward the powder-magazine, one of the pumps was shot away .... it was generally thought we were sinking.

Serene stood the little captain, he was not hurried ... his voice was neither high or low, his eyes gave more to us than our battle-lanterns.

toward twelve at night, there in the beams of the moon they surrendered to us.

TKB

May. 5, 2008 - a short story I wrote for school

   It was a cold, dark night. it degan to storm. lightning split the sky as rain lashed the mounteins. the villager hid in their homes. the town militia stood tensely in their baracks readyfor the call to arms.  howls pierced the sky.  the monsters of darkness prowled the mounteins. the villagers lit fires in their homes and  barred the doors and windows.the soldiers started a huge bonfire in the center of town. the night terrors strayed  away from the firelight and screamed when they couldn't enter the town. the beasts stalked off,leaving the town in peace. finally the sun rose and Dawn broke across the land.

the next town they attacked wasnt so lucky.

Mar. 26, 2008 - My mom tagged me.

Ok, 4sweetums tagged me with this fun tag so here we go.

5 random facts about myself:

1. I love rats.
2. I like to eat steak.
3. I like to read si/fi books.
4. I love to watch action, horror, si/fi movies
5. I work out every day.

5 weird things about myself:

1.  I hate to blow my nose.
2.  I eat my cereal out of mixing bowls because normal bowls are to small.
3. My favorire chore is cooking.
4. I think it is more dangerous to feed the snaping turtiles then the bears at my job at the nature center.
5. I wear t shirts in the winter.

 5 things on my desk

1.  paint
2. paint brushes
3. a radio
4. two lamps
5.  a plant

5 of your best friends:

1.   Jonathen
2.  wilson
3.   my brother
4. Isabelle my pet rat

I tag 5 people:

I tag nemo (Latin for no-one)

Mar. 24, 2008 - My new pet

I just got a baby blue rat. Her name is Isabelle and she is so cute. She squeeked alot the first night. She has calmed down a bit but she is still rather hyper. I have ben able to hold her but not for very long. Soon she will be able to ride on my shoulder and have more play time out side her cage.  Here is a picture of her ~

Mar. 21, 2008 - The Black Death

Welcome to the Black Death. Look around, people are dying in their homes and in the streets with horrible swollen purple and black growths hanging from their lymph nodes and coughing. Some have fevers so high that their brains are damaged, causing them to be laughing, crying and screaming hysterically. People are writhing in agony and projectile vomiting while they choke and gag. The death cart comes around every morning to pick up the dead to bury them. Over there, you can see the chewed on hand of a child that was dug up from its shallow grave by a dog. Soon the cart stops coming--its driver is dead. The bodies begin to pile up. Soon this village will be like a ghost town, with over half its population gone

Now that I've got you all depressed, I will get on to the facts. In the 14th century a plague began in Asia and spread to Europe along the trade routes. It was carried by disease infected fleas that fed on black rats. The fleas carried the plague bacteria. As the rats died, the fleas jumped on people and bit them, transmitting the bacteria that caused the plague. This bubonic plague sometimes transformed into the pneumonic plague, causing pneumonia. one-third to one-half of the population of Asia and Europe were killed during this century by the plague.

Mar. 18, 2008 - vacation in montgomery, alabama

In march 2008 I went to montgomery with my family for four days. We drove there and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. The breakfast bar was okay, but I've had better. We had a microwave in our room that mom almost blew up but she got the hang of it. The flowering trees had already started blooming.

We went to the Montgomery Zoo. It was really fun. We got to see a bison up close, and we also saw a baby rhinocerous named Rocky. While we were there, the lions were roaring constantiy and it was really loud. The baby giraffes were pretty cute and the monkeys  were hilarious.

We visied the Wall of Tolerance to look up my grandma's name and put our names on the Wall,too. We also saw the Rosa Parks Civil Rights Museum and the Fine Arts Museum that had some fun interactive art exhibits.

The trolley tour took Us all over the city. I saw the house that Martin Luther King lived in with his family. It had been bombed while they had lived there. I saw the first White house of the Confederacy. It was really small.

I enjoyed my vacation.

Feb. 28, 2008 - what's new at the nature center.

I just got assinged to help feed some new  animals at the nature center. It is so awesome because I get to feed the snapping turtles. I am still not allowed to feed the snakes but that is ok. Anyway, there  is a new sheep that is going to have babies soon. I hope that they are as cute as the baby goats we had last year.

Here I am holding a snake at the nature center.

Jan. 14, 2008 - Our gingerbread house

We built a gingerbread house this christmas. It was harder to build than we thought! It was good to eat though. Here are the pictures.

Jan. 9, 2008 -

We finally got some snow so we decided to go sledding! The problem was that their was very little snow,so we were sliding on ice. It was fun while it lasted. The pic above is of me and me little bro. I hope we get more snow but it is 60 degrees today!

Dec. 17, 2007 -

I found this on someones blog.

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second -- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. unknown soure.LOL HAAAaaa!!!

Dec. 10, 2007 - the gift of the magi

I just heard The Gift Of The Magi by O.Henry. They say it is a classic but I thought it was pretty stupid. they weren't expecting gift's but they bought eachother gift's anyway wich is fine but they did not have the money.  They needed to live in their budget.I hope people learn from this story not to git into credit card debt.

Dec. 6, 2007 - 7 crazy things

I am going to do a meme about 7 crazy things about my family.

1. My mom blasts christmas music like it rock.
2. My dad's been known to start whip cream fights.
3. We play hide and seek in the dark (really dark where you can't see anything).
4.  Last winter we got no snow so my dad and I took the sleds down the back stairs.
5. When we had a cat our dog sometimes used the litter box.
6. My dog is afraid of the rain.
7. when I was a little kid I ate a fire ant. 

Dec. 3, 2007 - of the shoemaker's gift and weird christmas plays

I just lisend to The Shoemaker's Gift by focus on the family radio theatre. It is an ok story but it is set in Russia and all the people had British accents!Lol! The sound affects were prattey  good. I don't know if I could eat cabbage soup all the time like he did. All and all it was a good story.

Anyway, I am going to be in a Christmas play. The problem is that we are having a hard time with it. 2 of us want to make a musical and the rest of us want to make a comedy.  I guess we will get it done the day before the play!

Nov. 28, 2007 - last night

man was yesterday packed! first I went to the nature center and had to work with the farm animals. It was freezing cold! After that I had to go to my sisters choir concert. I think she was lip singing most of the time but thats ok. shes only 6. Today I am going to archey. It is going to be fun to do some target practice

Nov. 24, 2007 - Hello

This is the first time I have ever blogged.  I am 17 and in 11th grade. I am the oldest of 4 kids in the family.  I love to work at the nature center and am an intern this year.  I like the working in the nature lab because I get to work with the snakes.  I also work in the barn where half my job is keeping the goats from escaping.  Luckily they get lazier at this time of year because it is cold. 

I will be writing about what I have done in school and posting some of my writing assignments.  Watch out for my stories about my crazy siblings and funny parents.