My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me (The Atlantic)

What happens when a father, alarmed by his 13-year-old daughter's nightly workload, tries to do her homework for a week.

Memorization, not rationalization. That is the advice of my 13-year-old daughter, Esmee, as I struggle to make sense of a paragraph of notes for an upcoming Earth Science test on minerals. “Minerals have crystal systems which are defined by the # of axis and the length of the axis that intersect the crystal faces.” That’s how the notes start, and they only get murkier after that. When I ask Esmee what this actually means, she gives me her homework credo.

Esmee is in the eighth grade at the NYC Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies, a selective public school in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. My wife and I have noticed since she started there in February of last year that she has a lot of homework. We moved from Pacific Palisades, California, where Esmee also had a great deal of homework at Paul Revere Charter Middle School in Brentwood. I have found, at both schools, that whenever I bring up the homework issue with teachers or administrators, their response is that they are required by the state to cover a certain amount of material. There are standardized tests, and everyone—students, teachers, schools—is being evaluated on those tests. I’m not interested in the debates over teaching to the test or No Child Left Behind. What I am interested in is what my daughter is doing during those nightly hours between 8 o’clock and midnight, when she finally gets to bed. During the school week, she averages three to four hours of homework a night and six and a half hours of sleep.

I wonder: What is the exact nature of the work that is turning her into a sleep-deprived teen zombie so many mornings?Some evenings, when we force her to go to bed, she will pretend to go to sleep and then get back up and continue to do homework for another hour. The following mornings are awful, my daughter teary-eyed and exhausted but still trudging to school.

I decide to do my daughter’s homework for one typical week.

full story - theatlantic.com

Thunderbird 2 is go! Gigantic amphibious airship takes first flight

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• The Aeroscraft can take off and land without an airstrip meaning it can operate even in war zones and disaster areas

Zeppelins were once considered the future of air transport - but after the horror of the Hindenburg disaster, they disappeared from the skies for more than 75 years.

Now a pioneering aviation firm hopes to bring back the airships in a bid to revolutionise the global market in transporting freight.

The Aeroscraft is built using innovative technology which allows it to control its flight better than previous airships, so it should avoid the problems experienced by the first generation of zeppelins.

It requires only a third as much fuel as an aeroplane carrying cargo, and it can take off and land anywhere even without a formal airstrip - including on water - making it well suited to war zones and disaster areas.

The aircraft has been designed thanks to a $3million grant from the U.S. government, and it will soon be ready for its first test flight, according to Business Insider.

The Aeroscraft is designed by Worldwide Aeros Corp., who predict that it will change the way that goods are moved around the world by providing a mode of transport which is cheaper than planes but faster than ships.

The key technological breakthrough came when the firm's founder Igor Pasternak came up with a way to compress helium, which allows the airship to control its weight.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2416809/Return-zeppelin-Firm-unveils-gigantic-airship-revolutionise-goods-carried-world.html#ixzz2eZNJyxwQ
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Six Flags unveils plans for monster new ride

An New Jersey says it will build a 41-story drop ride, making it the world’s tallest.

Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson says Zumanjaro: Drop of Doom will hoist riders 415 feet in the air and drop them back to the ground at 90 mph.

The stomach churning attraction will be attached to the what is itself the world’s tallest roller coaster, Kingda Ka.

Three gondolas will carry brave riders up the face of Kingda Ka. They will drop from just below the coaster’s 456-foot peak as its riders hurl overhead at speeds up to 128mph.

Each tower will feature a gondola for eight riders, which will help keep lines for the ride, one likely to attract worldwide enthusiasm, as short as possible.

At the top, riders will be able to see the skyline of Philadelphia, which lies 52 miles away.

‘Zumanjaro solidifies Six Flags Great Adventure’s dominance as the Northeast’s thrill capital,’ said John Fitzgerald, park president.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2406491/Six-Flags-unveils-plans-world-record-shattering-attraction-drop-riders-41-stories-90mph.html#ixzz2dQzHjA50
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Boozy Snapshots of American Life Under Prohibition (io9)

From 1919 to 1933, the United States was a dry nation. It was illegal to make, sell, or consumealcohol. In this collection of images, you'll see what daily life was like in a country where police poured millions of gallons of booze into the gutters — and everyone else surreptitiously drank it in bizarre, hidden places.

full photo gallery - io9.com

Native Americans: Portraits From a Century Ago (The Atlantic)

"In the early 1900s, Seattle-based photographer Edward S. Curtis embarked on a project of epic scale, to travel the western United States and document the lives of Native Americans still untouched by Western society. Curtis secured funding from J.P. Morgan, and visited more than 80 tribes over the next 20 years, taking more than 40,000 photographs, 10,000 wax cylinder recordings, and huge volumes of notes and sketches. The end result was a 20-volume set of books illustrated with nearly 2,000 photographs, titled "The North American Indian." In the hundred-plus years since the first volume was published, Curtis's depictions have been both praised and criticized. The sheer documentary value of such a huge and thorough project has been celebrated, while critics of the photography have objected to a perpetuation of the myth of the "noble savage" in stage-managed portraits. Step back now, into the early 20th century, and let Edward Curtis show you just a few of the thousands of faces he viewed through his lens."

 [34 photos]

Prezentace - Reálie USA (GSOŠ DUM)

V rámci školního projektu Inovace krok za krokem byly zpracovány Reálie USA. Celkem soubor obsahuje 20 powerpointových prezentací, které prošly odbornou i jazykovou korekturou, a měly by být tedy bez chyb. I když i sebepřísnějšímu kontrolorovi sem tam něco unikne. ;)

Témata prezentací:

1. Geography 
2. People & language 
3. Education system 
4. Holidays 
5. US History 
6. US History II 
7. US Sports 
8. Political system 
9. US Presidents 
10. US Literature 

11. Region - Northeast 

12. Region - Southeast 

13. Region - Northcentral 

14. Region - Southwest 

15. Region - Northwest 

16. Washington, DC 

17. New York 

18. Chicago 

19. National Parks 

20. Czechs in the USA

Prezentace jsou vhodné k přípravě na státní i školní maturitní zkoušku z AJ. Na stránkách školy se během krátké doby objeví i sada prezentací k Velké Británii, Austrálii a Novému Zélandu. Odkaz najdete na těchto stránkách, až bude k dispozici.

Kompletní souboru prezentací si můžete stáhnout ZDE.

Street: A Mesmerizing Slow-Motion Drive Down the Streets of NYC (PetaPixel)

"Combining the capabilities of a high-speed camera with the basic idea that “there are enough [magical moments] happening every moment of any given day,” New York artistJames Nares is currently captivating audiences at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mesmerizing video “Street.”

Shot in September of 2011, “Street” consists entirely of slow-motion panning shots of the streets of New York, as seen from a moving car. Using a high-speed camera, Nares captured 16 hours of footage, which he then edited down to 3 (regular speed) minutes — translating into just over an hour of slow-mo magic."

VIDEO - PetaPixel

Evolution of the New York Driver’s License (NYT)

"New York State first began issuing paper licenses to chauffeurs in 1910, and the shape, form and style have changed over the past century, adapting to new laws and technologies. The following is a sampling of how the license has evolved."

full gallery - New York Times

Wright Brothers: Second in Flight? (Discovery)

"Were we wrong about the Wright Brothers?

That's the shocking claim by Australian aviation historian John Brown, who told FoxNews.com he has photographic proof that German immigrant Gustav Whitehead flew over Connecticut in 1901 -- Orville and Wilbur were second.

“Two years, four months, and three days before the Wright brothers, somebody else flew first,” Brown said via phone from Germany. "It’s really a radical revision of the history of aviation."

full story here - discovery.com