Unschooling, Playgrounds, and San Francisco City Government

Two of the unschooling gang, 8 year-old No. One and six year-old No. Two went to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Property Use and Transportation Committee, (that’ a mouthfull!) meeting today! Four year-old No. Three would have attended, but she was feeling a little bit under the weather. We’ve been planning to do this for months. We’d—all of us—like to ask to have a Free Play Proclamation passed by our mayor and the board of supervisors. The proclamation is a document, drafted by the LetGrow free-range play organization, saying that yes, kids will play outside, yes they will be without their parents, yes they will be OK. First though, we figured we should meet our supervisor, and get a feel for how supervisors’ meetings went.

That’s the plan we set out for ourselves months ago, but we didn’t act on it. Our need was high, but not compelling. Until last week. That’s when one of our friends congratulated us on the new playground update we were about to receive. The kids love that playground, they spend time, almost every day, in that playground. They’re also aware that when the local swimming pool was ‘updated’ it took the better part of four years.

So, when they heard their playground was scheduled for an update, and that it was the supervisors who decided such things, the gang immediately wanted to go to the next meeting. That’s one of the fun parts of unschooling, projects simmer until they become passions, and then they move like rockets.

And so, we found ourselves at the committee meeting this afternoon. The room—located in City Hall—where the meeting took place was gorgeous! The entire place was covered in wood. The ceiling was ornamented in curlicues and lions. The back of the bench we sat on was cushioned. Large video screens displayed each speaker as the took the floor and clarified their words with closed captions. It wasn’t a bad place to spend an hour and twenty minutes.

This week, the meeting didn’t cover playgrounds. Instead it focused on an RV parking program intended to help homeless people, a proposal having to do with making registering buildings as historical landmarks more convenient, and another proposal to change city ordinances with respect to mother-in-law units.

We got to learn how meetings are called to order. We practiced focusing on procedural language. We found out that if you send in your comments ahead of time, you get to speak in an earlier slot. And, we met our supervisor—Ahsha Safai.

We shook hands, speaking a bit about his programs to plant more trees in the neighborhood and revitalize the playgrounds. The gang hadn’t expected to meet their Supervisor today, and so were mum on their thoughts about the playground. (For the record, One wishes they’d leave it alone; Two on the other hand is entranced with the planned new slide tower.)

Two was interested by the meeting and paid attention. One was bummed we’d miss the next meeting on June 3rd, because schedules. All in all, it was a great first meeting we couldn’t have attended if the gang wasn’t unschooling. We’ll move forward from here a bit at a time, but I’m psyched that we’ve started on participating in our local government!

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in concept very sim

Copasetic Flow

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