Critique - lecture: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Mommy, Dr. Peter Saccio of the Teaching Company said in his lecture that we don't mix up the two males -- Lysander and Demetrius -- but he's wrong, because Puck did mix them up.


Specifically:
Mommy, Dr. Peter Saccio of the Teaching Company said in his lecture that we don't mix up the two males -- Lysander and Demetrius -- but he's wrong, because Puck did mix them up when he gave them the special flower juice that made you fall in love with the person whom you first saw when you woke up.

The juice was supposed to go into Demetrius's eye, but Puck put it in Lysander's eyes instead. And so when Lysander first woke up, the first person he saw happened to be Helena. And Lysander said, "Not Hermia but Helena I love! Who would not change a raven for a dove?"

Nourish-ism

"Mommy, I'm going to be a fruit-and-vegetarian." -- S.C., age 7

Steam Clouds or Steam Streams?

Thanksgiving dinner was in the works, and I had opened the lid of the roaster to evaluate the progress of the turkey. Sophia Claire wondered aloud why the steam "looks like an atom bomb explosion" with a mushroom-shaped cloud above. After several observations of the rising steam, she noticed that -- and wondered why -- there was a large puff of steam on top, with a straight streaming tail beneath. First she hypothesized that the steam was puffing out when it hit the ceiling -- but then she recognized that the steam puffs out as soon as it exits the container (a turkey roaster), long before encountering the ceiling, and that the following bits of steam move straight with neither puffs nor curls.

And then she hit on it -- she remarked that it must be that the hot steam is hitting against the cold air in the room surrounding the container, with the result that the steam looks as though it has bumped into something -- cold air -- thus causing steam puffs and swirls. And, she explained, after the cold air is pushed out of the way, then the rest of the rising steam moves in a relatively straight path.

(Many clouds and streams of steam contributed to this conclusion. Little wonder that our turkey was a little dry-ish...)

Watch out for that swing!

When 7-year-old Sophia and I were playing on the swings at the park, a small boy several times crossed the path of my swing. Despite our smiling words of caution, I found myself wrenching to a stop to avoid hitting him. In order to show the boy the actual path of the swing, and the path he should follow in order to be safe, I took a moment to explain. First I backed up a little and said, "See? When I'm back here, it looks safe where you are, but let's see what happens if I swing forward -- and -- "

Just then, Sophia interrupted helpfully, shaking her head, "Mommy, he's still very little, and I don't think he'll understand about momentum -- "