Sea stars are punks

Actually, scallops may be the punks of the seafloor. Sea stars are more just everywhere.

I've just spent some 45 minutes classifying image after image of the seafloor, marking scallops, sea stars, crustaceans and fish. Oh, and lots of nothing and lots of "other." This is one of the projects available on Zooniverse, a citizen science portal, where people can classify galaxies, African savannah animals, cancerous cells, and sea creature images. I'm starting work on a project related to Zooniverse, and I wanted to get a taste of what it is like to be one of the citizens.

Classifying galaxies is something I've already spent time doing in my life. And seeing lots of lot quality images of them. I'm good, as far as galaxies are concerned.

But sea creatures...now that is new. At first, I thought I was going to quit on my first image. The tutorial image was so clear, my first actual image was....like a dust storm. And the field guide provided didn't actually tell me what a sponge looked like, although the tutorial image claimed it contained one. And fish...sometimes hard to see.

And the punky scallops. Some are dead - a hole in the shell, maybe with white shells. Some are not. And some, I have no idea. They are just being difficult.

Finding a fish or crab is pretty exciting.

Rarely is an image totally empty of life.

After a few images, I got more comfortable with the uncertainty of maybe having it wrong. Other people were going to see these same images and add to what I said. Subtract from it, maybe. My mistake wasn't going to single handedly kill the scallop population. My eating habits, might. But not my classifying.

And now, an image with a fish is pretty exciting. And without a fish, my brain is more able to coast through the marking and measuring of creatures. In the back of my mind I'm thinking about eating sea creatures, about fishing, about sea stars in general. It is an interesting process.

Citizen science is pretty cool stuff. Whether it is nearly a million people classifying images more accurately than computer programs, or people going out counting birds per square mile, or inmates studying slow-growing mosses.

Vincent van Goat

We are increasingly using videos with A, but she is still unused to much of the kids' cartoons. They make her upset, or they are too fast paced. And I really wonder who is producing this stuff for kids. The themes are pretty grown up, and take us to discussions I don't know she is ready to have.

So we stick to Sesame Street playlists online, which M watches and plays with her, some iPhone and iPad books and stories, and the Baby Einstein series videos. They are just slower.

Today we finally broke out the Baby Einstein art video. It was all about colors, and Vincent van Gogh's paintings (for the purpose of the video, he was a goat).

Afterwards, we rolled out some white IKEA drawing paper and M, A and I went looking around the house for objects of each color. A also had the responsibility of checking through the dog's toybox to find an object for L.

It was a pretty fun 20 minutes. I give you our collaborative installation pieces.

The pupper needs an iPhone

Angry Birds is a very addictive game for the iPhone. It probably comes with a version for any smartphone and beyond. Uses real physics principles for catapulting variously talented (they split into 3, they drop egg bombs, they explode) birds at creatively protected pigs. In the game, the meanie pigs have stolen the birds' eggs, so they have it coming. And when you don't blow them all up using all the birds you've been allotted, they smile smugly at you. At this point, your heart rate goes up, you vow to show those pigs a lesson, and as soon as the screen asks you "try again?" your finger slams the "ok" (or as I experience it "hell yes!") key.

One of the most anxious moments in Angry Birds comes when you've knocked a wooden or stone beam out of place and it is just barely hanging in place, just above a soon-to-be-mocking-you pig. You tilt the phone in hopes the beam will fall. Maybe you blow at the screen. And about half the time, after a few seconds of wobbling, it falls! Score!

Anyway, even though our dog doesn't play Angry Birds and has never had a physics class, even she gets the point about precariously balanced objects. We gave this one a wide clearance.