My First Escape Room

 

  

While I was in Utah a few weeks ago, I went to my first escape room with my sister Heather and her family. I had no idea what to expect really. We went to Alcatraz Escape Rooms and picked a Harry Potter themed room. 

They put us and another group of 4 or 5 (total strangers to us--my first thought was that I would have to work and talk with people I didn't know) into a dark room the size of a small dining room. I'm looking around completely clueless about how to start while they went over the rules. Then we were off. 

Everyone starts scrambling and I have no idea what to scramble for. I noticed that there were colored pennants on the wall. Most people were working on figuring out what the two foot columns were for when I called out that there were pennants on the wall. Someone who knew what they were doing decided to match the colors with the columns to get a combination. Okay then, I see how this works now.

There was a chest set with a clue to find the white queen's winning play with several examples of the game board. This is where I become both brilliant and a complete moron at the same time. Brilliant, because I know enought about chess that I immediately knew the correct sequence and loaded them on the board. A moron because as soon as I placed the final piece a trap door opened in the wall behind me and a wand popped out. I give the wand to my sister's daughter, but I did not get the connection that it came from the chess piece. I don't know how much more time I wasted trying to figure out that chess game that I had already solved. 

It so it went. I had moments of brilliance and moments of being utterly clueless. It was really fun though, with lots of laughter and even working with strangers who were okay. It seems like we were smarter than we gave ourselves credit for because we kept second-guessing ourselves. We ended up escaping with five minutes to spare so Huzzah to us! 

I highly recommend these as good family fun! 

White Smoke: Review

 

White SmokeWhite Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this book more than I thought I would. It's the kind of story where you want to skip ahead to see how it ends, but don't dare because you don't want to miss one darn word.
Mari, the main character, has personality and attitude, but can she trust what she is seeing? She's coming off a situation where her family can't take her word for anything, leaving us readers wondering if she is a reliable narrator. What is going on? Is the house/neighborhood haunted? Is there a conspiracy? Every citizen is suscipious and creepy. This is NOT a town you want to move to.
I cannot wait to introduce this story to my freshmen students. They are going to be as caught up as I was.

View all my reviews

Top Gun: Maverick

Pat and I went to see the new Top Gun today and I am so glad to have experienced it in the theatre. I loved it. For those who haven't seen the original ~~ wait, why haven't you seen the orginal? Nevermind that. For those who haven't seen the original, the movie stands on its own so it will still be awesome. However, for those who have seen the first, this one pays beautiful homage. 

What I loved: That the scenes we loved from the first TG were duplicated, giving us fans big nostalgia, yet each scene played out in a completely different manner with the new characters and the new storyline with Maverick learning new life lessons. 

The original scenes had a beginning ramped up action with Maverick pulling an unbelieveable stunt against a Russian Mig. 

TG: Maverick starts with a harrowing action scene with Maverick pulling an unbelieveable stunt as a test pilot. Both stunts land him in trouble. And he is sent to Top Gun. This time as an instructor. 

 Yes, he once again races his motorcycle with the jet. 


The bar scene is replicated, which moves into the the scene where the new pilots are in the hanger and are introduced to their instuctor (this time Maverick) who they embarrassed themselves with at the bar. 

 They begin amazing training exercises and they soon learn Maverick's skill. The pilots take their shirts off and play sports. There is a training accident and then a funeral. Maverick again moves into his dark moment or all is lost scene and has to do something balls-to-the-wall to pull himself through it. They go on their mission, have a dog fight. I won't go into too much more detail about that except that it is so much fun to watch, espescially in the movie theatre with the rumbling vibrating through your bones. 

They even manage to get Maverick back into an F-15 with a plausible reason. So much more I could gush about and so many more little Easter eggs dropped in but I don't want to spoil too much. 

 Other things I loved: 
 The similar rivalry between the two top pilots. 

 Characterization. From a writer's perspective the way they introduced each of the new pilot's character was true genius. During training, the way the pilots flew, whether playing it safe, leaving their wingman, sacrificing themselves, or being gutsy showed who they were in a really quick and unique way. Honestly, I learned from that and want to figure out how to do that in my writing. Not with pilots obviously, because that's not what I write, but it's got my brain percolating. 

 Themes: After their crash, Maverick is holding Goose in the ocean. One of the rescue team says, "You got to let him go, sir." Then shortly after Goose dies, Viper tells Maverick "You gotta let them go." He repeats it for emphasis. In the new movie Iceman gives Maverick that same advice. He also repeats it for emphasis. 

 And speaking of Iceman: The scene he is in with Maverick is amazing. That's all I'm going to say, but dang. Just dang. Maybe it was more impactful because I had recently watched the documentary "Val". I highly recommend it. 

 Another line brought back from the origianl: When Charlie analyizes Maverick's move with the Russian Mig, he says, "You don't have time to think up there. If you think, you're dead." This line is brought back in the new movie when Maverick tells Rooster, Goose's son, that he is thinking too much while flying. "Don't think, just do." Then Rooster tells Maverick the same thing when Maverick is being too cautious to engage the enemy. The twist is that they are in the F-15 and Rooster is in the same seat as his father. Maverick is only thinking about not losing Goose's son the same way he lost Goose and not doing what needs to be done to save them both. 

Maverick's goals: 
In the original, Maverick wanted to be the best and prove that he wasn't his father.
In the new one, his goal is much more selfless. He wants to train his pilots well enough that they will come home from a mission that the navy deems is important enough to have "acceptable losses". 

 There is just so much I loved about this. Top Gun was amazing. Top Gun: Maverick is spectacular. It was made with a lot of thought for the fans and what we loved about the original but it also paid attention to making a new and better plot, keeping in mind the growth that has already transformed Maverick. His character still has things to learn but he didn't back-step and have to relearn the lessons from before. That would have been lame. The action sequences and even the mission objective were better. It's great. It's really really great. Well worth seeing. 

Pascal's Triangle

 

So yes, this is me talking about math. Shocker, since I soooo love math. Did you hear the sarcasm? To finish my degree, I had to take one more math class. That was almost a deal breaker for me until I found out I could take a history of math course that would suffice. So this is a history paper on mathematics. Go me! 


The concept of Pascal’s Triangle has been around for centuries, although it wasn’t given that name until the 17th century. The Persians and the Chinese both appear to have discovered the application independent of the other in the eleventh century. In Persia, Omar Khayyam was extracting number roots with the triangle. Khayyam was a teacher of geometry and algebra, and studied astronomy and the Jalali calendar. He was also an “advisor to Malik Shah I” (Famous Mathematicians 1) until Shah was murdered. In 1070, Khayyam’s finished writing his treatise called Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra. Within it “he laid the foundation of the Pascal’s triangle with his work on triangular array of binomial coefficients” (Famous Mathematicians, 1). This treatise was not only highly influential in Persia, but made its way across Europe as well. 


 About the same time, circa 1050, Jia Xian who is also called Chia Hsien is also one of the first mathematicians known to have developed what would later be called Pascal’s Triangle. He lived between 1022 and 1054. Very little is known about his life, except that he was a eunuch, one of the emperor’s special guards who welded more influence as advisors than one would think. He wrote two books on mathematics, both which have been lost except the titles, The Yellow Emperor’s detailed solutions to the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art or Huangdi Jiuzhang Suanjing Xicao, and a collection of mathematical rules called Suanfa Xuegu Ji. After Jia Xian’s discovery, Chinese mathematicians continued to look at the triangle’s binomial coefficients, trying to take it further. A few centuries after Jia Xian, in 1261, one of these mathematicians, Yang Hui, (writer name of Qianguang) wrote an analysis of the mathematical rules in Huangdi Jiuzhang Suaniing Xicao in great detail (Beard, 1). Because of Hui, the work of Jia Xian has survived even though his book perished. In his preface, Hui explains his intention to make Jia Xian’s work better known, including his understanding of the triangle with his table “which records the coefficients up to the row 1 6 15 20 15 6 1” (Mac Tudor, 1). Very little is known about the life of Yang Hui, except for the works he left behind in reclassifying the ancient mathematical works of those mathematicians who came before him. Because of his efforts in preserving the ancient methods, in China the triangle is often referred to as the Yanghui triangle.

Later, an itinerant teacher, Zhu Shijie traveled across China in the later part of the 13th century. He was considered one of the greatest mathematicians of China. He is best “known for having unified the southern and northern Chinese mathematical traditions” (Horiuchi, 1). In 1303 he published Siyuan yujian or “Precious Mirror of Four Elements” which showed a diagram of the triangle, which was labeled the “Old Method”, proving that the concept was much older.





Zhu Shijie's illustration of Jia Xian's triangle. Image courtesy of Encyclopeadia Britannica, Beard

 

In Italy, another mathematician Niccolò Fontana, came onto the mathematics scene. In 1535, Bologna University held one of their public mathematics competitions where Fontana revealed a solution that had been considered impossible. He later  “devised a method to obtain binomial coefficients called Tartaglia’s Triangle” (16th Century, 1). Due to an injury, Fontana stammered and was called Tartaglia, which means “the stammerer”.  Even though he produced many formulas, he “died penniless and unknown” (16th Century, 1). Which brings us to Blaise Pascal.

Much later in 1654, French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote a treatise on the triangle named Traité du triangle arithmétique (Treatise on Arithmetical Triangle). It was published in 1655.


Blaise Pascal was both religious and a scientist. “He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal’s principle of pressure, and propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason” (Jerphagnon, 1). Syringes, hydraulic pressure, the barometer, and the first type of calculator, among many other contributions of science, can all be linked back to Pascal, including the triangle named after him. Although Pascal didn’t discover the triangle first, he “made the conceptual leap to use the triangle to help solve problems in probability theory” (17th Century, 1).

                                                  

                                           References

Beard, Andrea. Yang Hui: Chinese Mathematician. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yang-Hui

Famous Mathematicians. https://famous-mathematicians.com/omar-khayyam/

Horiuchi, Annick. “Zhu Shijie: Chinese Mathematician.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zhu-Shijie

Hosch, William H. Encyclopedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/science/Pascals-triangle.  

“Jia Xian” Mac Tudor. http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Jia_Xian.html

Jerphagnon, Lucien, et al. “Blaise Pascal: French Philosopher and Scientist.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Blaise-Pascal

Kazimir, Jessica. “Pascal’s Triangle.” Montclair University.  http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kazimir/history.html

“16th Century Mathematics – Tartaglia, Cardano, and Ferrari” The Story of Mathematics. https://www.storyofmathematics.com/16th_tartaglia.html

“17th Century Mathematics – Pascal.” The Story of Mathematics. https://www.storyofmathematics.com/17th_pascal.html

The Things They Carried

 

I really related to the matter-of-fact tone of “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. There have been times when the only way to get through talking about something had to be very clipped and matter-of-fact in order to keep my vocal chords from closing off. I had a terminally ill child and so many times I’d be in the emergency room rattling off previous medications and surgeries and what brought us there this time with the seemingly emotion of a stone all the while my heart was racing and I held back my fear because once I let it loose, I’d be weeping uncontrollably. The stark tone as the supplies they carry are listed with things interspersed such as “They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity” (O’Brien 1184) felt so familiar as when I rattled off the weight of my son’s mortality that I was trying futilely to bear. It also weaved in the setting of the jungles of Viet Nam in a way that made the life of the soldier so bleak and enduring to the point that the horribleness of it became mundane, which makes it all the more awful seeming as a reader.




Yet in the end Lieutenant Cross strips the weight of the world and home and love from his rucksack because to be a true soldier, a responsible leader of soldiers.  He had to let that all go in order to bear the heavier artillery of the burden soldiers bear. Everything else is gone, stripped away. “Commencing immediately, he’d tell them, they would no longer abandon equipment along the route of march. They would police up their acts” (O’Brien 1189) “He would not tolerate laxity. He would show strength, distancing himself” (O’Brien 1190). ­­­­­­

In comparison, the hateful, dark tone of The Cask of Amontillado came out gleeful in a macabre sense that matched the setting of the underground chilly vaults where wine was kept amid the family tomes and stacked bones of the dead. My takeaway of the theme? Never trust someone you have wronged, especially if they are offering gifts and are overly cheerful. When Fortunado is told “we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired beloved: you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed” (Poe, 1128) he should have run for the hills instead of going further into the depths of the vault. I’m kind of shaking my head at this one as Fortunado should have known better. I feel about as sorry for him as the woman in a horror show who goes down into the basement when she hears a noise.

 

Work Cited

O’Brien, Tim, “The Things They Carried.” Abcarian, Richard, Marvin Klotz, and Samuel Cohen, eds. Literature: The Human Experience: Reading and Writing. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 1177-1190

Poe, Edgar Allen, “The Cask of Amontillado.” Abcarian, Richard, Marvin Klotz, and Samuel Cohen, eds. Literature: The Human Experience: Reading and Writing. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 1126-1131

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"The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien" by manhhai is licensed under CC BY 2.0


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