Just in time for you to order your plants and seeds for this growing season! This month the U.S. Department of Agriculture publicized their new plant hardiness zone map. This is the first update to the map since 1990, but thanks to incredible technological advances in weather measurements since then, users can expect a much […]
Continue ReadingWhat drives big thinkers, creators, and leaders who achieve success on their own terms? Jamie McMillin wanted to find out, hoping her quest would help her raise and educate her own two children. She delved into biographies of luminaries including Margaret Mead, Pearl Buck, Marie Curie, Louis Armstrong, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Beatrix […]
Continue ReadingIf you hang out here at GeekMom very much you’ll notice that a lot of our geeky posts center on things our writers geek out about, that may seem outside the stereotype for a woman. Some of us are crazy into Steampunk. Some go nutty over anything related to Star Wars. And yes, we even […]
Continue Reading“I ask once or twice a year,” she told me. “But it’s a powerful question. It should only be used wisely.” I was interviewing a woman I’ll call Ms. C. for a newspaper series. She was truly an elder. I don’t mean age-wise, although she appeared to be in her mid-seventies or beyond. By elder […]
Continue ReadingI noticed the trend starting at Toy Fair last year: robots for kids. Booth after booth featured our future overlords, and I thought my six-year-old daughter would love most of them when she got her hands on them. About six months passed, and then the robots found their way to our house for us to […]
Continue ReadingIn the wake of last weekend’s tornado outbreak impacting Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, on ABC News, Diane Sawyer reported that there was no warning to the storms: Something terrifying took the South by surprise last night — no warning. 25 tornadoes striking in less than 24 hours. In the meteorology community, especially among some of […]
Continue ReadingBeing a geek is no longer geeky. Role-playing games are being used in classrooms, “graphic novels” are considered literature, conferences about geek pop culture are in major cities with thousands of attendees, and every cool kid is going to see the latest Harry Potter in the theaters. After this movie about magic and monsters, what’s […]
Continue ReadingEach year my kids and I search the stores for the perfect Valentines for their classes. There are cards with every character you can think of and even little prizes like stickers, tattoos or lollipops. It’s a big decision, because it only comes around once a year and for kids, their choice of card is important. Are they a […]
Continue ReadingI’ll never forget where I first met Meg Murry: Mrs. Beville’s 5th-grade language arts class, Aurora, Colorado, 1978. Mrs. B. always picked the best books for her classroom read-alouds: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. The Cricket in Times Square. How to Eat Fried Worms. And Madeleine L’Engle’s A […]
Continue ReadingThe video for Wilco’s “Dawned on Me,” from their Grammy-nominated record The Whole Love, features the first hand-drawn Popeye cartoon in more than 30 years. You may want to celebrate with some spinach.
Continue ReadingEstablished in 2004, the last Thursday of January every year we remember all of the men and women who have given their lives as NASA astronauts as part of the NASA Day of Remembrance. Since Alan Shepard took his first flight into the blackness of space in 1961 during the Mercury program, 17 brave souls […]
Continue ReadingGoogle sent out emails to users to let them know that they’re changing their privacy policy and Terms of Service, effective March 1. That’s usually enough to start a good panic, and I doubt it will be different this time. Just how “evil” is Google? Well, it probably depends on who you ask. There were […]
Continue ReadingAs you may have noticed if you read GeekMom regularly, I’m a passionate reader of superhero comics and have been since I can remember. But, being a woman (d’uh), it’s impossible to miss the issues with the portrayal of female characters over the years. Nowhere was outrage more consolidated than in a site called Women […]
Continue ReadingIts time for the second annual Google Science Fair. Last year over 10,000 students submitted 7,500 entries from 90 countries from around the globe. The 2011 winner, American Shree Bose, discovered a way to prevent cancer cells from becoming resistant to the chemotherapy drug, cisplatin. With such amazing entries last year everyone is waiting in excited anticipation […]
Continue ReadingMy Dad was an engineer so I had lots of toys for which building was a part of the playing. We had an infinite number of Legos and Tinker Toys and an Erector Set that sort of scared me in it’s complexity. In fact, I don’t remember doing much with that one, although I remember […]
Continue ReadingSteampunk Festival Fears Mother Nature Steampunk World’s Fair takes unusual step to keep inclement weather from raining on parade This May, the Steampunk World’s Fair will hit Piscataway, New Jersey with three days of the largest steampunk festival in the country – last year’s fair garnered about 3000 guests in total. With a nation of […]
Continue ReadingIf you haven’t heard of the Symphony of Science, or seen the amazing videos, today is your lucky day. In an effort to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form, John D. Boswell created a series of videos he called The Symphony of Science. Each is beautiful, and filled with stunning shots of the […]
Continue ReadingNeed a little lift today? How ’bout a few smiles? Check out these amazing pictures, a compilation of the best street art from 2011. My favorites are the ones that use the architecture around them to inspire their creation (look for the two young children, playing hide and seek, and the camel train that runs […]
Continue ReadingSitting down to sketch or paint a place you love is one of the best ways of revisiting it. That’s because getting the images on paper forces you to re-imagine the sights and sounds, making it come alive more fully in your memory. The folks at They Draw & Travel know all about this […]
Continue ReadingLast week I reviewed the Striiv, and this week I’ll look at the BodyMedia FIT system. Full disclosure: I was provided with a review unit of the CORE system for this evaluation. The BodyMedia FIT CORE is available from Amazon and other stores starting at $143 for the basic device, but it’s worth it for the slight upgrade […]
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