Geek of the Week: Bill Peet

Here we honor Muggle geeks who embody Ravenclaw spirit...when they succeed, they soar, and when they fail, they fail spectacularly!

Bill Peet (1915 - 2002) 
"I always kept a small tablet in my desk and at every chance I would sneak a drawing into it. Often I'd be surprised to find the teacher standing over me and my tablet would be taken away."

Happy birthday to the late Bill Peet, an artist who began drawing as a child and never looked back.  Leave it to a creative geek to take what was around him in his youth -- farm life, a circus parade, trips to the zoo -- and turn it into full-blown pictorial narratives with his imagination.

artist self-portrait

Many know him from his award-winning work as a children's lit author and illustrator who expected the young readers to gain an extensive vocabulary through context (his books began as bedtime stories for his children).  Peet also produced scads of story sketch and character development animation while working at Walt Disney Studios for thirty years.

Find out more about Bill Peet on Wikipedia.

Geek of the Week: Hedy Lamarr

Here we honor Muggle geeks who embody Ravenclaw spirit...
when they succeed, they soar, and when they fail, they fail spectacularly!

Hedy Lamarr (1914 - 2000)
"I can excuse everything but boredom. Boring people don't have to stay that way."

**brought to you by a request from MyIzumi 

and from Cyp's mama**

Hedy Lamarr led a double life: the erstwhile Hedwig Kiesler married six times, owned the Sound of Music mansion, and swanned around Hollywood as "The Most Beautiful Woman In Films" -- but there's so much more. 

So she tinkered with engineering equipment at home. And she worked with her neighbor to develop a "Secret Communications System." And people used it during World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  AND her invention set the groundwork for Bluetooth and wifi. BOOM she's awesome.

FUN FACT: Lamarr was the inspiration for Anne Hathway's portrayal of Catwoman and the namesake for Dr. Kleiner's pet in Half-Life 2.

Check out the US Patent issued to Lamarr and her co-inventor, avant garde composer George Antheil.
Find out more about Hedy Lamarr on Wikipedia.

NEWTlings, hurrah!

Here there be NEWTs! 
We have 10 (yes, TEN) Ravenclaws who are attempting NEWTs (plus one SoS -- hi, Ielith!)! Let's give a big cheer to our fellow Towermates:
Akasha111182
*Bacs
*bandbabe
DJMeurer (also a NEWT Examiner!)
*greenheron
*Hreow
MariaCrafts
*Mimulus
*NoNeinNyet
*roocmc

• of our intrepid ten, the seven crazy dedicated Claws marked with asterisks are going for the Flaming Newt by also attempting a Mission for the Order of the Phoenix
• the top two subjects for NEWTing are Transfiguration (11) and Arithmancy (10), and two NEWTs combine them - gotta catch 'em all!

Four Claws have already checked in at 50% -- 75 points each!
DJMeurer - SOAR RAVENCLAW!

Akasha111182 - SOAR RAVENCLAW!

greenheron - SOAR RAVENCLAW!

Mimulus - SOAR RAVENCLAW!

REMINDER:
If you've proposed a BROOM, GO TIME is NOW!!  You have until SATURDAY, March 15th, end of day POT, to present your findings to the Mission Chiefs.

Geek of the Week: Sal Khan

Here we honor Muggle geeks who embody Ravenclaw spirit...when they succeed, they soar, and when they fail, they fail spectacularly!

Sal Khan (b. 1976)
"If we could get those creative people…to say ‘Hey I’m using these math tools to further my creativity’ this would help.  I think people are starting to appreciate that, and that is what computer science has really done."

It all began with a quick YouTube tutorial, teaching weights and measures conversion to a very specific seventh grader.

If Salman Khan (the Louisianian computer scientist, not the Bollywood superstar) had gone to school at Hogwarts with us, he would definitely have sorted into Ravenclaw... but instead he went to MIT and Harvard, schools with equally restrictive admission policies.

What he has done with that education is remarkable: his Khan Academy offers almost 4000 free, high-quality, easy-to-follow educational videos, complete with quizzes, on a variety of subjects.

Find out more about Sal Khan on Wikipedia.
Educate yourself at the Khan Academy.

HEY, LET'S LEARN ABOUT THE UNIVERSE A LITTLE BIT:

Geek of the Week: Nichelle Nichols

Here we honor Muggle geeks who embody Ravenclaw spirit...when they succeed, they soar, and when they fail, they fail spectacularly!

Nichelle Nichols (b. 1932)

"I said 'Gene, I've been watching each of the episodes and they each get better and better ... and I discovered something: you're writing morality plays.' And he said, 'Shhh. They haven't figured it out yet.' "

Nichelle Nichols is made of awesome, and if you didn't already know that fact, then know it now.  She is known for her role on Star Trek as communications officer Lieutenant (eventually Commander) Uhura, but Nichols wasn't satisified with resting on her good looks and gravitas: she got cerebral with it.  She named her own character (with tweaks from Gene Roddenberry, of course) based on the Swahili word for freedom.  A now-famous conversation with "the biggest Trekkie on the planet," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., convinced Nichols to stay with Star Trek in the prominent role. It's a good thing, too, as her groundbreaking work has inspired real-life astronauts (Mae Jemison), actors (Whoopi Goldberg), and world leaders (US President Barack Obama) alike.

Her groundbreaking work AFTER her stint on Star Trek is even more impressive.  Nichols took NASA for its lack of diversity and volunteered her time to assist the space agency in recruiting minority and female personnel, including the first American woman in space, Sally Ride.  She has a namesake asteroid and two released music albums (one of them space-themed).

Find out more about Nichelle Nichols on Wikipedia.

Geek of the Week: Bill Nye

Here we honor Muggle geeks who embody Ravenclaw spirit...
when they succeed, they soar, and when they fail, they fail spectacularly!

Bill Nye (b. 1955)

"When we see the shadow on our images, are we seeing the time 11 minutes ago on Mars? Or are we seeing the time on Mars as observed from Earth now? It's like time travel problems in science fiction. When is now; when was then?"

His TV show for kids only ran for five years in the mid '90s, but the world of scientific education was forever changed by the accessibility and sheer enthusiasm brought by Bill Nye, the erstwhile (perpetual?) Science Guy.  Nye, a mechanical engineer once taught by Carl Sagan, has always dressed the part of an unabashed geek (he wore ties every day at a high school that didn't require it); the dapper duds come in handy when he goes swing dancing. He first broke into entertainment after winning a Steve Martin lookalike contest.

Nye regularly submitted applications to be an astronaut at NASA -- rejected every time, due to lack of PhD -- so he's gone another route as the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, advocating and lobbying for continued space exploration in some awesome bowties.

FUN FACT: Nye holds several U.S. patents, including one for ballet pointe shoes (because who wants bloody feet?  Nobody.).

Find out more about Bill Nye on Wikipedia.

BOW TIES ARE COOL: