HIP-HIP and HOOREEE

HIP-HIP and HOOREEE
-(More ESD Activities, Ice Breaker)-

This is a game for fun, an ice breaker game that I got from my friend in Philippines when we are attending the ToT in land rights advocacy. The students of Xavier University at Cagayan de Oro, told us that this is a game to welcome their neighbouring friends (included me also ^^)

Although it is simple game, we have a lot of fun to do this game. When you are teaching something, or conduct a training and when a session need an energizer, this is a game to choose.

Needs
About 5 to 15 participants

The rule of this game is to obey trainer instructions. There is two basic rules while they appoint participants:
1. When trainer appoint someone, a participant must clap 2 times and say HIP-HIP
2. For second appointment participants must raise her/his hands and say HOOREEE

Trainer can choose any participants to do first and second instructions. So the participants must concentrate their concentrations while playing this game, so they will not getting eliminated.

Do the instructions fast and you as a trainer also can repeat the instructions for the same man or different man. Make your instructions unpredictable. You always can make a randomize appointment and everybody will shock and need concentrate hard to play this game.

It's not really a nature game, but maybe you can modified some move and yel. My suggestions are :
- Use this activity to learn about language. You can add new move and use some English / local language for the substitution of HIP-HIP and HOOREEE
- After some practice you can start to make a competition. Ask the participants to make a circle so you can choose participants faster / effectively
- This game also suitable for they who wants to popularize some words and symbol. Repetition for middle or long term also good to influence people minds. For example, you also can affect people behaviour (children) if you change the order like this :
First appointment : Shout "THROW (the garbage)!" - action : using hand like throwing something
Second order : Shout "NOOO !" - action : jump and make raise an X with her/his body (hand and foot)...

Thank you for my Pinoy friends. I hope you also have fun with this game...

Picture : ANGOC ToT participants (Srilanka vs Nepal) in action, the last one to be eliminated

Found : Firm Place to Stand Outside Solar System

Found: Firm Place to Stand Outside Solar System
-(Shocking Nature News)-
From Yahoo News, 17 Sept 09

This image provided by the European Southern Observatory Wednesday Sept. 16, AP – This image provided by the European Southern Observatory Wednesday Sept. 16, 2009 shows an artist rendition …
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer


WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand — if only it weren't so broiling hot.

As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.

Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.

"We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its sun."

So close that its surface temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, too toasty to sustain life. It circles its star in just 20 hours, zipping around at 466,000 mph. By comparison, Mercury, the planet nearest our sun, completes its solar orbit in 88 days.

"It's hot, they're calling it the lava planet," Hatzes said.

This is a major discovery in the field of trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, said outside expert Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution. It was the buzz of a conference on finding an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, held in Barcelona, Spain, where the discovery was presented Wednesday morning. The find is also being published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The planet is called Corot-7b. It was first discovered earlier this year. European scientists then watched it dozens of times to measure its density to prove that it is rocky like Earth. It's in our general neighborhood, circling a star in the winter sky about 500 light-years away. Each light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

Four planets in our solar system are rocky: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

In addition, the planet is about as close to Earth in size as any other planet found outside our solar system. Its radius is only one-and-a-half times bigger than Earth's and it has a mass about five times the Earth's.

Now that another rocky planet has been found so close to its own star, it gives scientists more confidence that they'll find more Earth-like planets farther away, where the conditions could be more favorable to life, Boss said.

"The evidence is becoming overwhelming that we live in a crowded universe," Boss said.

Boy Finds Rare Pink Grasshopper

Boy Finds Rare Pink Grasshopper
By Lori Bongiorno
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/greenpicks/253/boy-finds-rare-pink-grasshopper.html

Daniel Tate, an English schoolboy, was looking for grasshoppers at a wildlife event he attended with his great-grandfather last week. But the 11-year old boy and his companions at Seaton Marshes Local Nature Reserve had no idea what a huge surprise they were in for.

Tate saw something pink that he thought was a flower. But when it jumped he knew it was a grasshopper.

It turns out that it was an adult female common green grasshopper that just happened to be born pink.

Experts aren't sure what caused this mutation. Grasshoppers of different colors, including pink, are unusual but not unheard of according to experts. What makes this particular grasshopper so rare is the intensity of the pink, according to Fraser Rush, a nature reserves officer in Britain.

Grasshoppers aren't the only insects that can be pink. Below are a few of nature's brightest examples:


Pink praying mantis
Praying mantis (Photo: Steve Roetz / Flickr)









Pink dragonfly
Dragonfly (Photo: Richard Giddins / Flickr)









Pink katydid
Katydid (Photo: Ric McArthur / Flickr)









Pink hummingbird moth
Hummingbird moth (Photo: Jody McNary / Flickr)









Pink grasshopper moth
Another grasshopper (Photo: Tim Parkinson / Flickr)









Most people find insects annoying, but they can certainly benefit people and the planet. Praying mantises, for example, eat ticks, mosquitoes, flies, beetles, and other pests. Fewer mosquitoes and ticks in your backyard translates into fewer applications of toxic bug repellents. Organic gardeners use praying mantises, common ladybugs, and other beneficial insects to control pests as an alternative to pesticides.

400 Year Old Clam Found

400 Year Old Clam Found - Oldest Animal Ever

-(Shocking Nature News)-

http://bizarrecreatures.blogspot.com

Can you imagine living for four centuries? A team of scientists from Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences believe they have found an animal which did just that, a quahog clam, Arctica islandica, which was living and growing on the seabed in the cold waters off the north coast of Iceland for around 400 years- that is, until they killed it

Only after researchers cut through its shell, which made it more of an ex-clam, and counted its growth rings did they realize how old it had been — between 405 and 410 years old.

What is Biogas?

What Is Biogas?
-(Shocking Nature News)-

http://factbooks.blogspot.com

Biogas is a mixture of carbon dioxide, methane and some other gases. It is produced by some kinds of microorganisms, usually when air or oxygen is absent. (The absence of oxygen is called “anaerobic conditions.”) Animals that eat a lot of plant material, particularly grazing animals such as cattle, produce large amounts of biogas.

The biogas is produced not by the cow or elephant, but by billions of microorganisms living in its digestive system. Biogas also develops in bogs and at the bottom of lakes, where decaying organic matter builds up under wet and anaerobic conditions.

Picture taken from www.gimmecorn.com