Tubes and Squirrels

They really are evil.

OK, For full disclosure, we have a thing about squirrels at our house. Every year we plant tomatoes, and for the past three we have not gotten a single tomato. Now I know you are probably thinking we just don't know what we are doing...But those beautiful, healthy tomato plants are surrounded by eggplant, peppers, swiss chard, peanuts (yes, peanuts), beans, chickens...you get the idea.

Unfortunately those beautiful, healthy tomato plants are also surrounded by squirrels. Our octogenarian wiener dog is a bit past the chasing other mammals phase of his life,and the blind Labrador is full on useless at this, so it it rodent city around here.

And at this point you are wondering what any of this could possibly have to do with computer science. Normally you'd be right, but there is a tie in...Tubes.

I got this out of the library, and it is so good I ended up buying a copy. The author starts his journey to discover the structure of the Internet after some of the aforementioned rodents disrupt his connection to the net.

I am hoping to get some classroom copies for this next year - it would work well in both the CS Principles class and in the International Baccalaureate Computer Science courses. Great background on the physical structure of the Internet. It is at a level most high school kids should be able to read it. Plus it would work really well with Baker Franke's #hashtagging homework project - which you can find on his course Moodle here with a more complete description given during the CS&IT presentation here.