chemotherapy. time to take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly. first the good. remember the adorable pair of kittens that brought the new york city subway system to a halt last week? they now have a new home. august and arthur are now in foster care until their purr-fect family can be found. the bad. mcdonald s plans to have a new menu and items cost up to five bucks on the dollar menu. look at this video from south africa. a giraffe wouldn t leave a mountain biker alone. time for your brew on this question of the day responses. we asked if new children toys acting out an armed bank robbery were make believe or over the line. charles tweeted bank robber toys? what were they thinking? let s inspire kids to commit criminal acts. michael tweeted what are they going to come up with next?
is zero room for error. about 17 minutes from now, if all goes as planned, the rover will touchdown on the martian surface. but it takes 14 minutes for a signal to travel from mars to earth, so best case scenario, confirmation will come in about 31 minutes. we expect pictures around 2 a.m. eastern. now, joining us from the laboratory in california. in moscow r where russian space officials are closely following the development and science correspondent david brodie joins us from edge water, new jersey. but first we will go to john zarrella there live in pasadena. john, we are about to enter the period that officials are calling seven minutes of terror, where they will not know if curiosity is alive or dead. that s exactly right, john. this is it. they ve all been using the olympic term that they have to stick this landing. as you pointed out, that this maneuver to entering the atmosphere of mars, traveling at 13,200 miles an hour, in less than ten minutes from now, they ll
every child learns. wh s happened is we focus too much on tests, too narrowly on performance measures that n t allow students to be motivated and don t allow teachers to teach, don t allow the arts, physical education, activities of those kind that inspire kids, we don t have an inspiration nation, we have a blame and recrimination nation when it comes to education. teachers are the focus of what everybody thinks is wrong rather than looking at the way kids, families can be engaged in the school and invited to do the kinds of things that are the 21st century schools, social skills, optimism, persistence, resilience. these are the things that inspire young people, which have been pushed out too frequently. do you worry about the the accountability movement is behind reform. that s taken hold. but now we ve gotten into a pre-polarized place, even in education reform.
last decade is we have high expectations. democrats and republicans came together ten years ago, passed legislation that said we want to be more focused on ensuring every child learns. what s happened however unintentionally is we ve narrowed expectations. secretary shalala says we focus too much on tests and performance measures that don t allow students to be motivated and don t allow teachers to teach or activities that inspire kids. we don t have an inspiration nation. we have a blame and recrimination nation when it comes to education. teachers are the focus of what everybody thinks is wrong rather than looking at the way kids, families can be engaged in the school and invioloted to do the kind of things of the 21st century schools, social skills, optimism. these are the things that inspire young people. they have been pushed out. bill, do you worry about i mean the accountability movement
is he a part of the solution here or the no, no. he merely tasks us with with the story and then we report back to him how it goes. i m a huge fan of the show. you make you take these big questions that all of us wonder, myths, urban puzzles, you know, if you will. and find solutions. essentially kind of making science cool and fun. is that why you got into doing what you do? is that why you re getting involved here? not at all. we re totally unquifalified to scientists. we never set out to actually be educational or to inspire kids. i think that s actually why the show works. kids can smell that kind of crap a mile away. how did you get into this if you you re not scientists by nature or well, we re both we re both special effects artists by training. that s what we were doing when the show came along. the idea initially was to have a couple of guys get that could build just about anything, do more than talk about urban