by Tom Martin I enjoy going to the cinema. I enjoy Professional
Development. I didn’t think for one minute that these two
interests would ever overlap. That was until I went to watch the
new $200 million blockbuster “Battleship” at the cinema last
weekend. Without giving too much away it’s basically about an
alien invasion and mankind’s struggle to defeat them. Sound
familiar? The difference is, this time the battle is fought
mainly at sea. Hence the ship bit. Being an educator, I enjoy
films that not only entertain, but that also educate and I
learned a very valuable lesson on this occasion. The lesson is
how to locate alien ships when you find yourself trapped at sea
on an American warship within a 2 mile thick impenetrable alien
force field and the alien ships don’t show up on your RADAR.
(They don’t show up because they apparently use special RADAR
blocking alien technology). The answer to this problem is
surprisingly simple. Access NASA “NOAA” data on the web. You can
get live data from ocean buoys that