text:
Just be sure that when you do go out, you watch out for moving dust bunnies.
Science Now
Behind the scenes at a science museum
Kevin von Appen is Director of Science Communication at the Ontario Science Centre. He started his career as a crime reporter for a newspaper. So much for career paths.
Super-Natural Events - Nov. 7, 2014
- Jul. 21 — Who flies there? Now I know.
- Dec. 3 — Diving Deeper
- Oct. 23 — A Question of Black and White
- Aug. 15 — Citizen Science
- Aug. 1 — Generation G
- Jul. 19 — A Fax from the Future Beach
- Jun. 13 — Rock on, kid
- Jun. 7 — The Meaning of Adam Noble
- Mar. 1 — Baloney and Cheese
- Jan. 3 — Toys in the Attic
- Dec. 12 — Space Between Your Ears
- Nov. 16 — Forecast: Cloudy…
- Oct. 4 — One Giant Leap
- Aug. 8 — Science Does My Head In
- Jul. 23 — Viral Dialogue
- Jul. 16 — A (Post) Human Edge
Take a close look at that dust bunny in the picture.
What do you see? Look again. Really look. I'll tell you exactly what you're really looking at in a second.
In the meantime, picture 300,000 square feet of floor. That's about three and a half football fields, if you're playing in the CFL.
That's how much floor we have at the Science Centre. It's a lot to sweep, especially with a million visitors a year tracking the dust around.
We were recently sweeping up in KidSpark, our place for kids eight and under and the adults who love them. That's when Kira Webb, the acting coordinator for KidSpark and, Leo O'Reilly, one of our floor Hosts, spied a dust bunny you could say was more bunny than dust. It was moving.
It was, in fact, a superb example of Anaxyrus Americanus. (Which, you have to admit, is kind of fun to say). Its more common sobriquet is toadlet. (Also fun to say.)
The presence of a tiny toadlet smaller than the tip of Leo's thumb in the middle of one of our busiest exhibit halls says a lot about the remarkable location of the Science Centre.
Despite being in the geographic centre of the biggest city in the country, the Centre borders a wetland that, I kid you not, hosts beavers and muskrats, herons and much else you don't expect to find a few hundred metres from an intersection through which 92,000 cars and trucks pour every day.
When you're in the woods around the Centre by the shore of that wetland, the sound of all that traffic fades. For much of the year, thanks to Anaxyrus Americanus, you hear this.
It's paradise, really. So I was puzzled by why any self-respecting toadlet would leave it for a building with thousands of largely heedless and potentially lethal feet clomping around.
The toads can't help it, according to Laura Murray, who's a wildlife biologist and one of our senior Hosts.
Toadlets leave the water to head for forests where they'll spend their adult lives feasting on insects and snails and beetles and slugs and in turn getting eaten by snakes and raccoons and hawks and herons. The Science Centre has forest all around it. Quite simply, we're in the way.
"That's when we see the toadlet invasion," Laura grinned, explaining they're tiny enough to squeeze under a door or through a crack and are on the move right up to the winter, seeking shelter in the leaf litter. "I'm amazed at the numbers we see. This past spring I must have rescued 400 toadlets, and that's just me."
The presence of so many intrepid amphibians is a sign of a healthy environment that's worth paying attention to. But most of our visitors never venture outside to pay attention to it.
We're working to change that, right now.
Look out the windows as you ride our escalators this fall and you'll see a woodland construction site as we cull invasive species and damaged trees to make way for a naturalized pathway with a boardwalk, a pergola, a large "bird's nest" and a carved pine tree slide. We're also building an exhibit using a piece of the Maple Leaf Forever tree to display the process of tree decay while we transplant native shrubs and trees and plant more than 100 new trees.
It will be called the Cohon Family Nature Escape, and combined with activities like our guided nature walks and birdfeeder watch, it's going to be a great new way to check out our backyard.
Postscript: Fate of the toadlet rescued by Leo? He took it outside to the forest, rinsed it in rainwater, and set it free.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
There's this little grey bird that's been bugging me for years.
I see it hopping around shrubs and trees, making little grey bird noises, when I go for walks in forests outside the city and I wonder what it is. But being the urban guy I am, my personal classification system for birds to this point has basically been:
- Robins.
- Seagulls. (Man, those things are irritating.)
- Everything else, except hawks. Hawks are cool.
The little grey bird until this point has fit squarely in the 'everything else, except hawks' category. Linnaeus, I am not.
But this has all changed, thanks to a visit to a remarkable place: the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York.
Five years ago, I wrote a letter of support on behalf of the Ontario Science Centre for the Lab to get a research grant to create software that could over time "learn" to help non-experts quickly and easily identify birds they see.
They got the grant, and the result, after years of work, is Merlin.
Merlin is, in a word, amazing. If you have an iPad, iPod or iPhone, you can download it right now.
I went down to Ithaca earlier this summer as part of the Merlin advisory team to meet with researchers and biology, computer science and user testing/evaluation experts to talk about what's next for Merlin. More about that intriguing subject in a moment.
First, let's go into the Sapsucker Woods.
The woods are a 230-acre slice of forested, ferny, swampy heaven beside the Lab.
I wandered along a sun-dappled trail in my bare feet for the simple pleasure of feeling the wood chips, had a seat on a bench by a pond, and moments later saw my little grey nemesis hopping around in some nearby shrubbery.
I pulled out my Merlin-equipped iPad. The app captured my location and the date, and then posed three simple questions to determine:
- The size of the bird I saw (helpful silhouettes - including one of a robin - made this super easy)
- The colour of the bird (with "paint chips" displayed to aid my choice)
- What the bird was doing when I saw it (eating at a feeder, sitting on a fence, etc.)
Then it showed me a photo. Was this my bird?
It was, exactly. And so I at last was able put a name to my nemesis: Gray Catbird. I clicked a button to hear its Gray Catbird song. The little bird in the shrub sang back! It felt like magic and I felt like John James Audobon.
I'm not alone: Merlin has been downloaded more than 180,000 times in a little over six months.
I think Merlin's stunning simplicity and user-friendliness is playing a big part in this. If Merlin was a person, she'd be a pal who knows a pile of stuff, but doesn't rub your nose in it. Rather the opposite of most of the printed field guides I've tried to use, which seem to assume you already know what you're looking for.
Merlin's success has also been propelled by the dramatic rise of smartphones and tablets equipped with GPS that occurred during its development. Knowing where you are and when you're looking helps the software rapidly zero in on the bird you're most likely looking at using the 400 North American species in the current app's expanding database. Every time someone clicks "This is my Bird!" the response is recorded to improve Merlin's accuracy.
So where does Merlin go from here? The trio of Lab leaders - Jessie Barry, Rick Bonney and Miyoku Chu - who I dubbed "The Bird Ninjas" when we took a hike and they identified ten species in 120 seconds without needing any help from Merlin, have some ideas about that.
Having Merlin identify birds using photos snapped by users and by sound, since we hear way more birds than we see (like a Shazaam for bird calls) and adding a "My Merlin" function so users can store what they identify in a personal "life list" are all in the mix, as is building the Merlin database to identify birds beyond North America. We're trying Merlin out with visitors at the Science Centre this summer as well.
But what excites me the most is the idea of our everyday devices helping, even driving, us to become more aware and informed about the environment around us - and just maybe, care about it more. So what about a Merlin for plants, rocks, insects? Like the Gray Catbird, there are more than a few other things out there I can't identify. And that kind of bugs me.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
Take a breath. A deep, deep breath. Now, hold it.
Keep reading while you keep that air inside. The point of this will become clear very soon.
We're opening our first new exhibition in seven years this December. It's called The Human Edge. There are many remarkable exhibit experiences in it. But one of them in particular has really captured me and I've been thinking about why that is.
Still holding your breath? Excellent. Keep doing it. Let's see how far you can go, ok?
If you love to swim, enjoy whispers of current passing your ears, or let's say you absolutely hate the water: I suspect this particular exhibit will hook you, too. And even if you can't get to the Science Centre, you can feel the experience – right here and right now.
I'm serious. Just keep holding your breath. Read on.
The diver in the photo is Vancouver's Mandy-Rae Krack. She holds the women's world record for diving to a depth of 88 metres on a single breath.
A team at the Centre decided 18 months ago to try to give people the experience of diving with Mandy-Rae without getting wet.
There are three secrets behind how they've pulled it off that you will not learn by coming to the Centre – although I very much hope you can do that. You can only learn them by reading on. And please continue, if you can, to hold your breath.
Secret One: A traffic jam
Oddly enough, the idea for taking visitors on an imaginary journey underwater was born in a car trapped in rush hour on Toronto's Gardiner Expressway. To pass the time, the driver, senior designer Joe Sponder, turned on the radio. He heard the voice of Mandy-Rae Krack on the CBC, talking about what it's like to do a single-breath dive.
Joe was transfixed. Through the power of Mandy-Rae's voice alone, he could see it, feel it – the arc of a powerful surface dive, the water getting darker, pressure compressing the chest with each passing metre downward. The Gardiner faded away.
"I wondered if we could do something really simple, but really powerful, to give people that experience," he says. The key would be Mandy-Rae's voice, narrating her unique achievement pushing beyond what was thought to be humanly possible, step by step, as it happened. Which is where the holes come in.
Secret Two: 33,000 tiny holes
Joe sketched the design for a structure that has ended up like a huge, hollow teardrop. Inside the teardrop, visitors enter an immersive space filled with shimmering, shifting light and sounds that evoke a dive deep beneath the waves.
"I saw the poetry in Joe's approach and I worked to realize that," said David Poholko.
David's a drafter and detailer with more than two decades of experience, which includes work on designs for buildings capable of weathering the climate of Nunavut. He saw Joe's design as a small building – a theatre, basically. And this theatre would need an amazing sound system.
"It has to transport people from being in an exhibit hall to being 100 feet underwater as soon as they cross the threshold."
Speakers jutting from the interior wall like lollipops are placed so that when a visitor is positioned between them, Mandy-Rae's voice will feel like it's coming from inside their heads. And the upper walls are precisely perforated in some 33,000 places – just enough to be transparent to sound while maintaining enough solid surface to reflect projected light. And there's a clever fringe benefit: the holes keep the air circulating.
I said to David I thought it was a shame visitors wouldn't notice this remarkable design in the dark. He just smiled.
"The point is they're not supposed to notice it."
Secret Three: The Murakoshi Bolt
Which brings us to the final secret, which will likely go unremarked as well. But without Murakoshi bolts, the "Single Breath" exhibit quite literally could not have come together. And we can thank Norm Johnson for that.
(By the way, if you are still holding your breath at this point, I would very much like to meet you because you are clearly awesome. For everyone else, please enjoy that explosive exhale and the next of the 20,000 or so breaths you will take today.)
Norm came to the Science Centre as a cabinet maker back in 1989. He understands wood.
So he knew that to realize the curves of the teardrop envisioned by Joe and detailed by David, he needed a way to hold its wood panels in place, while giving quick access to the guts beneath to fix what will inevitably need fixing after serving a million visitors a year.
"This was a hard sell for me," he says, pointing to the head of one of the 500 or so screw-on brass fasteners glinting on the skin of the towering teardrop that's 18-feet, four inches tall. "I fought for these."
Still holding your breath? Ok, let it out!
(Just breathe - you've earned it. I'll tell you why in a few more paragraphs.)
Norm calls himself a tradesman, but he gazes at his tower with the critical gaze of an artist.
The top, he says, is twisted ever so slightly out of alignment with the bottom – about a quarter of an inch. Pointing out this utterly invisible flaw seems to make him as happy as his success in constructing the curves.
"The last thing I want to see is someone as creative as Joe sitting on his hands," said Norm of his efforts. "I want him to be free, because that makes me more creative. "
One last secret
Assuming the average adult reading speed of 300 words a minute, if you read all the way to the point where I told you it was okay to let out your breath, you matched the two minutes and forty-eight seconds of Mandy-Rae Krack's world-record, single-breath dive.
Just remember you did it while calmly gazing at a screen and Mandy-Rae did it while kicking with a giant monofin down through chilly waters at pressures that compressed her lungs to the size of tennis balls.
The record for holding your breath while sitting still? That's 11 minutes and 35 seconds, set by France's Stephane Mifsud. Take a new, even deeper breath and read a few more blogs without exhaling – you'll just about make it.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
Let's do a thought experiment. You're visiting a science museum and you see a sign telling you to walk only on the black squares of a black and white checkerboard hallway.
Would you do as you're told?
For more than 20 years we've asked that question at the Ontario Science Centre and watched what our visitors did. A remarkable majority - kids and grown-ups alike - have tiptoed from black to black to black.
It's fascinating to watch. Amusing, too. But it always gives me a chill.
Because at the end of that hallway stands an exhibit about the intriguing question of how and why humans follow orders that's tied to arguably the most famous and controversial psychological experiment ever performed on human beings.
Psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale University in 1961 recruited unwitting participants as "teachers" who were instructed to give increasingly strong electric shocks to "learners" for each wrong answer they gave to a series of questions. There were no actual shocks and the "learners" were part of Milgram's team, but the "teachers" were told to keep upping the voltage even as they heard screams and pleas to stop from "learners" hidden behind a screen.
Milgram reported some two-thirds of participants administered potentially "fatal" shocks of 450 volts and that every single participant administered shocks of up to 300 volts. The horrifying findings were received by a shocked public as evidence that any of us - all of us, in fact - are readily capable of ignoring our conscience and performing brutal acts in obedience to authority.
For decades, Milgram's experiment has been cited as an explanation for the Nazi Holocaust and a cautionary tale to keep us vigilant when it comes to giving power to authority.
I've been thinking a lot lately about our Milgram exhibit.
Right now, it's in pieces and stored in a trailer in our parking lot as we complete the work on our new Human Edge exhibition.
I'm anxious to get it back. Here's why.
- After five decades, Milgram continues to provoke and inspire current science.
Australian psychologist Gina Perry last year published a book called Behind the Shock Machine. She re-examined Milgram's data and concluded that who obeyed the order to administer shocks, who didn't, and why was not as black and white as people generally thought.
In a fascinating interview, Perry points out less well-known variations of the experiment performed by Milgram showed that if the "learner" was in the same room as the "teacher", subjects refused to give shocks more frequently. If they had to hold the down the hand of the "learner" on a metal plate to give the shock, they were even more resistant. They were also likely to rebel if there were other teachers present who refused.
In fact, University of Exeter psychology professor Alex Haslam - who also did fresh analysis of Milgram's data - says a direct order to give a shock met with less obedience. Participants were most likely to give shocks when they believed they were advancing a noble cause - in this case the cause of science. Conclusion? He thinks we should be more afraid of enthusiastic believers than obedient robots.
These ongoing debates enrich and enliven our understanding of Milgram's experiment and we need that.
- Real life is one big Milgram experiment.
Check any news feed, on pretty much any day, and you'll see the evidence - and not just in the torture chambers where you'd expect to find it. For example, consider a story that broke this fall about male and female freshmen at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, who, as part of their frosh-week festivities chanted a cheer endorsing non-consensual, under-age sex. Sexually assaulting children, in other words.
I suspect few, particularly the women, would have shouted those words in the street as individuals, away from the context of their university and the implicit authority of their student leaders. Look at the footage and you can't help but think about what you might do yourself in a similar situation and about Milgram's experiment, which will remain one of a kind.
- There will never be another study like Milgram's done by a reputable scientist. No chance.
Modern research ethics around informed consent make it impossible. That's a good thing. People aren't lab rats and some participants interviewed by Perry were still emotionally traumatized decades after the Milgram experiment.
Having said that, I'm profoundly grateful for Milgram's work. Because its message matters. And because we need to feel that chill.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
Weeks have passed, but I'm still wondering what the heck was up with the ants.
I was on an early morning stroll around my neighbourhood before heading into work. I was looking down at the sidewalk, which I like to do because I often notice interesting stuff on the ground – lost toys, a purple sock, a single, high-heeled shoe, nickels: you get the idea.
On that particular morning, every half block or so for a dozen blocks, boiling up from the cracks like rice in a pot, were swarms of little brown ants.
The phenomenon was so arresting, I grabbed my iPad and took a picture so I'd remember it.
I nosed around the internet and talked to David Sugarman, a biologist who works at the Science Centre and quickly realized that ant swarms (the kind I was looking at were most likely "pavement" ants, aka Tetramorium caespitum) aren't that mysterious or unusual.
When a colony runs low on food sources, gets too big for its burrow, or needs some mating with the Queen to happen, it throws a moving party.
But what tugs at my brain is the simultaneous timing of the thing: what was going on in the micro-environment of my east end Toronto 'hood on that particular morning to trigger a whole bunch of colonies to swarm at the same time?
Were they genetically linked? Were they signalling each other? Was it happening in other neighbourhoods, or even other cities, right then?
When something tugs at your brain it's just natural to ask some questions, make some observations, form an opinion about what might be going on.
We all do it. But when groups of us start doing it together and sharing it, it gets really interesting. It can turn into a powerful force of citizen science.
Some journalism students from the University of Western Ontario recently came into the Hot Zone at the Science Centre to talk about citizen science based on the research they did for a seven part news series.
Citing citizen-science observation of locust outbreaks dating back 3,000 years to China's Shang dynasty, they noted that citizen science is in fact the root of all modern science.
What's new is that thanks to the rise of internet and computer technology, it has never been easier to become a citizen scientist. You can log in from your kitchen to start classifying newly-discovered galaxies or explore the ocean floor in the company of hundreds of thousands of other citizen scientists worldwide. It's pretty cool.
Also cool is the link between citizen science and a healthy democracy – the more of us who are watching and participating, the less likely we are to be misled by the interests of a few.
Curious? Start with citizen science clearinghouses such as Cornell University's Citizen Science Central or Zooniverse to find a match that suits you.
As for me, I'm checking out the School of Ants. Looks like they could use some Canadian data.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
I often can't remember where I put my keys. But I recall with startling clarity – down to the blue glow of the screen and the smell of the indoor-outdoor carpet in my high-school buddy Joe's basement rec room – the first time I played Pong.
I can hear the 'bip…bip…bip' sound of that dot of light bouncing back and forth between the paddles and feel again the sweaty-palmed, fervent conviction that if I twitched the paddle just as it made contact, I could spin the ball to baffle my opponent slouched beside me on the chesterfield.
It was 1976 and the future had arrived. A computer game! On TV!
And so it was with a Proustian thrill that I met the entrance experience in a travelling exhibition we're hosting at the Science Centre this summer called Game On 2.0.
It was Pong. Glorious Pong.
It's a hoot to eavesdrop on the multigenerational memory-swapping that goes on in families as they play. But I was considering more than memories as I pin-balled through 100+ gaming stations in the show that span 60 years of video gaming history.
I was thinking about Generation G.
Generation G is what author and entrepreneur Gabe Zicherman calls the millions of "millenials" born after 1980 who play videogames as their primary form of entertainment – a generation he thinks is getting measurably smarter as a result.
I'm skeptical about that, frankly. Measuring human intelligence is a slippery thing. We tend to measure what we value and value what we measure and both those things change over time. Having said that, I think having conversations about it is worthwhile.
And I'm very intrigued by how video games have started "game-ifying" life beyond our arcades, exhibit halls and living rooms and what that might come to mean. It could affect every generation, G included.
In my new car, for example, there's a dashboard display that gives real-time feedback about how much fuel I'm burning as I step on the gas. Ease off and the number drops. It makes me feel like I'm winning – like I'm taking care of my planet like a Tamogotchi.
Game designer Jane McGonigal says a better future for all of us lies in harnessing this kind of behaviour. Humans collectively invest more than three billion hours every week playing online games, she says, games that reward collaboration, tenacious problem-solving and adaptability.
Channel that gaming energy through initiatives like "World Without Oil" or "Superbetter" and we'll be a step closer to her goal: making it as easy (maybe as fun) to save ourselves in real life as it is in a video game.
It's a long way from Pong and a basement rec room. But just think of the memories we'd have if it worked, even a little.
Have games made your life better? How? Tell us about it.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
If you're reading this, I'm guessing you might care about what the future holds for science centres. So it's worth noticing what happened at an odd little gathering in the desert town of Albuquerque, New Mexico this summer.
Sixty people from around the world came together to talk about new kinds of experiences we'll be creating for and with visitors by 2020. After three days, for me it shook down into three big ideas.
- Reality will get "real-er"
Emerging computer technologies will increasingly augment "real" experiences. For example, you play with a ball floating in a moving column of air and see a simultaneous virtual overlay on your phone, tablet or a screen that reveals air currents and areas of high and low pressure to give you deeper sense of how the Bernoulli principle works.
Larger-scale projections onto the surface of big, mysterious artifacts such as steam engines, water fountain pumps, bridges, even whole buildings, will reveal and animate what's happening inside. What you can't see, you'll touch through "haptic" interfaces that let you feel the surface of artifacts like cloth or sculpture that are too fragile for handling, or get touch-based coaching through your clothing on the proper position to swing a bat or dance Gangnam Style.
A blind PhD student from North Carolina State University named Sina Barham showed us, or rather played us, a map on a tablet computer that he tapped and talked with to explore Wyoming. When Sina said "Hey, buddy, centre that" and "Now, take me to the capital of the United States" and the map responded in natural language, it felt a step closer to Star Trek. "Hearing" data - from graphs of wind speed to the colours on a space image - is about more than accessibility for those with disabilities: it opens up a new way of experiencing information for all of us.
And the tech can make room for visitors to contribute with delightful results: Jun Fujiwara's art invention that collects sound (from passing footsteps or giggles) in a bottle, then plays it back as danceable music when the bottle's uncorked, had us talking, and laughing, at the possibilities.
- "Stuff" will get "smarter"
By 2020, sensors in our exhibits and buildings will broadcast when and where it's busy (the Rain Forest is empty and the snake's awake! KidSpark is jammed up with school groups until 2!) and ask if you'd like to broadcast your visit with your "likes" and "dislikes". Windows will double as multi-touch screens to talk about what you can see outside and be an interface to upload and download your own creations. It's part of what Rick Smolan, photographer and author of "The Human Face of Big Data", calls our planet's development of its own "nervous system" through its growing billions of digital sensors. Early example? Fourteen seconds before the massive Japan earthquake of 2011 hit, bullet trains and factories were halted by linked sensors, saving lives.
By 2020, we'll be living in a world that goes beyond the internet and social media to living with an omnipresent, always-on, digital layer of experience and information.
"One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible."
Science fiction author William Gibson said that in 2007. In Albuquerque, it already felt like old news.
- What visitors expect will change (or not)
Here's the thing: you can't see truly disruptive technology coming (which is why we hedged our bets with predictions that looked out seven short years). While teens at a science centre in 2013 may roll their eyes when they can't get wifi, maybe this generation of "digital natives" described by Don Tapscott, will actually hunger more for the physical and low-tech - something tangible in an ocean of digital marketing messages. Will all those sensors that read and react to our facial expressions, anticipate our needs and cluster us together in "like" groups come to dominate the few open public spaces we have left? Stunt our abilities to overcome obstacles and innovate by making everything too easy and available?
How do science centres keep creating spaces for surprise, wonder, the unexpected and uncomfortable? This is where it gets really interesting, this wrestling for what's good versus just what's current, or coming.
We closed with a promise to email our 2013 thoughts in 2020 (assuming that particular technology's still around) to see how we did. And we looked at a fascinating cultural artifact from 1993 - a series of AT&T commercials that predicted, among other things, that in the future we'd be sending faxes from the beach. It's worth a look.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
When the kid with the diamond stud in his ear pulled the weird-looking rock out of his pocket, I rediscovered — one more time — why it's worth having science centres.
It was March Break and I had put on a lab coat and headed out to the exhibit floor to help out. We welcome somewhere around 65,000 people during the Break, so everybody on staff gets out of their office.
I was chatting with a crowd of visitors by an escalator when the kid - he looked to be nine or so - approached.
His rock was reddish and looked a little melted, with shallow depressions like little thumbprints. The kid thought it might be a meteorite and he said he had been walking around talking to people about it, but couldn't get a definitive answer.
I told him I wasn't sure, either.
But I told him it was promising that his rock seemed to have iron in it and the magnetic attraction he mentioned was intriguing. I encouraged him to keep searching and suggested that he come back when our new Rock 'N Minerals shop opened in order to talk with our volunteers.
We talked some more, but others were crowding forward with questions of their own, so I closed by suggesting that when he got to high school, he could consider coming to the Centre's Science School.
The kid looked at me like I'd just confirmed that Santa Claus was alive and well and jamming in a band with the Easter Bunny. Then he grinned, and left.
Here's my point.
If you type "Have I found a meteorite?" into Google, you'll get about 6,550,000 results in 0.30 seconds.
There is no shortage of facts out there. "Answers" are everywhere.
But coming to a Science Centre with a rock in his pocket and his caregivers gave a questing kid something that I think is more valuable than a fast answer from the Web or final ruling from an expert.
The kid got inquiry and discussion. He got a respectful hearing. He showed those close to him something interesting about himself. He got exciting new ideas to consider. He learned, I think, that asking questions can be at least as much fun as getting answers. In short, while he didn't get a final ruling on his science question, he did get a science experience.
I hope I run into him again. Cool kid.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
Before the awards and the media interviews and the admiring crowds, the letters after your name and the trophies on your shelf, there is something else that comes first.
Watching Adam Noble on a stage at the Ontario Science Centre this week to receive one particular award – the 2013 Weston Youth Innovation Award – you are reminded of what that thing is.
It's the power to create a picture in your head. To imagine. And then, through application of bloody-minded persistence, to transform the picture in your head into something real. To innovate.
This power has driven Adam on a quest that began with simply looking at the water of a lake near his home in Lakefield, Ontario as a young teenager to where he stands today at age 18: as a young researcher who looks past visible surfaces and imagines something new.
"I noticed the water quality in Clear Lake was deteriorating and I was curious about it," Adam was saying at a small reception just before the speeches started. His voice simultaneously conveys childish excitement and understated, adult control. His imposing 6 foot 2 inch frame is topped with the open face and blushing cheeks of a boy.
Adam went looking for a "marker" for water quality and found it in the oddball microscopic form of a creature that in a sense straddles the plant and animal kingdoms - Euglena. "I thought it was pretty cool looking", he grinned.
Research experts advised against Euglena, recommending that Adam use something more readily available and accepted, such as a kind of water flea called Daphnia . But Adam stuck with his choice, painstakingly devised a system to grow Euglena himself, and then noticed - and imagined - something remarkable.
Euglena were able to absorb a particular kind of contaminant invisible to the naked eye - tiny particles of silver called nanosilver that are used as antibacterial agents in products ranging from cosmetics to sports equipment and toys. Could Euglena be more than a marker? Adam imagined so. And hundreds of hours of lab work and collaboration with mentors later, he has a patent application for a prototype biofilter that uses Euglena to remove nanosilver from wastewater and the attention of environmentalists and industrialists with an eye on the healthy market value of retrieved silver alike.
He also has won multiple science fair awards and a trip with fellow students to participate in a programme for promising young scientists at the 2012 Nobel Prize Awards in Sweden last December, where he danced with a princess. And now his latest honour, the Weston Youth Innovation Award.
We'll be watching with interest to see where the pictures in Adam Noble's head will take him - and just maybe the rest of us - next.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
I really like cheese sandwiches. And like most of us, I'd love some help with making better decisions and being a generally smarter and nicer person.
So you can imagine my excitement when, while contemplating lunch at my desk, I suddenly tuned in to a TED talk that I had running on my monitor.
Neuroscientist Molly Crockett was saying that she had discovered the secret to successful decision making and it was this:
"A cheese sandwich. That's right. According to scientists, a cheese sandwich is the solution to all your tough decisions. How do I know? I'm the scientist who did the study."
Cheese is a source of an amino acid called tryptophan, which is a building block for a brain chemical called serotonin. Serotonin is linked with mood and judgement - more serotonin is, generally speaking, a good thing. Chocolate contains tryptophan. Excellent news, yes?
Here's the thing, though.
In Dr. Crockett's study, test subjects consumed a drink that lowered their tryptophan and were subsequently found to be more likely to react vengefully when treated unfairly, even if it was against their best interests. This is not exactly the same thing as announcing that cheese is a wonder drug.
Dr. Crockett's point is the press and people with an interest in selling more cheese or other "brain enhancing" drinks and foods stretched her findings too far. In this case, the cheese became baloney. She was speaking about the wonders of cheese with a sarcastic tongue firmly planted in her scientist cheek.
Aside from making me laugh out loud (and a little hungry) Dr. Crockett reminded me how challenging it can be for scientist and non-scientist alike to sort cheese from baloney when it comes to making sense of the science we're told about.
There are some 28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals out there, collectively publishing around 1.9 million articles a year.
That's a lot of science. That's a new article every 16 seconds or so.
So it helps if you have some basic guidelines for spotting science baloney before you swallow it. Anna Relyea, the Science Centre's Director of Strategic Communications, sent around a great blog post from TEDx offering just that.
I also like Dr. Michael Shermer's 10-point "Baloney Detection Kit".
Finally, I had a chat about all of this with Dr. Hooley McLaughlin, who is the Science Centre's chief science officer.
After swapping a few stories about some notable brushes with baloney at the Science Centre, such as the hysteria around Y2K and cold fusion, we settled on a handy list of three simple things to watch out for.
- The person making the claim is convinced they're right.
As Hooley put it, "When somebody is sure, the big flag goes up." This includes, by the way, scientists who, in debunking pseudoscience, say that science itself is ultimate truth. Science is about ceaseless questioning, not certainty.
- It sounds too good to be true (or even just really good).
True breakthroughs in science - like say, figuring out that washing your hands reduces the spread of disease-causing germs, are exceedingly rare. If you hear the word "breakthrough", get skeptical.
- It's associated with human health, nationalism, or a popular movement.
A staggering amount of science news - from diets, to government-funded studies on oil reserves, to new fad theories on raising children - falls into this category.
What kinds of science activate your baloney detector? Let us know.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
A few steps beyond the happy tumbling of high-velocity toddlers in a corner of our KidSpark experience area, behind an unmarked grey metal door, lies a silent world of wonders.
It's the Ontario Science Centre's artifacts collection storage facility.
Our attic.
Like any great attic, it features moldering cardboard boxes and mysterious objects, a dry, papery smell and a thrilling aura of trespass and secrets.
And like any great attic, it's not easy to get into and no one knows for sure what all's in there. (Although we do know that we're in possession of a device that a fashionable lady once upon a time hung around her neck to attract fleas.
I'm not making this up.)
Along with the handwritten documentation we've discovered in crumbling ledger books, we have about 2,000 objects in our attic catalogued in a computerized database, from antique bee smokers to a 1767-edition plant catalogue by Carl Linnaeus.
Our curator Cara Culkin figures that's a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands of pieces we've got stored. But given there are boxes in here that we haven't opened in 20 years, it's also pretty much a wild guess.
We're trying to get more of the wonders from our attic out on our floor where people can enjoy them. There's the Burgh Castle Giant that recently moved into the Hot Zone and just outside the Weston Family Innovation Centre, there are a series of kitchen gadgets, including a toaster from the 1920s that reminds me a of a Dalek from Dr. Who.
In the coming year, we'll be getting the hidden treasures out of the attic and putting them where visitors can enjoy them. We'll be transforming a few of our empty stairwells with cases populated with objects chosen to intrigue.
I'll be pushing for the display of that fashionable flea catcher, pictured here around Ms Culkin's neck.
Back in the 1700s, it didn't matter how rich you were or how fancy your clothes, you might find yourself getting nibbled by a member of Pulex irritans and this vessel, formed from ivory and containing a sweetly-attractive and sticky substance, drew the little biters in to their doom.
It's a very unusual artifact. So unusual, Cara says, that the august experts of London's Victoria and Albert Museum at first assured us when we contacted them about it back in the late 1960s that there was no such thing.
But exist it does. Along with some other interesting objects in the slide show below.
Our never-displayed gun collection includes muskets stamped with "DC" for Dominion of Canada
This ivory figure dating from 1875 was used by Victorian female patients too shy to disrobe in their doctor's office to point to the body part in question.
This Chinese cannon was used for launching fireworks.
Which of the items pictured here would you most want to know more about? What should come down from our attic? Let us know.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
When I look up at the night sky (usually squinting past the glare of sodium streetlights) I am sometimes transfixed by a childhood memory.
It's a totem - an embodiment of the noble and the intrepid, a shining exemplar of a probable future.
I am speaking, of course, of Major Matt Mason.
Major Matt was a rubber action figure toy that came out in the late 1960s. He had wires embedded in his space-suited limbs that enabled him to bend his legs and arms to grip the handles of plastic space sleds.
I found Major Matt so compelling that even when his wires broke and left him frozen in the shape of a floppy starfish, I kept having adventures with him. Sometimes — even in the midst of battles on the Planet of the Borrowed Barbies — I'd pause, lost in a daydream where the dust of my yard was rendered alien and lit by a strange sun.
Time has passed, and the only time I feel kinship with Major Matt these days is when I look in the mirror after an unfortunate haircut. The education-through-osmosis of working at the Ontario Science Centre has been a bucket of Martian ice water dumped on childhood daydreams of humans exploring space.
Case in point: a podcast we posted recently featuring Science Centre astronomer Jesse Rogerson.
Jesse explains that the Voyager 1 probe that launched in 1977 has taken 35 years to travel 18 billion kilometres and it's just now reaching the edge of our solar system.
It's travelling 60,000 kilometres per hour, which is insanely fast, really. But even at that speed, it would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star four light years away. If we could somehow increase our top speed tenfold, using technology that's inconceivable at the moment, we could get there in…seven centuries or so.
This totally bums me out.
With numbers like these, dreaming about exploring space feels like a big waste of time.
But happily, I recently found three things to warm the ice water and revive my inner Major Matt:
- The Space Hall at the Ontario Science Centre.
- A travelling exhibition we've been hosting created by the American Museum of Natural History called Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration (it closes January 1, 2013).
- A very neat guy named Michael Shara.
Let's go in reverse order (like a countdown!) and start with Michael.
Dr. Shara is Curator in the Department of Astrophysics at AMNH, whose research frequently employs the Hubble Space Telescope. I called him up and in a heartbeat he diagnosed my problem.
"You're caught in a particular place on the curve of travel that isn't favourable."
Think about Moore's Law, Dr. Shara suggested. That's the observation that computer speed doubles every 18 months or so. Travel speed? Same idea.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus' ships were puttering along at 5 kph. A little over five centuries later, we're moving through space so much faster that Dr. Shara predicts 500 years from now we'll be blasting along at half the speed of light - about 540 million kph - and that's fast enough for interstellar travel (especially with the longer lifespans we'll be enjoying by then) .
Those of us around now may be at that too-early place on the travel curve, but…our species is going to get there. No doubt in Dr. Shara's mind about that at all. In fact, he says, people under the age of 50 will have an affordable shot at buying a ticket to travel into space in their lifetime.
So after I hung up the phone, I walked over to Beyond Planet Earth and looked at the sexy prototypes of form-fitting, next-generation spacesuits and the life-size model of the Curiosity Rover that's currently driving around on the surface of Mars. Then I went over to the Space Hall and in a dark corner of the exhibit looked at an image from the Hubble space telescope of 10,000 galaxies.
I thought about my dreams with Major Matt, then thought a bit deeper - about the future reality those dreams predict. And this, quite suddenly in the dark, felt more than good enough.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
If you're reading this, chances are you've heard the term "cloud" applied to the internet.
As in: "All your stuff is out there, forever safe in THE CLOUD! Your documents! Your music! Embarrassing pictures of your cat! Emails to Mom! How fabulous is that?"
And you know, it is pretty fabulous, this idea that we're cradled by an invisible cloud of our "stuff" that thanks to the internet we can retrieve and share anytime, anywhere, with anybody, through a smartphone or laptop.
But a team of researchers who recently visited our Hot Zone parted the clouds, as it were, to present a deeper picture of the internet. It's fascinating. And a bit unsettling.
If you're at a computer at the Ontario Science Centre and you visit the webpage for the San Francisco Art Institute, here's how your data travels - and who spies on it along the way.
The team, led by Andrew Clement at the University of Toronto with Nancy Patterson of OCAD University uses Google Earth and some creative programming to track and reveal the routes your "packets" of data take as they travel around the internet in a project called IXmaps.
Their project shows the internet is much more like the much-mocked "series of tubes" referred to by the late Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens (and subsequently spoofed for your dancing pleasure) than some amorphous and benevolently neutral fog machine.
It's a physical thing. Your "stuff" travels through buildings and cables and computers and those buildings and cables and computers are owned by corporations and sometimes snooped on by governments.
In fact, you can be at home in Toronto and decide to check out the Hockey Hall of Fame, which is also in Toronto, and your request will bounce first through Chicago, one of some 20 cities in the U.S. suspected of hosting a National Security Agency internet surveillance post.
Seeing this sparked a lot of questions from visitors – and that's exactly what we're trying to do as a place for dialogue about current science: provoke questions, get people engaged and hungry to know more.
In fact, science centres like ours are increasingly serving as a place where researchers with a desire (or a funding requirement) to communicate what they're up to can meet the public face to face.
In some cases, as in our Research Live program, visitors can participate directly in the research itself.
What questions does the research of IXmaps raise for you? What's an area of research you'd like to learn more about? Tell us what you think.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
Science centres typically don't concern themselves much with the delicate business of studying and conserving priceless artifacts. We make stuff that kids can whale on. When stuff breaks, we fix it
or toss it.
Or hoard it in our offices, because, hey, you never know…
So what do we do when we've got two priceless, 1,400 year-old skeletons – leading experts tell us they're so fragile and unique most museums would hide them away to protect them – and we need to move them to make way for a new exhibition?
If they drop, or jiggle, or somebody breathes on them funny, they could literally turn to dust. The experts from the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum tell us they have no idea – seriously, no idea – how to move them safely.
It's an interesting problem.
And it's what we faced a few weeks ago when it came time to move the skeleton of the Burgh Castle Giant – more about the intriguing science tales told by the bones of this guy in a moment – from our Human Body Hall.
What we did with a combination of chopped up Haz-Mat suits, Christmas wrapping fluff and really big cardboard tubes broke some new ground around here. And it points to some new thinking.
First, a bit of back story.
We got the skeletons in 1967 and '68, well before we opened in 1969. Back then, many believed the Ontario Science Centre would be a traditional, amazing-objects-in-glass-cases-style museum. The thinking that created a hands-on, interactive experience trailblazer instead (with stuff for kids to whale on) was just hitting stride.
The skeletons date back to the 7th century and were discovered near the ruins of a Roman fort in England's Norfolk County. One of is from a man of roughly average size for his time (which is kind of little, actually). The other belonged to someone who towered more than 2.2 metres (7 feet, four inches) tall. That's the Burgh Castle giant.
The giant's bones are, scientifically speaking, really cool. He's got healed fractures on his forearms, his upper right arm, his right shin and his right foot. He's got a hole in his upper right arm that looks like he got hit with a bullet. He's got ridges – big ones – on the bones in his thighs and arms. The bones in his skull haven't fused completely.
And when we got ready to move him, we found an old packing peanut stuffed between his vertebrae.
The skull bones reveal the giant died around 40, in an era when most people didn't make it past 25. The big ridges on the thighs and arms indicate he had strong muscles. The hole actually came from a bone infection – the breaks from falls or violence. Farmer or fighter, the giant was a tough guy who lived a hard life. He also likely suffered from a pituitary disease that made him big.
And the packing peanut? Possible evidence of at least one less-than-formal strategy we employed at some point to protect and support those priceless bones.
The giant and his companion have proved over decades even in our hands-on, whale-away experience halls, a priceless, hands-off, "real thing" can be profoundly powerful, even inspirational. As our anthropology-schooled curator Cara Culkin puts it: "There's the hands-on. Artifacts are the brains-on."
And so these days, we're looking at our surprisingly-large collection of historical artifacts in a new way. We're pulling more and more "real things" out of our secret storage room and getting them out on the floor. More about that in a future column.
In the meantime, click through this slide show to see how we accomplished the delicate move.
First, Cara chopped up Haz-Mat suits made of slippery Tyvek, then sewed and wrapped the material around the bones to protect and hold them all together.
Next, each skeleton was encased inside rigid sonotubes typically used as molds for concrete columns, filled with the puffy polyester you can use for wrapping presents.
The tubes were loaded onto dollies and pushed very slowly out to the floor before we opened.
We re-suspended the skeletons very carefully to keep those bones inline.
We unwrapped the Giant to discover a gift - he'd survived his trip unscathed.
Our skeletons in their new HotZone home.
Now that the Giant – along with his companion and a third modern-era skeleton – are safely and temporarily hanging in our HotZone area, we're interested in your take on a couple of key questions:
What would you most want to know when you look at these skeletons? What is the most interesting thing about them? Do you have any expertise that could teach us more?
Your answers will help guide how we talk about the skeletons in their final destination: our new "Human Edge" exhibition hall, which is now in development. Drop us a line.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
The Wednesday before the Curiosity Rover was scheduled to land on Mars, I went into the kitchen in the back labs of the Science Centre to microwave my leftover chicken – and walked smack into a debate on the nature of the universe
One of our Hosts – those folks in the lab coats you see on our floor – who also happens to be an astronomer, and one of our researcher/programmers, who also happens to be an astronomer, were talking about what it would really mean when we got the signal from Curiosity that it had touched down.
Here's the thing, said Rajiv the Host: it would take 14 minutes for that signal to travel to Earth. In earlier views of the universe, the event of the landing and the event of us getting the news (yay!) about the event of the landing would be understood as purely separate events, separated by time. But seen through a lens of our current understanding (which is based on Einstein's relativity theory), there is only NOW. So the fact that we get the signal 14 minutes after the event is neither here nor there – for us, touchdown is NOW because the signal is NOW. We only perceive it as later, and so we're, um, wrong.
Got it? Me neither.
So, I handed Rajiv a piece of paper towel from beside the sink to draw a picture of what he meant for Jesse, the researcher/programmer astronomer. (Jesse was looking puzzled, which made me feel much better). It looked like this:
The dot on the right – labelled "some event" – is the moment Curiosity lands on Mars from a Martian perspective. The dot on the left – labelled "Now" – is the moment we receive the signal. From our perspective, then, until we get the signal, Curiosity has NOT landed on the surface. Better?
This just does my head in. It was like the time I suddenly, finally, got it that the music from my radio and the sunlight warming my face and the x-rays showing that stupid cavity in my tooth are the same thing: it's only that the electromagnetic waves that they are made of are vibrating at different frequencies. It is all light. All of it. Holy moley. This did my head in, and it still does. It makes me feel like I'm standing on a precipice above a giant, shimmering pool filled with fizzing champagne, about to fall in.
My sense is that this happens a lot to people who think about the things science can make you think about. And it can happen at a Science Centre even when the main thing on your mind is microwaving your chicken leftovers.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
Look up from your lunch at the Science Centre's Valley Marketplace restaurant and you can get a quick education about sexually transmitted diseases.
To be specific, HIV, which - as a Science Centre-produced video animation running on large screens points out - is not just another STD. It's incurable.
The man who'd come in for a meeting to talk about our video was…not happy.
His 8 year-old had returned from a recent visit to the Centre to ask at the dinner table: "Hey Dad, what's a condom?" Consternation ensued.
The man - let's call him Mr. H. - is a member of the Science Centre. He trusts us as a good place for his family, a safe place. He felt his trust had been betrayed. He didn't think a young kid should see this stuff - particularly not in a cafeteria with no parental discretion advisory. (He also thought we should have included abstinence as an option to avoid HIV.)
We sent him a link to the video so he and his wife could see it for themselves. It became clear through the ping pong of email that this did not allay his concern, to put it mildly.
So I invited Mr. H. in to talk about it. We were joined by my boss, Hooley McLaughlin, who is the Science Centre's Chief Science Officer. We had a good talk.
Mr. H. is clearly a thoughtful, intelligent guy and a caring Dad. He wanted the video removed, or at least put in a place where parents could choose whether to let their kids see it.
We respectfully informed Mr. H. we would not do that.
We said in a science centre with more than a million visitors a year and hundreds of exhibits, events, programs and demonstrations that often deal with the sharp and controversial edges of science, we expect to occasionally upset somebody. Sex seems to do it pretty reliably, as does questioning western science orthodoxy. Even showing performing animals in historic circuses recently hit a nerve.
Our take? If a visitor is old enough to ask a question, they're old enough to hear the answer. Does this mean we didn't take Mr. H. seriously? Far from it. His complaint prompted at least a dozen hours of discussions and letter writing between and from senior staff at the Centre. It's also prompted us to ask ourselves about what's the right science content for visitors in different places inside the Centre. Should we talk about feces or botulism in the place where we're selling the hamburgers? Some of us say no, others: absolutely. And the debate continues.
At its core, science is about fearless inquiry, dialogue and argument. Peer review (or a meeting at the science centre to discuss an exhibit idea) can feel like a crowd of angry villagers throwing rocks at Frankenstein's monster, but that's the energy that propels us forward.
So whether you love us or are seized with an urge to wring our necks, send us a note or give us a call. We'll talk.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin
Meet the Bionic Woman. She's part of an old exhibit at the Science Centre from the 1980s that showed the technology you could stuff inside a human body to fix it, make it work better, or make it look better. That red button-thingy on the prosthetic leg? It unscrews and pops out. When you push the red power button, it locks the "knee" in place so you can stand up. Push again, it unlocks to let you walk. Very cool. As are the titanium balls replacing the joints at the hip and the knee. And so on, up the chest.
Right now, the Bionic Woman is resting between gigs in our artifact storage room. She might be reappearing in late 2013 in a new permanent exhibition we're working on right now called Human Edge. More about that in a second.
I was looking at the Bionic Woman and unscrewing the button on her leg recently while I was talking with Joe Sponder, one of the senior designers working on Human Edge, and he told me a fascinating and slightly disturbing thing: the skeleton of the Bionic Woman - you can see the bones clearly - is from a REAL person. Joe showed me a healed fracture on the shin bone. We were quiet for a bit, thinking about that.
It left me thinking about where life can take you even after you cease to live. Like to the floor of a science museum where millions and millions of people marvel at what you were, and how technology and exhibit creators at that museum transformed you. Talk about edgy.
Which brings me back to Human Edge. The exhibition, which will mark an evolution of our currently closed-for-development Human Body hall, will deliver on its title by exploring what lies at the edge of the humanly possible.
What do you think of when you hear that phrase "Human Edge"? What kinds of things would excite you in an exhibition with that title? We'd like to hear.
Comments? Feedback? Contact Kevin


text:
Lamb Shank
Lamb shanks are cut from the shoulder and front leg, normally including the leg bone. Historically, they were one of the cheaper cuts available, suitable only for long braises or stews. In the early 1990's, braised lamb shanks became popular staples on the menus of evolving New American restaurants in New York. This drove prices up, but also introduced the cut to many diners who would otherwise not have ever discovered it. Over the next decade, the dish spread across the country, and it was followed by a wave of more exotic braised meats including pork belly and beef cheeks.
Translations: Lamb Kāta, Lamb Orlaiviai, Mielul coadă, Janjetina Shank, Lamb trzpieniowe, Lamsschenkel, मेम्ने पिंडली, Баранья ножка, Αρνίσιο Κότσι, خروف شانك, 양 다리, Jehněčí kolínko, Lamb paa, 羊膝, Xai canya, Jahňacie kolienko, למב שאנק, Јањетина Подлактица, 子羊のスネ, Jarret d'agneau, Lammkeule, Lamb shank, Cordero caña, Бараняча ніжка, Агнето джолан
Tasting Notes
Food complements: Mint
Wine complements: A bold bordeaux
Beverage complements: Rum or mojitios sweetned with agave nectar
Related Cooking Videos
Related Foods
- What Part Of The Lamb Is The Lamb Shank?
- Braised Lamb Shanks
- Braised Lamb Shanks In Red Wine With Spices
- Baked Lamb Shanks
- Lamb Shanks With Wild Mushroom Sauce
- Lamb Shanks and Bbq Sauce
- Asian-Braised Lamb Shanks
- Lamb - Shank Soup
- Braised Lamb Shanks With Mushrooms and Red Wine
- Braised Lamb Shanks With Coriander, Fennel and Star Anise

subset: commoncrawl


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You can now invite anyone to meet at your favorite Starbucks.
Limited-time feature
36 year old man | Maricopa, AZ, USA | Seeking women 25-35 within 50 miles
Time running out not renewing. 12/04/13
I will be finishing up my time in the Army about mid December and will be returning to Arizona. Would like to have some one to talk to and spend time with when I return home. I am an honest person and am looking for the same. I enjoy a lot of different hobbies but am happiest when helping others. I am a jack of all trades master of none and enjoy learning more every day. Looking for some one that enjoyes going out once in a while but does not mind staying in and watching movies or doing work around the house as well. Ask anything you want and I will answer I have nothing to hide.
Coffee and conversation , Cooking , Movies/Videos , Music and concerts , Playing sports , Video games
Billiards / Pool, Bowling, Cycling, Running, Swimming, Walking / Hiking, Weights / Machines
I exercise 5 or more times per week.
I like Dogs
I look forward to returning home and spending time with my father's chow/springer mix, Bruno, coolest and smartest dog I have ever seen.
Middle of the Road
I love to spend time in Chicago. I grew up there and still have friends and family that I go to see all the time. I will be spending a lot of time in Texas visiting two of my nieces and my sister. And I can not wait to get home to Phoenix area!!!
I enjoy a good workout, nothing is better than the feeling you get after finishing a five mile run, or push yourself on a bike ride. I enjoying reading and will read anything for manuals to silly fiction stuff. Movies are hit or miss but no horror.
I work around the house, maintain and repair my truck, weld, and wood working. Layout out by the pool when weather permits, or inside on the couch watching a movie. Taking the kid's to do kid stuff, and spending time with family.
Guardians of Justice series, New Jedi Order series, Hunger Games, and Fate of Jedi. Aslo tech manuals related to welding
Z{{Cta}} {{#if HasMoreInfo}} ?{{CtaSecondary}} {{/if}}
|What he is looking for
|5'9" (175cms)
|3'0" (91cms) to 8'11" (271cms)
|Body type:
|Athletic and toned
|Slender, Athletic and toned
|Black, Blue, Brown, Grey, Green, Hazel
|Dark brown
|Auburn / Red, Black, Light brown, Dark brown, Blonde, Silver, Dark blonde
|Yes, but trying to quit
|No Way, Occasionally, Daily, Cigar aficionado, Yes, but trying to quit
|Never, Social Drinker, Moderately
|Political / Govt / Civil Service / Military
|Administrative / Secretarial, Artistic / Creative / Performance, Executive / Management, Financial / Accounting / Real Estate, Labor / Construction, Legal, Medical / Dental / Veterinary / Fitness, Political / Govt / Civil Service / Military, Retail / Food services, Sales / Marketing, Self-Employed / Entrepreneur, Student, Technical / Science / Computers / Engineering, Travel / Hospitality / Transportation, Other profession, Nonprofit / Volunteer / Activist, Law enforcement / Security / Military, Fashion / Model / Beauty, Architecture / Interior design
I am a welder in the army.
|$25,001 to $35,000
|Less Than $25,000, $25,001 to $35,000, $35,001 to $50,000, $50,001 to $75,000, $75,001 to $100,000, $100,001 to $150,000, $150,001+
|Never Married
|Never Married, Widow / Widower, Divorced
|Have kids:
|Wants kids:
|Definitely, Someday
|White / Caucasian
|White / Caucasian
I was born and raised in the Chicago area. In my mid 20's I moved to Phoenix, AZ.
|Christian / Catholic
|Christian / Catholic
Everybody needs to believe in something. I do not attend mass on a regular basis but I do always remember to be thankful for what I have, and the time I was given with my youngest sister Brittany.
|Some college
|High school, Some college, Associates degree, Bachelors degree, Graduate degree, PhD / Post Doctoral
Thinking about Uti for auto repair or welding classes when I get home


text:
First Lessons Classical Guitar
By William Bay
First Lessons Classical Guitar composed by William Bay. For guitar. Saddle-stitched. First Lessons. Methods. Beginning. Book/CD Set. 48 pages. Published by Mel Bay Publications, Inc (MB.30048BCD).
ISBN 9780786684410. Methods. 8.75 x 11.75 inches.
This book and accompanying audio are a great introduction to the world of classical guitar. The user friendly method is ideal for self instruction or for use with a teacher. The book contains many great sounding pieces playable by the beginning student. This method will get you playing fun music right from the start.


text:
It is important to know whether the major instruments in the field, such as the Wechsler scales and Stanford-Binet Test of Intelligence, adequately assess intelligence in a given case. If they do not, clinically acceptable and programmatically workable alternative instruments should be explored. This may entail identifying other instruments (including nonverbal intelligence assessment instruments as well as instruments available in languages other than English) that have sufficient reliability and validity to adequately diagnose mental retardation. Of course, any additional instruments identified should have the potential for wide use in clinical practice settings.
A number of research areas have produced reliable findings that are relevant and ready for implementation in practice. Advances in the assessment of developmental functioning have expanded the examination of intelligence from a dependence on verbal and performance intelligence scores to a broader view that incorporates measures of process as well as product. Multiple components that comprise intellectual functioning can now be more easily separated, for example, attentional processes, computational processes, problem-solving skills, and performance processes.
In the area of developmental assessment, standardized preschool measures of competence (Bayley, 1993) are required to assess multiple domains of functioning. These include fine motor, gross motor, cognitive, communication, and social skills. Impairment judgments based only on verbal and performance IQs may not reflect current intelligence testing practices for preschool children. The committee was charged with determining if other instruments better assess young children's intellectual functioning.
For individuals with an intelligence score greater than 59, SSA requires documentation of deficits in adaptive behavior and functioning in order for a classification of mental retardation to be made, as long as no other serious medical condition is present. This may include the results of standardized tests (e.g., Scales of Independent-


text:
Step Into The World Of Step Outside the Jewelry Box Blog
Artist Statement
Photo Gallery
Inspiration for My Fabulous Jewelry Sensation
Rbjewelz has been designing jewelry for eight (8) years. Started by handcrafting jewelry for family and friends. Then, start competing in jewelry design competitions in the US and Europe. Won Bronze Medal in the Gemstone division in the US.
Rbjewelz's jewelry carries a sense of style as well as embodying life and purpose. Her original designs combine the elegance and femininity in the emotional feelings of the wearer.
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The Message audio Bible is now available on Bible Gateway! Click to learn more.
instructing, occurs in the title of thirteen Psalms (32, 42, 44, etc.). It denotes a song enforcing some lesson of wisdom or piety, a didactic song. In Ps. 47:7 it is rendered, Authorized Version, "with understanding;" Revised Version, marg., "in a skilful psalm."


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Press release from CNW Group
2013 Visa Infinite Dining Series Showcases Unforgettable Culinary Experiences
Thursday, February 07, 2013
2013 Visa Infinite Dining Series Showcases Unforgettable Culinary Experiences07:20 EST Thursday, February 07, 2013Visa Infinite cardholders invited to indulge in exclusive dining experiences with some of Canada's most famous culinary personalities and establishments TORONTO, Feb. 7, 2013 /CNW/ - Returning for its seventh installment, the Visa Infinite Dining Series is showcasing another round of exclusive events with prominent chefs across Canada's urban centres. The much-anticipated Series invites Visa Infinite cardholders to get up close and personal with both established and emerging culinary icons as they create diverse menus, from pub fair and brunch, to the finest and most elegant of dinners.Running through June 2013, Visa Infinite cardholders have a unique opportunity to participate in creative culinary experiences across the country, including food and beverage pairings with a twist featuring champagne, beer, and cocktails.The current installment of this season's Visa Infinite Dining Series will feature notable celebrity chefs including Toronto's Chef David Lee from Note Bene, and Chef Jeff Claudio from Yours Truly - both offering inventive and specially designed tastings for attendees.Montreal events will feature Chef Frédéric Morin and Chef David McMillan of Joe Beef, as well as the world-renowned Chef Daniel Boulud who will partner with Executive Chef Riccardo Bertolino and Sommelière Isabel Bordeleau to present carefully chosen wine pairings with a memorable and a monumental feast."This season's line up of Visa Infinite Dining events across Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver are true culinary showstoppers," said Jennifer Arthurton, Head of Consumer Credit Products, Visa Canada. "From brunch to bistro to fine dining, Infinite cardholders are in for dining delights that will leave them pleasantly full but hungry for more."Visa Infinite cardholders across Canada can experience these remarkable and inventive dining experiences in the following venues:2013 Events:TorontoVeuve Clicquot Champagne Dinner with David Lee at Nota BeneToronto, Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 6:30p.m.Be Part of Gold Medal Plates-winning Chef David Lee as he presents a menu specially designed to showcase the most famous sparkling wine region in the world - Veuve Clicquot.A Tasting Exploration at Yours TrulyToronto, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 6:30p.m.Visit Yours Truly, one of Toronto's hottest new restaurants, where multi-course tasting menus are the norm and the main ingredients change daily. Guests can expect a special menu of small plates that will take them on a culinary tour of Chef Jeff Claudio's favourite local purveyors, farmers and suppliers.Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner Museum with California WinemakersToronto, Sunday, April 7, 2013, 11a.m.Join Governor General Award-winning Chef Jamie Kennedy for an incredible brunch experience highlighting his signature local-based cuisine and the Wines of California.The Ultimate Country Culinary Escape at Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa with Jonathan Gushue and Guest Chef Graham Elliot from ChicagoToronto/Cambridge, Friday, June 7 to Sunday, June 9, 2013Join award-winning Chef Jonathan Gushue and Guest Chef Graham Elliot for a deliciously relaxing weekend at Langdon Hall, a Relais & Cháteaux property of breathtaking beauty less than an hour's drive from Toronto.MontrealMaison Publique with Derek Dammann and Guest Chef Lee Cooper of L'AbattoirMontreal, Wednesday, February 20, 2013, 6:30p.m.Visit one of Montreal's newest hot spots, a neighbourhood pub where global gastronomy receives top billing in a fun and casual atmosphere.Joe Beef with Frédéric Morin and David McMillanMontreal, Monday, March 11, 2013, 6:30p.m.Join the party at Joe Beef, Montreal's boisterous temple of gastronomic joie de vivre, where Chefs David McMillan and Frédéric Morin will preside over a monumental feast. Guests will also walk away with a copy of The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts.Maison Boulud with Daniel BouludMontreal, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, 6:30p.m.Join these two formidable chefs as they present an unforgettable gustatory exhibition, drawing on Michelin-star Chef Boulud's repertoire of global fare.Sunday Jazz brunch at Pastaga with Martin JuneauMontreal, Sunday, April 14, 2013, 11a.m.Join Chef Juneau for a brunch experience that celebrates the joy of lingering over great food and great conversation. The multi-course experience will feature a carefully chosen wine to match each dish.CalgarySunday Brunch at River Café with guest Chef Aaron Joseph Bear RobeCalgary, Sunday, February 24, 2013, 11a.m.The River Caféculinary team and guest Chef Aaron Joseph Bear Robe will design an unforgettable brunch featuring a variety of pristine Canadian ingredients that emphasize locally sourced, organic andseasonal provenanceThe Ultimate Mountain Culinary Escape with Top Chef Canada Season 1 & 2 Finalists and Special GuestsCalgary/Banff, Friday, April 26 to Sunday, April 28, 2013Choose a weekend escape to the Rocky Mountains for a spectacular setting of gastronomic awakening with best young chefs from Top Chef Canada Season 1 & 2.Vancouver:Bubbles and Brunch at West Restaurant + Bar with Quang DangVancouver, Sunday, February 10, 2013, 11a.m.Join Executive Chef Quang Dang and his perfectly tuned culinary team as they interpret the art of pairing bubbles at brunch as pristine ingredients will be paired with premium champagnes and sparkling wines.Collaboration on Surf + Turf: YEW restaurant + bar with Ned Bell and Guest Chefs Connie DeSousa and John JacksonVancouver, Saturday, March 9, 2013, 6:30p.m.Join Ned Bell at YEW restaurant + bar in the Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver for a celebration of West Coast cuisine with a twist. It's a surf and turf of ultimate proportions!To purchase tickets for one or more Visa Infinite Dining Series events, Visa Infinite cardholders can call 1-888-711-9399 (seating is limited), or visit www.visainfinite.ca and log-in as a Visa Infinite cardholder for more information.Visa Infinite provides cardholders with one-of-a-kind, memorable experiences for themselves, their family and friends. This includes exceptional benefits at some of the world's finest hotels, exclusive access to entertainment and sports events and a complimentary 24/7 concierge service. Visa Infinite also incorporates Visa's range of trusted security benefits, featuring a zero liability policy, emergency card replacement & cash service, and cardholder inquiry service.About VisaVisa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world's most advanced processing networks—VisaNet—that is capable of handling more than 24,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa's innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products. For more information, visit corporate.visa.comSOURCE: VISA Canada CorporationFor further information: Erin Sufrin, Visa Canada, 416-860-3869, email@example.com Megan Stoudt, Fleishman-Hillard, 416-645-8206, firstname.lastname@example.com


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50-14795 - Universal TV Stand, For Televisions 32" ~ 60"
Universal Television Stand
This universal TV stand is perfect for flat panel televisions that were mounted to the wall, but are to be moved to tabletop use. Universal mounting plate attaches to all VESA standard sets from 200x200 through 600x400, and provides a ...
Mfr Name: Pro Signal
Mfr Number: 50-14795
See all items in Desk Mounts
21-10115 - 60W Compact Digital Soldering Station
This compact soldering station features a digital
display and low profile casing. Its compact design
will fit on any tool bench and is small enough for
convenient storage. The efficient, thermostat-controlled,
60-watt output of this unit provides almost in...
Mfr Name: Tenma
Mfr Number: 21-10115
See all items in Soldering Stations
555-19915 - Slim PAR56 RGB LED Light
Slim PAR56 RGB LED Light
The Pulse SLIMLITE 56 features a total of 150 super bright, 10mm LEDs offering rich colors and a variety of operating modes. The split yoke bracket makes it ideal for hung and floor standing operation. The slim line housing also reduces t...
Mfr Name: Pulse
Mfr Number: SLIMLITE 56
See all items in LED Par Cans
96-1760 - WES51 Electronic Soldering Station
A powerful and economical continuous production soldering station, this unit has temperature lockout and automatic power-down features to keep you in control. The WES51 was designed for continuous production, rework, and repair of through hole, SMT boards, most gr...
Mfr Name: Weller
Mfr Number: WES51
21-3475 - WLC100 Soldering Station
The WLC100 has been the top choice of hobbyists, DIY-ers, and students for years. This low-cost station features the quality you expect from the leading name in soldering equipment.
Mfr Number: WLC100
28-18030 - Pi Noir 5MP Raspberry Pi Night Vision Camera Module
The Raspberry Pi NOIR Camera Module is a 5 megapixel camera custom designed add-on for Raspberry Pi, featuring a fixed focus lens without an IR filter. It's capable of 2592 x 1944 pixel static images, and also supports 1080p30, 720p60 and 640x480p60/90 video. It a...
Mfr Name: Raspberry Pi
Mfr Number:
See all items in Raspberry Pi
72-7720 - 2,000 Count 3-1/2 Digit Multimeter DMM
Large Display Digital Multimeter
Full function multimeter offers a variety of ranges for every service application. Rugged overmolded housing stands up to the daily rigors of field service use, and large backlit LCD display is easily read from several feet away. ...
Mfr Number: 72-7720
See all items in Handheld
50-14790 - Universal Television Stand, For Televisions 17" ~ 37"
Universal Television Stand
Perfect for flat panel televisions that were mounted to the wall, but are to be moved to tabletop use. Universal mounting plate attaches to all VESA standard sets from 75x75 through 200x200, and provides a secure and attractive mountin...
Mfr Number: 50-14790
555-11660 - Adjustable Speaker Pole
This adjustable speaker pole is a perfect solution for mounting a DJ speaker on the top of a subwoofer, or a variety of custom applications. Sold individually.
Standard 1 3/8" diameter pole mountAdjustable 32"~54.5" heightHeavy duty steel constructionSupports...
Mfr Name: Stellar Labs
Mfr Number: 555-11660
See all items in Speaker Stands
555-27180 - Multi Colored LED PAR 56 Can with RGB LED's - Black Aluminum Housing
LED Par 56 Can
Featuring 177 x 5mm RGB LED's the LEDJ EQLED015 outputs spots of color that produce stunning performances of all sizes. The units operate in several modes, including, DMX and stand alone.
Mfr Name: Ledj
Mfr Number: EQLED015
555-13830 - Heavy Duty Keyboard Stand with Adjustable Width and Height
Heavy-duty keyboard stand is designed to support most 88-key keyboards, and features adjustable height and width.
Provides ample floor space for pedals
1 1/4" square tube construction
Adjustable height: 23"~35 1/4"
Adjustable width: 24 1/2"~40"
Mfr Number: 555-13830
See all items in Keyboard Stands & Benches
555-11650 - Adjustable Speaker Stand 80lb Capacity
Supporting up to 80lbs, this speaker stand offers tremendous portability and can be easily stored between gigs.
Features:1 3/8" diameterLightweight aluminum constructionSafety pinHeight adjustable from 48"~77"
Mfr Number: 555-11650
555-11690 - Heavy Duty Laptop / Projector Presentation Stand
Heavy Duty Laptop / Projector Stand
The design of this versatile, heavy duty stand makes it not only great for holding sheet music, but holding a laptop or projector for presentation purposes as well.
Also available with Larger Tray
Mfr Number: 555-11690
See all items in Music Stands
35-10575 - Desktop Microphone Stand, Tripod, Adjustable
Desktop Tripod Microphone Stand
The PMKSDT25 is an adjustable desktop tripod microphone stand. It easily adjusts from 4.7" to 8.7" in height. Use this convenient stand to record from the comfort of your desktop -- podcasts, screencasts, or video chats. Supports u...
Mfr Name: Pyle
Mfr Number: PMKSDT25
See all items in Stands
96-1764 - WESD51 Digital Soldering Station
Innovative heater and sensor combination gives you quick heat-up and rapid temperature recovery
Wireless temperature lockout to prevent operators from raising the temperature to levels higher than specified for the board or component
Station automatically power...
Mfr Number: WESD51
They always have good communication and the products I order show up in time.


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VIEWS: 16 PAGES: 3 CATEGORY: Fitness POSTED ON: 10/5/2012 Public Domain
Adult acne without any skin problems suddenly managed to get through adolescence adult problems can be. Rarely do real so far, some people good skin skin problems, teenage years managed to get between the later adult years.
3 Tips for alleviating adult acne Adult acne without any skin problems suddenly managed to get through adolescence adult problems can be. Rarely do real so far, some people good skin skin problems, teenage years managed to get between the later adult years. According to the survey conducted by approximately 1 / 4 between the ages of 30 to 60-year-old men and women, University of Miami, Kerry JUNET, MD, PhD, experience the form of adult acne. I've got a very simple skin, teenagers are now acne products and batches of long lists may use and enjoy a picture perfect skin Regiment adult sponsor. In addition to determining what treatment best option deals with psychological elements of the 1930's and 1940's unexpected gender oil and hard. Effects of adult acne, social withdrawal, low self-esteem, work has a negative impact. Insulators and may interview job adult acne sufferers in the marketing department might choose to take work from many sick days. Discovered to suffer from many adults who suffer from Acne outbreak consistent from study at different levels of depression. Primary offenders balance hormones, genetic predisposition and health effects get rid of acne causes, such as stress and nutrition adult and youth, are eager to clear skin. Then the clear skin prey claims oil hardening of the quest for some business people understandably,. Take, for example, akniab and acne Bonner. Decided to intervene to reach a settlement with the manufacturer provided by downloading the application before the FTC, nearly 15000 unsubstantiated claims. Claimed application developers get rid of acne emits light from the applications Apple and Android smart phones. Holding their acne lesions near mobile phone, Smartphone users application transaction involved. Derived from the alleged loose probably so no grounds for application of acne blue light. Can use FDA-approved mild moderate acne blue light therapy treatments, it is $ 1000-come with price tags ranging from $ 1,500. It cannot create application apparently will fire non-UV still used by narrow-band blue medical professionals. Such as blue product you can light therapy, and many prescription drugs or skin treatment and acne reducing might break out. Some people after traditional methods, or with varying degrees of success are not willing to try traditional options. Bail out or nothing but minimal or no implementing side effects and relatively quick and easy to maintain. Today there are can 3 step here. 1 Dietary changes According to research published and spread of "Harvard School of public health" Association of skim milk and acne. Skim milk has more from the 2% of the milk sugar lactose than simple. You adjust to the healthy eating should be saturated fat of blood sugar levels, reduces the cravings for sugar (carbohydrates). System is linked to less skin skin blood sugar clear diet. 2. Face mask There are major components can be an effective face mask. Made one simple mask raw, unprocessed honey. Wash the face with water, 15-30 applies a layer of honey. Rinse with warm water, then splash cold water. 3. Sleep advice Sleep studies at Nova Southeastern University showed 73.2% of people sleep lying positions. If you sleep in the stomach or side pillow cases frequently or to rub your face or hair pillows and avoid accumulation of oil changes every day. Changes to some of you of a certain age, body Acne can be expected. Adult Acne can be frustrating too, simple and effective home remedies for acne near your kitchen cabinets and refrigerator as you could find.
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Roast Venison
|Beef drippings
|3 Tablespoon (Good)
|2 , chopped
|3 , chopped
|3 , chopped
|1⁄4 , chopped
|Celery stalks
|1 , sliced
|1⁄2 Pound, roughly sliced
|Venison haunch
|6 Pound (1 Whole)
|Red wine
|1 1⁄4 Cup (20 tbs)
|1 1⁄4 Cup (20 tbs)
|Red currant jelly
|2 Teaspoon
|Port wine
|350 Milliliter (2 Wineglasses)
|To Taste
|To Taste
Melt the drippings in a saucepan and add the vegetables.
Cook for 7-10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent them from sticking.
Put the venison in a roasting pan.
Pour the partially cooked vegetables, drippings and all, over the venison.
Roast in a preheated 425° oven for 30 minutes.
At the end of this time, baste with the drippings and lower the temperature to 350°.
Pour the red wine and milk over the venison.
Cover with foil and continue roasting for 1 1/2-2 hours.
Transfer the venison to a warmed platter and keep warm in the oven.
Skim the fat off the surface of the cooking juices and vegetables in the roasting pan, then pour the juices and vegetables into a blender or food processor.
Add the red currant jelly and port and blend until smooth.
Pour this sauce into a saucepan.
Taste and adjust the seasoning, then reheat.
Serve in a sauce boat or a jug, with the venison.


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We have a wide selection of upper body workout routines and strength training exercises designed for all fitness levels. Target all areas of your body from your shoulders and upper arms to your thighs and lower abs with these full-body exercises. The American Council on Exercise is committed to helping all workout enthusiasts reach their fitness goals safely and efficiently. For full-body workouts featuring these exercises, visit our Workouts section.
Fit Life Articles
Although there are several benefits to practicing Bikram yoga, the concern over heat-related challenges among some participants seems warranted. If you are planning on participating in a Bikram yoga class, check out ACE's easy-to-follow safety recommendations that will help...
If you're trying to eat healthier or lose a few pounds, lunch can prove to be a stumbling block, with limited time and workplace temptations making it easy to ditch your healthy habits. Check out these common lunch-hour mishaps and their fixes that can help you stay on...
If you've been considering trying a raw food diet, there's a few things to consider first. While it seems like a good idea to eat a more plant-based diet, if not done properly, a raw food diet can make you feel worse, not better. Here's what you need to know to reap the...
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Universal Acquires Non-Fiction Bestseller PROOF OF HEAVEN
Universal Pictures has won the rights to Dr. Eben Alexander's non-fiction bestseller, PROOF OF HEAVEN: A NEUROSURGEON'S JOURNEY INTO THE AFTERLIFE, Deadline has confirmed.
Ryan Knighton (COCKEYED, the upcoming film THICK AS THIEVES) is set to adapt Dr. Alexander's uplifting story for the big-screen. As of now, no director is attached to the project.
The book is officially descibed by the publisher as:
"Thousands of people have had near-death experiences, but scientists have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those scientists. A highly trained neurosurgeon, Alexander knew that NDEs feel real, but are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress.
Then, Dr. Alexander's own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion-and in essence makes us human-shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then, as his doctors considered stopping treatment, Alexander's eyes popped open. He had come back.
Alexander's recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere. While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself.
Alexander's story is not a fantasy. Before he underwent his journey, he could not reconcile his knowledge of neuroscience with any belief in heaven, God, or the soul. Today Alexander is a doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real and that death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition.
This story would be remarkable no matter who it happened to. That it happened to Dr. Alexander makes it revolutionary. No scientist or person of faith will be able to ignore it. Reading it will change your life."
The site reports that numerous studios fought for the rights, though Universal came out on top with an undisclosed, though presumably high, bid.
For the original report, head on over to Deadline.
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Hostelworld "meet the world" by Lucky Generals
Rating: 5.0
By Maisie McCabe, marketingmagazine.co.uk, Monday, 18 October 2010 09:07AM
Children are asked to build their own models using Lego City then photograph and upload them to the Nickelodeon website, nick.co.uk, which contains a clickable map of the British Isles. Children in the same region can view each other's entries by clicking the map.
The two winners, one from the UK and one from Ireland, will star in a 40-second TV spot for the Lego City brand and receive free products for their classmates.
Laura Di Bonaventura, senior brand manager at children's construction toy brand Lego UK, said: "It is essential that City receives impactful marketing support using the most innovative, creative and engaging means.
"This campaign allows children to literally enter their own City world. It encourages our target audience to interact with the brand and really experience the core elements of creativity and building everyday, instantly-recognisable models."
The deal was negotiated between Aegis media agency Carat and Nickelodeon's ad sales house Sky Media. Julia Scales, Viacom sponsorship manager at Sky Media, said: "Lego City continues to engage its target audience via integrated, compelling campaigns.
"By giving Nickelodeon viewers the chance to immerse themselves into the Lego City world, and into the channel itself, not only achieves a once in a lifetime opportunity for the winner, the creative for the campaign completely cuts through to their audience."
This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk
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Rating: 5.0
Agency: Grey London
Rating: 5.0