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Jim Steacy Going to Beijing

Another acquaintance of mine, Jim Steacy, qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The CBC wrote this article about Jim and his amazing hammer throwing skills.

I remember a couple of years ago, the night after the University’s Blue and Gold banquet (he won athlete of the year that night), most of the athletes were pretty tired after staying out late partying and I just happened to be driving by the track field early the next morning. Guess who was up bright and early and out practising by himself—Jim Steacy.

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Teaching of Psychology

Tom Stafford, a member of the Adaptive Behaviour Research Group in the Department of Psychology at University of Sheffield, recently presented the keynote speech at the annual conference of the Association for the Teaching of Psychology at Lincoln in the UK. He talked a little bit about the priming that can occur when you load up my backmasking site. He was kind to present the topic using this slide.

Thanks Tom! you made my day.

Research Digest wrote up an interesting summary of Tom’s keynote talk.

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I Met the Walrus

Do you STILL love the Beatles? Then you will love this interview with John Lennon (that you haven’t heard before).

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.


[I Met the Walrus – YouTube]

(Via Waxy)

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Google Lively

I tried out Google’s new Second-Life clone, Lively. Never having played Second-Life, I’m not so sure what all the fuss is about, but just for kicks, embedded below is my Lively virtual room.

Update: Lively has been shut down.

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Kid’s Hope Ethiopia Triathlon

I just got back from my trip to Calgary and the Kid’s Hope Ethiopia Triathlon.

I didn’t swim nearly as fast as I had hoped but I’ll choose to blame it on the fact that I couldn’t get very good rotation on my arms while wearing my wet-suit. Every stroke meant pulling against the elastic fabric of the neoprene and I’m sure the lack of training never had anything to do with my inability to keep my time under 10 minutes.

Bryce Meldrum running in the Kid's Hope Ethiopia Triathlon

JULY 5, 2008 — OKOTOKS, ALBERTA, CANADA — Triathlon competitor Bryce Meldrum, of Calgary, Alberta, makes a crowd pleasing mad dash sprint to the end of the Foothills Charity Triathlon for Kid’s Hope Ethiopia. — PHOTO BY JEFF MILNER.

Nevertheless our team did very well—especially against the other teams—not so much against the individual tri-athletes many who amazingly swam, biked, and ran faster than the three of us working together.

The race was put on by Kids’ Hope Ethiopia, the same charity organization that Bryce happens to work as a Project Coordinator.

So against other teams, we came in 8th out of 21 and my individual swim ranked me 4th. I think the highlight for me was seeing my team-mate Bryce making his crazy sprint to the finish line and then paying the price after the race. It’s not hard to love a competitive team-mate.

I can almost see myself getting into doing the whole thing myself, but then again, it’s a lot easier said than done, especially from the comfort of my office chair.

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Kid’s Hope Ethiopia

I’m away today taking part swimming in a team triathlon held in Okotoks (is it safe to call Okotoks a suburb of Calgary yet?) for the annual Foothills Charity Triathlon for Kid’s Hope Ethiopia.

I’m happy enough to just have one section of the triathlon, because I want to go all out, but I have to keep in mind that I’ve spent exactly no time at all training for this event.

I’m just shooting to break seven and a half minutes which looks to be a fairly competitive time (and a winning time depending on which year’s results you are looking at).