lisamlong

“Masjid Sheikh Zayeid B&W”

Photographer: Hussain_Quantum
Photographer: under license from Creative Commons

Maggie

All is well with Nils Olav. Make that Sir Nils . . . the first black-and-white pint-sized knight with yellow-and-orange highlights and flippers. Nils Olav, the famous king penguin of the Edinburgh Zoo, waddled forth and was knighted on Friday, August 15 after inspecting the Norwegian King’s Guard regiment, which was visiting Edinburgh for the annual Military Tattoo.

“We have a long-standing history with the Norwegian King’s Guard and it is something we are extremely proud of,” said David Windmill, head of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the owners of Edinburgh Zoo where Nils lives.

Now here’s a great story of international relations and foreign policy. It should give hope to other nations. Norway presented Edinburgh Zoo with its first king penguin in 1913, the year of the zoo’s opening. The Edinburgh Zoo has since become famous for its king penguins.

Some background: Nils Olav bcame a honourary member of the Norwegian Royal Guard in 1972, after a young lieutenant Nils Egelien first visited the king penguins at Edinburgh Zoo. (The chosen king penguin was awarded the rank of Lance Corporal and named Nils Olav–after Nils Egelien and Norway’s then King Olav.) HM The King’s Guard of Norway is the finest unit in the Norwegian armed forces. The Norwegian Guardsmen visit Nils every few years while they are in the city for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.  Over the years Nils has risen through the ranks, received various accolades for long service and good conduct, including medals and a 4-ft. bronze statue in his honour, finally becoming the regiment’s Honourary Colonel-in-Chief in 2005. The original Nils died about 20 years ago in 1987, and the name Nils Olav has been transferred to one of his king penguin peers.

On Friday, August 15, Nils Olav was granted the highest honour yet, when a Norwegian Guardsmen dubbed a sword on each side of Nils’ head–where his shoulders should be–to confirm his regimental knighthood.

Norwegian King’s Guardsmen, Captain Rune Wilk said, “We are extremely proud of Nils Olav and pleased that an enduring part of the Royal Guard is resident in Scotland helping to further strengthen ties between our two countries.”

“Nils always recognizes the Norwegian Guardsmen when they come to visit him,” said Darren McGarry of the Edinburgh Zoo. “He loves the attention he receives at the ceremony and takes his time inspecting the troops.”

Sir Nils Olav of Edinburgh Zoo, photo from ‘Gill’ at Flickr, under cc-by-sa-2.0 License (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0).

Patrick

A year or two ago, the staff at Connected Ventures in New York produced a “lip dub” after work.  The video became very popular and even drew mainstream media attention.  Besides turning out as a great recruitment video, that first lip dub has inspired individuals and groups of people to do their very own lip dubs.  In my opinion, most of them don’t quite measure up to the quality of the original.  Today, I found one that does.

“University Lipdub” was created by students at the Hochschule Furtwangen University in Germany.  Like the original, University Lipdub was filmed all in one shot and features an impressive number of actors/singers.  It even has it’s own website, universitylipdub.com, which encourages students at other universities to create their own university lipdubs.  Having just graduated from university, I’d love to see a group of students from my alma mater take up the challenge.  Hochschule Furtwangen has certainly set the bar high for everyone else to follow.

University Lipdub (HS Furtwangen) from DASKAjA on Vimeo.

lisamlong

“Standing tall”

Photographer: afroboof
Photographer: under license from Creative Commons

lisamlong

“Tu que piensas? solo cara”

Photographer: Eugenia_y_Julian
Photographer: under license from Creative Commons

lisamlong

As of this writing, Day 10 of the 29th Olympia is getting into full swing at Beijing. For almost the entire last week I was preparing myself to blog on Canada’s medal free state. Mercifully this unpleasant prospect ended on Day 7 when Wrestler Carol Huynh, a 27-year-old native of Hazelton, B.C., advanced to Saturday’s final in the 48-kilogram freestyle weight class. The only question for Canadians going to bed was the colour of the guaranteed medal. Will it be gold or silver?

Canadians woke up to the exciting news–Carol Huynh had beaten three-time reigning world champ Chiharu Icho of Japan by a score of 4-0 and 2-1 to secure Canada’s first gold medal of the 29th Olympics.

However, the distinction of winning the country’s first medal, a silver, went to a pair of rowers, Dave Calder from Victoria and Scott Frandsen from Kelowna, B.C.

It is true that good things come in three. Later in the day veteran wrestler Tonya Verbeek won her second personal Olympic medal and Canada’s third, a bronze. She won in the 55-kilogram weight class, beating Ida-Theres Nerell of Sweden by a score of 1-0, 1-0 in one of two bronze medal matches.

Day 8 was significant for Canada in this year’s Olympics as the country surged from zero to seven medals in two days. But the day belonged to a young man from Jamaica, Usain Bolt. That evening he went out and totally destroyed his own world record for the 100-metre.

The story is not that he won the race nor lowered the world record to 9.69 seconds. But he did it with astonishing ease which left no doubt in any body’s mind that he is capable of a much faster time yet. During the Olympics, from round 1 to the final, he had not run an entire race at full speed. In one race he eased up on the throttle at the 50-metre mark. Even in the final after realizing he had the race won, he started to decelerate and celebrated his victory with 20 metres to go. This certainly is not good news to his primary rivals, Tyson Gay of the USA and fellow Jamaican, Asafa Powell. This can be downright disheartening.

We have not see the last of him at this Olympics. As a matter of fact this was just Act 1 of 3. He is scheduled to compete in the 200m and the 4×100m relay. The 200m record may be in danger. But I think everybody’s attention is now on the relay because three Jamaican sprinters advanced to the 100m final. Any relay team with a current and former world record holder is as close to invincible as can be. Not a bit surprising if the record keepers have hauled the ledger out already.

lisamlong

“IMG_1874″

Photographer: uppure
Photographer: under license from Creative Commons

Maggie

Seeing the symbol $ can make a difference! Just seeing $ can affect our spending habits . . . this doesn’t sound too smart of us.  And, how do researchers come up with such unique areas of our psyche to study?

A team of researchers at Cornell University in New York wanted to test whether the price presentation on restaurant menus affected how we were willing to spend on meals. Needless to say, these findings are the first to establish a relationship between consumer attention to menus and consumer purchase behaviour and spending habits.

Results:  menus using a numerical price format without the accompanying “$” symbol yield an average of $5.55 more in spending than menus with prices printed with either a dollar sign or written in text script. The researchers presented three versions of a typical lunch menu at a local “upscale-casual” restaurant and compiled the results from 201 participants who used a menu with listed prices as XX, $XX or scripted words. For example, if a menu item cost $20–the menu stated 20, $20 or twenty dollars.

The study found no difference in spending patterns among customers using menus with numerical price formats with the “$” symbol and scripted prices with the word “dollars” at the end. The researchers were surprised that prices presented in the “XX” format actually resulted in higher spending than scripted prices.

We need another study. Is this quirky human behaviour found in all cultures and countries?  Who’ll be paying?

The study is to be published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management.