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Showing posts from February, 2017

Pumpkin Flowers Author Matti Friedman

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RBC Finalist Matti Friedman (Pumpkinflowers) describes his life in the Israeli armed forces as  "beyond the mindset of life in Toronto.” --> review by K.J. Mullins for Weir website Matti Friedman When Matti Friedman moved from Toronto to Israel he thought he had landed on another planet.  He was 17 and he was leaving the world’s most diversity friendly city for a place that  was “so beyond the mindset of life in Toronto.” “I was young enough to roll with the punches,” Friedman said of the move from his safe North York childhood home to the Middle East as we started to talk about the differences between North American and Middle Eastern culture and his current book Pumpkinflowers which has been shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction. “I liked the cultural shock. Israel is chaotic with its Middle Eastern culture.” One of the most jarring differences between Canada and Israel is in the military draft. All young people in Israel ser

Wireless Communication - it all began in Newfoundland with Guglielmo Marconi

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Dr. Marc Raboy Raboy's Marconi memoir nominated for the RBC Taylor Prize Feature by K.J. Mullins for Stephen Weir website The rapid rise and steady growth of inventions and patents from Marconi forged the communication world that we live in today. One of the youngest of the early innovators to use sound waves in order to achieve wireless communication Marconi was just in his early 20s when he first blazed on the scene. Marconi's achievements are a marvel and yet the man himself has always been a mystery. In Marc Raboy's book 'Marconi' each aspect of the man's life is examined. Extremely well written this massive tome brings to life the legend of a great man of his time and shows the reader how his insights of wireless communication came to be. The man that author Marc Raboy started to write about when he started the research for his RBC Taylor Prize shortlisted book Marconi is not the same man at all, he found. “I learnt a tremendous amount about