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Miss Vivi Section on Pinterest

Follow Me on Pinterest

I’ve joined Pinterest and I’m having a fabulous time! At first I was a bit sceptical about how it is used, but I signed up anyway just to give it a try.

I’ve decided to use it as a place to gather really good anatomy images, experiment ideas and other science images for you to refer to.

You know how frustrating it is when someone takes your work and presents it without giving you any credit, so please be courteous and credit the artists and websites if you use the images in the classroom. I have tried to link all the images back to their original websites so you can check out any copyright information they have and use the images appropriately.

I hope it’s useful to you and you find some fun there too. Feel free to point me in the direction of good stuff to share with other labbies. I’ll count it as an entry in the t-shirt competition if you do it before Easter.

Happy Australian Bacon Week
It's Australian Bacon Week

By the way, Happy Australian Bacon Week to you! It’s going to be all about bacon on this blog and the Facebook page this week.
Miss Vivi

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Oh what a feeling: the Toyota ad with the glass organs

I loved this Toyota ad showing glass artists making an entire person out of glass immediately. It combines two of my favourite things in the world – glass and science. The ad isn’t being played on TV anymore, which is a shame. Compared to most car company advertisements it is quiet and classy and beautiful instead of being loud and brash and blokey. The delicacy of the glass organs evokes all the frailty and beauty of the human body. A masterpiece.

Miss Vivi
ps. don’t forget there’s only a couple of weeks left to enter the t-shirt competition, so get writing and send in your top tip for a labbie.

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Every family needs a farmer

gympie beef and bean farm
Our neighbour grows beef and beans. This is the view of his farm from our back verandah.

It’s the Australian Year of the Farmer – and every family needs a farmer.  This family in particular needs farmers.

We live in the country.  Our property is surrounded by beef, dairy, macadamia, banana, deer and small crops farms.  Slowly but surely these farms are dwindling in size and variety as town moves out and the career farmers move on.  A local abattoir has recently closed and properties running a few pigs and cattle are now left without a nearby facility to have them slaughtered for their family meat.  Their choice, now, is to pay to have them transported over a longer distance to another abattoir, hire an on-farm butcher to come and do the job on the property or not bother growing their own meat.

If I hadn’t moved to Gympie Dissection Connection would not exist.  That’s no exaggeration.  Gympie is in the perfect geographical position to get good quality stock, get it packaged and get it on the road – and this is where I met Mr Vivi ♥  The closure of small and medium sized abattoirs threatens our ability to source good specimens for you.  You know how difficult it is to get stock out of the really big export abattoirs and that’s because they are under much more pressure to produce more meat in less time in order to remain viable as a business.

Since I started the business we have been buying almost all of our meat from local butchers and I can tell you the quality is head and shoulders above the meat I used to buy at the big supermarkets.  Home smoked bacon and ham, handmade sausages, t-bones from a beast that came from a local farm that the butcher could give me directions to if I wanted to visit, duck dressed at the abattoir and cooked in my kitchen on the same day – there’s nothing quite like it. And the value for money at the butcher is incredible.  We often buy a quarter of a beast or an entire pig and share it with another family.  Where else are you going to get Black Angus beef t-bones or free range shoulder ham on the bone for about $6.00/kg?

When you buy specimens from Dissection Connection you are keeping countless numbers of families afloat.  The meat industry supports Mr Vivi and I, the growers, the butchers, truck drivers, slaughtermen, admin staff, cleaners, electricians, plumbers, engineers and even the public servants that regulate the industry – just to name a few.

Abattoirs keep small towns alive.  They provide full time employment, apprenticeships and traineeships for people that would otherwise have to move to the city.  They bring people to regional towns that would otherwise not be able to grow and thrive.  And they keep you in meat for the barbecue.

Every family needs a farmer.  Every family.  When you buy specimens from us you are are buying 100% home grown Australian produce – not specimens chemically treated and imported from America.  Well done you!  Now – how about going one step further and grabbing some meat from the local butcher and having a barbecue with your mates this weekend?

Miss Vivi

ps. there are some great classroom resources on the Australian Year of the Farmer website

 

seven days without beef makes one weak
Australian beef growers bumper sticker on a ute I pulled up behind at the servo. The man in the background is the beef grower.
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Happy New Year!

So, here we are at the beginning of Term 1 for 2012 and we’re all about to dive into the Australian National Curriculum for classes up to Yr 10.

Here at Dissection Connection we’re starting the year with a new price list.  It’s over there on the right under Downloads –>  It’s in a slightly different format, hopefully organised to make it easier to use.   Feel free to have a squeal if you have any comments about it.

There are some new dissection specimens worth squealing about so look out for a newsletter in your inbox soon.

We hope you’ve had some great times over Christmas and New Year.  We’re looking forward to hearing from you very soon.

Miss Vivi

and

Mr Vivi