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Everyone knows Tim Allen. Hes one of Hollywoods most famous funnymen, recognized for productions such as Home Improvement, Toy Story, and The Santa Clause. But what people might not know is whether hes married or a father. Allen has always been private about his personal life and is rarely seen with anyone other than his celebrity peers. So, whats the deal?

Allen and his college sweetheart, Laura Deibel, dated for years before tying the knot in 1984. Deibel has been described as an unbelievably committed partner, as she stuck by Allens side through many hard times. Notably, Deibel supported Allen after he was sentenced to prison in the 70s for drug trafficking and as a struggling actor in the 80s.

We loved each other. It was that simple, she explained to People in 1991.

But as Allens star began to rise, they started having serious issues. After breaking out on Home Improvement (which ran from 1991 to 1999), Allens schedule became increasingly busy, leaving little time for his wife. He also started struggling with alcoholism; in 1998, he was arrested for a DUI and entered rehab for his addiction.

By 1999, Deibel had had enough. She filed to separate from the Galaxy Quest actor, citing irreconcilable differences. Their family and friends were devastated.

They were lifelong soulmates, a friend of Allens told People after the split.

Allens mother, Martha Bones, added: The situation is very unhappy for everyone.

While some hoped the two would eventually reconcile, they didnt. In 2003, the pair reached a divorce settlement and parted ways.

In 2001, Allen began dating Jane Hajduk, an actress who is best known for her role in the superhero comedy Zoom (2006). Five years later, Allen and Hajduk married in an intimate ceremony in Colorado.

Allen opened up to Closer Weekly in 2017 about how his experiences from his first marriage helped prepare him for his relationship with Hajduk, saying, Im not the same guy I was the first time [I was married] when I was hiding and doing what people who drink too much do. I was not connecting. But Ive been sober for almost 20 years. Im much more present.

As of writing, he and Hajduk are still going strong.

Allen has two children. He and Deibel have one daughter, Katherine, who was born in 1989; He shares another daughter, Elizabeth, with Hajduk. Allen and Hajduk welcomed Elizabeth in 2009.

I was gone so much in my first marriage, I love the moments when I engage with my youngest daughter now, Allen toldParade in 2011. Its not my thing to sit on the ground and play tea party, but Ill do it because its a moment that will stick with me forever.

More here:
Is Tim Allen Married and How Many Children Does He Have? - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick

First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.

This year, our daughter, our youngest child, entered fourth grade in New York State. The event provoked a certain amount of dread in my husband, Raj, and me. This is not because we expected her to misbehave or because the school is substandard, but because this is the year she will learn about the American Revolution.

To illustrate why two Canadian parents might have reason to grimace at this portion of an American-born childs education, I have only to look back on our family trip to Boston this summer. Having just completed the fourth-grade curriculum the previous school year, our younger son was full of pride in the Patriots (as they are referred to in the U.S. history texts) and their brave fight against the tyrannical British. He jumped at the chance to tour the Boston Tea Party museum, listening attentively as the guide expounded on the madness of King George and the oppressive laws of the British, marvelling at the courage of the Sons of Liberty and delightedly throwing crates of fake tea into Boston harbour (take that darned Brits!).

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Raj and I listened silently to the American version of events, all the while exchanging dubious glances and wondering how we would ever break it to our little Patriot that his two Canadian parents were, in fact, the cultural heirs of those party poopers deluded enough to remain loyal to the British Crown. "Do you know about the United Empire Loyalists? I whispered to the tour guide once our son was out of hearing. Who? he replied, with a look of perplexity.

Raj and I sighed. It seemed important for our son to be aware of the Canadian perspective, but it was hard to know when to break it to him that far from admiring the revolutionaries his father and I had been taught to regard Loyalists as sole voices of sanity in a colony overtaken by mob rule. What, we wondered, would our loyal little American think when he found out that the Canadian schools that Mom and Dad attended in the 1970s and 80s represented fidelity to the British crown as a noble dedication to tradition and treated American republicanism as a dangerous fit of arrogance threatening to upend law, justice and due process? How to break it to him that the elderly lady he has seen on Canadian money is not only the direct descendant of that mad King George but is also still (still!) Canadas head of state. What, we mused, would our son say when he learned that Canadian children are brought up to admire Canadas gradual, bureaucratic progress toward independence that was finalized, not in 1776 but 1982 (for goodness sake!)

As our son stood proudly for photos outside Paul Reveres house on Bostons North Square, and reviewed the facts of Reveres famous midnight ride, Raj and I wondered how we would ever tell him that our own, Canadian version of Paul Revere was a woman named Laura Secord, that the oppressive military force whose arrival she heroically announced was none other than the Americans themselves and that the forces whose victory she ensured were, in fact, British! (Although we hoped the association of Secords name with a chocolate company making delicious candies might somewhat reconcile our son to her stature among Canadian children.)

The trepidation Raj and I felt about the effects of this information on our younger son was not unfounded. We both remembered the awful shock our older son had experienced several years previously. In this case, the child had returned from a school lesson on the Revolutionary War full of amazement at the horribleness of George III. At the time, we were living in North Carolina, a region with far less sympathy for the British even than New York State. King George was really crazy and a tyrant, our older son informed us at the family dinner that night. In his mind, this man (and his British ilk) were the undisputed villains of the piece.

While our older son was surprised when I shared the Canadian perspective on the American Revolution, his expression turned to alarm when his dad chimed in to say that he had, in fact, attended King George Junior Public School in Toronto! Our son was horrified. Here were his parents, whom he had been accustomed to see as good and righteous, now revealed as the worst kinds of traitors! All along, he had been living in a nest of vipers and never knew it! We tried to backtrack by telling him that the school was not actually named after that King George but a different one, George V, but it did little to mitigate his disgust.

As awkward and painful as it is, Raj and I keep emphasizing our alternative perspective on the American Revolution because we believe that the difference between our education and that of our kids provides, perhaps, the best history lesson of all. History, our children have learned, is complicated. How you tell it depends on your location and the networks of power and loyalty of which you are a part. One story can have many different versions, each emphasizing a different facet of events in order to bolster a different theory or a different collection of interests.

Their embarrassing Canadian parents have taught them that there are no clear villains and no undisputed freedom fighters. Was George III a tyrant or a divinely ordained monarch? Depends on how you look at him. The same can be said of Secord, whose heroic legend also conceals a more complex reality. Although Secord sided with the British in the War of 1812, she was the Massachusetts-born daughter of a man who fought on the side of the Patriots in the American Revolution. And while Secord may have provided crucial information to the British, it is also possible that they were warned of the coming Americans by their Mohawk allies.

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Raj and I are, ourselves, part of a more complex story: Although we received one kind of education in our Canadian schoolrooms, our own immigrant backgrounds offered us different perspectives. My father, raised in the Catholic south of Ireland, had no kind words for the Queen. Rajs family roots lie in India, where British colonialism exacted a far more violent and oppressive toll than it ever did on the white American colonists. As we watch our youngest child encounter the history of the American Revolutionary War from the perspective of that conflicts winners, we wonder what her reaction will be. As for our younger son, he was philosophical about Mom and Dads weird Canadian past, Its okay, he said. Its how you were brought up. You cant help it.

Nicole Nolan Sidhu lives near Rochester, N.Y.

Read the original:
Im Canadian, my kids are American, so teaching the American Revolution is tricky - The Globe and Mail

No doubt, this is partly because men often have the silliness of imaginary play hammered out of them through our process of maturity and the education system, and taught to focus on real stuff.

But mostly its because lets face it its a lot more fun to spend time doing an activity that you also like doing.

Some of the games kids love can be mind-numbingly dull (if youve ever been an active participant in an imaginary tea party for more than five minutes or played Snap 67 times in a row, youll know what Im talking about) and engaging in activities that are not inherently interesting to you is actually really hard. Repeating them over and over, as kids like to do, is harder still.

Then theres that weird phase children go through where they set and change the rules of the game. The changes to the rules occur roughly every five seconds. I have played games with Polly Pocket where everything I did was wrong.

But I have to remind myself that playing with my children is not about me and what I want. Its about my children and what they want.

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Ultimately the activity you do with your child is mostly irrelevant. What counts and what will be remembered is the time you're spending together.

After all, you dont play backyard cricket with your kids because youre a cricket fanatic. Its because you love your kids. And the same goes for any other activity that our kids are interested in no matter how uninteresting we find it.

Engaging in your childs play also helps them develop a strong and confident sense of themselves. Its showing them that the person they are, their innate strengths and interests, are valid and worthy. And that you love them just the way they are.

If you only involve yourself in the parts of your childs life that you personally like, the lesson to your child is that they are not lovable or interesting to you when they are their authentic self.

The holidays are an opportunity to let your child know that you want to spend time with them because you love them, not because you happen to like the same activity.

In years to come, your child is unlikely to remember what was in their Christmas stocking this year. But the time you spend with them, validating and loving who they are, will stay with them for a lifetime.

Christopher Scanlon is the co-author of a 2020 book on parenting girls.

Christopher Scanlon is a Melbourne writer and academic.

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Why I play the games my children want to play (even if they're boring) - The Age

For mathematicians and computer scientists, this was often a year of double takes and closer looks. Some reexamined foundational principles, while others found shockingly simple proofs, new techniques or unexpected insights in long-standing problems. Some of these advances have broad applications in physics and other scientific disciplines. Others are purely for the sake of gaining new knowledge (or just having fun), with little to no known practical use at this time.

Quanta covered the decade-long effort to rid mathematics of the rigid equal sign and replace it with the more flexible concept of equivalence. We also wrote about emerging ideas for a general theory of neural networks, which could give computer scientists a coveted theoretical basis to understand why deep learning algorithms have been so wildly successful.

Meanwhile, ordinary mathematical objects like matrices and networks yielded unexpected new insights in short, elegant proofs, and decades-old problems in number theory suddenly gave way to new solutions. Mathematicians also learned more about how regularity and order arise from chaotic systems, random numbers and other seemingly messy arenas. And, like a steady drumbeat, machine learning continued to grow more powerful, altering the approach and scope of scientific research, while quantum computers (probably) hit a critical milestone.

Read more here:

Quanta's Year in Math and Computer Science (2019) - Quanta Magazine

NEW DELHI: An image of the black hole, the stuff of science fiction down the decades, was at the centre of a year that saw science breaching new frontiers with exciting firsts such as the development of a quantum computer that can outperform its classical counterparts and artificial embryos.

Cutting edge innovations in research and technology celebrated science and forwarded humankind's understanding of complex realities of the universe. The year will also be remembered as the year of testing biological and ethical limits in the laboratory, helping researchers find new avenues in the treatment of critical diseases.

In April, the International Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, consisting of a global network of radio telescopes, unveiled the first actual image of a black hole, a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot escape.

To produce the image, the researchers combined data from a network of radio telescopes to take simultaneous readings from around the world.

Science magazine named the image of the supermassive black hole situated at the centre of the Messier 87 galaxy, 54 million light years away, as the 2019 Breakthrough of the Year.

The imaging of the black hole is a fantastic revelation that is simultaneously a validation and a celebration of science, Ayan Banerjee, from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Kolkata, told PTI.

Although it does not uncover something that we did not know earlier, it does convert science fiction into science -- which is crucial for the acceptance of science in the daily lives of human beings, and the generation of future scientists, Banerjee said.

In a year that marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings, lunar exploration was high on the agendas of space agencies.

In January, China's Chang'e-4 probe became the first spacecraft to land safely on the far side of the Moon. Its rover Yutu-2 continues to roll across the dusty soils of Von Karman crater on the lunar body.

Other attempts to explore the Earth's natural satellite were not so successful.

To produce the image, the researchers combined data from a network of radio telescopes to take simultaneous readings from around the world. In April, an Israeli-led effort to put the first private spacecraft on the Moon's surface ended in a crash landing. The same fate was met by India's ambitious Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander in September.

The ongoing Mars missions returned a host of results. In April, NASA announced that its robotic Mars InSight lander had recorded a marsquake for the first time ever.

The marsquake' is the first recorded trembling that appears to have come from inside the planet, as opposed to being caused by the forces above the surface, such as wind.

There were many firsts in the micro world of laboratories too.

US researchers restored cellular function in 32 pig brains that had been dead for hours, opening up a new avenue in treating brain disease -- and shaking our definition of brain death to its core.

Announced in April in the journal Nature, the researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine devised a system roughly analogous to a dialysis machine, called BrainEx, that restores circulation and oxygen flow to a dead brain.

In another out-of-body experiment, scientists grew monkey embryos in a dish for nearly three weeks -- longer than primate embryos have ever been grown in the laboratory before.

The advance raised ethical concerns of whether lab-grown human embryos should be allowed to develop beyond 14 days, a restriction imposed in most countries.

In September, researchers at the University of Michigan in the US provided a possible circumvention of the 14-day limit by using human stem cells to make artificial embryos' that mimic the early development of a real human embryo.

Our stem cell structures that mimic embryos can help fill critical gaps in knowledge about early human development, and that could lead to a lot of good, Jianping Fu, an associate professor at Michigan, who led the study, said in a statement.

In October, Google took a quantum leap in computer science. Using its state-of-the-art quantum computer, called Sycamore, the tech giant claimed "quantum supremacy" over the most powerful supercomputers in the world by solving a problem considered virtually impossible for normal machines.

The quantum computer completed the complex computation in 200 seconds. That same calculation would take even the most powerful supercomputer approximately 10,000 years to finish, according to researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who published their results in the journal Nature.

A fantastic discovery has been that of Google's 53 qubit quantum computer ('quantum supremacy), Banerjee said.

And for the first time in July, an artificial intelligence (AI) bot beat human champions at multiplayer poker.

The AI programme developed by Carnegie Mellon University in the US in collaboration with Facebook AI defeated leading professionals in six-player no-limit Texas hold'em poker, the world's most popular form of poker.

The AI, called Pluribus, defeated poker professional Darren Elias, who holds the record for most World Poker Tour titles, and Chris Ferguson, winner of six World Series of Poker events.

In August, researchers from Oxford University and IBM Research made the first-ever ring-shaped molecule of pure carbon in the lab by using an atomic-force microscope to manipulate individual molecules.

Carbon can be arranged in a number of configurations. For example when each of its atoms is bonded to three other carbon atoms, it's relatively soft graphite.

A ring of carbon atoms, where each atom is bonded to just two others, and nothing else has eluded scientists for 50 years. Their best attempts have resulted in a gaseous carbon ring that quickly dissipated.

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From the image of a black hole to 'artificial embryos', 2019 was the year of many firsts in science - Economic Times