A CD or compact disc is a thin plastic silvery disc for audio recordings.

CD, C/D, Cd or cd may also refer to:

• CD-ROM, the same technology used for computer data
• Certificate of deposit, bank account in the United States with a fixed maturity date

In science and technology:

• cd (command), a command line command to change the current working directory in operating systems
• .cd, the Internet domain of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Cadmium or Cd, the chemical element
• Candela or cd, a unit of light intensity
• Circular dichroism, a form of spectroscopy
• Cluster of differentiation, a protocol used for the identification and investigation of cell surface molecules present on white blood cells
• Cordoba Durchmusterung, a star catalogue of the southern sky
• Drag coefficient or c_d, a dimensionless quantity that is used to quantify the drag or resistance of an object in a fluid environment
• Type-cD galaxy, a galaxy morphology classification
• -CD, the North American call sign suffix for Class A low-power television stations operating with digital signals

In politics:

• Cairo Damascus or Damascus Document, a text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls
• Canadian Forces Decoration, a Canadian award bestowed upon members of the Canadian Forces who have completed twelve years of military service
• Centre Democrats (Denmark), a former Danish political party
• Centre Democrats (Netherlands), a former political party of the Netherlands
• Community of Democracies, an intergovernmental organization of democracies and democratizing countries
• Conference on Disarmament, a forum established by the international community to negotiate multilateral arms control and disarmament agreements
• Corps Diplomatique, the collective body of foreign diplomats accredited to a particular country or body

In other uses:

• 400 (number), or CD in Roman numerals
• Geely CD, a coupe automobile from Geely Automobile
• České Dráhy or ČD, the main railway operator of the Czech Republic
• Commander of the Order of Distinction, a rank in the Jamaican Order of Distinction
• Companion dog (title), a title offered by the American Kennel Club for dog obedience
• "CD", a song by T2
• Civil Defense

See also[link]

• Conservation Dependent or LR/cd, an IUCN category assigned to species or lower taxa which were dependent on conservation efforts to prevent the taxon becoming threatened with extinction

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Criss Angel
Born	Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos (1967-12-19) December 19, 1967 (age 44) Long Island, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Magician/Entertainer/TV Personality
Years active	1997–present
Net worth	US$17 million (2010)
Spouse	JoAnn Winkhart (2002–2005) (divorced)
Website
Criss Angel.com The Magic Place Twitter Facebook

Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos (born December 19, 1967), better known by the stage name Criss Angel, is an American magician and illusionist. He is best known for starring in the television show, Criss Angel Mindfreak and his live performance illusion show Criss Angel Believe in artistic collaboration with Cirque du Soleil at the Luxor casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Angel is also the creator of the MagicPlace.com.

Early life[link]

Angel's childhood interest in magic grew as he aged and by the time he graduated from East Meadow High School, he decided to pursue a career as a professional magician instead of attending college as his parents wanted.^[1] Angel is of Greek descent.^[2][3][4]

Television career[link]

[edit] Criss Angel Mindfreak

Criss Angel was the creator, director, and executive producer of the A&E Network show Criss Angel Mindfreak. Seasons 1 and 2 were filmed at The Aladdin in Las Vegas, with Season 3 at the Luxor Las Vegas. Premiering on July 20, 2005, the show's illusions have included walking on water, levitating, walking up the side of Luxor Hotel (in the light of 39 focused lamps that can be seen from space^[5]), floating between two buildings, causing a Lamborghini to disappear, surviving in an exploding C4 Crate, cutting himself in half in full view of an audience and getting run over by a steamroller while lying on a bed of broken glass. While making season 3 Angel was injured jumping out of a moving car and stopped production for 2 weeks.

[edit] Criss Angel Believe

He made numerous special television guest appearances on WWE Raw, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Megan Mullally Show, The Ellen Show, AVN Awards Show 2007 and Larry King Live on CNN. The Tonight Show, Late Show with David Letterman, America's Got Talent", The Rosie O'Donnell Show, and introducing honoree Ozzy Ozbourne on the VH1 Rock Honors awards. He also made a guest acting appearance on the hit television shows CSI: NY, Las Vegas and Rules of Engagement.

The show was originally developed for Broadway and was titled Criss Angel MINDFREAK. Eventually, the show evolved into Believe when he entered a partnership with Cirque du Soleil and the Luxor's parent company, MGM Mirage, financed the show with $100 million.^[6]

After several delays, the show was set for a gala opening on October 31, 2008, with preview shows in late September.^[7][8][9] The initial preview was not well received, with thoroughly negative audience reactions.^[10][11] The show opened to equally harsh reviews which cited a lack of the magic Angel is known for, as well as a confusing and uninteresting theme. Reviewers felt neither Angel nor Cirque du Soleil were able to perform to their capabilities.^{[12][13][14][15]}

In April 2009, Angel ended a performance of Believe by "hurling obscene insults" at blogger Perez Hilton, an audience member. Hilton reportedly had texted to his fans during the performance that the show was "unbelievably BAD" and that he'd "rather be getting a root canal", and word had gotten back to Angel by the end of the performance.^[16][17] Cirque du Soleil later apologized to Hilton for Angel's remarks.^[18]

In 2010 the Las Vegas Sun critic John Katsilometes, after being unimpressed by the initial show, said that the show had improved by reducing the narrative elements and focusing on the magic.^[19] In 2011 the Toronto Star wrote: “The show is easily the most exciting thing now on stage in Vegas!” ^[20]

Phenomenon[link]

Starting in October 2007 he appeared as a judge on Phenomenon, with Uri Geller and in a CNN interview about the show he told Larry King "no one has the ability, that I'm aware of, to do anything supernatural, psychic, talk to the dead. And that was what I said I was going to do with Phenomenon. If somebody goes on that show and claims to have supernatural psychic ability, I'm going to bust [him] live and on television."^[21]

Wikinews has related news: Criss Angel challenges Uri Geller and Jim Callahan over paranormal claims

On the October 31, 2007 episode of the reality show Phenomenon, Paranormalist Jim Callahan performed a summoning, purportedly of author Raymond Hill, to help discover the contents of a locked box.^[22] Although fellow judge Uri Geller praised the performance, Angel called it "comical" and subsequently challenged both Callahan and Geller to guess the contents of two envelopes he pulled out of his pocket, offering a million dollars of his own money to whoever could do so. This led to an argument between Callahan and Angel, during which Callahan walked toward Angel and called him an "ideological bigot", with the two pulled apart as the show promptly went to a commercial break. Angel has since revealed the contents of one envelope and at the unveiling he challenged Geller one more time. Geller responded, "Although we were born one day apart - I was born on the 20th of December and you on the 19th - a lot of years between us - 40 years, you were one year old when I came out with my spoon bending..." Criss Angel cut him off at this point, saying, "I guess this is a 'no,'" and proceeded to open the envelope. The envelope contained an index card with the numbers "911" printed on it for September 11, 2001. Angel's explanation was this: "If on 9-10 somebody could have predicted that 9-11 was going to happen, they could have saved thousands of lives". The other envelope's contents was scheduled to be revealed on the first episode of Season 4 of Criss Angel: Mindfreak.

Other media[link]

Angel with Tommy Lee

Appearances[link]

In 2007, Angel appeared as fictional illusionist Luke Blade in an episode of CSI: NY, called "Sleight Out of Hand". On March 8, 2010, he was a special guest star on the WWE.^[23][24] In 2011, Angel appeared in an Orville Redenbacher Pop-Up Bowl popcorn commercial.^[25]

Books[link]

Angel is the author of the book Mindfreak: Secret Revelations, published by HarperEntertainment, 2007 (ISBN 978-0061137617).

Charity[link]

Angel created the BeLIEve Foundation 'Believe Anything is Possible - A JDS Foundation'.^[26]

Personal life[link]

In 2002, Angel married his longtime girlfriend JoAnn Winkhart (now JoAnn Sarantakos). The couple filed for divorce four years later.^[1] Although Angel was seen with his wife in the buried alive illusion (season 1, episode 6, 2005) and the body suspension illusion (season 1, episode 5, 2005), she was not credited as his wife; rather, she was listed as "Criss's Girl". In November 2008, Angel began dating Holly Madison, former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner.^[27] The relationship ended in February 2009.^[28]

He proposed to Sandra Gonzalez on September 7, 2011 in Cabo San Lucas during a sunset dinner.^[29]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Criss Angel at the Internet Movie Database

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2009)

Ice cubes in a glass of iced tea

Ice cubes are small, roughly cube-shaped pieces of ice, conventionally used to cool beverages. Ice cubes are sometimes preferred over crushed ice because they melt more slowly; they are standard in mixed drinks that call for ice, in which case the drink is said to be "on the rocks."

Ice cubes that are crushed or sheared into irregularly-shaped flakes may add an interesting aesthetic effect to some cocktails. Crushed ice is also used when faster cooling is desired, since the rate of cooling is governed by the number and average radius of the ice particles.^[1]

Melting ice cubes sometimes precipitate white flakes, commonly known as "floaties". This is calcium carbonate which is present in many water supplies and is completely harmless.^{[citation needed]}

Origin[link]

Gorrie's ice machine.

American physician and humanitarian John Gorrie built a refrigerator in 1844 with the purpose of cooling air. His refrigerator produced ice which he hung from the ceiling in a basin. Gorrie can be considered the creator of ice cubes, but his aim was not to cool drinks: he used the ice to lower the ambient room temperature. During his time, a dominant idea was that bad air quality caused disease. Therefore, in order to help treat sickness, he pushed for the draining of swamps and the cooling of sickrooms.

Methods of production[link]

Ice cubes are produced domestically by filling an ice cube tray with water and placing it in a freezer. Many freezers also come equipped with an icemaker, which produces ice cubes automatically and stores them in a bin from which they can be dispensed directly into a glass.

Ice cube tray[link]

Ice cubes in a tray

Ice cube trays are designed to be filled with water, then placed in a freezer until the water freezes to ice, producing ice cubes. Trays are often flexible, so the frozen cubes can be easily removed by flexing the tray. Twist ice trays have a simple spring loaded mechanism with a lever that is used to turn the tray upside down and flex at the same time such that the cubes drop are collected in a removable tray below and return the ice cube tray to its upright position without removing it from the freezer which can save time and reduces accidents and mess, though the tray has to be removed to be collected and the ice cube tray still has to be removed to be refilled. An alternative system is an aluminum tray with a lever that raises the ice cubes, freeing them from the tray. A motorized version of this is found in most automatic ice-making freezers.

While the usual shape of the ice 'cube' is roughly cubical, there are trays that dispense hemispherical or cylindrical blocks. These are commonly referred to as ice tubes. Some novelty trays produce blocks of ice in seasonal, festive or other shapes.

The first rubber ice cube tray was invented by Lloyd Groff Copeman. One day in 1928, while walking through some woods collecting sap for maple syrup, Copeman noticed that slush and ice flaked off his rubber boots rather than adhering to them. Having recalled this incident over lunch with his patent attorney, he conducted experiments using rubber cups. Later, he set about designing and then patenting different types of tray: a metal tray with rubber separators, a metal tray with individual rubber cups, and a tray made completely of rubber.^[2]

The first flexible stainless steel, all-metal ice cube tray was created by Guy L. Tinkham in 1933. The tray bent sideways to remove the ice cubes.

Several companies now offer pre-filled disposable ice trays for home freezing, which they claim provide better taste and reduced risk of contamination.^[3]

Large-scale ice cube production[link]

Dedicated ice-maker machines can be used to produce ice cubes for laboratories and academic use. Ice cubes are also produced commercially and sold in bulk; these ice cubes, despite their name, are often cylindrical, and may have holes through the center.

An interesting characteristic of commercially made ice cubes is that they are completely clear, lacking the clouding found in the center of domestically made ice cubes. Cloudy ice cubes result when water is frozen quickly, or when the water is high in dissolved solids. When water is cooled to its freezing point, and ice starts to form, dissolved gases can no longer stay in solution and come out as microscopic bubbles. However, as ice floats in water, once there is enough ice to form a layer on the surface, the ice layer traps all bubbles within the ice cube. Commercial ice-makers use a flowing source of purified water to make ice with cooling elements at the bottom, allowing the bubbles to be washed away from the top as the cube grows.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

Listen to this article (info/dl)

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ice cubes

• Ice pack
• Pagophagia
• Refrigeration
• Ice

References[link]

1. ^ Rauch, Jeffrey (1975). "The mathematical theory of crushed ice". Partial differential equations and related topics (Program, Tulane Univ., New Orleans, La., 1974). Berlin, New York (the state): Springer-Verlag. pp. 370–379. MR0427863. 
2. ^ "www.lloydcopeman.com: Biography". http://www.lloydcopeman.com/biography/CopemanStory.pdf. 
3. ^ "After Bottled Water? Purified Ice Cubes". http://www.aquaice.com/PressRelease_WSJ_2006.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-03. 

External links[link]

Look up ice cube in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Hot water can freeze faster than cold water (Subscription required)