Jian Ghomeshi at home in lofty house

I’ve recently linked to two interviews by CBC Radio personality Jian Ghomeshi and I think Jian does some of the best interviews in Canada.

Here is another cool TorStar video, “Jian Ghomeshi at home in lofty house“.

Ad for a designer axe

From TorStar “Designer Axes. Really.” Nice video report.

Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation @ TED

Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation. [HT TEDxCalgary]

“Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think.”

Dean Kamen: The emotion behind invention @ TEDMED

Dean Kamen: The emotion behind invention. [HT BMD]

“Dean Kamen talks about the profound people and stories that motivated his work to give parts of their lives back with his design for a remarkable prosthetic arm.”

TEDx Calgary LIVE (Apr 29th, 9am-6pm)

For those who are not able to participate in person, the TEDx Calgary event is being webcast in full on April 29th, running from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (MST).

I want to thank the TEDx Calgary team and volunteers for organizing this event in Calgary. Looking forward to meeting them and other TEDx Calgary participants tomorrow.

Follow TEDxCalgary: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube.

Ricky Gervais to return as Golden Globes host

I am delighted to find out the funny and insightful comedian Ricky Gervais is to return as Golden Globes host in 2011. Very looking forward to meeting Ricky at the 2010 Banff World Television Festival (bwtvf) in June.

From Ricky’s site,

“The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has invited Ricky reprise his hosting role after the success of this year’s show back in January.
Read more here in Variety.
And listen to Ricky’s reaction on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show.”

By the way, from UK Guardian,

“The next series from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant will be Life’s Too Short, a sitcom about actor Warwick Davis, who is 3ft 6in tall. “It’s about his life: the life of a showbiz dwarf. He plays himself, we play ourselves, it’s sort of like Curb Your Enthusiasm,”"

Defending Canada and Parliamentary Democracy

Today is an important day. From CBC,

“The House of Commons has a right to order the government to produce uncensored documents related to the treatment of Afghan detainees, Speaker Peter Milliken has ruled.”

More info from this Liveblog from CBC. Ottawa Citizen, “Milliken mediates“.

From TorStar “Parliament wins in showdown with Harper government“, and editorial “Wise ruling on secret files“.

From TorStar Susan Delacourt “Speaker’s Ruling: Derek Lee speaks” (very insightful, must read),

[Lee:] The precedent here today is the clear, unequivocal, benchmarked statement of authority of the House to send for papers and records and it is absolute. And he says the House has never acted to curtail its powers. It was always absolute and it still is. So that’s the rule, that’s the law.

The government members took it quite well. It maybe wasn’t a cold shower, I don’t know. I mean, I wrote a book on this, it wasn’t new to me. But to some of them, to hear that said, it would be a bit of a cold shower.

An excerpt from Macleans “The Commons: The House always wins“,

There seemed, at first, points for each side. Halfway through, the tally might have been said to be tied. Then, the will of Parliament began to run up the score.

“Before us are issues that question the very foundations upon which our parliamentary system is built,” Mr. Milliken observed. “In a system of responsible government, the fundamental right of the House of Commons to hold the government to account for its actions is an indisputable privilege and, in fact, obligation.”

Then came the reference to Bourinot. Then references to Maingot, Erksine, McGee and Odgers. Then this.

“It is the view of the chair,” Mr. Milliken said, “that accepting an unconditional authority of the executive to censor the information provided to Parliament would in fact jeopardize the very separation of powers that is purported to lie at the heart of our parliamentary system and the independence of its constituent parts.”

MPs on the opposition side applauded. The Speaker continued. ”Therefore,” he said, “the chair must conclude that it is perfectly within the existing privileges of the House to order production of the documents in question.”

A cry of “yes!” came from the far end of the room.

Louise Arbour can finally speak out against world’s worst regimes

Excerpt from an insightful TorStar article “Louise Arbour can finally talk about world’s worst regimes – Controversial jurist’s new role allows her to finally speak out against world’s worst regime“,

But she spares no criticism for benign governments that fail in their responsibility to protect vulnerable people worldwide.

The “ouch” factor is high — and that includes Canada.

“Is Canada punching below its weight?” she says. “Is it punching at all?”

Ottawa, Arbour argues, is “largely absent on the international scene. It’s very difficult to capture any kind of message, position or form of engagement these days.”

And she adds, “when I was prosecutor in 1996, it mattered what Canada thought. On issues of justice and ethics, it mattered what the Canadian position was. There was a sense that you would get an honest, well-thought-out approach. Not just a raw pursuit of ideological or national interest.”

Exclusive Feature Interview with K’naan on Q TV

Another insightful and wonderful interview from Qtv “Canadian rapper K’naan sat down for a rare feature length interview in Studio Q with host Jian Ghomeshi.”

New quotes I love

New quotes I love.

“Never memorize what you can look up in books.“
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. [...] The important thing is not to stop questioning; never lose a holy curiosity.“
- Albert Einstein

Interesting articles: Cameron, Samuelson, Edelman, JTF2, Einstein

Saw a few interesting articles in the last few days,

• James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora
• Paul Samuelson Memorial by Paul Krugman
• Words from Richard Edelman, CEO of PR firm Edelman
• JTF2 – Canada’s elite commandos and the invasion of Afghanistan
• What Einstein Left Behind – from Life Magazine 55 years ago, on April 18, 1955

The Adventures of BeetleCam with Elephants, Lions, African Buffalos

Check out “The Adventures of BeetleCam” (with sample photos of Elephants, Lions, African Buffalos). Very cool.

“And so BeetleCam was conceived; a DSLR camera mounted on top of a four-wheel drive remote control buggy.”

Cute ad with shadow puppets

Cute ad. [HT Bud]

Warren Buffett & Goldman Sachs

I like to capture these two articles (at the same place) for the record.

Buffett Rented Good Name to Goldman Too Cheap: Alice Schroeder (Bloomberg) [HT Alice]

Warren Buffett Has ‘Great Confidence’ in Goldman Sachs Says Berkshire Director (CNBC Warren Buffett Watch)

How K’naan’s ‘Wavin’ Flag’ became anthem for the world

Check out this wonderful TorStar piece “How K’naan’s ‘Wavin’ Flag’ became anthem for the world“. Here is The Young Artists for Haiti version of K’naan‘s “Wavin’ Flag” that was released March 12, 2010.

P.S. See my previous blog entry about K’naan (with link to song Wavin’ Flag and Q interview).

****

The TorStar report claims this next one is the FIFA version, but the video info said it is not. Well, it is a good version.

The Coca-Cola version.

P and NP: a cute movie

This is a cute movie about P and NP.

[HT Lance]

Congrats MT Carney, President of Marketing, Disney Studios

Congrats to MT Carney for being appointed President of Marketing, Disney Studios. Here are some of the news reports and commentaries.

1. Carney to Run Disney Marketing (The Wrap)
2. Disney Studios to Name Naked’s M.T. Carney as CMO (AdAge)
3. Disney Studios hires outsider M.T. Carney to head marketing (LA Times)
4. Disney Names a New Marketing Chief (New York Times Blog)
5. MT Carney named head of Disney marketing (The Hollywood Reporter)

Here is an excerpt from AdAge,

“In one of the more surprising moves of an agency executive moving to the client side, M.T. Carney, partner at Naked Communications’ U.S. operations, has been hired to lead marketing for Walt Disney Studios.

As first reported by The Wrap, the hire is expected to be announced by Disney Studio Chairman Rich Ross later today.
Ms. Carney and Disney couldn’t be immediately reached, but Naked confirmed the move to Advertising Age.

“We are very proud of M.T.,” said Paul Woolmington, founding partner at Naked. “Now we have a Naked inside Disney, and we anticipate working in a new capacity,” he said, calling the move a “win-win.” Mr. Woolmington stressed that the move wouldn’t cause disruption at the agency as it’s “bench strength is amazing.”

In 2006, when Ad Age positioned Ms. Carney as a media executive to watch in its “Media Maven” report, John Harlow, co-founder of the U.K. based communications planning shop, described the Scottish-born, former Ogilvy & Mather account planner as having a “fierce intellect, and clients are just taking to her.”

It now seems one of those clients she won over was Richard Ross, who for many months is said to have been hunting outside of Hollywood for a new marketing leader who could shake things up at the entertainment company and better position it in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Other candidates for the position reportedly came from packaged-goods companies and beverage brands such as Pepsi.”

By the way, this bit of info from the LA Times and Disney’s unspoken rationale seem quite odd to me for the new President of Marketing,

“Disney declined to make Carney available for an interview.”

Footnote: For the last few years, I felt a small connection to MT because her personal site “mtcarney.com” used to have one sentence & a link to this 2006 AdAge article page on my site. Since MT’s page and her LinkedIn profile are both wiped clean now, I suspect thats the price for being marketing boss at the big mouse studio! :) Here is what I remember seeing at mtcarney.com and still cached by Google cache.

Good luck and all the best MT!

Innovation: Fresh thinking for the ideas economy

The Economist has posted the videos of the 2010 “Innovation: Fresh thinking for the ideas economy” conference at Berkeley, California. Here is the programme. Check out the videos.

Some of my fav videos (so far):

1. The Hybrid Problem Solver: Can design thinking save the world?
2. Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, talks about the power of opensource
3. Hannibal and me: Timeless lessons about life, success and failure by Andreas Kluth

[HT Andreas Kluth]

Apple’s Next iPhone

Check out Gizomodo’s “This is Apple’s Next iPhone” for the iPhone 3GS + 1 model. Now I just hope the mobile chip set will run on WIND Mobile’s AWS.

Sunday Times: David Duchovny is not quite the man next door

A very interesting piece from Sunday Times: David Duchovny is not quite the man next door.

Check out the trailer for The Joneses, seems quite smart independent film.