If you haven’t seen the documentary “Orgasm Inc. – The Strange Science of Female Pleasure“, I highly recommend you go get a copy and watch it. I very much agree with the claim in the sysnopsis that Orgasm Inc. is “upbeat, engaging, enlightening, and provocative” and indeed it will ”change the way you think about sex.“
If you live in Calgary or anywhere in Canada, you can actually watch the full Orgasm Inc. documentary online at CBC The Passionate Eye. (Other countries may have similar arrangement, check Orgasm Inc for more info.) See my previous entry about the film and director Liz Canner. [Oct 6th Update: I have just interviewed Liz to talk about her film and updates about issues discussed in the film. I will post my interview with Liz later. Stay tune.]
“Extraordinary behind-the-scenes access reveals a drug company’s fevered race to develop the first FDA-approved Viagra for women – and offers a humorous but sobering look inside the cash-fueled pharmaceutical industry.”– Hot Docs Film Festival
“In the shocking and hilarious documentary ORGASM INC., filmmaker Liz Canner takes a job editing erotic videos for a drug trial for a pharmaceutical company. Her employer is developing what they hope will be the first Viagra drug for women that wins FDA approval to treat a new disease: Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD). Liz gains permission to film the company for her own documentary. Initially, she plans to create a movie about science and pleasure but she soon begins to suspect that her employer, along with a cadre of other medical companies, might be trying to take advantage of women (and potentially endanger their health) in pursuit of billion dollar profits. ORGASM INC. is a powerful look inside the medical industry and the marketing campaigns that are literally and figuratively reshaping our everyday lives around health, illness, desire — and that ultimate moment: orgasm.
Upbeat, engaging, enlightening, and provocative,
ORGASM INC. will change the way you think about sex.”
The following two news reports and documents released via Access to Information Act clarifies some of Harper government’s disinformation about census complaints
“An Industry Canada employee questioned Conservative MP Maxime Bernier’s claims in July that as minister he received about 1,000 complaints a day about the mandatory long-form census, internal documents obtained by CBC News show.
[...] Industry Canada’s “internal survey of correspondence did not show anything close to a thousand a day,” he wrote to Statistics Canada’s Connie Graziadei, adding in brackets “we got a standard 25-30 a year.”" [K comment: This, paradoxically, shows how important factual statistics collection is. Claim of 1,000 complaints a day with NO factual support of these complaints is another example of playing loose with facts at best and unethical behaviour at worst.]
However common in biology research, frogs are rare customers in physics laboratories and one may wonder why the Dutch boffins levitated frogs rather than “something scientific”, … like a mumbo-jumbo, for instance. We apologise to those who believe that “the real physics” should involve only obscure substances and be always dull.
Diamagnetic levitation was first demonstrated as long ago as in 1939 when small beads of graphite and bismuth were levitated in an electromagnet (for historic details, read Physics Today). It took scientists another 50 years to rediscover levitation when physicists from Grenoble lifted several organic materials by the diamagnetic force. They were not aware of the earlier experiment. Although Grenoble’s research was published in Nature, a few scientists noticed it.
When we, in our turn, rediscovered levitation being unaware of the previous experiments, we were amazed to find out that 90% of our colleagues did not believe that we were not joking that water can levitate. It became obvious to us that it was important to make scientists (as well as non-scientists) aware of the phenomenon. We levitated a live frog and other not-very-scientific objects because of their obvious appeal to a broader audience and in the hope that researchers from various disciplines, not only physicists, would never ever forget this often neglected force and the opportunities it offers.
In addition, the frog picture will probably help students studying magnetism to get less easily bored.
Why does the frog fly?
(this explanation is written in response to numerous inquiries from children who have not studied physics yet … or even do not want to study it at all)
[...] As you probably saw many times when playing with magnets, magnets push each other away if you try to bring together their like poles, for example, two north or two south poles. Similarly, the north pole of the external field will try to push away the “north poles” of magnetized atoms.
Our magnet creates a very large magnetic field (about 100 to 1000 times larger than school or household magnets).
In this field, all the atoms inside the frog act as very small magnets creating a field of about 2 Gauss (although very small, such a field can still be detected by a compass). One may say that the frog is now built up of these tiny magnets all of which are repelled by the large magnet. The force, which is directed upwards, appears to be strong enough to compensate the force of gravity (directed downwards) that also acts on every single atom of the frog. So, the frog’s atoms do not feel any force at all and the frog floats as if it were in a spacecraft.
You have got to ask yourself, – who will spend time going through years (across 2005,06,07) of internal and informal emails (obtained under the under the Access to Information Act) between myself and one of my consultancy contractors (Industry Canada), a past reviewer’s report of an early draft, selectively reading my publications since 2001, and producing about 20 printed pages (in two parts) of menacing rant appearing to try to undermine my (Andersen’s) research credibility and the Andersen-Frenz (2007) study for Industry Canada on “The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music”. [comment: Wow!]
Amazingly, this two-part diatribe (published in May and June 2010) attacking me and my research is published as an apparently ‘independent’ analysis representing facts and not taking sides in the ongoing international debate on how policy should respond to unauthorized filesharing on the Internet and the digital economy of the future.
The blogger is in fact Chris Castle from ‘Christian L Castle Attorneys’ based in Los Angeles and San Francisco USA, and the firm’s web site lists that they represent the record labels, film studios, among others. Thus, one could consider they have a clear financial interest in the debate on intellectual property (IP) policy in the digital economy. Another blogger spreading this unsubstantiated gossip on the Internet is Bob Tatantino [sp? Tarantino] from Heenan Blaikie’s Entertainment Law Group in Toronto.
Is this type of work commissioned? Peer- reviewed? (not likely!), and what interests surround the making and publication of it? [comment: Good questions.]
Is it hypocritical, or even dishonest, that firms so closely linked to the interests on the one side of the copyright debate on digital economy policy present themselves as neutral carriers of ‘truth’ while accusing a neutral academic study of taking sides? Do these firms have a conflict of interest? [comment: Interesting questions again.]
Interestingly, I was not informed of the publication of this work (but realized its existence as I received a number of unusual emails over the summer), which explains my late response.“
SW: Graphene seems to be just one particularly extraordinary example of a long line of unique discoveries in your research. How would you characterize your research style?
It is rather unusual, I have to say. I do not dig deep—I graze shallow. So ever since I was a postdoc, I would go into a different subject every five years or so. Every time I took a different university position, I would change subjects. I don’t want to carry on studying the same thing from cradle to grave. Sometimes I joke that I am not interested in doing re-search, only search. There have been a few hits, like graphene and levitating frogs and gecko tape. When I moved from Holland to the University of Manchester, it was a good time to try new subjects, and one of the things that came out of it was gecko tape and another was graphene, and a third involved domain walls in magnetic structures. Graphene certainly turned out to be the biggest hit, scientifically the most important. Even though gecko tape is very popular these days, we had to completely abandon it. Graphene turned out to be much, much more important than anything else.
SW: Is there a common theme to your research strategies?
The common theme is to use experimental facilities that are available and to see what we can do—what other people haven’t done previously. I’m looking for an unexplored area of research, based on a combination of knowledge and facilities. I’m not trying to reach some theoretical goal set forth by someone else. It’s like this kids’ toy, Lego. You have all these different pieces, cubes and stuff, and you have to build something based strictly on what pieces you’ve got. So in research, some of the Lego pieces are facilities, some are random knowledge, and we try to build up something new from that. I guess we could call it the “Lego Doctrine.”
Here is an excerpt from Bruce Schneier’s insightful article “Wiretapping the Internet” (emphasis added),
“Surveillance infrastructure is easy to export. Once surveillance capabilities are built into Skype or Gmail or your BlackBerry, it’s easy for more totalitarian countries to demand the same access; after all, the technical work has already been done.
Western companies such as Siemens, Nokia and Secure Computing built Iran’s surveillance infrastructure, and U.S. companies like L-1 Identity Solutions helped build China’s electronic police state. The next generation of worldwide citizen control will be paid for by countries like the United States.
We should be embarrassed to export eavesdropping capabilities. Secure, surveillance-free systems protect the lives of people in totalitarian countries around the world. They allow people to exchange ideas even when the government wants to limit free exchange. They power citizen journalism, political movements and social change. For example, Twitter’s anonymity saved the lives of Iranian dissidents — anonymity that many governments want to eliminate.
Yes, communications technologies are used by both the good guys and the bad guys. But the good guys far outnumber the bad guys, and it’s far more valuable to make sure they’re secure than it is to cripple them on the off chance it might help catch a bad guy. It’s like the FBI demanding that no automobiles drive above 50 mph, so they can more easily pursue getaway cars. It might or might not work — but, regardless, the cost to society of the resulting slowdown would be enormous.”
CBC Radio: The Current It’s Monday, October 4th. Stephen Harper‘s spokesperson says the Prime Minister is not a control freak, despite what a new book says. Currently, All 143 Conservative MPs have signed sworn affidavits to the same effect. This is The Current.
Love to hear in the comments section if any readers also find this news funny.
P.S. I am normally not a betting man (unless the odds are with me), in this case, I am willing to bet $10 that, within the about IPO price range, there will at least be two prices that will NOT be used. :)
First of all, I want to congratulate The Right Honourable David Johnston on becoming Canada’s new Governor General.
Now, like some other technical savvy Canadians, I am not satisfied with the simplistic official explanation of “The wavy band inscribed with zeros and ones represents a flow of information, digital communication and modern media.“
I want to find out the “real” translated meaning for the ones and zeros under the new GG’s Coat of Arms. CBC reporter James Cudmore has shared his speculations in his Oct 1st article “The new GG’s binary banner: what’s it mean?“ I am now trying to find out more info. Stay tune for further update if and when I have more details to add.
It is easy to blame someone who cannot, by law and by constitutional convention, defend herself. I think people who have attacked Jean may now understand more of what really happened behind the scene from the CBC report “PM gave Jean pledges in prorogation crisis“.
I want to make a note that Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided to NOT attend Jean‘s farewell party and speech. Just as Canada was the only country that didn’t have anything positive to say to the former UNHCHR Louise Arbour (a Canadian and former supreme court justice) when she left her post. This pattern of small-mindedness and pettiness just makes me sick to my stomach.
I want to congratulate the very capable Ngo brothers for launching another Memory Express store, this time in Richmond, BC, their seventh store at the moment. Check out this video interview I did about 2 years ago, “Exploring the successful Memory Express – Chat with co-founder Minh Ngo“. It is wonderful and exciting to see the brothers growing their business from one tiny store to a large chain with seven stores over the years. I think what the brothers have done and achieved can be inspiring for Canadian entrepreneurs.
By the way, I like Mihn and the brothers so do check out their grand opening sale this weekend (Saturday Oct 2nd & Sunday Oct 3rd, 2010) at the Richmond and other stores.
I want to wish the many Canadian athletes and officials at Commonwealth Games all the best and good health. I don’t want to second guess the Canadian organizers but I am worried about Canadian athletes and officials especially after reading news of the conditions of the Games and “Indian official contracts dengue fever as Games open” CTV and Guardian.
I am interested in seeing results and progresses, so I hope the mathematicians and computer theorists can figure some new ways to share ideas and give credits so they can get a few more cool open problems resolved in my lifetime.
This is a drama/romantic comedy with a twist. Here is the CIFF film synopsis (with emphasis added),
“ME, TOO is the story of Daniel (Pablo Pineda), the first European with Down syndrome to graduate university. Raised in a highly academic home environment, the 34-year-old Daniel is constantly caught between two worlds, without quite fitting in on either side. He is more intellectual than the average person with Down syndrome, but not “normal” enough to fit in with much of “normal” society. Because of his loneliness, his relationships are the most important part of his life. When Daniel starts a new job, he soon forms a close friendship with one of his co-workers, Laura (Lola Dueñas). The friendship advances quickly into something more all consuming, and soon Daniel falls in love.
The intimate journey of Daniel, Laura and their friends and family captures the intense emotions each of them experiences. ME, TOO is a fascinating and emotional first feature film written and directed by the team of Álvaro Pastor and Antonio Naharro.”
By the way, to complete this review, I will also post some links to other reviews I enjoy reading plus an interesting review by a respected law professor and my personal response to his views.
1. Opening scenes
Like other reviewers have pointed out already, the opening scenes set up the story beautifully. And Jesse Eisenberg (as Mark Zuckerberg) is greatly helped by Rooney Mara as Erica Albright. In the hands of lesser writer or director, the audiences may not connect with Jesse‘s Zuckerberg character and we might have a film dead on arrival.
2. The “computer hacking” and “social hacking/understanding”
Many computer code hacking/writing scenes were shown through out the film and they presented in dynamic manner. But more interestingly, the audiences are also made clear that the “social hacking/understanding” is equal or more important.
3. The Supporting Casts
The supporting casts all did wonderful jobs. The supporting actors/actresses all have great screen time to show their chops.
I really think Timberlake has done a wonderful job in the film and I think we should stop giving him a hard time for his singing past! :) If you haven’t seen it, he was very funny in Mike Myers’ The Love Guru.
4. The rowing race scene (using tilt-shift time-lapse photography)
I don’t have a photo to show the rowing race scene (above photo is the twins practicing). Anyway, the filming technique used to film the race is a special technique called tilt-shift time-lapse photography. [HT Brandon for leaving a comment to remind me of the name of the technique.]
The Calgary Apple Chinook store opened its door two days ago on Wednesday, 29th Sept. My friend Garry (thanks for above the photo, Garry) was there bright and early at 8am to check out the new store and was one of the lucky ones to get the free Apple Chinook t-shirt. Apparently, the crowd at 8am wasn’t big as most people (~100) were lining up to buy iPhone 4 and some of the 1,000 free t-shirts were still available before 11am.
I went to Apple Chinook in the afternoon and it was buzzing. Was I blown away by the Apple Chinook store? Well, it looks nice and bright, but it is definitely no AppleNewYork. While the staff were pleasant and helpful but I felt some of the sales staff were not as technically knowledgeable as I had expected. What Apple Chinook will likely do is to add some serious challenge to nearby Apple resellers (e.g. London Drugs, Best Buy, Future Shop) or even other Apple stores in town. Time will tell.
“I’m here to get an iPhone 4,” said Shonicker, who was the first in line at the Apple store. “Because my phone sucks hard-core. Doesn’t do anything. I don’t care what it costs. It could cost anything I’ll pay it right now. I need a new phone.“
Dylan Ostafie, 22, was also at the mall since 3:30 a.m. and first in line at the Apple store.
“We randomly decided we wanted an iPhone. They’re sold out everywhere,” he said. “We figured we’d just beat everyone else.”
It is words like “I don’t care what it costs” and “We randomly decided we wanted an iPhone” that give Apple the power that it has over its customers/fans. And it is this kind of power that turns the opening of a “store” into “news”.
Here is the press release from NFB. Check out some of these FREE screenings if you are in Toronto.
The NFB celebrates 40 years of China-Canada relations at the Toronto Mediatheque
Toronto, October 1st, 2010 – This October, Canada and the People’s Republic of China are celebrating 40 years of diplomatic relations. The two countries have maintained productive relations for several decades now, enriched by exchanges in such varied sectors as science, agriculture, trade, the environment, medicine and culture. To mark this memorable anniversary, the National Film Board (NFB) is presenting seven recent films produced by China’s movie industry at the Toronto NFB Mediatheque from October 8 to 13. Several of the films are making their Canadian premiere alongside a selection of films produced by the NFB. The screenings are FREE and are being organized jointly by China’s Film Office of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Canada, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada and the NFB.
About the Program
Friday, October 8 at 6:30 pm
Forever Enthralled by Chen Kaige, 2008
An epic film on the life of the famed Chinese opera singer Mei Lanfang, starring Zhang Ziyi and Masanobu Ando, rising star Shaoqun Yu, who gives a remarkable performance, and Xueqi Wang in a supporting role. Named Best Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards in 2009, Forever Enthralled has been presented in several competitions, including the Berlin International Film Festival in 2009.
Saturday, October 9 at 1 pm – program for the whole family
The Dream of Jinsha, animated film, 2010 (Canadian premiere)
Xiao Long, a schoolboy around ten years old, accidentally goes back in time to an ancient Chinese empire that existed 3,500 years ago. That’s when the problems start…
The film will be preceded by a screening of the NFB animated film The Friends of Kwan Ming.
Saturday, October 9 at 3 pm
Walking to School by Peng Jiahuang and Peng Cheng, 2009 (Canadian premiere)
Children of the Lisu tribe in the Yunnan mountains have a strange way of getting to school: they have to dangle from a hook above the gorges of the Nujiang River and slide along a steel cable. Read the rest of this entry »
There is a policy issue related to Chatr’s claims about dropped calls that I’d like to address. In most countries around the world when a customer moves from one carrier’s network to another, there is a seamless transition for the caller. That means that when a customer moves from one carrier to another while conducting a call, the call continues and doesn’t drop. It’s called a seamless hand-off. In Canada however, the government does not obligate carriers to provide seamless handoff and our roaming partner has refused to give our customers the benefit of seamless handoff. The result is that when one of our customers moves from our Wind home zone to our roaming partner’s network, (we call it an “Away” zone) her call drops. When it decided to introduce competition into the telecom sector, the federal government thought about requiring incumbents to give new entrants seamless hand-off. The incumbents lobbied hard and successfully against this. As a result, our customers do have some dropped calls that they would not otherwise have. This is not because of any issues with the quality of our network but because the incumbents are taking advantage of a government policy which gives them a competitive advantage.
Posted by kempton 
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