Director/producer/independent reporter Kempton Lam has made three full-length documentaries from 2004 – 2015. (Cantonese with English subtitles 廣東話、英文字幕) Collectively, the three documentaries are known as his “Revolution Trilogy” 「革命三部曲」. Kempton’s debut documentary Long Hair Revolution 「長毛革命」 has been collected by the Canadian National Archive since 2009. You can watch the three films at this YouTube Playlist (projected on your big screen HD TV or on your computer here). Enjoy!
It is time for Canada to catch up with up-to-date science. Similar to what some other countries (Australia, New Zealand, Malta, Nepal, Denmark, India and Pakistan (Ref The Economist video)) have ALREADY been doing!
“Most women are 46XX and most men are 46XY. […] In addition, some males are born 46XX due to the translocation of a tiny section of the sex determining region of the Y chromosome. Similarly some females are also born 46XY due to mutations in the Y chromosome.“
“A team of U of T engineering researchers is mending broken hearts with an expanding tissue bandage a little smaller than a postage stamp.
Repairing heart tissue destroyed by a heart attack or medical condition with regenerative cells or tissues usually requires invasive open-heart surgery. But now biomedical engineering Professor Milica Radisic [K’s note: including links to PubMed listed articles] and her colleagues have developed a technique that lets them use a small needle to inject a repair patch, without the need to open up the chest cavity.
Radisic’s team are experts in using polymer scaffolds to grow realistic 3D slices of human tissue in the lab. One of their creations, AngioChip, is a tiny patch of heart tissue with its own blood vessels – the heart cells even beat with a regular rhythm. Another one of their innovations snaps together like sheets of Velcro™.
Such lab-grown tissues are already being used to test potential drug candidates for side-effects, but the long-term goal is to implant them back into the body to repair damage.
“If an implant requires open-heart surgery, it’s not going to be widely available to patients,” says Radisic.
She says that after a myocardial infarction – a heart attack – the heart’s function is reduced so much that invasive procedures like open-heart surgery usually pose more risks than potential benefits.
“It’s just too dangerous,” she says.
Miles Montgomery, a PhD candidate in Radisic’s lab, has spent nearly three years developing a patch that could be injected, rather than implanted. [K’s note: more news on Miles]
“At the beginning, it was a real challenge,” he says. “There was no template to base my design on, and nothing I tried was working. But I took these failures as an indication that I was working on a problem worth solving.”
After dozens of attempts, Montgomery found a design that matched the mechanical properties of the target tissue and had the required shape-memory behaviour: as it emerges from the needle, the patch unfolds itself into a bandage-like shape.
[…]
The scaffold is built out of the same biocompatible, biodegradable polymer used in the team’s previous creations. Over time, the scaffold will naturally break down, leaving behind the new tissue.
The team also showed that injecting the patch into rat hearts can improve cardiac function after a heart attack: damaged ventricles pumped more blood than they did without the patch.
“It can’t restore the heart back to full health, but if it could be done in a human, we think it would significantly improve quality of life,” says Radisic.
There is still a long way to go before the material is ready for clinical trials. Radisic and her team are collaborating with researchers at the Hospital for Sick Children to assess the long-term stability of the patches, as well as whether the improved cardiac function can be maintained.
They have also applied for patents on the invention and are exploring the use of the patch in other organs, such as the liver.
“You could customize this platform, adding growth factors or other drugs that would encourage tissue regeneration,” says Radisic. “I think this is one of the coolest things we’ve done.”“
I’m sad and sicken of the KKK, Nazis, white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Canada is not immune as right-wing extremism is on the rise as well.
Program description for the above insightful Vice News piece.
//On Saturday hundreds of white nationalists, alt-righters, and neo-Nazis traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia to participate in the “Unite the Right” rally. By Saturday evening three people were dead – one protester, and two police officers – and many more injured.
“VICE News Tonight” correspondent Elle Reeve went behind the scenes with white nationalist leaders, including Christopher Cantwell, Robert Ray, David Duke, and Matthew Heimbach — as well as counter-protesters. VICE News Tonight also spoke with residents of Charlottesville, members of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Charlottesville Police.
From the neo-Nazi protests at Emancipation Park to Cantwell’s hideaway outside of Virginia, “VICE News Tonight” provides viewers with exclusive, up close and personal access inside the unrest.
This episode of VICE News Tonight aired August 14, 2017 on HBO.//
Aug 16th, 2017 11:28am Update: Well said CEO of Campbell’s Soup Denise Morrison (tweet, press release), “Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville. I believe the President should have been – and still needs to be – unambiguous on that point.
Following yesterday’s remarks from the President, I cannot remain on the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative. I will continue to support all efforts to spur economic growth and advocate for the values that have always made America great.”
“President Trump’s relationship with the American business community suffered a major setback on Wednesday as the president was forced to shut down his major business advisory councils after corporate leaders repudiated his comments on the violence in Charlottesville this weekend.
Trump announced the disbanding of the two councils — the Strategy & Policy Forum and the Manufacturing Council, which hosted many of the top corporate leaders in America — amid a growing uproar by chief executives furious over Trump’s decision to equate the actions of white supremacists and protesters in remarks Tuesday at Trump Tower.
Earlier Wednesday, the CEOs of Campbell Soup and the conglomerate 3M resigned from the manufacturing council. “Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville,” Campbell Soup chief executive Denise Morrison said. “I believe the president should have been – and still needs to be – unambiguous on that post.””
Long Hair (Leung Kwok-hung 梁國雄) was forced into the biggest fight of his political life with the recent unjust retroactive court ruling that robbed his Legislative Council seat. As I was digitizing the 25 hours of miniDV tapes I filmed to make Long Hair Revolution, I decided to turn some clips into deleted and extended scenes and used them as calls for help for Long Hair. #Donate #LHRDeletedExtendedScenes I stole the following words from a friend, I hope she doesn’t mind.
//Long Hair needs money for the battle ahead. The HKSAR and CCP government will do everything possible to bankrupt him, jail him, and destroy his movement for democracy in Hong Kong. They are threatening to dun him for 9 months of back wages, and have saddled him with millions of dollars in court costs. I’m reaching out to all of my friends, in and out of Hong Kong, to ask for your help. Please, please donate to keep his work and our dream alive. Here is an easy link. https://www.lsd.org.hk/donate/?lang=en
The donations are done with PayPal or credit card, and can be recurring or one-time-only. (For those of you unfamiliar with HK dollar amounts, 200 HKD is about 25 USD.)
Many many thanks! You are backing a noble man and a worthy cause. And if you’d like to know more about our Hong Kong situation, please reach out with questions and I’ll be happy to answer.//
“In particular, my thoughts go to Mr. Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, herself a tremendous symbol of courage and poise, who remains under house arrest,” Freeland said. “We continue to call for the release of all political prisoners.”
I have, so far, been unable to find any evidence of Canadian reporters asking Trudeau, on camera, about his view of Liu Xiaobo‘s death and his wife Liu Xia‘s continual house arrest. Since Mr. Trudeau was visiting Calgary yesterday for Stampede, I thought I would try my best to ask him a question myself. I thought, on the day of Liu Xiaobo‘s funeral (yesterday, Saturday, July 15), it was the least I could do to pay my deepest respect to Xiaobo and did my small part to try to shine a light on Xia‘s continual house arrest and get the PM to do more help free her.
Here is a video of my attempts in asking Trudeau. I have included some additional footage so you can see my questions in context of the crowd.
I asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau my first question as an independent reporter. For my second try, I took off my reporter hat and paid my respect to Liu Xiaobo by making a request to my Prime Minister as a Canadian citizen with Hong Kong heritage. On the sady day of Liu Xiaobo‘s funeral, when I’ve read reports of Chinese government sending secret police to pretend to be his best friends (many were too young to be his “best friends”) at the funeral, reports of his wife forced to burn his body to ashes and spread the ashes into the sea so no one can pay his grave site proper respect, I thought the least I could do to pay my respect to Xiaobo and did my small part was to try to shine a light on freeing Xia from her continual house arrest.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Please help free #LiuXiaobo’s wife #LiuXia!
“Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Johnston in Beijing on Thursday, urging both countries to expand cooperation in such areas as trade, law enforcement, technology and culture, and launch negotiations on a free trade agreement at an early date, reported the official Chinese Xinhua agency, which had no mention of Liu’s passing.“
Given the Chinese government’s self-proclaimed meaningless “rule-of-law” which lead to the shameful premature death of Mr. Liu Xiaobo and continual house arrest of Liu Xia, any discussion of cooperation in law enforcement is absolutely premature. How can we be sure any cooperation in law enforcement is absolutely Charter of Rights and Freedoms compliant under the current Chinese judicial regime?
“China cremated its only Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo, on Saturday, but watchful officials allowed only his widow and a few other mourners to bid farewell to the man who was also the country’s most famous political prisoner.
Later in the day, Mr. Liu’s ashes were lowered into the sea in a simple ceremony, ensuring that there would be no grave on land to serve as a magnet for protests against the Communist Party, especially on the traditional tomb-sweeping day every April.“
“It would be hard to imagine a more obscene display of Canada’s slavish relationship with China’s depraved Communist Party regime: The very moment imprisoned democracy activist and Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo died under heavy guard on a hospital bed in the northeast city of Shenyang on Thursday, a beaming Governor General David Johnston was posing for photographs at the opulent Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, shaking hands with Chinese tyrant Xi Jinping, Liu’s jailer, and tormentor.
It was all so very chummy. […]
Liu’s death marks the first time a Nobel peace prize winner has died behind bars since the pacifist Carl von Ossietzky died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1938.“
I LOVE the Calgary Green Bin program which promises to turn our food and yard waste (garbage that fills our landfills) into nutrient-rich compost! Totally #awesome! But MAGGOTS?! What the beep?! I don’t remember the city ever warns us any major risk of turning our green bins into massive stinky maggots farm?!
Take a look of the following photo and video to see for yourself what I am talking about.
I plan to phone the City of Calgary 311 help line or do some Google search to see how best to deal with this massive maggots problem.
While I certainly don’t enjoy this stinky stomach-turning maggots problem, I want to emphasize I still LOVE the Green Bin program as we all have to do our small part to help save our planet.
July 18, 2017 Update: I called 311 yesterday and Pam at the help desk connected Dave from City of Calgary Waste & Recycling Services who called me back promptly. I shared with Dave my massive & stinky maggots problem and suggested future city info flyers should include words warning Calgarian of potential issues if they choose to use the “newspaper method” suggested by the city. (with emphasis added and local PDF file included)
//How to make a kitchen pail liner out of newspaper
Wrapping food waste in newspapers or flyers is great alternative to compostable bags. Follow our quick kitchen pail liner guide (local PDF file) to make one at home.//
I Suppose the “newspaper method” can still be used if you don’t mind the maggots (which can totally be composed but it looks sickening) or if you freeze the food waste and put them into newspaper the night before the compost pick up day.
Today is finally the compost pick up day so I will clean up the green cart. This week we will try to use the compose bag and see if things will improve much better. According to Dave, things should improve a lot as the compose bags should stop flies or insects getting to the food waste. Will see how things go.
Posted by kempton 
kitchen pail liner guide
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