Watch “Revolution Trilogy” 睇「革命三部曲」

Director/producer/independent reporter Kempton Lam has made three full-length documentaries from 2004 – 2015. Kempton’s debut documentary Long Hair Revolution 「長毛革命」 has been collected by the Canadian National Archive since 2009. The three documentaries are collectively known as “Revolution Trilogy” 「革命三部曲」 and are in Cantonese with English subtitles (廣東話、英文字幕). You can watch the three films at this YouTube Playlist (beautifully projected on your big screen HDTV or on your computer). Enjoy!

Long Hair Revolution 「長毛革命」 (full-length 2005) (read film & Canadian national archive info)

HKtv Revolution 「香港電視革命」 (full-length 2015) (read Director’s Statement)

Umbrella Revolution: History as Mirror Reflection 「雨傘革命實錄：以史為鏡」 (full-length 2015) (read Director’s Statement)

Life and times via Valedictory Remarks

Biography and auto-biography are types of non-fiction books that I enjoy a lot in reading as I get to learn from the life and times of interesting people. I recently discovered and learned to love Valedictory Remarks from the UKSupremeCourt YouTube channel. Here are two video remarks I enjoy (Lord Sumption, Lord Neuberger, Lord Clarke) and I hope you will too.

Lord Sumption’s Valedictory Remarks

Lord Neuberger and Lord Clarke Valedictory Remarks

China’s War on the Internet

Author James Griffiths @jgriffiths gave an insightful talk “China’s War on the Internet: How the West Lost the Web” at Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong @fcchk talking about his new book, The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet. Have a watch.

“China’s War on the Internet: How the West Lost the Web”

 

Clinical study: Single blood test from U Calgary could offer rapid breast cancer diagnosis

Hope the two year clinical study will prove to be successful, time will tell. Good luck and best wishes to Dr. Kristina (Tina) Rinker and her Early Cancer Detection Initiative team!  #fuckCancer

2019 March 14th, CBC News, “Calgary-made blood test aims to improve breast cancer detection – Clinical study now underway at University of Calgary on test that could reduce wait times, patient stress”

//The clinical study, which began in May 2018, will involve more than 800 women from Calgary and Edmonton, and roughly 600 women in Manchester, U.K.

Participants are given a simple blood test along with their regular mammogram.

“The earlier you can identify the breast cancer at a point that it’s treatable, the better the outcomes,” said Kristina Rinker, associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Calgary.

According to Rinker, a computer algorithm allows scientists to identify a molecular marker for active breast cancer in the blood at an early stage. She says 800 samples — already collected — show the test has an accuracy rate of about 90 per cent.

“Finding it early, finding it at stage one, getting the treatment as fast as possible, that’s going to save lives,” she said.

Rinker hopes the blood test will eventually be used along with mammography to help identify cancer in women who have dense breast tissue — which makes cancer more difficult to detect — or those who have inconclusive mammogram results.//

Further reading, U of Calgary, 14 March, 2019 “Single blood test could offer rapid breast cancer diagnosis – Two-year clinical program seeking participants for study” which has a link to the ‘Identification of Breast Cancer from a Blood Sample (IDBC)’ study for “Women interested in participating in the IDBC clinical program can find more information” which has additional links for people to read through the IDBC Consent Form, IDBC Questionnaire or IDBC Brochure.

P.S. Here is a UC link to Dr. Rinker’s peer-reviewed article. and her profile at the Creative Destruction Lab.

Designing the Canadian Flag

I recently watched the documentary “Design Canada – The History of Graphic Design in Canada” via online streaming service Kanopy (free thanks Calgary Public Library) and LOVE it! Especially loving the segment about the design history of the Canadian flag! I love that Canadian flag segment so much that I looked up more online and found some extra cool info produced by CBC News in 2015 to celebrate the 50th birthday of our lovely flag!

CBC News, Feb 16, 2015, “The real story behind the Canadian Flag”

Have a read of the lovely historical and insightful four-page document “Dr. George F.G. Stanley’s Flag Memorandum – “the genesis of the Canadian flag”” as shown in the above CBC News report.

Here is a trailer of “Design Canada – The History of Graphic Design in Canada”

P.S. I love Canada and the Canadian flag and I’ve requested a Peace Tower flag that has flown on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and hoping to receive it around the year 2060, hopefully I’ll still be alive to receive it!

I like the Greek proverb (?), “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” In requesting the Peace Tower flag that had a waiting list of 46 years at the time, I made myself a commitment/promise of sort to love, cherish, and to try to make Canada a little bit better than I found her!

Hello 2019

Love to learn from others and will keep doing it. Graham Norton is one of my favourite talk show hosts and here you can find a lot of inside insights. “Exclusive: Graham Norton Reveals Secrets From His Show | Studio 10“.

I also watched these three clips of Hillary Clinton: a) Hillary Clinton Wishes She Had Done This During the Debates, b) Hillary Clinton didn’t want to attend Trump’s Inauguration, c) Hillary Clinton Is Worried About Donald Trump’s Tweets.

Q&A with Neil Gaiman (one year after Neil’s great commencement speech!)

C-SPAN: Joe Wong at RTCA Dinner

(Ref: Joe Wong: Building A Wall Didn’t Work For China, clip of .@JoeWongComedy wants to bring Chinese and Americans together – by making them both laugh)

I would much rather feel comfortable and feel beautiful, than to feel uncomfortable, but look fantastic. – New Quote I Love

I’m adding three quotes by Penny Marshall (the actress, director and producer who passed away yesterday) to my list of Quotes I Love. The first quote was thanks to Olivia Munn. The other quotes I discovered from imdb.

“I would much rather feel comfortable and feel beautiful, than to feel uncomfortable, but look fantastic.” – Penny Marshall (1943 – 2018)

“I want you to laugh and cry. That’s what I do.”

“I have a strange combination of fearlessness and massive insecurity.“

In the quest to build a better battery

I’ve always love and curious about battery technologies. CBC News has this interesting news article, “In the quest to build a better battery, a Canadian is energizing the field“. Will see how things pan out in the coming years with Canadian Don Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at MIT. (Prof. Sadoway “did both his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Toronto, receiving his PhD in 1977”.)

2012 Ted Talk Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy

2015 World Economic Forum, Unlocking Renewables | Donald Sadoway