Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau, Please help free #LiuXiaobo’s wife #LiuXia

So far Canada has very muted responses to Liu Xiaobo‘s death (on Thursday July 13, 2017) and his wife Liu Xia‘s continual house arrest. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland tweeted she is “terribly sad” and issued a strongly worded written statement including the words but, as far as I know, nothing was said in-person on camera by neither Minister Freeland nor Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself. Here is an excerpt from the written statement (download a PDF file with my highlights and notes),

“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!

Photos credit: HK01 July 15th report, “劉曉波告別式：國保疑混入充數 被監控好友證無一「好友」出席”

Photo of Liu Xiaobo’s ashes being spread at sea. Photo credit: Tweet of 吾尔开希 Wu’er Kaixi. Here is a Medium article “Murdered but Undefeated” by Wu’er Kaixi that I hope to read soon.

P.S. As reported by Radio Canada International (RCI), Governor General David Johnston was “on a state visit to China from July 10 to 14, accompanied by a large delegation of Canadian politicians and business leaders“.

Further quoting the RCI report, [emphasis added]

“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?

July 16, 2017 update: Foreign Affairs Minister @cafreeland tweeted, “Canada continues to call on the Chinese govt to release #LiuXia and offer her safe passage out of China, according to her wishes. #LiuXiaobo” at 5:26 PM – 16 Jul 2017 from London, England

(audio) BBC World Service Newshour, “Ai Weiwei says Western countries failed Liu Xiaobo”

Guardian, July 15, “Liu Xiaobo: dissident’s friends angry after hastily arranged sea burial”

NYT, July 15, “Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Dissident and Nobel Laureate, Is Cremated”

“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.“

Maclean’s, July 14, “Ottawa’s despicable display in China – Terry Glavin on the death of Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo and Canada’s efforts to wine and dine the prisoner’s tormentors”

“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.“

xx

HongKongers, iMac, iPod, and HomePod

You would be wrong to think this is a post about Apple’s iMac (introduced in 1998, 18 years ago), iPod (introduced in 2001, 15 years ago), or even HomePod! Quoting (iGuardian News introducing HomePod on June 5, 2017, that is just today). to illustrate what I really want to talk about.

“Introducing the HomePod

The HomePod has seven tweeters and four-inch woofer; it has an A8 chip living inside it, and uses that to make the sound “spatially aware”. That’s a feature Sonos has too, letting the speakers adjust their output to, say, push the vocals down the centre of the room while bouncing the bass off the wall. […]”

Instead, the focus is Etymology!

“Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. By extension, the term “the etymology (of a word)” means the origin of the particular word.”

Some months before the word HongKonger started to be accepted as a word by dictionaries like Oxford to describe “a native or inhabitant of Hong Kong“, I had already started to use it like that. One thing that I’m still insisting is to spell HongKonger with a capitalized “K” (instead of the dictionary version of “Hongkonger”).

Which brings me back to how we spell iMac, iPod, and HomePod with the capitalized “M” for iMac, “P” for iPod, and then “H” plus “P” for HomePod. At the end of the day, the rules of how we spell words are determined by human convention. And dictionaries are tools that reflect our usages of words. So I will keep on spelling HongKonger(s) with a capitalized “H” plus “K” just like HomePod and I will wait for dictionaries to catch up. :)

Fact Check re Syrian children

(This is a post I shared on Facebook.)

My dear FB Friends, I had enough today. I refuse to stay silent seeing suffering children in Syrian or anywhere around the world being further insulted. I’m absolutely #BeggingYouToFactCheck your posts before you share anything (claims of photos of suffering Syrian children are fakes, radiation in our food in Canada or US, etc). Stop sharing things so quickly from a random “non-trusted” site. (It is hard to define “trust” but will you take a C$100 bet reports from this site will NOT be confirmable lies or fakes later?)

My last straw was seeing a long time friend sharing a post that claims photos of suffering children of Syria are fakes! Accusing they were photos of the same child in three photos.

I LOVE children as they are our future. Defenceless & suffering little children in Syrian or anywhere around the world don’t need some baseless accusations!

Against my own earlier post in stating I won’t spend my time to fact check my friends anymore. They are adults and should really do their own damn fact check! I decided to do one *last* simple #FactCheck. How long did this simple check take me to confirm my friend was dead wrong? Well, precisely less than 60 seconds! Typing a few words into Facebook search of all places! (Some checks take longer but this one is less than 60 seconds) I was able to confirm my friend’s shared accusation was untrue thus sickening.

I don’t have infinite time to fact check my friends’ posts but when I see things that are fishy, for those friends that I care enough, I may leave a tag comment #BeggingYouToFactCheck

I know I may risk pissing some friends off as some friends had told me they enjoy sharing stuff, including unproven medical claims with neither proper nor reputable sources or references.

Sorry my Facebook friends in advance. If you need to unfriend me after seeing one of my #BeggingYouToFactCheck tags, I don’t mean to insult you in anyway. But in our post-truth world, we are in danger of being drowned with fake news and lies that were reshared endlessly in social media like Facebook.

P.S. A few words about references and good sources, when you want to make an astonishing or extreme accusation, please make sure you have sourced the share from creditable media or double or triple sources things and not simply from a single FB page or .com sources that are align to your own political views.

Repeating what I wrote above: It is hard to define “trust” but will you take a C$100 bet reports from this site will NOT be confirmable lies or fakes later?

Hannah Arendt – Banality of Evil

I found the 2012 movie “Hannah Arendt” about the real life political theorist/philosopher/reporter Arendt very insightful.

Love the Hannah Arendt Final Speech

Prof. Dick Bernstein on the Film “Hannah Arendt” | The New School (very insightful 42 minutes as Prof. Bernstein knew Arendt personally.)

Hannah Arendt’s Disruptive Truth Telling (1 hour 40 minutes)

With the horrible or worrying events around the world in our time, the ideas and lessons of Arendt are worth further investigating or studying.

Watch “Revolution Trilogy” 睇「革命三部曲」

(Watch my trilogy of documentaries.)

Watch my docs Revolution Trilogy 睇「革命三部曲」

20190812 Director new preface re the word “Revolution”:

The title of my debut documentary “Long Hair Revolution 「長毛革命」” was decided in 2004, so 15 years ago. The rationale is similar to “industrial revolution” or “internet revolution”, ideas for improvement. Nothing to do with violence.

“長毛革命”在2004, 即是15年前定名, 其實跟”工業革命”或者”互聯網革命”道理相同, 是嶄新改革的意思, 完全同”暴力”沒有任何關係.

Lose money for the firm – New quote I love

I hope I am wise enough to copying Warren when I do my own hiring. Adding this quote that I’ve used many times over the years to my long list of Quotes I Love,

“Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.” – Warren Buffett (YouTube clip of Warren Buffett’s Testimony before the subcommittee on the conduct of Salomon Brothers, September 4th, 1991)(full 4+ hours on YouTube or on C-Span)

P.S. In hindsight, almost 24 years later, it is remarkable to see how Warren’s reputation can be “enhanced” in his darkest hours.

Kashy Keegan sings “This is my dream” LIVE at HKTV rally outside of HKSAR gov HQ

Kashy Keegan sings “This is my dream” LIVE at HKTV rally outside of HKSAR gov HQ

Kashy Keegan #HKTV rally interview after “This is my dream” performance 

Commentary: HK Chief Executive Mr. CY Leung and the Chinese government may not realize it until it is too late. But the repeated protests on the street and in front of the HKSAR Government HQ for  various bad policies may have the unintended consequence of training citizens to voice their views publicly which is required in any healthy democracy.

Happy 57th birthday, “Long Hair”, Leung Kwok-hung!

I want to wish “Long Hair”, Leung Kwok-hung, happy 57th birthday, good health and all the best! Here is my 2005 documentary “Long Hair Revolution” filmed only two months after his election to Legislative Council of Hong Kong. I’m happy to say my first documentary has been added to the federal government “Library and Archives Canada” permanent collection in Ottawa.

Long Hair Revolution 長毛革命 @ national archive of Canada

Doctor and medical student interrupt Minister Joe Oliver at press conference

My personal thanks to the doctor and medical student who spoke up on our behalf. Shame on our Canadian government. Shame on us Canadians that we are not more aware of this problem. Canadians are BETTER than the actions of our current government in power!

According to the YouTube clip info, the names of the doctor and medical student speaking up are Chris Keefer and Faria Kamal respectively. I applaud Chris and Faria’s brave protest, risking retribution from the Harper government and their hospital administration.

Shame on Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Doctor and medical student interrupt Minister Joe Oliver at press conference

See CBC News, “Refugee health cuts protest cuts off Oliver announcement”

TorStar, “A new low for refugees in Canada”

The issue (a website) as posted in the YouTube clip info.

Ai Weiwei: Artist & Dissident – Time Person of the Year Runner-Up

TIME, Ai Weiwei: The Dissident – Time Person of the Year Runner-Up

“For 81 days last spring and summer, Ai Weiwei was China’s most famous missing person. Detained in Beijing while attempting to catch a flight to Hong Kong on April 3, Ai, an artistic consultant for the iconic Bird’s Nest stadium, was held almost entirely incommunicado and interrogated some 50 times while friends and supporters around the world petitioned for his release. On Nov. 1, Ai, who says the case against him is politically motivated, was hit with a $2.4 million bill for back taxes and penalties. Two weeks later, he paid a $1.3 million bond with loans from Chinese supporters who contributed online and in person and even tossed cash over the walls of his studio in northeast Beijing.

The son of a revolutionary poet, Ai, 54, has grown more outspoken in recent years, expressing his anger at abuses of power and organizing online campaigns, including a volunteer investigation into the deaths of children in schools that collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. His detention came amid a broad crackdown on activists by the Chinese government meant to stamp out a call for Arab Spring–inspired pro-democracy protests as well as continuing unrest in the Tibetan regions, where 12 people have set themselves on fire since March to protest Chinese policies.

Ai, who speaks excellent if not quite flawless English, sat down on Dec. 12 with TIME’s Hannah Beech and Austin Ramzy — and a calico cat, one of nearly two dozen cats and dogs at his studio — to discuss his detention, the poetry of Twitter and whether China is immune to the global forces of protest and revolution. […]

If you had a chance to go overseas, would you?

I have to evaluate, Is it better to stay in a jail here or go abroad? If you go, you really have to say goodbye.

You feel you wouldn’t be allowed back?

Not only that. I’m afraid I would lose the sensitivity to this reality. There are so many things you can do in life, and of course, activist isn’t my top choice. I think I would lose touch with here, and I certainly feel I owe a lot of people. If I can make a good effort, I would continue to do that.”

New Quote I Love and early 101th birthday wish to professor Ronald Coase

Here is a new addition to Quotes I Love,

“New ideas are most likely to come from the young who are also the group who are most likely to recognize the significance of those ideas.” – Ronald Coase in his 2003 Coase Lecture

Photo credit: by Zhaofeng Xue (薛兆丰) 2009

And I like to send an early Happy Birthday and All the Best wish to Professor Coase, for his up coming 101th birthday on 29th December, 2011! And I am looking forward to the upcoming (Feb 2012) book “How China Became Capitalist” co-authored by Prof. Coase and Ning Wang. Yes, Prof. Coase is going to be 101 years old and he is still working and writing!

The following is an insightful 2003 talk by Prof. Coase when he was _only_ 93 years old! :) (See this entry for all six video clips and time codes plus descriptions.)

2003 Coase Lecture by Ronald Coase – Part 1/6

Lytro Picture Revolution – In its founder and CEO Ren Ng’s words

Highly recommend you read this dpreview article, “Lytro’s Ren Ng sheds some light on the company’s ambitions“. Here is an excerpt,

“Lytro’s announcement that it will be launching a plenoptic ‘light field’ camera that allows images to be re-focused after they’ve been taken, was met with equal amounts of interest and skepticism. Interested to find out more, we spoke to the company’s founder and CEO, Ren Ng, to hear just what he has planned and how far towards a product the company has got.”

***

Sept 7, 2011 update: Reuters video interview, “California company brings sharper focus to photography”

Economist, “Cameras get cleverer – Consumer electronics: New approaches to photography treat it as a branch of computing as well as optics, making possible a range of new tricks“

Kevin Roberts, CEO worldwide Saatchi & Saatchi keynotes nextMEDIA Toronto 2011

I’ve been reading Kevin Roberts‘s ideas for years and even created Kevin’s Wikipedia page. So it is wonderful to see Kevin is coming to Canada to share his insights. The following is from the nextMEDIA Toronto 2011 (Dec 5 – 6) press release. If you are in Toronto during that time, register to attend.

“CEO worldwide for creative agency Saatchi & Saatchi, Kevin Roberts is a marketing pioneer with a heart for nostalgia and has been bringing popular brands to market and straight into consumers’hearts since the early 1970s. Roberts has worked with large-scale international clients such as Carlsberg, TMobile, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Sony Ericsson, JCPenney, Toyota and VISA Europe among others.

Roberts is the author of a number of best-selling books, including Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, in which he describes the emotional connections we create with the brands we’ve grown tolove.

So, here’s the real question: How does your brand achieve Lovemark status? Well, fear not, Roberts is heading to nextMEDIA Toronto this year to help you solve that very problem.

Named one of the top ten ideas of the decade in 2010 by advertising and marketing news website AdAge, Lovemarks transcend brands, leaving their iconic symbols emblazoned in the hearts and memories of consumers worldwide.

Join Kevin Roberts at nextMEDIA Toronto 2011 for an informative keynote session about hisLovemarks theory, offering crucial insight into the future of marketing and an analysis of the way we identify with our favourite brands.”

Inspired by …

Here is a list of people & song that is currently inspiring me.

(Borrowing and expanding an idea from Wired magazine.)

[Note: I’ve added this list to the About Kempton page.]

Thinker: Marshall McLuhan

Artist: Oscar Claude Monet

Investor: Warren Buffett

Inventor: James Dyson

Entrepreneurial creativeness: Richard Branson

Advertiser: Kevin Roberts

Hotel: Four Seasons, Issy Sharp

Fashion: Fashion TV

Song: Firework by Katy Perry

My Google+ Bragging Rights

My updated Google+ Bragging rights sounds cool to the very biased me:

Kempton’s first feature-length documentary Long Hair Revolution (2005) is preserved in Library and Archives Canada‘s permanent collection “for the benefit of present and future generations”.

Watch Long Hair Revolution free online here.

Videos of Malcolm Gladwell at Cannes Lions 2011

I find Malcolm Gladwel‬l insightful and worth my time in considering his ideas and arguments. Have a watch of the following videos.

Malcolm Gladwell at Cannes Lions 2011

The video and audio may not be perfect but it is still a great speech to listen to.

Malcolm Gladwell at Cannes Lions 2011 1/3

Malcolm Gladwell at Cannes Lions 2011 2/3

Malcolm Gladwell at Cannes Lions 2011 3/3

Malcolm Gladwell 2011 Honorary Degree Recipient Speech at University of Toronto

Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers) got a free degree from University of Toronto, his and my alma mater, and we the public get a free Gladwell story, not a bad deal. (Great story, worth watching again after first viewing: time code 5:58)

Happy 100th birthday, Marshall McLuhan in his own (and others’) words!

Happy 100th birthday, Marshall McLuhan! [HT Gary]

Have a look of Open Culture,”Marshall McLuhan: The World is a Global Village”

Marshall McLuhan – The World is a Global Village (CBC TV)

Check out “Tom Wolfe on Marshall McLuhan for His 100th Would-Be Birthday”

Have a listen to CBC Jian Ghomeshi opening Q essay, “Jian on Marshall McLuhan’s 100th birthday”

Payment Card Industry: Square by Twitter Cofounder Jack Dorsey

I try to keep up with the latest development in the payment card industry because I think it is important. Last night, I found something call Square that looks pretty cool and worth checking out some more. Here is an excerpt from Wired Magazine “Twitter Cofounder Shakes Up the Credit Card Biz” (emphasis added),

His new company began with similarly modest aims: give anyone the ability to accept credit card payments through a tiny reader that plugs into their iPads and smartphones. Called Square, it has signed up hundreds of thousands of merchants and processed $66 million in transactions in the first quarter of 2011 alone. The startup is also building a vast database of financial information that its customers can tap into. [Kempton’s note: The transaction processed is one thing ($66 million for a new gadget). What is as interesting is the financial information Square tracks.] It tracks each sale conducted through its credit card readers, allowing the company to calculate everything from the busiest sales day of the week (Saturday) to the average price of a cappuccino ($3.09 as of April 18).

The power of that kind of data analysis helps explain why Square was able to close a second round of funding in January: $27.5 million fromSequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, and others, which valued the young company at $240 million. Then Visa invested an undisclosed sum in April. [Kempton: I like the Visa investment. Interesting to know: “how much” & “under what terms”?] .Wired sat down with Dorsey at Square’s offices in downtown San Francisco.

Wired: You got the idea for Square after an artist friend lost a $2,000 sale because he couldn’t process credit cards.

Jack Dorsey: Right now there are about 8 million merchants in the US that accept credit cards. That doesn’t include people who do transactions over craigslist or dog walkers or people fund-raising for the PTA. There is such untapped demand. Like, we had a couch in the office that was really ugly, and we sold it for $5,000, and we accepted a credit card. There are moments in life when that’s necessary. And that’s what we’re focused on.

Ariel Garten, CEO InteraXon, interview @ Banff World Media Festival 2011

I had a very enjoyable time attending Ariel Garten’s (CEO of InteraXon creator of the Muse headband) NextMedia Keynote address: Thought Controlled Computing @ Banff World Media Festival 2011. Afterwards, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ariel. Here is the interview video.

The following are a few highlights of my video interview with Ariel.

* 0:00 In your presentation, some ideas are very cutting-edge and quite “out-there”. When you meet corporate clients, how do you engage them and bring them down to earth?

* 1:03 Talking about the chewing gum example (the “chew off”) discussed in your presentation, can you tell us more and which brand it was? What does InteraXon actually measure? [Kempton’s note: The chewing gum campaign went live on June 16th. At press time, I haven’t heard any updates from InteraXon.]

* 2:20 So does the software system work by basing on its previous training of brainwave signals?

* 2:48 How accurate is the software? Lets take heart rate as an example because it is easy to know what is right.

* 3:16 You mentioned the system has limitations, can you elaborate on the kind of limitations please? [Kempton: Here are some reading about Alpha (relax “awake but relaxed”) and Beta (focus “alert and attentive”) brain waves. And via Wikipedia, Alpha and Beta.]

* 3:48 Ariel talks about the reliability in using Alpha and Beta brain waves, especially for new users.

* 4:05 What other signals can your system use?

* 4:25 Am I using the right analogy to compare the “training” your system undergoes to the “training” speech recognition system needed in the past?

* 4:52 Someone asked Ariel about the possibility of using brainwaves for security authentication purposes. How unique are brainwaves? Can it be done now? If not now, how may it work in the future?