ASL Use of English

Canon 5D Mark II used to shoot entire House season finale, director says it's 'the future'

2010-04-14T21:05:00.000+08:00

May 17, folks. That's the date when the grumpy doctor you wish you were and the snazzy camera you wish you owned will join forces on American network television. The final episode in this season's run of House has been shot exclusively using Canon's 5D Mark II, and the show's director Greg Yaitanes has been taking questions about the experience on Twitter. PetaPixel have helpfully collated the Q&A session into a coherent pseudo-interview, which you'll be able to find at the source below. The major takeaway is that the crew liked the experience and didn't have to do an overwhelming amount of work to adapt to the different shooting method. Guess after SNL and its own movie, the 5D Mark II just had to go and do a guest appearance on its favorite TV show.

Engadget. Apr 13, 2010.

400 HK parents sign up for place at Harrow

2010-04-14T20:27:00.000+08:00

International school to take up to 750 local students

More than 400 Hong Kong parents have put their children's names down for the city's first international boarding school - months before building work is due to begin.

Plans for the campus of Harrow International School Hong Kong, which will be built on the site of a former military barracks in Tuen Mun, were unveiled yesterday at the British Consulate in Admiralty.

The school is being set up under a franchise agreement with Harrow School in Britain by Harrow International Management Services, which won a government tender for the site last year and is close to sealing a land grant.

Executive headmaster Mark Hensman, who is leading the project, said the school aimed to recruit 50 per cent of its 1,500 students from the territory - the maximum number permitted by the government - but had set no minimum quota for local students.

"An international school should reflect the culture of the local environment, so it is very important that we have a large number of Hong Kong students," he said. "Our ideal is 50:50.

"We have had nearly 400 registrations of interest to date - all from Hong Kong.

"We will be marketing the school from Indonesia to Korea and Japan and from the Philippines right across to possibly the Indian subcontinent."

Hensman said children aged seven and above would be selected using tests of English, maths and non-verbal reasoning and interviews from August next year. Younger children would be observed in play sessions for English ability and social skills.

The school would provide scholarships and bursaries for around 10 per cent of students. Scholarships would go to students with special or all-round ability in academic study, music or sport.

Plans for the 3.7-hectare campus feature a nine-storey building set around a football pitch, three tennis courts and one multi-purpose sports pitch. The HK$700 million building, which is being bankrolled by Hong Kong tycoon Daniel Chiu, will provide 33.3 square metres of space per student in a campus that is less than one-fortieth the size of its mother school in London.

The first phase of construction, due to be completed in 2012, also includes an indoor swimming pool, an underground sports centre and a housing block for 50 teachers. A performing arts centre and extra boarding house are due to be added later.

Students will be allocated to eight "houses" - following the traditional pastoral system of British independent schools - with each house occupying one floor. There will be 44 students to five staff per house, with separate wings for boys and girls.

Hensman said day students would also be allocated to houses for the school's extensive programme of extra-curricular activities and homework, on which students were required to spend two hours per day after lessons. The school's 100 teachers, who would have to live on campus, would be recruited mainly from the UK, he said.

Permanent secretary for education Raymond Wong Hung-chiu, who met with the Harrow team yesterday, said the school would "definitely" help to address the educational needs of expatriate families and attract overseas students to Hong Kong.

"We will continue to monitor the provision of international school places and take the necessary measures to meet the demand of the community," he said.

SCMP. Apr. 14, 2010.

KFC Launches All-Meat Sandwich, No Fooling

2010-04-04T09:15:00.000+08:00

The KFC Double Down, a sandwich that the fast-food chain felt compelled to assure consumers was actually real and not an April Fools' Day prank, will land with a greasy thud in KFC locations across the U.S. on April 12, an advertisement on KFC’s website said Saturday.

The Double Down features bacon and Monterey Jack cheese surrounded not by a bun but by two fried chicken fillets.

KFC describes the sandwich as “so meaty, there’s no room for a bun!” Consumer affairs website Consumerist called it “mysteriously tempting (and potentially lethal).”

The Double Down was initially tested in Omaha, Neb. and Providence, R.I. last July before KFC decided to take it nationwide, CTNow.com reported.

According to KFC.com, which has a countdown to the launch of the Double Down, the sandwich is available with Original Recipe chicken or original chicken. The grilled option provides fewer calories and less fat than the Original (which has 540 calories and 32 grams of fat), but also a whopping 1430 grams of sodium -- more than half of the U.S.Department of Agriculture’s recommended daily allowance.

Myfoxla.com.

iPad: Easy enough for a five-year-old?

2010-04-03T13:06:00.000+08:00

fastcompany

Apple iPad: roundup of reviews

2010-04-03T13:02:00.001+08:00

Here is what the critics had to say about the latest offering from Apple:

Stephen Fry, writing in Time magazine:

"It is possible that the public will not fall on the iPad, as I did, like lions on an antelope.
"But for me, my iPad is like a gun lobbyist's rifle: the only way you will take it from me is to prise it from my cold, dead hands."

David Pogue, writing in the New York Times:

"You can get a laptop for much less money – with a full keyboard, DVD drive, USB jacks, camera-card slot, camera, the works.
"[But] the iPad is so fast and light, the multitouch screen so bright and responsive, the software so easy to navigate, that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget."
"Some have suggested that it might make a good goof-proof computer for technophobes, the aged and the young; they're absolutely right."

Walt Mossberg, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

"If people ... see it as a way to replace heavier, bulkier computers much of the time – for web surfing, email, social networking, video- and photo-viewing, gaming, music and even some light content creation – it could be a game-changer the way Apple's iPhone has been."

Xeni Jardin, writing in BoingBoing:

"There's something about tilting and steering and braking with a device you hold in your hands, just like a steering wheel, that's so much more viscerally pleasing than a big old shelf-bound console.
"Manic, non-stop use revealed a number of things: battery life is better than I anticipated … orientation lock is great for when I'm sharing YouTube clips with family, or web browsing in bed.
"It fits well in my lap for tweeting when eating during lunch break, and it's easy to wipe off a stray mayo glop."

Ed Baig, writing in USA Today:

"The iPad is not so much about what you can do – browse, do email, play games, read e-books and more – but how you can do it.
"That's where Apple is rewriting the rule book for mainstream computing. There is no mouse or physical keyboard. Everything is based on touch."

The Telegraph. Apr 2, 2010.

Google search goes blank in China

2010-04-02T11:29:00.000+08:00

Web users in China unable to get search results from Google after company makes changes to its site resulting in technical glitch

Internet users across China reported today that they were unable to get search results from Google, after the company made changes to its site that fell foul of the country’s “Great Firewall”.

The US company closed its China-based site last week, carrying out its pledge to stop censoring its search engine due to alleged cyber-attacks coming from inside the country. Instead, users from the mainland are now redirected to Google’s Hong Kong site.

Yesterday, in cities across China, internet users said they were able to reach the homepage but any searches beyond that brought up a blank page and error messages. Even innocuous words such as “Manchester United”, “Sandra Bullock” or “Beijing Olympics” were crashing pages since 5pm today.

Google said that the problems were due to a technical glitch on its part. In the past 24 hours, the letters "gs_rfai" started appearing in Google’s search parameters worldwide. A Google spokeman said: “because this parameter contained the letters rfa the great firewall was associating these searches with Radio Free Asia, a service that has been inaccessible in China for a long time - hence the blockage. We are currently looking at how to resolve this issue."

Google said it is looking at how to resolve the problem. Separately, it also said its mobile services in China were partly blocked on Sunday and Monday. Three days ago, Google’s mobile search function was partially blocked in China by authorities, leaving mobile phone users unable to use the Google search function.

In an interview last week, Google co-founder Sergey Brin implied that the move to the Hong Kong based site had been discussed with Chinese authorities and indirectly approved by them.

Under the “one country, two systems” slogan championed by by Deng Xiaoping, China’s former leader, Hong Kong retains the freedom of speech and British law left behind after the UK ceded the territory to China in 1997.

In January, the search firm said it was no longer willing to self-censor searches blaming increasing internet censorship and Chinese hackers attempts to infiltrate the data of human rights activists in the country.Beijing said Google’s closure of its mainland site was “totally wrong”, and argued that governments worldwide controlled internet content. It has consistently denied internet hacking, which is illegal in China.

The Times. Mar 30, 2010.

Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?

2010-03-28T10:22:00.000+08:00

In the United States, the Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through the US Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to America's growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.

The US government also purchases surplus foods like cheese, milk, pork, and beef for distribution to food assistance programs—including school lunches. It is not required to purchase nutritious foods.

When the House of Representatives debated the bill in July, PCRM, along with many other health and public interest groups, supported the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment, which was offered by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). This amendment would have limited government subsidies of unhealthy foods, cut subsidies to millionaire farmers, and provided more money for nutrition and food assistance programs for Americans and impoverished children overseas.

Unfortunately, politics doomed the reform effort. At the eleventh hour, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) feared that freshman representatives who voted to cut subsidies might risk losing their seats in farm states in the 2008 elections, endangering the Democratic majority. The reform amendment was defeated 117 to 309.

Nonetheless, Congress did make some modest changes to the Farm Bill’s subsidy programs at the very last minute.

This fall, the Senate will have its turn debating and voting on the bill. PCRM will need your help again to encourage senators to cut subsidies for unhealthy foods and increase support for fruits, vegetables, and vegetarian foods. Other groups, including the American Medical Association and the President’s Cancer Panel, are also calling on Congress for sweeping reforms.

Good Medicine.

Beijing Deploys Giant Deodorant Cannons to Freshen Up City Landfill

2010-03-28T09:28:00.001+08:00

Link to video.

High-pressure fragrance sprays will be installed at Asuwei dump, one of several hundred overflowing landfill sites that are the focus of growing public concern

Beijing is to install 100 deodorant guns at a stinking landfill site on the edge of the city in a bid to dampen complaints about the capital's rubbish crisis.

The giant fragrance sprays will be put in place by May at the Asuwei dump site, one of several hundred tips that are the focus of growing public concerns about sanitation, environmental health and a runaway consumer culture.

Municipal authorities say they will also apply more plastic layers to cover the site in response to furious protests by local residents who have to put up with the stench when the wind blows in their direction.

The high-pressure guns, which can spray dozens of litres of fragrance per minute over a distance of up to 50m, are produced by several Chinese firms and based on German and Italian technology. They are already in use at several landfill sites, but they are merely a temporary fix.

Beijing's waste problem - and China's - is expanding as fast as its economy, at about 8% each year. With millions more people now able to afford Starbucks, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and other elements of a western, throwaway lifestyle, the landfill sites and illegal tips that ring the capital are close to overflowing.

According to the local government, the city of 17m people generates 18,000 tonnes of waste every day - 7,000 tonnes more than the capacity of municipal disposal plants.

"All landfill and treatment sites in Beijing will be full in four years. That's how long it takes to build a treatment plant. So we need to act right now to resolve the issue," said Wang Weiping, a waste expert in the city government. "It's necessary to restructure the current disposal system. We cannot rely on landfill anymore. It's a waste of space."

Less than 4% of Beijing's rubbish is recycled – the UK recycles 35% – but is still near the bottom of the EU recycling league. Two per cent of Beijing's rubbish is burned but the rest is dumped in landfill sites, which cover an area of 333,000 sq m. Cities throughout the country face a similar problem.

There are more than 200 legal and illegal sites around Beijing, according to Wang Jiuliang, a photographer who has spent the past year recording and plotting the wastelands using GPS systems and Google Earth.

Together, they form what he calls "Beijing's seventh ring", where the city meets the countryside with smart new ring roads, expensive housing complexes and the detritus of consumer culture.

"People are forced to use these places for dumps and landfills. There is no better place," he says. "China has become a consumer society over the past 10 or 20 years. The authorities are working hard to solve the garbage problem, but it has emerged too quickly."

Environment authorities in cities throughout the country are struggling to keep pace with this burgeoning problem. According to the government, about 20m tonnes of urban garbage went unhandled in 2008.

They want to deal with the waste by burning it. But government plans to build 82 incinerators between 2006 and 2010 have encountered an increasingly hostile "not-in-my-backyard" movement.

According to Chinese media reports, at least six incinerator projects have been put on hold due to public opposition, including Panyu in Guangdong province, Jiangqiao in Shanghai, and Liulitun and Asuwei in Beijing.

The number of rubbish-related public complaints in Beijing increased by 57% last year, according to the Municipal Petition Office. Many residents have safety fears about incineration facilities despite reassurances by the government.

In an attempt to win public confidence, the managers of a new 800m yuan incinerator in Gao'antun set up a giant display screen earlier this month that contains real-time data on emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

But it continues to raise concerns because there are no figures for dioxins - the toxins released during the burning of plastic and other synthetic materials. The plant has had to scale back operations in the face of public opposition.

In the longer term, the government plans massive investment and new legislation to double the capacity of waste disposal facilities, increase the incineration rate to 40% and to cut the growth in the volume of rubbish to zero by 2015 through recycling.

There is a long way to go. Currently, even when waste is separated by schools and companies, it is often just crammed back together by refuse collectors. A Beijing News report last month noted that distribution and disposal plants are not designed to deal with separated waste.

"We just compress, pack and then bury everything directly," said staff from Mentougou district waste transfer station.

Efforts to promote recycling have a long way to go. Public litter bins offer two options - marked recyclable and non-recyclable - but few people are aware of the distinction because there has not been an adequate public education campaign.

"I am willing to take time and money to separate and recycle my rubbish, but there's just no such system here," said Beijing resident Cui Zheng.

The Guardian. Mar 26, 2010.

Crop circles 2009

2010-03-27T20:38:00.001+08:00

This man has all the latest tech ... from the 80s.

2010-03-27T15:36:00.000+08:00

Digg.

GST-related articles

2010-03-12T13:54:00.001+08:00

Hong Kong drops sales tax plans

The Hong Kong government has dropped plans to introduce a new sales tax in the face of public opposition.It had hoped that a goods and sales tax (GST) would bring in an extra $3.8bn (£1.9bn) in revenues to boost the city's public services budget.
Hong Kong currently has one of the world's lowest tax regimes, with a 16% personal rate and 17.5% for businesses.
Critics said a new sales tax would hit lower income groups disproportionately and could also hurt tourism.

Budget deficits
The government had held a nine-month consultation on the planned tax reform.
It has said that the territory needs to boost its sources of public revenues in order to cope with the welfare burden of an ageing population and any potential economic downturns.
The city ran up large deficits in the late 1990s after the Asian financial crisis.
"Although the public understands that GST can broaden our tax base, it is clear from the views collected that we have not been able to convince the majority to accept GST as the main option to address the tax base problem," said Financial Secretary Henry Tang.
At the moment only 35% of Hong Kong wage earners pay income tax, and the government has previously suggested that it could look at reducing personal allowances to get more people into the tax net.

Hong Kong backs off on sales tax - Business - International Herald Tribune

Widespread public opposition forced Hong Kong's government to back down Tuesday on a proposal to introduce a sales tax on goods and services.

"We accept that at this time we do not have public support or the right conditions" to introduce the tax, Financial Secretary Henry Tang said.

A goods and services tax of 5 percent was proposed to broaden Hong Kong's tax base. A nine-month consultation started in July and the government has so far received 2,200 written comments.

"For the remaining part of the consultation we will not be advocating" the planned sales tax, Tang said.

Tang and Chief Executive Donald Tsang have said that government costs are rising and that a sales tax would be a more stable source of revenue than taxes on salaries and profits. Opponents say sales taxes hurt the poor and small businesses.

Tsang said that he and all members of the government's executive council backed Tang's decision.

Retail sales growth unexpectedly eased in October as tourist arrivals increased at the slowest pace since China loosened visa rules for visits to the city three years ago, a report this week showed.

The consultation on the sales tax will continue as scheduled.

Tang said, "By March next year, upon conclusion of the consultation, we will draw up a report for consideration by the government of the next term."

The government and credit agencies say the tax base is too narrow, making public finances vulnerable during economic downturns.

Such a downturn occurred as recently as in the years after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, when the government ran up a series of large budget deficits.

Government finances are now back in surplus after three years of robust economic recovery, but the government says that an aging population will put further pressure on the budgets in the future.

Retailers and other business groups have vehemently opposed a goods and services tax, saying it would hurt tourism.

At the same time, many members of the public say that there is no need to introduce a tax now that the economy is doing well.

UNESCO-related article

2010-03-12T10:50:00.001+08:00

Heritage plea for TST bus terminal

Joyce Ng
Activists have taken their campaign to save the Tsim Sha Tsui bus terminal to new heights - asking Unesco and international scholars to consider its historic value. Until now, the campaign has focused on the terminal's convenient access to the Star Ferry pier.
Our Bus Terminal, a four-member group, will fly to Hanoi next month to present a research paper at an annual Unesco seminar on heritage issues. Their paper will argue that the government is destroying the city's historic urban landscape by removing its first public transport interchange.
Meanwhile, the Central and Western Concern Group and an architecture professor from Hong Kong University will speak at the Unesco seminar about the Urban Renewal Authority's redevelopment of Central's historic Graham Street market.
The terminal activists formed a network on the social networking site Facebook to promote their cause last year, after the government announced a plan to turn the terminal into a piazza with a five-storey shopping mall. It has gathered support from over 3,000 netizens.
Its chairman, Leslie Chan Ka-long, said the bus terminal, which has been in operation since 1921, was the first of its kind in the city - a connection between a ferry pier, a railway station (since torn down), taxis and minibuses - which contributed to Tsim Sha Tsui's development.
He is glad the forum will draw international attention to their cause.
'I hope this will exert some pressure on our government to think twice before destroying the terminal and turning it into a soulless, open space.'
The terminal is used by as many as 3,000 bus passengers per hour on weekdays, according to a count made by his group last month.
The transport flow comprised an impressive part of the urban landscape, he argued in the paper, and the government's piazza plan would 'delink the historic fabric'.
Mr Chan's paper has won three As, one B and one C from an evaluation committee of scholars on heritage preservation organised by Unesco.
'An interesting paper, especially in the choice of transport infrastructure as the unit of analysis,' said a committee member who gave it an A grade.
A spokeswoman for the Tourism Commission said the piazza plan was supported by the Yau Tsim Mong District Council and the tourism industry, and that a new transport interchange would be created near the adjacent Hong Kong Cultural Centre.
Transport hub
The Tsim Sha Tsui bus terminal has been in use since: 1921

Heritage preservation grips Hong Kong amid building boom

HONG KONG (Reuters) - In the dim confines of the time-worn Wing Woo grocery, a short hop from Hong Kong's gleaming financial towers, Kwan Moon-chiu, 73, quietly arranges supplies of salted-fish and eggs, knowing his store's days are numbered.

"This shop is 130 years old, I have deep feelings for it. But if the government wants to tear it down, what can I do?" he said.

The plight of Kwan's rickety store, which faces demolition for a massive urban renewal project, embodies the dilemma faced in Hong Kong -- one of the world's most densely populated places with 7 million residents -- of whether to raze or save.

While development has long taken precedent over heritage preservation -- the recent demise of two iconic colonial-era piers sparked widespread public outrage among Hong Kongers tired of seeing their history effaced in the name of progress.

"I would see it as a major social movement in Hong Kong and it's an emerging attitude among the young," said Lee Ho Yin, an architectural conservation expert at the University of Hong Kong.

Activists who chained themselves to the doomed piers and who wrote protest banners in their own blood helped foment heritage-preservation an emotive, hot-button civil cause, alongside other long-established Hong Kong issues like the push for greater democracy and social equality.

"Our city would be identical to any other, lacking personality. It would just be blasts of glass, steel and concrete blocks," said Hong Kong resident Bonnie Yiu.

Kwan's shop stands to be demolished in a controversial HK$487 million redevelopment that rips the heart out of one of Hong Kong's oldest neighbourhoods centered on Central's last surviving street market on Graham and Peel Streets.

Thirty-seven mostly post-war tenement blocks will be replaced by four 30-40-storey skyscrapers including a hotel and new shops that will displace the quirky, old stores including noodle-makers and incense sellers lining the narrow, sloping streets.

The numerous, boisterous street hawkers selling all manner of produce from broccoli to live crabs in wicker baskets and pig trotters hung on metal hooks also face an uncertain fate.

"This market must really be preserved for its historical, economic and social value," said Katty Law, an activist with a network of social and heritage groups who have been campaigning against the project.

"Other countries have charters guiding the preservation of old areas but Hong Kong has never done this," Law added.

In the 1950s -- Hong Kong's waterfront was still filled with red-brick Edwardian and Victorian buildings with columns and elaborate facades. These have since been largely demolished.

A historic Victorian building called Murray House was dismantled and rebuilt in 1999 on the other side of the island in a manner which critics say was tasteless and failed to preserve its original character.

Neighboring Macau on the other hand -- which is even more densely populated than Hong Kong -- has managed to preserve much of its historic Portuguese core -- and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The chairman of Hong Kong's Urban Renewal Authority, Barry Cheung, defended the development project by saying it would create more open, greener spaces, resettle residents now stuck in the decrepit buildings and generally gentrify the area.

"If somehow through what we do or what we haven't done, that street market dies, then I'll take it upon myself as having failed," Cheung told Reuters. But he said he was also "touched" by the wave of public concerns regarding heritage preservation and was willing to rethink existing plans for the market.

"Not everything has been cast in stone," he said.

MATURING SOCIETY

With Hong Kong marking its tenth anniversary since returning from British to Chinese rule, observers say the city's growing civil activism -- of which heritage preservation has become a part -- is tied to a greater sense of belonging and a desire to preserve the city's cultural roots and unique identity.

"Up to 1997, people were not focused on the living environment because Hong Kong had a sell-by date," said Paul Zimmerman, an expatriate activist opposed to the reclamation of large chunks of Victoria harbor for redevelopment.

"The whole mentality has changed," he added.

But for activists like Chu Hoi-dick -- who fought to save Queen's Pier -- Hong Kong's heritage activism boils down to a simple lack of democracy and the government's heavy-handed policy-making without adequately involving the public.

"I do not deny this is just the beginning of a new political movement. It is a movement to re-establish the identity of Hong Kong people, not controlled by the British and not controlled by Beijing," said Chu.

Hong Kong's Urban Renewal Authority has said it will preserve several older buildings in the area including the facade of the Wing Woo grocery -- but some say the development will still bleed the district of its vitality and color.

"What makes Hong Kong such a unique city is all the local markets, otherwise it's just the same as any other city," said Aaron Martin, one of many tourists who flock to the market daily to soak up its quintessential Hong Kong charm.

Cancer Foundation-related articles

2010-03-12T10:28:00.000+08:00

Arts foundation hopes workshops will get more young people to open up about cancer

with Andrew Sun. Additional reporting by Vivian Chen.
In polite company, cancer is not usually a topic of conversation. But the Youth Arts Foundation wants more young people to talk openly about the often hushed-up disease.
With funding from Operation Santa Claus, the arts group is moving forward with a project to empower young adults who are either living with the illness or have (had) close family members who are.
Through a series of workshops due to begin this month, participants aged between 15 and 30 will be encouraged to interpret and explore their feelings about the disease though visual art forms, digital mediums or in good old-fashioned words.
One of the artists facilitating the project is Rae Leung Wai-hon (left) who has been living with the disease since 2007.
The results will be put on display at the end of the programme, hopefully to demystify the disease and promote more public awareness. The workshops are free but you do need to sign up and the deadline is tomorrow. We suggest you contact the foundation to let them know you or someone you know might have an interest.

Donation helps young cancer patients explore artistic talent

Adrian Wan
About 100 people fighting cancer will be able to take part in a six-month art workshop, thanks to Swire group's HK$150,000 donation to the Youth Arts Foundation yesterday.
In its 15th year of sponsoring Operation Santa Claus, John Swire & Sons - one of the longest-serving corporate donors - raised the money through its charitable trust, for the foundation's new project targeted at 18 to 30-year-olds with cancer, The C Word. Hunter Crawford, staff director of the Swire group, said: 'The company has had a long-time relationship with the foundation. And the project is a great cause, so we're happy to help them get the publicity in the English media they need.'
The Swire group, which comprises about 80 companies with 70,000 employees, 'will continue to support Operation Santa Claus as long as possible', he said.
Rae Leung Wai-hon was diagnosed with cancer in 2007.
She will be the artist in residence for The C Word, a free workshop not only for the young people living with the disease, but also relatives struggling to deal with their own feelings.
The C Word will be open to about 100 people, run for approximately six months, and comprise workshops on audio recording, writing, photography and collage-making.
Leung said she came up with the idea after noticing there was not much support for cancer patients in her age group.
Last month, the foundation and the Little Life Warrior Society, another OSC beneficiary, sat down to talk about the benefits of art for people living with cancer. Dr Matthew Shing Ming-kong, a founder of the mutual-aid organisation for children with cancer, said he used art as a way for his patients to express their thoughts and feelings. 'It lets them understand themselves and others,' he said. 'And it undoubtedly lets people who care, like me, to get a glimpse of their inner feelings.'
He recalled treating an 18-year-old avid badminton player two years ago. 'The moment he knew he had cancer,' Shing said, 'the first question he asked was, 'Can I still play badminton?' To be frank it wasn't optimistic because his right hand was losing agility.
'Later, I saw his drawing of himself playing badminton with his left hand. His strong desire to continue playing badminton was amazing. But if it hadn't been for the painting, I wouldn't have known.'
The young man regained strength in his right hand.
'Our children engage in lots of painting, singing, writing, arts and crafts, or even photography, in their leisure time,' Shing said.
'By no means is their artistry sophisticated, but it's certain that the arts provide avenues for them to give vent to their feelings.'
Yick Ling-yan, visual arts manager of the arts foundation, agreed that art was 'a nice way to express one's thoughts'.
Knowing the benefits art could bring to children with cancer, the foundation conducted a puppet-making programme for the Little Life Warrior Society a year ago.
She said: 'It inspired uncertain children to share with people around them their happiness and their sadness.'
You can help make a difference

Santa brings hope to little warriors

Adrian Wan
It is a diagnosis everyone dreads: cancer. And the reaction can range from stoic acceptance to despair and thoughts of suicide.
Dr Matthew Shing Ming-kong, senior medical officer with the Lady Pao Children's Cancer Centre at Prince of Wales Hospital, Sha Tin, has seen it all.
One Hong Kong mother considered jumping out of the window with her five-year-old son when he was diagnosed with cancer.
Shing tried to reassure her, telling her that nowadays more than 70 per cent of children with cancer were cured. A counsellor encouraged her to look on the bright side.
There was one person in that room who lifted her spirits - a young leukaemia survivor, who had recovered from the disease more than 10 years earlier. The survivor gave the woman the hope she needed.
That experience prompted Shing to form a support group, Little Life Warrior Society, in 2002. Children with cancer, their families and medical staff can fight the battle together.
About 20,000 people in Hong Kong are diagnosed with cancer each year, of which about 200 are children. Cure rates were much higher than for most adults, Shing said, adding that more than 70 per cent of children could be completely cured.
'It's true that treatment of children's cancer has been improving, but their sadness can't simply be resolved with advanced medical facilities, high-quality care and counselling services,' he said. 'Our group lets the little warriors and their families get together and support each other.'
Anson Lau Cheuk-lam, 12, developed leukaemia last year and had to skip school for more than half a year to receive treatment. 'It was so tough getting chemotherapy and radiotherapy - my face turned purple sometimes,' she said. 'The worst thing was it tired me very easily, and I couldn't participate in my PE lessons even after the treatment.'
Treatment for Anson's cancer ended two years ago, and she had three years to go before she was considered cured, Shing said.
The society organises regular ward visits, tea gatherings, parties and other events for its more than 800 members. It held a four-day childhood-cancer camp last year, and Shing hopes to do it again when he gets new funding.
'We'll make use of the money collected and help children with cancer on the mainland, because fewer than 10 per cent of them can afford the cost of treatments,' the doctor said. 'Most of them get diagnosed and go back home.'
The society is one of the beneficiaries of Operation Santa Claus, the annual charity drive organised by the South China Morning Post and RTHK. It intends to use donations to continue providing services to child cancer patients and survivors in the city, and to do more work and set up similar groups on the mainland.
Shing said: 'We manage our finances transparently and use every dollar to help children.'
Other charities receiving Operation Santa Claus support are Suicide Prevention Services, Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Elderly Home, conservation body WWF, Youth Arts Foundation, Autism Partnership Foundation, Families of Spinal Muscular Atrophy Charitable Trust, the Nesbitt Centre, Po Leung Kuk, The Intellectually Disabled Education and Advocacy League, Baptist Oi Kwan Social Service, the End Child Sexual Abuse Foundation and Operation Dawn.
You can help make a difference

Paparazzi-related articles

2010-03-12T10:18:00.000+08:00

Watchdog investigates racy photos of activist

Anita Lam
Media watchdogs have received more than 110 complaints against a magazine in the past two days over the publication of racy pictures of a student activist.
The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority has launched an investigation after the latest issue of Chinese-language magazine, Oriental Sunday, featured on its cover photographs of University of Hong Kong student Christina Chan Hau-man in a tight top and a thong in her Cheung Chau home.
The authority will determine if the photographs breached the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance. Most of the 111 complaints received by the authority and the Press Council since Tuesday concerned obscenity and indecency.
However, Obscene Articles Tribunal adjudicator Mervyn Cheung Man-ping said the pictures might pass scrutiny if they did not reveal the subject's private parts.
'It is unethical to publish such shots especially as they were taken of her inside her house. But it is more a question of an invasion of privacy than the pictures' obscene nature as Chan had her clothes on,' he said.
In 2006, the tribunal ruled as indecent a picture published by the now-defunct Easy Finder magazine that showed Canto-pop star Gillian Chung Yan-tung changing her clothes back stage at a concert.
The tribunal said that although the pictures exposed no intimate parts of the star, they were presented with text that was 'extremely detailed, graphic and provocative' and meant to be sexually arousing and pornographic.
Oriental Sunday, in the text accompanying the photos, said it acted on complaints by Cheung Chau residents who were shocked by the activist's wild behaviour.
But Chan said she never received nor ignored any complaints. She said the pictures were not recent and the story had forced her to consider moving. She plans to stage a protest outside the authority's offices today.
Oriental Sunday, which is owned by the New Media Group, did not comment last night.

Press Council condemns photos' publication

The Press Council yesterday condemned Oriental Sunday for publishing in January paparazzi photographs of student activist Christina Chan Hau-man in underwear at her Cheung Chau home. The council, which received 49 complaints over the photos, said they infringed her privacy and breached the code of practice. Oriental Sunday, owned by New Media Group, made no response to the judgment.

Handsome Chinese vagrant draws fans of 'homeless chic'

2010-03-09T11:09:00.000+08:00

Identity of 'Brother Sharp' - dubbed China's coolest man - remains a mystery

The photograph shows a starkly handsome Chinese man walking with a model's measured gait, and wearing a rag-tag but well co-ordinated overcoat on top of a leather jacket. His eyes peer into the middle distance, in what one fan described as "a deep and penetrating way", and he strides confidently forward.

But this is no catwalk model. This is a homeless man in the city of Ningbo. And now a band of web followers are calling him the coolest man in China.

His good looks and bohemian dress sense have won him thousands of online fans after a resident of Ningbo posted a picture online. Web users in China have called him the "Beggar Prince", the "Handsome Vagabond", and, most often, "Brother Sharp".

He is 5ft 8in, around 35 years old, and always has a cigarette between his fingers. He also appears to have a fondness for women's clothes, which has only served to fuel his status as a fashion icon. His good looks are reminiscent of popular Asian actors like Takeshi Kaneshiro or the Oscar- nominated Ken Watanabe.

One particularly striking picture juxtaposes Brother Sharp's with a model showing the latest Dolce & Gabbana collection. "Look at him wrinkle his brow... nothing needs to be said... sexy...", ran one comment on the Tianyu site.

Another wrote: "He doesn't really look like a beggar, more like a vagabond. The quality of this person's tops are all not bad, a down jacket, cotton jacket, even a leather jacket inside, and though they're a bit dirty, they're all in good condition, not the kind that beggars find from the trash."

The suggestion that homelessness can be cool chimes with a fashion trend that many have considered tasteless: in January, the designer Vivienne Westwood presented a "homeless chic" show in which models were styled to look like rough sleepers, a move prefigured by Ben Stiller's satirical film Zoolander, which featured a similar show called Derelicte. Two years ago the supermodel Erin Wasson revealed the homeless were her fashion inspiration, saying: "When I... see the homeless, like, I'm like, 'Oh my God, they're pulling out, like, crazy looks and they, like, pull shit out of like garbage cans.'"

But anyone with similar designs on Brother Sharp's sartorial tips is out of luck. His identity remains a secret, and social workers in Ningbo say they want to keep it that way. "Homeless people are vulnerable. It is incorrect to use them for entertainment purposes," said one worker at a homeless centre in Ningbo. Brother Sharp is said to appear mentally disturbed when approached on the street.

In China, begging is technically illegal, as the Communist Party-run state provides all a citizen could need. In reality, the rapid development of the Chinese economy in the last 30 years has marginalised many.

The rumours surrounding Brother Sharp's true identity persist. Some say he is a university graduate who lost his mind after his girlfriend left him. Others have blogged about how they sought him out and tried to help him find work or to go back to his family, but that he appeared frightened and cried out without speaking.

The local government in Ningbo said it had a policy of looking after the homeless, and that it would extend the same treatment to Mr Sharp.

The Independent. Mar 4, 2010.

Mouse fitness

2010-02-24T16:16:00.000+08:00

Real-life painting

2010-02-21T14:26:00.000+08:00

It looks like a painting, right? It’s not. Makeup Girl is actually a photograph of a model in bodypaint. Peter Kun Frary, a professor of music at the University of Hawaii, spotted this model in a stage display at a shopping mall:

Recently I walked by the Ala Moana Mac cosmetic store and noticed a crowd of Japanese tourists gawking and snapping pics. Amazingly, a model in full body paint was posing against a set. She was a darn good simulation of a late 19th century oil painting. At first I thought she was naked--wearing only makeup--but she sported a few scrapes of cloth in the right places. Also, she hardly ever blinked...

These are the two "paintings".

Performer's Galleria.

"PleaseRobMe" website highlights dangers of telling world your location

2010-02-20T11:51:00.000+08:00

A website called PleaseRobMe has been launched to highlight the dangers of sharing too much information on the internet about your location.

The site pulls together updates on Twitter from people who publicly broadcast where they are at any given time, making the point that if they are in the pub, for instance, they are not at home and could be burgled.

The Dutch website lists "all those empty homes out there" and provides a running total of "new opportunities". The data is searchable by city or by people's Twitter usernames. A search for London reveals a stream of people who have recently left their houses.

The PleaseRobMe website has caused a stir, with some accusing it of making it easy for burglars to target people's homes.

The site took developers just a few hours to create after thousands began posting updates about where they were in the online social game Foursquare, which is based on a person's geo-location in the real world.

In Foursquare, a free application accessed through mobile phones, people send messages to friends and other players, including via Twitter, to say where they are. The more updates people give, the more places they visit, the more points they get. In some cases players "check in" at their own or a friend's home, giving the exact address.

There are several similar online applications, such as Gowalla, Brightkite and Google’s Latitude service.

The developers, Boy Van Amstel, Frank Groeneveld and Barry Borsboom, said that they did not want to encourage criminals, only to remind people that sharing information on the internet carried risks.

They say on the site: "Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized."

They explained: "On one end we're leaving lights on when we're going on a holiday, and on the other we're telling everybody on the internet we're not home. The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz, etc. Because all this site is is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information."

Crimestoppers advised people to think hard before they posted personal details online.

The Times. Feb 19, 2010.

Rice pudding (年糕) delicacy won't dethrone king

2010-02-13T18:16:00.000+08:00

Rice pudding, a traditional Chinese delicacy on the Lunar New Year table, is expected to see a strong boost in sales this year, but will continue to lag mooncake as the No 1 festival food in Hong Kong.
For the past month, staff at Wing Wah Cake Shop's kitchen in Yuen Long have been working day and night to mix rice flour with various ingredients, steam it, package the pudding and then deliver them to its 40 shops and restaurants across the city.

Wing Wah is expecting rice pudding sales to show double-digit growth this year but says mooncake - with industry-wide sales of around HK$700 million a year - will remain the king of festive cakes.

Food has been always been at the core of Chinese festival culture. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, mooncake is a must-have snack that represents family reunion. At the Dragon Boat Festival, people are accustomed to eating rice dumplings as a way to commemorate the ancient poet Qu Yuan, who died for his nation.

Rice pudding, also known as rice cake, is considered an auspicious food to consume at Lunar New Year. Its Chinese name is nian gao in Putonghua or nin gou in Cantonese. Nian is "year" or also "sticky", while gao is "cake". Together they indicate a wish for a "higher year" ahead.

Although the three major Chinese festival foods are equal in cultural value, they vary greatly in commercial value.

Wing Wah general manager Lee Ying-kuen said rice pudding generated less revenue than mooncake due to the keen competition among cake makers and the food's shorter shelf life.

He explained that making rice pudding was simpler and involved fewer ingredients than mooncake, so many small bakeries and also housewives would also make supplies.

"At this time every year, you can find rice pudding sold in every corner of the city, from street shops, restaurants to big hotels," Lee said. "We cannot expect it to generate sales volumes as big as mooncakes, which are only available at big bakeries and hotels."

Rice pudding usually can only be stored for a month in a refrigerator, whereas the shelf life of mooncake is as long as two months. "This is important if we want to develop the overseas market," Lee said.

Wing Wah's mooncakes are sold in Europe, the United States and Australia, and are also available throughout the year at its counter in the Hong Kong International Airport. But rice pudding is only produced for the Hong Kong market.

The city's largest catering group, Maxim's, says Lunar New Year is the second-biggest festival food market.

Maxim's sells mooncake in more than 80 locations around the world, but this year for the first time it will promote its Hong Kong-made rice pudding outside the city. Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Foshan have been chosen as the first batch of cities to sell the products.

Angela Chan, Maxim's branded products manager, said the turnover of rice pudding would increase this year due to bigger demand in Hong Kong and the new market across the border. But the group did not expect sales to exceed mooncake sales.

"It's hard in terms of the demand and value," Chan said. "A box of mooncake is priced at HK$200 on average," yet rice cake usually sells for between HK$30 to HK$100.

Even so, retailers have gone to great effort to innovate, with new pudding flavours and packing in order to attract more buyers.

In addition to the traditional turnip, taro and coconut pudding, novel products being marketed this year include "bird nest" pudding from Wing Wah, durian-flavoured pudding from Taipan Bread and Cakes, and Hello Kitty-shaped cakes from Maxim's. Some retailers are also following the green trend and packing their products in boxes that can be reused instead of vacuum-sealed plastic bags.

Designer-turned-cook Xu Yuan is trying to turn the annual delicacy into art. Saying traditional rice pudding is "boring", Xu started to apply her imagination to the cakes six years ago.

This year, about 100 of Xu's puddings were snapped up by friends and customers at her restaurant in Wan Chai a couple of weeks before the Lunar New Year. The most popular ones are "star pudding" and "tiger pudding", which feature colourful stars and tiger skin patterns with carrot, water chestnut, sesame and other ingredients - all from Xu's own organic farm in the New Territories.

Xu has stuck to tradition, using a stone grinder to produce the rice flour and firewood to steam the pudding which, she said, creates a much better taste.

As a result her products are more expensive, ranging from HK$200 to HK$350 each.

"Honestly, I cannot make much money from this since it takes too much time," Xu said. "For me, it's a statement of my food philosophy rather than a business."

A lover of traditional food since her childhood, she said the little cakes always reminded her of happy moments celebrating the festival with her family.

"Although my puddings are fancy in appearance, their flavour is 100 per cent traditional. I think people love this traditional flavour because they do love the warm feeling of sharing with their loved ones," she said.

SCMP. Feb 13, 2010.

US east coast shut down as 'snowpocalypse' hits

2010-02-07T09:30:00.000+08:00

Washington DC ground to a halt on Saturday as the US capital was blanketed in its heaviest snowfall in nearly a century by a storm dubbed “snowmageddon” and “snowpocalypse”.

The “white-out” blizzard dumped up to 32 inches of snow in some parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia were all pounded, receiving up to 2.5 feet (30 inches). After setting several records, the storm swept out to sea across New Jersey and Virginia, battering the mid-Atlantic shore with winds gusting to 40 miles an hour but largely skirting New York.

The snow brought down electricity lines, leaving at least 200,000 people without power. Several roofs collapsed and trees were felled, blocking roads. The weather has already been blamed for hundreds of accidents and the deaths of a father and son who were trying to help a crashed motorist in Virginia.
President Barack Obama had his own minor brush with the hazardous driving conditions as his motorcade navigated the short journey from the White House to the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee.
A heavy branch crashed into a car two vehicles from the president’s. In his speech, Mr Obama later referred to the storm as “snowmageddon”, embracing one of the favourite short-hands for the historic storm.
Transport networks were preparing to shut down and residents of some rural areas were warned they could be forced to spend up to five days indoors. Stores had earlier reported a run on food and basic necessities, with many people stocking up for supplies for Sunday evening parties to watch the Super Bowl, the biggest date in the America sporting calendar.
Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia each declared “snow emergencies”, allowing them to call in assistance from the National Guard. The predicted snowfall is the biggest in the US capital for 90 years.
The National Weather Service warned that conditions would be “extremely dangerous,” with heavy, wet snow and strong winds. They warned that transport would be affected and supplies to shops could be delayed.
Airlines cancelled flights, schools closed and the federal government sent workers home. Some hospitals asked people with four-wheel-drive vehicles to volunteer to pick up doctors and nurses to take them to work.
The National Zoo closed early and the Smithsonian museums planned to close on Saturday. Flights on Saturday afternoon were cancelled at Dulles International Airport in suburban Washington. Amtrak stopped most trains heading south from Washington, affecting fans heading to the Super Bowl in Miami.
In western Virginia, a tractor-trailer struck and killed a father and son who had stopped to help another driver who had crashed in snow on Interstate 81, Virginia State Police said. William Edward Smith Jr., 25, and 54-year-old William Edward Smith Sr. died at the scene, authorities said.
The storm comes less than two months after a storm on December 19th dumped more than 16 inches of snow on Washington.

The Telegraph. Feb 6, 2010.

Poor schoolchildren shut out of the Web

2010-02-07T09:23:00.000+08:00

Needy students who don't own computers are finding it tough to do their homework

For more than two years, while other children played in the schoolyard at break time, Ching has been lining up outside a computer room with 30 or 40 poor children.
They wait to use the internet to do their homework. Sometimes the break ends before Ching has had her turn. "Often after I type in the password and go to the internet, the bell rings," the Primary Three pupil says.

Back at her Mong Kok home, her mother Fung Hin-mei, 38, calls the public library each day to book a computer for her daughter.

When Ching returns home, she quickly finishes her hardcopy assignments, then hurries with her mother to the library to do her online homework. In the one-hour limit she does English, Chinese and mathematics, and searches for information.

"Sometimes I forget to make a booking and we have to wait for an hour to get back-up places," says Fung, a single mother.

Ching has even resorted to using a computer at a mall which allows limited access.

She is one of an estimated 12,560 poor children, aged six to 14, struggling to do their homework because their families cannot afford to pay internet fees. For every 100 children from low-income families, seven to eight have no internet access, according to government research by the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong Council of Social Service (HKCSS) says 157,000 children, aged six to 14, live in poverty.

For most children, using the internet to do homework is a normal part of life. But for poor children it is a daily struggle.

"Each day they line up for school computers, or rush after school to community centres, libraries, or shopping malls, to use the computer to do homework," says Au Yeung Tat-chor, an organiser at the Concerning CSSA Review Alliance (CCRA).

Social workers and academics say homework announcements and submissions of the work, as well as information searches over the internet, have become routine at all schools. Au Yeung says some children who cannot do online assignments have marks deducted while others have their conduct's marks cut.

While poor children can get second-hand computers from social projects they receive no help to get online. Social workers want the Education Bureau to provide free internet for poor children, arguing that the lack of such availability means the children are deprived a basic right to study. "It is a violation of children's rights," says Peace Wong Wo-ping, a policy research and advocacy officer at the HKCSS.

Wong Hung, an associate professor in the department of social work at Chinese University, says that in an information society students who have no access to the internet are being deprived of basic facilities.

Wong is worried that if the government does not help the problem will make poor children less competitive and contribute to cross-generational poverty. He says suggestions by the government that such children can use computers in public libraries and community and youth centres are "not viable".

In his policy address last year, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen pledged to help students with digital learning. Initiatives are expected to be announced in the budget this month.

Peace Wong says: "We expect that the budget will create some kind of co-operation with an internet service provider to ask them to provide discounts to poor children. It will be short term and have quotas."

The CCRA is organising a march by 200 poor children and their parents in Central today to raise awareness of the problem.

Au Yeung says many of the poor families he has helped have to cut costs in other areas, such as food, to pay for internet connection.

Fung, who gets HK$3,700 a month in welfare payments, eats cheap food to save money. She says she has no way to cut her expenses.

Ching says internet assignments account for a third of her homework but she is often unable to submit them. She says her academic results have suffered because internet homework is taken into account.

Things are even worse for Wong Tin-yau and his twin brother Tin-lok, eight. They do not have a computer. Their mother, Lau Iu-sin, 36, says the public library is a 45-minute walk from their Kwai Chung Estate home, so she can hardly take her boys there.

For a mother who earns HK$960 a month as a part-time market stall cleaner, the internet seems a luxury. Her husband Wong Tak-kuen, 59, is an iron-bender. He earned HK$5,000 last month but is often out of work.

Lau, who came to Hong Kong in 2008, is not eligible for welfare.

The HKCSS, CCRA and Wong Hung have called for the Education Bureau to cover internet fees for poor families.

An Education Bureau spokesman said they put a lot of resources into helping the needy. "An annual subsidy is provided to schools to put in place computer rooms and facilities for use of needy students."

There is also a programme to give a recycled computer and a one-year free internet line for children of welfare recipients and those getting school textbook assistance. But social workers say this is a short-term programme offering 20,000 places and cannot solve the problem.

Both Fung and Lau worry that their children will be left behind. "I am worried that they will be poor when they grow up and our poverty will be passed to the next generation," Lau says bitterly.

SCMP. Feb 7, 2010.

It was saved last year, but tree now faces final chop

2010-02-05T21:39:00.000+08:00

Maryknoll Convent School alumni are making a last-ditch effort to save a 70-year-old tree on the campus after what the school described as a "painful" decision to fell the tree because drainage work had damaged it.
About half the roots of the 20-metre Norfolk Island pine, which leans to one side but was declared safe last year, were damaged last month by a contractor digging a trench. Work was suspended when the Kowloon Tong school discovered the damage.

The tree cheated death in July last year when the school, which is a declared monument, was forced by public outcry to drop a plan to fell it. The school said it feared the tree was a threat to the safety of pupils and traffic in Waterloo Road. The government said at the time it would draw up a plan to preserve the tree and set aside HK$500,000 for the purpose, but there has been no further action.

Preparations have been made to fell the tree on Saturday, but some alumni have spoken strongly against its removal and plan to stage a protest outside the school on Saturday. One, Winnie Chu, said she was "fed up" with the school's lack of transparency. "I don't know if it is really something about the stability of the tree or something else," she said.

Some observers are asking whether negligence by the school or government led to the damaging of the tree's roots. "Someone has to be responsible for that and we are determined to drag him or her out," former legislator Tanya Chan, who has been following the case of the tree since last year, said. She suspected government approval would have been required for the drainage work because the tree was on the grounds of a declared monument.

University of Hong Kong tree specialist Professor Jim Chi-yung said digging under the tree clearly violated international standards in tree care. While damage had been done, there was no convincing evidence to suggest removal was the only solution, he said. "We can stabilise the tree first before finding other ways to save it," he said.

However, the supervisor of the school's primary section, Helen Yu Lai Ching-ping, said the school stood by its decision to remove the tree.

The school had always wanted to preserve the tree and the decision to remove it had been a "very painful one" to make, she said.

"I graduated from this school 50 years ago and I grew up with the tree, too. I feel as heartbroken as anyone does to see the tree go," she said.

Yu said the government had advance knowledge of the drainage work because it was carried out to meet a Buildings Department order issued in 2004, and half the funding came from the government.

She said discussions involving the school, contractor and Antiquities and Monuments Office took place before the work started, and the work tender clearly stated the contractor had to protect school property. But she could not say whether the school was aware of the work's potential to damage the tree.

Wood from the trunk would be used to build furniture for the school, while the smaller branches would be turned into souvenirs, Yu said.

A new tree would be planted on the campus on "worldwide reunion day" on February 19 to mark the school's 85th anniversary, she said.

The Development Bureau said last night it had no advance notice of the drainage work, and that there was no need for the school to seek permits from the Buildings Department or the Antiquities and Monuments Office for minor renovation work.

It said two independent consultants had been hired to inspect the tree after the damage was done to its roots. They ruled out the options of building a support for the tree or trimming it because such work would take six to eight months - and would still not completely rule out the risk of the tree collapsing.

The bureau said it "understood and concurred with the decision" of the school to remove the tree.

SCMP. Feb 5, 2010.

Does Facebook have a future?

2010-02-05T21:20:00.000+08:00

If you search online for articles about “the end of Facebook” you’ll see that people have long been predicting its demise.
An undercurrent of doubt, especially over its value and ability to generate revenue, has accompanied the brand through every phase of its rapid ascent. But despite the naysayers, the world’s biggest social networking service just carries on getting bigger and bigger.

Last year, it reached 350 million active users, up 200 million in 12 months. And statistics published this week at the tracking site InsideFacebook.com demonstrate a strong start to 2010: another 23 million new users in the first 30 days of the year.
Facebook now has a central place in our culture. Just like Google, it has become a verb: people now whisper “Facebook me” as they air-kiss. After years of asking, all our friends are now “on it”, including millions who aren’t really our friends at all – brands, bands, TV shows and businesses.
It’s normal to see buskers in the Tube displaying badges urging us to join them on Facebook. I even saw a badge like that on the back of a plumber’s van. Surely Facebook has finally, totally made it and is here to stay. But is it?
Probably not. The history of the internet is littered with the bodies of dead and dying social networking services – Six Degrees, Firefly, Friendster, and, closer to home, our very own Friends Reunited. Each experienced explosive growth and appeared to be a permanent fixture, until they were rapidly abandoned for something else. In the history of social networking, the moment of apparent ubiquity often echoes with the crack of doom.
So, why should Facebook be different? Are we seriously to believe that, like Lehman Brothers, it’s “too big to fail”? What could bring it down? And what will replace it?
The thing most likely to kill Facebook is probably Facebook itself – or more precisely Facebook Connect, a feature that allows users to sign in to other sites using Facebook log-in details. It’s a brilliant idea but it also means that I have less and less reason to visit Facebook. And if I don’t visit Facebook, I don’t see their ads.
Of course, Facebook would argue that this doesn’t matter because its true value lies in the social data it still able to collect about me and my mates. Facebook is gambling on owning the one social graph (the data about me, my contacts and what we all do) to rule them all. The problem is that they don’t.
Telephone companies and email providers also have that kind of data – and they have tons more of it. It’s just that they have yet to get their acts together. Now that phones and the web are really beginning to converge this becomes more valuable.
Does this mean that someone, somewhere, is working on the new Facebook right now? Possibly, but whatever comes next will be created by someone who doesn’t even know they are doing it. Facebook never set out to build a better MySpace.

The Telegraph. Feb. 4, 2010.

Hung Hom building collapses, 2 dead

2010-01-29T22:23:00.000+08:00

Firefighters were scouring the remains of an old five-storey residential building in Hung Hom for survivors after it suddenly collapsed on Friday afternoon - in a tragedy which has claimed two lives.
Rescuers have already pulled five people from the rubble of the collapsed 50-year-old building, three men and two women.

Of the five, two people have now been confirmed dead, including a 40-year-old woman and a 41-year-old man.

One person, with serious injuries, was rushed to hospital.

At least four people are still missing; and police are continuing to search the mound of rubble.

Director of Fire Services Gregory Lo Chun-hung said the rescue work was difficult and dangerous.

“Our colleagues, including 20 staff from urban search and rescue teams, are doing their best to get people out as quickly as possible.

“But there are dangers, as the remains of the building itself are not stable. It, and the buildings next to it, might also collapse,” Lo said.

Director of Buildings Au Choi-kai agreed that two old buildings next to the collapsed one were dangerous. “We have to close them immediately and residents are not allowed to enter them,”Au said.

Over 20 nearby residents have already been evacuated, television news reported.

The incident occurred when most of the external wall of the building, at 45 Ma Tau Wai Road, crashed down about 1.43pm, a police spokesman said.

Firefighters and police rushed to the scene about 2pm. Witnesses said the wall had collapsed instantly.

Police closed off the scene and are investigating.

Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, who visited the area on Friday afternoon praised the rescuers.

“Some people are still trapped inside the building and the firemen are doing their best to save them,'' he told reporters.

Tsang said he, and colleagues from the Social Welfare Department and Home Affairs Department, had met with nearby residents.

“Naturally they are frightened, scared, worried. I spoke with them,'' he told reporters.

“Definitely we will look after their accommodation tonight and whatever is needed to ensure they have alternative accommodation and will look after their livelihood.''

He said the building collapse had been a “real tragedy”

“We will do whatever we can to ensure this sort of accident will not happen again.”

The rescue work is expected to continue overnight.

SCMP. Jan 29, 2010.

Google 'sister' launches in China

2010-01-29T21:50:00.000+08:00

A new search engine and social network provider called Goojje has appeared online in China.

The site contains very similar branding to Google, and the final syllable "jje" sounds similar to the Mandarin word for older sister (jiejie).

Goojje's search results appear to be filtered for sensitive content in accordance with Chinese regulations.

Google has recently objected to those restrictions, but the new site appears to be urging it to remain in China.

Google said on 12 January that hackers had tried to infiltrate its software coding and the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, in a "highly sophisticated" attack.

The California-based firm - which launched in China in 2006 - said it would remain in China only if the government relaxed censorship.

According to the Reuters news agency, Goojje has a message on its site which reads: "Sister was very happy when brother gave up the thought of leaving and stayed for sister".

While Goojje sounds like "sister", the word Google sounds similar to the Mandarin word gege, which means "big brother".

Google has declined to comment.

BBC News. Jan 27, 2010.

Know your fats

2010-01-26T15:01:00.000+08:00

We're always being told to reduce our fat intake. But is cutting out butter really the best option?

In the last 20 years, one type of fat in particular has been portrayed as being especially bad for us: saturated. We are submitted to a barrage of advice: "saturated fats are killing us"; "eat low-fat spread"; "don't use lard"; "trim off all the fat from meat". In the latest instalment of this long-running saga, heart surgeon Shyam Kolvekar is now demanding that we banish butter from our diets.

But no entire food group needs to be (or should be) completely removed from our diet and fat is no exception. Each cell in the body requires fatty acids to absorb vitamins A, D, E and K. Fat adds to the taste of food and is an important energy source. We need it to support our natural growth, to keep skin healthy and taut, to protect our vision and boost our immune functions. We need it to help our brains function normally, too. And we need to eat a healthy balance of naturally occurring fats to get these benefits.

So how much fat is safe? Fats should not take up more than 35% of one's daily calorie intake. That may sound like a lot, but fat is a very intensive calorie source. For example, 100g of butter – 10 of the small packs that cafes provide with a scone – provide 717 calories, making up one third of the average female's recommended daily calorie intake of 2,000 (men's is higher, at 2,500). And "good" fats don't contain any fewer calories than bad fats, so substituting an olive oil-based spread for butter won't make you slimmer (and it will likely be laden with colourants and other undesirable additives).

But there is more to fat than calories, so knowing your trans fats from your monounsaturates is one of the best things you can do for your health.

Saturated fat

This is the most traditional source of fat and is largely animal-based. It includes the fat found in meats, butter, cheese and cream. There are also many food products that contain these fats, with cakes, biscuits and pastries being the obvious culprits. Slightly less obvious are items such as barbecued chicken, many sauce mixes, pre-frozen roast vegetables and confectionary bars. Guidelines tell us that we should not exceed 11% of our daily fat intake in this form. It is seen as a bad fat because too much of it will contribute to hardening and narrowing of the arteries.

Unsaturated fats ('good' fats)

There are two main kinds of unsaturated fats – monounsaturated and poly unsaturated. The former come mainly from the oleic acid found in most nuts, avocado pears, rapeseed and olive oils. Monounsaturated fat is believed to lower cholesterol and may assist in reducing heart disease. Like polyunsaturated fat, it provides essential fatty acids for healthy skin and the development of body cells. And polyunsaturates are the essential fatty acids that contain the richest sources of Omega-3 and Omega-6, mainly found in fish oil, sunflower and corn oils and products made from these oils. Polyunsaturates can help reduce the "bad" cholesterol caused by saturated fat. You will find good sources in cold-pressed, unfiltered organic oils such as flax and rapeseed as well as in fish oils.

Trans fatty acids (TFAs)

A by-product of hydrogenated vegetable oil, TFAs are technically monounsaturates, but have been proven to be dangerous to health. Denmark was the first country to cut them out completely, saying there was "no such thing as a safe limit". Switzerland and Austria have since followed. And this week the UK Faculty of Public Health, representing 3,300 doctors, is urging ministers to eradicate them here, too.

TFAs were originally created in 1903 when an American chemist worked out that by boiling cottonseed oil to 260C, he could make it solidify. Why did he want to do that? To make cheap candles. Proctor & Gamble spotted the potential for food and bought the patent in 1909. It soon launched Crisco shortening in the US, a wonder food that contained no animal fat, didn't soak up other flavours and had a great shelf life. It wasn't until the 1970s that researchers discovered how damaging TFAs were.

TFAs do not just lower your "good" cholesterol level; they simultaneously raise the "bad". The most important research began in the US in 1976 and ran for 13 years. It found that a 2% increase in TFA calories would bring a 23% increased risk of heart disease. So, in terms of heart health, consuming 25g of TFA is equivalent to eating an entire 227g block of butter. And something like a take-away pie could easily contain 15g of TFA.

These days, a voluntary code has drastically reduced the amount of trans fat in supermarket own-brand products, but look out for hydrogenated vegetable oil on the ingredients lists of familiar brand names. You will still find it in cakes and confectionary, instant hot drinks, ready-bake cake mixes and, most commonly, where it is unidentified: that is, in take-away foods (especially anything that has been deep-fried). Trace amounts of TFAs (less than 1%), naturally occur in meat and milk too, but these do not seem to carry any risk.

So our Victorian ancestors, it seems, had a point: stick to natural sources and just watch the quantities. There really is nothing wrong with butter as long as you spread it on in moderation.

Guardian.co.uk

Solving 4 Rubik's cubes in 70 seconds

2010-01-18T19:14:00.002+08:00

Hundreds protest costly railway project in Hong Kong

2010-01-16T10:39:00.000+08:00

Hundreds in Hong Kong ringed the city's legislature on Friday as public frustration mounted over government attempts to bulldoze through a high speed railway, an issue that has also catalyzed a fresh push for full democracy.

The HK$66.9 billion (US$8.6 billion) high speed railway linking Hong Kong to the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou has been championed by officials as a vital infrastructure project that could bring upwards of HK$87 billion in economic benefits over 50 years by vastly cutting travel times to Chinese cities.

Public bitterness has grown, however, over the planned razing of a village and rural swathes to make way for the project, along with growing cost estimates that now make the rail link one of the most expensive in the world on a per kilometer basis.

Outside the city's legislature, Hong Kongers ranging from grizzled activists and villagers facing eviction, to young protesters feverishly posting updates on Twitter and Facebook, appealed to lawmakers inside not to approve funding for the rail-link that will augment a slower existing one to Guangzhou.

"The government has never asked us what we want," said Chu Hoi-dick, a young activist who opposed the demolition of Hong Kong's historic Star Ferry clock tower several years ago.

The rail link has also become a lightning rod for the venting of broader discontent at Hong Kong's lack of democracy and government accountability for major policies.

Pro-democracy politicians are poised to resign en-masse from the city's legislature this month in frustration at what they say is too slow a pace in political reforms.

"Hong Kong's role is changing in that no longer are we a so-called economic city. Hong Kong is fully aware that to stand up for our rights is the only way to safeguard our future," said Albert Lai, chairman of the Professional Commons.

The Commons is an influential coalition of working professionals, whose detailed proposal for a cheaper alternative rail link with fewer disruptions has so far fallen on deaf government ears.

A vote on the rail link wasn't expected until late evening.

Earlier this week, Leung Chun-ying, a senior member of Hong Kong's cabinet, warned of growing public discontent, fueled in part from a yawning income gap and high property prices.

"Such a politically-alienated majority may perhaps at present have little capacity to disrupt economic life or political decision-making but within 10 years ... this will no longer be so," he wrote in an article in the Hong Kong Journal this week.

An average of 99,000 passengers are expected by 2016 to travel daily on the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong link, which will join Hong Kong to China's high-speed rail network.

Officials have warned of great costs of further delays, while a fresh wave of Chinese visitors are expected to bring tourism, retail, logistics and other economic benefits.

Construction worker unions have also marched in support of the rail-link, saying it will bring thousands of new jobs.

Reuters. Jan 8, 2010.

Google 'may quit' China

2010-01-14T19:49:00.000+08:00

Internet giant Google has said it may end its operations in China following a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack originating from the country.

It did not accuse Beijing directly, but said it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn.

This could result in closing the site, and its Chinese offices, Google said.

Chinese rival Baidu called the move "hypocritical" and financially driven. In US trade on Wednesday Baidu's shares were up 13%, and Google's down 0.57%.

Google said the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were the primary target of the attack, which occurred in December.

The search engine has now said it will hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering had yet been made.

Google launched google.cn in 2006, agreeing to some censorship of the search results, as required by the Chinese government.

It currently holds around a third of the Chinese search market, far behind Baidu with more than 60%.

Email targeted

In a blog post announcing its decision, Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said: "A primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists."

The company said its investigation into the attack found two accounts of its online mail service - Gmail - appeared to have been accessed.

However, the attack was limited to accessing account information such as the date the account was created and subject line, rather than e-mail content, it said.

It said it had also discovered that the accounts of dozens of US, China and Europe-based Gmail users, who are "advocates of human rights in China", appeared to have been "routinely accessed by third parties".

It said these accounts had not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but "most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on users' computers".

At least 20 other large companies from a wide range of businesses were similarly targeted, it added.

'Makes me sick'

In a blog, the chief architect of Baidu said Google's decision to quit was for financial reasons, rather than a human rights issue, as Google had failed to dominate the Chinese search market.

"What Google said makes me sick," he said. "If you are to quit for the sake of financial interest, then just say it."

Google's decision to concede to China's demands on censorship in 2006 led to accusations it had betrayed its company motto - "don't be evil" - but Google argued it would be more damaging for civil liberties if it pulled out of China entirely.

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan Jones said Google had also seen a significant amount of internal dissent over its decision to operate under censorship.

In 2008, it signed the Global Network Initiative agreement with rivals Microsoft and Yahoo, pledging better protection of online privacy and freedom of speech against government interference.

Those commitments, however, are weighed against the commercial opportunities that China provides as a fast growing market.

Nearly 340 million Chinese people now online, compared with 10 million only a decade ago.

BBC News. Jan 13, 2010.

Anne Frank helper dies aged 100

2010-01-12T13:23:00.000+08:00

Miep Gies, the last surviving member of the group who helped protect Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, has died in the Netherlands aged 100.

She and other employees of Anne Frank's father Otto supplied food to the family as they hid in a secret annex above the business premises in Amsterdam.

Anne's diary of their life in hiding, which ended in betrayal, is one of the most famous records of the Holocaust.

It was rescued by Mrs Gies, who kept it safe until after the war.

Miep Gies died in a nursing home after suffering a fall just before Christmas.

Speaking last year as she celebrated her 100th birthday, Mrs Gies played down her role, saying others had done far more to protect Jews in the Netherlands.

She and her fellow employees kept Anne and the seven others supplied for two years, from 1942 to 1944.

When the family were found by the authorities, they were deported, and Anne died of typhus in the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen.

It was Mrs Gies who collected up Anne's papers and locked them away, hoping that one day she would be able to give them back to the girl.

In the event, she returned them to Otto Frank, who survived the war, and helped him compile them into a diary that was published in 1947.

It went on to sell tens of millions of copies in dozens of languages.

Mrs Gies became a kind of ambassador for the diary, travelling to talk about Anne Frank and her experiences, campaigning against Holocaust denial and refuting allegations that the diary was a forgery.

For her efforts to protect the Franks and to preserve their memory, Mrs Gies won many accolades.

Memories of Anne

In an interview from 1998, published on the annefrank website, Miep Gies says she thought it "perfectly natural" to help Anne and the seven others despite the penalties she could have suffered under the Nazi occupation.

"They were powerless, they didn't know where to turn..." she says. "We did our duty as human beings: helping people in need."

Her role was, she recalls, to fetch vegetables and meat while others supplied bread or books.

Her memory of Anne is of having the feeling she was "speaking to an adult".

"I'd say to myself, 'My goodness, child, so young and talking like that already'," she says in the interview.

She believes that she once came across Anne writing the diary.

"It was a very uncomfortable situation," she says.

"I tried to decide what to do. Should I walk away or go to her? At that moment she glanced at me, with a look that I'll never forget.

"This wasn't the Anne I knew, that friendly, charming child. She looked at me with anger, rage. Then Anne stood up, slammed her diary shut and glared at me with great condescension. 'Yes,' she said, 'I'm writing about you, too.'

"I didn't know what to say. The only thing I could manage was: 'That ought to be interesting.'"

Mrs Gies also remembers the day the Franks were taken away and how she went up into the empty annex to find the pages of the diary lying on the floor.

Removing the pages, she did not read them immediately, telling herself at the time: "These may belong to a child, but even children have a right to privacy."

BBC News. Jan 12, 2010.

Frozen Britain

2010-01-09T09:31:00.001+08:00

The freezing weather looks set to stay with them for up to a week but what do the figures tell us about the cold snap so far?

BBC News - Frozen Britain.

Star Trek was the 'most pirated movie' of 2009

2010-01-07T16:33:00.000+08:00

The latest Star Trek film was illegally downloaded more than 10 million times in 2009, according to an internet blog site that monitors file-sharing.

The figures suggest it is 2009's most pirated film, ahead of Transformers sequel Revenge of the Fallen.
Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla was the third most pirated movie, with The Hangover and Twilight completing the top five.

The TorrentFreak blog reports on peer-to-peer activity which uses BitTorrent file-sharing software.
BitTorrent is one of the most popular means of transferring large files over the internet.
Other films featured in the list of most illegally downloaded titles include sci-fi thriller District 9 and the sixth Harry Potter adventure.

But X-Men Origins: Wolverine ranks fairly low in the Top 10, despite an unfinished version of the film appearing online ahead of its release.

Directed by JJ Abrams, Star Trek charted the early days of James T Kirk, Mr Spock and other crew members of the Starship Enterprise.

BBC News.

Complete exam practice - Sets 1 & 2

2010-01-05T15:45:00.000+08:00

You can download Set 1 and Set 2 from the following links.

Set 1.

Set 2.

For Some in Japan, Home Is a Tiny Plastic Bunk

2010-01-05T13:52:00.000+08:00

For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin — one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo’s decrepit “capsule” hotels.

“It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black suit — one of just two he owns after discarding the rest of his wardrobe for lack of space. “You get used to it.”

When Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 opened nearly two decades ago, Japan was just beginning to pull back from its bubble economy, and the hotel’s tiny plastic cubicles offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home.

Now, Hotel Shinjuku 510’s capsules, no larger than 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide, and not tall enough to stand up in, have become an affordable option for some people with nowhere else to go as Japan endures its worst recession since World War II.

Once-booming exporters laid off workers en masse in 2009 as the global economic crisis pushed down demand. Many of the newly unemployed, forced from their company-sponsored housing or unable to make rent, have become homeless.

The country’s woes have led the government to open emergency shelters over the New Year holiday in a nationwide drive to help the homeless. The Democratic Party, which swept to power in September, wants to avoid the fate of the previous pro-business government, which was caught off-guard when unemployed workers pitched tents near public offices last year to call attention to their plight.

“In this bitter-cold New Year’s season, the government intends to do all it can to help those who face hardship,” Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said in a video posted Dec. 26 on YouTube. “You are not alone.”

On Friday, he visited a Tokyo shelter housing 700 homeless people, telling reporters that “help can’t wait.”

Mr. Nakanishi considers himself relatively lucky. After working odd jobs on an Isuzu assembly line, at pachinko parlors and as a security guard, Mr. Nakanishi, 40, moved into the capsule hotel in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district in April to save on rent while he worked night shifts at a delivery company.

Mr. Nakanishi, who studied economics at a regional university, dreams of becoming a lawyer and pores over legal manuals during the day. But with no job since Christmas, he does not know how much longer he can afford a capsule bed.

The rent is surprisingly high for such a small space: 59,000 yen a month, or about $640, for an upper bunk. But with no upfront deposit or extra utility charges, and basic amenities like fresh linens and free use of a communal bath and sauna, the cost is far less than renting an apartment in Tokyo, Mr. Nakanishi says.

Still, it is a bleak world where deep sleep is rare. The capsules do not have doors, only screens that pull down. Every bump of the shoulder on the plastic walls, every muffled cough, echoes loudly through the rows.

Each capsule is furnished only with a light, a small TV with earphones, coat hooks, a thin blanket and a hard pillow of rice husks.

Most possessions, from shirts to shaving cream, must be kept in lockers. There is a common room with old couches, a dining area and rows of sinks. Cigarette smoke is everywhere, as are security cameras. But the hotel staff does its best to put guests at ease: “Welcome home,” employees say at the entrance.

“Our main clients used to be salarymen who were out drinking and missed the last train,” said Tetsuya Akasako, head manager at the hotel.

But about two years ago, the hotel started to notice that guests were staying weeks, then months, he said. This year, it introduced a reduced rent for dwellers of a month or longer; now, about 100 of the hotel’s 300 capsules are rented out by the month.

After requests from its long-term dwellers, the hotel received special government permission to let them register their capsules as their official abode; that made it easier to land job interviews.

At 2 a.m. on one recent December night, two young women watched the American television show “24” on a TV inside the sauna. One said she had traveled to Tokyo from her native Gunma, north of the city, to look for work. She intended to be a hostess at one of the capital’s cabaret clubs, where women engage in conversation with men for a fee.

The woman, 20, said she was hoping to land a job with a club that would put her up in an apartment. She declined to give her name because she did not want her family to know her whereabouts.

“It’s tough to live like this, but it won’t be for too long,” she said. “At least there are more jobs here than in Gunma.”

The government says about 15,800 people live on the streets in Japan, but aid groups put the figure much higher, with at least 10,000 in Tokyo alone. Those numbers do not count the city’s “hidden” homeless, like those who live in capsule hotels. There is also a floating population that sleeps overnight in the country’s many 24-hour Internet cafes and saunas.

The jobless rate, at 5.2 percent, is at a record high, and the number of households on welfare has risen sharply. The country’s 15.7 percent poverty rate is one of the highest among industrialized nations.

These statistics have helped shatter an image, held since the country’s rise as an industrial power in the 1970s, that Japan is a classless society.

“When the country enjoyed rapid economic growth, standards of living improved across the board and class differences were obscured,” said Prof. Hiroshi Ishida of the University of Tokyo. “With a stagnating economy, class is more visible again.”

The government has poured money into bolstering Japan’s social welfare system, promising cash payments to households with children and abolishing tuition fees at public high schools.

Still, Naoto Iwaya, 46, is on the verge of joining the hopeless. A former tuna fisherman, he has been living at another capsule hotel in Tokyo since August. He most recently worked on a landfill at the city’s Haneda Airport, but that job ended last month.

“I have looked and looked, but there are no jobs. Now my savings are almost gone,” Mr. Iwaya said, after checking into an emergency shelter in Tokyo. He will be allowed to stay until Monday.

After that, he said, “I don’t know where I can go.”

New York Times. Jan 2, 2010.

The boulders they concrete in place, to be sure

2010-01-03T16:44:00.000+08:00

A hiker examines a large boulder on a hiking trail from

Sok Kwu Wan to Tung O on Lamma Island that has been

supported by concrete slabs. Someone in Hong Kong's

vast bureaucracy believes rocks that have stood on outlying

islands hills for more than 100,000 years now pose a danger to hikers.

The huge boulders scattered around the hills of the outlying islands have stood for more than 100,000 years. But someone, somewhere in Hong Kong's vast bureaucracy, believes they may suddenly roll down the slopes and injure hikers. And so to that truly Hong Kong solution - concrete and paint. One instance of such work is the hiking trail that cuts along a slope in Tung O, Lamma Island. Large boulders along the trail increase the beauty of the landscape that has been designated an area of special scientific interest. But now concrete slabs, painted light blue, have been pegged under some of the boulders. Short concrete barriers have been built in front of the rocks. Does it help hikers better enjoy the scenic beauty? No, says Laura Ruggeri, chairwoman of Living Lamma, a local conservation group. "[These works] are tantamount to vandalism. It is totally out of proportion," she said. "The area is uninhabited and intensive development would not be permitted under the current land zoning restrictions." Young Ng Chun-yeong, chairman of the Association for Geoconservation, said the granite boulders were naturally formed by weathering over at least 100,000 years. "[It may take] another 10,000 or more years to break down to smaller pieces [as it is]." Spokeswomen for the Development Bureau and the Home Affairs Department say they are trying to find out why the work was carried out and who is responsible. If the concrete slabs are intended to stop the boulders from rolling downhill, it won't work, Ng says. "They may never roll downhill unless there's an earthquake or a really heavy downpour which may trigger a massive landslide, [and under such circumstances] the whole area will collapse because of the landslide." Hikers are miffed. "[They] destroy the natural beauty of the location for all hikers for centuries to come. It is truly a shame," said Melanie Moore of the Lung Fu Shan Environmental Concern Group. Ruggeri, a regular hiker in the Alps, says there are better ways to secure maintain slopes, such as using plants and wood. The work on Lamma Island reflects a lack of awareness and understanding of aesthetics among the city's engineers and contractors, she says. "Hong Kong should learn from others. The [United Nations] Food and Agriculture Organisation organises conferences [on slope maintenance] that are attended by forest experts from around the world, China included. [But] my friend, who attends these events, told me he never met any Hong Kong delegates." Ruggeri said concerns were raised with a district councillor, but she felt the councillor was more interested in pursuing more of these minor public works to keep contractors busy. "These are jobs for the boys," she said. "If the government has money to pay the contractors, it may as well pay them to do their work properly."

SCMP. Jan 3, 2010.

Has the government done the right thing? Tell me your opinion.

2010 - How do you say it, 'twenty ten' or 'two-thousand ten'?

2010-01-02T16:33:00.000+08:00

2010 - How do you say it, 'twenty-ten' or 'two-thousand ten'? - The year 2010 is here, but how do you pronounce it? Do you say "twenty ten" or "two-thousand ten"? It's up to you, of course, but you may notice people moving back and forth among various choices in the way they say the year for awhile before they settle on a preferred pronunciation.

One theory has it that because we pronounced the first ten years of the millennium "two-thousand one, two-thousand eight, etc." we may begin 2010 saying it that way at first. Then, the theory goes, as the year wears on, we will change over to "twenty ten."

If you look back to the olden days of the twentieth century, we pronounced the years "nineteen ninety-nine." This would lend support to the "twenty ten" model.

Another way of looking at it is by syllable count. "Two-thousand and ten" = 5 syllables. "Two thousand ten" = 4 syllables. "Twenty ten" = 3 syllables. This theory claims that people will eventually use the quickest and easiest way to say the year. If this proves true, you can count on people saying "Twenty ten" soon and "Twenty eleven" perhaps more easily a year from now.

Comment: What way do you pronounce 2010 right now? What ways have you heard it pronounced? What way do you think you'll pronounce 2010 in the future--will you change the way you say it, do you think? Do you not care how it's pronounced as long as you make it through all 365 days of it? Let us know your thoughts in the Comment Section!

In the meantime, have a very happy 2010 - however you pronounce it!

Examiner.com Jan 1, 2010.

MP3 Players in the Year 2000 Were Not So Good

2009-12-31T12:09:00.000+08:00

This is the Creative Nomad Jukebox from the year 2000. It may have been shaped like a CD player to mentally ease technophobes, but it actually had a 6GB hard drive on board. And boy did we love it.

That's not to say that this thing was great—because it wasn't; not by today's standards. It had only a USB 1.1 connection, so uploading all 6GB worth of music took hours and hours. Imagine filling up a 1TB hard drive over a USB 2 connection today, if that gives you any idea of how long the process was. Oh, and it cost $420.

But you know what? It actually a pretty decent player for the year 2000. The 6GB is adequate even now (the lowest iPod Nano today has 8GB), and that 8GB of 5-minute skip protection was good enough for continuous music most of the time, except when you were off-roading or running away from cougars.

Hell, because it was so early in the MP3 player era, it even had extraneous features that were eventually ditched for cost cutting reasons because only a small portion of people used it. There was the stereo line input for recording, dual stereo output for 4-point surround sound as well as WAV and WMA support. Creative did do a good job with firmware support after the thing was released, actually adding functionality to the player when they could have just released a new hardware revision.

So yes, the Creative Nomad Jukebox was heavy, and lost in every way to any Android, Windows Mobile or Apple smartphone today in both price and feature set, but it was pretty damn good in the year 2000. [Product Page (Price dropped to $300 by 2001)]

Decades: where we revisit gadgets we loved from the start of the decade and see how they compare to what we use today.

Gizmodo. Dec 30, 2009.

Teacher killed by drink-driver, three injured

2009-12-26T16:47:00.000+08:00

A secondary school teacher was killed early on Thursday morning after being hit by a car in Sau Mau Ping, a police spokeswoman said.
The incident happened at around 8am. A car driven by a 23-year-old man was travelling along Lee On Road in Sau Mau Ping, when the driver suddenly lost control and the car mounted the pavement.

A 44-year-old man named Chu Chi-shing â a secondary school teacher in Putonghua and Chinese history at Ning Po No 2 College â lost consciousness when he was hit by the car. Chu was certified dead by ambulancemen at the scene.

Three other people â a 38-year-old female pedestrian, a 22-year-old female passenger and the driver of the car â were also injured. They were sent to the Union Hospital for treatment.

The car was seriously damaged.

Police have arrested the 23-year-old driver for drink-driving, after alcohol levels in his blood were found to exceed the prescribed limit.

One eyewitness said the car was travelling at 80km to 90km per hour before it crashed.

Investigations by Special Investigation Team of Traffic Kowloon East are under way.

The police spokesman urged anyone who may have seen the incident or who has any information about it is urged to contact the investigating officers on 2305 7500.

The victim who died in the tragic accident was a discipline master â one who dealt with difficult students â for the school. Chu was on the way to join the school's Christmas party before he was hit by the car, said Wong King Hung â vice-principal of Ning Po No 2 College.

Speaking at a press conference, Wong described Chu as a responsible teacher who was highly respected.

“Chu was a popular teacher. After the accident, many students feel very upset and some have been to the scene to mourn. Many have written note cards to express their condolences,” he said.

School teachers and social workers provided counselling to Chu's immediate students and those who witnessed the fatal accident.

Wong appealed to the drivers not to drink alcohol before they drive.

SCMP. Dec 26, 2009.

Question for discussion:
As there have been several accidents caused by drink driving, do you think the government should increase the penalty?

HP camera 'can't see' black faces

2009-12-25T23:59:00.000+08:00

A YouTube video suggesting that face recognition cameras installed in HP laptops cannot detect black faces has had over one million views.

The short movie, uploaded earlier this month, features "Black Desi" and his colleague "White Wanda".

When Wanda, a white woman, is in front of the screen, the camera zooms to her face and moves as she moves.

But when Desi, a black man, does the same, the camera does not respond by tracking him.

The clip is light-hearted in tone but is titled "HP computers are racist".

"HP has been informed of a potential issue with the facial-tracking software included on some of its systems, which appears to occur when insufficient foreground lighting is available," an HP spokesman told BBC News.

"We take this seriously and are looking into it with our partners."

BBC News. Dec 24, 2009.

Heavy snow blankets the north-eastern states of the US

2009-12-23T21:38:00.001+08:00

The Telegraph.

Mini-Moscow on Sale for Just $3 Million

2009-12-20T23:45:00.000+08:00

It took 300 people to construct a 400 square foot model of the USSR's capital city back in 1977. Today you can buy that super-detailed, scaled-down version of Moscow for a mere $3 million.

Stunning, isn't it? Apparently every single of the itty-bitty windows in the model can be lit up and there are effects to simulate day and night time. I guess that it's not surprising that the electricity costs alone are making mini-Moscow enough of an expense to get pushed onto the auction block.

Engadget.

LED traffic lights don't melt snow and do cause accidents

2009-12-19T23:28:00.000+08:00

A number of cold weather American states are reporting their dismay at finding out that LED traffic lights are so energy efficient that they do not produce enough excess heat to dissipate any snow that covers them. It turns out, perhaps in an homage to bad engineering everywhere, that the inefficiency of incandescent light bulbs was previously relied upon to keep traffic signals unimpeded. The new LEDs do not achieve the same effect, which has resulted in a few accidents and even a death being blamed on obstructed traffic lights. Feel free to apply palm to face now. It's not all gloomy, though, as the majority of people are said to treat a dysfunctional traffic light as a stop sign (how clever of them), and a tech fix is being worked on as we speak.

Engadget. Dec 17, 2009.

Border security guards kill -- literally kill -- a MacBook

2009-12-18T15:28:00.001+08:00

A young American woman travels over to Jerusalem to meet some friends, see the sights, live the life. Overzealous border security officers ask her a bunch of questions, take issue with her answers, and a few well-placed bullets later she is allowed entry into the country with a somewhat altered MacBook in tow. So what can we all learn from this incident? Firstly, back up all the data you consider important; B, Israeli policemen don't mess about; and 3, distressed laptops look gorgeous no matter how they got there -- just look at the way the glass trackpad has wrinkled up from the force of the bullet penetrating near it, it's a borderline work of art. The young lady in question has been promised compensation, but lest you think this is a one one-off you can see pictures of an equally dead Dell at the Flickr link below. We've got a couple more close-ups of the ravaged MacBook after the break.

Engadget. Dec 16, 2009.

Nearly half of high schools to teach in English

2009-12-15T16:35:00.001+08:00

16 schools using Chinese to switch completely from September

The number of secondary schools teaching in English in Hong Kong will almost double in September when the changes to language instruction policy take effect, according to school profiles released by the government yesterday.

Taking advantage of the latest changes in language policy, 16 schools which are now teaching in Chinese will switch to teaching entirely in English. Another 80 schools will adopt a mixed approach - using Chinese for humanities subjects but using English for science subjects. Seven schools will do the opposite by switching at least some classes from English to Chinese.

This means 199 schools, or nearly half of the 402 secondary schools in Hong Kong, will be teaching fully or mainly in English.

This is the second turnaround of the medium of instruction adopted in local schools. The government adopted the mother-tongue policy in 1998 when all but selected secondary schools were ordered to switch their medium of instruction to Chinese. At present, 110 schools teach entirely in English.

In 2006, the authorities announced that schools could teach a class in English if 85 per cent of students in that class were in the top 40 per cent of their age group academically. Schools whose students learn mainly in Chinese could use English for up to a quarter of lesson time to promote "extended learning activities". The policy will start from Form One students in the next academic year.

Many schools said they made the switch because of an appeal from parents. Ho Kit-to, principal of Shun Tak Fraternal Association Tam Pak Yu College in Tuen Mun, one of the 80 schools using the mixed approach, said: "Many schools, including us, made the switch because of the market or parents' demand."

Dr Anson Yang, principal of King Ling College in Tseung Kwan O which will adopt blanket English-language teaching next year, said all parents, teachers and students were excited about the change. "I believe that students will just learn better," he said.

Another school which will soon join the ranks of English-medium schools is Yuen Long Lutheran Secondary School, which has been teaching in Chinese for 50 years. Principal Belinda Chan Yuen-chau said: "Our students are quite ready for this and the school is well prepared."

Yim Chin-ming, principal of TWGH Lo Kon Ting Memorial College in Yuen Long, said: "We have been waiting to switch back to English-medium since 1998.

"Until the handover, we taught in English and the school never really wanted to switch to Chinese. Almost everyone in the school is delighted with the change."

One father, Mr Yip, whose Primary Six son will be affected by the new policy when he starts secondary school next year, said he was confused by the new system.

"We now have more choices. Most parents in this town want their children to learn English well and I am just one of those."

Michael Tien Puk-sun, former chairman of the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research who is critical of the new policy, said: "These schools switching to English-medium teaching are the first nail in the coffin for mother-tonuge education. In the end, Chinese-medium teaching in junior secondary schools is going to be wiped out altogther."

Seven English-medium schools will no longer be allowed to teach entirely in English.

SCMP. Dec 15, 2009.

As a Form 6 student, do you think it is a good idea for more secondary schools to switch to English as a medium of instruction?

Troubled ATV files complaint over TVB

2009-12-12T23:15:00.000+08:00

Troubled terrestrial broadcaster ATV has lodged its first complaint of unfair competition with the Broadcasting Authority, against its rival in the free-to-air television market, TVB.
On Monday, Linus Cheung Wing-lam resigned as chairman and a director of ATV, after a dispute emerged between its two big stakeholders - Taiwanese snack-food tycoon Tsai Eng-meng and the family of Mingly Corp chairman Payson Cha Mou-sing.

ATV's production, administration and public relations vice-president, Ip Ka-po, yesterday said the complaint filed by the broadcaster on Thursday made five main allegations, including some against RTHK.

Ip said TVB had been monopolising the talent pool by signing contracts with actors and singers barring them from making appearances in Hong Kong except with TVB. He said that even actors who had signed the "one-show" annual contract, which guarantees an actor only one half-hour segment of television a year, could not appear on other television stations.

Ip added that ATV even had to re-dub imported dramas it aired if they had been dubbed using TVB actors.

ATV also suspected that TVB had been offering large discounts to advertising clients, discouraging them from placing adverts on ATV, Ip said.

ATV accused public broadcaster RTHK of facilitating unfair competition by TVB against ATV. Ip said RTHK's popular public affairs programme Hong Kong Connection, which has a 30-year history, has never made any appearance on ATV, and RTHK had never explained why. Further, RTHK never let ATV be the first to broadcast its annual music awards show, because singers appearing on the show had contracts with TVB, he said.

The Broadcasting Authority acknowledged that it had received ATV's complaint, and said it would be processed in accordance with the Broadcasting Authority Ordinance.

TVB said it welcomed ATV filing complaints. A TVB spokesman hoped the authority's investigation would clear the air, saying TVB would co-operate with it.

However, Tsang Sing-ming, TVB's deputy controller of external affairs, defended the dominant broadcaster, saying that contracts signed between artists and TVB were willingly agreed by both parties, and it was normal for TVB to lay down clauses protecting its interests.

When it came to advertising, Tsang said, clients requested the best package. And if clients could not afford to place adverts on multiple channels, they might stick to the most effective channel.

When asked about ATV's allegations, an RTHK spokesman said it had been in close contact with ATV to ensure that programmes of various genres could appear on ATV.

The Broadcasting Ordinance prohibits anti-competitive conduct and abuse of dominance.

Despite this, ATV's complaints might not hold up, said Dr Cheuk Pak-tong, head of Baptist University's cinema and television department. ATV should try to do a good job before accusing others, he said.

"It changes management every few years; its financial status is not healthy; its shareholders are fighting with each other. How can the staff feel secure and do a good job to produce quality programmes?" he said.

Cheuk added that the government should listen to the public, and consider action against ATV's licensee status. "If they can't do a good job, maybe they should give the licence to other, capable people," he said.

Samson Tam Wai-ho, chairman of the Legislative Council's information technology and broadcasting panel, said ATV would also be able to file complaints to the panel if the panel later felt that the Broadcasting Authority did not handle the complaint effectively.

SCMP. Dec 12, 2009.

Kao gets special royal treatment at Nobel awards ceremony

2009-12-11T12:48:00.000+08:00

Physicist Dr Charles Kao Kuen received his Nobel prize from Sweden's King Carl Gustaf with a special honour.

Because he suffers from Alzheimer's disease, the physicist did not have to approach the king to receive his medal and award.

Instead the king came to him, leaving the podium and walking down to the stage where the beaming "father of fibre optics" walked forward a few confident paces to meet him and shook his hand firmly.

The special arrangement was made by the organisers because of doubts whether the Shanghai-born, 76-year-old retired head of Hong Kong's Chinese University could negotiate the full distance to the podium, where the other laureates were to receive their prizes.

Various parts of the ritual including bowing to and shaking hands with the king, bowing to past prize winners seated on the stage, and to the 1,500-strong audience, were all dispensed with.

A day before the presentation ceremony, Kao's wife of 50 years, Gwen Wong May-wan, after delivering a speech at Stockholm University on behalf of her husband, hinted to media he might receive the prize in person.

Kao, who had been in Stockholm with his wife and children since Saturday said excitedly to the press on Wednesday in a rare complete sentence in English: "The only thing you have to do is practice."

Hours before the ceremony his wife said he did well in rehearsal. Kao won the physics prize for what the Nobel jury said were his "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication, that has shaped the foundations of today's networked societies".

The award comes with a cash prize of 10 million Swedish kronor (HK$10.8 million), of which Kao will receive half. Two American co-winners of the prize, Willard Boyle and George Smith - for their pioneering work on semiconductors and digital imaging - will split the other half.

It was the third time Kao had received an honour from the Swedish king, after winning the Ericsson Prize in 1979 and becoming a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 1988.

SCMP. Dec 11, 2009.

Insane Pics Inside Amazon UK's Distribution Center (before Christmas)

2009-12-10T16:11:00.000+08:00

It's 'Manic Monday' and shoppers are expected to spend £17million an hour today over the internet. The total outlay will hit £417million in just 24 hours, making it the busiest web shopping day of the year. Sales are expected to peak between 1pm and 2pm when office staff log on from work. Another hectic period will have occured this morning when mothers got home after dropping their children off at school. And the biggest-selling items? They're expected to be Apple iPod Touch, Wii fit, Scalextric and LCD TVs.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233766/Santas-little-helper-Todays-busiest-online-shopping-day-year-So-ready-biggest-grotto-Lapland.html#ixzz0ZGsvr2PU

Fake fingerprints

2009-12-08T15:15:00.000+08:00

A Chinese woman managed to enter Japan illegally by having plastic surgery to alter her fingerprints, thus fooling immigration controls, police claim.

Lin Rong, 27, had previously been deported from Japan for overstaying her visa. She was only discovered when she was arrested on separate charges.

Tokyo police said she had paid $15,000 (£9,000) to have the surgery in China.

It is Japan's first case of alleged biometric fraud, but police believe the practice may be widespread.

Japanese police suspect Chinese brokers of taking huge sums to modify fingerprints surgically.

Local media reports said Ms Lin had undergone surgery to swap the fingerprints from her right and left hands.

Skin patches on her thumbs and index fingers were removed and then re-grafted on to the matching digits of the opposite hand.

Japanese newspapers said police had noticed that Ms Lin's fingers had unnatural scars when she was arrested last month for allegedly faking a marriage to a Japanese man.

The apparent ability of illegal migration networks to break through hi-tech controls suggests that other countries who fingerprint visitors could be equally vulnerable - not least the United States, according to BBC Asia analyst Andre Vornic.

BBC News. Dec 7, 2009.

BMX hero set to strike commercial gold

2009-12-06T10:12:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong's first Games winner has marketers salivating over the possibilities

When Steven Wong clinched gold for Hong Kong in the men's BMX final of the East Asian Games yesterday, it wasn't just the spectators who were thrilled.
The marketing industry suddenly found themselves with their own coveted prize - a young, hip sports star they could use to sell everything from sodas to running shoes.

Many brands have already approached the 21-year-old to offer sponsorship and product endorsement deals.

Banks and insurance companies have also expressed an interest in recruiting Wong as an adviser for their internal sports programmes.

With more sponsors, Wong will have access to better training and more events, giving him a chance to climb to a level of sports celebrity that only a handful in the city have reached before.

"Hong Kong previously did not have any young and stylish sports icons. He will be one," said Daniel Chan Yan-nang, director of Action House International, a local sports marketing consultant. "Teenagers will see him as an idol."

Part of that appeal lies in the sport itself. BMX racing is young, emerging into the mainstream largely in the 1980s. Most of the sport's followers are in North America, but Wong's win will boost its profile in Hong Kong.

He couldn't have asked for a better platform: Wong was the flag bearer for the Hong Kong team in the opening ceremony last night.

"To marketers, visibility is essential in choosing a brand spokesperson," Chan said.

He said Wong was interested in getting sponsors for future competitions in Europe and North America. Only when he did well in these races would he have a shot at the 2012 London Olympics, Chan said.

With a Chinese father and a Belgian mother, Wong can barely speak Cantonese - save to introduce himself.

He was born in Belgium and grew up there, but in his youth visited Hong Kong to see family.

He has been spending more time in the city lately.

An athlete does not have to have a Hong Kong passport to represent the city in the Games.

Wong is likely to spend even more time in the city since the construction of the BMX Park at Kwai Chung - built with a grant of HK$20 million from the Hong Kong Jockey Club - will allow him more opportunities to train.

Wong grew up a soccer fan and BMX did not enter his life until he turned 12, when his father gave him a second-hand bicycle.

Before capturing yesterday's gold, he was already a four-time Asian BMX champion.

Wong is expected to shine for years to come as BMX riders can still be in top form when they reach 30.

Chinese University marketing professor Leo Sin Yat-ming said Wong was on the path to becoming a rising star.

"People will definitely remember him after making headlines today," he said.

Asked whether Wong would face a language barrier, Sin said: "The fact that he does not speak Chinese might make him look even more stylish."

The professor said Wong would be the ideal person to promote "young" products, such as soft drinks, gym shoes and sportx equipment.

He said Wong also interested marketers because he was cheaper to sponsor than Olympic gold-winning windsurfer Lee Lai-shan and Asian champion cyclist Wong Kam-po.

"Some might want to invest in him before he gets famous," Sin said.

SCMP. Dec 6, 2009.

Man Builds Detailed Model Cars From Discarded Aluminum Cans

2009-12-05T18:18:00.000+08:00

Meet Sandy Sanderson from New Zealand. Needing something to keep himself occupied after breaking his wrist in a motorcycle accident, he started building amazing model cars from discarded aluminum cans. His incredibly intricate work below.

Sandy's something of a renaissance man; draftsman, guitar player, teacher, motorcyclist, instrument maker and model builder. When he was in a motorcycle accident which shattered his wrist and put him out of action for a while, he needed something to do. While finishing a canned beverage he thought of model airplanes he'd seen made from cans and thought why not make cars out of the same material? And thus was born the CanCar. The "Coriba Climax" below is his first effort and while impressive in its own right you see the cars keep getting more and more technically detailed with each successive build. Very cool hobby Mr. Sanderson, and talk about a unique (though somewhat spendy) Christmas present opportunity.

Jalopnik.

Inflation rates by country

2009-12-04T18:58:00.000+08:00

Japanese fishing trawler sunk by giant jellyfish

2009-12-02T18:49:00.000+08:00

A 10-ton fishing boat has been sunk by gigantic jellyfish off eastern Japan.

The trawler, the Diasan Shinsho-maru, capsized off Chiba`as its three-man crew was trying to haul in a net containing dozens of huge Nomura's jellyfish.

Each of the jellyfish can weigh up to 200 kg and waters around Japan have been inundated with the creatures this year. Experts believe weather and water conditions in the breeding grounds, off the coast of China, have been ideal for the jellyfish in recent months.

The crew of the fishing boat was thrown into the sea when the vessel capsized, but the three men were rescued by another trawler, according to the Mainichi newspaper. The local Coast Guard office reported that the weather was clear and the sea was calm at the time of the accident.

One of the largest jellyfish in the world, the species can grow up to 2 meters in diameter. The last time Japan was invaded on a similar scale, in the summer of 2005, the jellyfish damaged nets, rendered fish inedible with their toxic stings and even caused injuries to fishermen.

Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, such as why some years see thousands of the creatures floating across the Sea of Japan on the Tsushima Current, but last year there were virtually no sightings. In 2007, there were 15,500 reports of damage to fishing equipment caused by the creatures.

Experts believe that one contributing factor to the jellyfish becoming more frequent visitors to Japanese waters may be a decline in the number of predators, which include sea turtles and certain species of fish.

The Telegraph. Nov 2, 2009.

Solar-powered FM Radio

2009-12-01T13:33:00.000+08:00

Flexio is this really awesome radio that’s solar powered and portable. I’m willing to overlook the “only one fixed FM channel” stand for the cute little paper packaging it comes in. I’m sure the dynamics of manufacturing this are going to be reasonable, because one can even use it for promotions and gifts…like ask someone to advertise on its package. The innovative factor comes from the flexible speaker & flexible solar cell. It’s designed to be used within the station-waves range, but could be modified to receive internet radio via WiFi or WiMax.

Designers: Wu Kun-chia, Wang Shih-ju, Chen Ming-daw & Liou Chang-ho

Yanko Design. Nov 30, 2009.

A harbourfront for the people - just a dream?

2009-11-30T19:33:00.000+08:00

The people are the rightful owners of the harbour. But they have often been left lamenting what has been done with it and around it without true consultation. It sounds promising therefore that representatives of the harbour's owners - the public - have been promised a say in the development of prime waterfront land in Central, a move that could be a model for other projects. Two sites between IFC and the Central ferry wharves will be the first waterfront project to be developed by a public-private partnership. Members of the public will be included on a committee to advise on design and operation. In a city known for building on its most famous natural asset, and giving little access to the people, it remains to be seen how much weight will be given to public opinion, and how developers feel about being restrained by it. Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor does not strike an optimistic note when she talks of appealing to developers' sense of social responsibility. We hope they have an abundance of it, but it would be bad policy to depend greatly on it.
The government, after all, is to provide the land for a developer to design, build and operate the sites. Granted, the developer will have to reserve 3,000 of the project's 22,000 square metres for non-lettable public facilities, provide a public piazza and a landscaped deck, and build extra commercial space over ferry piers. But Lam has signalled that she might also offer HK$200 million for work on the piers. Hong Kong makes poor use of its harbourside compared with many other cities. As a result, what we have to show are office blocks, luxury housing, shopping malls and a few promenades. In a perfect world, the Central sites would be turned over entirely to landscaped public space integrated with IFC, Exchange Square and the ferry piers. In the real world, public-private development may give us the best deal. It may be too much to expect developers to curb their appetites.

But the harbour is worth daydreaming about now and then on the off-chance such dreams might come true, and even hold good for the development of open space on newly reclaimed land in Wan Chai and two harbourfront sites in Quarry Bay.

SCMP. Nov 30, 2009.

Broadband access for all

2009-11-27T21:03:00.000+08:00

EU call for 'universal' broadband

Brussels is considering making broadband access available for all.

The fast growth of broadband has led the European Commission to bring forward a review of the basic telecoms services Europeans can expect.

Current statistics suggest about 36% of households in EU member nations have high-speed net access.

When a majority of EU citizens are using a telecoms service, EC rules dictate that it becomes one every European should be able to enjoy.

Basic access

"High-speed internet is the passport to the Information Society and an essential condition for economic growth," said Viviane Reding, EU Telecoms Commissioner in a statement announcing the review.

"This is why it is this Commission's policy to make broadband internet for all Europeans happen by 2010."

The EC's Universal Service Obligations (USO) demand that all citizens who want them should be able to get access to basic telephone services.

It covers the production of a telephone directory, availability of payphones, specific measures for people with disabilities or those on low incomes and fixed phone access for local, national and international voice calls.

The obligations also include a clause demanding that the fixed line be of sufficient quality to "permit functional internet access". In the UK this has been interpreted to mean a line that can support a dial-up speed of 28.8 kilobits per second.

The EC reviews the USO every three years and in its report kicking off the latest overhaul, it said broadband was growing at a pace that would mean more Europeans were using it than not.

Figures from the EC suggest that from 2003-2007 broadband use in member nations tripled to 36% of households and had an annual growth rate of 20%.

Despite this, said the EC, there were "striking gaps" among member states and the coverage their citizens enjoyed.

In nations such as Denmark, Luxembourg and Belgium, 100% of the population can get broadband if they want it. By contrast, 60% of Romanians cannot get broadband access.

Even in nations such as Germany and Italy, which have booming broadband sectors, about 12% of the population is not covered by high-speed access.

The review aims to find out if the USO needs to be re-written to force telecoms firms to extend broadband to those areas competition will leave bereft of it.

It will also find out if a narrow-band access, aka dial-up, is sufficient to "permit functional internet access" or if the pace of change online means higher speeds are the minimum needed.

The EC is inviting submissions from telecoms firms, governments and citizens with the aim of producing a communique in 2009 and perhaps legislation in 2010.

BBC News. Sep 26, 2008.

20 questions on genetically-modified (GM) foods

2009-11-27T20:54:00.000+08:00

Q1. What are genetically modified (GM) organisms and GM foods?

These questions and answers have been prepared by WHO in response to questions and concerns by a number of WHO Member State Governments with regard to the nature and safety of genetically modified food.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be defined as organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally. The technology is often called “modern biotechnology” or “gene technology”, sometimes also “recombinant DNA technology” or “genetic engineering”. It allows selected individual genes to be transferred from one organism into another, also between non-related species.

Such methods are used to create GM plants – which are then used to grow GM food crops.

For the other questions, please click this link and go to the WHO's website.

What is digital divide?

2009-11-26T15:32:00.000+08:00

The concept of the digital divide is becoming more and more complex as access to computers and the use of computers, changes over time. When the existence of a “digital divide” first emerged, it revolved around access to computers and related technologies. The high cost of computers create a large divide between people who could afford them, and who had access to all the advantages of a computer, and those who could not.

The falling cost of computers, combined with initiatives in many countries to create community access points or telecentres [link], has meant that more and more people are gaining access to some form of computer. As more people gain basic access to computers, the term “digital divide” has grown to encompass technological literacy and the total cost of running a computer—in other words, the ability, both technical and financial, to make full use of the technology available. The digital divide now takes into consideration access, or lack of access, to the Internet, as well. The digital divide is not only an issue in developing countries. Even in very wealthy countries, various communities face barriers to access, for economic, linguistic, and even generational reasons.

Some organizations and even countries are trying to close the digital divide using free and open source software (FOSS). FOSS allows anyone to modify the software for his or her needs. One common reason to turn to FOSS is language: many software programs do not include language support for more than three or four languages. FOSS programmers can provide translation and localization for the software by changing the software code. To do this with non-open source, or proprietary, software users must wait until the company who made the software translates it.

Different groups are trying to close the digital divide in many other ways. The World Summit on the Information Society was a global policy process where governments, civil society, and businesses tried to solve some of the most pressing issues, ranging from basic access to who controls the flow of information on the Internet (Internet governance and net neutrality). There is also a large group of individuals, called the Digital Divide Network (DDN) [link] who are trying to close the divide in a number of different and innovative ways.

TakingITGlobal.

Cool Evian Roller Babies Ad

2009-11-25T16:16:00.002+08:00

Midnight record for Twilight film

2009-11-23T16:10:00.000+08:00

The new Twilight vampire movie took a record $26.3m (£15.9m) in midnight showings at North American box offices, studio Summit Entertainment has said.

That beats the previous North American record of $22.2m (£13.5m) for midnight openings, taken by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in July.

Experts have predicted that New Moon will have one of the biggest opening weekends for a non-summer film.

The first movie in the series, starring Robert Pattinson, made $69.6m (£42.1m).

It is expected the sequel will take almost $100m (£60.6m) in the US and Canada over the course of the weekend.

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire holds the current North American weekend record - outside of Hollywood's May to August summer season - with takings of $102.7m (£62.2m) in November 2005.

The biggest ever opening weekend was for Dark Knight - starring the late Heath Ledger - which took $158.4m (£96m) in July 2008.

The new Twilight film follows the romance between high school student Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, and vampire Edward Cullen, played by Pattinson.

The movie adaptations are based on the series of books by American author Stephenie Meyer.

The books have sold 85 million copies and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

BBC News. Nov 21, 2009.

Something to wake you up in a cold winter morning

2009-11-18T12:16:00.000+08:00

I'm sure these two bacon advertisements can warm you up.

"Hand-trimmed and hardwood smoked mean it’s always a scrumptious morning."

Oscar Mayer bacon is carefully selected, hand-trimmed and naturally hardwood smoked for hours to bring you that one-of-a-kind flavor well worth waking up for.

"To make great bacon, we take the slow road."

Oscar Mayer bacon is carefully selected, hand-trimmed and naturally hardwood smoked for hours. Because there are no shortcuts to that one-of-a-kind flavor.

New rules don't cover drink-label sweet talk

2009-11-17T10:16:00.001+08:00

The Consumer Council has warned that misleading claims such as "less sweet", "unsweetened" and "reduced sugar" on drinks will not be regulated by the food-labelling law that goes into force in July.
The council examined 80 beverages. Yakult contained the greatest amount of sugar - 16 grams of sugar per 100 millilitres. The sugar content in one 100ml bottle of the Live Yakult Lactobacillus drink accounts for 32 per cent of an adult's recommended daily sugar intake.

A Yakult spokeswoman said the sugar in the drink was there to feed the live bacteria in the drink. Lactobacillus is the drink's main selling point. "We will forward the report to our head office in Japan to follow up," she said.

Seven out of 80 different drinks tested by the council bore wording related to sugars such as "less sweet" or "unsweetened", "slightly sweetened", "reduced sugar" or "no-added sugars".

"These wordings and expressions were not considered to be nutritional claims on sugars and as such they are not covered by the law," Professor Ron Hui Shu-yuen, vice-chairman of the council's publicity and community relations committee, said.

The Food and Drugs (Composition and Labelling) (Amendment: Requirements for Nutrition Labelling and Nutrition Claim) Regulation 2008 stipulates that "sugar free" food must contain not more than 0.5 grams of sugar per 100 grams or 100ml.

The legal definition of a "low sugar" claim on solid food or liquid food means there must not be more than 5 grams of sugar per 100 grams of solid food, or 100ml of liquid food.

"But the wordings such as 'less sweet' and 'reduced sugar' is description of a beverage's sweetness and is a matter of subjective judgment varying from individual to individual and without a standard measurement," Hui said. "Since these expressions are not considered to be nutritional claims about sugar, they are not covered by the amendment regulation which will come into effect next year."

Ribena Blackcurrant Drink ("less sweet") is one of the examples that might cause confusion, as it contains 9.1 grams of sugar per 100ml - only 0.9 grams less sugar than a can of Coca-Cola.

"Expressions such as 'less sweet' or 'no-added-sugar' on their packaging do not mean that they really contain less sugar or have low sugar levels," Dr Anne Fung Yu-kei, principal medical officer of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said. "Consumers should not be misled by these wordings, especially diabetes patients."

The council reminded patients that the term "no added sugars" only meant that no sugars were added to the product, but the food might still contain sugars. "The expression should not be taken as meaning the sugar level is necessarily low," she said. Other expressions such as "no MSG", "no hydrogenated oil", "caffeine-free", "with electrolytes", "no added" and "not a significant source of" are also not considered to be nutrient-content claims.

The council urged consumers to read food labels carefully before purchasing. "Do not believe the wording on the package," Fung said. "Read the labels to find out the nutritional facts before paying for a food product." If many manufacturers used subjective expressions as a way to bypass the law, the council said it would suggest that the government legislate on the use of such words and expressions.

Two drinks that bear the words "less sweet" are Low Sugar Vitasoy soymilk and Low Sugar Vitasoy Malted soymilk. A spokeswoman for Vitasoy International Holdings said the two products, containing 4.8 grams of sugar per 100ml and 4.7 grams of sugar per 100ml respectively, complied with the law. "As these products contain less sugar compared to the traditional version, we describe the taste as 'less sweet' on the side of the pack," she said.

The food labelling law will require packaged food to carry "1+7" labels, declaring the product's total energy value and that of seven core nutrients.

SCMP. Nov 17, 2009.

Last Ice Age took just SIX months to arrive

2009-11-16T16:50:00.000+08:00

It took just six months for a warm and sunny Europe to be engulfed in ice, according to new research.

Previous studies have suggested the arrival of the last Ice Age nearly 13,000 years ago took about a decade - but now scientists believe the process was up to 20 times as fast.

In scenes reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The day After Tomorrow, the Northern Hemisphere was frozen by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream, which allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic.

Geological sciences professor William Patterson, who led the research, said: 'It would have been very sudden for those alive at the time. It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months.'

Professor Patterson's findings emerged from one of the most painstaking studies of climate changes ever attempted and reinforce the theory that the earth's climate is unstable and can switch between warm and cold incredibly quickly.

His conclusions, published in New Scientist, are based on a study of mud deposits extracted from a lake in Western Ireland, Lough Monreagh - a region he describes as having the 'best mud in the world in scientific terms'.

Professor Patterson used a precision robotic scalpel to scrape off layers of mud just 0.5mm thick. Each layer represented three months of sediment deposition, so variations between them could be used to measure changes in temperature over very short periods.

He found that temperatures had plummeted, with the lake's plants and animals rapidly dying over just a few months.

The subsequent mini Ice Age lasted for 1,300 years and was probably caused by the sudden emptying of Lake Agassiz in Canada, which burst its banks and poured freezing freshwater into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

That would have disrupted the Gulf Stream - the flows of which depend on variations in saline levels and temperature - and allowed the ice to take hold.

Some scientists believe that if the Greenland ice cap melts it could disrupt the world's ocean currents and have a similarly dramatic effect.

An iceberg melts off Ammassalik Island in Eastern Greenland. Some scientists believe that

if the Greenland ice caps melt, an Ice Age could hit within months

Daily Mail. Nov 16, 2009.

Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe denies drug allegations

2009-11-14T10:38:00.000+08:00

The actor is currently filming Harry Potters and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe has "categorically" denied newspaper allegations that he was photographed smoking cannabis.

The Daily Mirror published photos believed to be of the star, taken by a fellow reveller at a London party.

"Daniel does smoke the occasional roll-up cigarette, but he was not doing anything more than this," said a spokeswoman for the 20-year-old actor.

Radcliffe is currently filming the last two parts of the Harry Potter series.

"We categorically deny the allegations regarding Daniel Radcliffe published in today's Daily Mirror," the spokeswoman said.

"We are considering our position and will be taking all necessary action in relation to such allegations," she added.

BBC News. Nov 13, 2009.

Chinese schools collapse in snow

2009-11-13T21:58:00.000+08:00

In China, heavy snowfall has led to the deaths of 38 people in road accidents and collapsed buildings, state-run media have reported.

The deaths included four pupils in schools that collapsed, Xinhua news agency quoted officials as saying.

Nineteen people were killed in traffic accidents that also stranded thousands of motorists, the officials said.

The deaths of thousands of pupils in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake has already raised questions of school safety.

The government promised to improve the quality of school buildings after the earthquake.

Canteens collapse

The heaviest snowfall in northern China for decades snarled road traffic across the region and forced delays or the cancellation of hundreds of flights from airports in several cities, including Beijing.

In Hebei province, two primary school girls and a boy died after heavy snow caused the roof of their canteen to collapse.

Another 28 were injured and were being treated in a local hospital. Schools in the provincial capital Shijiazhuang have been ordered to close.

Another child died in neighbouring Henan province and seven were injured, again when the roof the school canteen collapsed. Three of the students are in a critical condition.

Local media said the storms were tapering off on Friday with road, rail and air traffic beginning to return to normal.

Corruption blamed

School buildings in China are often poorly built, says the BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Beijing.

In the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, thousands of children died when their schools collapsed.

Surrounding buildings remained standing and parents blamed local corruption.

China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao promised a full and open investigation, but the details were never made public.

Following these latest deaths, one Chinese state newspaper has asked why school safety is still a problem, and demands that China's children be offered better protection.

BBC News. Nov 13, 2009.

Introduction to podcasts

2009-11-08T12:33:00.001+08:00

Dear students,

I want to introduce you to podcasts. The word "podcast" is derived from a combination of "iPod" and "broadcasting". You can find any kind of podcasts you like from a wide variety of programmes. You can find Xbox/PS3/PSP games reviews, photography, films or music. From now onwards, I'll introduce podcasts that may interest you occasionally. Stay tuned!

Regards,
Mr. Fu

1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Some behind-the-scenes videos and interviews of leading actors and actresses of the movie.

Link to iTunes.

2. Discovery Channel video podcasts

Link to iTunes.

3. Grammar Girl

Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. Whether English is your first language or your second language, these grammar, pronunciation, style and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer.

Link to iTunes.

4. The 1UP Show

1UP.com's weekly video podcast. Every Friday, the editors of Electronic Gaming Monthly and 1UP.com go on-camera to share their insights on all the latest games. Find out what to buy now and what to watch out for in the future.

Link to iTunes.

Berlin Block Tetris

2009-11-07T13:29:00.000+08:00

How'd They Do That? Berlin Block Tetris

Sergej Hein is a moving image, animation and fine arts student currently studying at the University of East London. His "Berlin Block Tetris" is a fantastic addition to a growing body of homages to the classic video game: there's human Tetris, Tetris on a skateboard at night, Tetris against a building, and now what might be called Soviet-era architecture Tetris. It took Hein two weeks to make this clip -- but just a few minutes to tell us about it:

What gave you the idea to make this video?
The idea is based on a kind of parody about the former socialist building style combined with pop culture. They used to build whole cities where each house was designed identically to create cheap housing for workers. These blocks were so similar that in Soviet times, you could easily wake up at a friends place in another city and still feel like you are in your own flat (there is even a Russian film about it!). Even the furniture was the same. I grew up in such a suburb of Riga, which was part of the Soviet Union at that time. When I moved to East Berlin I was again living in such a "ghetto" as the cool kids used to call them. Walking through that part of Berlin, seeing all these square blocks one day gave me the idea that they actually look like Tetris stones. I thought, "Hmm, why don't you make an animation of that?"

How did you make it?
Basically the animation consists of two parts: the sky time-lapse and the house with the background. I took a photo of the "block" building on the opposite side of the street out of my bedroom window. Then I had to rebuild the scenery in After Effects. To do that, I used Photoshop to cut out the shapes of the Tetris Stones and rebuild it with the 3D function of After Effects. So basically only the building and the Tetrisstones are 3D; all other elements are 2D images taken out of the source photo. The sky time-lapse is made with my DSLR. I took a photo every five seconds over the duration of three hours and compressed it to 1:21 min.

Why do you think people are fascinated with Tetris?
Tetris is a synonym for pop culture like no other computer game, but it was also invented by the genius Russian engineer Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union in 1984. I think it reminds all of us of the beginning of digitalization; computers became faster and started to become a part of our daily lives. I remember getting a Gameboy with Tetris in 1991 and fighting with my brother about who can play first. Seriously, I was highly addicted! Sometimes our parents had to take away the Gameboy, which always ended in tears. My family was living in East Germany at this time which had just joined West Germany. It was the time of change, everybody was excited, keen to find a place in the new system. The German Unity is now almost 20 years ago. Many things have changed but I think that Tetris will always remind people from all over the world of the early '90s.

Tell us a cool fact about this video that no one would know by looking at it.
A friend was living in a flat located in the fourth Tetris Stone. He got shaken up a bit! But luckily his line did not disappear.

Creator's Corner Blog. Oct 8, 2009.

Subway Ad Makes It Look Like the Tunnel Is About to Collapse

2009-11-06T13:50:00.000+08:00

Pretty scary "2012" advertisment currently up in Rio de Janeiro. First off, when the Evil Doers next blow up and flood an underground tunnel somewhere in the world, my bet is, that 'somewhere' will be 'here.'

Slice of city named national geopark

2009-11-04T10:19:00.000+08:00

A 49-square-kilometre tract of some of Kong Kong's most rugged land and seascapes has been designated China's 183rd national geopark in a move that officials hope will boost tourism and lead to World Heritage status as early as next year.
The park boasts one of the world's biggest collections of hexagonal rock columns, formed by volcanic activity, among eight distinctive features.

Speaking at a ceremony, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen said gaining national status meant the city's geological resources were unique and world-class, and that legal and administrative systems to protect and manage the park were adequate.

"I hope that when people think about Hong Kong, they will not only admire our skyscrapers and be attracted to our busy shopping areas, but also the unique geological formations and natural beauty," he said at the ceremony at the High Island reservoir, site of the hexagonal columns.

Recognition follows an application to mainland authorities earlier this year. Next step, the government said, was to seek World Heritage status from the United Nations next year for the park, the two sections of which stretch from Tung Ping Chau in the north to the Ninepins in the south.

Tourism Board chairman James Tien Pei-chun said the park had great potential to attract visitors but, having spent half an hour travelling from Central, he said transport arrangements needed to be improved to make it easier for people to get there.

"Natural attractions aren't a great source of income, but they diversify the activities for tourists in Hong Kong," he said.

Senior geopark officer Dr Yeung Ka-ming said the park was not very big but was "the largest in the world in terms of the number and the diameter of hexagonal rock columns". The columns were formed 140 million years ago when volcanoes erupted. The volcanoes eventually collapsed, leaving vast depressions called calderas that eroded over millions of years to their appearance today.

The park's features will be covered by three zones - core protection, special protection and comprehensive protection - with different levels of access. Sensitive or hazardous areas will be restricted to boat trips, while hiking trails will be provided in others, such as Tung Ping Chau, Tolo Channel and High and Sharp islands.

Yeung said more work had to be done before an application could be made for the park to join Unesco's network of geoparks. "More than HK$1 million will have to be spent on finding a competent management team that puts conservation before anything else, and on raising Hongkongers' interest in earth science before we will stand a chance," he said.

No new law was required as the geopark areas would be protected by the Country and Marine Parks Ordinance by next year, Yeung said.

The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department is organising educational activities, including guided tours on Sundays and public holidays, from later this month to March, and "rock classroom" activities will be held for schoolchildren at the Lions Nature Education Centre in Tsiu Hang, Sai Kung.

Department director Alan Wong Chi-kong said 20 staff would be hired to manage the park and prepare for world geopark status next year. The department had already provided training and guidelines to the tourism sector. "The park offers the city a chance to keep up its international status," Wong said. "Eco-tourism can boost the economy, as a shopping paradise might no longer be attractive enough to mainland visitors."

The Tourism Board will promote the park overseas, including Japan, as the city's eco-tourism attraction.

SCMP. Nov 4, 2009.

Kids in the Kitchen: mini pumpkin pies

2009-11-01T11:33:00.000+08:00

At this time of year little ones up and down the land are excited at the prospect of free food in exchange for a fright.

It's a great opportunity to have a party and as it is a child-friendly time the kids can muck in with the production as well as the eating. This year we will be making spooky pizza faces, wormy bug pasta and ghoulishly green apple and avocado smoothies.

The Americans are the masters of Halloween celebrations and they have used the pumpkin - something we usually carve out then throw onto the rubbish tip - to its full potential in a whole range of delicious pumpkin related recipes, including desserts.

Pumpkin pie is a fabulous concoction of pureed pumpkin, sugar, cream and eggs and if you can get your head around the fact that there is a vegetable in the mix you will love it.

I like to use molasses-packed sticky black treacle in mine, and they can be made into individual ‘pies’ for little hands by using mini pudding moulds such as in this recipe or jam tart cases. They are seasonal, delicious and frightfully fantastic. Happy Halloween.

Mini pumpkin and black treacle pies

One pack of short-crust pastry

500g peeled and chopped pumpkin

300ml double cream

100g muscovado sugar

3 eggs, beaten

3 tbsp black treacle

½ tsp ground cinnamon

A little ground nutmeg

1 tsp ginger

1 - Pre-heat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Roll out the pastry then portion and line some mini pudding moulds leaving the edges overlapped. Put into the fridge to rest.

2 - Bring a pan of water to the boil then cook the chopped pumpkin until tender. Blend to a puree.

3 - Pour the cream into a pan then add the sugar and spices and heat up to just under boiling point.

4 - Pour in the eggs and whisk well, then add the black treacle. Stir in the pumpkin puree and pour into the pudding moulds.

5 - Bake for 25-30 minutes or until just set.

The Times. Oct 28, 2009.

Master motivator drums up inspiration

2009-10-31T13:05:00.000+08:00

The children at Yew Chung International School remember Nick Vujicic not just for his inspirational message but also for his "chicken drumstick".
That is the name he gives his tiny foot with two toes that is his only functional limb and with which he has learned, among other things, to type more than 40 words a minute and play a drum machine.

The Australian motivational speaker, who was born without arms or legs, demonstrated his skills on his second visit to the school yesterday as he delivered his message that "there is hope until you give up".

He also showed video footage of himself swimming and playing golf and soccer, hoping, he says, to inspire his audience into thinking: "If there is destiny for a man without limbs, where is mine?"

Over the years, he has turned his struggle with a rare condition, tetra-amelia syndrome, into a message of hope and optimism with which he has travelled to 25 countries.

He also told how he had suffered so much from teasing at school that he contemplated suicide.

"The school isn't going to change until you become the change," he told the school assembly.

Vujicic will start a tour of the mainland today, visiting Beijing, Shanghai and Sichuan . Through the "power of unity", he hopes to work with the government to bring a brighter future for the people, especially survivors of last year's Sichuan earthquake. Vujicic will return to Hong Kong to hold a seminar, "Attitude is Attitude", at 8pm on November 4 at the International Trade and Exhibition Centre's Star Hall. Tickets costing HK$150 are available from PMA Music Foundation's website, www.pmf.org.hk.

SCMP. Oct 31, 2009.

Living in a cage in Hong Kong

2009-10-30T10:43:00.004+08:00

Video: http://us.cnn.com/video/?/video/business/2009/10/28/yoon.hkong.cage.home.recession.cnn

If you have ever complained that your apartment is the size of a shoebox, consider the living space of Hong Kong resident Chung For Lau.

Chung lives in a 625 square foot (58.06 square meter) flat here with 18 strangers. The place is sectioned into tiny cubicles made of wooden planks and wire mesh. Everything he has acquired over the years -- clothes, dishes, figurines, a tired TV set -- is squeezed into this tiny cube, a modernized version of what is known here as a cage home.

With all the buzz over Hong Kong's exorbitant luxury property (like the recent record-breaking sale of a $57 million duplex), it may be hard to believe that people have been living in cage homes in this city for years.

But with Hong Kong home to some of the most densley-populated urban districts in the world, real estate has always come at a premium, no matter how small.

Chung's cage is a newer yet less-desirable model, we are told. The wire mesh one, which resembles an over-sized rabbit hutch, is apparently more comfortable.

Occupants have less privacy, but the temperatures don't get as high as in the wooden-mesh variety. A thermometer in Chung's home reached 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit). Sometimes it gets so hot, Chung said, that he wants to die.

Chung used to be a security guard. In the good old days he earned about $500 (HK$3,875) per month. But as the economic crisis set in, his full time job went to part time work until he was laid off this past summer.

As he stared into his bank passbook, Chung lamented that he wouldn't be able to make the $150 rent (HK$1,160) this month -- these cubes aren't cheap.

They are stacked on two levels -- $100 (HK$775) for a cube on the upper deck and $150 for the lower bunk.

The lower cubes are more expensive because you can just barely stand upright in them. Do the math and the apartment owner is collecting roughly $2,500 a month (HK$19,375) from these people.
The 19 occupants share two toilets. A small rubber hose attached to a leaky faucet is what they use to wash themselves. Social workers who monitor the apartments said the electricity is donated, so a few of them have TVs. One person on the upper deck has an aquarium.
One social workers said that because of the recession these homes are being occupied more frequently by those made jobless -- people in their 30s and 40s. The social worker said none of the younger people wanted to speak on camera for fear their chances of finding work would be hurt.
Chung, 67, is now waiting for welfare to kick in and is on a long list for public housing. The government says it is doing its best to meet its citizens' needs, but Chung says he has lost all hope. Economic recovery or not, he feels forgotten.

CNN. Oct 28, 2009.

Appetite for hairy crab returns

2009-10-29T19:47:00.000+08:00

SCMP. Oct 26, 2009.

Man Spends US$50,000 to Recreate a First-Class Pan Am Cabin in His Garage

2009-10-27T13:41:00.000+08:00

Anthony Toth is so obsessed with perfectly recreating a vintage Pan Am first-class cabin in his garage that he once traveled to Thailand for—wait for it—original Pan Am branded headphones. And his obsession goes much deeper than that.

Anthony began his obsession with Pan Am as a child, when he and his parents frequently flew to Europe to visit family. Pan Am's service seems decadent and almost silly today, when Southwest and JetBlue achieve success with a budget mentality, but to Anthony, Pan Am was the epitome of class and style.

Pan Am was once synonymous with international jet-setting, with upper-deck dining rooms and flight attendants decked out in crisp blue uniforms, high heels and white gloves. First-class travelers were served out of silver-plated martini pitchers. A parade of linen-covered food carts made its way down the aisle at dinnertime.

Anthony saved things like the cardboard linings on food trays and recorded his trips with multiple rolls of film and extensive tape recordings of the radio selection on board. "This consumed my world," said Tosh. As an adult, he works for United Airlines, and two years ago bought a home with an oversized garage in which he could build a faithful replica of Pan Am's first-class cabin. The project has taken him, in total, 20 years.

Construction required multiple visits out to a spot in Death Valley where airplane carcasses are dumped, but the details of his project are unnervingly precise: The replica isn't open to the public, but if you visit (Tosh hosts executive meetings sometimes, appropriately enough), you'll be offered drink service and given a perfectly-crafted souvenir boarding pass designed to match those used by the airline in the late '70s and early '80s. He's got authentic Pan Am swizzle sticks and glasses. The overhead compartments are original Pan Am construction. Hell, he's even got sealed packages of salted almonds (we have no evidence regarding the taste of 30-year-old almonds, but they're probably not for eating anyway).

The one concession he's made to the modern age? A flat-screen TV in place of the old-school projection Pan Am used. Everything else (save the stewardesses) is either original Pan Am or a custom-made replica. He's hoping to open his obsessive ode to Pan Am as a museum, but he seems perfectly content to just hang out in first class. [WSJ, images also WSJ]

Gizmodo. Oct 27, 2009.

The Biggest Lego Mario Ever Built

2009-10-25T15:56:00.000+08:00

If you have $3700 handy, you can buy this 6-foot tall, 110-pound 40,000-brick Lego Mario, the biggest ever built. It took one week to plan, and 175 hours to build, during 16 days.

You don't have to feel like a dorky geek for buying it, because the money will go to charity. So you can feel like a good-hearted dorky geek.

The auction lasts till November 1st, and the money will go to the Ronald McDonald foundation in Netherlands, "a dutch organization that arranges proper housing for relatives of hospitalized children, in the vicinity of clinic".

Gizmodo. Oct 24, 2009.

Apple's new "Get a Mac" TV advertisement - Broken Promises

2009-10-24T20:53:00.000+08:00

The Drunk Guy Buying Beer Silent Film Remix

2009-10-23T20:35:00.000+08:00

Burger King Japan selling Windows 7 burgers

2009-10-22T20:37:00.000+08:00

Microsoft has taken the unusual step of promoting Windows 7 in Japan with Burger King's launch of a Windows 7 Whopper. Fitting in with the software theme, the burger stacks seven patties in an otherwise normal Whopper and measures 5.1 inches tall. It also has an appropriate 777 yen ($8.53) price.
The stunt isn't unique for Microsoft's Windows 7 launch, which in the run-up to Thursday's introduction has repeated the "seven" theme in multiple publicity events; it launched a giveaway of the new OS for every resident of the Dutch village of Zevenhuizen ("Seven Houses") and decorated parts of the Spanish village Sietes ("Sevens") in Windows-themed colors. The campaign contrasts sharply against the more traditional ads of Vista and earlier Windows releases, highlighting Microsoft's desire to turn around its public image.

In North America, most of the developer's less conventional advertising has centered around promoting Windows 7 house parties and its first retail stores.

Electronista. Oct 21, 2009.

Academic vocabulary

2009-10-21T21:24:00.000+08:00

Dear students,

Here's a website for you to revise/ enhance your vocabulary. There are a total of 10 lists which have words that you should know at your current level. All you have to do is to go through the lists and study them. As suggested in the website, for each word you can click on the links to get a definition, example sentences, pronunciation or a Chinese translation. Make best use of the website.

Regards,

Mr. Fu

Link: Academic Vocabulary

'Wild' film top at US box office

2009-10-20T15:33:00.000+08:00

A fantasy film about a make-believe world of monsters has entered the US and Canada box office at number one.

Where The Wild Things Are made US$32.5m (£19.9m) in its first weekend, beating Jamie Foxx thriller Law Abiding Citizen into a second place debut.

The film, which mixes live action and animation, is based on the children's book by Maurice Sendak, but audiences were predominantly made up of adults.

Ghost flick Paranormal Activity was also a new entry at number three.

The film - shot in the style of a documentary - is said to have made a box office impact due to word-of-mouth interest and has been compared to 1999 hit The Blair Witch Project.

It beat the debut Sony's bigger budget horror movie The Stepfather into fifth spot.

It is due to be expanded into more cinemas at the weekend where it will go head-to-head with established horror franchise outing Saw VI.

The adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are, directed by Spike Jonze, features the voices of Forest Whitaker and James Gandolfini.

The story's main protagonist is a boy who journeys to a land populated by monsters who are torn between hugging him and having him for dinner.

BBC News. Oct 19, 2009.

Balloon boy parents will face criminal charges for 'hoax'

2009-10-19T16:38:00.000+08:00

After initially accepting that Richard and Mayumi Heene, from Colorado, prompted a major rescue effort because they genuinely believed their six-year-old son had stowed away on the helium balloon, the local sheriff said that he and the media had been "manipulated" by the family.

Jim Alderden, the Larimer County sheriff, said the parents, who had once appeared on the reality TV series Wife Swap, had planned the stunt for two weeks in order to attract sufficient publicity that they would get their own show.

The couple, who first met at drama school, "put on a very good show for us, and we bought it" an embarrassed Mr Alderden announced at a press conference. "On the bizarre meter, this rates a 10."
He said the pair had not yet been arrested but were likely to face both misdemeanour and more serious felony charges.

They could include conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, making a false report to authorities and attempting to influence a public servant, he said.

Some of the more serious charges are punishable by six years in prison and a $500,000 (£300,000) fine.
All three of the Heenes' children knew about the hoax but are unlikely to be charged as the oldest is only 10.

Mr Alderden said the parents had shown "no evidence of any remorse".

Sheriff's deputies searched their home in Fort Collins on Saturday, taking away several boxes and a computer, after the family spent the day being questioned.

In an elaborate land and air rescue that gripped television viewers across the world, the authorities pursued the flying saucer-like balloon after it took off from the Heenes's home and soared thousands of feet into the air last Thursday.

Mr and Mrs Heene said they were convinced Falcon was inside the balloon's cockpit but, five hours later, he was discovered hiding in the attic of their garage.

Suspicions about the drama grew after it emerged that Mr Heane, an amateur inventor, was obsessed with becoming a TV star.

Then, in an interview with CNN, Falcon was asked by his father why he had not come out of his hiding place sooner. He replied: "You guys said that we did this for the show."

Mr Alderden said the apparent slip-up was their "first 'ah-ha' moment" but added that investigators were also suspicious about the flimsiness of the strings with which the Heanes had tethered the balloon.

Robert Thomas, a former business associate of Mr Heene, told Gawker, a US website, that he had previously discussed a plan to kick-start his TV career by using a weather balloon to fake a UFO sighting.

Mr Heene was "driven by ego and fame", and was determined to get his own television series in which he would conduct bizarre scientific experiments, he said.

Barbara Slusser, a friend and fellow storm chaser, said she stopped collaborating with Mr Heane because he kept bringing his young children on expeditions, even one into the eye of Hurricane Gustav.

She said he had an "explosive" personality, once trying to stuff lavatory paper down her throat during an argument.

Mr Heene said on Sunday the saga has become "convoluted".

The Telegraph. Oct 18, 2009.

Underwater cabinet meeting symbolises threat from rising seas

2009-10-18T14:42:00.000+08:00

The Maldivian president and ministers held the world's first underwater cabinet meeting yesterday, in a symbolic cry for help as rising sea levels threaten the tropical archipelago's existence.
Aiming for another attention-grabbing event to bring the risks of climate change into relief before a landmark UN climate change meeting in December, President Mohamed Nasheed's cabinet headed to the bottom of a turquoise lagoon.

Clad in black diving suits and masks, Nasheed, 11 ministers, the vice-president and the cabinet secretary dived 3.8 metres to gather at tables under the crystalline waters that draw thousands of tourists to US$1,000-a-night luxury resorts.

As fish darted around a backdrop of white coral, Nasheed gestured with his hands to start the 30-minute meeting, state TV showed.

"We are trying to send our message to let the world know what is happening and what will happen to the Maldives if climate change isn't checked," a dripping Nasheed said as he re-emerged from the water.

The archipelago nation off the tip of India is among the most threatened by rising seas. If UN predictions are correct, most of the low-lying Maldives will be submerged by 2100.

Nasheed and the ministers used a white plastic slate and waterproof pencils to sign an "SOS" message from the Maldives during the 30-minute meeting. "We must unite in a world war effort to halt further temperature rises," the message said. "Climate change is happening, and it threatens the rights and security of everyone on earth."

World leaders will meet in Copenhagen to hammer out a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and industrialised nations want all countries to impose sharp emissions cuts.

"We have to have a better deal," Nasheed said. "We should be able to come out with an amicable understanding that everyone survives. If Maldives can't be saved today, we do not feel that there is much of a chance for the rest of the world."

The developing world wants rich countries to shoulder most of the burden, on the grounds they contributed most to the problem.

Nasheed and the cabinet trained for two weeks and were assisted by professional divers to pull off his latest eye-catching move related to climate change. Barely a month after entering office last year, he declared he would establish a sovereign fund to relocate his country's 350,000 people if sea levels rise, but he later admitted it was not feasible given the state of the Maldivian economy.

He has vowed to make the Maldives carbon-neutral within a decade by switching to renewable energy and offsetting carbon emissions caused by tourists flying in.

SCMP. Oct 18, 2009.

Japan gets the Pentax K-x in “robotic colors” (limited edition)

2009-10-17T00:26:00.000+08:00

The Pentax K-x was announced last month, and it seems to be a very decent entry-level camera. It has been reported the device will be available in a few different colors in Japan, while the US only gets black, white, and red models. And today Pentax said in Tokyo that they are ready to roll out a very special version of the K-x, which is a particularly colorful model inspired by the so-called Kore Ja Nai robo toy [Japanese].

The robot was introduced in Japan in 2001 and is available in different variations (the one you see in the pic above is a cell phone strap). Spec-wise, the K-x isn’t any different from the conventional models so the design is the main selling point.

Pentax plans to sell the robo K-x exclusively in its own online store [Japanese] (price: US$880), and the model is restricted to just 100 units. Pre-orders begin in early November. People living outside Japan might want to contact the Japan Trend Shop or Geek Stuff 4 U and ask if they can help with the purchase.

Crunchgear. Oct 16, 2009.

Hong Kong flat 'most expensive'

2009-10-15T22:28:00.000+08:00

A wealthy Chinese buyer has snapped up a luxury Hong Kong apartment for $57m (£35m), thought to be a record price.

The five-bedroom home is believed to be Asia's most expensive property - with each sq foot costing $9,200.

The unidentified new owner bought the property in 39 Conduit Road, one of Hong Kong's most exclusive addresses.

The deal came as the territory's chief executive, Donald Tsang, said he was concerned about a possible property bubble emerging.

The apartment, about 6,000 sq feet, was sold by Henderson Land Development.

It is on the 68th floor of the building and has views over the harbour. The owner has access to facilities including an aroma spa centre, a fitness room and an outdoor yoga gym.

Thomas Lam, from the company, said the building, offered "a chance to allow the elites in town to enjoy such prestigious property".

Another unit in the same building was sold for $51 million.

WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE HOMES
Fleur de Lys, Beverley Hills, US: $125 million
Dunnellen Hall, Connecticut, US: $125 million
Updown Court, Surrey, UK: $110 million
Tranquility, Nevada, US: $100 million
Eurasia, Moscow, Russia: $100 million Source: Forbes.com

In his annual policy address, Mr Tsang said the government was considering making more land available for development.

"The relatively small number of residential units completed and the record prices attained in certain transactions this year have caused concern about the supply of flats, difficulty in purchasing a home, and the possibility of a property bubble," he said.

Property prices in Hong Kong have benefited from mainland China's booming market, however it has one of the world's most expensive property markets - with many locals finding it difficult to buy.

Xavier Wong, head of China research at international property agency Knight Frank, told Bloomberg news: "Most luxury apartments are just like antiques and paintings.

"There's an asset bubble forming; at such a phase in the property market, anything can happen."

BBC News. Oct 15, 2009.

Standard Chartered marathon to allow more runners

2009-10-13T22:01:00.000+08:00

The annual Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon has increased the number of participants from 55,000 to 60,000 - and would introduce a new route for the full marathon for next year's event, organisers said on Tuesday.

The sporting event is scheduled to take place next year in Hong Kong on February 28.

The race has proved very popular in Hong Kong in recent years with many people still anxious to participate - even after entry registrations close.

Participants in next year's 42.2 kilometre race will start at Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui next year - as in previous years - and run along the Western Kowloon Highway.

But runners will enjoy a new view when they reach Cheung Sha Wan â as they will have to turn left along the newly-opened Ngong Shuen Chau Viaduct. They will then pass across Stonecutters Bridge before reaching the Tsing Ma Bridge. There, they will rejoin the old route until they finish at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay, organisers say.

Half marathon and 10km racers will run the same routes as in previous years. But there will be one more start for the 10km - accommodating 4,000 more participants â and an additional 1,000 people for the half marathon.

The Hong Kong Amateur Athletic Association said it was confident the increased quota of 5,000 would be filled.

“People everywhere around the world are becoming more aware of the importance of living a healthy lifestyle that embraces regular exercise,” said HKAAA president Alex Moh Ho-chap.

“The Hong Kong Marathon's inclusive, community-based nature is ideal for demonstrating this,” he added.

Moh was speaking at a press conference at the Standard Chartered Bank headquarters in Central.

Online and postal entries open on Tuesday - with an early bird offer of HK$270 for local runners and HK$290 for overseas runners.

For more information visit: Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon 2010 website

SCMP. Oct 13, 2009.

Two-year-old with same IQ as Einstein

2009-10-12T21:46:00.000+08:00

Oscar Wrigley, a two-year-old with the same IQ as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, has become the youngest boy in Britain to be accepted into Mensa.

Assessors at the Gifted Children's Information Centre in Solihull said Oscar, with an IQ of at least 160, is one of the brightest children they have every come across.

He has been ranked in the 99.99th percentile of the population and has been ranked off the scale as the Stanford-Binet test cannot measure higher than 160.

Oscar's father Joe, 29, an IT specialist from Reading in Berkshire, said: "Oscar was recently telling my wife about the reproductive cycle of penguins.

"He is always asking questions. Every parent likes to think their child was special but we knew there was something particularly remarkable about Oscar.

"I'm fully expecting the day to come when he turns around and tells me I'm an idiot."
Mother Hannah, 26, told The Daily Mail: "He amazes everyone. We knew at 12 weeks he was extremely bright. He was unusually alert."

Mrs Wrigley, a housewife, added: "His vocabulary is amazing. He's able to construct complex sentences.

"The other day he said to me, 'Mummy, sausages are like a party in my mouth'."

Dr Peter Congdon, who assessed Oscar, said he was a "child of very superior intelligence".

"His abilities fall well within the range sometimes referred to as intellectually gifted. He demonstrated outstanding ability," he said.

John Stevenage, Mensa's Chief Executive confirmed Oscar had been accepted aged two years, five months and 11 days.

"Oscar shows great potential. Converting that potential to achievement is the challenge for his parents and we are delighted that they have chosen to join the Mensa network for support", he said.

The youngest British child to join Mensa is Elise Tan Roberts, from Edmonton, North London, at two years, four months and 14 days, with an IQ of 156.

The Telegraph. Oct 10, 2009.

Young women break the tattoo taboo for the love of body art

2009-10-11T10:36:00.000+08:00

Joey Pang works on a customer.

Jodie Chan, a receptionist at Temple Street in Central, is among the growing number of Chinese women breaking the taboo of having a "moving art piece". A tattoo artist said that when he started in the industry, only a tenth of clients were women, but nowadays it was 40%.

Tattoo parlours, hidden in the upper floors of buildings, used to carry an air of mystery.
Conservative Chinese have long associated the body art with muscular men or triads, but now more women are breaking the taboo to get tattooed. Some take it a step further - becoming tattoo artists themselves to show their love for "moving art".

Kenny Chin, at Solo Tattoo, has been in the trade for 10 years. When he began "inking" people, only one-tenth of his customers were female. Now, 40 per cent of them are women.

"People are more open nowadays. They also have a deeper understanding of tattoos. It's not a symbol of bad guys," Chin said. "While we may forget about people or things, a tattoo is permanent."

Most women want beautiful but small tattoos - usually the size of a palm. "They are afraid tattooing larger patterns would not be pretty."

Chin, 37, said he had just taken on a university student as an apprentice. Her enthusiasm impressed Chin, who has been surprised at the number of women asking about how to get into the trade.

At Tattoo Temple in Central, Cynthia Yiu, 35, got a dolphin tattooed on her lower leg. The office worker thought about it for years before she took the plunge.

"Everyone told me not to do it. But it's a personal decision that does no harm to others," she said. The 20-minute session was more painful than she expected, but she did not regret it, as the tattoo had a special meaning, too personal to discuss.

Tattooist Joey Pang, 30, said that about half of Temple's clients were women, but few worked as artists. "There are around four or five female tattooists in Hong Kong. The number of male ones is double that."

Pang studied design and make-up until five years ago. "I have always wanted a life-long profession. It wasn't until I got involved with tattooing that I felt, 'this is it'."

To become professional, she spent two years overseas learning from various tattooists. First she did a course in Thailand, then she went to France and Switzerland to find tattoo artists who had been in a book by an English author.

Pang has always loved drawing and found it appealing that she could use her ideas in tattoo designs. "Tattoos are moving paintings. Clients exhibit your designs on their bodies."

Before she went overseas, her mother asked if she could just learn the techniques and not get tattoos. "But when she saw my tattoos, she understands they are drawings."

Jodie Chan Man-man was the only apprentice Pang took in. The 24-year-old woman, who likes drawing skulls and was surprised tattoo parlours hired people, quit her coffee-shop job to start anew in tattooing.

SCMP. Oct 11, 2009.

Big in Japan, but could America love Moomin?

2009-10-10T13:04:00.000+08:00

Tove Jansson, who created the Moomin characters in 1945 as a teenager, died in 2001.

Moomin House at the Moomin World theme park in Naantali, Finland.

In one of the quirkiest book cults America has never heard of, a round-snouted troll is hauling consumers' wallets from their pockets despite the worst recession in decades.

The license-holders for Moomin, who say license sales increased 35 percent this year, are contemplating expansion.

"We want to grow and be as profitable as we have been so far," said Sophia Jansson. "But in a way that increases the awareness of Moomin, starting from countries where books already are sold."

The artistic head and chairman of Moomin Characters, she is the niece of Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jansson, whose creation, the Moomintrolls, soon turn 65.

Moomins -- whose naive hero Moomintroll was the "nastiest creature" teenage Tove could imagine after a quarrel with her brother -- are a lucrative publishing and licensing niche mostly in Nordic countries, Japan and Britain.

Since the 1945 publication of "The Moomins and the Great Flood," adventures with Moomin and parents Moominmamma and Moominpappa have featured in 13 novels and picturebooks translated into 40 languages, and thousands of cartoon strips.

The characters have also been used to brand a wide range of products including kitchenware, diapers, DVDs and tinned candy.

"They made me feel peaceful," said Tokyo-based Hideyuki Masumoto, 40, describing the characters he called his childhood friends while eyeing gifts in the tiny Moomin shop in Helsinki.

"They remind us of how we used to live in Japan; in a small community where everyone knows each other."

In Japan, children in the 1960s grew up with an animated television series of the trolls and loved Moomin, Masumoto said: his personal hero was Moomin's friend the wayfarer Snufkin, the "wise guy, who plays music and doesn't belong anywhere."

Inhabiting a land called Moominvalley, Moomins play into a similar vein of comfort to Disney's "Winnie-the-Pooh," revived by publishers Egmont in an October 5 sequel. But the deeply Finnish characters tap much darker mysteries than Pooh.

Bjorn Lindergaard, 30, a Dane in Helsinki on U.N. training, said he liked that the tales were inventive and realistic, and none of the characters were perfect: for example Little My, a tin-sized, fierce girl, with a positively aggressive temper.

"The Moominvalley looked very friendly, but there was also a darker side to it. life was not just plain idyllic," he said.

Peaceful and realistic is how people see Moomins, but they are not human, says Jansson, whose firm manages the Moomintroll legacy and copyrights including up to 300 licensees.

"The Moomins are not people. You can't send them up the Eiffel Tower, they don't speak on cellphones, drive cars, or carry guns," she said.

ONE EYE ON AMERICA

Moomin Characters' chief executive Roleff Krakstrom said he is eyeing the U.S. market. Moomin books were sold there half a century ago but the firm has no licensees and animations have aired only on Hawaii. But he is cautious.

"It is possible, but not obligatory," Krakstrom said. "We are reluctant to start a big project that could fail and label Moomin for a long time."

Last year Moomin Characters, which was founded by Tove and her brother and co-illustrator Lars Jansson, collected $6.69 million in license income and sales from its three brand shops in Helsinki, with operating profit at $2.18 million.

"Some think Moomin is only for the smallest family members, but for instance in Japan our main target group is 20-35-year old women," said Jansson: products for adults make half the firm's sales.

Technologies such as digital media are helping characters cross borders, said Marty Brochstein, senior vice president of the international Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association (LIMA), but warned cultural characteristics are important.

In Japan, Moomin plays into a long-running craze for cute things, said Roger Berman, managing director of the Japanese branch of LIMA: it was a similar story to many characters seen in the west as targeting children, such as Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter or The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

"If it looks cute, Japanese adults will buy as much as a child will. They will happily display character hangstraps from their mobile phones without self-consciousness," he said.

But Martin Olausson, digital media director at Strategy Analytics, pointed out that with Disney recently agreeing to buy Marvel's superheroes, the consolidating industry is tending to focus on established characters to minimize risk rather than introduce new ones.

"Profitability depends on how strong the brand is," he said. "There is a very wide spectrum, but firms like Marvel, with a library of globally big characters, can charge a lot."

In North America, character royalties slid 3.9 percent to $2.6 billion last year. Giants like Disney and Marvel have suffered as consumers reined in purchases.

EDGY

The Moomintrolls -- curious, bohemian, generous -- may be a bit more edgy and eccentric than the American mainstream.

Moomintroll is friendly, wide-eyed; he picks flowers and likes to fish. Besides Little My, who plays pranks, his friends are oddball. Snufkin smokes a pipe.

Where Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood has Eeyore the grumpy donkey, Moominvalley has a melancholy scientist, the Hemulen. A hill-shaped, lethal spook called the Groke invokes all winter's pain. Even the comedy Hattifatteners -- finger-shaped electric creatures which move in a flock -- are unsettling.

Tove Jansson, who died in 2001, said her own experiences were the basis for her work, and the experience of war may be one distinguishing factor making Europeans and Japanese susceptible to her sense of shyness and feelings of disaster.

Some experts, like Chris Anderson, author of "The Long Tail," have said technology now allows firms to cater to increasingly fragmented audiences, boosting niche products.

But Strategy Analytics' Olausson, while not ruling out that Moomins could catch on, said there was little evidence to show a niche product can thrive in the profit-driven U.S. market without the backup of a big player.

Lana Castleman, managing editor of Canadian trade magazine KidScreen, was also cautious about the chances of success for Moomins in a market that has traditionally favored princesses and spidermen above new characters.

"It's a completely different mindset," she said. "They (Moomins) are very different from current and historical American characters, such as Mickey and Winnie, both in the way they look and content of the stories."

Reuters, UK. Oct 6, 2009.

Top passwords are revealed - 123456 is the most common

2009-10-09T12:57:00.002+08:00

SECURITY RESEARCHERS looking at the behaviour of those people who were caught by the Hotmail phishers have found out the most common passwords.

Since more than 10,000 people were hacked and their password details revealed on the world wide wibble, it gives researchers a good population study for the use of passwords.

Bogdan Calin of Acunetix grabbed the passwords before the data was wiped.

He found that "123456" was the most commonly used password, appearing 64 times.
Just under half the population used only lowercase letters from "a" to "z" and only six percent mixed alphanumeric and other characters.

The top 20 passwords were Spanish names, such as Alejandra and Alberto, suggesting that the victims were Hispanic. This also suggests that people tend to use either their own name or the name of someone they know.

Nearly 2,000 of the passwords were only six characters long, which made them easy to hack. However the longest, "lafaroleratropezoooooooooooooo" was revealed in the phishing scam so the owner's care was wasted.

The Inquirer. Oct 8, 2009.

Amazon's Kindle coming to Hong Kong

2009-10-08T13:58:00.000+08:00

Amazon's Kindle electronic book-reading device is finally coming to Hong Kong, two years after going on sale in the United States.
An international version of the e-reader that can be used in 100 countries will be released this month.

The device, which allows book lovers to download a book in under a minute and can hold a virtual library of 1,500 volumes, will cost US$279.

Orders can be placed online with Amazon but shipping will not start until October 19.

The international Kindle will allow readers in Hong Kong to download books wirelessly without monthly fees, service plans or need to use a Wi-fi hotspot. The only extra cost is the price of books purchased, which varies.

People in Hong Kong who currently own a "US only" version of Kindle have to pay an additional US$1.99 fee when downloading a book wirelessly.

To avoid any fees, they can download via a computer and transfer to Kindle using a USB connection.

Cultural critic and TV host Leung Man-to was thrilled by the news.

He said he had thought of buying one in the US but abandoned the idea after learning that the free wireless connectivity for access to books, magazines and blogs was not available in the city.

Leung, who owns more than 10,000 books, said the days of paper books were numbered.

"E-books are cheaper, environmentally friendly and more convenient. Like vinyl records, paper books will vanish from the earth or become collectable items, and only real book lovers will buy them - and just some nicely designed or precious ones."

But fellow book lover, Ivan Choy Chi-keung, a political scientist at Chinese University, said he would not buy a Kindle. "Reading is an enjoyment to me and I can only have it by flicking the papers," said Choy, who buys 20 books a month. He said he loved the feeling of being "embraced by piles of books", although he was forced to dump many on the floor, as the shelves were full.

Currently, Amazon offers more than 350,000 e-books, newspapers, magazines and blogs for downloading. Downloads for Kindles are available only in English but Amazon says it has started working on digitising books in other languages.

The mainland is still not included in the Kindle expansion but Leung believes people there will embrace e-books.

"They are used to getting cultural content, music, movies and books online, since many of these things are suppressed.

"It is not a problem for them to read from a digital device. All they are waiting for is one that suits their needs," he said.

Charles Mok Nai-kwong, chairman of the Internet Society, said the biggest appeal of Kindle, like the iPod, was not the hardware but the way the content was delivered.

"There are other e-book devices but Kindle stands head-and-shoulders above them, since it has a strong content base and it can allow users to download content wirelessly."

While iTunes, a platform that Apple offers to allow iPod users to buy music online, is not fully available in Hong Kong and the mainland, Mok said the market for books was different.

"The blackout was not Apple but the music industry's idea. The sale of music is different to books," he said, adding that prices of albums varied hugely in different places but books were priced within a narrow margin.

Alan Jone, manager of gadget store JC Shop, said Kindle was a product with a niche market. It was more of a practical device than a trendy toy, Jone said, so people would not flock to get one or bid high prices for the device.

"I think the product will be well received in Hong Kong especially among the richer people," he said. "It has its gimmick because people are more aware of environmental protection."

Bookstore chains Page One and Dymocks as well as publisher Sino United Publishing were not able to comment yesterday.

SCMP. Oct 8, 2009.

E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection

2009-10-07T21:49:00.000+08:00

Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.

Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007.

“I ask myself every day, ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why from a hamburger?’ ”Ms. Smith said. In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known.

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

Read more by clicking this link...

New York Times. Oct 3, 2009.

Men Sleep on Mars, Women on Venus

2009-10-06T10:20:00.000+08:00

Elderly women may complain about insomnia, but they really get more sleep than men their age.

That is the surprising finding of a Dutch study that used monitors and sleep diaries to assess the sleep patterns of almost 1,000 men and women ages 59 to 97 for 6 days, and found that the women slept a quarter of an hour longer, on average, than the men.

Yet when men and women were asked about the quality of their sleep, women were more likely to report it as poor.

“What we found is that men completely overreport their sleep — they have a strong tendency to make it sound better than it was,” said Dr. Henning Tiemeier, associate professor of psychiatric epidemiology at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and principal investigator for the study, published in the Oct. 1 issue of the journal Sleep.

In fact, men did not sleep as well as women, the study found. They reported sleeping seven hours a night, but objective measures, including a monitor on the wrist that measured sleep time, indicated they slept less than six and a half hours. Their sleep was also more fragmented, possibly because they drank more alcohol than the women.

Though women reported more problems with their sleep, their reports were more accurate, Dr. Tiemeier said.

Are men just oblivious?

“One could say men have this gift of being more optimistic, that it’s a natural tendency,” Dr. Tiemeier said.

New York Times. Oct 5, 2009.

'Toy' Stories in 3-D - Buzz Lightyear finds a dimension

2009-10-06T10:05:00.000+08:00

IMAGINE taking a Nintendo 64 game and getting it to play on a Wii. That technological task gives an idea of what the staff at Pixar Animation Studios faced in converting 1995’s “Toy Story,” Disney’s first entirely computer-animated feature, and its 1999 sequel into 3-D.

The double feature of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2,” which was released on Friday, not only offers another generation of children the chance to see both films in theaters. It also, conveniently, helps prime the promotional pump for next summer’s “Toy Story 3.” For Pixar and its owner, the Walt Disney Company (another new development since the originals appeared), 3-D innovation means the films can be seen as they should have been all along.

“I’ve always been thinking in three dimensions, ever since I started working with computer animation in the early ’80s,” said John Lasseter, chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios and the director of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2.” “Within the computer, we’ve created truly three-dimensional environments. We’ve only looked at them with one camera. Therefore it’s a two-dimensional view of that three-dimensional world.”

The production process for a 3-D movie requires the use of two cameras, positioned next to each other, shooting action at the same time to mimic each of the viewer’s eyes. A live-action film not originally shot with two cameras cannot be made into a 3-D film, but in the more malleable world of computer animation, the second camera view can be added. The process involves a bit of virtual time travel.

“We have every scene in ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Toy Story 2’ saved, and so we have this bit of action that is frozen in time, “ Mr. Lasseter said. “If we bring that up in our system, we’re going back in time into that moment.”

Without changing any of the film’s action, Pixar’s 3-D specialists, or stereographers, returned to each frame of the film and virtually placed a second camera next to the original, creating left-eye and right-eye views of the scene. Then all of the scenes were re-rendered in the computer with this additional perspective.

The process of taking the original files from the first two movies and getting them to a place where they could be enhanced was one that Mr. Lasseter called “digital archaeology.” “We had to have some very, very smart people at Pixar go back in and write some software and figure out a way to make it so that those files would render on our current computers,” he said.

It took four months to resurrect the old data and get it in working order. Then, adding 3-D to each of the films took six months per film. (Pixar and Disney declined to talk about the project’s cost.)

One person charged with that task was Bob Whitehill, the lead stereographer. And his role was not just technical; emotional impact also informed some of the changes. “When I would look at the films as a whole, I would search for story reasons to use 3-D in different ways,” he said. “In ‘Toy Story,’ for instance, when the toys were alone in their world, I wanted it to feel consistent to a safer world. And when they went out to the human world, that’s when I really blew out the 3-D to make it feel dangerous and deep and overwhelming.”

The distance Mr. Whitehill would position the second camera from the first would determine the degree of 3-D and which of three types: “in front of screen” (when an object seems to be in the theater with the audience), “at screen” (when the image looks 2-D) and “behind screen” (when the screen seems to be a window with objects in the distance).

But in creating various levels of 3-D, both Mr. Lasseter and Mr. Whitehill were concerned about not overdoing the effects. “We work very hard in all of the Pixar films to not make anything in the imagery that causes people to think of something other than the story,” Mr. Lasseter said.

New York Times. Oct 1, 2009.

Jackson autopsy details revealed

2009-10-04T17:51:00.000+08:00

Pop star Michael Jackson had a strong heart and was a "fairly healthy" 50-year-old, according to an autopsy report obtained in the US.

His weight was in the acceptable range for a man of his height, according to the Associated Press.

But the singer, who died of a heart attack in June, had punctured arms, tattooed lips and eyebrows and suffered from lung damage and some arthritis.

Jackson's death was ruled as homicide caused by a powerful anaesthetic.

Cosmetic surgery

The Los Angeles coroner disclosed in August that Propofol and the sedative Lorazepam were the "primary drugs responsible for Mr Jackson's death".

The drugs were administered by Jackson's physician Dr Conrad Murray, and the verdict has been considered likely to increase the chances of criminal charges being brought against his doctors.

According to the document, Jackson's most serious health problem was his chronically inflamed lungs, but this was not serious enough to be a contributing factor to his death.

The post mortem did not uncover any physical problems that may have limited Jackson's ability to perform.

"His overall health was fine," said Dr Zeev Kain of the University of California, who reviewed the report for AP but was not involved in the post-mortem examination.

"The results are in normal limits," he added.

The report also revealed that Jackson had a number of scars on his body, including behind his ears and beside each of his nostrils.

Dr Kain concluded they were likely to have been caused by cosmetic surgery, while others, including on the knee, were likely to have been created by medical procedures.

The document also states that the singer was bald at the front of his head and had what appeared to be a dark tattoo stretching across his head.

His remaining hair was described as short and tightly-curled, it added.

The coroner reported that Jackson had depigmentation of the skin around his face, chest, abdomen and arms.

The full autopsy report has yet to be officially released to the public, but the conclusion that Jackson's death was homicide has been disclosed.

BBC News. Oct 1, 2009.

In a shower of sparks, fire dragon rises again to protect Tai Hang from the plague

2009-10-03T23:11:00.001+08:00

The fire dragon of Tai Hang rose refreshed again on the eve of the moon festival yesterday, brightening up the tranquil Causeway Bay neighbourhood and wrapping it in a cheerful carnival mood.

Waves of revellers and fun seekers streamed into Tai Hang in the evening to watch the annual ritual of the fire dragon dance, which saw a 67-metre-long fire dragon emblazoned with thousands of burning sticks of incense take to the streets.

The air over Tai Hang was thick with the billowing white incense smoke, as more than 100 young bearers took turns carrying the fire dragon, threading through the narrow streets to bring good luck to residents. Bursts of light from camera flashguns and cheers from revellers pierced the smoke as the fire dragon twisted back and forth along the narrow streets.

Among the crowd was keen photographer Tommy Kwok, 24, who had arrived an hour early to jostle for a better position to take pictures of the fire dragon. "It is my first time to watch the fire dragon dance. I think it is really cool and is going to be a memorable event," said a delighted Kwok.

The legend of the fire dragon can be traced back almost 130 years to when Tai Hang was a village whose inhabitants lived on farming and fishing. A plague hit the villagers, and the only way to get rid of it was to keep a fire dragon dancing for three days and nights during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Villagers did so and the plague disappeared.

Earlier this week, the government declared the dance was among four local traditions it would recommend to the Ministry of Culture for the status of national intangible cultural heritage. The fire dragon dance is one of the many highlights of the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar. This year, it falls today. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a major event for Chinese, celebrated by compatriots all over the world. The Chinese traditionally observe the festival with their families, serving mooncakes and lighting lanterns.

The Observatory says the moon will be at its fullest at 11.38pm tonight. Today's forecast is for dry and fine weather with one or two light rain patches, then clearing skies at night.

"Early birds" who went to Victoria Park last night to see the moon were not let down.

Chan Kwong-chiu, 50, who went with his wife, said: "We come to the park to watch the moon every year. We like the beautifully decorated lanterns on display here."

A Mid-Autumn lantern carnival will be held in Victoria Park tonight. The three-hour show features Chinese traditional stage arts, puppetry, a lantern quiz and fortune-telling. Performing troupes from Yunnan and Hebei will perform songs, dances and acrobatics.

There are also lantern exhibitions to promote the East Asian Games at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre piazza from now until November 1. Another lantern exhibition is planned for the West Kowloon waterfront promenade today and tomorrow.

SCMP. Oct. 3, 2009.

Bill Gates lost $7 Billion last year, and is still the richest

2009-10-02T14:27:00.000+08:00

The collective net worth of the super rich on Forbes's annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans fell by US$300 billion over the past 12 months, and the tech sector spilled its share of the red ink.

Microsoft's Bill Gates lost the most — at least on paper. His net worth dropped from US$57 to US$50 billion, not enough, however, to keep him from topping the list for the 16th year in a row. Two current and former Microsofties were close behind: Paul Allen (No. 17) lost US$4.5 billion and Steve Ballmer (No. 14) gave up US$1.7 billion.

Other notable losers were Michael Dell (No. 13), down US$2.8 billion, and SAS's James Goodnight (No. 33), off US$1.9 billion.

In this company, the US$600 million that Apple CEO Steve Jobs lost on paper doesn't seem so bad. In fact, on the strength of the US$5.1 billion he still has, he moved 18 spots up the Forbes 400 list, from No. 61 to No. 43.

Below: The 12 richest tech moguls and their change in net worth. One actually got richer. Can you guess who?

No. 1. Bill Gates, Microsoft: US$50 billion, down US$7 billion
No. 3 Larry Ellison, Oracle: US$27 billion, no change
No. 11 Sergey Brin, Google: US$15.3 billion, down US$600 million
No. 11 Larry Page, Google: US$15.3 billion, down US$500 million
No. 13 Michael Dell, Dell: US$14.5 billion, down US$2.8 billion
No. 14 Steve Ballmer, Microsoft: US$13.3 billion, down US$1.7 billion
No. 17 Paul Allen, Microsoft: US$11.5 billion, down US$4.5 billion
No. 28 Jeff Bezos, Amazon: US$8.8 billion, up US$100 million
No. 33 James Goodnight, SAS Institute: US$6.8 billion, down US$1.9 billion
No. 40 Pierre Omidyar, eBay: US$5.5 billion, down US$800 million
No. 40 Eric Schmidt, Google: US$5.5 billion, down US$400 million
No. 43 Steve Jobs, Apple, Pixar: US$5.1 billion, down US$600 million

CNN Fortune Brainstorm Tech. Oct. 1, 2009.

European Airline Brings Back the Smoking Section

2009-10-01T09:07:00.000+08:00

It’s been a long time since passengers have been allowed to smoke on an airliner in the United States. It’s the same story in Europe. But now the smoking crowd across the Atlantic have an option when the nicotine comes calling.

Ireland-based Ryanair is selling smokeless cigarettes on all the company’s flights. Ryanair says a survey showed more than 24,000 passengers would like the option to smoke during flights and that was enough of an incentive in these lean times to try and gain some market share as well as some extra income. So as long as you’re at least 18 years old, the company will sell you a pack of smokeless smokes for 6 euro (about HK$68).

Ryanair is a discount airlines that flies throughout Europe and North Africa and is no stranger to using a gimmick to bring in some business. The company says the cigarettes can’t be lit and deliver the nicotine through inhalation.

For those who fear the old days when the difference between the smoking section on an airplane and the non-smoking section was simply whichever way the air was flowing inside the cabin, the smokeless cigarettes do not emit any toxins or chemicals to nearby passengers. Company spokesman Stephen McNamara believes when smokers can get their nicotine, everybody wins, “as these cigarettes are smokeless, they cause no discomfort to other passengers and can ensure a more enjoyable and stress-free flight for all passengers as non-smokers will no longer have to cope with moody smokers in need of nicotine.”

Wired. Sep 28, 2009.