Icarus thoughts

Icarus
by Rebecca Baggett

The story is so simple
really. Imagine
yourself gifted with wings,
every child's sleeping
and waking dream, imagine
that you could defy
that force dragging us all
to heel, imagine every sweet safe
green harbor below, laid out
for your choosing
like candies in their box.
Then imagine that one
gold coin, that fierce and pulsing
point around which worlds dance,
imagine the gentleness below
and that wildness above, imagine
that something in you echoed
to the leaping of its flames,
imagine how its one question
beat in your veins, how you saw
with perfect clarity that moment
in which each of us chooses,
forever. Imagine that voice
far below crying: Come
back Come back

Talking heads

Oohhh....what will they measure next?

The project "head" is a Professor Ball.

I'm full of bad puns this morning.

Why western shapes don't fit Chinese heads
South China Morning Post
September 18, 2007

A research project which measured the head shapes of 2,000 Chinese appears to have unlocked the mystery of why some products, like eyeglasses and safety helmets, do not fit Chinese users.

This is because the head of an average Chinese is rounder and higher than that of a westerner, according to the 18-month study.

Chinese heads are also smaller, usually measuring 540mm in circumference, compared with the 570mm western head. And the upper, rear section is much flatter.

The information, collected by a research team at the Polytechnic University's school of design, is arguably the world's first comprehensive databank of Chinese head sizes and facial features.

While the findings may sound trivial to some, the data has potentially huge implications for product makers targeting the Chinese.

Hats, glasses and even facemasks are made to fit western faces and heads, and often the physiology of Chinese consumers is not considered.

"Baseball caps sometimes sit awkwardly on Chinese heads. It is not about size, but the shape, because Chinese heads are higher," said Roger Ball, leader of the project SizeChina.com and assistant professor of the school of design.

"Understanding human size and shape is the cornerstone for designing successful consumer products, because every product relies on accurate fitting," said Professor Ball.

"Designers, engineers and architects need sophisticated data on head and face shapes to design best-selling products. How well a product fits us is the most important part of any successful design."

Working with local universities and community centres, the team collected head details from more than 2,000 volunteers aged 18 to 70.

A 360-degree rotary laser scanner was used to take readings of their heads.

The project began in April last year, with nearly HK$4.5 million funding from the government's Innovation and Technology Commission under the project titled "Perfect fit China".

Professor Ball, a sports safety products designer from Canada, developed an interest in the shapes and features of Asian heads after meeting a Japanese sales representative 10 years ago over poor response to helmets he had designed.

"I was told the shape of the helmet was not right, it was too tight a fit on the sides of the head," he said.

In compiling the data, the researchers visited six cities - Beijing, Hangzhou , Guangzhou, Lanzhou , Chongqing and Shenyang . Professor Ball said these were representative cities in the northern, eastern, southern and western parts of the mainland.

The project's technology supervisor, Chan Wai-yin, said they might consider a project to measure Chinese hands.

September the 16th

I am very much a secular person, and often I think my only religion, if you could call it that, is kindness. But sometimes I suspect there is a God and a heaven. And when I think of Eric, then I definitely wish with every atom and neutron and proton of my being, that there is indeed an afterlife, because I miss him so and thoughts of seeing my kid brother again would almost reconcile me to the D word.

We love you, kiddo. When I get there, I swear I'll be patient this time and play chess with you.

She's half the girl she used to be

Heh. heh.



Experiments in focusing, using my new Sony DSLR! Not quite as successful as I'd hoped, but I was trying to put my face into sharp focus and blur the background.

I really should have kids around - it's more fun photographing other people.

Kids...

Nah.

Highs and lows

The past week has been hectic at work, as we were trying to put the magazine to bed. Meeting production deadlines have always been a tough job for writers and editors--well that's why there are production managers in any publishing firm I guess. Many freelance contributors are habitually late with their stuff, or they wait until the very last minute. It must be a psychic thing. Having done freelance myself I can say an impending deadline can produce a massive adrenaline rush that can result in some of the best work I've ever done.

Highs and lows of the last few days:
* Erap's conviction. Although this brought a lot of rejoicing it also made some people wonder why comparable or even bigger offenders aren't being prosecuted. Imelda Marcos, for example, is flourishing and enjoying a revival of her popularity and clout. We Pinoys really are a forgiving lot.

* Friends in need. A good friend that I used to work with was going through a tough time in her personal life and also at work. While I, like all our other friends, felt tremendous sympathy for her, I also wanted to shake her and tell her it wasn't the end of the world, that things usually turn out for the best, that she will look back a month, heck maybe even a week from now at the string of events that upset her, and laugh about it. But the older I get the more I realise that the best way to help friends sometimes is to just be there for them and not bludgeon them with too much unsolicited advice. She was in a glum uncommunicative mood but after dimsum and a bit of window shopping yesterday her mood lifted, she was laughing at the end of the day, and the shadows seemed to have gone away. At least for a time.

* Grey skies. This week the horrible haze is back. After weeks and weeks of impossibly blue skies, HK is Pollution Land again. The Observatory said a freak southesterly wind--which blew all the pollution back to Guangdong--created those perfect days. Come back, come back! As I texted friends yesterday, I'm not sure I want to live in a city that is under a perpetual soupy haze compounded of diesel emissions from local vehicles plus the nasty stuff from the factories across the border! When I first came to Hong Kong in 1997 the skies were so clear and blue. They say the last blue skies were in 2000. But I think of how cloudless and clear the skies over the Philippines are--oh yes, even over Metro Manila--and I could weep. Last year, when I was vacationing in France, I was perpetually astonished by how clear the skies were. You could see forever into the distance. My flat, and I've mentioned this many times before, overlooks Hong Kong's low hills and I used to rejoice at the green vistas that gave me. Well today, I can barely discern the green slopes through the haze.

* What is it with restaurants? Dim Sum restaurant in Happy Valley (63 Sing Wo Road) was always my go-to to impress visiting out of towners because while its offerings were rather pricey they were reliably excellent. But my recent visit left me disappointed; either it was an off day for the chef--although how you can go wrong when the menu hasn't changed in years--or they're now cutting quite a lot of corners, but the food was BLAH! The hau gau was not as strikingly fresh as in the past, when the prawns seemed to be just minutes from the sea. The siu mai was so-so, the tea wasn't as earthy-rich (it was puerh, or po lei), and the 3 other dishes were just forgettable. I paid HK$220 ($7.7=US$1). In another dimsum restaurant I would have paid half the bill and probably come away more satisfied with the quality.

...Well look at that! Almost 9 am. Gotta start on the work I brought home. At least I don't have to worry about cleaning the flat--I finally gave in and asked a parttime cleaning lady to do the necessary. In three hours the place will at least sparkle.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Might take a while though...

MANILA, Philippines -- Communist leader Jose Maria Sison has been freed from prison, just hours after a Dutch court ordered his release after it failed to find “sufficient indications” he was involved in the murders of former political colleagues in the Philippines.

But Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA), is not off the hook yet as the District Court of The Hague does not preclude him from being prosecuted on murder charges.

“The charges are not being dropped. The investigation will continue and the national police still consider him a suspect,” spokesman Wim de Bruin of the national prosecutor's office told INQUIRER.net in a phone interview.

The Dutch court only rules on the request to keep someone in custody, while it is the public prosecutor's office that decides on whether or not to prosecute.

“Now that he is released, there is no need for a trial within three months,” De Bruin said. “It can start longer than three months.”

Sison, who has been living in the Dutch town of Utrecht since 1987, was arrested on August 28 on charges of having ordered the murder, from the Netherlands, of former comrades Arturo Tabara and Romulo Kintanar.

According to Dutch prosecutors, Sison ordered the assassination of Kintanar, former NPA chief, on January 23, 2003. The murder was claimed by the NPA itself in an official publication, they said

Prosecutors are also investigating the role of Sison, 68, in the killings of Tabara and his son-in-law Stephen Ong on September 26, 2006. Tabara was a member of the highest command of the NPA and his assassination was also claimed by the rebel group.

The district court has established that the murders were committed in the Philippines due to disagreements within the CPP and that the decision to commit these crimes was made “within party structures of the CPP.”

Kintanar and Tabara were among rebel leaders who led a faction that split from the mainstream communist movement in the 1990s.

The court also recognized “many indications in the files which support the point of view that the accused is still playing a leading role in the Central Committee of the CPP as well as in the military branch of the CPP, the New People's Army.”

The court ruled however that there was not enough evidence to prove Sison committed the crimes in collusion with others or that he incited others to kill the victims.

De Bruin said the Dutch national prosecutor’s office will appeal the court’s decision to release Sison.

Full news here

Twice right

Erap will soon be behind bars!

And perhaps so too will Joma Sison!

Mysterious ways

Someone very dear to me has announced her impending marriage to a man who clearly is vastly superior to the one she nearly married a year ago. When THAT engagement was broken we all bled for her, so this one...is oh joy, such joy unexpected, a heavenly gift, like unlooked-for rain in the middle of a parched summer. If the previous engagement had gone ahead who knows what misery she might be in now? Truly, if you just let life take its course the reason for many things become crystal clear. I myself have railed against my own personal disappointments and failures, and yet now, with the benefit of hindsight, I could literally fall down on my knees and be grateful to the Creator that those events happened. Each one happened for a damn good reason.

My cup runneth over.