In this article Huffpost writes about that Google is attempting to loosen China’s policies or else China may be comdemned in the court of public opinion. The web is also buzzing about it.

Are you serious? China is going to “bow” to a foreign company, it doesn’t even bow to the most powerful country in the world, much less a company that has anywhere between 15-30% search market share that was mostly censored?

By leaving China Google is not trying to work from within and will henceforth attempt to drive its agenda (and perhaps change) from the outside. Google deserves praise for its stand but is it too little too late or is it merely lipservice?

How well is enforcing change on the outside going to work?

CNN, BBC, Voice of America anyone? Who has enabled more change and freedom inside China? The advent of Alibaba, Sina, Sohu, Netease or QQ or the external forces of the BBC, CNN, Yahoo, Facebook or NBC?

What Google is telling the world outside of China is that it wants to open up all information, to create really an information revolution.

How do you enact a revolution? From the inside or from the outside? Let’s learn from history.

Kung Fu film star Jackie Chan Monday admitted that he acted in a porn movie 31 years ago, responding to a report revealed by Hong Kong media, Information Times reported Tuesday.

"I had to do anything I could to make a living 31 years ago, but I don’t think it’s a big deal, even Marlon Brando used to be exposed in his movies," Chan said. "The porn movie at that time was more conservative than the current films," he said.

Hong Kong netizens tipped local media that Chan was in the porn movie "All in the Family" in 1975, with a porn movie star who was famous at that time.

The Hong Kong made movie, directed by Zhu Mu, was defined as a comedy. Dean Shek, Tien Chun, and Sammo Hung were also co-stars.

Photo: ifensi.com

Hello Kitty,  popular with teenagers around the world, was used by a notorious Colombian drug lord to hide messages to his minions, according to a report Monday.Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, who is being held in Brazil after his arrest in August, hid voice and text messages digitally encoded into e-mailed images of the innocent feline, Brazilian police told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

Investigators say the disguised missives, hundreds of which were found on Abadia’s computer, could put the narcotics kingpin up to his neck in Kitty litter as some of them allegedly detail cocaine shipments between countries.

The newspaper said the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) broke the binary code containing the messages under the Hello Kitty images because Brazilian police lacked the necessary computer equipment.

It added the same technique of hiding messages in seemingly innocuous image files was used by Al-Qaeda to prepare the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Abadia apparently picked Hello Kitty as his courier because his wife was a big fan of the Japanese icon — she had even decorated one of her rooms in a Brazilian house with Hello Kitty-themed chairs, watches and wallpaper.

Abadia, 44, is currently the subject of extradition proceedings requested by the United States, which wants to try him on drug trafficking, money-laundering and murder charges.

The Colombian, who has previously been convicted in his own country for trafficking, is suspected to have headed the ultraviolent Valle del Norte cartel.

He is being kept in a high-security prison pending the verdict by Brazil’s supreme court on the US extradition request.

The DEA estimates that Abadia accumulated a personal fortune of 1.8 billion dollars from his illicit activities, which it says involved sending tons of cocaine and kilos of heroin to California through Mexico.

A star was born earlier this week, and she was fortunate enough to already have decent-quality products available on the Internet. The price of Ashley Alexandra Dupre’s Amie Street songs instantly soared from pennies to $0.98, and now, according to the Post, has settled around $0.68. And that just the beginning for this very physical digital entrepreneur.Highlights from the Post:

• $200,000+ from song sales so far (300,000+ downloads)
• $1 million offer from Hustler magazine
• Offers from Penthouse, et al
• $1 million offer from Kick Ass Pictures for a starring role
• Expected $1 million offer for a book deal.
• Hypothetical “Client No. 9″ perfume deal
• “Six figure” offer from Georgi Vodka to star in their butts-on-buses campaign (”She’s probably got the most popular butt in America right now,” a Georgi executive says). Georgi also wants to create a new product around her called “Vodka No. 9.”
• Commercials, tabloid-TV shows, a sexy clothing line, and more.

The Post’s expert estimates that Ashley could coin $2.5 to $5 million off this publicity bonanza and calculates that she “would have to service Spitzer 581 to 1,162 times at her going rate of $4,300 for four hours to earn the same amount of money.”

The downside: Her new business success will make her ineligible for further representation by her public defender. Also, the 22-year old will be besieged by reps, managers, advisors, acquaintances, and agents of all types, some of whom will no doubt persuade her that she can’t afford not to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In the moment, this will seem like pennies, but if her career trajectory follows that of other instant web stars, will soon leave her penniless again.

Wow, is all I can say!

A good article on globalvoices today. The most striking comment being that even possession of the photos were illegal by a Police commissioner who clearly did not know better. A major protest was out on the streets to protest the obscene photo case and relevant arrest.

There is now even a facebook group calling for Edison Chen’s arrest.

Depending on the source, anywhere from 250-500 people were marching on the street, a sample from hkdigit.

More than 250 Hong Kong people included members of the League of Social Democrats(Organizers Article23.net said more than 500 people attended) marched from Victoria Park to the Wan Chai Police headquarters to protest against the police’s handling of the obscene photo case involving local pop and film stars including Edison Chen Kwoon-hei(陳冠希), Gillian Chung Yan-tung (鍾欣桐), Bobo Chan Man-woon (陳文媛) and Cecilia Cheung Pak-zhi (張栢芝), implicated Edison’s current girlfriend Vincy Yeung (楊永晴). They accused the police of selective prosecution.

For more information on this there is even a Wikipedia entry.

There are several events of hypocrisy, starting from the lie that the pictures were fabricated, to the innocent and quick arrests of people and the police threatening to jail people simply for possession. I guess being a celebrity gives you some extra benefits in Hong Kong society?

Gillian Chung makes a public appearance after the Edison Chen scandal, here a brief sample from the article.

Gillian Chung began by saying Happy New Year to those present. She said that this incident has caused great distress and hurt to herself and those around her. She admitted to being very naïve and very stupid before, but she has now grown up. She expressed her gratitude towards the company, her family and her friends for their concern and support. She apologized for the effect of the affair on society at large. In the future, she will continue to work hard and live actively. Finally, she thanked the media for their concern and the fans who never abandoned her.

The Internet forum response has been quite negative. Throughout her statement, there was no description of what the affair was about. The netizens did not take kindly towards her description of being “very naïve, very stupid.” People pointed to the KY jelly in the background of one of her photographs and asked: “If she had been ‘very naïve, very stupid’ at the time when she was using KY jelly in a hotel room, then what is she doing now that she has grown up?”

Why is the Internet forum public so hostile towards Gillian Chung this time? When photographs of her changing in the dressing room appeared in EasyFinder magazine in August 2006, the public was overwhelmingly on her side. But the tide appeared to have swung the other way around. One reason was that her company Emperor Entertainment Group had claimed initially that the photographs were computer modifications. When more photographs appeared, EEG went silent and refused to comment on the grounds that there was an ongoing police investigation. Even at today’s press conference, EEG stated that the company and all its artistes will decline comment in the future in the interest of not causing more social harm. The Internet forum users consider Gillian Chung and EEG evasive.

The whole video of the interview is here:

A pregnant woman has complained to the Department of Health after being told she won’t be able to have her baby at Adventist Hospital in Hong Kong even though she had earlier been assured of a bed.

"The hospital had told my doctor that my booking was no problem," Ms Ip said. "That is why I had not booked with another hospital. I was shocked that the hospital turned me away."

She said the news had caused her and her family a great deal of stress.

"I’ve had insomnia since receiving the bad news. I had three weeks of depression when my daughter was born last year, now I am so worried that I can’t sleep well. I don’t know how to handle it," she said.

"It is a complete black-box operation. We don’t know why suddenly there is no place for local mothers. I suspect some of the places have been given to mainland mothers, because hospitals can earn more from them."

Ms Ip, 33, said she had saved for the past year to cover the HK$60,000 to HK$80,000 cost of having her baby at a private hospital.

She gave birth to a daughter last year at Adventist Hospital and said she preferred private hospitals because of better service and privacy.

"Some of my friends have had very bad experiences in public hospitals. There are no doctors to do the deliveries and when they were breastfeeding, several men just peeped through the curtains. They were very scared."

Ms Ip said the department had responded to her complaint, saying the hospital denied passing maternity bed places to mainland mothers.

"But I think it is an issue which demands serious concern," she said.

"I wonder why there is no policy in Hong Kong that hospitals should give priority to local mothers.

"It is our home and yet we cannot enjoy good services."

Get used to it, last I heard Hong Kong was part of China not the other way round. Local media reports this case as a concern and the whispers in town are that "Mainland mothers" are taking away space for local mothers. If Mainland mothers will pay more, then why is that a problem? I didn’t hear anyone complaining coming to Hong Kong and spending "Mainland money" in Hong Kong a few years ago. Mainland tourism is fueling the Hong Kong economy, you don’t get to pick and choose, without China would Hong Kong be as prosperous as they are today? This type of xenophobia is the reason why Hong Kong will not become an open society if we cannot even open our doors to our own!

The Web is full of spoof and parody on this, here are some of the funnier ones I’ve seen so far.

and this one, written by Monkey Woods:

Policemen who break or bend the rules in Thailand are not exactly in the minority, but from next week, any that are caught will be handed out the biggest punishment any of them could possibly imagine - they will be required to dress in a Hello Kitty suit.

The suits, made from toughened white felt, with black whiskers and a pink bow, were the brainchild of Chief of Police Pongpat Chayapan, whose daughter is a big fan of the much-loved children’s toy cat which originated in Japan in the 1970s.

Apart from the steaming hot temperatures - a Thai policeman’s crotch was recently measured at 54 degrees centigrade - it’s thought the stigma attached to wearing one of the suits will be almost too much to bear for the macho Thai officers.

Corruption is rife amongst the police force, with ‘backhand payments’ for trivial offences the order of the day, but Chief Chayapan is determined to ‘clean up’ the ranks.

Through a translator, he said:

"We have been far too bent for far too long. This has to stop. Anyone found contravening police rules will wear this ridiculous get-up indefinitely. I am no longer pussyfooting around!"

In an article I came across on boingboing I came across this imagery,whereas Musti was designed a few years prior to Kitty apparently. The original source blog quoted the following:

Kitty’s design was just a crib from this!!!
This is “Musti” created by the Belgian animator/director Ray Goossens (1924-1998). Musti was started as an animation series on TV in 1968, and its picture books were also published. I read some of that books and loved it in my childhood.

There were a variety of the usual naysayers and claims made how Hello Kitty was a rip-off etc. etc. of course some of them claimed that Musti was a rip off of Miffy by Dick Bruna.

The resemblance is rather uncanny, but often people will create a big story for sensationalist reasons. Sure, Musti and Kitty have some similarities, but the very original Hello Kitty design looked like this:

Compared to the above image, doesn’t strike me as “close”. Could the original artist have been inspired by the design of Musti (or Miffy). Maybe, it’s not unheard of but there is such a thing as the court of law, and if indeed Musti had a serious chance in claiming the copyright they would have done so already.

Infact, Musti and Miffy are far closer, given the X for a mouth, and the overall design qualities. The fact that Kitty-chan has no mouth is now almost a trademark legend (why does she now have one anyway?). Besides, I think that Kitty-chan is much much cuter (and adult in design) than both Musti and Miffy, Musti has a decidedly jagged kindergarden look intentionally crooked to resemble the image of the drawings of a very young child or toddler. Their target audience is also very different.

To conclude, in the compounds of art and design, I think Kitty-chan is original creation in my view, what do you think?