關於 expected death at home ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

#Congratulations! Director Hsin-Chien Huang's latest VR works, Samsara and The Starry Sand Beach, were nominated for the 78th Venice International Film Festival!

The 78th Venice International Film Festival (VIFF) announced the shortlisted nominees for the category of VR Film. Taiwanese new media artist, Distinguished Professor of NTNU, Hsin-Chien Huang, winner of the BEST VR Experience in 2017 with his work La Camera Insabbiata, will again contest for the Leone d’oro this year with two of his latest, sci-fi inspired works, Samsara and The Starry Sand Beach. While the Taiwanese athletes are striving for the Gold Medals at the Tokyo Olympics as we speak, director Hsin-Chien Huang dazzles the jury of VIFF with his visually-stunning and thought-provoking works — bringing cutting-edge Taiwanese VR films onto the international stage and letting world-wide audience sees Taiwan!

Before being selected for the 78th Venice International Film Festival, Samsara episode 1. has already grabbed the Jury Award at SXSW and Best VR Story at the Cannes XR Competition. This futuristic VR experience teleports the audience onto a journey that spans millions of years. Samsara is a Sanskrit word meaning “ the world ”. In Buddhism, it means what we perceive as the world is actually an endless cycle of karma (cause and effect), a cycle of life, death and rebirth in the six realms of existence. In this fascinating VR work, the audience is reincarnated into the bodies of different persons and creatures, experiencing the universe in their new bodies and in search for the ultimate spiritual transcendence.

Samsara depicts an apocalyptical story in the near future where human greed has depleted the earth’s resource. Catastrophic wars to fight for resource resulted in global destruction. Finally, the remaining humans had to leave the Earth and go on a search in space for a new place to live.

Nevertheless, their desperate, long quest for a new homeland… could it be just a loop in space and time? The cycle of greedy domination and total destruction that then necessitates the search for a new home…. may have hopelessly repeated itself over and over again? The constant evolutionary process and so-called progress, without transformation in consciousness and spiritual advancement, is nothing more than a Möbius strip that leads nowhere, perhaps…?

Samsara is an experiment based on the theory of Embodied Cognition. Through interactivity and VR, the audience gets to live inside the bodies of different persons and creatures, experiencing their feelings from within. Perhaps It is when we can perceive the world in different bodies that we may truly appreciate the thoughts of others and empathize with them. An experience that will also help us better comprehend our own existence and learn to live in harmony with all.

Samsara explores a complex of deeply interconnected issues of ecology, technology, natural resource and war, etc. It's a story about a journey humans are forced to take on, after having destroyed the earth with nuclear disasters. The survivors seek a new planet, in the boundless, interstellar space, to carry on their lives. Gradually they evolve into a new life form artificially. Yet, many years passed and they’ve come to realize that they would never make it to the new planet they’ve been dreaming of. In fact, they have simply been returning to the Earth, in different life forms, time after time.

Director Huang applies the concepts of embodied cognition, offering a unique way to contemplate about the nature of life. As the audience are transported into different bodies each time, they gain a brand new perspective to experience the world views presented in Samsara.

Samsara was produced under the guidance of Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and Kaohsiung Film Archive VR(VR FILM LAB), it’s a sate-of-the-art VR production made 100% in Taiwan. In the VR experience, viewers are transformed into various kinds of animals to interact with the scenes, including species unique and indigenous to Taiwan, such as Taiwan Blue Magpie and Formosan Black Bear.

Samsara Ep.1 features the latest somatosensory technology, including 4D views shooting techniques by the Industrial Technology Research Institute and TAICCA. A digital shooting system comprised of a high-sensitivity 4 million-pixel, full-color CCD sensor and 48 4DV-EX-Z cameras made it possible for Samsara Ep.1 to be taken from an omnidirectional view and shot without any blind spots, creating the ultimate immersive experience.

THE STARRY SAND BEACH, directed by Hsin-Chien Huang and produced in cooperation with Lucid Reality (France) and Oready 瑞意創科 Oready Innovation Lab (Taiwan), is a scientific fairy tale about a unique ecological wonder in Taiwan and Japan, the shiny starry sand beaches. Foraminifera, from the Latin word “foramen” meaning hole, is a single-celled organism that builds a shell with multiple chambers which intercommunicate with one another through holes. On the Qimei Island, Taiwan and the Yaeyama Islands, Japan, beaches have been formed by a specific species of foraminifera with star-shaped shells made of calcium carbonate. Like the real stars in the legends, grains of the starry sand have also been preserving the earth’s memories for millions of years.

THE STARRY SAND BEACH is a real-time 3D interactive VR adventure into the natural and mythological landscape of the starry sand beaches on Qimei Island in Penghu Archipelago, Xing Sha Wan in Kenting National Park and Taketomi Island in the far south of Japan. The experience is full of aesthetically-amazing elements and enriched with cultural and religious significance like Shintoism in Japan. A beautiful, haunting legend tells the story of the starry sand…

The final winners will be presented at the award ceremony held on Sep11. With great anticipation and hopes, Hsin-Chien Huang is expected to bring home again the grand prize for Taiwan!

https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/selection-complete-works-venice-vr-expanded-0

#黃心健 #HsinChienHuang
#samsara #chalkroom
#LaCameraInsabbiata
#VeniceInternationalFilmFestival #VIFF
#Thestarrysandbeach
#LucidReality
#OreadyInnovationLab

今早為Asian Medical Students Association Hong Kong (AMSAHK)的新一屆執行委員會就職典禮作致詞分享嘉賓，題目為「疫情中的健康不公平」。
感謝他們的熱情款待以及為整段致詞拍了影片。以下我附上致詞的英文原稿：

It's been my honor to be invited to give the closing remarks for the Inauguration Ceremony for the incoming executive committee of the Asian Medical Students' Association Hong Kong (AMSAHK) this morning. A video has been taken for the remarks I made regarding health inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic (big thanks to the student who withstood the soreness of her arm for holding the camera up for 15 minutes straight), and here's the transcript of the main body of the speech that goes with this video:

//The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, continues to be rampant around the world since early 2020, resulting in more than 55 million cases and 1.3 million deaths worldwide as of today. (So no! It’s not a hoax for those conspiracy theorists out there!) A higher rate of incidence and deaths, as well as worse health-related quality of life have been widely observed in the socially disadvantaged groups, including people of lower socioeconomic position, older persons, migrants, ethnic minority and communities of color, etc. While epidemiologists and scientists around the world are dedicated in gathering scientific evidence on the specific causes and determinants of the health inequalities observed in different countries and regions, we can apply the Social Determinants of Health Conceptual Framework developed by the World Health Organization team led by the eminent Prof Sir Michael Marmot, world’s leading social epidemiologist, to understand and delineate these social determinants of health inequalities related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to this framework, social determinants of health can be largely categorized into two types – 1) the lower stream, intermediary determinants, and 2) the upper stream, structural and macro-environmental determinants. For the COVID-19 pandemic, we realized that the lower stream factors may include material circumstances, such as people’s living and working conditions. For instance, the nature of the occupations of these people of lower socioeconomic position tends to require them to travel outside to work, i.e., they cannot work from home, which is a luxury for people who can afford to do it. This lack of choice in the location of occupation may expose them to greater risk of infection through more transportation and interactions with strangers. We have also seen infection clusters among crowded places like elderly homes, public housing estates, and boarding houses for foreign domestic helpers. Moreover, these socially disadvantaged people tend to have lower financial and social capital – it can be observed that they were more likely to be deprived of personal protective equipment like face masks and hand sanitizers, especially during the earlier days of the pandemic. On the other hand, the upper stream, structural determinants of health may include policies related to public health, education, macroeconomics, social protection and welfare, as well as our governance… and last, but not least, our culture and values. If the socioeconomic and political contexts are not favorable to the socially disadvantaged, their health and well-being will be disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Therefore, if we, as a society, espouse to address and reduce the problem of health inequalities, social determinants of health cannot be overlooked in devising and designing any public health-related strategies, measures and policies.

Although a higher rate of incidence and deaths have been widely observed in the socially disadvantaged groups, especially in countries with severe COVID-19 outbreaks, this phenomenon seems to be less discussed and less covered by media in Hong Kong, where the disease incidence is relatively low when compared with other countries around the world. Before the resurgence of local cases in early July, local spread of COVID-19 was sporadic and most cases were imported. In the earlier days of the pandemic, most cases were primarily imported by travelers and return-students studying overseas, leading to a minor surge between mid-March and mid-April of 874 new cases. Most of these cases during Spring were people who could afford to travel and study abroad, and thus tended to be more well-off. Therefore, some would say the expected social gradient in health impact did not seem to exist in Hong Kong, but may I remind you that, it is only the case when we focus on COVID-19-specific incidence and mortality alone. But can we really deduce from this that COVID-19-related health inequality does not exist in Hong Kong? According to the Social Determinants of Health Framework mentioned earlier, the obvious answer is “No, of course not.” And here’s why…

In addition to the direct disease burden, the COVID-19 outbreak and its associated containment measures (such as economic lockdown, mandatory social distancing, and change of work arrangements) could have unequal wider socioeconomic impacts on the general population, especially in regions with pervasive existing social inequalities. Given the limited resources and capacity of the socioeconomically disadvantaged to respond to emergency and adverse events, their general health and well-being are likely to be unduly and inordinately affected by the abrupt changes in their daily economic and social conditions, like job loss and insecurity, brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak and the corresponding containment and mitigation measures of which the main purpose was supposedly disease prevention and health protection at the first place. As such, focusing only on COVID-19 incidence or mortality as the outcomes of concern to address health inequalities may leave out important aspects of life that contributes significantly to people’s health. Recently, my research team and I collaborated with Sir Michael Marmot in a Hong Kong study, and found that the poor people in Hong Kong fared worse in every aspects of life than their richer counterparts in terms of economic activity, personal protective equipment, personal hygiene practice, as well as well-being and health after the COVID-19 outbreak. We also found that part of the observed health inequality can be attributed to the pandemic and its related containment measures via people’s concerns over their own and their families’ livelihood and economic activity. In other words, health inequalities were contributed by the pandemic even in a city where incidence is relatively low through other social determinants of health that directly concerned the livelihood and economic activity of the people. So in this study, we confirmed that focusing only on the incident and death cases as the outcomes of concern to address health inequalities is like a story half-told, and would severely truncate and distort the reality.

Truth be told, health inequality does not only appear after the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19, it is a pre-existing condition in countries and regions around the world, including Hong Kong. My research over the years have consistently shown that people in lower socioeconomic position tend to have worse physical and mental health status. Nevertheless, precisely because health inequality is nothing new, there are always voices in our society trying to dismiss the problem, arguing that it is only natural to have wealth inequality in any capitalistic society. However, in reckoning with health inequalities, we need to go beyond just figuring out the disparities or differences in health status between the poor and the rich, and we need to raise an ethically relevant question: are these inequalities, disparities and differences remediable? Can they be fixed? Can we do something about them? If they are remediable, and we can do something about them but we haven’t, then we’d say these inequalities are ultimately unjust and unfair. In other words, a society that prides itself in pursuing justice must, and I say must, strive to address and reduce these unfair health inequalities. Borrowing the words from famed sociologist Judith Butler, “the virus alone does not discriminate,” but “social and economic inequality will make sure that it does.” With COVID-19, we learn that it is not only the individuals who are sick, but our society. And it’s time we do something about it.

Thank you very much!//

Please join me in congratulating the incoming executive committee of AMSAHK and giving them the best wishes for their future endeavor!

Roger Chung, PhD
Assistant Professor, CUHK JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, @CUHK Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 香港中文大學 - CUHK
Associate Director, CUHK Institute of Health Equity

📘【Ken的高頻單字筆記 I】
購買辦法：https://is.gd/H8W7Qj

📰 今天我們來讀讀【華爾街日報】
🖐🏽 五分鐘來關心國際時事 — 墨西哥治安 🇲🇽

📰 Mexico Reports Slight Decline in 2019 Homicides
Nation’s murder rate remained at highest level in decades despite fall in number of killings

MEXICO CITY—Mexico registered 209 fewer homicides in 2019 than a year earlier, the first decline in five years, though the murder rate remained at its highest level in decades, the National Statistics Institute said Wednesday.

📌 這篇文章討論墨西哥 (Mexico) 的殺人罪 (homicide) 數字的微小下降(slight decline)。nation是國家的意思，在這裡是指墨西哥，這是常用修辭方法之一。作者也用同義詞提高文章的可讀性： homicide vs murder vs killing。

The country registered 36,476 homicides last year, down from 36,685 in 2018, according to preliminary data based on death certificates. The homicide rate was unchanged from 2018 at 29 per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest level on records stretching back 30 years.

📌 這段交代有關數據，register (登記)、down from (從...下降)、according to preliminary data (根據初步資料) 和 unchanged (不變的)是常見用語。

“The important thing is that the government doesn’t rest on its laurels by saying we’ve slowed the rise in homicides,” said Cassius Wilkinson, a security analyst at political-risk consultancy Empra. “A plateau at historic highs still isn’t good for Mexico’s public security.”

📌 這段引述一位保安分析員 (security analyst) 的意見。rest on one’s laurels (不求進步) 是道地用語。plateau的原意是高原，在這裡引申指有關數字維持於高位不降。

Monthly police reports for 2020 show that homicides were up 1.5% in the first eight months of this year from a year earlier, although the numbers have been overshadowed by more than 74,000 deaths of people infected with the coronavirus.

The drop in the preliminary number of homicides for 2019 will likely become a small increase when final data are released at the end of October, said security analyst Alejandro Hope. “The good news is that it’s not growing, the bad news is that it’s not falling,” he added.

📌 這兩段繼續分析有關數字的走勢。overshadowed by (因為...失色的) 是生動的用語。preliminary 跟 final 是異義詞，the good news is that…the bad news is that… 是平行結構，也是很好的修辭方式。

Lowering the level of violence, much of it by organized-crime groups, is among the main concerns of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador whose strategy has been to reduce direct confrontation between security forces and heavily armed criminal gangs.

Since taking office at the end of 2018, Mr. López Obrador has disbanded the Federal Police and replaced it with a National Guard drawn mostly from the ranks of army and naval police. The National Guard has close to 100,000 members, and is expected to increase to 140,000.

📌 這兩段介紹墨西哥總統其中一項主要關注 (main concern) 就是降低暴力的水平 (lower the level of violence)。他的策略 (strategy) 是減少保安部隊 (security forces) 和犯罪集團 (criminal gang) 之間的直接對抗 (direct confrontation)。

Homicide rates last year fell in 15 of the country’s 32 states, including Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo—home to tourism hubs Los Cabos and Cancún—and Mexico City.

Among the most violent states was Guanajuato in central Mexico, which has been the site of fighting between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and a gang of fuel thieves called the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Authorities arrested José Antonio Yépez, the alleged head of the fuel theft gang, in early August.

While violence increased in Guanajuato, the homicide rate fell last year in neighboring Jalisco state. The number of murders could be masked by an increase in forced disappearances in the state as the Jalisco cartel consolidates its control of the area, said Mr. Wilkinson.

“A lot of the states that lead the rankings are leading for different reasons,” he added, noting increased killings in northern states such as Sonora and Chihuahua. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the 2020 numbers are much higher.”

📌 這四段詳細分析墨西哥不同州的殺人罪率 (homicide rate)去年的情況。the rankings的意思就是排名。在旅游樞紐 (tourism hub)的州殺人罪率下降，個別州份因爲幫派的打鬥變得最暴力的。

未完待續...
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📰 作者
Anthony Harrup
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