After I mentioned “Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity?“ in this Chinese blog entry,  allow me to share with you one of my favourite passage (emphasis added) in “Late Bloomers“,

[...] Cézanne didn’t just have help. He had a dream team in his corner.

This is the final lesson of the late bloomer: his or her success is highly contingent on the efforts of others. In biographies of Cézanne, Louis-Auguste invariably comes across as a kind of grumpy philistine, who didn’t appreciate his son’s genius. But Louis-Auguste didn’t have to support Cézanne all those years. He would have been within his rights to make his son get a real job, just as Sharie might well have said no to her husband’s repeated trips to the chaos of Haiti. She could have argued that she had some right to the life style of her profession and status—that she deserved to drive a BMW, which is what power couples in North Dallas drive, instead of a Honda Accord, which is what she settled for.

But she believed in her husband’s art, or perhaps, more simply, she believed in her husband, the same way Zola and Pissarro and Vollard and—in his own, querulous way—Louis-Auguste must have believed in Cézanne. Late bloomers’ stories are invariably love stories, and this may be why we have such difficulty with them. We’d like to think that mundane matters like loyalty, steadfastness, and the willingness to keep writing checks to support what looks like failure have nothing to do with something as rarefied as genius. But sometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.

“Sharie never once brought up money, not once—never,” Fountain said. She was sitting next to him, and he looked at her in a way that made it plain that he understood how much of the credit for “Brief Encounters” belonged to his wife. His eyes welled up with tears. “I never felt any pressure from her,” he said. “Not even covert, not even implied.”

Beautifully said.

I had never expected a Canadian political story could be funny, sad, and insightful all at the same time. Thanks to Conservative Senator Mike Duffy, we now have such a story. Have a watch of this rather nasty exchange video clip on a CBC political show.

Here is an excerpt (emphasis added) of what Don Martin, Sen. Duffy’s former colleague and former friend wrote in his article “Mike Duffy jumps the shark – It takes considerable effort to become a complete embarrassment“,

So instead of a rational discussion on the value of the new senators to reforming the process, a tuxedo-sporting Duffy appeared on Thursday’s Power and Politics show to interrupt, insult and fire innuendo at Stoffer, snarling in disgust as he blasted the popular MP as a ‘faker’.

Now, Duffy calling someone a faker equals pot calling the kettle black.

This is the same Duffy who, as host of his own politics show, presented himself for decades as journalistically neutral, then accepted Harper’s $130,000 appointment ten months ago and now devotes his energies to shamelessly shilling for the Conservatives.

That’s the definition of fakery for you, particularly given he was appointed after airing that infamous CTV interview with then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion, a bumbling performance credited by some as the turning point of the 2008 election campaign for Stephen Harper.

Not content to merely take Stoffer’s report personally, Duffy then blasted it as a political “diversion” for voters in a Nova Scotia byelection Monday where, he hopes, the New Democrats “are going to be trounced because they’re fakers.”

[...] MPs from all parties have consistently ranked Peter Stoffer as the least partisan and most personable MP in Canada today. And I’m frankly surprised the Canadian forces haven’t rushed to Stoffer’s side, because there is no more loyal political footsoldier on military matters than this 53-year-old MP.

It says a lot about Stoffer that the first person to rush to his defence was a Liberal. “When I asked him to come to my riding in London and hold a rally for the troops, he readily agreed even though he was from another party. That’s the kind of MP he is,” MP Glen Pearson wrote on a blog.

Here is an excerpt from an insightful G&M blog entry where I first read about this news,

The usually soft-spoken Liberal MP from London, Ont., is anything but – at least in print. On his blog, he jumps to the defence of his NDP colleague, Peter Stoffer, who was engaged in a rather nasty exchange last night on CBC with Conservative Senator Mike Duffy.

The former broadcaster and PEI Senator referred to Mr. Stoffer as a “fake,” an actor and someone who doesn’t support the military. The Senator is upset with an analysis by Mr. Stoffer of the cost to taxpayers of the 27 new senators appointed by Stephen Harper. In his analysis, he also takes aim at Senator Duffy’s expenses.

Here is what Liberal MP Glen Pearson wrote in his blog entry “‘Fake’ Wears a Tuxedo” in defence of Peter Stoffer (emphasis added),

Let me say something about Peter Stoffer. In the annual Maclean’s poll on MPs, Stoeffer repeatedly comes out on top as the most collegial of them all. He uses his influence to attempt to get MPs of all stripes to work together for various causes and events. Working in harmony with the Speaker of the House, each year he holds the “All Party Party” – a wildly popular evening in which MPs and their staffs all co-mingle and for a brief time put aside their party ideologies. It’s Stoffer that oversees the annual soccer game between MPs and the media. When I asked him to come to my riding in London and hold a rally for the troops, he readily agreed even though he was from another party. That’s the kind of MP he is. He’s a popular public servant and can often be found in the lobby sitting with members from other parties.

But he’s more than symbolic. I was especially irked when Duffy called Stoffer a faker, who pretends to support Canadian troops but votes against funding allocations for them. Let’s be clear. Peter Stoffer, as with Peter Mackay, is acknowledged in the House as being fully behind our men and women in uniform. Any MP, including Conservatives ones will tell you that. He was the one who led the charge in Parliament to protect soldiers medals that were otherwise being sold on eBay. The reason why he voted against the Conservative allocations on the military was because they offered embarrassing little support for the soldiers returned from active duty and who are having trouble moving on with their lives.

I’m not trying to be partisan here; I’m trying to be fair. Peter Stoffer gets elected each and every time by wide margins because he delivers for his constituents. Mike Duffy?  Well, he spent years as a CTV interviewer often mocking the Senate as a bunch of old men who do little with their time but who cost the taxpayer a bundle.

Ultimately, this is a sad story. A cautionary tale. A reminder that good reputations take years to create and minutes to damage.

Trying to look at this incident positively, it is nice and refreshing to see MP crossing party line in defence of an MP from a different political party. And to hear about the “All Party Party”.

Calgary filmmaker Matt Palmer’s new NFB video instalment of “Human cost of the economic crisis“.

Thanks go to Leona for mentioning Malcolm Gladwell’s new book ”What The Dog Saw: And Other Adventures” and two of the articles she likes. I googled the articles and found them from Gladwell’s and I’m posting it to share.

“The Art of Failure: Why Some People Choke and Others Panic“

“Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity?“

Bonus article from the book title: “What the dog saw: Cesar Millan and the movements of mastery“

P.S. Over the years, I’ve collected a few insightful video presentations by Gladwell. Check them out here and here. Have fun.

P.P.S. 想深一層，Leona 寫，

“香港曾是一個充滿活力、容許失敗、鼓勵「馬死落地行」的城市，但從什麼時候起，我們的社會開始害怕轉軌、不再包容主流以外的選擇、人們拒絕冒險？”

我看其實”鼓勵「馬死落地行」”，本身便有點要人順應「主流」的味道。香港人(中國人?)根本從來都不太包容”放棄薪高糧準的律師工作，開始寫作”(giving up a respectable job/pay and trying something “different”) 的人。這可能是 cultural mindset/peer pressure 的問題。在外國，地方大，人自由一點，因而亦可以自我一點。

I am so happy to watch Calgarian Trevor Bielby getting a deal for his Schmotoboard at Dragons’ Den tonight. I will write more about the deal and the episode later. In the mean time, here is a video of Trevor showing off his Schmotoboard at the Calgary audition in March.

More news at NiagaraThisWeek and a nice Calgary Sun video.

Incidentally, the inventiveness in Trevor actually reminds me a little bit (just a little bit) of James Dyson (one of my most admired and successful inventors).

Congrats Trevor!

After writing the insightful Warren Buffett biography The Snowball, Alice Schroeder has gained my respect and I look forward to read her analysis of Warren’s investment decisions.

Here is an excerpt from Alice’s Bloomberg column about the Burlington Northern Santa Fe deal and the 50-to-1 stock split, “Buffett Revisits Hunting Ground for Survivors“,

Warren Buffett called Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s deal to buy the part of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. that it doesn’t already own an “all-in wager on the economic future of the United States.”

If so, it’s a survivalist bet. The railroad business is never going away, but it’s not going to lead the economy out of recession, either. Buffett has spent a lot of time in the last year burnishing his legacy by tackling Franklin Roosevelt’s role as the verbal antidepressant for this wretched economy. As I have said before, though, Buffett isn’t as bullish as he sounds.

[...] A final motive I am confident about is that Buffett finally has a plausible excuse to split Berkshire’s B shares. He has spilled a lot of ink over the years decrying stock splits. A 50- to-1 ratio isn’t a stock split, it is a mincing.

Excerpt from “Guest-Tek showcases small cap frustrations“

“All the frustrations that come with buying small cap Canadian tech stocks are neatly illustratd in the plan to go private announced recently by Guest-tek Interactive Entertainment.

This hotel broadband network supplier went public back in 2004 by selling shares at $10.25 each, on the back of a story that featured 200 per cent-plus annual revenue growth and 100 per cent-plus profit growth. BMO Nesbitt Burns led the Guest-Tek (GTK-T0.48-0.01-2.04%) initial public offering, and the stock’s best day was its first day on the TSX.

Guest-Tek failed to sustain strong growth, and the $44.6-million IPO never attracted much os a following. A dreary but familiar trend developed: There was little buying and selling, and the stock price price started to slide. The cheaper Guest-Tek got, the less it appealed to institutions, which need to establish a meaningful stake in a company to make it worth following. This became a classic orphan stock, neglected and unloved.”

Arnon Levy, Guest-Tek co-founder, President and CEO, is trying to take the company private for a share price of $0.50 per share, quite a way from the original IPO price of $10.25. As the current CEO, the deal is likely a good one for Mr. Levy, while I am not sure how will people who invested at the original IPO price and stayed on feel.

Nov 4 Update: Have a listen of Warren on CNN talking about the deal and other things. And Warren on Fox News (transcript and video). And Alice Schroeder’s (Warren’s biographer) opinions on the deal.

***

Have a listen to what Warren Buffett said on CNBC live about his decision to buy the remaining shares of Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Here is a good quote (emphasis added),

“[Burlington Northern Santa Fe] do it in a cost-effective way and extraordinarily environmentally friendly way. BNSF last year moved on average, it moved a ton of goods 470 miles on one gallon of diesel. It releases far fewer pollutants into the atmosphere. It saves enormously on energy consumption and, you know, it diminishes highway congestion. Rails last year moved 40 percent, more than 40 percent, over the country. They moved more than all those trucks, just the four big railroads. It’s a very effective way of moving goods. I basically believe this country will prosper and you’ll have more people moving more goods 10 and 20 and 30 years from now, and the rails should benefit. It’s a bet on the country, basically.”

WSJ said the deal is a “text book example of his value-based strategy in action“. For more news see, “Buffett’s firm to buy Burlington Northern (CNN)” and “Warren Buffett, American Railroad Barron (Reuters)“, “Berkshire Buys Burlington in Buffett’s Biggest Deal (Bloomberg)” and Berkshire Bets on U.S. With Purchase of Railroad (NYT).

An excerpt from the BNSF deal (emphasis added),

“Our country’s future prosperity depends on its having an efficient and well-maintained rail system,” said Warren E. Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway chairman and chief executive officer. “Conversely, America must grow and prosper for railroads to do well. Berkshire’s $34 billion investment in BNSF is a huge bet on that company, CEO Matt Rose and his team, and the railroad industry.

“Most important of all, however, it’s an all-in wager on the economic future of the United States,” said Mr. Buffett. “I love these bets.”

On this day, it may be fitting to include the following excerpt from The Snowball – by Alice Schroeder (emphasis added),

“Warren had a little single oval HO-gauge train set and coveted a more elaborate version, the kind he saw at the Brandeis deaprtment store downtown, which had multiple engines twisting and turning past flashing lights and signals, rising over snow-covered hills and dropping into tunnels, racing past tiny villages and disappearing into pine forests. But the closest he came to owning it was buying the catalog that depicted it.

‘If you were a little kid with one little oval track, looking at this thing, it was completely unbelievable. You’d gladly pay a dime for the model-train catalog and just sit there and fantasize.‘ [Warren Buffett said]” – The Snowball – by Alice Schroeder

By the way, The Snowball has a paperback version now, check out a brief review of the paperback edition. And here is my “review”/”best of” of the hardcover edition.

Note: Baby Berkshire shares (i.e. class B) will be easier to buy now once the 50-for-1 stock split is approved (a formality).

Here is an excerpt from Business Week,

I’m sitting on a stool watching an info-video at the Dairy Management booth at the Worldwide Food Expo in Chicago. The stool, designed by Bruce Mau Design, is a bright red box. It is lightweight, yet sturdy. It also is made from cow manure. So, too, is the exhibit’s video-display case, kiosks of stacked milk cartons, and work tables.

And no, the material doesn’t look or smell like cow poop. And no again, you can’t buy it in stores—at least not yet.

The booth is a public showcase of a dairy industry initiative to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020. For a new product, it came together fast.

[...] While researching dairy farming, Tom Keogh, Bruce Mau Design’s project director, says the Toronto-based team came across experiments by a scientist in Madison, Wis. The scientist, John Hunt, a general engineer with the USDA’s Forest Service, had been testing alternatives to wood pulp in making paper and particle board. Among them: fiber-rich cow manure.

“There’s a moment during the creative process,” adds Paddy Harrington, a Bruce Mau Design creative director, “when someone says, the whole thing could be made of cow manure.” And so it would be.

[via BMD]

Nov 2nd, 2009: I am not a fan of John Doyle, but this live chat is worth checking out “The new-look CBC: What do you think?“.

*******

CBC recently relaunched Newsworld as CBC News Network. I am surprised to read Richard Stursberg, CBC Executive Vice President of English Services, has decided to call criticism of CBC News “pathetic” in an age when customers’ and viewers’ comments are valued, respected, and treated seriously.

Viewers who spend time to criticize are the ones who still care enough and hoping things may change for the better. People who don’t care at all have already left, sometimes forever.

To learn more, you can also read Peter Mansbridge’s “About the standing” blog post and people’s comments there.

From CBC,

“We achieved reunification together, with peace and freedom and with the support of our neighbours,” [former German chancellor Helmut] Kohl recalled.

“We don’t have many reasons in our history to be proud,” Kohl said. “But those years when I was chancellor, … I have every reason to be proud. I have nothing better, nothing to be more proud of than German reunification.”

The crowd-funded Designing Obama – The Book. Check out their Kick Starter funding page with video. (Note: They’ve already met their funding goal of $65,000 with 1,074 backers.)

A word about crowd-funding, it is not just about money (although it is about the money). It is about the connections that people have with the project they care about.

It is about the people, each and every single one of them, making something possible.

They, through their individual small “pledges”, make a project (a book, a song, a film, a creative endeavour) possible.

They create.

P.S. A great way of funding, I hope something like this will launch in Canada soon. Currently according to their site, “Due to current Amazon Payments policy, projects can only be started by people or entities with a U.S. address and bank account.”

[via BMD]

A picture of some other Kick Starter projects.

Very interesting article from The Economist’s Intelligent Life, “The Last Days of The Polymath“. A bit I like,

“Polymaths possess something that monomaths do not. Time and again, innovations come from a fresh eye or from another discipline. [...] But breakthroughs—the sort of idea that opens up whole sets of new problems—often come from other fields.”

[via Lance]

Hmmm, I will have to read the CRTC decision (Telecom Decision CRTC 2009-678 or PDF) more carefully later. A quick scan of the CRTC PDF decision file leads me to think that the last two pages of charts may be particularly interesting to look at. Here is the bit the sums up the decision,

“119. In light of all the above, the Commission finds that Globalive is controlled in fact by Orascom, a non-Canadian. Therefore, the Commission concludes that Globalive does not meet the requirements set out in section 16 of the Act and is not currently eligible to operate as a telecommunications common carrier.”

For now, I’m not sure if less competition is good for Canadian consumers. By the way, in the happier times of Sept 2008, I conducted a phone interview with Tony Lacavera, CEO of Globalive, after they launched a few interesting initiatives that I thought would be good for Canadian consumers.

From CBC,

“The commission found it particularly important that Orascom owns 65.1 per cent of the equity, has entered into a strategic technical arrangement with Globalive, controls and holds the ‘Wind’ brand under which Globalive will operate, and holds the overwhelming majority of the outstanding debt,” the regulator said.

“The commission therefore determines that Globalive has not met the requirements of the ownership and control regime and is therefore not currently eligible to operate as a Canadian telecommunications common carrier.”

The CRTC prescribed a list of changes the company could theoretically make in order to bring itself into compliance, which would include amendments to the composition of its board of directors, liquidity rights and the threshold for veto rights.

However, the fact that Orascom controls almost all of the company’s debt is a factor that cannot be easily resolved.”

More report and analysis from Toronto Star.

From WIND mobile’s own press release “A Bad Day for Canadians and Wireless Competition in Canada“,

“In its decision, the CRTC came to a different conclusion than Industry Canada and has indicated that Globalive Wireless is not in compliance with the Canadian ownership and control requirements set out in the Telecommunications Act.

“Having already received approval from Industry Canada, we are extremely disappointed that the CRTC has come to a different conclusion,” said Anthony Lacavera, Chairman, Globalive Wireless Management Corp. “This is a bad day for Canadian consumers. Canadians deserve competition in wireless and this decision represents a major step backwards.””

*******

Oct 29, 2009 Morning: Looking forward to the CRTC Globalive decision to be announced later today after markets close. Here is an excerpt from a Canadian Press report,

If the CRTC decides that Globalive is Canadian enough to compete as a new national cellphone company, it’s a decision that’s likely to shake up foreign ownership rules.

Toronto-based Globalive wants to be Canada’s fourth major wireless carrier and compete with Rogers, (TSX:RCI.B), Bell (TSX:BCE) and Telus (TSX:T) for consumers who want to buy cellphones. But before Globalive can go ahead with its launch later this fall, it must survive a CRTC ruling expected Thursday on its ownership and structure.

[... RBC Capital Markets analyst Jonathan] Allen said if the CRTC approves Globalive’s bid, it will likely launch in Toronto and Calgary next month.

Project 10¹⁰⁰ is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.

Really cool that Google created Project 10¹⁰⁰, and will be announcing the winning big ideas soon.

[via Kevin]