Composition is the bedrock on which all great photographs are built but it can be extremely confusing especially for beginners. So in this video I'm going to help you break down the core concepts and composition that really help you into easy and understandable tips. How's that? The problem with composition and photography is that because it is a system that has evolved over centuries to help visual people create images that seem to just hold themselves together there have been a lot of rules and ideas and formulas and theories that have built up over time about how to actually achieve this. I'm reminded that when I was a student I used to go to underground alternative clubs and the DJs there in that dark smoky environment would always play the most let's say avant-garde music because they were trying to show how much they knew and often education about photography falls into this trap that you know people talk about composition and they don't want to just cover the basic grounds again they want to show how much they know so they talk about you know gold and ratios and all that kind of stuff that just ends up confusing the person who just wants to understand how to create an image that feels harmonious and that's what we're going to look at today is you know really getting to grips about the important things in composition and photography. It cannot be overstated how important composition is when you are taking a photograph. There are many tips and ideas and tricks that you can employ but ultimately they all sort of point to one thing and that is creating an image that holds together rather than just a random collection of subjects on a frame. It helps to think about composition not as a set of rules that need to be followed but like a toolbox that you can open up and there are various tools to you know approach various things. If you want to take out a screw for example you don't use a hammer you use a screwdriver so when you think about the rules of composition in that way then you see that there's a lot more flexibility to them than often is implied that all photographs should you know check a number of boxes that you know it needs to have this and these have that to be useful it doesn't. All the image needs to do is to use the tools at your disposal to give the viewer the idea the feeling the emotion the experience that you want to give them but how do we actually get to this point where we have a useful set of tools. I'm a big believer in the idea that you know you need to make sure that you are approaching what is your photographing in a in a way that makes sense that when you look at something decide how you are going to photograph it not specifically from like oh this is a tree is i'm going to photograph it like a tree but more what is it that you want to do with the subject that you are photographing it that is a question that when you've asked yourself gets you so much further to actually beginning to lay that that foundation of composition it begins before all these rules and stuff simply by saying okay i have something in front of me what do i want to do with it how do i want to portray it i would encourage you right now actually to look around you to see what you might want to photograph and think okay how would i want to portray that specific item and how could i do that by using some of the compositional ideas that i already have it's quite possible that at this point you have asked yourself but what is good composition what is a composition that works and the answer is actually surprisingly simple it is really just to follow your gut when i'm out taking photographs i don't look around and and you know take a picture and i and i photograph on my phone quite a lot actually so it's a very quick process i look at you know see someone i take a picture of it and i kind of go does that feel right i'm listening to my gut i'm trusting my intuition when you start learning some of these approaches some of the tools that you are going to get throughout this when you when they start speaking to you when they become intuitive then you're going to rely on your gut a little bit more it's a weird little process but think about all the things that you do in in your day-to-day life that you don't even give a second thought to when you learn how to write it was it was tricky you had to learn all sorts of things but now you just write without even thinking about it walking it's the same thing you're going to understand the more that you look at these rules more you think about them that the more that they're going to become second nature to you the best composition is one that feels right that also includes breaking the rules if you want to break the rules in composition do so if it feels right for you but whatever you do when you break those rules break them with conviction right don't just make a little mistake leap into own that own that breakage something that doesn't often get really discussed i think enough in composition is is lighting lighting can impact the mood the feel of a photograph and it is extremely important that you have lighting and you control that you understand how it affects the way that an image looks like itself can be a compositional element and the way that it reacts to the subject or the thing that you're photographing also will change the composition if lighting is very harsh if it's middle of the day it's going to give you lots of shadows lots of angular things that you can turn into lines and framing and all those kind of you know effects that we can you know we can employ in guiding the viewer's eye around a photograph we're going to get on to somebody later on who is an exceptional exponent of doing this but how do you find all these things that are there in front of you just waiting for you to use last year i made a video about the squint method and it is such a helpful idea you know we confronted with loads of things it's like how to break down a scene into those lines those shapes all the the elements that can help us build a composition that is pleasing to us and and the viewer and the squint method very basically summed up is that you either you squint or you just kind of squint so everything is broken down into blurs in distinct shapes if you're not able to do that and this is a wonderful tip actually i share in the comments of the the previous video was just defocus your lens look through your lens and defocus it so everything becomes a blur see what stands out see the the points of interest that are there in front of you and how you can then use them to to balance out the composition how they could line up you know move around the tip we looked at earlier your lighting same sort of thing if you defocus the lens you're going to see the light and the shade without any of the distractions that are around you but that is just one aspect of you know messing with the scene in front of you the next one i think it's a beautiful idea that so few people actually even bother to think about elliot erwitt is a fantastic photographer the hugely talented and one of the the great series it is has about dogs and and these are dogs that are photographed from a dog's eye view he's gotten down low he's he's crouched on the floor so many photographers spend their entire lives photographing from five foot nine inches above the ground giving people the the view of the world that everybody else has as a photographer when you start playing with perspective when you start changing your viewpoint you are encouraging the viewer to experience the world in a different way if you want to you know play with dynamic lines and and you know all that kind of stuff and and weird perspectives then changing your viewpoint helps you achieve this give it a try if you've never photographed low or high looking down see what this simple approach can actually bring to your photographs that just elevates it one step up that makes it something a little bit different that stops people and they go oh I really like that I mentioned earlier at the beginning of this video that your composition gets a bit of a I suppose a bad rap either it's too simple or it is overly complicated and my advice with all of this would be that whenever you are thinking about trying to work on your compositions is is to keep it simple don't get overly complex thinking that you have to have your rule of thirds then some leading lines then all of these things collected together I always like cookery analogies and one of the things with that is that if you have millions of ingredients some of them are going to get lost you've over complicated the dish when you talk to chefs you listen to to the great chef's talk they talk about simple dishes simple dishes are the best because you just allow one or two ingredients to shine and think of the same thing within your compositions you don't need to have oh look at this you know golden ratios and fennel batchy stuff and all those kind of things just use the elements the tools at your disposal in a simple easy to understand method that communicates clearly what it is that you want to achieve with your photograph at this point you're probably going wow okay cool right I've got I've got some handle on the sort of composition I know a bit of rules of third I've got your leading lines all that kind of stuff but what can you do just to elevate that a little bit you know what are the what are some of the more specialist tools that you can use what well one of them is color like light color never really gets talked about in composition but we're all inherently aware of the power of color if I put up an image that's red how do you feel about it if I put up photographs that have contrast in colors it's quite clear what's going on your brain in your visual brain it can break it down into a way that just inherently makes sense remember earlier I was talking about you know the intuition that's what we're talking about here is those intuitions when you look at Pete Turner for example a hugely you know talented exponent of color photography you don't need to understand composition to make you understand the picture you feel it in your bones that's the beauty it's just a little bit of time thinking about color theory and again you don't have to get into it full on but just go back to all the art classes you had at primary school and see how they work see what you can use them to your own effect in your images then you come up to something like balance balance is that idea that if you have something in your photograph where everything's off to one side then the image feels like it's just going to tip over all right that's probably the simplest way of explaining it but if you balance elements making the eye you know feel like the image wants to just sit and and you know not fall over then that goes a long way to creating a harmonious kind of feel of course the opposite is true if you want to have a a disquieting or an unusual you know sort of disorientating sort of filter images then make your composition unbalanced that again we talked about the ideas of you know you have these rules but break them if you want to you don't need to follow them unlike the tool idea that we had you know where everything has a specific purpose think of it in a one step up that each tool has a purpose but then it has an anti-purpose as well see you know see what you can think about that if you let me know in the comments about some of the the ideas the anti-ideas especially that you can employ in creating you know compositions that have a certain effect I would I would love to hear them now earlier we talked about a photographer who used light shade color all these things in a spectacular way his name is Alex Webb and he is a master of a number of compositional techniques but the one that I would like to share with you now which is quite an advanced technique is the ideas of layering so in layering we have a concept that the frame the image the photograph is is broken up into elements that stretch away from the viewer so let's say a foreground and middle ground and a background and this gives your photograph a bit of a depth not the quite same as the depth of field but more of a of an emotional depth a narrative depth if you if you want to call it that with again without making it sound like it is too sort of like too too edgy you know educational educational what a terrible word you know because of course there's an educational I meant too kind of like you know like high brow sort of stuff like making all sound like his fancy pants right so there's this layering that we have there's basically the way you can think about it is you have an image where there's something going on the foreground there's something going on in the middle ground there's something going on in the background and all of those things tend to link together they enhance each other they support each other they give yeah they give context to an image this I feel is one of those compositional elements that if you are able to get a handle on it if you are able to figure out ways that you can employ it and I will just give you a heads up that Alex Webb does say that 99% of his photographs do not work so this is not an easy thing then it is going to radically make your photographs so much more I don't want to use the word meaningful but have so much more oomph to them that is the technical word oomph right and I just I really love it but in the meantime just look at his work see what sort of compositional aspects that we've talked about that he is employing remember that all of these things are simply tools use them don't use them employ them when you need to that goes so far to making composition and photography so much easier to understand but it doesn't really mean anything until you know how to use your equipment properly as well and if you want to understand how to use wind angle lenses which I'm sure all of you have check out this video over here thank you ever so much for watching and I will see you again soon


The evaluation of the heme chip, a low-cost point-of-care diagnostic device for sickle cell disease, revealed several factors that contributed to its successful translation from laboratory to market. These included NE and CTSA hub support, pilot program funding, university resources, entrepreneurship training, due diligence, and collaboration with industry partners. Additionally, overcoming challenges such as proving novelty, manufacturing costs, fundraising, and academic-industry relations proved essential to the success of the heme chip's translation. This case study provides valuable insight into the complexities of translating medical devices and suggests potential strategies for future funding mechanisms and infrastructures to ensure successful translation. This article was authored by Kelly Qua, Shannon M. Swietkowski, Imit A. Gurkin, and others.


Let me take this opportunity to wish every stakeholder in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors a successful Wolfood Day 2018. This day is celebrated every year around the world on October 16. The theme for this year's celebration is our action, our future and a zero hunger world by 2030 is possible. This theme speaks to the negative effect we are experiencing right now from climate change, which can impact our ability to meet our objective of a zero hunger world. Despite the many challenges we are faced with, the leadership within the Department of Agriculture has developed and are implementing programs to tackle the issue of food security for St. Lucia, whilst at the same time addressing the theme of this year's Wolfood Day celebration. We are seeing increase in productivity in agriculture. Cabinet has approved the proposed option for the restructured St. Lucia Marketing Board and St. Lucia Fish Marketing Cooperation. With the support of the Government of Taiwan, very soon we shall commence a three year import substitution project. The objective is to reduce the importation of seven vegetables we believe that can be grown on a sustainable basis in St. Lucia, namely tomatoes, sweet pepper, cucumbers, lettuce, cabbages, watermelon and pineapple. We will see very soon the opening of the National Diagnostics Facility at Union, which will be home to two units of the Division of Agriculture and the Meteorological Unit of the St. Lucia Bureau of Standards. This facility will provide technical and analytical service to agriculture and the other major economic and productive sectors. We are in the process of reviewing the Agricultural Incentive Act. My ministry believed that there is a need to amend sections of the Act. This will make the application process smoother and faster. It is necessary to note that we have signed a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Cuba and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Cooperative, establishing a general framework of technical cooperation in agricultural matters. As we celebrate World Food Day this year, agro-processing and value-added will be the area of focus. In light of this, we are expected to continue empowering groups and individuals regarding their involvement in agro-processing. Encouraging the utilization of locally grown food and forest products will improve the livelihood of participants and increase the demand for their production. In keeping with our area of focus and to contradict the misinformation out there, let it be known that the government has established agro-processing facilities in Fosso and Anger. We are also supporting many private individuals with the establishment of their own facility by providing capacity building to processors and students at various schools. In closing, I would like to wish our most valued farmers, Fisher folks, agro-processing processors and citizens in general a happy and productive World Food Day 2018 as we join the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Cooperative and the International Committee in celebrating World Food Day 2018. I thank you.


How do you know if you're achieving the goal? How do you know if your students are meeting the mark? What do you do? Again, we kind of moved very quickly from a lot of my classes, which were many paper-based quizzes, tests, final exams, to all remote assessments. And it was difficult. I mean, I experimented with some variety of types of assessments. I tried some group assessments. And some students liked them. And some said, no, I don't have time to work in a group. I'm working full-time. I'm not on the same schedule as some of these other people. And there was some pushback to the group assessment from some. And there is this concern in universities that if we're not doing a proctored paper assessment, then students are cheating. And we can't trust anything. I really couldn't focus on that when we were completely online because I really didn't see what the alternative was. So I did do lots of remote assessments. I did lower-weight assessments. I didn't do a final exam, which was kind of new for one of these first-year courses. I did term tests and frequent weekly sort of mini assignments and had students sign a academic integrity statement and hope that that was enough. I know I'm getting into a whole other ballpark here. But yeah, lots of low-weight assessments was what I was looking at to try to see how students were doing. There were many themes there in that response that I want to dig into. So there's these concepts of mastery versus getting a good grade. And as an instructor and in this role as an entrepreneur, I would love for technology to assist instructors in bringing students forward with mastery. And I'm less interested in just taking the box so that somebody can pass the class without necessarily really achieving knowledge the way that we are supposed to be imparting. So I'm really interested in that kind of theme It's one thing to just hand out grades and have the registrar be happy that there was a proctor involved with the exam. But that's not the same thing as really helping my students that I'm newly empathetic with to achieve certain goals. Jana, what do you think about this thread? And I definitely had the usual issues of how do we suddenly transfer things to online? It definitely has led to a common theme of reducing the big high stakes assessments. My course I'm teaching right now is actually the first one where I've done it without tests. Because in an online environment, I'm not sure what the difference is between an assignment and a test apart from, for one, I'm trying to mimic what I would do in class. It has the benefit of there'd be oftentimes in my stats classes where I would be teaching something like normal tables. And I'd have to teach them a way to do it on a piece of paper because that's how I would have them write their tests. And then the realization, well, why am I teaching them how to find a number by looking it up on a piece of paper that I photocopied for everyone? I wouldn't do that for anything in math class. And finally, well, if we're doing it all online, I can just let them use our and write things in the notebook and they have the code available to them and they could fix it live while they're writing their tests. But it took a surprising, on my part, a surprising amount of time to accept that we're still talking about the normal distribution. You're still learning the same amount of stuff. You just haven't learned the esoteric skill of looking up numbers in a weird way along a table. But it seemed like that was, oh, we're cutting that out. But really, it's the typing it into a program that makes a lot more sense. I'm not going to make them learn arctan by pulling out a book off of the shelf and looking up numbers there. But it took a big, a lot of time for me to accept that I'm still teaching this just in a slightly different way. And having that, the assessment where they do get some of the feedback of, okay, you need to do this. You can at least see if the computer is doing what you think it is before you send it off to me to get some feedback from me is so much nicer than, okay, you wrote it on a piece of paper. You've made a silly mistake, but you couldn't possibly have known it until I've graded it and told you this was wrong. You give them the chance to fix their mistake because that's how you do math, right? The fixing your mistake, the understanding, something went wrong and let me figure it out rather than, oh, I made a mistake. I lost three marks. So that last bit is really interesting. I want to follow up with you immediately. So dialogue, the peer review process for the researcher is analogous in some sense to providing constructive feedback to students so that they can process what they did wrong and then improve. Did you engage in more or less dialogue, Janna, during the pandemic? I tried to do more. There was always the time constraints that we're all working with. I taught a proof class in the past term and I was lucky we had access to hypothesis which allows for social annotation. So that was really nice. It was, we were doing some synchronous classes but it meant that there was a process to check in with the students who were asking questions about things in the textbook. And so I found definitely with online teaching, one thing I need to work into is, okay, I need to be checking in with them every day in some way so that there's some kind of, there is more interaction. It's no longer, okay, I teach 50 minutes, three times a week and then answer some emails. I need to have more of that feedback. And I just sent my current students, they handed in their worksheet, their first playing around with an hour notebook and sent it back to them this morning with the comments of, you know, some of them were just, yeah, that looks good and some comments about the data set we were working with and others that though, here's what you needed to type in to make it work. That's interesting. So you're using hypothesis to provide feedback back around our notebooks, for example. I was using that for the textbook and I'm using CrowdMark for the air notebooks. I get them to submit it and play around with it. Very cool. What about you, Sean? I think in the past I had the sense that you have some strong opinions about grades versus mastery, so I'd like you to throw some spice into this conversation. Yeah, I could keep going on this until our time is up, I think. I'm moving in the direction now where I'm no longer convinced that the, you know, the timed proctored closed book test is this sort of gold standard for assessment. So I was teaching what, for me, are small classes of about 50 students. With 50, I said, hey, these classes are small enough. I can, maybe I'm not gonna go full on, you know, like mastery grading, but I can at least let them do revisions on like any piece of work they submit. They can have at least one chance for revisions. And the revisions are nice because, you know, now some of them will just email them to you, but others will book office hours and they'll come in and then you get to have a conversation about what they know and what they don't know and they can kind of work out and get to the point where they're like, okay, now I understand what I need to do on this problem. I can go away and I can fix it and I'm gonna send you the improved version later in the week. And then you, you know, when you start getting the feedback from students, you know, I got a lot of comments from students saying, like, oh, wow, like, you know, I appreciate this because now I can look at tests as actually an opportunity to learn something and not just as a measurement tool, right? And that really changes the conversation. It really changes the perspective on what they're doing, you know, in that test. And you've removed some of the pressure because they know they'll have another crack at it if they get it wrong. You've removed some of the incentive to cheat. I mean, and there will be, there will still be some, even though they have like unlimited attempts to get it right. And it's just that sometimes the students get to the point where like, I need to have this done and I don't have time to do it because I have 1,000 other pressures in my life right now. So I'm gonna let somebody else do the work for me, you know, and that doesn't make it right.


Well Trump's answer to Twitter launched this week truth social and the rollout has been a little bit rocky to say the least So apparently they already suffered a site-wide outage that lasted 13 hours or so on top of that The website is functionally unusable for hundreds of thousands of people who are stuck on a waiting list that exists for some reason Are they vetting the users? What's the point of that?  This is the First amendment platform So this sounds like a great cell for me. I absolutely am excited to Make an account infiltrate this website and plaster communist adjut prop everywhere But apparently I might not be as welcome as I initially thought because there are reports that people are getting banned left and right for Criticizing Donald Trump. Excuse me. What? I thought this was the free speech platform So users are reporting that they're getting banned for criticizing Donald Trump Apparently it seems as if you are not allowed to disparage the president Donald Trump Matt Ortega claims that he was censored for making a parody account. What hang on a second That's protected under the First Amendment. Are we not allowed to make parodies on truth social? What gives and get this even right wingers are being censored So a right wing pundit claims that he was censored for saying government officials who authorized COVID vaccines for kids quote Should we put on trial and executed? Wow I mean when you can't even publicly call for the execution of public health officials I just have to assume that that website doesn't respect freedom of speech But on a serious note people are trying to figure out what exactly it is That's acceptable to post because the parameters are kind of bizarre. We don't know what they are This is supposed to be a free speech platform that is intended to compete with big tech platforms that apparently censor people for frivolous reasons, but yet People are getting criticized for making parody accounts and criticizing Donald Trump. We can do that on Twitter currently We can make parody accounts on Twitter currently So is Twitter more pro-free speech than Donald Trump? I'm not sure but what specifically does it say in the terms of service about freedom of speech? Well as Chris Walker of Truthout reports although Trump promised that truth social would be the standard bearer of free speech and Anti-censorship truth socials terms of service grant the site permission to ban quote any person for any reason or for no reason whatsoever, but I thought this was no not not a free speech platform Okay, okay seems like this is less of a social media platform and more of a Donald Trump platform for him to talk at you He doesn't care what you have to say. He's not interested in your tweets or rather truths or your re-truths That's literally what they're calling it. It's so Orwellian when he lied so much He's not interested in what you have to say He's not interested in the social media element of this website He just wants to talk at you and he wants you to clap like seals at every single thing that he says He tweets while he's shitting at 3 a.m. You want you to respond to it saying he's amazing This is for him not for you. He doesn't care about your free speech He cares about his freedom of speech and he's mad that he was banned from Twitter So this is just his new Twitter although I have to say it honestly is hilarious that so many people are getting banned and It doesn't seem like There's good reason to ban these folks right disparaging Donald Trump Creating parody accounts to get banned on this platform when you Claim that you're free speech. I mean, it's very it's very on-brand for Donald Trump to be a complete Hypocrite and contradict everything that he says but again, this this isn't a social media platform I think that a lot of people Assumed that this would be you know a competitor with Twitter But I don't one think that Trump is competent enough to do that given how many problems the website already has but again This isn't about anyone else Trump doesn't care about people using the platform He just wants people to use the platform in so far as they listen to what he has to say because social media was one of His many addictions. So, you know, that's what this is about. That's why he's banning people if you disparage him so I just I think it's funny and I will continue to keep you updated and when I am able to successfully infiltrate truth social I will report back because I'm gonna have some fun on this website.  I will absolutely try to see how far I can get But if I can get a re-truth by the president the former president Donald Trump, I will consider this a success I mean, it's a smaller platform. So maybe there's a higher likelihood that he'll notice me, but um We'll see. We'll see. I'm definitely I'm definitely gonna check out truth social. Yeah You


This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. I'm Marcia Joyner, and this is Community Matters. Think Tech Hawaii has done a series of Community Matters with candidates that are running for election, and of course primary is August 11. And we have interviewed people from as far south as South Point on the Big Island all the way to Nihihau and places in between. And we have talked to candidates from places that most people don't even know are in Hawaii. And today we will talk to one that everybody knows. He is our hero. He is Lieutenant Governor Doug Chen. Aloha. Aloha. And he of course is the one that stood up to the bully and flaunt the bully. So he's the one that we all know. Doug, tell us about the Lieutenant Governor. About you first. Great. Well, I'm actually the son of immigrants. My parents came from China to the U.S. back in the 1950s. Actually during a time when there were some very restrictive and discriminatory immigration laws that were in place. But they came here anyway and sacrificed just like so many people who are immigrants to the United States do in order to give the next generation a better life. So I have so much gratitude to my parents and they raised me to care about doing what's the right thing. So that was in Seattle. You were born in Seattle. Yes. My mom was a librarian at the University of Washington for almost 40 years and my father was a civil engineer. But when he first came to the U.S. he was parking cars and just trying to make his way in a world that was not his original culture. What part of China? Oh, near Shanghai. So kind of near the central part of China. Can you tell our audience about the Chinese Exclusion Act? Because most people at young age anyway have no idea just what your parents went through with the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Chinese Exclusion Act was something that took place right after Chinese Americans who had come into the U.S. to help work on the railroads. Ended up finding that the railroads were built and now they were taking jobs away from other people or perceived as taking jobs away from other cultures. So what happened was the other cultures started to say, well, we shouldn't have Chinese people in the U.S. anymore. The Coolies. Yeah, they were called the Coolies. There were a lot of political cartoons that painted or showed Chinese people looking like they were animals or that they were monsters. And so along with that, there was a lot of decisions that were made, poor decisions by Congress as well as other leaders to exclude people who were Chinese from coming into the United States. And so it was a very strict discriminatory quota that Congress finally overturned in the 1960s. Yes, and just for our audience, it was our Senator Fong who worked on getting rid of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Again, most people don't know that far back. So then you went to Stanford. I did. Correct. We think of Asians at Stanford as being the top of the totem pole in the curve, intellectual curve. Is that true? I don't know about that, but it was a great school to go to and I really appreciated it. And in fact, my family sacrificed a lot even then. My parents, of course, took out a second mortgage and my sister even worked an extra job in order to help pay for my tuition. And to me, that actually speaks a lot of what families and immigrant families but families of all cultures really do is that they all do whatever they can to care for each other and help people be successful. So I'm forever grateful to them for that. And again, Queen Lillio Kalani contributed to Stanford University. Yes, that's so wonderful. So after Stanford, growing up in that kind of neighborhood before you went away to school, did you feel discriminatory as a child growing up in Seattle? Sure. And I think that just shows how much times have changed. So I guess what we're finding is that maybe times haven't changed so much. But I did face a lot of over-discrimination of just being called slant-eyed or being someone who was, I get teased about my name or just not being from the race that most people were part of. My neighborhood was mostly white and there were very few African-Americans, there were very few Hispanic people. So in that neighborhood, then I think it was easy for people who were minorities to be picked on. You're showing a picture, actually, of my family. So I just want to make sure that I point that out because that's my sister and my parents. That's when I graduated from law school. Correct. When I graduated from law school here at the University of Hawaii. So coming to Hawaii from that culture into this one where Asians are a major part of the culture, what was that transformation like?  You could breathe easier being a part? For the first time, I didn't feel like a minority because I wasn't. And I also felt like there weren't any boundary lines in between cultures. I think one of the things that people end up seeing on the mainland is there's a lot more sequestration amongst neighborhoods where Chinese people just hang out with Chinese people, Japanese people just hang out with Japanese people, Mexicans and Mexicans. And here, it's just a melting pot. And to me, having been here for the past 30 years, that is such a special story that is really a unique one that can be expressed to people from all around the country. That when you come to Hawaii, you can see mixed races, you can just see people who are all being able to work together and function together successfully because of the melting pot that we are. Now, you graduated from UH Law School and most graduates from UH Law School think of going to work at some big firm, but you decided to go into government. Correct. Oh, well, my parents had always taught me to make sure that whatever I did, I was always giving back to the community. The other thing I really enjoyed was that part of being a lawyer was the opportunity to be in court. And I really wanted to be interacting with people and speaking to juries. And wearing a suit. I guess. That wasn't so great, but especially in the hot weather. But Peter Carlyle was a prosecutor at the time and he hired me on. And during that time, I started off in traffic court, but then over the years, then I eventually started doing some very serious cases, mostly domestic violence and sexual assault cases. And then you went from just being a prosecutor to deputy prosecutor. What's the difference? Correct. So I basically became the number two person in the office and so it took on a lot more managerial and policy type responsibilities. One of them actually was always advocating for the strictest common sense gun regulations that we currently have here in the state of Hawaii. And I'm very proud of that, that even to this day, Hawaii is recognized as having the strictest gun control regulations in the country. And frankly, that is something that is potentially under threat by the current administration if we don't do something about making sure that we're checking that. So then you went from the deputy prosecutor, which is where I met you, to the managing director of the city and county. So tell us about that. Yeah, that was a great experience. It was actually my first step into interacting with the city council as well as the state legislators and really understanding just a lot of what the political bubble is all about. And a good bubble that it is because it really is a place where there are so many people who care about wanting to make the community better and really get into a lot of conversations that sometimes just looks like people arguing. But actually is very productive in terms of being able to make progress here in Hawaii. Now, I must add a footnote here that when you were managing director and I was just somebody at the city council, that was the only time. Oh no, I shouldn't say only the first time I can remember that the city administration and the council worked very well together. Oh good. That's my own caveat there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then after you left there, you went to when the term was over, then you went to... Then I was working at Carl Smith Ball. I was the managing partner there for a couple years. And then eventually when Governor E. Gay became our governor, then he appointed me to become the attorney general. And so I was the attorney general from 2015 to 2018 for three years. Three years? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a great experience. Now, one of the things... Okay, let me look for it. Was that nonsense, the mess with the molasses in the... Oh yeah. Yeah. There was a very serious situation where one of the large shipping companies that brings goods to Hawaii ended up spilling... There was a molasses spill that occurred within Honolulu Harbor. And it took a lot of working with the shipping company as well as several environmentalist groups such as the Sierra Club and other major players including the current congressional delegation to come up with a great solution which basically involved restoring the coral reefs and also putting in a lot of money to be able to build infrastructure to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Well, now, that one I remembered because that went on forever and ever. So how did you solve that? Sure. It was an example of something that was actually headed towards some very serious litigation that to my mind was going to last for the next decade. In other words, I could see easily that the two sides were so far apart. One side wanted basically a billion dollars. I'm exaggerating, but just something really high. The other side wasn't really willing to pay that much. And it looked like it would be something that would be dragged through the courts. And in the meantime, we wouldn't be having our reefs being restored. We wouldn't have any money to do that. So by bringing everybody together and working with both sides of it, there was a lot of mediation that had to take place and I'm proud to say that I was part of that.  So what did they finally do to restore the reef? What happened? They put about 15 million dollars into taking down the molasses infrastructure as well as providing funding to the state in order to be able to help grow coral reefs just around the south shore of Oahu. And that's great because that ecosystem is so important to the ocean and to the fish and the wildlife in Hawaii. Well, we need to take a break. And when we come back, we want to talk about your go around with the bully in the White House. Right. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I just walked by and I said, what's happening guys? They told me they were making music. Guys, don't forget to check me out right here at the Prince of Investments. I'm your host, Prince Dykes. Each and every Tuesdays at 11 a.m. Hawaii time, I'm going to be right here. Stop by here from some of the best investment minds across the globe. And real estate, finances, stocks, hedge funds, managers, all that great stuff. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner. And we at Think Tech are doing a series of interviews with candidates all across the state from the tip of the big island all the way up to Niihau and everything in between. Candidates of places that we never dreamed existed.  Go to D.C. Representing Hawaii. To do battle with the bullied Trump. Yeah. Yeah. Doug, tell us about your event, your standing up to Trump and the taking it on with the, what is it, shutting down the ports, the airport ports and everything to immigrants. Tell us about that fight with him. Well, President Trump had issued an executive order in the second weekend after he was sworn in that banned travel from several Muslim majority nations to come into the United States. And right away it threw our airports into chaos. There was a lot of protests that took place. There were people who were being told midair that they couldn't come into the country. People went down to the Daniel K. Annoy International Airport including other airports all around the country to be able to offer help. And I was the attorney general at the time and I felt like we really need to do something here to stand up for immigrants as well as for the rights of peoples that we don't discriminate against people based upon their nation of origin or their religion. I think so many people here in Hawaii especially remember the discrimination that took place against Japanese Americans when they were interned as citizens having done nothing wrong during World War II and it was done for national security reasons. They said it, yes. And I have nothing against national security. I absolutely believe it's the President's prerogative to take care of our national security but we have to always make sure that our foundational principles are upheld which is that we don't discriminate against people simply based upon their nation of origin or based upon their religion. That goes against the Constitution. What happened then? You filed the lawsuit. Then what happened? You go from there to what happened? Sure. Well, I'll tell you this really quick is that I mean I had a short interchange with President Trump himself when I was out there for a national attorney general's conference and I was able to ask him why is it that you've passed this executive order and he basically said frankly your priorities are not my priorities which was just a great point of reference to be able to say, hey that's exactly the reason why we need to be standing up and fighting for Hawaii's priorities because these values were being threatened. We brought our lawsuit here in Hawaii Federal Court. A district judge named Derek K. Loha Watson who was a President, Obama appointee, Kamehameha Schools graduate had basically agreed with me and issued a nationwide order that stopped the travel ban. That got a lot of people's attention and then it went up to the Ninth Circuit. There are three judge panel upheld it so that was the next level up and then the final level up for that was the U.S. Supreme Court. So just about I guess seven weeks now then a five to four majority sided with President Trump and upheld the travel ban. However there was four significant dissenters that said this is a very, this decision is seriously flawed and history is going to end up judging us on this. I really believe that. I really believe that Hawaii's going to be on the right side of history of this and that we are going to be shown as having done the right thing during the right time. So you took step after step after step. Did they change the order? Did they modify it at all? Along the way there were some new versions that came out that were more neutralized but they never took away the original statements that were behind it which was that President Trump had always said that he wanted to call for a complete Muslim ban of people coming into the United States. And I think that in and of itself for all of us who are now sensitive to how these statements get made right away branding people who are of a Muslim religion as terrorists that the fact that so many Americans even accept that statement just shows that we're already in a bad place in terms of how our minds process that concept. The fact is that it's not your religion that makes you a terrorist. It's some very bad decisions or just some other things. But there are people who are not Muslims who have committed some atrocious gun violence within our country and so anyway that's just not the right thing to do. So now you have decided that you want to go to Congress. Yes. To represent us in Congress. Why? Well one of the things that I saw, well one thing I could tell you is that I could say I ask myself that every night before I go to sleep. I'm sure your wife does too. But I will say this is that one thing I'll give you the serious answer which is this is that one of the things that I saw as attorney general is that ports can only do so much. They can only stop something or they can slow something down but it's Congress that can really be proactive when it's functioning well in order to be able to make differences in the country. So to me I just want to talk about this. I see that there are some very critical issues that are coming up right now from Washington DC that if we don't address them it's going to impact an entire generation. So one obviously is immigration. This whole idea of just kind of blocking out people from certain continents and allowing more welcoming to people from European nations. That impacts an entire generation if we don't really stand up and speak out against that. I think another thing that's very critical has to do with gun control. There's a lot of movement right now. There's a company that is trying to manufacture three-dimensional guns in people's homes. A 3D gun with no serial, no nothing? Correct, correct. And so that has been right now as we're sitting here in camera time then it's been upheld or it's been stopped by a court but it's only temporarily stopped and so it's going to take Congress to make sure that that doesn't continue further. There's another serious issue where Congress is trying to think about making states that have common sense gun regulations like us recognize the rights of other people who are coming into Hawaii so that we have to recognize their state's laws. Now that is not safe at all. This pains me to say it but then this thing called state's rights. Correct, correct, correct. So the fact that that's even coming up means that I feel like I am the right person as someone with a law enforcement background as the attorney general and as a prosecutor and also as someone who's a lawyer to really be able to make sure that Congress doesn't do anything that will really affect an entire generation. Well now, let's rewind back to the Federalist Papers when they made the decision that each state would be a state and not that the federal government would not interfere with the things that happen in each state. That's my memory of the Federalist Papers. That was the whole idea in creating this thing called United States. Correct, correct. And our state laws that we've passed are ones that have been really has been decades of work by state legislators, by governors, by prosecutors to really be able to advocate for the gun regulations that we have here. We don't want there to be the same kind of massive type of shooting that's occurred. We had one actually happen in 1999 with the Xerox shooting. We never want that to happen again. And so the idea of what's called reciprocity that's being talked about right now in Congress, that is something that I feel very motivated to stop and feel like I'm in the best position to be able to stop it with my background. Yes, I agree with you. And assuming, of course, that you do get elected and you're one of four, and it takes 218 people, any party, to get a bill to the floor, how do you think that you can make a difference in moving enough other people to make that 218? It starts with working closely with our own congressional delegations. So I think the fact that we have four is from Hawaii. It's a small number, but it can be a very loud number when there is seniority that can be built. And so one of the things that I feel like I bring to the table is just turn 52. And so I feel like, God willing, if I've got good health, then I have another good 20, 25 years to be able to build seniority out there, which I think is actually in contrast to some of my other candidates. I mean, some of them I think they have less years ahead of them, and I think other people don't have the right type of experience that really prepares them for being in Congress. Yeah, now, I'm agreeing with you. I think that your experience, especially in these areas that you mentioned, immigration, gun control. And the other thing is women's rights and LGBTQ rights, which are completely under attack. Oh, yes. And Roe v. Wade is looking like it'll get overturned with the addition of a new conservative Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh. That's very concerning, as well as LGBTQ rights being rolled back from all the progress that's been made. And as the Attorney General, I have taken strong stances to make sure that we don't defund Planned Parenthood, that we are standing up for the rights of same-sex couples. And so I would continue to be a staunch advocate in those areas. Yes. I'm agreeing with you because you were right here on this program when we first took a stand on marriage equality, and you were right here in this very seat supporting it and supporting cannabis and medical aid and dying. You have been totally supportive in all of those issues. All of which are under attack. I was going to say that. Correct. Do we always choose something that has to be under attack? Well, to me, I think that's why Hawaii's so awesome is because we really are on the cutting edge of so many things that I think are good for the next generation and good for our future. So to me, this is a really critical time. We're at a very serious time when we need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to be able to stand up for Hawaii's values. Well, now would you be so kind as to tell us why we should vote for you on August 11 or, let's see, early voting has already started. So why we should vote for you? So first of all, I would say this. I think for people who've already voted, I want to thank them for voting regardless of who it was because they were part of the process. And by far, that is the most important thing. If they haven't voted yet and they're still undecided, I'd encourage them to look at my website, DougChin.com, because I think it talks a lot about my priorities as well as my background and why I think I'm the best person to be representing Hawaii and Washington, D.C. in 2018. I think, frankly, this is a very critical time for the country and I just feel like we need someone like former Attorney General who's a career prosecutor who can really be able to hold Washington accountable and also be able to work with the congressional delegation to be able to see that Hawaii's priorities are met. So hoping I get that opportunity. It's been great just to be able to meet so many people from Oahu. I feel very blessed to be able to have that experience. Well, thank you so much for always being there and I wish you the best of luck. Great, thank you. And aloha. Aloha. We'll see you next time.