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The fetching arch in the façade of this downtown apartment tower, located at 20 Prince Arthur Avenue just a block north of Bedford and Bloor, fits this tower's unusual architecture.
Jan. 24th, 2011
Oh God. No. Why?
No.
Neo might be returning to the big screen, according to the original spoon-bender, Keanu Reeves himself. Reeves just spilled the beans on the Wachowskis' plans to make two more Matrix movies!
AICN has a report from Keanu Reeves's keynote speech at the London school of performing Arts University. A commenter wrote in with a few highlights from the lecture, including this particular gem about The Matrix.Says he met the Wachowskis... for lunch over Christmas, and stated that they had completed work on a two-picture script treatments that would see him return to the world of the matrix as Neo. Says the Wachowskis have met with Jim Cameron to discuss the pro's and con's of 3D and are looking to deliver something which has never been seen again. Keanu stated that he still has an obligation to the fans to deliver a movie worthy of the title "The Matrix" and he swears this time that the treatment will truly revolutionize the action genre like the first movie. Wachowskis are working on a movie called "Cloud Atlas" at the moment, once that concludes they will talk again.
Has enough time passed that most people have forgotten the awful savior-heavy second and third films in this series?
No.
GeoCurrents' Martin Lewis makes the interesting point that by many metrics, Siberia--not only a more populous and potentially hefty entity than stereotypes might have it--is significantly more Russian than European Russia. How so?
All this implies to me that discussions of Siberian separatism, before or after the Soviet collapse, were fundamentally ill-founded: why would an ur-Russian region break away from Russia?
The public view of massive Russia is especially distorted by the state-based world model. For starters, many people fail to grasp how much larger Russia is than other independent states. Informal polling bears this out. When I recently asked a group of educated Americans how they thought Siberia compared in area to the world’s largest countries, most respondents put it fairly high on the list – but no one put it first. In fact, a sovereign Siberia would be the world’s largest country by a substantial margin, as big as Canada (#2) and India (#7) combined. My respondents did no better when it came to estimating Siberia’s population ranking. Most thought that it would be very low on the list, out-numbered by more than 100 sovereign states. In actuality, Siberia’s 39 million inhabitants would put it 33rd in the world, proximate to Poland and Argentina and well ahead of Canada.
[. . .]
Siberia retains certain aspects of its colonial past. It is much less densely populated than European Russia, with most inhabitants concentrated along its southwestern front. Although Siberia contains roughly three quarters of Russia’s territory, it holds only about a quarter of its population. “Asian” Russia also encompasses a large array of indigenous ethnic groups, and counts as well Russia’s largest internal republics and other autonomous areas. The Republic of Sakha alone is almost as extensive as the whole of European Russia.
It would be a serious mistake, however, to regard Siberia as any less Russian that European Russia. It may have been a colonial realm in the 1600s and 1700s, but massive settlement by Russian speakers subsequently transformed the region. Today, Siberia is substantially more Russian than European Russia in terms of its population. In the country as a whole, Russians* constitute 80 percent of the population; for Siberia, the figure is over 90 percent. A significant number of indigenous ethnic groups live in Siberia, but most are very small and many are close to extinction. The largest Siberian group, the Sakha (or Yakut), number only about half a million.
The map of republics and other autonomous areas in Russia may convey a misleading view of nationality/ethnicity in the country. Although such areas have been differentiated on the basis of their non-Russian indigenous populations, they have never been off-limits to Russian and other migrants. As a result, some areas classified as autonomous have very small indigenous populations, or “titular nationalities.” In the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, the Khanty and the Mansi together form only about two percent of the population, whereas Russians account for sixty-six percent, Ukrainians nine percent, and Tatars seven percent. Not coincidently, Khanty-Mansi is the richest unit of the Russian Federation, with a per capita GDP of over $50,000. Overall, as the economic map shows, resource-rich Siberia has a distinctly higher level of per capita GDP than European Russia.
All this implies to me that discussions of Siberian separatism, before or after the Soviet collapse, were fundamentally ill-founded: why would an ur-Russian region break away from Russia?
[LINK] "Voyager and the Will to Explore"
Jan. 24th, 2011 06:08 pmThe Voyager space probes have proven to be remarkably durable, as the ever-readable Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams notes.
If this class of spacecraft built in the 1970s can remain functional for decades, what feats of endurable will future spacecraft be capable of enduring? As always, it depends on whether or not people want to build spacecraft inspired by Voyager.
Go, read.
I remember thinking when Voyager 2 flew past Neptune in 1989 that it would be a test case for how long a spacecraft would last. The subject was on my mind because I had been thinking about interstellar probes, and the problem of keeping electronics alive for a century or more even if we did surmount the propulsion problem. The Voyagers weren’t built to test such things, of course, but it’s been fascinating to watch as they just keep racking up the kilometers. As of this morning, Voyager 1 is 17,422,420,736 kilometers from the Earth (16 hours, 8 minutes light time).
Then you start looking at system performance and have to shake your head. As the spacecraft continue their push into interstellar space, only a single instrument on Voyager 1 has broken down. Nine other instruments have been powered down on both craft to save critical power resources, but as this article in the Baltimore Sun pointed out recently, each Voyager has five still-funded experiments and seven that are still delivering data. The article quotes Stamatios “Tom” Krimigis as saying “I suspect it’s going to outlast me.”
[. . .]
What’s fascinating about the Sun’s article is that it covers Krimigis’ work on instruments that could measure the flow of charged particles during the mission. Such instruments — low-energy charged particle (LECP) detectors — would report on the flow of ions, electrons and other charged particles from the solar wind, but because they demanded a 360-degree view, they posed a problem.
[. . . ]The instruments are still working. These days they’re working in a region where solar particles no longer strike Voyager 1 from behind, and it’s been like that for the last six months. Krimigis says the instruments can still detect a particle flow, evidently a mix of solar and interstellar particles, moving in a flow perpendicular to the spacecraft’s direction of travel, so it appears we’re still not in true interstellar space, but in a place where, as the scientist puts it, “…the solar wind is kind of sloshing around.”
If this class of spacecraft built in the 1970s can remain functional for decades, what feats of endurable will future spacecraft be capable of enduring? As always, it depends on whether or not people want to build spacecraft inspired by Voyager.
Go, read.
Over at the Globe and Mail, Jill Mahoney wrote "Canadians rank Arctic sovereignty as top foreign-policy priority" about the latest iteration of the "Arctic sovereignty" rhetoric that's been ongoing since forever. It turns out that Canadians are quite into defending their country's claims, and aren't at all into compromising.
Those surveyed were also asked to name their preferred partner in dealing with Arctic issues – only Americans named Canada. By contrast, Canadians said they would choose Scandinavia.
In Canada, pollsters surveyed 2,053 people in the 10 provinces as well as 744 residents of the three territories in November and December. The poll’s margin of error for southern Canadians is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The margin of error for northerners is plus or minus 3.6 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
It's important to define, here, what "Arctic sovereignty" actually means. Claims to Canadian territories aren't being made, with the singular exception of Hans Island between Canada's Ellesmere and self-governing Greenland. Rather, "Arctic sovereignty" relates to control over maritime resources (navigational routes, undersea resources) and also to the ability of the Canadian state (military, particularly) to exercise authority over the territories of the Arctic.
Enhancing the Canadian footprint in the Arctic can be a good thing. Contrary to myth, Canadians aren't a very northerly people, huddling in our cities close to the warm warm south; only a very small fraction of the Canadian population lives north of the Arctic Circle, less than a hundred thousand people out of some thirty-five million. If Canada develops the institutional capacity necessary to productively manage the resources of the area--whatever the resources might be, and however they should be managed--that's fine. So what if Canada's being unexpectedly assertive if the assertiveness is good for us?
If. It becomes a bad thing when "Arctic sovereignty" is used as an excuse for jingoism. The various attempts of the Canadian government to try to rally Canadians around the flag by making claims of Russian incursions that often aren't incursions at all, in fact threatening an Arctic entente with Russia based on common positions (we claim the Northwest Passage as an internal waterway, Russia claims the Northeast Passage as an internal waterway).
“That traditional notion of what is a Canadian is kind of challenged by this. We sound more like what people would say Americans would sound like dealing with international issues. That’s quite an eye-opener,” said Neil Desai, director of programs and communications at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
The findings are based on an Arctic-security poll of more than 9,000 people in the eight northern countries: Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. The surveys were conducted by Ekos Research for the Munk School.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper regularly reminds Canadians that his Conservative government is determined to defend this country’s sovereignty in the Far North. As well, climate change is causing Arctic ice to melt rapidly, opening up previously impassable waters and potential new international disputes.
[. . .]
In contrast to Canadians’ intransigence on Arctic negotiation, the poll found that Canadians stand alone among northern countries in the view that the Northwest Passage is an internal Canadian waterway. Respondents in other countries largely see the passage as an international waterway.
Canadians’ hard-line views also come into play in the dispute over the Beaufort Sea. [. . .] The poll found about half of Canadian respondents said Canada should try to assert its full sovereignty rights over the Beaufort Sea compared to just 10 per cent of Americans. Sixty-two per cent of Americans said the U.S. government should try to strike a deal with Canada over the disputed area.
Those surveyed were also asked to name their preferred partner in dealing with Arctic issues – only Americans named Canada. By contrast, Canadians said they would choose Scandinavia.
In Canada, pollsters surveyed 2,053 people in the 10 provinces as well as 744 residents of the three territories in November and December. The poll’s margin of error for southern Canadians is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The margin of error for northerners is plus or minus 3.6 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
It's important to define, here, what "Arctic sovereignty" actually means. Claims to Canadian territories aren't being made, with the singular exception of Hans Island between Canada's Ellesmere and self-governing Greenland. Rather, "Arctic sovereignty" relates to control over maritime resources (navigational routes, undersea resources) and also to the ability of the Canadian state (military, particularly) to exercise authority over the territories of the Arctic.
Enhancing the Canadian footprint in the Arctic can be a good thing. Contrary to myth, Canadians aren't a very northerly people, huddling in our cities close to the warm warm south; only a very small fraction of the Canadian population lives north of the Arctic Circle, less than a hundred thousand people out of some thirty-five million. If Canada develops the institutional capacity necessary to productively manage the resources of the area--whatever the resources might be, and however they should be managed--that's fine. So what if Canada's being unexpectedly assertive if the assertiveness is good for us?
If. It becomes a bad thing when "Arctic sovereignty" is used as an excuse for jingoism. The various attempts of the Canadian government to try to rally Canadians around the flag by making claims of Russian incursions that often aren't incursions at all, in fact threatening an Arctic entente with Russia based on common positions (we claim the Northwest Passage as an internal waterway, Russia claims the Northeast Passage as an internal waterway).