[PHOTO] “Dovercourt between Dupont and Geary, three shots”

The view looking south towards the intersection of Dupont and Dovercourt from Geary Avenue, under the railway bridge I photographed here in daylight, can be quite spectacular at night with the lights in motion. I’ve three photos and one favourite. Your thoughts?

Of my three photos of this scene, this one appeals to me for its near-symmetry, the line of the railroad tracks separating the glistening illuminated street and the cars from the rail cars below the open sky.



This one of the three photos appeals to me because it seems more grounded, anchored by the solid metal of the guard separating sidewalk from pavement and its sense of intimately gazing at something in detail. It's the one of the three I've submitted to the Toronto and Toronto Bloggers communities on Flickr, which allow only one photo submission a day.



This photo is OK, but might have benefited from some cropping to leave the blur of the metal at left out of the shot of the pavement under the bridge.

[LINK] "England's Glorious Revolution"

Understanding Society's Daniel Little blogs about Steve Pincus' revisionist take on England's Glorious Revolution of 1689, an exceptionalist narrative emphasizing the peaceful nature of change. So not true.

The revolution was unrevolutionary. Unlike other subsequent revolutions, England's revolution was bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all sensible. The English had no desire to transform their polity, their society, or their culture. Instead they worried that James II had intended to do just that. Second, the revolution was Protestant. James II had tried to reinstitute Catholicism in England. The revolution insured that England would remain a Protestant polity. Third, the revolution demonstrated the fundamentally exceptional nature of English national character.... Fourth, there could have been no social grievances undergirding the Revolution of 1688-89 because English society had changed little in the modern world. (kindle loc 134)

According to Pincus, this account fundamentally misrepresents the nature of the transformation that 1688 represented in English history, and it defines the scope of the historical question incorrectly in profoundly misleading ways. Pincus wants to tell a more accurate and revealing story; and he also wants to provide a political historiography that attempts to explain how these misrepresentations have come to define the dominant view of this revolution -- the political ins and outs of Establishment Whigs, Conservatives, and Opposition Whigs in the ensuing century and a half of debate and historical interpretation.

His own approach to the historical problem is to start over: to reassess the materials and archives that exist today that allow the historian to gain fragmentary glimpses into the complex social reality that 1688 represented. As he points out, there are substantial materials available today that were not available in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries when the master narrative was pieced together. But he also observes that even materials available to Macaulay and Trevelyan can be read to a very different conclusion from those drawn by the eighteenth and nineteenth century historians.

Pincus's interpretation disagrees with the standard narrative in every major respect. First, he believes that the English Revolution was "the first modern revolution" -- the result of conflicts created by the process of state modernization that James II had undertaken. Second, he believes that the English Revolution was fundamentally located within a European context -- not a purely sui generis English affair.

The Revolution of 1688-89 is important not because it reaffirmed the exceptional English national character but because it was a landmark moment in the emergence of the modern state. (kindle loc 184)

Just as in the French and Russian Revolutions, there was extensive and violent crowd activity. And just as in other modern revolutions, the revolutionary events resulted not in consensus and compromise but in deep ideological cleavages. (kindle loc 3450)

Third, fourth, and fifth, Pincus refutes the idea that the revolution was "bloodless, aristocratic, and consensual". He documents that mass mobilization and violence were just as striking in England, Scotland, and Ireland as in the first year of the French Revolution (chapter 9), that segments from all levels of society were actively involved in these conflicts (chapter 8), and that the Revolution and its aftermath involved deep and abiding disagreements about the directions that the English state and society should take (chapter 10). So -- not bloodless, not aristocratic, and not consensual.

This brief post says nothing about the argument that the replacement of the Stuart king of England and Scotland with a Dutch prince actually represents a Dutch conquest of sorts.

Go, read.

[LINK] "Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for Years"

It has become increasingly clear we are so very, very lucky we didn't fight a war in the 1980s when world arsenals were at their peaks. This is bad enough.

Even a regional nuclear war could spark "unprecedented" global cooling and reduce rainfall for years, according to U.S. government computer models.

Widespread famine and disease would likely follow, experts speculate.

During the Cold War a nuclear exchange between superpowers—such as the one feared for years between the United States and the former Soviet Union—was predicted to cause a "nuclear winter."

In that scenario hundreds of nuclear explosions spark huge fires, whose smoke, dust, and ash blot out the sun for weeks amid a backdrop of dangerous radiation levels. Much of humanity eventually dies of starvation and disease.

Today, with the United States the only standing superpower, nuclear winter is little more than a nightmare. But nuclear war remains a very real threat—for instance, between developing-world nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan.

To see what climate effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT—just 0.03 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal.

The researchers predicted the resulting fires would kick up roughly five million metric tons of black carbon into the upper part of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the Earth's atmosphere.

In NASA climate models, this carbon then absorbed solar heat and, like a hot-air balloon, quickly lofted even higher, where the soot would take much longer to clear from the sky.

The global cooling caused by these high carbon clouds wouldn't be as catastrophic as a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear winter, but "the effects would still be regarded as leading to unprecedented climate change," research physical scientist Luke Oman said during a press briefing Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

Earth is currently in a long-term warming trend. After a regional nuclear war, though, average global temperatures would drop by 2.25 degrees F (1.25 degrees C) for two to three years afterward, the models suggest.

At the extreme, the tropics, Europe, Asia, and Alaska would cool by 5.4 to 7.2 degrees F (3 to 4 degrees C), according to the models. Parts of the Arctic and Antarctic would actually warm a bit, due to shifted wind and ocean-circulation patterns, the researchers said.

After ten years, average global temperatures would still be 0.9 degree F (0.5 degree C) lower than before the nuclear war, the models predict.

The effects on agriculture would be catastrophe. One, two, three, many Tamboras?

Go, read.

[LINK] "Being Carless in America is Like Second-Class Citizenship"

Thanks to Facebook's John for linking to Sami Grover's Treehugger essay on the problems of being carless. I've not noticed it, having lived in compact communities and now in a Toronto with decent mass transit, with frequent biking; I'm thankful I'm not in the Phoenix that Andrew described some time back.

The first time I came to America I was 23 years old, and it always confused me why people were so shocked that I had never driven a car. Until I started to travel. Because as soon as you leave the major metropolitan areas, it can be amazing how un-pedestrian friendly most infrastructure is. The fact is that being carless in most of America is, without doubt, a major impediment to social inclusion and economic well-being. Without a car, you're basically a second class citizen.

[. . A] curious yet provocative piece over at The Guardian has gotten me thinking about what it really means to be carless in the Land of Opportunity. Linh Dinn—who himself grew up in suburban Virginia—writes a fascinating essay/rant about America's automobile mania and those who cannot, for whatever reason, participate. He begins with an account of a horrific incident in South Carolina where a woman deliberately drove into a group of teenagers who would not get out of the road because she "wanted to knock some sense into them". This is, says Dinn, a symptom of a wider malaise:

"At that intersection, there are no sidewalks. All over America, there are many roads without sidewalks. Many communities are built just for the car. Lawns, often vast, encroach right to the curbs. America's 307 million people own about 150m cars. Entire blocks are reserved for parking garages. Walking on a road shoulders, one can feel like a vagrant or a prowling criminal."

Dinn's essay goes off on some interesting tangents, exploring everything from the mono-cultural blandness of the suburban megamall, to the inevitable emotional attachment to the automobile that comes when it is ones ticket to freedom and, often, sexual awakening.

Living now in rural North Carolina, the hegemony of the motor car is ever more apparent to me. It's rare that I see people walking down the grass verge on the road into town as cars come rushing by. Given the unpleasant experience it must be, I can only assume that most that do are doing so because they have to, not because they want to.

Thoughts? And yes, I think cars have a perfectly legitimate place in the transportation mix.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the homophobe running Belarus

I've blogged in the past about Guido Westerwelle, Germany's out Foreign Minister. Towleroad today pointed to a news story suggesting that the Belarusian president used Westerwelle's sexual orientation to try to trigger a diplomatic incident following the suppression of free elections.

Last November in Minsk, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko suggested to German Minister of Foreign Affairs Guido Westerwelle that he should cease being gay.

Lukashenko recently acknowledged the incident, telling reporters that he dislikes "faggots" and confirming he told Westerwelle "it is necessary to live a normal life."

Russian gay activist Nikolai Alekseev expressed surprise that there was little reaction to the incident from German gay activists or the German government.

"To leave without reaction what Lukashenko said is nothing else than setting a dangerous precedent," Alekseev said. "If he can bash verbally a German minister on his sexual orientation, then why he would not do it with all Belarusian LGBT people.

"People have to understand that their absence of reaction can have some negative side effects to others."

ILGA Europe went into more detail about the comments, the Gay Russia site going into more detail after Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorsky himself.

According to the Polish Minister, the Belarusian President created a diplomatic incident when he told the openly gay German Minister that all gays should be sent to State Farms.

"When I was in Minsk together with Guido Westerwelle, we talked about minorities, and not just national minorities. Similarly (concerning sexual minorities) Alexander Lukashenko also expressed himself. I recognise that it should not be an example for members of the Civil platform" explained Radoslava Sikorsky to the News Agency Regnum on February 14.

Citing sources in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Polish daily «Wprost» writes that during the meeting of the Polish and German foreign ministers in Minsk, President Lukashenko made a long monologue.

"He said he does not understand how a man can live with a man. It was an obvious allusion to Westerwelle, who has a partner. The German minister looked nervous, but Lukashenko went even further. In very severe form, he said he did not have anything against lesbians, but that he would be happy to send gay men to State farms" writes the newspaper.

On the eve of last December Presidential elections in Belarus, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski together with his German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle, travelled to Minsk, where they both called President Alexander Lukashenko to hold transparent and fair elections. Mr Lukashenko was re-elected on the first round with 79.67% of the votes.

The situation for GLBT rights in Belarus isn't very good, so it's probably not surprising that Lukashenko used Westerwelle's sexual orientation--broadly unremarkable in Germany, increasingly so in Poland--to delegitmize European criticism of Belarus' totalitarianism. Alekseev quoted above is right to note that letting Lukashenko's bigotry pass for three months without any public criticism likely isn't good; certainly it seems indicative of Lukahshenko's respect for minority rights generally.

[LINK] "Rob Ford scores 60 per cent approval rating: poll"

Mayor Rob Ford is popular, it's worth confirming.

Rob Ford enjoys a 60-per-cent approval rating, according to the first public poll released since he took office Dec. 1.

However, Toronto-based Forum Research, Inc. found that urban and suburban Torontonians remain deeply divided about Mr. Ford: His approval rating was highest in Scarborough (71 per cent) and North York (65 per cent) and lowest in the old cities of Toronto and East York (46 per cent.)

“That puts him higher than his vote, so somehow he’s got the approval of some of his opponents' supporters, which I think is quite a task, especially given how polarizing the election was,” said Lorne Bozinoff, the president of Forum Research.

Mr. Ford captured 47 per cent of the vote in the Oct. 25 election.

The telephone survey of 1,012 Torontonians, which was conducted Feb. 25 and 26, found widespread support for several of the mayor’s pet issues.

Some 72 per cent approve of Mr. Ford’s desire to ban strikes at the TTC; 61 per cent approve of his plan to pay for a Sheppard subway extension with private financing; and 54 per cent approve of privatizing garbage collection for parts of the city.

Mr. Ford has encountered little effective opposition in his first three months as mayor. As promised, he scrapped the $60 vehicle registration fee, reduced councillors’ office budgets and banned free food from council meetings.

He also shepherded a budget with a tax freeze through city council.

The poll was conducted before Toronto’s auditor-general released a pair of damning audits Monday about overspending and sloppy procurement at the Toronto Community Housing Corporation – a scandal that is expected to boost the popularity of Mr. Ford, a long-time critic of TCHC management.

But opponents say Mr. Ford faces a tough road in 2012 as he tries to balance a budget with a projected shortfall of $774-million.

Mr. Bozinoff also warned of pitfalls ahead for Mr. Ford. The poll showed his support is soft among voters aged 18-34, only 49 per cent of whom approve of the job he’s doing.

“He skews highly toward older voters,” Mr. Bozinoff said. “He’s not got the younger voters on board.”

[LINK] "Follow my leader"

I've blogged about swarm intelligence befopre, in October of last year about the uncanny problem-solving ability of social insects, and in December a [FORUM] post asking what swarm intelligence has solved for you. Now, the Economist is on the subject. For swarm intelligence to work, it seems that the components can't be too bright.

HUMAN beings like to think of themselves as the animal kingdom’s smartest alecks. It may come as a surprise to some, therefore, that Iain Couzin of Princeton University believes they have something to learn from lesser creatures that move about in a large crowd. As he told the AAAS meeting in Washington, DC, groups of animals often make what look like wise decisions, even when most of the members of those groups are ignorant of what is going on.

Coming to that conclusion was not easy. Before lessons can be drawn from critters perched on the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder, their behaviour must first be understood. One way to do this is to tag them with devices that follow them around—motion-capture sensors, radio transmitters or global-positioning-system detectors that can put a precise figure on their movements.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to tag more than a few individuals in a herd, flock or swarm. Researchers have therefore tended to extrapolate from these few results by using various computer models. Dr Couzin has done quite a bit of this himself. Most recently, he has modelled the behaviour of shoals of fish. He posited that how they swim will depend on each individual’s competing tendencies to stick close to the others (and thus move in the same direction as them) while not actually getting too close to any particular other fish. It turns out that by fiddling with these tendencies, a virtual shoal can be made to swirl spontaneously in a circle, just like some real species do.

That is a start. But real shoals do not exist to swim in circles. Their purpose is to help their members eat and avoid being eaten. At any one time, however, only some individuals know about—and can thus react to—food and threats. Dr Couzin therefore wanted to find out how such temporary leaders influence the behaviour of the rest.

He discovered that leadership is extremely efficient. The larger a shoal is, the smaller is the proportion of it that needs to know what is actually going on for it to feed and avoid predation effectively. Indeed, having too many leaders with conflicting opinions results in confusion. At least, that is true in the model. He is now testing it in reality.

[. . .]

If the models are anything to go by, the best outcome for the group—in this case, not being eaten—seems to depend on most members’ being blissfully unaware of the world outside the shoal and simply taking their cue from others. This phenomenon, Dr Couzin argues, applies to all manner of organisms, from individual cells in a tissue to (rather worryingly) voters in the democratic process. His team has already begun probing the question of voting patterns. But is ignorance really political bliss? Dr Couzin’s models do not yet capture what happens when the leaders themselves turn out to be sharks.

Go, read.

[LINK] "New Zealand: should the Philippines become a major partner?"

Such is the contention of contention of Blue Jacket 1862. There's room for synergy between the two southwest Pacific English language-using island nations, the author argues.

Why particularly The Philippines though? Apart from the fact that already the country is New Zealand's third largest market for dairy products, it's also a key destination for beef and forrestry exports. Also, there are numerous other areas for advancement, all detailed on NZTE's site. One thing which struck me was the scope for the IT industry.

As NZTE puts it, "mobile/wireless, transport and logistics, health IT, security and defence and the business process outsourcing market" are immediate opportunities for New Zealand's rapidly growing ICT industry.

NZICT, the industry body for the ICT and Hi-Tech sectors, foresaw recently that this industry - already worth US$3.74bn - could grow to match the primary sectors soon to within ten years becoming New Zealand's biggest export earner. Digital content development and software development are both sub-sectors which will grow rapidly over this upcoming decade. Denmark has recently undergone a similar economic transformation, which New Zealand hopes to copy, I understand.

The Philippines weathered the recession better than many neighbours due to strong domestic demand, all those remittances from abroad, and less dependance than some competitors on exports to sustain growth.

Although small at present, the Philippines economy is set to grow fast. It grew by another 7% in 2010, according to the World Factbook and now ranks at No.34 in the world in terms of its total GDP (PPP). That places the country, with 92m people, just above Venezuela (pop. 29m) and Austria (pop. 8m). Yet, Goldman Sachs, an investment Bank, predicts the Philippine economy will rise to world No.17 by 2050, putting it ahead of Italy, Iran and Egypt.

And another thought, as global consolidation in the bourse (share market) sector gathers pace, would an early pre-emptive tie-up between the Wellington-based NZX and the Pasig, Manila-based Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) make strategic and economic sense?

Looking into a merger of stock exchanges could be a good idea, he suggests.

Go, read.