[BLOG] Some Monday links

• 80 Beats lets us know that tractor beams of some sort may be possible.


• Bag News Notes features the photography of Danny Ghitis, who catalogues quotidian life in the small Polish city of Oscwiecim.


• At Border Thinking, Laura Agustin is skeptical that new high-tech passport and border controls in Nigeria will limit unsanctioned migration.


• The Discoblog reports on a species that turns out to have seven sexes as opposed to our two.


• Eastern Approaches reports on the Hungarian government's decision to let the Communist secret police archives be dispersed, making it next to impossible to maintain a single history.


• At Extraordinary Observations, Rob Pitingolo makes the point that bike racks at airports aren't for passengers so much as they are for workers.


• Geocurrent Events reports on distinctive cultures in the North Africa desert, with reports of the Ibadhi Muslim Berbers of southern Algeria's Mzab Oasis opposing the government and the Libya's relatively pro-Gaddafi Saharan Fezzan with its unviable irrigation-driven agriculture.


• The Global Sociology Blog reports on Spanish sociology Manuel Castells' evaluation of Egypt's shutdown of Internet access during the protests: costly, incomplete, and ultimately not encompassing nearly enough media to be effective.


• The Grumpy Sociologist positively reviews a film dealing with the integration and other issues in Rosengard, a heavily immigrant-populated neighbourhood of Sweden's southern city of Malmo. Competition over scarce resources--within the neighbourhood, in wider Sweden--is key to explain social issues.


• Language Hat blogs about the complications of dubbing The Simpsons in Québec, where the efforts to produce a dubbed version saleable in Francophone Europe (doomed to fail because of French policies, thanks feorag) lead to the production of local versions lacking local characteristics.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Charli Carpenter points out that a new United Nations study pointing to common sexual violence against men in conflict zones also lends itself to pointing out that many women inflict sexual violence themselves.


• Progressive Download's John Farrell notes a prominent Southern Baptist leader's statement that opposing same-sex marriage is going to look as bad as opposing interracial marriage and points out that the leader's distaste for science that doesn't back him up isn't going to help.


• At The Search, Douglas Todd introduces his readers to the interesting former Roman Catholic bishop of Victoria Remi de Roo, known for his theological iconoclasm.


• Torontoist points out that the downtown Urban Affairs Library was closed down by the Toronto Public Library service only because it had to be.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little engages critically with the myth that mass education engenders social mobility, pointing out that it can as readily reproduce existing social networks as creating new ones.

[LINK] "China's growing sway felt in north Japan ski town"

Does the future of the Hokkaido ski resort town of Niseko depend on Chinese tourism? That's the contention of the Associated Press' Malcolm Foster.

Japan has set the ambitious goal of tripling its number of foreign tourists from 8.6 million last year to 25 million by 2020. With its population shrinking and economy flat, Japan must open up to trade, investment and tourism, Prime Minister Naoto Kan declares, if it is to reverse a slow decline. But it's a tall order in this historically insular country.

[. . .]

In early February, the place was swamped with families from the Chinese-speaking world, particularly Hong Kong, for the Lunar New Year, marked with fireworks at the base of Mount Annapuri.

Property agents say Hong Kong and Singapore buyers account for 70-80 percent of condominium and land purchases, with interest emerging from Malaysia and mainland China. Japanese developers are largely absent, still gun-shy from an early 1990s property market collapse.

"The Japanese are complacent," said C.J. Wysocki, a Hong Kong-based American lawyer for GE's aircraft business. He built an apartment building with 10 units in Hirafu and sold several to wealthy Asians. "The foreigners are the ones who are saying this place is amazing, it needs to be preserved."

Foreign tourists spent nearly 200,000 hotel nights in area accommodations last winter, up from just 7,800 eight years ago, according to the Niseko Promotion Board, which has hired Korean and Chinese speakers to field questions and maintain its foreign language websites.

Mainland Chinese visitors accounted for 6,100 nights and are expected to top 40,000 within five years, said Tomokazu Aoki, the board's deputy administrative director.

[. . .]

Mainland Chinese are coming to Japan in record numbers -- 1.4 million last year, second only to South Koreans -- and they are collectively the biggest spenders. Snapping up cameras, cosmetics and handbags, they make up about a quarter of foreign tourist consumption.

Still, many experts are skeptical that the Niseko formula will work in the many hot springs and ski towns that are in slow decline. Many resist foreign influence, and Kerr calls them "hopelessly old-fashioned."

Hakuba, a ski resort in central Japan, has seen an increase in Australians, but many residents feel strongly about protecting the local culture and don't want change, said Yasuaki Enari, deputy director general of the Hakuba Tourism Bureau.

"Tourism is going to be a massively important industry for Japan in the future, and people haven't caught onto that yet," Kerr said. "The few places like Niseko that have really picked up on it are going to see an economic boom" while the rest will be in trouble in 20 years.

[URBAN NOTE] "Is the Bixi the middle ground between motorists and couriers?"

The Globe and Mail's Les Perreaux wonders if Bixi--the bicycle-sharing service that has taken off in Montréal, among other world cities--will work. Certainly it has potential.

In a place like Toronto, which was a tough city for cyclists even before new mayor Rob Ford expressed his disdain for the mode of transportation, changing the tone is vital, enthusiasts say.

“It’s not going to change things overnight, but it's a lot harder for a motorist to become angry at someone on a Bixi bicycle than a bicycle courier or a racer. And I think that's important in bridging the gap between these two road users,” said James Schwartz, a Torontonian who blogs about cycling issues at The Urban Country.

The evidence is anecdotal, but several urban affairs and cycling experts who have examined bicycle sharing around the world report bikes such as the heavy Bixi, which carries riders in an old-fashioned upright stance, most often without a helmet and at speeds drastically slower than your average road rider, has a calming effect both on motorists and more aggressive cyclists.

[. . .]

Under the Bixi system, automated docking stations are scattered around cities. Users in Toronto will have the option of signing up for a year ($95), a month ($40) or a day ($5). Once a rider has signed up, usage is free for the first 30 minutes of any ride. The system is designed for short hauls, such as inner-city commutes or running an errand across downtown.

Critics of bike sharing say it’s a marketing exercise that does little to reduce road congestion. Fans say it gets casual riders back on bikes and in big, dense cities such as London it’s by far the cheapest and easiest way to get around the centre of town.

Toronto's mandatory helmet laws, it seems, might doom the system.

One of the awkward truths of shared bicycle systems around the world is that the shorn inconveniences often include helmets. Few Bixi riders wear them.

Helmets are a source of much controversy in the cycling world. While governments and public health officials encourage their use, pointing to statistics that show the severity of head injuries is reduced by helmets, many cycling organizations argue they discourage casual riders by sending the message the sport is dangerous. Fewer riders means fewer public health benefits from the exercise. A lower critical mass of riders raises risk for the remaining riders, they say.

Authorities are left in the awkward position of promoting both helmet use and a bicycle system that unintentionally and indirectly discourages it.

Melbourne, Australia is one of the only cities with both a shared bicycle system and a mandatory helmet law. Bixi usage there has languished badly compared with other cities. Bixi’s parent company, Public Bike System, and the city have searched for solutions, such as introducing helmet rentals and vending machines.

Michael Rubbo, an Australian-Canadian cycling enthusiast and film maker who is now based near Sydney, has closely examined bicycle sharing in Montreal, Barcelona, Dublin and closer to home in Melbourne. He says the Melbourne system is at risk of failure unless the helmet law is softened.

But then, if one of the major complaints of Toronto cyclists--justifiably, to a non-trivial extent--is that it isn't as safe for bikers as one might like, does it really make sense to rescind entirely defensible safety regulations? Letting more people get their heads cracked apart to help a bike-sharing system get off the ground doesn't seem very defensible. All IMHO, of course.

[LINK] "Assumptions about exo-oceans"

Might Earth-style water oceans--not buried beneath layers of ice, like Europa's or Enceladus', but exposed to the atmosphere--but ubiquitous? Quite possibly, yes.

Not only may up to 25% of Sun-like stars have Earth-like planets – but if they are in the right temperature zone, apparently they are almost certain to have oceans. Current thinking is that Earth’s oceans formed from the accreted material that built the planet, rather than being delivered by comets at a later time. From this understanding, we can start to model the likelihood of a similar outcome occurring on rocky exoplanets around other stars.

Assuming terrestrial-like planets are indeed common – with a silicate mantle surrounding a metallic core – then we can expect that water may be exuded onto their surface during the final stages of magma cooling, or otherwise out-gassed as steam which then cools to fall back to the surface as rain. From there, if the planet is big enough to gravitationally retain a thick atmosphere and is in the temperature zone where water can remain fluid, then you’ve got yourself an exo-ocean.

We can assume that the dust cloud that became the Solar System had lots of water in it, given how much persists in the left-over ingredients of comets, asteroids and the like. When the Sun ignited some of this water may have been photo-dissociated, or otherwise blown out of the inner Solar System. However, cool rocky materials seem to have a strong propensity to hold water, and in this manner, could have kept water available for planet formation.

Meteorites from differentiated objects (i.e. planets or smaller bodies that have differentiated such that, while in a molten state, their heavy elements have sunk to a core displacing lighter elements upwards) have around 3% water content – while some undifferentiated objects (like carbonaceous asteroids) may have more than 20% water content.

Mush these materials together in a planet formation scenario and materials compressed at the centre become hot, causing outgassing of volatiles like carbon dioxide and water. In the early stages of planet formation much of this outgassing may have been lost to space – but as the object approaches planet size, its gravity can hold the outgassed material in place as an atmosphere. And despite the outgassing, hot magma can still retain water content – only exuding it in the final stages of cooling and solidification to form a planet’s crust.

Mathematical modelling suggests that if planets accrete from materials with 1 to 3% water content, liquid water probably exudes onto their surface in the final stages of planet formation – having progressively moved upwards as the planet’s crust solidified from the bottom up.

Otherwise, and even starting with a water content as low as 0.01%, Earth-like planets would still generate an outgassed steam atmosphere that would later rain down as fluid water upon cooling.

If this ocean formation model is correct, it can be expected that rocky exoplanets from 0.5 to 5 Earth masses, which form from a roughly equivalent set of ingredients, would be likely to form oceans within 100 millions years of primary accretion.

This model fits well with the finding of zircon crystals in Western Australia – which are dated at 4.4 billion years and are suggestive that liquid water was present that long ago – although this preceded the Late Heavy Bombardment (4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago) which may have sent all that water back into a steam atmosphere again.

[LINK] "Going Caucasian: Tbilisi Wooing White Africans"

News that some white South African farmers, seeking better economic and political opportunities, have sought to emigrate to different parts of Africa--Mozambique, Kenya, even Nigeria--has been commonplace. Via Siberian Light, I discovered Paul Wimple in the Moscow Times reporting that the former Soviet republic of Georgia is now trying to get in.

White South African farmers may become Georgia’s newest ethnic minority. In an effort to boost its agricultural potential, Georgia is wooing Boers dissatisfied with South Africa’s land reform policies to come till fertile Georgian land at next-to-nothing prices. Their expertise, it is believed, can turn around a feeble agricultural sector.

Of course, not everybody agrees.

Georgia’s reactionary opposition accuse the first lady, Sandra Roelofs, of lobbying on behalf of the Boer’s Dutch origins, while Georgian farmers wonder why the government is offering help to foreigners instead of locals. Mariam Jorjadze, from the agricultural organization Elkana, told the BBC that although a small number of farmers could bring investment opportunities, a large influx would create tensions with local farmers.

The South African Transvaal Agricultural Union is trying to sell the idea to disgruntled Boers and thinks that as many as 1,000 South Africans could end up in Georgia. Last October, one group was given a whirlwind tour, which included grape harvesting, wine tasting, a rugby match between the farmers and Georgian officials, and a tour of the Georgian motor vehicle department in Rustavi. Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili presented each member of the delegation a personalized license plate and a Georgian international driving license, processed in a mere 10 minutes.

The news has caught the attention of white supremacist web sites like the Council for Conservative Citizens and Stormfront.org, which see this as a white South African exodus in the making, only forum commentators can’t agree on whether Georgia is a white enough destination. Some note it is “Caucasian,” while Russian supremacists warn of Georgia’s racial and religious differences.

The ethnic differences are not lost on Georgians. Even though Georgia prides itself on its multi-ethnic makeup, an evident chauvinistic streak does exist. When Labor Party secretary Giorgi Gugava says he fears an ensuing ethnic imbalance at the possible arrival of Boers, he reflects a paranoia that is shared across party lines.

Georgia is still dragging its heels over the repartition of Meskhetian Turks, who were deported en masse in 1944. Since 1999, when Georgia agreed to repatriate its former citizens, only 1,000 have returned. Some 9,000 more have been waiting several years for their applications to be reviewed.

Nevertheless, Georgia is pinning its hopes on the Boers. Whether the Boers will come through remains to be seen because none of the 90 Afrikaners who have visited Georgia have committed themselves yet.

!

[ISL] Three links on the Kuril Islands

Russo-Japanese jockeying over the Kuril Islands--the once-Japanese islands in the Sea of Okhotsk annexed by the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War, and under Russian control to this day--has produced some interesting posts over the past month about those islands. Me, my opinion remains what it was before: it's somewhat ludicrous for a former Axis power to still be complaining about its territorial losses, counterproductive in terms of hoping to avoid isolation in East Asia vis-a-vis a rising China and South Korea, and ultimately hypocritical on Japan's part given its continuing claims to Korea's Dokdo islands on incomparably weaker grounds.

Arctic Progress blogged about Russia's preemptive military deployments to the Kuril Islands.

On Feb 9th, President Medvedev held a meeting with the Defense Minister and the Minister for Regional Development, giving instructions to improve regional defense capacities into order to guarantee Russian sovereignty over the Kurils.

A source in the Defense Ministry told RIA Novosti that the first two of the four Mistral helicopter carriers that Russia has acquired from France are to be deployed to the Pacific Fleet. This is to be accompanied by modernization of the regional 18th Division, and the addition of two S-400 “Triumf” SAM divisions, self-propelled Pantsyr-S1 air defense systems, several modern radar stations, and a Bastion P coastal defense system armed with Yakhont anti-ship missiles. Afterwards there are plans to construct an air base on the islands, with Su-35 fighters and anti-submarine aircraft.

Nonetheless, as noted by Nikolai Tulaev, a member of the Federation Council on Defense and Security, even after the military upgrades the Kurils will remain far less militarized than under the Soviet period.

At Beyond the Beyond, meanwhile, Bruce Sterling noted that his favourite ex-spy Anna Chapman is going to pay a visit to the Kuril Islands for a television program of hers.

Former spy Anna Chapman turned TV host will arrive on the disputed Kuril Islands in March to hoist the Russian flag and make a film about the life of local residents, Russian media have reported.

Chapman will be part of the delegation of the youth arm of Russia's ruling United Russia party, Molodaya Gvardia (Young Guard). She was named a member of the group's public council in late December.

The group plans to open its headquarters on Kunashir, the second-largest of the four islands disputed between Russia and Japan. Chapman has been tasked with hoisting the Russian flag on the island, which is well seen from Japan.

Finally, Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait photoblogs the terrifyingly inhospitable-looking Kuril island of Shikotan. (Well, he posts an image; the taker wasn't his satellite.