[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• blogTO points out a map--well-grounded, this time--by a pro-Transit City group that doesn't want all the money put to subways.


• Bruce Sterling links, at Beyond the Beyond, to a promo video by fashion deisgners Rodarte, combining their distressed fabrics with the Space X experimental labs.


• Centauri Dreams also reports on the anomalous heat generation on Enceladus, suggesting that this makes the case for oceans on that Saturn moon all the more likely.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on the various stealth aircraft projects around the world.


• Daniel Drezner engages with the question, newly energized by the revelations surrounding the interactions and support lent by prominent political scientists and others when Gaddafi seemed a reformist, and what the academy's relationship with power should be.


• Eastern Approaches reports on the Estonian elections, which kept the free-market Reform Party in power.


• GNXP notes DNA studies suggesting that the most diverse human populations are in southern Africa, not eastern Africa, suggesting either that southern Africa is where our species evolved or that greater diversity in eastern Africa was overwhelmed by recent migrations.


• Language Hat takes a look at language in Libya, where the Arabic language is well-ensconced but notable language minorities remain.


• Language Log has at Christopher Hitchens for his tendentiousness re: the usage of "brutalizes". Who knew he was so retro?


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Scott Lemieux wonders when Instapundit Glenn Reynolds is going to note that, actually, all that it took was for anti-gay policies to be removed and campuses did see ROTC again.


• Slap Upside the Head is thoroughly unimpressed with Mayor Ford and Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, inasmuch as their feud is threatening city funding of Toronto pride.


• Spacing Toronto's Jessica Lemieux takes a look at soil remediation in formerly industrial areas of Toronto.


• Torontoist's reports on the straight students in a Toronto school's gay-straight alliance.


• Towleroad's Andrew Belonsky notes Grindr's expansion to Android, wondering about the potential for spontaneous contacts the software offers based on shared interests.

[LINK] "Off the Rails"

"Why do conservatives hate trains so much?" is the subtitle of David Weigel's Slate article. Weigel's writing about American conservatives, and the seeming paradox that at the time that the movie Atlas Shrugged with its high-speed train is coming out many Americans are hostile to passenger trains. His conclusion? It's a combination of ill-thought opposition to transport subsidies and a dislike of European-style densification, even in high-density areas, all coupled with a belief that it's just another item on liberals' list of behaviours to be (unnaturally) modified.

What, exactly, do Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians have against trains? Seriously, what? Why did President George W. Bush try to zero out Amtrak funding in 2005? Why is the conservative Republican Study Committee suggesting that we do so now? Why does George Will think "the real reason for progressives' passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans' individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism"?

[. . .]

Libertarians, of course, have no problem with trains (see, e.g., Atlas Shrugged). They do have a problem with federal spending on transportation, as do many Republicans. Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957; Amtrak took over the rails in 1971. Since then, conservatives will sing the praises of private rail projects but criticize federally funded projects that don't meet the ideal. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., for example, pushed a high-speed rail initiative through Congress in 2008. By 2010, he was denouncing "the Soviet-style Amtrak operation" that had "trumped true high-speed service" in Florida. In 2011, as the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, he is interested in saving the Orlando-Tampa project by building 21 miles between the airport and Disney World. This is about 21 miles farther than local Republicans want to go.

For more than a decade, Lind and a conservative movement icon, Paul Weyrich, collaborated on papers about why conservatives should support rail. Their 2001 paper, "Twelve Anti-Transit Myths: A Conservative Critique," actually tackled 34 "myths" about rail, including "rail transit is a federal conspiracy" and "trains are noisy." It ended with Lind and Weyrich declaring of their foes: "THESE PEOPLE DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT!" Weyrich died in 2008, effectively cutting the number of conservative rail prophets in half.

"Conservatives used to be in favor of a civilized way of doing things," says Lind. "Board a train and you don't have the TSA groping you. If you think our greatest vulnerability is a dependence on foreign oil, here's a way to get around that can run on coal or electrified rails."

But conservatives hear that spiel every day. They have a response that's part economics and part culture. The economics are simple: Trains cost too much. Randal O'Toole, a Cato Institute fellow who studies transportation and is constantly cited by rail skeptics, likes to compare the total federal subsidies-per-passenger of rail to subsidies-per-passenger on highways. Amtrak got $2.2 billion in pure subsidies in 2010 and carried 28.7 million people, for around 13 cents per passenger, although some researchers estimate the annual cost at closer to 30 cents. Highways got $42 billion in funds in fiscal year 2010, but far more people use them; the estimate puts cost at between 1 cent and 4 cents per driver.

But there is another way to look at the numbers: Amtrak passengers pay more of the cost of their transportation than do drivers on the interstate. About 62 percent of Amtrak's operating expenses, according to the Department of Transportation, comes from fares. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the percentage of highway spending paid for by users—in the form of gas taxes and tolls—is headed below 50 percent.

[. . .]

Leaving aside the apparent contradiction—first rail doesn't make sense because no one would ride it, then it doesn't make sense because too many people would want to ride it—Cox's point is the conservatives' second play in their anti-rail argument: the cultural case against rail. Rail can't work because people don't want to ride it. Liberals want to fund rail because they want to change behavior.

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] On non-hypocritical anti-abortion laws and activists

News of a proposed law in Georgia that could subject women who have miscarriages to the death penalty has been extensively covered--here, for instance, by Mother Jones' Jen Philips, interviewed in the below MSNBC segment.

"The Girl And The Robot (Kris Menace Remix) - Röyksopp ft. Robyn" (Watch on YouTube)

Her summary?

There's a new bill on the block that may have reached the apex (I hope) of woman-hating craziness. Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin—who last year proposed making rape and domestic violence "victims" into "accusers"—has introduced a 10-page bill that would criminalize miscarriages and make abortion in Georgia completely illegal. Both miscarriages and abortions would be potentially punishable by death: any "prenatal murder" in the words of the bill, including "human involvement" in a miscarriage, would be a felony and carry a penalty of life in prison or death. Basically, it's everything an "pro-life" activist could want aside from making all women who've had abortions wear big red "A"s on their chests.

I doubt that a bill that makes a legal medical procedure liable for the death penalty will pass. The bill, however, shows an astonishing lack of concern for women's health and well-being. Under Rep. Franklin's bill, HB 1, women who miscarry could become felons if they cannot prove that there was "no human involvement whatsoever in the causation" of their miscarriage. There is no clarification of what "human involvement" means, and this is hugely problematic as medical doctors do not know exactly what causes miscarriages. Miscarriages are estimated to terminate up to a quarter of all pregnancies and the Mayo Clinic says that "the actual number is probably much higher because many miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy that a woman doesn't even know she's pregnant. Most miscarriages occur because the fetus isn't developing normally."

Holding women criminally liable for a totally natural, common biological process is cruel and non-sensical. Even more ridiculous, the bill holds women responsible for protecting their fetuses from "the moment of conception," despite the fact that pregnancy tests aren't accurate until at least 3 weeks after conception. Unless Franklin (who is not a health professional) invents a revolutionary intrauterine conception alarm system, it's unclear how exactly the state of Georgia would enforce that rule other than holding all possibly-pregnant women under lock and key.

Besides noting that this legislation almost certainly exists in the Glileadean theocracy that Margaret Atwood describes in her The Handmaid's Tale--a book that, I should note, was certainly not intended by Atwood to be an instructional tome--I will say that Franklin is one of the few strongly anti-abortion people I know who are consistent in their positions.

I have always found find remarkably inconsistent the people who condemn abortion as murder, innumerable abortions as acts of genocide entirely comparable to anything done by Hitler or Stalin, and then go on to not favour radical action in the name of the millions murdered hypocritical. Are these human lives, or are these human lives?

Likewise, I have always found inconsistent those call abortion murder but then go on to call the women who commissioned their abortions as victims, undeserving of criminal prosecution. Why should infanticide escape punishment? Even if women aren't fully capable moral actors, surely they knew what they were doing and--wicked, wicked!--planned anyway to murder the life that they were to nurture.

Franklin is a man who's consistent: yes, a fetus is a human life as worthy of protection as any other; yes; women who don't take proper care of the life that they're supposed to nurture should be punished. His radical honesty isn't something a sane civilization should strive for, mind, but it's something to be noted. Would that other anti-abortion opinionmakers were as consistent as him.

And below, for illustrative purposes, is a 2008 photo I took of the address of the former location of Dr. Henry Morgenthaler's famous Harbord Street abortion clinic in downtown Toronto. You know he got the Order of Canada, right?

[LINK] "And it’s one jet airliner, for ten prisoners…"

I thought I'd link to Alexander Harrowell's analysis at A Fistful of Euros of the importance of control of the air in Libya. At the time of his analysis, Harrowell thought that control of the air was important not so much in the sense of fighting in the air--air strikes weren't used overmuch and the Libyan Air Force is agreed to be inept--but in the sense of airlifting troops and supplies. The government's well-endowed in this area, and a no-fly zone might have unfortunate accidents possible in its future.

One thing that is perhaps being overlooked by people discussing whether or not it would be wise to impose a no-fly zone over Libya is exactly what such a zone would set out to prevent. When it was first suggested, it was inspired by the general horror that the Libyan government was having crowds of civilians strafed by its Sukhoi 22 close-support aircraft. However, especially since several Libyan Air Force crews defected to Malta and to the revolution, air activity has turned out to be much less significant in what is beginning to look like a classical West- or Central-African civil war, based around Toyota pickups and 23mm Russian anti-aircraft guns and mercenaries paid with the money from exporting some mineral or other. You know the one.

It’s fairly well known that Libya sponsored several of the key warlords of 90s West Africa – Foday Sankoh, Charles Taylor, and several others originally met up in Libyan-funded training camps. Interestingly, not only did one of the versions of Jetline International base itself in Tripoli and trade aircraft back and forth with two of Viktor Bout’s companies, but Gaddafi’s government maintains an impressive airlift capacity. As well as the two flag-carrier airlines, Libyan Arab and Afriqiyah, whose names track the changing priorities of foreign policy, the Air Force operates a semi-commercial cargo wing, Libyan Arab Air Cargo, with a fleet of Ilyushin 76 and even two enormous Antonov-124s, some of very few such aircraft owned outside the former Soviet Union.

[. . .]

The upshot of this is that logistics, rather than tactical air power, might be the most important factor in Gaddafi’s efforts to defeat the Libyan revolution/win the Libyan civil war. Rather than engaging in combat, the aim might instead be blockade, as a complement to the international financial sanctions already in place. (A ship has recently been stopped in British waters carrying large quantities of freshly printed Libyan currency.)

On the other hand, it also adds complexity and risk to the whole issue. There are still plenty of people who want to leave Libya, and British government-chartered airliners are ferrying some of them from Tunisia to Egypt. It would be a bad business, to say the least, to shoot down an Il-76 full of refugees. It could be better to try to cut off the supply chain at source by grounding Libyan aircraft elsewhere in the world, although this requires the cooperation of those states who are still willing to let them recruit on their territory. Further, imposing a blockade also implies a responsibility for the survival of the civilian population. Sending aid to eastern Libya has already been suggested, of course.

[LINK] "Ecologies of Gold"

I found Dorothy Tang and Andrew Watkins' photoessay Ecologies of Gold: The Past and Future Mining Landscapes of Johannesburg" thanks to Landscape and Urbanism's linkage. The South African metropolis of Johannesburg was built by the late 19th century gold rush; Zulu name eGoli means "place of gold." Tang and Watkins illustrate how urban settlement in Johannesburg has been shaped by the gold mines, especially as the informal settlements created in the post-apartheid urbanization run up against the gold mines.

Over the past century a range of factors — fluctuating international gold prices, changing demands for mining labor, the construction of infrastructure and the need to dispose of mining waste — has shaped the development of what is now the most urbanized province in South Africa. In particular, the 80-kilometer mining belt between the two cities is riddled by deep-shaft mines, where companies built an extensive network of underground tunnels and moved large amounts of earth to the surface. These operations have weakened geological strata, disrupted natural drainage patterns and altered ecological habitat. The original semi-arid grasslands ecology is now converted to an urban forest, and sediment from mining waste has blocked natural waterways, unexpectedly creating wetlands with rich bird habitat. Massive mine dumps, many upwards of 30 meters tall, have become landmarks of Johannesburg — or eGoli, “the place of gold,” in Zulu.

In the 1970s the gold mines moved from Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni to the rural areas of the Witwatersrand, and informal settlements began to occupy the vacant mining lands in the heart of the city. The end of apartheid, in 1994, brought a large influx of rural residents — mostly blacks or foreign Africans — seeking opportunities in Johannesburg and joining family and friends in existing informal settlements along the mining belt. Currently 25 percent of the population in Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni live in informal settlements, and approximately a quarter of them — 400,000 people — are in the mining belt. The settlements range from 100 to 40,000 people, with the largest communities in Ekurhuleni, where the mining companies have expended fewer resources to police the land.

Not surprisingly, the settlements face myriad obstacles. Local zoning laws prevent them from receiving municipal services such as water, electricity and sanitation. Having no secure right to the land, the settlers construct homes from scrap metal and found wood; and despite such resourcefulness, they've encountered degraded environmental conditions that seriously hampered efforts to improve living standards and achieve formal municipal status.

Changing ownership structures and bankruptcies in the mining industries have made it difficult to determine who is responsible for the environmental remediation of the old mining land (despite strict environmental regulations). Shallowly undermined land — caused by underground mines close to the ground surface — makes it technically difficult to construct permanent buildings and basic infrastructure, while the fine dust from neighboring mine dumps poses health risks such as respiratory disease and cancer. To complicate the situation, new extraction technologies and rising gold prices are enabling the recovery of gold from mine dumps. Massive topographical and hydrological operations have been set in motion once again; the old mine dumps are disappearing, gold slurry and water are piped throughout the region and waste has been transferred to new “super dumps” on the periphery. Newly freed land is being redeveloped for light industry and recreation; yet the population of greater Johannesburg is projected to double over the next 20 years, creating a significant housing shortage. This has created tension over land; but it's also led to unexpected partnerships between the mining companies and informal settlements.

Sometimes, they run up quite dramatically against each other.



Originally found here for display on this page.

As the first settlers arrived during the gold rush in 1886, Johannesburg and many smaller mining communities grew along a linear mining belt at the northern edge of the Witwatersrand Basin. Over the past century, gold mines and associated facilities, such as mine dumps, have occupied prime real estate in central areas of Johannesburg and its sister city, Ekurhuleni, setting the stage for current land use tensions along the mining belt. The Top Star mine dump, shown here, was constructed from 1899 to 1939, reaching a height of 50 meters and containing 5.1 million metric tons of chemically processed mine waste. In the early 1960s, Top Star was converted into a drive-in movie theater, which showed movies until 2006, when it was shut down by DRD Gold to extract latent gold in the mine waste. The mine dump’s dramatic height within Johannesburg’s urban core offered spectacular views of the Central Business District.

Go, read and see.

[LINK] "Elephants Lend a Helping Trunk, Pass Cooperation Test"

Elephant intelligence doesn't seem to be all that widely speculated about. Other primates resemble human beings so much that it's difficult not to recognize their intelligence, cetaceans are famously cute and charismatic, and cephalopods of late have had weirdness backing them up. Elephants, though, not so much despite a mass of anecdote. A new study suggests that elephants are capable of advanced cognition.

Elephants recently aced a test of their intelligence and ability to cooperate, with two of them even figuring out ways that the researchers hadn't previously considered to obtain food rewards.

The study, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlights not only the intelligence of individual elephants, but also the ability of these animals to cooperate and understand the value of teamwork.

Scientists now believe elephants are in league with chimpanzees and dolphins as being among the world's most cognitively advanced animals.

"Elephant sociality is very complex," lead author Joshua Plotnik told Discovery News. "Social groups are made up of matriarchal herds (an older female is in charge), and varying levels of relatedness among members. Cooperation in elephants was most likely necessary in a context of communal care for, and protection of, young."

"In the wild, there are fascinating anecdotes of elephants working together to lift or help fallen members, and forming clusters to protect younger elephants," added Plotnik, a Cambridge University researcher who is also head of research at Thailand's Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation.

Tests of elephant intelligence and their other abilities are rare, simply because working with these large and potentially dangerous animals poses risks. To meet the challenge, Plotnik and colleagues Richard Lair, Wirot Suphachoksahakun, and Frans de Waal reworked a classic 1930s experiment used on primates.

The researchers positioned a sliding table, holding enticing red bowls full of yummy corn, some distance away from a volleyball net. A rope was tied around the table such that the table would only move if two elephants working together pulled on the dangling rope ends. If just one elephant pulled, the rope would unravel. To get to the front of the volleyball net, the elephants had to walk down two separate, roped-off lanes.

A total of 12 male and female elephants from the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, Thailand, participated. It's estimated that fewer than 2,500 of these animals are left in the Thai jungle, so conservation efforts now are critical.

After quickly learning that the corn-on-the-table task could not be successfully completed solo, elephants would wait up to 45 seconds for the second "partner" elephant to show up. If the researchers did not release this second elephant, the first one basically looked around as if to say: "You've got to be kidding. It takes two to do this." In most cases, the elephants got the corn.

Two elephants, named Neua Un and JoJo, even figured out how to outwit the researchers.

"We were pleasantly surprised to see the youngest elephant, Neua Un, use her foot to hold the rope so that her partner had to do all the work," Plotnik said. "I hadn't thought about this beforehand, and Neua Un seemed to figure it out by chance, but it speaks volumes to the flexibility of elephant behavior that she was able to figure this out and stick to it."

Video is below.

"Falling sakura of Russell Street, University of Toronto" (Watch on YouTube)