[PHOTO] Dovercourt railway bridge, from the north

Dovercourt railway bridge, from the north, a photo by randyfmcdonald on Flickr.

The railway bridge on Dovercourt Road between Dupont and Geary is a favourite subject of mine, photographed at night from the north here, its underside photographed here. The bridge has a nice amount of quotidian grace to it, don't you think?

[CAT] "Why cats need opposable thumbs"

The below YouTube video shows why cats need opposable thumbs.

Watch on YouTube

Wouldn't it be more convenient for humanity, and respectful of the dignity of Felis catus, for advanced genetic engineering to ensure that each and every individual of that species had an opposable thumbs? There are plenty of polydactyl cats already. Why not ensure that all enjoy the same benefits that we humans so casually--but crucially--enjoy every day?

[LINK] “Inside Syria's secret prisons”

I’d like to thank Facebook’s Derrick for linking to the story of imprisonment told by Dorothy Parvaz, an al-Jazeera journalist holding (among others) Canadian citizenship who was arrested on the 29th of April in Damascus to cover the Syrian protests and who was held captive in Syria and later Iran before her release earlier this month. Parvaz was lucky to be spared torture, but the people in her environment didn’t share in her good fortune. (“'We could clearly hear the interrogator pummelling his fists into his subject,' writes our correspondent” is the subtitle of her account published at al-Jazeera.)

Blindfolded, I was led to the first of my three cells - a tiny, sparse room, roughly three paces across and five length-wise. On the floor, on a ratty brown blanket, sat a young woman whose face was puffy from crying. She said she was 25 and from Damascus and indicated that she had been there for four days. She didn't know why she'd been picked up by the Mukhabarat, the Syrian intelligence service.

She said she was a shop assistant in a clothes store, and the designer stilettos that sat in the corner of the cell seemed to belie any suggestion that this was a girl who had left her house in order to participate in protests. She said she'd been speaking on her phone when she was hauled into a car, blindfolded and driven away.

She had no idea where she was, or how long she was to stay there. She had not been allowed to contact her family.

Our eyes moved to the month-long calendar etched on the wall, likely the artwork of a previous dweller. With unspoken glances, we each wondered how long she would remain there.

A man came to the door a couple of times before he took me from the cell, handcuffed and blindfolded me, and led me to what seemed like a courtyard.

He pushed me up against a wall and told me to stand there. As I did so, I heard two sets of interrogations and beatings taking place, about 10 meters away from me in either direction.

The beatings were savage, the words uttered by those beaten only hoarse cries – "Wallahi! Wahalli!" ("I swear to God! I swear to God!") or simply, "La! La!" ("No! No!").

I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, before someone approached me.

"Who do you work for?" he hissed.

"Al Jazeera. Online."

"Are you alone?"

"So alone."

I was taken to a second cell, this one, with smears of blood on the wall. I found what looked like a bloodless corner and perched until called upon again – at around midnight.

I was again handcuffed, but this time, before the blindfolds went on, I caught sight of a young man, no more than 20, chained to a radiator outside the hallway. He had a legal pad on his knees, was blindfolded, and was quivering so fiercely he could hardly hold the pen with which he was probably meant to ink some sort of confession.

Meanwhile, the beatings and cries outside continued.

Go and read the whole powerful account. If what Parvaz says is true--little doubt of that--then the Syrian regime has lost its legitimacy among its subjects. No wonder it’s willing to do whatever it takes to survive.

[LINK] "Prisoners of Gravity"

Could high escape velocities on super-Earths help explain the apparent absence of radio-transmitting extraterrestrial civilizations? Certainly it's a less depressing possibility than others. Andrew Barton argues at Acts of Minor Treason that many of the (broadly defined) Earth-like worlds so far discovered would have very high gravities. He uses Gliuese 581d, a planet that Barton calculates has nearly three times' Earth's gravity, as an example.

Local life forms would be short and bulky - in that kind of gravity, there's nothing to be gained by going up. Without the high mountains that lower gravity makes possible, land would tend to be lower and more eroded - conceivably, there could be high-gravity archipelago worlds. If you're interested, Extraterrestrials: A Field Guide for Earthlings by Terence Dickinson and Adolf Schaller goes into a bit more detail.

That's just biology - I'm more interested in technology. There's nothing about a high-gravity planet that fundamentally prevents an intelligent civilization from arising there, but one that did would face far greater challenges in some respects than we do. Culturally, it could theoretically have the deck stacked against it from the beginning. On a high-g planet, very few things fly and falls are exceedingly dangerous even from what we'd think of as trivial heights. That sort of environment could easily breed what would be, by human standards, an intensely conservative mindset - something like that, introduced early enough and reinforced enough by the environment, could put serious brakes on any kind of serious technological development, or perhaps just leave the people there in a long Bronze Age.

But let's look at Earthissimo. The people there have struggled against the chains of gravity enough to build a technological civilization that we might recognize in the broad strokes - details, of course, would differ immensely. The important issue, however, is access to space - without that, there's no chance of aliens coming to us. It's with access to space that the real challenges lie.

While it's certainly difficult to get to Earth orbit or beyond, it's certainly doable - a big part of the problem is that there aren't yet any economies of scale in the space industries, but even then you've still got to deal with accelerating to 9.4 kilometers per second even to reach the 300-kilometer altitude of the International Space Station. If you're leaving Earth entirely, escape velocity is 11.2 kilometers per second.

How envious the space freaks of Earthissimo would be of us. With all that extra mass pulling things down, it's not easy to get to orbit - Earthissimo's to-orbit velocity would be 44.91 kilometers per second, and if you want to escape entirely, you'll need to have a ship that can accelerate to 63.5 kilometers per second. The problem is that chemical rockets, such as the ones we used as we began to claw our way into the heavens, are insufficiently beefy. Rocket launches from Earthissimo would be incredibly complex and incredibly expensive - enough so that it's easy to imagine that the people there just wouldn't bother with it at all. Hell, we're having enough trouble getting it off the ground here!

[BRIEF NOTE] On Winnipeg's new NHL team

Everyone on my Facebook and Twitter feeds has been rejoicing at the news that the NHL hockey team the Atlanta Thrashers will be coming to Winnipeg, bringing NHL hockey back to Winnipeg a decade and a half after the 1996 departure of the Winnipeg Jets to Arizona.

Sources confirmed tonight that preparations are being made for an announcement Tuesday, confirming the sale and transfer of the Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment, which owns and operates the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League and the MTS Centre arena, which would become the NHL team’s new home.

Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the National Hockey League, is expected to travel to Winnipeg to make the news official.

The announcement would end months of speculation about whether one of the NHL’s financially-troubled American sunbelt teams might move north, filling the void left when the Winnipeg Jets packed up and left for Phoenix in 1996, where they became the Coyotes.

Much of the talk this spring had centred on that failing franchise, which was bought by the league after being placed in bankruptcy by its former owner Jerry Moyes in 2009.

But sources in Winnipeg suggest that the Thrashers had in fact been the primary target of potential owners Mark Chipman and David Thomson all along, and that some months back, the NHL board of governors quietly approved the sale and transfer of the team, pending the negotiation of a purchase agreement between Atlanta Spirit LLC, the Thrashers’ owners, and True North.

[. . .]

Even before those final negotiations took place, the potential Winnipeg owners concluded an agreement with the Manitoba government which will allow revenues from a sports bar with slot machine to be used for improvements to the arena, and to be used towards the debt service on the building.

That’s consistent with what Manitoba premier Greg Sellinger told reporters earlier this week, when he said that the provincial government had no interest in subsidizing an NHL team, but that the province had financially supported the renovation of the MTS Centre in the past, and would continue to be willing to do so.

The Globe and Mail's James Mirtle had described the problems facing the Thrashers in an article posted earlier this month, noting that Atlanta had sports teams it could turn to if the Thrashers left and that Atlanta already has a record of failure (the Calgary Flames came to Alberta from Atlanta back in 1980). The reaction of Atlanta fans is understandably negative, but as USA Today noted back in February the signs of departure were there. You even had some Canadians hoping to scout out the team.

As the Thrashers (25-23-10) try to earn their second playoff berth in 11 seasons — they sit ninth in the Eastern Conference, one spot out of qualifying range — the noise around whether the team is viable in Atlanta long term grows.

Busloads of Quebec City fans, clamoring for a team, traveled 535 miles to Nassau Coliseum on Long Island to see the New York Islanders play the Thrashers, a bid to show a fervor that exists north of the border. They camped behind the goals.

Thrashers President Don Waddell said a Quebec City newspaper sent reporters to inquire about the demise of hockey in Atlanta and whether the team might be relocated to — where else — Quebec City, which lost its team to Colorado in 1995. Winnipeg, which lost the Jets to Phoenix in 1996, also covets the Thrashers.

[. . .]

The Thrashers started the season 7-9 but then ripped off eight wins in nine games in a November-December stretch, and it looked like the black drape covering empty seats in the upper level might have to come down. Fans started to trickle back, but then there was a familiar downturn in January and February that featured 12 losses in 17 games.

The Thrashers' lone playoff experience came in 2007-08, when they were swept by the New York Rangers in a first-round series.

There have been seven losing seasons in 10, and the season ticket base has dwindled to between 6,000 and 7,000, which means the team has to sell a whopping 10,000 tickets each home game to get a good crowd in the 18,750-seat arena.

"I used to have eight season tickets, now I have three because I couldn't get anyone to take the other five," said Dennis Grogan, a distributor from Buford, Ga., who has been a season ticketholder for 10 years. "I was giving those five away.

"You want to see a better effort by ownership. This looks like a better team, so maybe it is turning around."

The owners are a target because their payroll is next-to-last in the NHL, $17 million under the $59.4 million salary cap. The Thrashers are averaging 13,056 fans this season, which ranks 29th. They weren't much better last season (13,607).

"This is a town with a lot of fans who are front-runners, and I think it is one of the toughest sports markets there is," said Bernie Mullen, former president of the Atlanta Spirit and now a sports consultant with the Atlanta-based The Aspire Group. "You have to win."

Will Québec City be next?

Regardless, my congratulations to Winnipeggers. You deserve a NHL team of your own.

(And sorry Atlantans.)