[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Andrew Barton at Acts of Minor Treason writes about how the CBC's innovative programming let him learn and enjoy things he'd otherwise not have. The cutbacks will not do good things for the national broadcaster.


• Jeff Jedras at A BCer in Toronto pins the blame for the massive cost overruns in Canada's share of the vastly overexpensive F-35 fighter program squarely on the Conservative Party and its ministers.


• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster shares the good news that the United States will resume producing the radioactive isotope plutonium-238 so as to provide the necessary fuel for outer-system space probes.


• Crasstalk's Mean Ol' Liberal reflects on the meaning of the bulls of Wall Street, not only the statue but the speculators.


• Daniel Drezner thinks that if China's leadership really does see global geopolitics as a zero-sum phenomenon, China's relationship with the United States may face substantially more risks than previously thought.


• At Geocurrents, Martin Lewis notes that the northern half of Mali claimed by Tuareg rebels for their national homeland actually has very large non-Tuareg populations.


• The Global Sociology Blog notes the incentives to sociopathy in the global economy.


• Noel Maurer, at The Power and the Money, notes that the Mexican city of Monterrey has a rather high population density by American standards, and a high density of police, too. Thus, its crime rate has little if anything to do with the city's sprawl.


• Registan notes the ongoing solidification and intensification of ethnic divisions between Kyrgyz and Uzbek in southern Kyrgyzstan in the years after the deadly Osh riots.


• Torontoist's Todd Aalgard notes that plans to immediately rebuild a platground in Toronto's High Park are stymied by the need to meet city safety and building codes.

[LINK] "Wreaths, tears mark 95 years since Vimy Ridge battle"

CTV reports on the commemoration, at the battlesite in France, of the 95th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The site of a Canadian military victory over the Germans in the First World War, the success of the Canadian offensive is frequently cited as one of the signal elements in the birth of a Canadian nationality.

I have some qualms about the battle's role as a reference point--Is referencing a bloody First World War battle as key to nationhood a good thing to do? Can Vimy Ridge continue to serve as a reference point with all of Canada's veterans dead? Given the opposition of French Canada to the war what does this imply?--but I don't see any harm in the commemoration as such.

Thousands of Canadians gathered at the site of the Battle of Vimy Ridge Monday, to mark 95 years since the fight in northern France that some say was a turning point in forging Canada's identity as an independent nation.

Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney joined 5,000 young Canadians for ceremonies at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, which overlooks the Douai Plain from the highest point of Vimy Ridge.

Blaney said he saw some students with tears in their eyes as they toured sites that were once trodden by soldiers from the four divisions of the Canadian Corps that launched their assault on this day in 1917.

"They are really carrying the sacrifice…we can see the emotion," he told CTV News Channel in a phone interview from Vimy.

Standing on the Vimy monument's terrace, it's possible to look down at an expanse of fields and hills, places where Canadians battled and died. Blaney said visiting the spot was a life-changing experience.

"It's not about the triumph, or only about victory. It's about the loss of a young nation," he said. "That's why it's so important."

Canada lost 3,600 men in their bid to capture the ridge that French and British forces had already fought the two years prior to capture at a cost of some 100,000 lives.

It took four days of battle for Canada to seize control of the entire ridge.

[LINK] "MacKay aware of F-35s' extra $10B cost"

This news about the inflated costs of upgrading Canada's air force by purchasing the troubled United States F-35 fighter--not inflated at all, says the Defense Minister--is infuriating. Logic-chopping is not cool.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay says he was aware two years ago that it would cost closer to $25 billion to buy a new fleet of F-35 stealth fighter jets.

That's about $10 billion more than the nearly $15 billion the government has maintained would be the price of the 65 radar-evading aircraft.

MacKay was asked on CTV's Question Period whether he was aware of the higher internal number. He said the higher number takes into account the ongoing cost of pilots' salaries and other costs associated with operating the current fleet of CF-18 jet fighters.

"Yes, and it was explained to me just that way, that the additional $10 billion was money that you could describe as sunk costs, that is what we're paying our personnel, and the fuel that is currently being expended in CF-18s, jet fuel, maintenance costs, what we are currently spending. So not part of a new acquisition," MacKay said.

Auditor General Michael Ferguson issued a scathing report this past week that slammed the military for keeping Parliament in the dark on the true cost of the procurement. He pegged the eventual cost of the project at $25 billion.

Ferguson also suggested to reporters that cabinet ministers would have known the true cost of buying the new planes was much higher than the numbers they were using publicly.

[. . .] MacKay, speaking Sunday from his Nova Scotia riding, said the $10-billion discrepancy comes down to an accounting difference. The minister insisted it was not a deliberate attempt to conceal the total pricetag of the jets.

"There's a different interpretation in the all-up costs," he said. "But the way acquisitions have always been done is to key in on the actual costs of new equipment, and that is the way that this number was arrived at."

[LINK] "The Economic Depression of 'The Hunger Games'"

This article on the dire economy of Panem, the far-future North American state of The Hunger Games trilogy, was written by one Kevin Baier, writer for the student paper of St. Mary's College in Maryland (The Point News). Without giving away any spoilers, I can say that he has got the political economy of Panem down but good.

The President and senior government officials of Panem must have slept through ECON 101 back in their heyday at District 13 University (or maybe they were too busy rebelling). Minus The Capitol, Districts 1 through 12 have to suffer through the awfulness of pre-industrial agrarian economies. Many economists estimate that the GDP per capita of Districts 1 through 12 is a measly one loaf of bread, a two pound bag of berries, and one haunch of squirrel meat (approximately $7) whereas the GDP per capita in The Capitol is three supersonic trains and one eccentric wardrobe (approximately $36 million). Whereas The Capitol is home to approximately eight million people, all 12 districts house the other 300 million Panemians. Some welfare economists estimate the gini coefficient of Panem to be approximately .992.

The economic structure of Panem creates a net loss of human capital each year as some of the countries brightest and innovative entrepreneurs are forced to kill each other. Even human capital superstars like Katniss Everdeen are used inefficiently as her labor specialization lies far away from coal-mining, the main economic activity of her district (12). The Capitol has removed virtually all capital and labor incentives and has suspended all investment and capital flows to the outlying 12 districts. In District 12, for example, The Capitol has forced a labor intensive coal-mining operation where historical economic records note that before the rebellion District 12 grew at an average rate of six percent thanks to its capital intensive economy. The few Capitol scholars who say more than “punishment for the rebellion” when asked about District growth rates said District 12 is one of its more promising cases, growing at -26 percent every year.

Eventually, the inefficient allocation of resources to labor-intensive operations will skyrocket costs so the high the CBO estimates that Panem’s unemployment rate will increase from 35 percent to 62 percent. Real wages have been so depressed for years that consumption and savings levels are at historic Panem lows. Because the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is approximately one, the citizens of Districts 1 through 12 have fallen into the “poverty trap.” With such low levels of consumption and savings, and subsequently output, the tax base will shrink incredibly. This shrinkage will force The Capitol to dramatically increase marginal tax rates for its citizens from zero percent to 91 percent, a level not seen since the Kennedy administration, which will eventually cause severe contractions of capital, investment, and labor because of the low-value of work and the high level of leisure. The inevitable substitution effect will eventually cause The Capitol to resemble something like a Hooverville.

[CAT] "Even in the 1870s, humans were obsessed with ridiculous photos of cats"

io9's Cyriaque Lamar has a delightful post up highlighting the fact that ridiculous cute cat pictures have a history long predating the Internet. Blame the invention of photography. He links to an essay about English photographer Harry Pointer's sideline.

During the 1870s, the Brighton photographer Harry Pointer (1822-1889) became well known for a series of carte-de-visite photographs which featured his pet cats. Pointer began by taking conventional photographs of cats resting, drinking milk or sleeping in a basket, but from around 1870 he specialised in photographing cats in a variety of poses, placing his cats in settings that would create a humorous or appealing picture. Pointer often arranged his cats in unusual poses that mimicked human activities - a cat riding a tricycle, cats roller-skating and even a cat taking a photograph with a camera. Harry Pointer soon realised that even a relatively straight-forward cat photograph could be turned into an amusing or appealing image by adding a written caption. Pointer increased the commercial potential of his cat pictures by adding a written greeting such as "A Happy New Year" or "Very many happy returns of the day". Purchasers sent the small cartes-de-visite as tiny greetings cards, thereby publicizing Pointer's distinctive cat photographs. By 1872, Harry Pointer had created over one hundred different captioned images of cats. Harry Pointer's series of cat photographs were collectively known as "The Brighton Cats". The Photographic News reported that, by 1884, Pointer had published about two hundred pictures in "The Brighton Cats" series.

Kitty!

[LINK] "Same-Sex Marriage in the Anglosphere"

Canadian pollster (with Angus Reid) Mario Canseco has contributed an interesting analysis, based on opinion polling, of differing attitudes in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States regarding the legal status of same-sex marriage. It turns out that men and older people in all four countries are more skeptical of same-sex marriage than women and younger cohorts, and that Americans stand out for their relatively hostile stance to homosexuality.

In Australia and Britain, about one-third of respondents believe that civil unions or partnerships are enough for same-sex couples (and that full-fledged marriage laws are therefore unnecessary). Only about one-fifth of respondents in Canada and the United States believe the same. Americans, however, are far more likely to think that same-sex couples should get no legal recognition at all: 27 per cent of American respondents feel this way, compared to 14 per cent of Canadian and Australian respondents, and 15 per cent of British respondents. Fewer than one in five Canadian and Australian respondents over the age of 55 believe that same-sex couples should get no legal recognition. This proportion grows to 21 per cent in Britain, and jumps to 33 per cent in the United States. It is important to note that older Aussies and Brits like the civil-partnership idea more than marriage or no legal recognition.

Several American states have held votes in an attempt to define marriage in their respective constitutions. This idea has not been discussed prominently in Australia and Britain, but the Angus Reid poll suggests that people in these three countries would vote very differently if they had the chance. If a referendum on the definition of marriage took place in Australia – where voting is mandatory and where the last nationwide plebiscite focused on the monarchy – the definition of marriage as a legal union between two people, rather than exclusively between a man and a woman, would emerge victorious. Britons are evenly split on this question, while Americans would vote to keep the current definition of marriage as “between a man and a woman.”

Americans’ opposition to the legalization of same-sex marriage is not caused, as some people have argued, by the apparent absence of gay and lesbian friends or relatives in the United States. In fact, 56 per cent of respondents in the United States know someone who is gay or lesbian. While this percentage is lower than in Australia and Canada, it still represents a majority, and is higher than in Britain. The main variance for Americans is their more general stance on homosexuality. While majorities of Canadians and Australians – and practically half of Britons – believe that people are born gay, only 40 per cent of Americans agree with this notion. Last year, one in four Americans said they believe it is possible to convert gays and lesbians into heterosexuals through prayer.

Go, read.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Earth-like worlds and red dwarfs

I think that io9 may have overreached in titling a post. The post "Why we won’t find Earth-2 around a red dwarf star" links to a very interesting paper regarding unconsidered problems facing potentially Earth-like planets around red dwarf stars, "Tidal Venuses: Triggering a Climate Catastrophe via Tidal Heating" by Barnes, Mullins, et al., but the paper consider a specific known exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf--Gliese 667C c, covered by me back in February here--and concludes that it could be habitable after all.

What's going on? It all has to do with the habitable zones around stars, the set of orbits in which a planet could plausibly support an Earth-like climate friendly to liquid water. Traditional calculations of a habitable zone have considered the radiant energy produced by a star. For red dwarfs--dim, low mass stars--a planet in the habitable zone would be closely bound by gravitation to its star, quite possibly with one side forever facing its sun in much the same way that one side of the Moon forever faces the Earth and the other forever faces away. This degree of tidal locking wouldn't prevent such a planet from being habitable, as atmospheric models suggest that an atmosphere only slightly denser than Mars would be capable of transporting enough heat to prevent the planet's atmosphere from freezing on the dark side. Other constraints, however, might exist. The authors identify the heat produced by the gravitational tides exerted by a star on such a close planet as a major source of heat.

As a planet moves from periastron, its closest approach to the star, to apoastron, the furthest point, and back again, the gravitational force changes, being inversely proportional to distance squared. This difference creates an oscillating strain on the planet that causes it to undergo periodic deformation. The rigidity of the planet resists the deformation, and friction generates heat. This energy production is called tidal heating.

Tidal heating is responsible for the volcanism on Io (Strom et al. 1979; Laver et al. 2007), which was predicted, using tidal theory, by Peale et al. (1979). Io is a small body orbiting Jupiter with an eccentricity of 0.0041, which is maintained by the gravitational perturbations of its fellow Galilean moons, that shows global volcanism which resurfaces the planet on a timescale of 100 – 105 years (Johnson et al. 4 1979; Blaney et al. 1995; McEwen et al. 2004). The masses of Jupiter and Io are orders of magnitude smaller than a star and terrestrial exoplanet, and thus the latter have a much larger reservoir of orbital and rotational energy available for tidal heating. Moreover, some exoplanets have been found with orbital eccentricities larger than 0.9 (Naef et al. 2001; Jones et al. 2006; Tamuz et al. 2008). Thus, the tidal heating of terrestrial exoplanets may be much more effective than on Io (Jackson et al. 2008c,a; Barnes et al. 2009a, 2010; Heller et al. 2011). This expectation led to the proposition that terrestrial exoplanets with surface heat fluxes as large or larger than Io’s should be classified as “Super-Ios”, rather than “Super-Earths” (Barnes et al. 2009b).

The authors go on to calculate that it's quite possible for some planets closely orbiting red dwarf stars, especially worlds orbiting low-mass red dwarf stars (less than 20% the mass of our sun, perhaps) and worlds with very eccentric orbits, to be located within the "classical" habitable zone of their star but nonetheless be so heated by the tidal forces exerted by their star as to become "Tidal Venuses", becoming superheated worlds which lose their water to evaporation in space in just hundreds of millions of years. The aforementioned Gliese 667C c is not likely to be such a planet, according to the team's calculations, as its orbit is too distant. Other worlds, as yet undiscovered, may not be so lucky.