[PHOTO] Looking east, westbound subway tunnel, Yonge and Bloor

[LINK] "Conrad Black cleared to return to Canada — temporarily"

Remember how I asked last night what Conrad Black's fate would be, bereft of Canadian citizenship but wanting entry?

Right.

It was never that up in the air, and to be sure there is a valid humanitarian case to be made for allowing his entry. I just find it more than a bit ironic that he wants to be Canadian again after condemning Canadian citizenship as a prize that might be attractive to desperate Haitians and Romanians but was otherwise lacking.

Former media mogul Conrad Black has been given permission to return to Canada after his release from a Florida jail, which could happen as early as Friday.

The federal government has cleared the way for Black's return by granting him a one-year temporary resident permit which is valid from May 2012 to May 2013, according to a source.

[. . .]

The authorization of a temporary permit is the first step in Black's quest to return to Canada long-term — but he will have to pass through a series of immigration hurdles to become a Canadian citizen again.

In 2001, the Montreal-born Black gave up his Canadian citizenship to accept a peerage in Britain's House of Lords. He did this because then-prime minister Jean Chretien would not allow him to accept the title as a Canadian citizen.

[. . .]

Black has made it clear he wants to return to Canada, but his criminal conviction and lack of Canadian citizenship pose problems.

Black's ultimate goal is to once again become a citizen. But he can only be considered for citizenship after he has successfully attained permanent residency status and has lived in the country for at least one year. Experts have questioned how easy it will be for Black to get permanent residency status, given his criminal conviction.

[. . .]

On Parliament Hill Tuesday, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney would not say whether Black had been granted the permit. But he did answer questions about the case in general.

He said that foreign nationals are eligible to apply for temporary resident permits to come to Canada. He said he couldn't comment on Black's case in the absence of Black's explicit permission without violating the Citizenship Act.

"It's the only legal answer I can give," Kenney told reporters. "If anyone of you can obtain a waiver from the privacy act from Mr. Black, we'd be happy to release all the details of any application, how it was considered and according to what criteria."

[. . .]

Every year, officials from the Citizenship and Immigration department approve more than 10,000 temporary resident permits for foreign nationals, he said, and "a very large number" of those permits help to overcome inadmissibility for foreign nationals with criminal records if federal officials determine it's a non-violent offence, the individual poses a low risk to reoffend and does not pose a risk to Canadian society.

Federal officials also will consider such other criteria as whether the person has long-standing ties to the country, family connections, and humanitarian and compassionate considerations, Kenney added.

[LINK] "Inuits demonstrate against Debenhams fur ban"

The English-language version of Denmark's Politiken carries the news of Greenlanders' displeasure that a high-end Danish store is no longer going to stock goods that could trace their origins to Greenland's seal hunt.

Might this have long-term repercussions re: the Danish-Greenlandic constitutional link? I wonder.

On Tuesday, Denmark’s upmarket Magasin store is to stop all sales of products made from furs from wild animals or from pelts that have not resulted from food production.

Magasin, which is owned by Debenhams of the United Kingdom, is one of the latest outlets to target fur sales, as a result of campaigns by animal rights activists to stop the global seal cull. Magasin’s decision is a particular thorn in the eye of Greenland Inuits, who are part of the Danish commonwealth.

In the light of Magasin’s decision, a group of Greenland Inuit hunters is to travel to Copenhagen in order to demonstrate at a happening on May 1 to highlight the problems for indigenous hunters caused by Europe-wide bans on sealskin sales.

“When you live in Greenland, you live from maritime resources. We have always done that, as that is what there is. Hunters in the outlying districts in particular find it difficult to feed their families when the sealskin trade drops, as they have no alternatives. Many of them have become dependent on social aid over the past couple of years,” says Leif Fountain, chairman of the Greenland Hunters’ Association, himself a fisherman and hunter for the past 27 years.

While Canadian hunters use clubs for about a third of their cull, Greenland Inuit use rifles, with wastage only occurring if an animal is only wounded and escapes before a hunter reaches it.

[. . .]

Sara Olsvig, a Greenland member of the Danish Parliament, says that the EU is mainly responsible for the sealskin crisis in Greenland by banning imports of seal products into the Union. Although the ban includes an exception for indigenous, sustainable hunts, the EU has not informed customs authorities, businesses and consumers that sealskin from Greenland is acceptable.

“This is not just an animal welfare issue, it is also about a people’s right to live off the resources we have and to maintain a basic part of our culture and identity,” says Olsvig.

[LINK] "Japanese kayaker hopes to show Kennewick Man could have traveled by boat"

Jon Trumbo's Tri-City Herald article chronicling a Japanese enthusiast's efforts to document the possibility of prehistoric migration between Japan and the United States, inspired by the controversial Paleo-Indian remains of Kennewick Man and claims of Jomon/proto-Ainu influence across the Pacific, is an interesting artifact.

(Myself I suspect that most migrations that took place between five and ten thousand years ago aren't at all likely to ever be connected to surmised cultures, but hey.)

By week's end, Ryota Yamada hopes to slip his sea kayak gently into the Columbia River at Clover Island, embarking on the first leg of a 10,000-mile adventure to Japan.

The retired scientist who did nanotechnological research intends to paddle downriver to the ocean, then via the Inland Passage north to Alaska, and eventually across the Bering Strait to the Asian continent.

It will take him four summers, but if he succeeds in reaching his homeland, Yamada said, he will have shown that Kennewick Man could have made his way by boat 9,300 years ago from Japan to North America.

"That is my main purpose," he said Monday from his temporary camp on Clover Island in downtown Kennewick.

The 42-year-old Japanese native who lives near Tokyo said the story of Kennewick Man, whose skeletal remains were found on the shores of the Columbia River near Kennewick in July 1996, inspired him to attempt the adventure of a lifetime.

[. . .]

Kennewick Man's bones, which are being held for research at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle, are controversial.

While the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Nation believe Kennewick Man is one of their ancestors, researchers believe the ancient bones are not Native American in origin, but may be genetically linked to the Ainu people, who have lived in Japan for thousands of years and appear to have a genetic link to Northern Europe.

A professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, C. Loring Brace, told the Herald in a 2006 interview that Kennewick Man's heritage likely connected with the Ainu of Japan, or the Jomon people, who were ancestors of the Ainu.

[. . .]

Yamada said he has been collecting the necessary equipment for his trip since arriving in Washington. He used a rental car to go to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he purchased a new sea kayak that is about 20 feet long and weighs barely 20 pounds.

It will take Yamada about four summers to complete the journey, paddling about 2,500 miles on each leg. He expects to get as far as Whitehorse in British Columbia this summer, including a side trip of about 50 miles up the Yukon River.

[CAT] "Move over Fido: Cats are the new top dogs on the Internet"

Kitties!

(Omar Mouallem at the Globe and Mail explored Saturday the increasing popularity of the cat relative to dogs. Not that it's a zero-sum situation, of course, but he notes that "lolcat" gets five million hits on Google versus the less than seventy thousand of "loldog".)

According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's report on pet food trends, cat ownership is on the upswing, and outpacing that of dogs. Eight-and-a-half million cats were owned by Canadians in 2010, compared to 5 million dogs. It's normal for pet adoptions to slow in recessions, but only dogs have felt the bite of this downturn – ownership is down 3 per cent from the year before.

How did the cat, maligned by dog-lovers as lazy, snobby and boring, suddenly climb the upholstered social-media ladder?

Dogs have long been favoured by film and TV, almost always portrayed as having a heart of gold (remember Lassie, The Littlest Hobo). Last year, a dog (Uggie) generated Oscar buzz of his own, with fans pleading that the Jack Russell terrier get a nod in the Best Supporting Actor category for The Artist (Uggie did get an invitation to the ceremony). And when director Michel Hazanavicius accepted the award for best picture, he was sure to thank Uggie the Dog.

Meanwhile in the feline camp, there are characters like Garfield and Felix – classic antiheroes, too sarcastic or cool for their own good. In the 1970s, when McGruff the Crime Dog was urging kids to take a bite out of crime, Fritz the Cat appeared in comic strips as a sex-crazed druggie.

As YouTube shows, videos their own owners take portray cats as eccentric, skittish, self-satisfied and even narcissistic. The cats we like, tweet and share would likely only alert you to a well if they were thirsty. They're fickle, quirky and can't be controlled, but they're also intelligent and sometimes sophisticated. These are all qualities the me-first Internet generation is said to share – is that what's driving up their popularity?

Or could it be that the phenomenon of lolcats has endeared pet owners to the humour and personality cats can deliver, traits dogs have owned until now?

“Cats are more interesting and entertaining than other animals because they show a wide range of emotions,” says Ms. Huh.

[. . .]
“I used to be really different if I had a cat shirt on,” says Hamilton-based veterinarian Elizabeth O'Brien, a feline practitioner for 27 years. “Now people are wearing them all the time.”

She says the spark in ownership is partly due to their rising status in pop culture, but also to urbanization. Not only are cats more adaptive to condo and apartment living, but more suited to lives of owners commuting between work, daycare and sports practice.

She has also observed many retiring life-long dog owners who are downsizing to cats along with condos. “They still want to have a pet … so a cat is easier.”

Long, do read.

[CAT] "Kitty cameras show Athens cats on the prowl"

Mike Paluska's CBS Atlanta story about the National Geographic Society/University of Georgia Kitty Cams Project is enlightening. The video's great, although it also reinforces my determination to keep Shakespeare an indoors cat: the outside is dangerous!

National Geographic and the University of Georgia Kitty Cams Project captured the actions of cats wearing cameras on the collars from November 2010 to October 2011.

During that time, 55 cats collected an average of 37 hours of video a piece.

The videos show cats walking around their homes, stalking birds, eating lizards, walking through sewers and in some cases climbing trees and walking on roofs.

The goal of the project was to learn about the predatory practices of cats - specifically, how much wildlife they were killing in their suburban environments.

"Cats aren't as bad as the biologists thought," said Ph.D student Kerrie Anne Loyd.

[. . .]

Common household cats were required to wear the cameras for seven to 10 days when their owners let them out of the house.

During their research, researchers reviewed more than 2,000 hours of footage. They determined that the cats "did not hunt as much as we thought," according to Loyd.

"About 44 percent of cats engaged in predatory behavior. We found in suburban areas, they are catching small lizards and small snakes, so that was surprising. They were also eating worms and catching butterflies, things they would never bring home. So without this camera, we'd have no idea what they were doing," said Loyd.

The younger male cats were more prone to participate in what Loyd called "risky" behavior.

"Some cats do cross the road quite a bit, and are going down the storm drain and drinking run-off from the road," said Loyd.

[LINK] "Tomorrow’s stocks could be traded via neutrino beam"

I blogged at the end of March about the apparent birth, in Chicago's Fermilab, of the first generation of neutrino communications systems. I shared the speculation at the time that communications systems using neutrinos, those elementary particles which travel at the speed of light and hardly intersect matter at all, would be useful in communications with space probes and submarines, i.e. vehicles out of communication for long periods of time because conventional electromagnetic communications systems are blocked by massive quantities of matter. (Oceans, say, or planets.) Now, io9 notes that neutrino communications systems might be useful for stock trading.

Neutrinos may not travel faster than light, but that doesn't mean they can't be put to good use. By sending encoded pulses of neutrinos on a 10,000 km shortcut directly through the Earth, financial firms and high-frequency trading companies think they can get a 44-millisecond communication advantage over their competitors.

That might not sound like much of an edge, but in a world where hundreds of millions of dollars change virtual hands in just fractions of a second, even milliseconds become significant.

"Thirty milliseconds is a lot of time in high-velocity trading," explains former J.P. Morgan Chase options trader Espen Gaarder Haug in an interview with Forbes Magazine.

According to Haug, cities with the greatest distance between them would stand to gain the biggest time boost. Communication between New York and Tokyo would see a 23.7 millisecond time advantage; communications between London and Sydney would see almost double that.

Of course, financial institutions still need the infrastructure to make this all happen, which would basically require a particle accelerator beneath any firm that wanted in on the latest, greatest trading trend. And while that's not likely to happen anytime soon, something tells us that as soon as one of these firms takes the plunge on neutrino-communication, the rest of them are liable to follow suit.