[META] Blogroll Additions

I've added two blogs to the blogroll, each belonging to a Canadian science fiction author: Karl Schroeder's weblog and Peter Watts' No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons (Re-reloaded).

One recent Schroeder post you might be interested in is "Colonizing Alpha-Centauri: the least and most we can do". Written in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of Alpha Centauri Bb, Schroeder argues here that even in the case of that planet being the only one in the entire Alpha Centauri system, it might still provide the anchor for a human civilization in-system.

If your idea of habitability is finding a more or less exact copy of the Earth and settling down on it to farm, then things are looking kinda bleak. But, if we have the technology to get to Bb, then we have the technology to live and thrive there.

Not on the surface, of course. Not even in a nearby orbit. But even if Bb is uninhabitable, it is still a great source of building material. If we have the technology to get to it, we'll have the technology to mine it, if only by dangling a skyhook down from the L2 point (or from a heliostat) to dredge the magma ocean. Haul the magma up, render it in the terrible light of the star, and ship the refined goods to a higher orbit where the temperature's a bit better. There, we can build habitats--either O'Neill colonies or, if we can harvest enough material, the coronals I describe in my novel Lady of Mazes.

With unlimited energy and (nearly) unlimited building materials, we can construct a thriving civilization around Alpha Centauri B, even if all we have to work with is this one piece of melted rock. (In terms of details, it would be a bootstrapping operation, with an initial small seed of robot miners constructing more or bigger skyhooks, more miners, etc. until exponential growth sets in, by which time it's safe for the human colonists to show up.)

Watts, meanwhile, argues in "Geoengineering and the Evils of Conservation" that geoengineering, or some form of managed human intervention in the environment, is going to be necessary to keep a world already thrown out of balance comfortable for our civilization.

The problem is that as any population varies, so too does its behavior. Mortality curves, reproductive rates, vulnerability to pathogens and predators — a hundred other variables — all change with population density. It’s a complex system, full of cliffs and folds and intertwined curves unwinding across a range of conditions; and when you keep your population from varying, you only acquire data from a very narrow band of that tapestry. But Nature’s a fickle bitch, and sooner or later she’ll kick your population out of that comfort zone despite your best efforts. When that happens you’ll be adrift in a dark, data-free wilderness where anything can happen.

Unless you kick it out there yourself beforehand, to get some idea of what’s waiting for you.

The term is Adaptive Management and back in grad school days my supervisor was one of its early champions. The idea was that you combine “management” with research, that you don’t strive to keep your system stationary year after year. Every now and then you cut your salmon quotas to zero, leave the scaly little buggers completely alone. Other years you hammer the shit out of them. In all cases you take notes— and gradually, over time, you beat back those dark zones, scratch out here there be dragons and scribble Ricker curves and Lotka-Volterra parameter values in their place. You do what Nature would do eventually anyway, only you do it on your own timetable, to a degree of your own choosing.

That’s the trick, of course: because sometimes there are dragons out there, and what if one of them swallows your salmon stock to extinction because you hammered them too hard? It’s a balancing act. You have to tread carefully, weigh risk against opportunity; the techniques used to find that sweet spot are what distinguishes Adaptive Management from just rolling the dice and unleashing a series of shotgun blasts.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Daniel Drezner notes that Chinese sabre-rattling over maritime borders is starting to encourage other East Asian countries--ASEAN member-states and Japan to start--to form a coalition to counterbalance China.


• Eastern Approaches reports on the baffling and horrible decision of a Jobbik MP to call for a list of Jews. What does this say about Hungarian politics?


• At Far Outliers, Joel posts an excerpt from J.H. Elliott's Imperial Spain: 1469-1716 which makes the point that, as New World populations crashed over the 16th century while New World industries prospered, Spain's initial economic advantage from its captive market disappeared.


• Still writing at False Steps, Paul Drye describes a recently aborted proposed mission to a Near Earth Asteroid.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Erik Loomis takes issue with an essay arguing that the Latin American left has a conflicted relationship with indigenous peoples.


• The Map Room's Jonathan Crowe is disappointed by the maps of the new Game of Thrones atlas collection.


• Joshua Foust at Registan takes issue with a confident Kazakhstani national identity that's compromised by extensive censorship.


• Torontoist covers the reaction of the Don Bosco Eagles, the high school football team coached by Rob Ford, to their loss at the Metro Bowl.


• At The Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Kontorovich asks how Israeli settlement in the West Bank managed to become uniquely controversial, given the existence of other comparable situations elsewhere in the world.

[URBAN NOTE] On why it's good Rob Ford can run for mayor of Toronto again

The news that Rob Ford would be eligible to run in the by-election triggered by his being ordered out of office after losing a conflict of interest case was everywhere.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was cleared today to run again for mayor in a byelection, should one be held ahead of the 2014 municipal election.

Lawyers for Ford, who earlier this week was ordered out of office by Superior Court Justice Charles T. Hackland in a conflict of interest case, asked the judge to clarify his ruling to clear up confusion about whether the order bars him as a byelection candidate.

At issue was a sentence in paragraph 60 of the judge's original ruling that said: "I decline to impose any further disqualification from holding office beyond the current term."

Ford's lawyer wanted clarification on what was meant by "beyond the current term." The question that had observers confused was: Did the term end when the mayor gave up his seat to comply with the sanction, or did the judge mean the term of office as defined in the Municipal Act, which would mean a term ending in 2014?

On Friday, the judge responded by amending his previous ruling. He deleted the words "beyond the current term" from his original ruling.

That means Ford can seek the mayor's chair if the city opts to hold a byelection ahead of the 2014 municipal election. Council also has the option of appointing a mayor to serve until 2014.

Ford is also applying for a stay of judgment, which will be heard Wednesday. If successful, he would remain mayor until his appeal runs its course.

The ruling to vacate the seat, if a stay application is unsuccessful, would take effect Dec. 10. Ford's appeal of the ruling could be heard as early as Jan. 7.

I was initially unhappy--I would have preferred, and still think I'd prefer, to have had him barred from running this time. Judge Lackland's clarification that Ford could run again may have been inevitable, though, given his stated opinion that Ford's automatic removal from office was too harsh a penalty to deliver automatically. Lackland might not be wrong.

Besides, a by-election where Ford was defintively defeated at the polls is a good thing. In commenting on this, James Nicoll also linked to an article reporting on the latest embarrassing thing Rob Ford did as mayor.

In what could be his last council meeting as Toronto's mayor, Rob Ford got into a shouting match with councillor Adam Vaughan over developer fees on Thursday.

Ford, who was ordered removed from office on Monday for violating municipal conflict of interest rules, became animated during a council debate about a development on Queen Street West.

Ford was upset that developers were asked to pay higher development fees in exchange for area improvements.

"All I'm saying is that looks like a shakedown, call it what you want," Ford shouted at Coun. Adam Vaughan, whose ward includes the site of the proposed development.

"You can not go up to developers and say I want a million dollars when staff says they don't want it. That's a problem ... that's not the way you do business down here."

[. . .]

Vaughan, a left-of-centre councillor who is tipped as a possible mayoral candidate, said everything about the development fees was above board and vetted by city lawyers.

"The mayor has found himself in trouble with his choice of words before, they're inaccurate, they're offensive and they're wrong," he said.

Ford later apologized for his "shakedown" remark but Coun. Karen Stintz said the incident reflects poorly on the city.

"It is embarrassing and I think it does speak to the need that we have as a city to resolve this matter with the mayor and quickly because I don't think we can continue to have the kind of discourse that has happened over the last couple of days."

If, after two years of this sort of thing, Toronto's electorate still decides to re-elect the man, then Ford isn't an anomaly so much as he really is Toronto's choice.

[URBAN NOTE] "Why the City Hesitated to Proclaim the Anniversary of the Nanking Massacre"

Torontoist's David Hains noted earlier this week the reluctance of some Toronto politicians to grant official recognition to the Nanking Massacre. Many of the usual suspects seem to be involved.

Inasmuch as there are certainly more than three hundred thousand people of Chinese background in the city of Toronto (roughly 283 thousand in 2006), a reluctance to recognize one of the worst atrocities committed against the Chinese during the Second World War could very well lose some people votes.

Official proclamations of special commemorative occasions are plentiful at City Hall: the City has publicly declared everything from Foursquare Day to Bullying Awareness Week. But Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) was frustrated by the difficulties she encountered when she tried to win official recognition for the 75th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre. Council finally decided to make that proclamation, at Wong-Tam’s urging, earlier today.

“I don’t believe we’re asking anything extraordinary, although this is a significant anniversary,” she said during an interview before the council decision. “You would never say to the Jewish community that you would not proclaim Holocaust Awareness Week.”

[. . .]

When City Hall’s Protocol Services office received Wong-Tam’s request for the proclamation, they denied it on the basis that it was “politically controversial,” and therefore against the proclamation criteria. In explaining this decision, they sent Wong-Tam a link to the Nanking Massacre Wikipedia page, which has a section that describes its associated “controversy.” The mayor’s office, which has the power to act independently of Protocol Services, relied on the office’s rationale, and chose not to proclaim the anniversary. Even so, despite a ruling from council speaker Frances Nunziata that Wong-Tam’s motion requesting the proclamation (seconded by Ward 41 councillor Chin Lee) was not urgent, council adopted it today.

The difficulty in passing the proclamation—normally a simple matter—highlights the underlying importance of raising awareness about the massacre. In an effort to share understanding of Nanking with the mayor, Wong-Tam offered books and DVDs, but received no response. “It’s important to understand and validate the fact that [the victims'] pain is real,” she told Torontoist. A difficult process like the one she faced, she said, “effectively re-victimizes the victims.”

Wong-Tam said Councillor Norm Kelly (Ward 40, Scarborough-Agincourt), a Governor General’s Award–winning historian, told her before council’s lunch break on Tuesday that “it’s time for you guys to move on.” When asked about the statement, which Wong-Tam called “shocking,” Kelly said he couldn’t recall any specific exchange, but he didn’t deny it. The Scarborough councillor, who taught a Chinese history course at Upper Canada College in the 1970s, added that he would support the proclamation of the 75th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre, but would prefer more awareness of Canadian history, like the treatment of Canadian prisoners of war during World War Two. “[The massacre] is something that happened purely in an Asian context between two Asian societies,” he said during an interview.

“I’m not sure Canadian society is at a point where it has to be instructed about these things,” he added, “because I think we have values that preclude being attracted to behaviour like that.”

[URBAN NOTE] On the upcoming (?) new subway lines in Toronto

CBC's report that the Downtown Relief Line and the northwards extension of the Yonge line are going to be prioritized by regional transit agency Metrolinx is good news.

A pair of new Toronto subway lines will be part of the next wave of public transportation projects that Metrolinx intends to pursue in the years ahead.

On Thursday, Metrolinx president and CEO Bruce McCuaig outlined the proposed projects for the second wave of the so-called Big Move — the regional transportation plan for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area.

The proposed $34-billion list of projects includes a downtown relief line that would relieve pressure on Toronto’s subway system, as well as an extension of the Yonge Street line up to Richmond Hill.

Metrolinx also wants to invest in light-rail transit projects in Brampton, Mississauga and Hamilton, as well as rapid bus transit in Peel, Durham and Halton regions and in Toronto.

Improvements to the GO Transit rail network would also be part of the proposed projects, as well as "resources for local transit, roads, active transportation and other strategic transportation initiatives."

McCuaig said that with the plan in place, “it's now time for the big conversation about the best ways to pay for this $34 billion investment."

The Toronto Star goes into more detail.

Originally slated for the plan’s 15- to 25-year horizon, the DRL has been moved up into consideration over the next 10 to 15 years, Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig told about 300 business people at the Toronto Board of Trade. The rest of the “second wave” is to be completed within a 20-year window of the start of construction.

The DRL is deemed critical to relieving pressure on the Yonge subway line, already operating at crush capacity, which is expected to attract 25 per cent more riders by 2031.

“While the relief line will be geographically located in the downtown area, its purpose is to open up possibilities throughout the region, such as the extension of the Yonge Line to Richmond Hill,” said McCuaig.

The precise route isn’t known. But a recent TTC report showed it would likely extend south from the east end of the Danforth line, around Pape, then west along King or Queen to University Ave. It could be extended further west up to the Bloor subway and run as far north as Eglinton Ave.

The 13-kilometre line would serve 107 million riders by 2031.

The cost, unofficially estimated at $7.4 billion, would be part of the $34 billion price McCuaig suggested the second wave would cost.

The big problem with this, of course, is the 10 to 15 year horizon. Will these promises really be fulfilled?

[URBAN NOTE] "Model-T Ford breaks down"

The subtitle of the Economist's article about Toronto's ongoing issues, "A city and its government are stuck in gridlock", gives me an idea what at least one authoritative non-Canadian publication thinks of the whole Rob Ford affair. Placing Ford in the context of a generally hopeless urban political environment makes sense, sadly.

Mr Ford was largely the architect of his own downfall. Although there are no political parties at municipal level, his bombastic, polarising manner has prompted remorseless opposition. The turmoil surrounding him has added to the troubles of Canada’s business capital, a city of 2.6m that is struggling with an unwieldy political structure, financial strain and horrendous transport problems.

[. . .]

Stand on the platform at St Andrew subway station in the city centre and Toronto’s problems are evident. The walls are grimy, and sections of vinyl panelling are missing. Renovations begun in 2009 are unfinished. Chronic underfunding of an overburdened public-transport network, and the council’s lengthy wrangling over a new plan have created a shabby and truncated subway that is unfit for the world-class metropolis Toronto claims to be. Although several new light-rail lines funded by Ontario’s provincial government are being built, the lack of public transport means that more than 70% of Torontonians with jobs drive to work. They face longer journey times than commuters in car-obsessed Los Angeles.

A second problem is that, whereas Chicago and other American cities have turned their waterfronts into attractive, accessible public areas, Toronto’s is hidden by a wall of apartment towers and separated from the city by an elevated expressway. Last year Mr Ford withdrew the city’s support for a redevelopment plan endorsed by the previous council as well as the provincial and federal governments, which both own parcels of lakefront land. He wanted to replace a proposed park with a mega-mall and a giant Ferris wheel. After much debate and delay, the city has reverted to the original plan.

Toronto still ranks highly on international lists of desirable places to live. But its politicians’ inability to come to grips with its problems is alienating some admirers. Richard Florida, an American urban guru who moved to Toronto in 2007, says the city is now “a more divided and contentious place, its once enviable social cohesion at risk, a growing split pitting downtown against the suburbs”.

This is not all Mr Ford’s fault. The province paved the way for political conflict in 1998 when it merged the city of Toronto with six surrounding municipalities. The effect was to set councillors like Mr Ford from sprawling suburbs, where the car is essential, against inner-city politicians who want more public transport and bicycle lanes, according to Robert Young, a political scientist at the University of Western Ontario. The lack of parties means that the 45-member council struggles to reach agreement. Mayors have profile but little power, a source of Mr Ford’s frustration.

[LINK] "Stores of ice confirmed on Sun-scorched Mercury"

Nature's Maggie McKee reports on the discovery of substantial amounts of water ice in the permanently-shaded crater bottoms of the north pole of Mercury. While the volume of water is relatively small compared to that present on Earth, on any number of outer-system worlds, or even on Mars (there's only a tenth as much water ice in Mercury's north polar regions as in Mars' much more robust north polar cap), it's still substantial.

Noteworthy is the fact that the ice seems to be covered only lightly, by relatively small amounts of debris, smaller than would be expected if these deposits dated from the earliest days of the solar system. Mercury's water ice supplies might be constantly refreshed, by incoming comets and other water-bearing objects, in other words.

Talk about a land of fire and ice. The surface of Mercury is hot enough in some places to melt lead, but it is a winter wonderland at its poles — with perhaps a trillion tonnes of water ice trapped inside craters — enough to fill 20 billion Olympic skating rinks.

The ice — whose long-suspected presence1 has now been confirmed by NASA's orbiting MESSENGER probe — seems to be much purer than ice inside similar craters on Earth's Moon, suggesting that the closest planet to the Sun could be a better trap for icy materials delivered by comets and asteroids. Three papers detailing the findings are published today in Science.

Despite Mercury’s blistering 400 °C temperatures, the floors of many of its polar craters are in permanent shadow, because the planet's rotational axis is perpendicular to its orbital plane, so its poles never tip towards the star. Indeed, radar pinged to the planet from Earth in the past 20 years has revealed bright regions1 near the poles consistent with metres-thick slabs of pure water ice.

But “radar does not uniquely identify water ice,” says David Lawrence, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Sulphur, for example, could have produced a similar radar signature.

Now, three different lines of evidence back the water-ice interpretation. Infrared laser pulses fired at the planet by MESSENGER's Mercury Laser Altimeter have revealed bright regions inside nine darkened craters near the planet's north pole2. These bright regions, thought to be water ice, line up perfectly with ultra-cold spots that, according to a thermal model of the planet that takes into account Mercury's topography, should never be warmer than –170 °C.

A third team, using MESSENGER's Neutron Spectrometer, has spotted the telltale signature of hydrogen — which they think is locked up in water ice — in those same regions4. "Not only is water the best explanation, we do not see any other explanation that can tie all the data together," says Lawrence, lead author of the spectrometer study.