[PHOTO] Confederation Landing Park, Charlottetown

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• blogTO recommends things to do on the Danforth.


• Centauri Dreams notes the importance of the discovery of water in the atmosphere of exoplanet HAT-P-11b.


• Crooked Timber goes on at length about Kevin Williamson's statement as noted by Joe. My. God. that women who have abortions should be executed.


• The Dragon's Tales notes plans for futuristic architecture in Shenzhen.


• Eastern Approaches observes the travails of a Roma soccer team in the Czech Republic.


• Far Outliers notes two different movements of Romanian intellectuals responding to relative backwardness, pasoptism referring to the post-1848 effort at modernization and protocronism referring to efforts to claim all was invented first in Romania.


• Marginal Revolution notes that in France, added years of education associated with avoiding conscription don't produce different job results.


• Spacing Toronto notes the failed visit of Upper Canadian reformer William Lyon Mackenzie to London in 1832.


• Torontoist notes building regulations prevent Toronto from making use of green roofs.


• Towleroad links to a study discussing the economic impact of anti-LGBT laws on Americans.


• Why I Love Toronto talks about the importance of having a local barber.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Russians will begin to draft first Chechens then Crimeans, notes increased state spending on Russia Today, observes the belief among some Russians that Ukraine is somehow not really a nation, and suggests that Belarus is cracking down on pro-Russians.

[LINK] On Canada keeping Russia and China from the 65th International Astronautical Conference

MacLean's shared a Canadian Press article noting that Canada did not give visa to Russian delegates to the 65th International Astronautical Congress.

Canada’s refusal to allow Russian delegates to attend a prestigious international astronautical symposium has angered Moscow, which said the decision flies in the face of international space co-operation and amounts to politicizing space exploration over the conflict in Ukraine.

A spokesman for the Russian embassy on Tuesday called Ottawa’s decision to deny visas for the delegates — including one of the country’s most renowned astronauts — unfortunate.

“In this regard, we can only express regret that a number of members of the Russian delegation did not get their visas,” Kirill Kalinin, second secretary at the Russian embassy in Ottawa, told The Canadian Press.

[. . .]

Ottawa initially declined to discuss the issue, citing privacy concerns, but on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada confirmed some applications were denied, while others were still being reviewed.

“Each will be assessed on its merits by professional, non-partisan public servants in accordance with Canada’s security and immigration laws,” Nancy Caron said in an email.

The CBC goes further, noting that Chinese as well as Russian delegates have prevented from getting visas.

The leaders of Russia's and China's space agencies were conspicuous by their absence at the opening plenary session in Toronto, sparking questions from among the thousands of participants.

The questions initially landed in the lap of Berndt Feuerbacher, past president of the International Astronautical Federation, who was moderating the session featuring the heads of space agencies.

"They were foreseen to be here with us, they have been with us in the past, and they will be with us in the future," Feuerbacher said.

"It is just unfortunate, due to problems especially in the visa area, that we couldn't have these delegations here. I apologize for this."

The issue came amid much delegate talk about the importance of international co-operation in the space-exploration field as symbolized by the International Space Station. Russia plays a key role in the space station — its capsule brought home Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield — but has drawn the wrath of countries such as Canada and the U.S. for its aggression against Ukraine.

"How do you want to succeed talking about global space co-operation without involving representatives from Russia and China?" delegates asked Feuerbacher.

"This is not our intention," he responded.

Walter Natynczyk, head of the Canadian Space Agency, was unable to explain what had gone wrong.

The retired general said he had only been alerted to the visa problem in the past couple of days.

There is a rationale for Russia, at least. But China? I would have thought that cultivating space links with China, or at least keeping connections alive, would have been a priority for the Canadian government.

[LINK] "Putin Has Destroyed Europe Trust in Russia: German Envoy"

Bloomberg's Indira A.R. Lakshmanan notes the continuing breakdown in Russia-European Union relations, as stated by the German ambassador to the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine has destroyed Europe’s trust in Russia, leaving politicians and businesspeople feeling that “we are not partners anymore,” German Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Wittig said.

“A lot of trust was destroyed by Putin’s policy,” Wittig said at a Bloomberg Government lunch in Washington yesterday. “And I think it’s a challenge to regain that trust.”

Germany was Russia’s biggest trading partner after China last year, with 6,000 German companies that have commercial ties with Russia, netting $88 billion in trade between the two nations, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

While it wasn’t in the self-interest of German industry to support economic sanctions to punish Russia for dividing Ukraine, “the leadership of the business world made it clear that Putin didn’t leave us any other choice,” Wittig said.

[. . .]

At the start of this year, “nobody had anticipated that Putin would take such a momentous decision” to seize Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and back armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, creating a rift between Russia and the U.S. and its European allies that “would take us back to a Europe before 1989” and the demise of the Soviet Union, said Wittig, who previously served as Germany’s ambassador to the United Nations.

“Now we are asking ourselves” about the future of “East-West” relations, Witting said. “Putin has signaled that he has renounced” the “partnership that we had.”

In Berlin yesterday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel invoked the 40-year history of communist East Germany as an historical example, saying the EU and the U.S. may be in for a “long haul” in their face-off with Russia, and that there’s no reason for the allies to soften their demands on Putin.

[LINK] "instead of chasing Ello, why not push LJ?"

I'm planning on posting an extended look at Ello later this week. I'm on there and I find the site interesting, but I'll reserve judgement. Meanwhile fengi's post suggesting that Livejournal fills a niche is worth noting. Livejournal's ongoing efforts to reestablish itself in the non-Russian blogosphere might come to fruition. Or, they might not: as one ex-Livejournaler noted on Facebook when I shared the link, people left LJ for a reason.

It has the features ello testers and disgruntled Facebook users want now. After 15 years of experience, it has slowly learned from drama and errors. It survived the original dot bust and seems ready for the next one.

The free-to-paid membership model has provided ad-free, adult-friendly options for a decade plus, something earnest manifestos usually don't (see tumblr's broken promise).

So why deal with more inflated startup promises and fumbling? Say goodbye to Facebook and hello to Livejournal -- a customizable global social network that doesn't require real names and provides an easy, logical way to avoid ads. [Forgive me for the infomercial language.]

As a longtime user and occasionally harsh critic, I think LJ is flawed but less adversarial and predatory towards users than Facebook, Google and others. Yes, it has an "old meme" image and notorious past service dramas, but in the long term it's become a solid product.

[LINK] "U.S. Company [Livejournal] Helps Russia Block Prominent Putin Critic"

Sisi Wei's ProPublica article from last month noting how Livejournal has blocked access to Alexei Navalny's Livejournal blog inside Russia makes unsurprising use. It does represent many fears, legitimate or otherwise, of Livejournal users of undue Russian influence on the site.

The company, LiveJournal, shows an error message to users inside Russia who try to read a blog maintained by prominent activist and politician Alexei Navalny, a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Navalny uses the service to post about Putin, the Russian government and politics. Users in other countries can read Navalny’s blog without seeing the error message.

[. . .]

An early social media pioneer, LiveJournal was once popular in the United States but is now dwarfed by sites like Tumblr and Wordpress. The site does retain a smaller, dedicated following among Americans users, including George R.R. Martin, author of A Game of Thrones, who regularly posts on his LiveJournal blog. In Russia, LiveJournal is the most popular blogging platform – so popular, in fact, that the Russian name for LiveJournal has become synonymous with "blogging.”

LiveJournal has a history of being blocked by Russian authorities, and may be self-censoring to minimize the parts of their site that are unavailable inside Russia. The entire service was blocked in parts of Russia at least twice as a result of regional court decisions meant to block individual users. On March 13 of this year, Navalny’s blog, along with three Russian news sites, were officially ordered to be blocked by Russia’s telecom agency at the request of Russia’s Prosecutor General.

When it was blocked by the government, users inside some Russian cities trying to visit the banned LiveJournal site would have seen an error message from their Internet provider, saying that the page was not accessible.

But in the current case, the error message appears to come from LiveJournal itself, at a LiveJournal URL and on a page that includes the company’s logo and design. The error reads, “The page is blocked due to the decision of authorities in your area.” The error message is in English, though Navalny’s blog is in Russian. Attempts to reach Navalny’s blog from a U.S. Internet connection were successful.

[LINK] "How Alexander Sodiqov was freed following espionage charges"

CBC's Jennifer Clibbon reports on the circumstances behind the release of University of Toronto graduate student Alex Sodiqov from detention in Tajikistan on charges of treason. The academic community, including Sodiqov's adviser Edward Schatz, fought for his liberation and won.

[Sodiqov's] fate galvanized scholars around the world because they felt it signals a chill for scholarly research in the former Soviet sphere. They set up a global petition, signed by thousands, to lobby the Tajik government.

"In the past you'd get a message that you're in dangerous territory. Now there's no warning that it's going to come," Sodiqov told CBC News."They are blaming foreign governments for things they can't control."

At the University of Toronto, Schatz and other graduate students set up a website, produced a video, gave interviews to the media, and used social media to post updates on Sodiqov's case." Their hashtag, #freealexsodiqov, kind of went viral," said Swerdlow, in an interview from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

"Schatz was strategic," says Tracy MacDonald, a professor of Russian history at McMaster University. "He never let it go. He kept the campaign public. It would have been embarrassing for the Tajik government had anything happened to Alex while in custody."

[. . .]

Two weeks ago, the Tajik secret police in Dushanbe called up Sodiqov and said he was now free to return to Canada. "I was shocked," he said.

[LINK] "Bloc's drop in Quebec a big chance for NDP and Liberals, polls suggest"

Writing for CBC, Éric Grenier suggests, on the basis of two recent polls, that the popularity of the separatist Bloc Québécois is continuing to collapse and that the Liberals and NDP--especially the Liberals--are taking advantage.

The polls were conducted by Quebec-based pollsters CROP (for La Presse) and Léger (for Le Devoir), each surveying 1,000 Quebecers via the firms' internet panels. CROP was in the field between Sept. 17 and 22, while Léger polled between Sept. 22 and 25. As these surveys were conducted online, a margin of error is not applicable.

The Léger poll pegged support for the BQ at just 16 per cent, the lowest registered by the company in more than a year. CROP, meanwhile, had the Bloc at just 13 per cent, confirming the historic low it had reported in its previous survey in August.

This is not just a case of fatigue with federal politics, but rather disinterest with the Bloc Québécois itself. Before removing the undecideds from the sample, both CROP and Léger estimated support for the provincial Parti Québécois to be 18 per cent. The very same people polled by the two firms gave the Bloc between 11 and 14 per cent support. In other words, roughly a third of respondents who would otherwise cast a ballot for the separatist PQ at the provincial level opted to support a federalist party at the federal level.

[. . .]

The Liberals have made inroads at the expense of both the Conservatives and NDP since the last election, as CROP and Léger placed the party at 34 and 39 per cent support respectively (up from 14 per cent in 2011). The NDP was down to 29 and 36 per cent respectively from the 43 per cent they scored at the ballot box 3½ years ago.

[LINK] "Wild chimps learn from others to make new tools"

CBC reports on a recent paper suggesting that chimpanzees, like humans, can transmit elements of material culture between each other. We all learn, and share.

It's not just humans who want the latest gadget. Wild chimpanzees that see a friend making and using a nifty new kind of tool are likely to make one for themselves, scientists report.

"Our study adds new evidence supporting the hypothesis that some of the behavioural diversity seen in wild chimpanzees is the result of social transmission and can therefore be interpreted as cultural," an international research team writes today in the journal PLOS Biology.

The findings suggest that the ability of individuals to learn from one another originated long ago in a common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans, the researchers add.

"This study tells us that chimpanzee culture changes over time, little by little, by building on previous knowledge found within the community," said Thibaud Gruber, a co-author of the study, in a statement. "This is probably how our early ancestors' cultures also changed over time."

Scientists already knew that chimpanzees in different groups have certain behaviours unique to their group, such as using a particular kind of tool. They suspected that wild chimpanzees learn those behaviours from other chimpanzees within their group, as scientists have observed in captive chimps. But they could never be sure.

The new study documents the spread of two new behaviours among chimpanzees living in Uganda's Budongo Forest. It shows that chimps learned one of them — the making and use of a new tool called a moss sponge — by observing other chimps who had already adopted the behaviour. Chimps dip the tool in water and then put it in their mouth to drink.

[LINK] "PrEP, The Pill, and the Fear of Promiscuity"

Ian Lekus' essay at Nursing Clio about the parallels between the hostile reactions nowadays to PrEP--the use of anti-HIV medications as a prophylactic measure--to preempt and prevent HIV infections and reactions in the 1960s to the contraceptive pill is thoughtful. Recommended.

Coming of age in the plague years of the 1980s, I could hardly imagine — who could? — that the arrival of a pill that prevented HIV infection would generate such controversy within gay male communities. Loud, pointed critiques of multinational pharmaceutical corporations, sure, I could easily expect that: when I teach HIV/AIDS: Politics, Culture, and Science to undergraduates born barely before the 1996 arrival of effective antiretroviral medications, my students learn plenty about the roles of pharmaceutical giants and grassroots protest over the course of the epidemic.

But I did not anticipate a surge of hostility towards PrEP and its early adopters, especially given the urgency of developing multiple HIV prevention strategies that acknowledge falling rates of condom usage among men who have sex with men. In May, pioneering AIDS activist Larry Kramer condemned PrEP, declaring “There’s something cowardly to me about taking Truvada instead of using a condom.” More critics, from the blogosphere to gay social networking apps, have shamed PrEP users as promiscuous, as irresponsible – even as “Truvada whores.”

Perhaps, though, my historical training should have prepared me for such a backlash, given the public discourse surrounding the development of the Pill half a century ago.

Elaine Tyler May, in her history of the Pill, recalled how as a child, reporters swarmed around her father, Edward Tyler, a researcher testing the oral contraceptive at his private practice. “Would the pill make women promiscuous?,” they asked. He insisted that it would not. But while he disapproved of premarital sex, he believed that unmarried women would have sex with or without the Pill, and hoped the new contraceptive would reduce unwanted pregnancies.

Other pioneering birth control researchers openly scorned unmarried people, especially women, who might turn to the Pill. John Rock, an obstetrician and gynecologist, and one of the Pill’s most prominent proponents, declared that, “any high school kid can get other contraceptives and probably knows about Saran Wrap.” Such means of birth control were available “for naughty little girls who want to use them.”