[PHOTO] Walking into the Distillery District, Parliament and Mill

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams considers interesting implications for planets very closely orbiting their parent stars.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes exoplanet KOI-1299b, a gas giant very closely orbiting its red giant parent star.


• The Dragon's Tales is bearish about the potential for artificial intelligence, The Numerati is bullish.


• Joe. My. God. notes that one of the two people murdered in the Sydney hostage taking, the store manager who tried to hold off the hostage-taker, was gay and partnered.


• Transit Toronto notes that in the new year, debit and credit card payments can be made for TTC tokens.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes the bad sense of a petitioner suing an employer on religious discrimination grounds launching racist rants at the judges, and observes a faked anti-Bosnian hate crime in St. Louis.


• Window on Eurasia observes that Internet usage in Russia does not change minds so much as confirm them, shares the observations of a Russian visitor to Ukraine that Ukrainians now see Russia as an enemy, and argues that the current Orthodox-Muslim peace in Russia is ephemeral and based on shared short-term concerns.

[LINK] "For aspiring Nepali migrants, the risks start at home"

Al Jazeera's Pete Pattisson notes the plight of migrant workers from Nepal, who seem to find themselves facing cheating by employment agents and dangerous work conditions at every turn. That their remittances play a critical role in the domestic economy makes things more complex.

Every day, almost 1,500 Nepalis join the long queues at Kathmandu’s airport to follow their dreams of a job abroad, typically in the Gulf or Malaysia. Over 525,000 Nepalis were issued permits to work overseas in 2013-14, well over double the number issued just five years ago.

According to an Open Society Foundations report on migrant workers, Nepal now sends the most workers abroad per capita of any country in Asia.

And for many, migration works. Official remittances account for over 29 percent of Nepal’s total GDP, and have increased by 400 percent between 2003 and 2011. At the arrivals gate of Kathmandu’s airport, dozens of migrants arrive off each flight balancing bulging bags and flat-screen TVs on their trolleys.

But wait till they have left, and another set of trolleys emerge from the terminal carrying a very different load — coffins bearing the bodies of migrant workers, like Umesh Pasman. Every day, three or four are flown back to grieving families in Nepal. In 2013, at least 185 Nepalis died in Qatar alone.

[. . .]

It usually begins with an introduction to a local recruitment broker, or agent. Typically, "the individual agent [is] someone personally known to the migrant worker... Consequently, migrant workers have great trust in their agents to look after their interests," said the Open Society Foundations report.

[LINK] "Angelina Jolie boycott brewing in Japan over war movie Unbroken"

CBC carries the Associated Press report that some conservatives and historical revisonists in Japan are unhappy with an upcoming film's depiction of the Japanese military. The film, it's worth noting, is historically accurate.

The movie [Unbroken] follows the real-life story of Louis Zamperini as told in a 2010 book by Laura Hillenbrand. The book has not been translated into Japanese, but online trailers have provoked outrage. Zamperini, played by Jack O'Connell, survived in a raft for 47 days with two other crewmen after a plane crash, only to be caught by the Japanese and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

Especially provocative is a passage in the book that refers to cannibalism among the troops. It is not clear how much of that will be in the movie, but that is too much for some.

"But there was absolutely no cannibalism," said Mutsuhiro Takeuchi, a nationalist-leaning educator and a priest in the traditional Shinto religion. "That is not our custom."

Takeuchi acknowledged Jolie is free to make whatever movie she wants, stressing that Shinto believes in forgive-and-forget.

But he urged Jolie to study history, saying executed war criminals were charged with political crimes, not torture.

"Even Japanese don't know their own history so misunderstandings arise," said Takeuchi, who heads his research organization, the Japan Culture Intelligence Association.

[LINK] "Journalism ethics take a hit with Rolling Stone's unravelling rape story"

CBC's Neil Macdonald argues that the search for clickbait is undermining journalism, as the Rolling Stone rape story suggests.

Rolling Stone accepted the vogue notion that the accuser should always be unswervingly believed — and that any skepticism "re-traumatizes."

That is a fine rule for people staffing rape crisis centres and phone hotlines. Women (and men; a significant percentage of sexual assaults on campus involve male victims) who say they have been raped should be treated with respect and trust.

But journalism is supposed to involve healthy skepticism and due diligence, no matter how strongly the winds of public opinion might gust on a particular issue.

In the case of Rolling Stone, a cynic might note that the climbdown and subsequent publicity resulted in another torrent of mouse clicks. (Nowadays, getting it wrong can be profitable.)

But that is increasingly the nature of postmodern journalism; facts matter less than trends. (Anyway, as postmodernists would ask, what's a fact, really?)

[LINK] "Alien Life on Mars? NASA Rover Spots Methane, a Possible Sign of Microbes"

National Geographic's Dan Vergano writes about the recent discovery of methane spikes by the Curiosity rover on Mars. They might indicate life, but not necessarily.

On Earth, most methane, better known as natural gas, is released by microbes that belch out the gas as they digest food. The rover mission scientists hedge the new results carefully, saying there's no way to tell whether the methane spikes have a geological or biological origin.

"It is a very, very puzzling result," says planetary scientist Joel Levine of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, who was not part of the study team. "Either Mars is geologically alive, which would be surprising, or Mars is biologically alive, which would have profound implications."

Decades of up-and-down measurements of methane in the Martian atmosphere have intrigued scientists hunting for signs of life on Mars. So when Curiosity first recorded a sudden tenfold increase in methane in November 2013, scientists were startled.

"It was an 'oh, my gosh' moment," said planetary scientist Christopher Webster of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who led the study team. Reported in the journal Science and presented Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting, the spikes, he said, "disappeared only six weeks later."

Curiosity went on to record a total of four sharp jumps in methane concentrations in the Martian air during its travels. The pulses lasted only a few weeks and lingered over a small area, roughly 2,625 feet (800 meters) of the rover's path. That points to a local, concentrated vent as the origin of the releases, says team scientist Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, most likely to the north of the rover inside Gale Crater.

[LINK] Two Bloomberg reports on Google and Apple leaving Russia, in different ways

Bloomberg's Tim Higgins notes Apple's withdrawal from online sales in Russia.

Apple Inc. halted online sales of its products in Russia due to “extreme” ruble fluctuations, showing how the currency’s swings are rippling out to international businesses.

The iPhone and iPad maker stopped sales from its Web store as Russia’s currency lost as much as 19 percent today, with a surprise interest-rate increase failing to stem a run on the currency. The ruble briefly sank beyond 80 per dollar, and bonds and stocks also tumbled.

“Our online store in Russia is currently unavailable while we review pricing,” Alan Hely, a spokesman for the Cupertino, California-based company, wrote in an e-mail today. “We apologize to customers for any inconvenience.”

The selloff in Moscow is spreading across the globe, prompting nervous investors to pull money from other developing nations amid concern that Russia’s financial struggles and the tumble in oil signal a global economic slowdown.

Bloomberg View's Leonid Bershidsky, meanwhile, observes that Google and other Internet companies are leaving Russia to avoid the risk of state censorship and interference in their affairs.

Google confirmed today that it would move its engineering office out of Russia. That makes it at least the third major tech company to scale down its presence in the country this year. Although none of the three companies explicitly tied the decision to Russia's increasingly oppressive Internet policies, the decisions to leave can hardly be a coincidence.

In April, President Vladimir Putin, who by all accounts isn't an Internet user, declared that the global computer network had "emerged as a special project of the U.S. CIA and that's how it's developing." A little more than two months later, the Russian parliament, always looking for creative interpretations of Putin's messages, passed a law banning the storage of Russian citizens' personal data outside the country. All Internet companies were required to move the data to servers within Russia by September 2016. Although the Internet community protested -- obeying the letter of the law would deprive Russians of the opportunity to use Facebook or even buy plane tickets from foreign airlines through their websites -- legislators toughened the ban in September, bringing forward its implementation to January 2015.

Even as that change made its way through parliament, Adobe Systems, maker of Photoshop and other popular software, announced that it was closing its Russia office. Adobe gave an innocuous business justification: It was moving its applications to the cloud, where they would be available by subscription, as part of the global fight against piracy. It no longer needed a physical presence in Russia or in a few other countries, such as Taiwan and Turkey. Yet unofficially, company representatives said that Putin's increasingly tense relations with the West were keeping it from winning contracts in Russia, and that it wasn't prepared to move its servers to comply with the personal data law.

In November, Microsoft shut its Moscow development office for Skype, moving some of the Russian engineers to Prague. The official reason was a restructuring of the video chat service's development arm to make its logistics simpler. Skype, however, is a product that has long interested Russia's intelligence services. Last year, the Moscow business daily Vedomosti reported that spies had found a way to eavesdrop on Skype chats. Skype also keeps its users' personal data on servers outside Russia. Since the service had no Russian presence apart from the development team, it made sense to get rid of the Moscow office and relocate the best programmers.

[LINK] "9 Wildrose MLAs, including Danielle Smith, cross to Alberta Tories"

Wow. From the CBC:

Nine Wildrose MLAs, including leader Danielle Smith, have crossed to Alberta’s governing Progressive Conservative party in a move political observers are calling unprecedented.

Premier Jim Prentice made the announcement late Wednesday afternoon after a day-long meeting, where PC MLAs voted in favour of bringing the new members into caucus.

"This is not a merger of parties, let’s be clear about this," he said in a joint news conference with Smith. "This is a unification of conservatives as Progressive Conservatives."

[. . .]

Smith said she was joining the party because Prentice's values were similar to the Wildrose. She and the other 8 MLAs decided to cross after agreeing to a set of "aligned values and principles."

Alberta has had four premiers since Smith became Wildrose leader in October 2009: Ed Stelmach, Alison Redford, Dave Hancock and Prentice. She said Prentice is the first to meet with her.

"Past premiers have merely paid lip service to these issues, saying the right things and then doing the opposite," Smith said. "But Premier Prentice has shown me and my caucus that he is different."

[. . .]

In her resignation letter as Wildrose leader, Smith asked the party to hold a membership meeting and pass a reunification resolution. She had led the party since October 2009.

[BRIEF NOTE] On how domestic politics in Russia have been hollowed out by trolling

The multiply-authored article in The Telegraph "Russia hikes interest rates to 17pc to stop rouble collapse" came out yesterday, outlining the state of affairs in Russia as the ruble collapses and interest rates spike and capital is going everywhere and immiseration 1998-style beckons. My attention was caught by one passage.

The currency's collapse will feed into double-digit inflation in short order. “This is extreme central banking, and the question is, what are they trying to achieve?” said Tim Ash, from Standard Bank.

“Moves like this create systemic risks, the risk of panic among the general population, and surely risks major deposit flight. It makes you think whether they forgot to read the manual which came with the bazooka. But this is a really high-risk strategy from the central bank."

The Institute of International Finance says Russia's reserves are not as large as they appear, given the levels of external debt and a chronic capital deficit of 2pc to 3pc of GDP a year. It says the danger line is around $330bn, suggesting that the central bank cannot safely bleed its funds for long to stem the outflow.

Mr Putin has so far defended the central bank against accusations from populists in the Duma that it has betrayed Russia by letting the rouble crash, and is run by “liberal feminists” in thrall to the International Monetary Fund.

He has promised "harsh" measures against traders betting against the rouble, warning that “we know who these speculators are” and how to deal with them. Yet the Kremlin appears out of its depth and is struggling to keep up with events.

"Liberal feminists" are wrecking the Russian economy?

I've noted in the past that Russian officialdom seems to be cleaving closely to conservative, even reactionary, ideologies on gender and sexual orientation and human rights. But this last, if true, is a not-bad example of trolling, in the sense at least of being absurdly provocative while making no sense. Can any dialogue where opinion like this features prominently mean anything good?

[DM] "On looking at peripheries"

I've a brief note up at Demography Matters noting my upcoming series of posts regarding the demographic dynamics of peripheral regions.