[OBSCURA] On how Prince Edward Island has been completely snowed in

CBC Prince Edward Island shared a remarkable picture yesterday, a high resolution satellite image of the Gulf of St. Lawrence basin from space that also showed how Prince Edward Island was almost overwhelmed.



Buzzfeed's Tanya Chen created a collection of pictures curated from social media showing the extent of the snow, while Island blogger Peter Rukavina shared a picture of his neighbourhood now that things are barely passable. Summerside's Journal-Pioneer has shared the story, with photos, of a Summerside couple who dug a 25-foot tunnel to find his buried vehicles.

Somewhere in Marcel Landry's Summerside backyard is his car, though you'd have to take his word for it.

Like many Islanders in this most recent storm, Landry and his fiance Stephanie Collicutt, who live on Notre Dame Street, watched the snow drift up and over their parked vehicles. But their case is a bit extreme.

Landry reported Tuesday that the area where his vehicle is parked is under roughly two storeys of snow.

So Monday night, lacking a better option, he started digging towards his vehicles.

After about six hours of digging he'd carved out a snowy pathway measuring 25-feet long and six-feet high in some places.

There will be stories about this for years.

[LINK] "‘Anti-petroleum’ movement a growing security threat to Canada, RCMP say"

The Globe and Mail's Shawn McCarthy notes a RCMP report claiming that anti-petroleum activists constitute a potential threat.

The RCMP has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, raising fears among environmentalists that they face increased surveillance, and possibly worse, under the Harper government’s new terrorism legislation.

In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.

“There is a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels,” concludes the report which is stamped “protected/Canadian eyes only” and is dated Jan. 24, 2014. The report was obtained by Greenpeace.

“If violent environmental extremists engage in unlawful activity, it jeopardizes the health and safety of its participants, the general public and the natural environment.”

The government has tabled Bill C-51, which provides greater power to the security agencies to collect information on and disrupt the activities of suspected terrorist groups. While Prime Minister Stephen Harper has identified the threat as violent extremists motivated by radical Islamic views, the legislation would also expand the ability of government agencies to infiltrate environmental groups on the suspicion that they are promoting civil disobedience or other criminal acts to oppose resource projects.

[LINK] "How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life"

In an article taken from his new book and published in The New York Times Magazine, Jon Ronson does an interesting job of humanizing Justine Sacco, the woman whose famous tweet about not getting AIDS in Africa because she was white made her a trending topic on Twitter. To what extent was her tweet misinterpreted? To what extent was the reaction justified? He suggests that mercy would be humane.

Late one afternoon last year, I met Justine Sacco in New York, at a restaurant in Chelsea called Cookshop. Dressed in rather chic business attire, Sacco ordered a glass of white wine. Just three weeks had passed since her trip to Africa, and she was still a person of interest to the media. Websites had already ransacked her Twitter feed for more horrors. (For example, “I had a sex dream about an autistic kid last night,” from 2012, was unearthed by BuzzFeed in the article “16 Tweets Justine Sacco Regrets.”) A New York Post photographer had been following her to the gym.

“Only an insane person would think that white people don’t get AIDS,” she told me. It was about the first thing she said to me when we sat down.

Sacco had been three hours or so into her flight when retweets of her joke began to overwhelm my Twitter feed. I could understand why some people found it offensive. Read literally, she said that white people don’t get AIDS, but it seems doubtful many interpreted it that way. More likely it was her apparently gleeful flaunting of her privilege that angered people. But after thinking about her tweet for a few seconds more, I began to suspect that it wasn’t racist but a reflexive critique of white privilege — on our tendency to naïvely imagine ourselves immune from life’s horrors. Sacco, like Stone, had been yanked violently out of the context of her small social circle. Right?

“To me it was so insane of a comment for anyone to make,” she said. “I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.” (She would later write me an email to elaborate on this point. “Unfortunately, I am not a character on ‘South Park’ or a comedian, so I had no business commenting on the epidemic in such a politically incorrect manner on a public platform,” she wrote. “To put it simply, I wasn’t trying to raise awareness of AIDS or piss off the world or ruin my life. Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third world. I was making fun of that bubble.”)

I would be the only person she spoke to on the record about what happened to her, she said. It was just too harrowing — and “as a publicist,” inadvisable — but she felt it was necessary, to show how “crazy” her situation was, how her punishment simply didn’t fit the crime.

“I cried out my body weight in the first 24 hours,” she told me. “It was incredibly traumatic. You don’t sleep. You wake up in the middle of the night forgetting where you are.” She released an apology statement and cut short her vacation. Workers were threatening to strike at the hotels she had booked if she showed up. She was told no one could guarantee her safety.

Her extended family in South Africa were African National Congress supporters — the party of Nelson Mandela. They were longtime activists for racial equality. When Justine arrived at the family home from the airport, one of the first things her aunt said to her was: “This is not what our family stands for. And now, by association, you’ve almost tarnished the family.”

[LINK] "No, India Isn't Growing Like China"

Bloomberg View's William Pesek suggests that India needs to do more if it is to rival China economically.

India bulls are ecstatic. According to revised gross domestic product numbers released earlier this week, the country will expand 7.4 percent in the year through March -- on par with rival China. Never mind that most other indicators -- from manufacturing to trade to corporate investment -- seem to show that the economy is at best bottoming out, or that central banker Raghuram Rajan has himself expressed puzzlement over the revised figures. For optimists, India has once again reached that holy grail of emerging economies: "China-like" growth.

India has been here before, of course. So have dozens of other countries, from Brazil to Turkey to tiny Sri Lanka. At one point or another, all have posted growth rates above 8 percent, leading to predictions of a liftoff like the one that's powered China for more than three decades. In most cases, those dreams have fizzled out within a couple years. Weak fundamentals, irrational investor exuberance and in some cases, credit or commodity busts quickly puncture fantasies of global dominance. By contrast, while its economy has begun to slow, China has grown an average of 8.5 percent for the last five years. Its Gini coefficient, a measure of a nation's rich-poor gap, has improved in each of them.

Ironically, achieving China-like growth is often the surest way to lose it. Leaders fall prey to hubris and complacency, hyping all the factors that supposedly guarantee a long run at the top: young populations, abundant resources, the unwavering affection of investors. That overconfidence fosters drift and bad policy. Remember, during its first term, India's previous Congress-led government also topped 8 percent growth. During its second, it focused on sharing the wealth through huge transfer programs rather than opening India to foreign investment, reducing red tape and deregulating fossilized industries. Growth, according the old formulas, slid below five percent.

Officials from New Delhi to Manila should be learning from China not just how to achieve high growth, but more importantly, how to sustain it. The mainland economy faces huge challenges of its own, of course. President Xi Jinping must shift growth engines away from exports and overinvestment toward services, as well as clean up Beijing's notoriously corrupt political machine. But China has gotten right many of the elements critical to raising the quality of growth. Among them: running a current-account surplus, beating inflation, boosting productivity and taming politics.

[LINK] "Putin 21-Year Quest to Be Russian Guardian Began in Estonia"

Bloomberg's Ott Ummelas makes the case that, as early as 1993, Putin was involved in promoting Russian separatist movements in neighbouring Estonia.

Two decades before seizing Crimea, Vladimir Putin showed his willingness to challenge the post-Cold War order in defense of Russians in Estonia, a country now bracing for the possibility he may go even further.

In 1993, as the St. Petersburg official running foreign affairs, the former KGB colonel helped the Russian majority in the Estonian border city of Narva approve a referendum on autonomy that was later struck down as unconstitutional, according to Vladimir Chuykin, who then headed the city council.

A unit of pro-Russian Cossacks, who once policed the tsarist empire by horse, had amassed on the Russian side of the Narva River before the ballot. Its organizers, who wanted a “clean” referendum, feared bloodshed if they were allowed to cross, Chuykin, 62, said in an interview.

“I held talks with Putin about the need for Russia to close its border so these guys couldn’t come here,” Chuykin said. “I knew Putin and his boss, Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, and they arranged a meeting for me with basically the KGB. We agreed that no ‘third forces’ would be allowed to interfere.”

Unlike Crimea’s vote to join Russia and Putin’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula, which the U.S. and the European Union declared illegal, the Narva initiative didn’t have the backing of the Kremlin, so there was no outside pressure to grant Russians greater autonomy, Chuykin said. That experience may have helped shape Putin’s approach to helping Russians throughout the former Soviet Union, which became a foreign policy priority after he was elected president in 2000.

[LINK] "Long list of small businesses wait for cash as Target’s cheque bounces"

The Globe and Mail's Martina Strauss looks at the plight of the many small Canadian businesses hit hard by Target Canada's bankruptcy.

When Target Canada collapsed into bankruptcy protection last month, hundreds of suppliers like Tanya Vierhuis felt the fallout.

The 20-year veteran market researcher spent months working on a major customer-feedback project for the discount retailer. Just before Target was granted court protection from creditors, the company sent her a cheque for $18,000, the final payment for her work. The cheque was dated Jan. 13, two days before the court filing, but she didn’t get it until Jan. 26. When she went to the bank to cash it, the cheque bounced.

Now, she’s among nearly 2,000 unsecured creditors who are waiting to see if and when they’ll get any of the money they’re owed.

“That’s my mortgage payment for the next four months,” said Ms. Vierhuis, a 44-year-old single mother of a 12-year-old son.

Ms. Vierhuis was far from alone in getting a rude surprise when Target announced it was quitting Canada and closing its 133 stores by the spring. The failed retailer is letting go its 17,600 employees – plus another 720 at its U.S. head office and in India.

But others also are feeling the pain, including suppliers such as Ms. Vierhuis, landlords and Target’s franchised pharmacists.On Wednesday, suppliers made a bit of headway in Ontario Superior Court in their tussle with Target Canada to try to get back some of their inventory. Some are worried the chain bulked up on orders in the month before it filed for creditors’ protection.

[ISL] "Will Pacific Island Nations Disappear as Seas Rise? Maybe Not"

National Geographic's Kennedy Warne suggests that a certain amount of optimism might be merited for some islands vulnerable to sea level rise, which have a certain capacity for regeneration. (Those with fixed infrastructure in place, alas, not so much.)

Are island nations like Tuvalu, where most of the land is barely above sea level, destined to sink beneath the waves, like modern-day Atlantises?

Not necessarily, according to a growing body of evidence amassed by New Zealand coastal geomorphologist Paul Kench, of the University of Auckland's School of Environment, and colleagues in Australia and Fiji, who have been studying how reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans respond to rising sea levels.

They found that reef islands change shape and move around in response to shifting sediments, and that many of them are growing in size, not shrinking, as sea level inches upward. The implication is that many islands—especially less developed ones with few permanent structures—may cope with rising seas well into the next century.

But for the areas that have been transformed by human development, such as the capitals of Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Maldives, the future is considerably gloomier. That's largely because their many structures—seawalls, roads, and water and electricity systems—are locked in place.

Their analysis, which now extends to more than 600 coral reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, indicates that about 80 percent of the islands have remained stable or increased in size (roughly 40 percent in each category). Only 20 percent have shown the net reduction that's widely assumed to be a typical island's fate when sea level rises.

Some islands grew by as much as 14 acres (5.6 hectares) in a single decade, and Tuvalu's main atoll, Funafuti—33 islands distributed around the rim of a large lagoon—has gained 75 acres (32 hectares) of land during the past 115 years.

[LINK] "Why are Christian movies so painfully bad?"

Vox's Brandon Ambrosino makes an argument that a tendency in American Christian culture to prefer didacticism over art and craft is responsible for a general failure of this culture to produce compelling art.

Any person even vaguely familiar with Evangelical subcultures will recognize the trend of copying and sanitizing whatever pop culture is doing. This trend belies a certain impulse within Evangelical Christians to separate the entire world into two categories: sheep and goats, wheat and chaff.

A good deal of contemporary Christian art is predicated on the sacred/secular divide: As Christian film critic Alissa Wilkinson noted, "Christians, and evangelicals in particular, have been really, really prolific in making pop culture products that parallel what's going on in mainstream cultural production."

To illustrate this point, Wilkinson references a poster many '90s Evangelicals will remember quite well: the "If you like that you'll love this" chart. The chart features two columns. The first reads, "If you like that." It contains the names of secular bands. The second reads, "You'll love this." It contains — you guessed it — Christian bands with similar, if sanitized, sounds.

If the chart were around today, it might say "If you like YouTube, you'll love GodTube," or "If you like Twitter, you'll love Gospelr." Or "If you like — and/or abhor — S&M sex, then you'll love this movie about chastity." These artistic replacements are intended to satisfy the Christian's cravings for the secular, harmful version.

The end result is that the Christian product seems like a knock-off, a cheap alternative.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about the good and the bad of freelancing.


• Centauri Dreams wonders about the technical issues associated with the Encyclopedia Galactica.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper speculating on how Jupiter would appear if it was an exoplanet.


• The Dragon's Tales notes a paper examining the tumultuous planetological history of Venus.


• A Fistful of Euros argues that Cyprus' engagement with the Euro has been marked by the government's willingness to hide shady behaviour at all costs.


• Joe. My. God. notes the death of out 60s pop icon Lesley Gore.


• Language Hat deservedly celebrates its author's return to health and blogging.


• Languages of the World's Asya Perelstvaig notes that sdhe has an online course on languages available.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the lessons of Uruguay's José Mujica for the left, and suggests that putting populists on pedestals is a losing strategy.


• The Map Room's Jonathan Crowe approves of the recent book Unruly Places.


• Marginal Revolution shares a revisionist take on the 1943 Bengal famine.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw considers the role of community gardens in modern-day Australia.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer

( Error: Irreparable invalid markup in entry. Raw contents behind the cut. )

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about the good and the bad of freelancing.


• Centauri Dreams wonders about the technical issues associated with the Encyclopedia Galactica.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper speculating on how Jupiter would appear if it was an exoplanet.


• The Dragon's Tales notes a paper examining the tumultuous planetological history of Venus.


• A Fistful of Euros argues that Cyprus' engagement with the Euro has been marked by the government's willingness to hide shady behaviour at all costs.


• Joe. My. God. notes the death of out 60s pop icon Lesley Gore.


• Language Hat deservedly celebrates its author's return to health and blogging.


• Languages of the World's Asya Perelstvaig notes that sdhe has an online course on languages available.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the lessons of Uruguay's José Mujica for the left, and suggests that putting populists on pedestals is a losing strategy.


• The Map Room's Jonathan Crowe approves of the recent book Unruly Places.


• Marginal Revolution shares a revisionist take on the 1943 Bengal famine.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw considers the role of community gardens in modern-day Australia.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer wonders if Grexit will be triggered over so little.


• Savage Minds shares tips on better writing for students of the social sciences (and all people, really).


• Window on Eurasia notes the shattering of the post-Soviet space, suggests further advances into Ukraine are unlikely, argues that Lithuania would be much more likely to face conventional aggression than Estonia or Latvia, and notes Russia's outlook to the European far left as well as the far right.

[DM] "Taiwan's growing multiculturalism"

I've a Demography Matters post linking to Sinclaire Prowse's article in The Diplomat noting the continuing evolution of Taiwan, via international migration, into a more multicultural society.