[PHOTO] Annex fence iris

Perfectly framed in the fence, this purple iris needed to be photographed.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• 3 Quarks Daily notes, after the Economist, that badly-educated men have not adapted well to global trade, high technology, and feminism.


• blogTO notes that the High Park peacock roaming around Roncesvalles may have returned to its home in the zoo.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly provides tips for people moving to freelance writing from staff employment.


• The Cranky Sociologists shares a parody of the new movie Aloha, set in Hawaii yet dominated by whites.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the unique astronomical biosignature of photosynthesis.


• The Dragon's Tales compares the clays of Earth and Mars.


• jsburbidge examines the concept of the literary canon.


• Language Log considers the complexities of Chinese character usage in an unacknowledged multilingual China/Taiwan space.


• Marginal Revolution considers China's heavy investments in the new Silk Road project.


• Progressive Download's John Farrell looks to a historian who suggests the world needs a new origins story based on science.


• Towleroad notes how a gay couple dissolved the adoptive relationship that once united them to become married.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes the illicit sexuality involved among the Republicans opposed to Clinton in the 1990s.


• Window on Eurasia argues that Crimea is set to be Russified and notes the importance of Russian rural agriculture in the time of sanctions.

[LINK] Al Jazeera on religion among American Druze

In her article "Keeping the faith?", Liana Aghajanian takes a look at the strategies used by American Druze to try to keep young people within the faith. Given that constraints of the Druze religion, including opposition to intermarriage and homophobia, are problems for these young people, the religion seems to have plenty of work.

Calling themselves Al-Muwahhidun (believers in the oneness of God), the Druze stress a strict monotheism that incorporates Greek philosophy and Vedic elements such as reincarnation. The religion is sometimes regarded as secretive because of its distance from outsiders and because of its strict adherence to endogamy, or marriage within the community.

The roots of these beliefs can be traced back to the 11th century, when Egyptian ruler Al-Hakim, a central figure in Druze cosmology, disappeared under mysterious circumstances and was succeeded by his son Ali az-Zahir, who sought to wipe out the religion. In an act of self-preservation, the Druze went underground in 1043 and haven’t accepted converts since. There are now roughly 1 million Druze around the world, the majority of whom live in Lebanon, Syria and Israel; 30,000 to 40,000 members are in the United States, with the largest American group in California.

The Druze have persisted for over a thousand years, but for American Druze, ensuring that their community will survive past the 21st century has meant facing difficult questions about striking a balance between religion and secular culture.

There are a number of challenges. For many Druze growing up in the U.S., religion isn’t part of daily life. Second- and third-generation Druze Americans are often assimilated into American youth culture, and many move further from the faith when they enter high school and college. Alcohol is forbidden in the religion — which can present a challenge — and only very few young Druze choose to become members of the uqqal, a group of spiritual leaders knowledgeable in Druze doctrine. As a result, the majority of Druze Americans are relatively uninformed about their faith, and many don’t even have Arabic language skills.

The religion has also struggled with restrictions that some consider out of step with contemporary life in the U.S. According to Michael Malek Najjar, a professor of theater arts at the University of Oregon and a second-generation Druze American, prohibitions on intermarriage and being openly gay are “driving a lot of Druze away.” He added that these issues “are frankly causing a major schism in the American Druze and Western Druze societies that are going to lead to a gradual diminishment of the faith.”

[LINK] "Made in Chindia: Two Paths Toward Industrialization"

Bloomberg looks at how India is desperately trying to catch up to China, if need be by capturing the industrial jobs that an increasingly developed China is starting to shed.

It may sound like another example of rivalry between the world’s most populous nations.

The Communist Party recently announced a Made in China program aimed at transforming its manufacturing sector, months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled his Make in India plan, also targeted at manufacturing. Look closer though and the signs point to a broad shift that could draw the two Asian giants closer economically in the years ahead.

Made in China 2025 is a 10-year campaign to push the country beyond labor-intensive work into more sophisticated sectors, from robotics to aerospace. Modi’s goal is to bring basic manufacturing to an economy that needs more decent-paying jobs. In short, China has set its sights on rivaling Germany or Japan, while India will happily settle for where China is now.

“Whatever industries China will be shedding over the years, India can capture,” said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economic research at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong. “The advanced guys will find that they finally have to compete head to head with China and I think it’s going to be a big, big headache for these industrialized countries.”

Besides sheer scale, China is years, if not decades ahead of its neighbor. According to International Monetary Fund and World Bank data, China’s gross domestic product per capita is almost five times that of India at $7,600 and its manufacturing sector is 10 times bigger at about $3 trillion. Still, China is losing workers by the millions, similar to what Japan experienced in the late 1990s.

[LINK] "Chinese counterfeits leave Ghanaian textiles hanging by a thread"

Africland Post describes the undermining of Ghana's wax-printed fabric industry by Chinese imports. This is a real problem, I acknowledge, yet I also wonder if, as Chinese industry moves up the value-added ladder, these textiles might be something that could be profitably outsourced to a stable middle-income African economy.

As a tailor, Afia Addy is a connoisseur of wax-printed fabric.

“The Chinese ones, the colors are brighter,” she says from her stall at a pop-up clothing boutique in the heart of Accra, Ghana’s capital. She points to a cropped blazer in a brown and ochre wax print. “When you compare, Ghanaian ones look a bit dull.”

Wax-printed fabric, a source of national pride that has come to represent African fashion worldwide, plays a vital role in weddings, funerals, and traditional events throughout Ghana. Any special occasion involves a trip to market to pick the fabric before taking it to a tailor, like Ms. Addy, to create a custom-made outfit. But over the past decade, the country’s textile industry has collapsed.

While there were once more than a dozen homegrown companies printing colorful fabrics, just a few remain. The industry, which until the 1990s employed 30,000 workers, now provides a mere 3,000 jobs, according to national data. The problem, textile manufacturers say, is counterfeit cloth made in massive quantities in China and smuggled into Ghana.

These “fakes” have been around for almost three decades, but they were visibly lower in quality until the 2000s. Then they began to exponentially improve — down to the labels used to confirm authenticity – so that they now make up about 60 percent of all textiles sold in Ghana, says Stephen Badu, marketing director of fabric company GTP, one of the few remaining homegrown manufacturers and a leading brands. Counterfeits can sell at half the price of an authentic product.

[LINK] "Why Europe can't let Greek economy crumble"

CBC's Don Pittis makes the case that the rest of the Eurozone has to bail Greece out somehow, in the name of its credibility and that of the wider European Union. He might have a good argument, but if levels of trust between Greece and the rest of the Eurozone are so low and for understandable reasons I wonder if anyone even believes in the possibility of this solution.

When two sides in a financial negotiation are playing chicken, there is always a possibility that both will think the other will give way at the last minute. Accidents do happen.

This time, neither side can afford it.

You can see why the Europeans have been reluctant to cave in. It is a classic case of moral hazard, where, if a person, business or country gets away with something once, there is nothing to stop them from doing the same thing again.

In this case, the idea is that Greeks ran up huge debts. Greeks, through their governments, made deals to borrow even more money to keep their economy afloat. The moral hazard argument would say that if Greeks don't keep to their side of the deal, they should be made to suffer the consequences.

For the EU, the moral hazard case goes far beyond Greece. It is only one of 28 countries in the union. Anything Brussels does for one member country becomes a precedent for what it may be asked to do for other members in the future.

The gloomiest of the Europeans fear a wave of copycat defaults as more countries elect governments to repudiate debts and demand relief.

[ISL] "Halifax woman opening her home to P.E.I. women needing abortions"

Good for this woman! From CBC:

A Prince Edward Island woman now living in Halifax is opening her home to women from her province needing abortions in the city because the procedure is not available there.

Chelsey Buchanan posted on social media offering a room, food, bus tickets and transportation to the clinic. She hasn't had any requests for the room yet.

Buchanan said she was inspired to offer help after reading the Sovereign Uterus, a blog where women were sharing their frustrations with the system.

"I was reading over it and I saw that so many women had travelled home afterwards, like after getting the procedure done and it was against doctor's orders," she said. "So I kind of figured there are a lot people out there that don't have the means to stay in Halifax overnight, and I mean I have space, so why not offer up what I have?"

P.E.I. is the only province in Canada where surgical abortions are not performed, but some doctors will provide a prescription for a medical abortion. The province pays for the service but not the cost of travel. A 2014 Health PEI report indicated the government could have saved $37,000 a year by providing the service on the island. The report said about 153 women had to seek the service in 2013.

The Sovereign Uterus blog, for whatever it's worth, is here.

[LINK] Liu Cixin at Tor on science fiction in China

Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin, known in the West for his trilogy The Three-Body Problem, published at Tor.com the essay The Worst of All Possible Universes and the Best of All Possible Earths: Three Body and Chinese Science Fiction at the beginning of May. There, after describing the impact of his book in China, he describes the history of the genre of science fiction in China, and its close relationship with Chinese modernization in its various forms.

Chinese science fiction was born at the turn of the 20th century, when the Qing Dynasty was teetering on the edge of ruin. At the time, Chinese intellectuals were entranced by and curious about Western science and technology, and thought of such knowledge as the only hope for saving the nation from poverty, weakness, and general backwardness. Many works popularizing and speculating about science were published, including works of science fiction. One of the leaders of the failed Hundred Days’ Reform (June 11-September 21, 1898), the renowned scholar Liang Qichao, wrote a science fiction story called “A Chronicle of the Future of New China.” In it, he imagined a Shanghai World’s Fair—a vision that would not become true until 2010.

Like most genres of literary expression, science fiction in China was subject to instrumentalist impulses and had to serve practical goals. At its birth, it became a tool of propaganda for the Chinese who dreamed of a strong China free of colonial depredations. Thus, science fiction works from the end of the Qing Dynasty and the early Republican years almost always presented a future in which China was strong, prosperous, and advanced, a nation that the world respected rather than subjugated.

After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, science fiction became a tool for popularizing scientific knowledge, and its main intended readers were children. Most of these stories put technology at the core and contained little humanism, featuring simplistic characters and basic, even naïve literary techniques. Few of the novels ventured outside the orbit of Mars, and most stuck to the near future. In these works, science and technology were always presented as positive forces, and the technological future was always bright.

An interesting observation can be made when one surveys the science fiction published during this period. In the early years after the Communist Revolution, politics and revolutionary fervor infused every aspect of daily life, and the very air one breathed seemed filled with propaganda for Communist ideals. Given this context, one might have expected that science fiction would also be filled with descriptions of Communist utopias of the future. But, as a matter of fact, not a single work of this type can be found. There were practically no science fiction stories that featured Communism as the subject, not even simplistic sketches to promote the concept.

[WRITING] "Writers in Canada make less than in 1998"

The Toronto Star's Deborah Dundas wrote about a terribly depressing survey by the Writers' Union of Canada. Perhaps unsurprisingly, writers just can't afford to earn a living from their craft.

Writers’ incomes continue to fall with the majority earning an income from their publications that is below the poverty line, according to findings released by the Writers’ Union of Canada from a survey of its members and other writers this spring.

The average writer earns just $12,879 from writing, the survey found, while the median income is less than $5,000. For 81 per cent of those who responded, their income from writing actually falls below the poverty line (which in Ontario was just under $20,000 in 2011). The organization has more than 2,000 members; 947 writers participated in the survey.

Taking inflation into account, writers are making 27 per cent less than they were in 1998, the survey says.

Interestingly, the survey breaks down sources of writing income, noting that 45 per cent comes from royalties, a total of about 5 per cent from grants, other types of writing, including corporate, financial and government, or freelance articles for newspapers and magazines. Self-published titles are the third largest source of income overall, at 8 per cent.

To be a member of the Writers’ Union, writers must have had at least one book published by a trade or university press or the equivalent in another medium.

Not to be overly morose, but at least this doesn't effect me: I never was a writer in the first place, not really. (Or does it, could it?) Perhaps I should just write the next 50 Shades of Gray.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the pro-gay transformation of Michael Coren

The transition of Canadian broadcaster and journalist Michael Coren, from a conservative Roman Catholic commentator most notable to me for his homophobia to an Anglican who has embraced gay issues, has from my perspective been sudden and remarkable. That homophobia was actually the motive force behind his religious transformation, as he wrote on the 16th of May in the Toronto Star, is still something of a shocker to me.

It’s been an interesting two weeks. I was fired from three regular columns in Catholic magazines, had a dozen speeches cancelled and was then subjected to a repugnant storm of tweets, Facebook comments, emails, newspaper articles and radio broadcasts where it was alleged that I am unfaithful to my wife, am willing to do anything for money, am a liar and a fraud, a “secret Jew,” that my eldest daughter is gay and I am going directly to hell. As I say, an interesting two weeks.

The reason for all this probably seems disarmingly banal and for many people absurdly irrelevant. At the beginning of May it was made public that a year ago I left the Roman Catholic Church and began to worship as an Anglican. More specifically, from being a public and media champion of social conservatism I gradually came to embrace the cause of same-sex marriage, more liberal politics and a rejection of the conservative Christianity that had characterized my opinions and persona for more than a decade. I’d won the RTNDA Broadcasting Award for a major radio debate where I opposed equal marriage, I was the author of the bestselling book Why Catholics Are Right, I was Michael Coren, for God’s sake — certainly not someone who would ever appear in the pages of the Toronto Star!

The change was to a large extent triggered by the gay issue. I couldn’t accept that homosexual relationships were, as the Roman Catholic Church insists on proclaiming, disordered and sinful. Once a single brick in the wall was removed the entire structure began to fall.

I refused to base my entire world view and theology, as so many active Catholics do, around abortion, contraception and sex rather than love, justice and forgiveness. Frankly, it was tearing me apart. I wanted to extend the circle of love rather than stand at the corners of a square and repel outsiders. So I quietly and privately drifted over to an Anglican Church that while still working out its own position on many social issues, is far more progressive, open, relevant and willing to admit reality.

He wrote again about this transition, at length, in The Walrus in the appropriately named "Coming Out".

As a middle-aged, very white, very straight, very Christian man, I was obliged, first reluctantly and then eagerly, to explore the complex dynamic between faith and homosexuality and to work out a new narrative. The crux of that narrative: God is love. The love I felt when I first saw my newborn children, when I watched my mother dissolve into Alzheimer’s, when I found my late father’s diaries that spoke of his pride in our family, when I feel closest to the Christ I worship. Jesus spoke of love for everybody and called for forgiveness, justice, truth, turning the other cheek.

As my faith has deepened over the years, I have tried to broaden the circle of inclusive love rather than guard the borders of what I once thought was Christian truth. Instead of holding the door firm, I want to hold it wide open. I have realized that Christianity is a permanent revolution, a state of being in which we believers must challenge our preconceptions every moment of every day. How dare I—with all of my brokenness and sordid, banal sinfulness—criticize someone simply because he or she wants to live life fully? How the hell dare I?

The standard Christian response to homosexuality is the familiar but entirely inadequate mantra “love the sinner but hate the sin.” In other words, a gay person’s sexual and romantic attractions—much of their being and personality, and all that they want in a lasting relationship—is sinful, but they themselves are just fine. By way of analogy, the teachings go, Christians love alcoholics but not alcoholism, love those who commit adultery but not the act of adultery itself. Such logic presupposes that same-sex attraction is no more central to a person’s identity than substance abuse or unfaithfulness—which any reasonable person knows to be untrue.

I'm still taken aback by this all. The apparent thoroughness of Coren's transition, triggered directly by his recognition of homophobia, impresses me. Really, the only thing coherent I can say about this is that I hope that I, too, am able to make similar shifts in my thinking when I recognize a fault in my worldview.