[PHOTO] Seen at the station

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams reports on a theory suggesting the distant dwarf planet Sedna and its kin were captured from another star in the sun's birth cluster.


• Crooked Timber reports on a Dutch court ruling arguing that the Netherlands is legally obliged to reduce carbon dioxide output.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes that hot Neptune Gliese 436b has a comet-like tail.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that DARPA is working on Martian terraforming bugs.


• Far Outliers looks at Comanche inroads on bison herds in the 19th century.


• Geocurrents maps the recent Turkish elections, looking for patterns.


• Marginal Revolution argues that the campaign against the Confederate flag couldn't work if the two American political parties were competing for rural white votes.


• The Russian Demographics Blog shares an Economist ranking of the top tne economies in 2050, Indonesia ranking notably higher.


• Torontoist notes a local publication of nerd fangirls.


• Window on Eurasia argues that the Russian Orthodox Church's ongoing losses in Ukraine will marginalize it internationally.

[LINK] "Is memory enough? Remembering the racial legacies of slavery in France today"

Nicola Frith and Kate Hodgson write at Open Democracy about race and slavery and historical memory in France, and their complications.

Race was central to constructing and maintaining slavery in France’s colonies, as it was across the colonial plantation world more generally. Key distinctions between subjects racialised as ‘white’ and ‘black’ shaped economic patterns, legal affairs and social relationships. Enslaved Africans were sought-after merchandise among the French merchants and plantation owners who made fortunes from the sale of what they crudely referred to as ‘ebony wood’. A legal text governing master-slave relations was created called the Black Code (1685). This outlawed relationships between free and enslaved persons, restricted the movements of slaves, and defined the harsh punishments to be used against slaves for any minor infringement or attempt to escape. The original colonial system placed a small white minority in control of a large but enslaved African majority, and was from the start a regime of terror, brutality and exploitation.

Yet the Black Code was not completely successful in its attempt to segregate and subjugate. This is evident in multiple forms of resistance, including poisoning, slave-led uprisings and ‘marronage’ (fugitive slaves). A growing free black and mixed-race population also began to emerge, posing a challenge to the stark, racialised binaries on which the colonial system was based. In response, additional colonial legislation was passed to restrict the activities of free people of colour. A total of 128 categories of skin colour were meticulously catalogued, from black to white, from ‘Sacatra’ to ‘Quarteron’.

The resentment provoked by this apartheid-esque system exploded with the arrival of French revolutionary ideas to the colonies, culminating in the mass revolt of the enslaved Africans in Saint Domingue. This became known as the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). The French Atlantic world was transformed with the birth of Haiti as the first black-led, post-slave, post-colonial nation state. One of the most radical aspects of Haiti’s independence was the article in the 1805 constitution that abolished distinctions of skin colour, with all Haitians henceforth identified as black. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the constitution’s creator, did this to help unify a nation still deeply marked by the structural racism of its French origins.

The French colonial bureaucracy took the opposite stance after it abolished slavery in the rest of France’s plantation colonies in 1848. In contrast to Haiti’s assertion of blackness, French republicanism embraced a ‘neutral’ identity based on the idea of assimilation to French cultural values and a desire to forget the slave past. This rhetoric of neutrality towards racial difference masked the reality of continued exploitation, including forced labour, indenture, and the use of detention centres. These and other practices effectively created a two-tier system of national identity based upon racial divisions. Numerous individuals who grew up during this period have testified to the profoundly alienating effects of a colonial education that worked to deny their history and erase their identity.

[LINK] "Renewables to Beat Fossil Fuels With $3.7 Trillion Solar Boom"

Bloomberg's Ehren Goossens reports. I would also add that other energy technologies should be taken into consideration--nuclear energy comes to mind.

Renewable energy will draw almost two-thirds of the spending on new power plants over the next 25 years, dwarfing spending on fossil fuels, as plunging costs make solar the first choice for consumers and the poorest nations.

Solar power will draw $3.7 trillion in investment through 2040, with a total of $8 trillion going toward clean energy. That’s almost double the $4.1 trillion that will be spent on coal, natural gas and nuclear plants, according to a forecast from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The figures show the traditional dominance of coal and natural gas suppliers will slip in the coming years as cheaper renewables mean developing nations can tap less-polluting sources to meet their swelling energy needs. The forecast from New Energy Finance also indicates that coal will remain an important fuel, suggesting policy makers must take further steps to control greenhouse gases.

“We will see tremendous progress toward a decarbonized power system,” Michael Liebreich, founder of New Energy Finance, said Tuesday in a statement as the research group released its findings in London. Despite this, emissions will continue to rise “for another decade-and-a-half unless radical policy action is taken.”

[LINK] On why the Galilean moons, unlike Titan, lack atmospheres

The Dragon's Tales links to a paper, "The formation of the Galilean moons and Titan in the Grand Tack scenario", that provides an explanation for why Galilean moons like Ganymede and Callisto lack atmospheres despite being as massive as densely-shrouded Titan. Migration in the early solar system explains this.

In the "Grand Tack" (GT) scenario for the young solar system, Jupiter formed beyond 3.5 AU from the Sun and migrated as close as 1.5 AU until it encountered an orbital resonance with Saturn. Both planets then supposedly migrated outward for several 105 yr, with Jupiter ending up at ~5 AU. The initial conditions of the GT and the timing between Jupiter's migration and the formation of the Galilean satellites remain unexplored. We study the formation of Ganymede and Callisto, both of which consist of ~50% water and rock, respectively, in the GT scenario. We examine why they lack dense atmospheres, while Titan is surrounded by a thick nitrogen envelope. We model an axially symmetric circumplanetary disk (CPD) in hydrostatic equilibrium around Jupiter. The CPD is warmed by viscous heating, Jupiter's luminosity, accretional heating, and the Sun. The position of the water ice line in the CPD, which is crucial for the formation of massive moons, is computed at various solar distances. We assess the loss of Galilean atmospheres due to high-energy radiation from the young Sun. Ganymede and Callisto cannot have accreted their water during Jupiter's supposed GT, because its CPD (if still active) was too warm to host ices and much smaller than Ganymede's contemporary orbit. From a thermal perspective, the Galilean moons might have had significant atmospheres, but these would probably have been eroded during the GT in < 105 yr by solar XUV radiation. Jupiter and the Galilean moons formed beyond 4.5 (+/-0.5) AU and prior to the proposed GT. Thereafter, Jupiter's CPD would have been dry, and delayed accretion of planetesimals should have created water-rich Io and Europa. While Galilean atmospheres would have been lost during the GT, Titan would have formed after Saturn's own tack, because Saturn still accreted substantially for ~106 yr after its closest solar approach, ending up at about 7 AU.

[LINK] "Federal Court orders government and RCMP to hand over all Quebec gun registry data"

Wow. Hosted at the National Post, Bruce Cheadle's Canadian Press article tells a damning tale of the government.

A Federal Court judge has ordered that Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and the RCMP commissioner immediately hand over an external hard drive containing a copy of all Quebec gun registry data.

Judge Luc Martineau gave the government until 10 a.m. Tuesday morning to deliver the hard drive to the court — effectively issuing a vote of non-confidence in government assurances that all the remaining long-gun registry records would be preserved while court challenges continue.

It’s the first decisive legal skirmish in a battle that could last for some time between information commissioner Suzanne Legault and the Harper government over the long-defunct long-gun registry.

[. . .]

Martineau’s order came after a day-long hearing in which Justice department lawyers argued it was unnecessary to produce an actual physical copy of the records because the public safety minister had issued “four separate undertakings” to preserve the data.

Lawyer Richard Dearden, representing Legault, presented affidavits, letters and email evidence showing that previous assurances from the Conservative government in 2012 were ignored as it pushed for the speedy destruction of all gun registry records outside the province of Quebec.

[URBAN NOTE] Chris Selley on how Bombardier failed Toronto with its streetcars

At the National Post Chris Selley notes Bombardier's multiple problems in delivering streetcars to Toronto on time, and wonders why we should protect it.

If the bidding process for these streetcars wasn’t rigged in Bombardier’s favour, you can’t blame people for being suspicious. Skoda’s highly regarded 10T model was conveniently excluded because the TTC insisted on a 100 per cent low-floor model. (The 10T was 50 per cent low-floor; its successor is 100 per cent.) Siemens struggled with the Cancon requirement, and dropped out of the initial, aborted bidding process at the last minute. You certainly can’t say Toronto did everything possible to get the best deal — indeed, then-TTC chairman Adam Giambrone had hoped to aim for 50 per cent Cancon, and board member Glenn De Baeremaeker tried to have whole thing sole-sourced to Bombardier, all based on the premise that Thunder Bay will suffer if we don’t buy domestic, and that that’s the TTC’s business.

It is a maddeningly parochial, small-minded view masquerading as benevolence, and it’s not just confined to transit. Last year, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives warned that CETA, the Canada-Europe free trade deal, would turn all of government procurement on its ear: It would “substantially restrict the vast majority of provincial and municipal government bodies from using public spending as a catalyst for achieving other societal goals.”

Daniel Schwanen, vice-president, research, at the C.D. Howe Institute, agrees it’s a big change — but a positive one, inasmuch as Canadian firms now have reciprocal access to the enormous European procurement market. Indeed, even as Vancouver buys Canada Line trains from South Korea, and Metrolinx buys UP Express trains from Japan, and Edmonton buys LRT units from Germany, the vast majority of Bombardier’s business in Thunder Bay is domestic — in large part because it’s so tough to sell to our most obvious potential foreign customer.

“When we negotiated the NAFTA, the U.S. and Mexico were ready to talk business regarding more open state and provincial and local procurement markets,” says Schwanen. But Canadian provinces weren’t up for it. Schwanen suggests they were more amenable during the European negotiations precisely because their companies found themselves locked out of the U.S. market, and didn’t much like it.

In short, instead of imagining job losses in Thunder Bay, we could be imagining all the jobs freer trade might create there to serve foreign markets.

[URBAN NOTE] "The fall of Sir Henry Pellatt, king of Casa Loma"

Spacing Toronto's Chris Bateman tells the story of how Henry Pellatt, the magnate who built Casa Loma, lost his wealth.

Trouble began to surface as the first world war drew to a close. Pellatt’s business debts were mounting and land he had bought in the Cedarvale area had failed increase in value. By 1923, less than 10 years after moving into Casa Loma, Pellatt owed $1.7 million ($24.2 million, 2015) to the Home Bank, which went bankrupt that year amid financial irregularities.

The property tax alone on the mansion was $1,000 a month. Fuel costs were $15,000 a year and the total annual cost of servicing the property was $22,000—$313,000 in 2015. With the couple’s cash flow drying up, Lady Pellatt died of a heart attack in April 1924. A short time later, Henry cut his loses and allowed the City of Toronto to seize his dream home for backed taxes. The contents he decided to auction off in an effort to cover his debts.

The collection of luxury items, valued at $1.5 million, was snapped up for roughly $250,000. The $75,000 pipe organ that once graced the property, fetched just $40, although the auctioneer did serenade the crowd with a rendition of Auld Lang Syne.

Countless works of art went for a song, as did bolts of fabric, Chesterfields, arm chairs, Chippendale furniture,

“It is a sale that breaks my heart,” Pellatt told the Toronto Star. “The process is something like getting a tooth pulled—once over, one proceeds to forget all about it.”

[MUSIC] Bif Naked, "I Love Myself Today"

It's time this Thursday evening for another Bif Naked song, "I Love Myself Today" off of her 2001 album urge.

"Bif Naked - "I Love Myself Today" Her Royal Majesty's Records" (Watch on YouTube)

Like her "Spaceman", this pop-punk song was remixed by the Boomtang Boys into a more chart-popular version.

"I Love Myself Today (Dance Remix) (Music Video) - Bif Naked" (Watch on YouTube)

It's a great pop song, energetic and cheery and relentlessly optimistic. Plus, the lyrics make me smile even if they are dated. (Who looks for lovers in a chatroom?)

Well look at you,
Your all puffed up
In a big red truck
But your out of luck this time
oh well thats tough
Cause I'm on fire too hot to touch
With a chat room full of lovers
on the line
I'll stand right up
Spit shine my soul
I'm gonna be proud and loud and outta control