[FORUM] What is the last movie you've seen?

This evening I saw Ant-Man, the latest enjoyable installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

You?

[PHOTO] Dupont sunflower

[LINK] "The lessons of Newfoundland’s 1948 referendum"

Suffragio features an article by Kevin Lees looking at Newfoundland's 1948 referendum. I think the author much too sanguine about the economic chances of Newfoundland--independence would have come at the price of continuing austerity, and no automatic access to the Canadian labour market--but the points made about the dynamics are worth noting.

Confederation’s champion was Joey Smallwood — a Liberal radio show host who embraced Canada and who nearly single-handedly pushed the cause through the Confederation Association. The cause of merging into Canada attracted support mainly from the Protestants of rural Newfoundland and Labrador; less so from the urban business class of St. John’s. After successfully pushing confederation, Smallwood (pictured above) would become the province’s first and most long-lasting premier, serving until 1972 and shaping Newfoundland’s transition as a part of federal Canada.

Peter Cashin, a one-time Newfoundlander finance minister, was a member of the 1947 commission to London that so disappointed Newfoundland’s leaders when the UK government refused to commit to financial assistance. Disillusioned by British intentions, and rightly suspecting that the British and Canadian government were colluding to favor confederation, Cashin led the Responsible Government League throughout the referendum campaign. In a famous 1947 speech to the national convention on Newfoundland’s future, he condemned what he called:

a conspiracy to sell… this country to the Dominion of Canada. Watch in particular the attractive bait which will be held out to lure our country into the Canadian mousetrap. Listen to their flowery sales talk which will be offered to you; telling Newfoundlanders they’re a lost people….

At minimum, Cashin believed that a return to responsible government would give Newfoundland a stronger hand in any potential talks on confederation, including the terms on which Newfoundland might join Canada — with respect to debt, provincial assistance and Newfoundland’s rights vis-à-vis the national government with respect to fishing and resources.

The most beguiling option came with the Economic Union Party, the brainchild of businessman Chelsey Crosbie. Though you might not be able to tell it from the name, the ‘economic union’ meant union with the United States — not with Canada. Crosbie’s group, which became even more popular than the Responsible Government League, hoped that independence would allow closer ties with the United States. US statehood was never presented on the ballot, even though there’s a plausible case that it might have won in light of the Newfoundlandish good will to the Americans during World War II. Though US president Harry Truman never seriously considered annexation, it’s conceivable that after a decade of closer economic partnership, Newfoundland could have become the 51st American state in 1959 alongside Alaska and Hawaii.

[LINK] Maddy Crowell of Slate on the problems of Auroville

In Slate, Maddy Crowell travels to India to visit a famed utopian community that actually is no such thing.

We drove in silence for 20 minutes down East Coast Road, a highway jammed with motorbikes, passing brightly colored tea and samosa stalls. In a sharp, 90-degree turn, the taxi lurched off the highway onto an unmarked dirt road where a wall of leafy trees brought the chaos and the color to a jolting stop. And suddenly, we weren’t in India anymore.

Auroville was built by hand by the flower-power generation of the 1960s. It was a “psychological revolution,” as W.M. Sullivan noted in his book The Dawning of Auroville—a venture in which Marxist-flavored socialism met anarchy. There is no money, no government, no religion, no skyscrapers or expressways, no newspapers with headlines of war, poverty, and genocide. Built for 50,000 people, Auroville today has only about 2,500 permanent residents and roughly 5,000 visitors—self-selected exiles from more than 100 countries. Auroville wasn’t just some hippie haven; it was designed to be a poster child for India itself. According to a 1982 Indian Supreme Court ruling, Auroville is in “conformity with India’s highest ideals and aspirations.” The Indian government donates more than $200,000 to Auroville every year, and UNESCO has protected the township since its birth in 1968.

But for a professed utopia, Auroville has a laundry list of problems; high up on the list are robbery and sexual harassment cases in the non-gated community surrounded by local villages, but there have been more drastic cases of rape, suicide, and even murder.

[LINK] Cas Mudde of Open Democracy on the failures of Syriza

Writing at Open Democracy, one Cas Mudde notes that Syriza's failures can be traced directly to a lack of professionalism.

Syriza failed, first and foremost, because the party and its leaders – not even speaking of its coalition partner Independent Greeks (ANEL) – were ill-prepared to govern. They were willful amateurs taken to the cleaners by rigid but experienced politicians like Schäuble. Blinded by their ideology, they were convinced that their argument was absolutely right and they only needed the support of the majority of the Greek people – hence the Greferendum – to convince the rest of the EU of their superior insight.

The best example of this righteous amateurism is undoubtedly the newest darling of Europe’s gauche caviar, Yanis Varoufakis, the now ex-Minister of Finance. In his first (of undoubtedly many) tell-all interview after resigning he complained about trying to ‘talk economics’ in the Eurogroup but being met by a ‘point blank refusal to engage in economic arguments.’ Most striking of his statements, however, is his follow-up: ‘And that’s startling, for somebody who’s used to academic debate.’ As most academics who have dealt occasionally with policy makers know, politicians are not interested in long, theoretical ‘lectures.’ Moreover, several Eurogroup members were particularly not interested in being ‘lectured to’ by the person who owed them money.

Obviously, the fundamental problem of Syriza is that it made up a ‘Third Way’ of bailouts without austerity, which it was able to sell to a plurality of desperate Greek voters, despite it being continuously and openly rejected by the other Eurozone members. Syriza politicians knew this at least since the 2012 elections, but chose to devote all of their time to criticizing the established parties and promoting their unrealistic alternative. They did not start to lay the groundwork for possible future negotiations with the Troika.

First of all, they did not develop at least a rudimentary plan for a fallback option, i.e. a Grexit. Varoufakis recently claimed that they only debated some alternative measures on the night of the Greferendum – oh the irony – but that he couldn’t convince his inner-circle colleagues of their feasibility. Even if it is true that Tsipras and others approached a slew of non-EU countries – China, Iran, and Russia – in 2014, to secure funding for a possible Grexit, this hardly counts as preparation of a fallback option. Rather, the fact that they seriously thought that, most notably, Russia would be able and willing to bankroll a Grexit – as it struggles through an economic crisis of its own as well as EU and US sanctions – is painful proof of their lack of understanding of the international political context.

Second, and even more important, Syriza failed to muster international support for its preferred alternative. As we learned from the recent negotiations, French and Italian social democrats were open to a softening of the austerity conditions. But rather than reaching out to possible mainstream allies, particularly in other hard-hit countries, Syriza politicians criticized several southern European countries for their handling of the crisis and debt. Its key strategy seems to have been to wait for other ‘radical left’ parties to come to power in southern Europe and then to collectively renegotiate the Memorandum. The obvious problem was one of sequencing. Greece had to negotiate its deals well before the other countries held elections – leaving aside the fact that there were few indications that other radical left parties would become the dominant party in a new government.

Consequently, when Tsipras met his counterparts in Brussels, he had no real allies or fallback option. It was only then, under extreme public and time pressure, that he tried to sell his alternative to the other European leaders. When they called his bluff, he couldn’t threaten with a Grexit, and instead went for “a democratic mandate.” But while the “no” vote in the Greferendum took most Eurogroup leaders by surprise, it obviously didn’t really affect their position. After all, their own democratic mandates come from their own voters, and in many countries the voters were far from sympathetic to the Greek plight. Note, for example, that Tsipras’ current approval rating of roughly 60% is more than matched by Schauble’s 70% -- not to speak of the fact that there are almost 8 times more Germans than Greeks.

[LINK] "Can Arabic literature ever be fully understood in English?"

The United Arab Emirates' The National features an essay by one M Lynx Qualey noting the problems with translated Arabic-language literature. What, exactly, is the consumer of the translated product consuming? Is it a good sample, or a representative sample? Lots of interesting questions.

In some ways, reading all this Arabic literature in English has been like listening in on a foreign-language recording when one understands the words’ meanings, but not the allusions, nor the jokes, nor the underlying rhythms.

Some of this woodenness can be blamed on inadequate translations. But some of it falls to our historical blind spots. What makes a literature untranslatable is not the failure to find equivalents of any particular words. The endless listicles of “untranslatable” words – like backpfeifengesicht (German for “a face badly in need of a fist”) and bakku-span (Japanese for “a girl beautiful only from behind”) – may not have single-word equivalents, but they come with easily understandable translations.

Rhythm and rhyme can be more difficult to recreate, but what’s really hard to convey is the fullness of a literary tradition. Why did the original readers judge this work great? Did they look for the same things we value in English, or was it something completely different?

Also, literature builds on literature. You can hardly appreciate Wicked without a passing knowledge of Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, and Moby-Dick is a lot thinner without access to a bit of Shakespeare and the Bible.

Novels take a position in a landscape of genres, motifs and other books. Just so, Youssef Rakha’s Sultan’s Seal, translated by Paul Starkey, is hard to understand if the reader lacks any relationship to classical Arabic letters.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s Yiddish Playhouse"

Torontoist's Kevin Plummer had a nice feature looking at one locus of Yiddish-language drama in Toronto.

As an expression of a new, secular Jewish culture, “Yiddish theatre served an important psychological function for the Jewish immigrant” in Toronto, historian Stephen A. Speisman writes in The Jews of Toronto: A History to 1937 (McClelland & Stewart, 2005 [1979]). “[I]t was a place where he could laugh uproariously after a day in the factory,” Speisman continued, “where he could rise out of the indignity of his existence as a rag-picker to heights unattainable outside the fantasy of the stage, where the catharsis of weeping simultaneously over one’s own lot and over the tragedy of the fictional character was to be had for ten cents.”

In Toronto, the centre of Yiddish comedy and drama was on the northeast corner of Dundas and Spadina, the site of Isidore Axler’s Standard Theatre—the first purpose-built Yiddish playhouse in Canada. At its peak in the 1920s and early 1930s, the Standard was considered by journalist and historian Hye Bossin to be “the finest Yiddish playhouse in North America and probably the world.”

Yiddish stock companies visiting Toronto performed at Orange halls and other venues until 1906, when the People’s Theatre, the city’s first Yiddish theatre, was opened in an old synagogue. The venue was so dilapidated that a balcony collapse during an early performance almost led to tragedy. Charles (Chanina) Pasternak, the owner and a Ward entrepreneur, brought another businessman (alternatively given as Simon Rabinowitch or a Mr. Abramaovitch) into the enterprise and relocated to a former Methodist Church at Agnes (Dundas) and Terauley (Bay) streets into a 900-seat auditorium. Known as The National when it opened in 1909—and later as The Lyric—the theatre hosted productions of New York touring companies. The shows were well-attended, but it doesn’t seem to have ever become a profitable business venture.

The biggest touring companies, like those led by Boris Tomashefsky and Jacob Adler, still preferred larger venues like Massey Hall, Hart House, or the Grand Opera House, which they could sell out with ease, to the rudimentary National. And the theatre’s practice of staging shows on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons earned the consternation of the orthodox community, some of whom refused to ever even enter the building or expelled attendees from their congregations. Moreover, by the early 1920s—when the Lyric was razed by fire—the theatre had been languishing as the city’s Jewish community, becoming more established and wealthier, had moved west from the Ward to re-center itself on the intersection of College and Spadina.

[PHOTO] "What We're Really Looking at When We're Looking at Pluto"

At Wired, Jenna Garrett writes a great essay about photography and the nature of human perception starting from the New Horizons Pluto photos.

The images of Pluto that the New Horizons probe beamed across 3 billion miles of hard vacuum are, in a word, breathtaking. Towering mountains of ice, smooth plains, a wan alien landscape. They’re amazing not only for what they tell us about Pluto, but for instilling wonder at seeing something human beings have until now only imagined and speculated upon.

But did we really see Pluto?

The New Horizons mission wasn’t a hoax; human beings really did send a little robot all that way. Just as conspiracy theorists question the Apollo moon landings, some folks claim the Pluto flyby was fabricated. It wasn’t. New Horizons spent more than nine years crossing the solar system to glimpse Pluto, which really exists. And it sent back pictures. So that’s not what I mean.

What I mean is this: There is something between us and Pluto, aside from the vastness of space. Two sensors called LORRI and Ralph, mounted on New Horizons, are actually “seeing” Pluto. What we’re seeing are pictures. And whenever that’s the case, we should be deeply, philosophically skeptical about whether what we’re seeing has the meaning we’re imparting on it.

You might see an image and believe it is “true,” but it isn’t necessarily the truth. Every photograph’s meaning is limited by the technology that captured it, the technology that disseminated it, and people’s ability to understand what it is they’re seeing. The nagging question Is it real? plagues not just science, but philosophy and the arts as well. We can barely trust our eyes and brains.

Technology only makes the problem worse.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Claus Vistesen of Alpha Sources notes that though the stock market might be peaking, we don't know when.


• blogTO warns that Toronto might consider a bid for the 2024 Olympics.


• James Bow thinks about Ex Machina.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly looks forward to her impending visit to Maine.


• Centauri Dreams features an essay by Michael A.G. Michaud looking at modern SETI.


• Crooked Timber finds that even the style of the New York intellectuals of the mid-20th century is lacking.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes that a search for superjovians around two nearby brown dwarfs has failed.


• The Dragon's Tales considers the flowing nitrogen ice of Pluto.


• Geocurrents compares Chile's Aysén region to the Pacific Northwest.


• Joe. My. God. shares the new Janet Jackson single, "No Sleeep".


• Language Log looks at misleading similarities between Chinese and Japanese words as written.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that the low-wage southern economy dates back to slavery.


• Marginal Revolution is critical of rent control in Stockholm and observes the negative long-term consequences of serfdom in the former Russian Empire.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes how Jamaica is tearing down illegal electrical connections.


• Savage Minds considers death in the era of Facebook.


• Towleroad looks at how the Taipei city government is petitioning the Taiwanese high court to institute same-sex marriage.


• The Volokh Conspiracy argues restrictive zoning hurts the poor.


• Window on Eurasia looks at how Tatarstan bargains with Moscow, looks at Crimean deprivation and quiet resistance, considers Kazakh immigration to Kazakhstan, and argues Russian nationalist radicals might undermine Russia itself.