[PHOTO] Rain trapped in spiderweb

[LINK] "Something Deep Inside Pluto Is Replenishing Its Atmosphere"

Wired's Nick Stockton reports.

Pluto has a problem: Its thin, nitrogen atmosphere shouldn’t be there. Ultraviolet rays from the sun should have knocked it away, molecule by molecule, in the dwarf planet’s first few thousand years. Four billion years later, Pluto’s atmosphere is still there, a gauzy interplanetary mystery.

[. . .]

High noon on Pluto looks like dusk on Earth. But even that small amount of solar energy is enough to turn frozen nitrogen on Pluto’s surface into gas. Once aloft, Pluto’s gravity is too weak to keep the particles from being blown away by ultraviolet radiation. (In case you’re wondering, Earth’s mass is enough to keep its atmosphere mostly safe from getting blown off into space.)

Pluto has been around for about four billion years, and according to the best math, it should have lost about 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grams of nitrogen (give or take a zero) since then. But scientists currently estimate that the planet has about 30,000,000,000,000,000 grams of nitrogen atmosphere, and loses about 1,500,000,000,000 grams each year. “Basically, it would take only a few thousand to tens of thousands of years to lose that atmosphere,” says Kelsi Singer, post-doctoral researcher at the Southwest Research Center and co-author of the paper. Basically, that’s not a very long time.

Considering that Pluto has been around for more than four billion years, the odds are pretty friggin’ slim that humans would meet the dwarf planet during its brief phase of atmosphere-having. No, something is replenishing the supply. Scientists, you got some ‘splaining to do.

[ISL] "Sri Lanka Wants to Be the Next Singapore as War Legacy Fades"

Anusha Ondaatjie and Tom Lasseter at Bloomberg report about Sri Lanka's interest in moving on. Can it?

Sri Lanka is moving past its history of ethnic strife and seeking to emulate Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai as one of the region’s premier trading and financial hubs, a senior ruling party lawmaker said.

“Our focus entirely is going to be on creating the most competitive economy in this part of the world,” Harsha de Silva, who helped draft the United National Party’s economic policy, said in an interview in Colombo on Wednesday. “We are going to have to play in a different league.”

The UNP won the most seats in an election on Monday after pledging to create jobs and heal wounds stemming from a bloody civil war that ended in 2009. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the party’s leader, will probably be appointed to lead the government for another term later this week.

The ruling party wants to revive growth that slowed to a two-year low with moves to make it easier for the private sector to do business. It has also pledged to avoid discriminatory policies that may stoke tensions between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority.

[. . .]

Sri Lanka’s challenges to compete with Asia’s economic powerhouses are immense: Loss-making state-owned firms dominate an economy four times smaller than Singapore that relies mostly on tourism and exports. Access to financing, an inefficient bureaucracy and tax issues are the top impediments for Sri Lankan businesses, according to the World Economic Forum.

[LINK] "Stephen Harper’s real problem goes beyond Mike Duffy"

At MacLean's, Paul Wells argues that Stephen Harper's centralized control over his government is a real problem for his party.

“I’m certainly not going to comment on an ongoing court case,” Stephen Harper said this morning in London during his daily, and mercifully brief, interrogation at the hands of travelling reporters. “But all of the facts certify exactly what I’ve said.”

The court case, of course, is Mike Duffy. A cottage industry has sprung up in the land—a loose affiliation of lawyers and reporters—dedicated to establishing and spreading the news that the facts really don’t certify what the Prime Minister has been saying. The nexus of incredulity is centred in the person of Ray Novak, Harper’s discreet and amiable chief of staff, who travels with the Conservative leader but does not speak, at least to anyone in my line of work, and who—if we are to believe everything that has been said about him in the past 10 days by Duffy trial witnesses, Harper himself, and Harper’s chief spokesman Kory Teneycke—is some kind of human singularity. Laws of physics break down when he is near.

There was an email, you see, from Novak’s predecessor, Nigel Wright, to Novak, that Novak never read. There was a conference call in which he participated, but he didn’t hear the most important part of the conversation. There was a meeting at which the government’s own lawyer saw Novak, whose appearance is distinctive, and noted his reactions—but Novak wasn’t there. He’s like the hitchhiker in the Twilight Zone episode. If you tried to touch him, your hand would pass right through. No wonder Harper likes him so much.

After Tuesday’s extraordinary courtroom exchanges between Donald Bayne and Nigel Wright, many reporters wondered how Harper would handle the news that a witness normally friendly to his government’s goals—the Prime Minister’s own former legal counsel, Benjamin Perrin—had told police he saw Novak at a meeting where Wright’s personal payment to Mike Duffy was discussed. Perhaps Novak would be dismissed from Harper’s staff before dawn. Perhaps the Conservative leader would simply implode. No such dénouement presented itself today, for to say Harper is gifted at stonewalling is to flatter stone walls. He replied, in the manner of René Magritte, Ceci n’est pas un really big political problem. All of the facts, he said, certify exactly what he’s said.

[URBAN NOTE] "Waiting for the streetcar now an international game"

The Toronto Star's Tess Kalinowski reports how Bombardier is keeping cities other than Toronto, including New York City, waiting for their mass transit vehicles.

Commuters sweltering on old TTC streetcars this week can take some comfort in knowing that Toronto isn't the only city seething over the late delivery of new transit vehicles.

While Torontonians curse Bombardier's glacial delivery of the new air-conditioned fleet, New York, Kansas City and Cincinnati are also facing delays on transit deliveries.

The Montreal-based Bombardier’s delivery of more than 200 Red Rocket streetcars, being assembled in Thunder Bay, is already a year behind schedule. Currently, only eight are running on Toronto’s streets, when 60 were supposed to have been here by now.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers expecting new Bombardier subway cars in 2017, are now facing a year-long delay in the $599 million, 2012 order.

A Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman said the decision to keep older subways running until 2022 at a cost of $50 million wasn't related to the delay in receiving new cars.

[URBAN NOTE] "Happy birthday to the Toronto streetcar system"

Yesterday at Spacing Toronto, Chris Bateman celebrated the anniversary of the foundation of the Toronto streetcar network.

There are perhaps few things more symbolic of Toronto than its streetcars. For more than 150 years, surface rail has formed the backbone of the city’s public transportation system, and despite numerous struggles and threats of abolition, it’s still streetcars that principally serve the downtown core: 240 vehicles carrying some 290,000 daily riders across 11 lines.

154 years ago this week, work started on the city’s first streetcar route: a horse-drawn “street railway” between Yorkville town hall just north of Yonge and Bloor and St. Lawrence Hall on King St.

The route was chosen based on its popularity. The city’s first public transit company, founded by cabinet maker and undertaker H. Burt Williams in 1849, operated a stagecoach service between roughly the same two points, linking the Toronto’s main market with what was then the independent town of Yorkville.

Williams started out with just four “omnibuses,” each one capable of carrying just six passengers, but as the business and ridership grew, so did the fleet. By the 1850s, buses were leaving every few minutes during peak hours.

The Toronto Street Railway company was founded in 1861 by Alex Easton of Philadelphia. His vehicles, while still pulled behind a horse, promised a smoother ride compared to the Williams buses. The city’s roads were still unsealed in the 1860s, and the surface was often rutted by wagon wheels or a muddy quagmire in the rain.

[URBAN NOTE] "Huge book sale at Toronto Reference Library this week"

blogTO's Amy Grief reports on a massive book sale this weekend at the Toronto Reference Library.

There's nothing quite as satisfying as rummaging through a used book sale and stumbling upon a treasure. Whether you're searching for a timeless classic or a discounted bestseller, sometimes it's the unexpected finds - like a 1960s-era cookbook - that are the most special.

This week, set your sites on the Friends of the Toronto Public Library's massive, annual sale happening at the Toronto Reference Library's Elizabeth Beeton Auditorium.

Everything will be priced between 10 and 50 cents - yes, cents. If you're itching to get rid of your spare pocket change, you should probably spend it wisely and buy a book.

I will be window-shopping.

[LINK] "Saudi Businesswomen Tap Instagram to Bypass Men, Attract Clients"

At Bloomberg, Deema Almashabi and Vivian Nereim report how Saudi businesswomen make use of Instagram to build their own commercial networks, bypassing their society's misogyny.

If she had chosen the traditional route to opening her accessories business in Jeddah, Rozana al-Daini would have had to enlist a male sponsor to represent her before government agencies and sign official documents on her behalf.

Instead, she sells jewelry, watches and wallets on Instagram, where Saudi businesswomen can avoid the gender restrictions they face in the kingdom. Her two-year-old business, Accessories_ar, has two employees, 67,000 followers and handles up to 25 orders a day. It also provides her with the ultimate empowerment: her own income.

“I can solve any problems or difficulties, financial or otherwise, without the interference of family members,” al-Daini, 20, said by phone.

Al-Daini is one of a growing number of Saudi women turning to Instagram to start businesses, gain market share and skirt limitations in a country where women can’t drive and often need the intervention of a male guardian. They are part of an informal economy, and aren’t counted in the 48 percent growth in the number of employed Saudi women to almost 806,000 between 2010 and 2014.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams looks at the role of supernovas in solar system formation and notes new models for gas giant formation.


• Joe. My. God. notes that a trans model now features on one of the Real Housewives shows.


• Marginal Revolution notes that the surge of immigration into Germany might lead to a shutdown.


• Savage Minds considers the issue of how, and if, to achieve anthropological fieldnotes.


• Spacing Toronto notes some cool photographs of early 20th century star Mary Pickford.


• Torontoist reports on Eaton's 100th anniversary fashion show in 1968.


• Towleroad celebrates Yvonne Craig, best known as Batgirl on the vintage 1960s show Batman.


• Transit Toronto notes that, this weekend, the TTC will be auditioning musicians at the Canadian National Exhibition.


• Window on Eurasia suggests how Ukraine can win over pro-Russian Donbas and Crimea and argues that the Russian economy won't recover from the current slump unless there are radical changes.

[MUSIC] Mylène Farmer, "Je t'aime mélancolie"

Mylène Farmer's"Je t'aime mélancolie" is a fun song, one with lyrics that play upon the singer's reputation as melancholic and pensive, presented as sung-spoken verses and sung choruses, paired with very early 1990s pop music, and given a literally combative video. Mylène does not take it lightly.

"Mylène Farmer Je T'aime Mélancolie clip" (Watch on YouTube)

Sample verse:

J’ai comme une envie
De voir ma vie en l’air
Chaque fois que l’on me dit
C’est de la mauvaise herbe
Et moi je dis:
Qu’une sauvage née
Vaut bien d’être estimée
Après tout elle fait souvent la nique
Aux “trop bien” cultivées, et toc!

The song was later remixed for the 2003 album RemixeS,
Felix Da Housecat providing an urgent electro remix that remained true to the original song. I think I prefer it to the original version, even.

"Mylene Farmer - je t'aime melancolie ( Felix DaHousecat Remix Edit ) by Video Mix & Bootleg" (Watch on YouTube)

Et toc.

[LINK] Three links on the past, present and future of science fiction

First comes an article by The Atlantic's Philip Eil, "The Unlikely Reanimation of H.P. Lovecraft". After noting Lovecraft's immense success in the early 21st century, he also notes the extent to which Lovecraft was racist, and to which Lovecraft's racism drove his stories.

Lovecraft’s ascendance has also brought an uncomfortable truth into the spotlight: He was a virulent racist. The xenophobia and white supremacy that burble beneath his fiction (which may have gone unnoticed, had he remained anonymous) are startlingly explicit in his letters. Flip through them and you’ll find the author bemoaning Jews as “hook-nosed, swarthy, guttural-voiced aliens” with whom “association ... was intolerable”; New York City’s “flabby, pungent, grinning, chattering niggers”; and New England’s “undesirable Latins—low-grade Southern Italians and Portuguese, and the clamorous plague of French-Canadians.” In 1922, he wrote that he wished “a kindly gust of cyanogen could asphyxiate the whole gigantic abortion” of New York City’s Chinatown, which he called “a bastard mess of stewing mongrel flesh.” In another letter, he wrote, “In general, America has made a fine mess of its population and will pay for it in tears amidst a premature rottenness unless something is done extremely soon.”

These writings leave Lovecraft fans in an uncomfortable spot. Leeman Kessler, who plays Lovecraft in the popular “Ask Lovecraft” YouTube series, has written an essay, “On Portraying a White Supremacist,” in which he says, “As long as I take money for playing Lovecraft or accept invitations to conventions or festivals, I think it is my moral duty to stare unflinchingly at the unpleasantness.” In 2011, the World Fantasy Award-winning novelist Nnedi Okorafor wrote a blog post calling attention to Lovecraft’s poem, “On the Creation of Niggers.” “Do I want ‘The Howard’ (the nickname for the World Fantasy Award statuette...) replaced with the head of some other great writer?” she wrote. “Maybe ... maybe not. What I know [is] I want ... to face the history of this leg of literature rather than put it aside or bury it.”

Last year, a petition demanding Octavia Butler replace Lovecraft as the face on WFA trophies received more than 2,500 signatures. A counter-petition soon followed, titled, “Keep the Beloved H.P. Lovecraft Caricature Busts (‘Howards’) as World Fantasy Award Trophies, Don’t Ban Them to be PC!” Similar exchanges play out regularly on the many social media pages dedicated to Lovecraft.

But as vexing as Lovecraft’s racism is for fans, his views are also one of the most useful lenses for reading his work. In March, Leslie Klinger delivered a lecture on Lovecraft at Brown University’s Hay Library, home to the world’s largest collection of Lovecraft papers and other materials. Toward the end of his remarks, Klinger—without excusing or defending Lovecraft’s racism—refused to separate it from his achievements. Lovecraft “despised people who weren’t White Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” he said. “But that powers the stories ... this sense that he’s alone, that he’s surrounded by enemies and everything is hostile to him. And I think you take away that part of his character, it might make him a much nicer person, but it would destroy the stories.”

What responsibilities do his contemporary fans have?

Meanwhile, io9's Rob Bricken has "The He-Man Movie Just Got a New Writer, and Here's Why It Actually Matters This Time".

There have been a lot of screenwriters hired to pen a live-action movie adaptation of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, but none of theme have managed to turn the story of a tan, mostly naked barbarian/bodybuilding enthusiast for modern audiences. But I have high hopes for the newest writer to take it on.

It’s Christopher Yost, who penned Thor: The Dark World and the upcoming Thor: Ragnorak scripts for Marvel. I actually really like The Dark World, but even if you didn’t, Yost is also one of the masterminds behind the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon, which was Marvel’s brilliant, shockingly overdue answer to Bruce Timm’s DC animated universe.

(I watched He-Man, in the 1980s. Even then I had no sense of it being anything lasting, or meriting revival.)

The Guardian's Richard Lea, finally, has "Science fiction: the realism of the 21st century". Drawing from interviews with Kim Stanley Robinson, Alistair Reynolds, and Ann Leckie, Lea considers the role of realism in science fiction. What does it mean? I like Leckie's take on the question.

Ann Leckie, whose Imperial Radch novels are set thousands of years in the future, says the distinction between plausible technology and the kind of hardware that is – in Arthur C Clarke’s memorable phrase – so advanced as to be “indistinguishable from magic” isn’t important for fiction.

“Even in real life I’m not certain the boundary is particularly solid,” she says. “The ‘indistinguishable from magic’ thing is highly dependent on where a viewer is looking from, and not something intrinsic to any particular sort of tech.”

Sometimes Leckie delves into the background of a technology to see what would make it work, and at other times simply tells herself “Yeah, I just want one of the variations on wormholes for interstellar travel, I’ll glue some glitter to mine,” but the starting point is nearly always, “What would make my story work the way I want it to”.

[. . .]

“I just put it all together in as artful a form as possible, in a way that will ask interesting questions, or illuminate the issues I’m pondering.” Leckie can hop over any gaps between currently achievable technology and what’s needed for the story and “go on with the adventure. That doesn’t mean I don’t think about that disjunct, of course, just that it’s not something that’s going to trouble me too much once I get going. I only need something to seem like it might mostly fit what we know, I don’t really need to worry too much about the details of how it might happen.”

By definition, Leckie continues, science fiction is concerned with science, but the demand for realism hides a host of assumptions about what’s real and whether fiction can convey objective reality.