[LINK] "Ivory Coast Has `No Fear' of Euro Peg, Maintains Growth Targets"

Bloomberg's Olivier Monnier reports that, at least officially, Côte d'Ivoire has no concerns with potential negative consequences for its exports coming from the pegging of the CFA franc to the Euro.

Ivory Coast’s economy has benefited from the stability of a currency pegged to the euro and has so far escaped any fallout from the economic slowdown in China, Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan said.

“There is no fear” about any major pressures being exerted on the CFA franc, the currency used by Ivory Coast and 13 other smaller African economies, Duncan said in an interview in Abidjan, the commercial capital, on Monday. The common currency “is beneficial for our economies. Those who have tried their own money have had some ups-and-downs with some difficulties.”

The stability from the common currency has made it easier to keep investors in Ivory Coast, avoiding the sell-off in emerging market assets sparked by the surprise decision by China to devalue its yuan in August. The move, which fueled concern authorities are struggling to combat a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy, prompted Kazakhstan to abandon its currency peg and intensified speculation that African nations would do the same.

China is the nation’s third-largest trade partner, after Nigeria and France.

The CFA franc has depreciated 7 percent against the dollar this year, compared with the 24 percent decline in the Ugandan shilling and 29 percent plunge in the Zambian kwacha, Africa’s worst performers.

[LINK] "FYI: Giving Birth in the Ocean with Wild Dolphins is *Still* a Fantastically Awful Idea"

Science Sushi's Christie Wilcox reposted a 2013 article on the continuing popularity of the idea of giving birth admist dolphins. This might be a good idea if the dolphins were actively consenting to this activity. One wonders what the hell they think is going on.

Let’s talk about dolphins for a moment. I get it — they’re stunning creatures. These sleek, smart, playful animals are almost universally loved by people. Dolphin interactive experiences are hot sellers at tourist locations worldwide, and we naturally want to trust their cheeky, smiling faces. So many people I know got into marine science because of their affinity for dolphins and other marine mammals. I understand why a to-be mother might want to calm her nerves by having a dolphin in the tub during an underwater birth. I can even stretch my imagination and see why a woman would enjoy swimming with a pod of dolphins and giving birth while watching the beautiful displays of these majestic animals.

But, DEAR GOD. NO. JUST. NO.

Because of their friendly disposition and common occurance in aquariums, we tend to think of dolphins as trustworthy, loving creatures. But let’s get real for a minute here. Dolphins don’t eat sunshine and fart roses. They’re wild animals, and they are known to do some pretty terrible things.

Et cetera.

[LINK] "The Beaverton pulls controversial article on Ashley Callingbull"

CBC reports on a misstep by Canadian humour website The Beaverton. They meant well, perhaps, but they did not consider the First Nations reaction.

A satirical news website that used a Cree woman's victory at an international beauty contest to draw attention to national coverage of missing and murdered indigenous women has withdrawn the article and apologized to its readers.

On Sunday, Ashley Callingbull, whose married name is Burnham, from Enoch Cree Nation in Alberta was named Mrs. Universe, the first First Nation woman to win the title.

The Beaverton's article, headlined "Mrs. First Cree Woman To Gain National Coverage If She Disappears," said make-believe judges "cited her good looks, upbeat attitude, and glitzy uncontroversial profession in awarding her the top prize of one day's coverage on most major Canadian news outlets should she suddenly vanish without a trace.

"Burnham is showing all those aboriginal girls out there that as long as you look like a supermodel and get on TV, you too can get the same news coverage as a white girl should you ever be abducted," the article continued.

In its apology, The Beaverton said it wrote the satirical story to "call out the Media for their failure to properly cover missing and murdered Aboriginal women …"

[LINK] "How We Can Tame Overlooked Wild Plants to Feed the World"

Wired's Hillary Rosner describes intriguing efforts by some scientists to produce wholly new food crops, using promising plants from the wild and breeding them into more useful forms.

A hand-painted wooden sign marks the entrance to Steven Cannon's community garden, tucked between a sidewalk and some train tracks in Ames, Iowa. It depicts the iconic image of a seedling poking from a mound of dirt. At the far end of the garden, Cannon, a tall and reedy geneticist for the US Department of Agriculture, digs into the soil with a shovel and then his bare hands, pulling up fistfuls of lumpy roots. Strip the scene to its essence—ignore the cars driving past and the power lines strung overhead—and you could be watching a Neolithic farmer. They collected seeds from wild plants, buried them near their homes, and harvested the crop, hoping it would be bigger and better than the last one. That simple act—agriculture—came to define us as a species.

Cannon isn't trying to re-create the past, though. He's inventing the future. On this fall afternoon, his team is harvesting tubers that resemble dark-skinned fingerling potatoes. They're called Apios americana, the potato bean—a legume endemic to North America. Native Americans gathered them and may even have served them at the first Thanksgiving. European settlers found them thriving in their cranberry bogs—places with low light, few nutrients, and bad soil. But they didn't bother domesticating them into an agricultural staple.

After a couple hours of labor, Cannon's harvest is complete. A dozen rubber bowls overflow with dirt-crusted tubers. Still, he is disappointed. “We were hoping for a little better yield,” he says. “This is about average.” Average is fine if you're just messing around in a kitchen garden. But Cannon is up to something far more essential. The potato bean is part of his plan for remaking our food supply from the ground up. He doesn't want to just grow Apios. He wants to turn it into a new crop that could help feed the world.

We need new crops. Thousands of years of breeding and decades of genetic modification have made the crops we sow predictable, easy to harvest, and capable of feeding more than 9 billion people. But they are also vulnerable to disease, pests, and the whims of weather. That's troubling, because global warming is bringing more disease, more pests, and more whimsical weather. On current trend lines, global wheat and soybean harvest yields could fall by nearly 30 percent by midcentury. Corn yields could drop by 7.5 percent. In the baking-hot European summer of 2003, plant growth fell by 30 percent. By 2050, that kind of summer will be the new normal. “Suppose the US breadbasket ends up with a climate like Texas,” Cannon said at a genetics meeting last year. “We need to look to species already adapted to extremes.”

The potato bean is one of those species. Versatile like a potato, protein-rich like a bean, with a flavor vaguely like a starchy peanut, Apios does well in both dry and soggy soils. And there are plenty of others like it. Roughly 18,000 species of legumes grow around the world. They're packed with protein and help fertilize the soil. Yet people have domesticated fewer than 50, and commonly eat only half that many. Cannon has assembled a short list of additional candidates: marama beans, yehub nuts, lupine, and a bunch of other so-called orphan crops, wild edible plants that could change the face of agriculture if someone could just turn them into reliable crops.

The article goes into much more detail, providing among other things recipes.

[LINK] "Egypt's Nubians refuse to allow heritage to fall through cracks of history"

Ayah Aman's Al Monitor article looks at how many of Egypt's Nubians, despite their displacement from their ancestral homeland on the current Egypt-Sudan border by the Aswan High Dam, are facing assimilation.

It has been 51 years since the Nubians were displaced by the 1964 building of the Aswan High Dam in southern Egypt. Back then, waters flooded their homes and ancient Nubia disappeared into the depths of Lake Nasser. Yet, the Nubian people refused to allow their heritage and culture to be forever lost under the water that flows behind the High Dam.

In the town of Kom Ombo in the Aswan governorate there is the village of Balana (meaning “beautiful queen” in Nubian), the inhabitants of which were the first to be displaced as the High Dam rose. Amina Ibrahim, a village woman in her 60s, still carries vivid memories of the old country that thrived on the banks of the Nile — memories that form the essence of stories about her family’s heritage and past, which she never hesitates to recount to neighbors, sons and grandsons.

Al-Monitor met with Ibrahim at her home, which consists of four rooms overlooking a large central courtyard on the walls of which she tried to replicate and draw Nubian decorations and carvings that once adorned the ancient Nubian mud-brick dwellings of the village, with their distinctive domed roofs designed to dissipate some of the overbearing heat.

Nubian is the language of choice for Ibrahim, her children and her grandchildren. “Language is our life and the only legacy that remains of our ancestors. Preserving our language and teaching it to my children and grandchildren who never lived on their forbearers’ land became my main mission in life after our deportation, on my quest to safeguard and maintain our generational legacy. I always tell my grandchildren that losing our Nubian language would mean losing our identity and roots.”

The question of preserving the Nubian language is atop the priorities of most Nubians in their attempts to safeguard their heritage and identity. However, they do mesh with Egyptian society and utilize Arabic in their daily dealings, with new generations failing to practice this language that is barred from schools and public institutions.

[LINK] "Rich Gay Men Wanted: Spain’s Conservatives Make Tourist Appeal"

Bloomberg's Maria Tadeo writes about how even Spanish conservatives are welcoming GLBT tourists, if for straightforward economic reasons.

Each August, Spain’s second city [of Barcelona] hosts Europe’s largest gay festival, attracting 71,000 visitors this year. During the two-week party Barcelona is plastered in posters featuring male models advertising parties aimed at gay visitors and stores carry signs with special offers, from sun-beds to free gym passes as the city is taken over by non-stop clubbing and pool parties.

With full-access tickets selling for 360 euros ($406), organizers say the events generates 150 million euros for the local economy. After eight years, the festival is expanding to Ibiza this year and the Canaries in 2016, catering to increasing demand for gay and lesbian events.

“This influx of visitors trickles down to local bars, gyms, even taxi drivers want to be involved,” said organizer Tes Cuadreny in an interview from his office in Barcelona. “They know this benefits everyone.”

Such initiatives have made Spain Europe’s market leader ahead of France which generates $6.6 billion of revenue, according to LGBT Capital, an investment firm based in the British Virgin Islands that focuses on gay-themed assets. The U.S. is the global leader with $21.5 billion of revenue.

In Madrid, even the conservative regional government is jumping on the bandwagon. Regional President Cristina Cifuentes flew the rainbow flag, symbolizing support for gay people, from institutional buildings for the first time following her election victory in May. In 2005, her colleagues from Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s People’s Party led 100,000 protesters in a march against legalizing gay marriage.

[LINK] "Obama's Denali Divide"

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg View takes a look at the controversy surrounding the restoration of Denali as the name of the highest peak in Alaska.

For decades, this has been a low-profile dispute pitting Ohio Republicans (who have been loyal to the assassinated president from the Buckeye State) against Alaskans of all political stripes -- most of them Republicans -- who used the older name. No less a partisan conservative than Sarah Palin has referred to “nature's finest show -- Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun.”

But as soon as Obama became involved, many Republicans from the lower 48 who probably couldn't tell you what state the mountain was in last week started protesting against the gross abuse of power intended to erase white people from U.S. history.

One of the stronger findings about the presidency from political scientists is that when presidents associate themselves with an issue, voters -- Democrats and Republicans -- tend to line up strongly for and against it based on party loyalty. This isn't just about Obama; the same thing happened on small and big things alike when George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were presidents. (Democrats turned against a mission to Mars when Bush proposed one, for example.)

[. . . W]hen all that’s needed is to win over members of his own party, presidential speeches that polarize can be extremely helpful. This was true during Obama’s first two years in office, when Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate. It has also been the case recently with the Iran deal: Obama may have deliberately chosen a partisan path to ensure that Democrats in the House and Senate stayed on board.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• blogTO notes that John Tory wants private industry to fund a Toronto bid for the Olympics.


• Centauri Dreams notes a paper suggesting that the effects of panspermia might be detectable, via the worlds seeded with life.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting that the Earth's geological composition is likely to be unique.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the technological advancement of Neanderthals in Spain.


• Far Outliers notes the extent to which some opposition to the Anglo-American invasion of Europe in the Second World War was motivated by pan-European sentiment.


• Geocurrents dislikes very bad maps of human development in Argentina.


• Language Hat notes that Jabotinsky wanted Hebrew to be written in Latin script.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the Sad Puppies.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes a book talking about a specifically Orthodox Christian take on demography.


• Spacing Toronto looks at the first ride at the CNE.


• Torontoist notes a Toronto libraries "passport".


• Understanding Society notes M.I. Finley's excellent book on the dynamics of the Roman Empire.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes a bizarre article published in a journal arguing that professors are equivalents to terrorists.


• Why I Love Toronto recommends Dream in High Park.

[PHOTO] CN Tower and sky