[DM] "On how the 1991 image of the Vlora and its Albanian refugees is being misrepresented"

I have a post up at Demography Matters looking at how one image, of a ship in 1991 laden with Albanian refugees, is being misrepresented as something else entirely.









Original on the bottom, of course.

[PHOTO] Metropolitan United Church amid the leaves, autumn, Toronto

The Metropolitan United Church is hidden by the banks of yellow leaves.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• blogTO notes an upcoming Instagram meetup here in Toronto.


• Centauri Dreams notes the latest Voyager 1 findings on interstellar space.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes exoplanets orbiting red dwarfs are more likely to exhibit high abiotic levels of atmospheric oxygen.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on the news Chinese C919 jet plane, meant to compete with Airbus and Boeing.


• Geocurrents maps religion in insular Southeast Asia.


• Joe. My. God. and Towleroad both look at how Yusuf Mack, an American boxer who claimed he was drugged into participating in a gay porn film, has actually come out via a convincing apology.


• Marginal Revolution wonders why short-term interest rates are negative.


• The Planetary Society Blog's Emily Lakdawalla shares her updated chart showing the round worlds of the solar system.


• Spacing argues for the importance of urban forestry.


• Towleroad notes same-sex couples in the United States who, having made use of adoption to create a legal relationship, are now unable to marry.


• Transit Toronto notes ongoing streetcar diversions on Queen Street East.


• Window on Eurasia notes the harm done to Ukrainians so far by Russia and the dim prospects of this being stopped any time soon.

[LINK] "Amazon is opening its first physical bookstore today"

This report from The Verge amuses me.

Amazon got its start as an online bookseller, and now — over 20 years later — it's decided to sell books the old-fashioned way. On Tuesday, Amazon will open a store in Seattle called Amazon Books. Not only is it one of Amazon's first physical locations, but it's also Amazon's first physical bookstore. Amazon says that it won't entirely be doing things like a traditional store, however; it'll be relying on Amazon.com data — including customer ratings, sales totals, and Goodread's popularity — to decide which books to stock. Curators will have some say, too.

In addition to selling books, Amazon is also going to be putting its devices on display. Visitors will be able to try Kindles, the Echo, the Fire TV, and Fire Tablets. This very much isn't a tech store, though. Photos show this to be a book store first and foremost; but like a Barnes & Noble, it also has an additional section for related (and not-so-related) technology. One thing that Amazon's store seems to be doing differently is putting all of its books face out, rather than spine out, and putting up a placard for each of them that contains their Amazon.com rating and an actual customer review. In-store prices will all match online prices, too (which means they'll probably change while you're holding them).

[LINK] Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic, "The Decay of Twitter"

Robinson Meyer's <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/conversation-smoosh-twitter-decay/412867/><U>article</u></a> is thought-provoking. I frankly remain largely inactive on that medium for different reasons, but I can see how this sort of collapse in meaning and understanding would be offputting. <blockquote>Anthropologists who study digital spaces have diagnosed that a common problem of online communication is “context collapse.” This plays with the oral-literate distinction: When you speak face-to-face, you’re always judging what you’re saying by the reaction of the person you’re speaking to. But when you write (or make a video or a podcast) online, what you’re saying can go anywhere, get read by anyone, and suddenly your words are finding audiences you never imagined you were speaking to. I think Stewart is identifying a new facet of this. It’s not quite context collapse, because what’s collapsing aren’t audiences so much as expectations. Rather, it’s a collapse of speech-based expectations and print-based interpretations. It’s a consequence of the oral-literate hybrid that flourishes online. It’s conversation smoosh. What I like about Stewart’s work isn’t just that she identifies this mechanic. She can say that conversation smoosh (which, to be very clear here, is my term) is a force shaping the network without conceding it’s entirely a bad thing. As she writes: Twitter, dead or no, is still a powerful and as yet unsurpassed platform for raising issues and calling out uncomfortable truths, as shown in its amplification of the #Ferguson protests to media visibility (in a way Facebook absolutely failed to do thanks to the aforementioned algorithmic filters). Twitter is, as my research continues to show, a path to voice. At the same time, Twitter is also a free soapbox for all kinds of shitty and hateful statements that minimize or reinforce marginalization, as any woman or person of colour who’s dared to speak openly about the raw deal of power relations in society will likely attest. And calls for civility will do nothing except reinforce a respectability politics of victim-blaming within networks. Stewart calls the ability for marginalized groups to seize the mic “tactical Twitter.” (This is a way, way better term than “Twitter shaming,” which is what Jon Ronson and many others previously preferred to call the effect.) Tactical Twitter has aided civil-rights movements and neofascistic ones. And the media intensifies Tactical Twitter by watching Twitter as a social network more closely than it does other sites—what happens there gets turned into news stories in a way that doesn’t happen in other places.</blockquote>

[LINK] "Why is hi-tech Japan using cassette tapes and faxes?"

The BBC's Michael Fitzpatrick writes about the relative technological backwardness of many sectors of the Japanese economy, and their reasons for remaining so.

Yoji Otokozawa, president of Tokyo-based IT consultants Interarrows, says Japan Inc. is poor in digital literacy because small businesses, not multinationals, rule the country.

"The hub of the matter is that you have to understand how SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] dominate the Japanese business landscape," he says.

SMEs account for 99.7% of Japan's 4.2 million companies, according to Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. So the world's third biggest economy is driven by minor establishments, not the giants everybody knows outside of Japan.

These SMEs are often conservative, if not downright Luddite, says Mr Otokozawa.

"They usually use postal mail, or fax for their communications. We sometimes receive a fax, written by hand which means such firms don't even use word processing software like Word."

[LINK] The Wire on a graphic novel depicting the history of India with Indonesia

Pallavi Aiyar's article in The Wire, "A Graphic Reminder of an Intertwined History", looks at a new graphic novel recently put out depicting the long relationship between India and Indonesia, Travels Through Time: The Story of India and Indonesia.

For an Indian, visiting Indonesia can feel like looking into a distorting mirror. Much looks and feels familiar, albeit in an off-kilter manner. On the island of Java, home to the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, references to the Hindu epics of the Ramayana and Mahabharata are embedded in the language, on street signs, in political commentary and even on bus advertisements. An enormous statue of Krishna leading Arjuna into battle dominates the roundabout in front of Monas, Jakarta’s main nationalist monument. Billboards for an energy drink, Kuku Bima, promise imbibers Bhima-like strength.

Amongst the country’s favourite forms of mass entertainment is wayang kulit, a form of shadow puppet theatre that features tales from the Hindu epics. Only the way in which characters are spelled differs: Bhima becomes Bima, Sita is Sinta, and Hanuman morphs into Hanoman. The physical form of wayang puppets is also highly stylised and distinctive of Java.

But the resonance is loud. That India and Indonesia are civilisational cousins is not a fact that is gently suggested by the environment. Rather, it whacks you on the head like a sledgehammer. Indonesians pepper ordinary conversation with words like manushya (man) and karena (because). When I was unable to find a taxi driver who knew where the national museum in Jakarta was, a local friend advised me to ask for “Museum Gajah” instead. The national museum has a statue of an elephant in the garden and it is by its nickname, elephant or gajah museum, that most citizens know the building. A large percentage of the vocabulary of Bahasa Indonesia, a standardized form of Malay, derives from Indian languages like Sanskrit, Tamil and Urdu. Indonesian has 750 loan words from Sanskrit alone.

[. . .]

Given this relationship to History, it is unsurprising that mythology has a significant place in both Indian and Indonesian societies. I was therefore immediately intrigued when I heard about a new Amar Chitra Katha comic book that detailed the India-Indonesia relationship through the ages. Amar Chitra Katha’s luridly illustrated comics featuring an assorted cast of demons, gods and cursing sages had been an integral part of my childhood in Delhi. By the age of eight I’d been able, thanks to them, to use “verily” in daily conversation. To have one of these comic books step out of the realm of the Gods and into that of Asian history was somehow apposite, given how much the Gods had shaped this history.

Titled, Travels Through Time: The Story of India and Indonesia, the comic is an initiative of the entrepreneurial Indian ambassador in Jakarta, Gurjit Singh. Put together by him, with the assistance of Indonesian historian and Indophile Tamalia Alisjahbana, the comic was released in Jakarta as part of a 6-month long festival of India in Indonesia, earlier this year.

[LINK] "Egypt’s industrial sector struggles with growing Chinese presence"

Al-Monitor's Khalid Hassan reports on the worrying state of Egypt's industrial sector.

Faced with various economic challenges, the Egyptian government now has to protect its national industry from Chinese goods, which are both cheaper and made to better suit the population’s needs.

Although the quality of Chinese products might be at times questioned, they were met with large demand because of their low prices, as the number of Chinese companies in Egypt rose from 1,000 in 2010 to 1,198 in 2015.

The market for these products has grown considerably and become a primary factor behind the current economic downturn, leading former Egyptian Minister of Trade and Industry Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour to decree in April 2015 an import ban on all Chinese imitations of Egypt's traditional handicrafts in an attempt to curb this invasion of the Egyptian market.

[. . .]

Not only are Chinese goods found at local shops, but Chinese vendors now visit Egyptians in their houses to sell them their goods, which mainly include clothing, pottery and electronics.

In terms of foreign investment in Egypt, China ranks 24th, with 1,198 Chinese businesses investing a total of $468.5 million in the country, mainly in the industrial and financial services sectors.

[LINK] "Is the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway worth the fuss?"

The geopolitics of a rail link connecting Turkey to Azerbaijan via Georgia is the subject of an Open Democracy article by Georgian journalist Yana Israelyan.

Georgy Arutunov is a local citizen of Akhalkalaki, near Georgia's Armenian border, but he doesn't know a great deal about the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway (BTK) currently under construction close to his hometown. 'I have heard about it, but I don't know whether it's being carried out or not.' About a dozen local residents have given me the same answer—they know next to nothing about the grandiose 'project of the century' as the BTK railway has been dubbed. According to the contract, 70% of workers hired to construct the railway are supposed to be Georgian citizens: it is strange that they have heard so little about it.

Marabda-Kartsakhi, the company responsible for construction, says that it is complying with all of the terms of the agreement. 'We employ specialists from Ukraine, Turkey and other countries, but in general, we recruit citizens of Georgia. Now the project employs about 600 people. When the road will go into operation, we will add another 1,000 employees,' said Levan Kankava, the Executive Director of Marabda-Kartsakhi Company.

BTK is a joint project of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and it aims to unite the railway systems of these three countries. Originally, the project was supposed to be completed by 2009, but the terms were breached. Then the completion date was moved to 2011, but that soon came and went. The deadline was then postponed several more times. The construction was finally restored after the Georgia's 2012 parliamentary elections, when, according to a company representative, Marabda-Kartsakhi underwent a management change.

'I do not want to look back and criticise, but many things were not completed then. When our new team started to work in 2012, only 20% of the work was completed. Now we have already completed 60%. We cannot promise to finish work by the end of the year – it is impossible, we need another two or three years. But we are ready to open it up to the first trains,' Kote Ninidze, CEO of Marabda-Kartsakhi, told me.

The current capacity of the BTK is 5m tons of cargo and 1m passengers. In the future, it could be increased to 15m tons of cargo and 3m passengers. The route's total length is 826 km, and 180 of those kilometres are situated inside Georgian territory.

[LINK] "BlackBerry's New Android Smartphone Could Be Its Last Device"

Bloomberg's Gerrit De Vynck writes about the Priv, the Blackberry phone that may well be the Canadian smartphone company's last device.

The Canadian company has unveiled several new phones in the two years since Chief Executive Officer John Chen took over, but none has managed to stop hardware sales from falling. Chen has repeatedly said he will exit the device business if he can’t make it profitable.

The BlackBerry “Priv” -- named for its emphasis on privacy -- runs a full version of Google’s Android operating system but features some of BlackBerry’s highly respected security and productivity features. It comes preloaded with an application that tracks how much other applications on your phone are accessing your personal data and location. It also has BlackBerry’s signature physical keyboard, which slides down from under the touch screen.

“Perhaps there’s something else in the pipeline, but this device does seem like a last stand,” Brian Colello, a Chicago-based analyst at Morningstar Investment Services, said in an interview. “We’ve seen new products come out for the last couple years, BlackBerry’s trying to get a hit with any form factor, any price point and now it’s with a different operating system.”

With its share of the global smartphone market at less than 1 percent, BlackBerry has been working to shift its focus to higher-margin software sales. As he tries to turn around the company’s fortunes, Chen has held onto the phone business, which still accounts for about 40 percent of revenue. Blackberry could stop producing phones within the next year if it doesn’t begin turning a profit, he said at a conference in October.

[LINK] "Nicaragua’s Interoceanic Canal, a Nightmare for Environmentalists"

The Inter Press Service carries José Adán Silva's article warning of the environmental effects of an interoceanic canal in Nicaragua.

The international scientific community’s fears about the damage that will be caused by Nicaragua’s future interoceanic canal have been reinforced by the environmental impact assessment, which warns of serious environmental threats posed by the megaproject.

The report “Canal de Nicaragua: Executive Summary of Environmental and Social Impact Assessment” was carried out by the British consulting firm Environmental Resources Management (ERM) and commissioned by the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development (HKDN Group), the Chinese company that won the bid to build the canal.

The 113-page executive summary sums up the study, whose unabridged version has not been made publicly available by the government, ERM or HKND.

In the study, ERM says the megaproject could be of great benefit to the country as long as best international practices on the environmental, economic and social fronts are incorporated at the design, construction and operational stages, for which it makes a number of recommendations.

[. . .]

The canal will go across the 8,624-sq-km Lake Cocibolca, also known as Lake Nicaragua – the second largest lake in Latin America after Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo. The route will be nearly four times longer than its rival, the Panama Canal.

The 276-km canal will link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; of that length, 105 km will cross Lake Cocibolca.

[DM] "On a relationship between climate change in the United States and falling birth rates"

Over at Demography Matters, I have a brief post linking to a paper--NBER Working Paper No. 21681, "Maybe Next Month? Temperature Shocks, Climate Change, and Dynamic Adjustments in Birth Rates", written by Alan Barreca, Olivier Deschenes, and Melanie Guldi--speculating that climate change, specifically warming, may dampen birthrates in the United States.