[PHOTO] On the platform at St. Patrick, Toronto

[LINK] On the meaning of the Challenger disaster for manned spaceflight

One theme I've seen in the blogosphere reacting to the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster is speculation that this event, by being so public, diminish faith in human spaceflight. This was discussed briefly at Lawyers, Guns and Money, and at greater length in Ryan Faith's Vice article "How the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Changed America's Romance With Space".

[I]n the early years of the Shuttle, a lot of folks really wanted to believe that NASA would solve the problems and make the spacecraft perform as promised if it were just given enough time and resources to do so.

NASA tried so very, very hard to live up to those hopes and aspirations, launching Shuttles as fast as it could manage — nine Shuttle missions in the year before the Challenger disaster, in fact. At the time, all kinds of civilians had blasted off: payload specialists (industrial astronauts!), military payload specialists, and congressmen. A second shuttle launch site was under construction in California to allow the shuttle to orbit the planet from pole to pole, rather than around the equator. Interplanetary robotic missions launched from the Shuttle's cargo bay were in the offing, and NASA was developing a potentially booming satellite repair business.

The Teacher in Space program, announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, was another major step. The idea was for a teacher to be selected from among thousands of applicants to fly on the Challenger and deliver two 15-minute teaching lessons from space. Kids across the US spent weeks prepping for this big national moment in science education. Christa McAuliffe, who taught social studies at a high school in New Hampshire, could have been anyone's teacher.

Meanwhile, the public was left to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the average person might be able to get themselves to space within a couple decades.

The morning of the launch, some 17 percent of the US viewing audience watched the launch live as all those idle notions and distant fantasies about an optimistic future in space were blown across the Florida sky and killed just as surely as Christa McAuliffe, the five NASA astronauts, and two payload specialists had been. Here was an individual who had been celebrated and touted as a normal, everyday kind of person, and she'd died a tragic death on national TV for audaciously embodying the idea that anyone could go to space.

Subsequent polling and opinion surveys showed that the percentage of the US public that followed the Challenger disaster "very closely" or "closely" was pretty much on par with the public reaction to 9/11.

This is a provocative speculation, but I'm not altogether sure if this is correct. Thoughts?

[LINK] "Guelph Mercury’s demise: Graphic novelist Seth on what we lose when local papers close"

Writing in The Globe and Mail, graphic novelist Seth reflects on the very recent closing of his local paper, the Guelph Mercury, and what that means for him and the community.

I didn’t subscribe to the paper myself – this is not a shameful admission. You see, my wife, Tania, subscribes to “The Merc” at her barber shop (The Crown) and then brings it home for me at the end of the day, so I always see the news the day after. That’s fine with me. I’m not in a great hurry for the local news. I can wait a day. What’s the rush, everybody?

By the time I get the paper it is well-thumbed. More thumbed than the Globe or the Post (which also come home to me). Often those papers haven’t even been unfolded by Tania’s customers. Why is that? Well, it’s not because the Mercury was the best paper in Canada, it’s because it was the local paper. Believe it or not, even in this current worldwide mega-culture people still have some desire to be connected to where they live.

Thinking about it, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with another example, besides a local paper, that so effectively does that job. I mean, simply living somewhere doesn’t necessarily connect you to a place. You can live in Guelph, for example, yet spend your entire inner-life online – living in some “neitherworld” of neither here nor there.

If you are not actively involved in the local culture – somehow personally invested in it – it’s pretty easy for that place to simply be where you sleep and buy your groceries.

[LINK] NOW Toronto on the need for Canada to protect its news media

Writing in NOW Toronto, Ross Howard argues for the protection of Canada's mass media as cultural assets.

[A]s the Toronto Star’s David Olive presciently pointed out a year ago, most of the money drained by Postmedia from its newspapers – some of which were actually breaking even or better – went back to the offshore debt-holders (the company is 35 per cent owned by Manhattan-based hedge fund GoldenTree Asset Management) instead of into better content that could actually attract readers and advertisers. Advertisers won’t pay for expensive print ads when they can reach more eyeballs on TV and online.

Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey claims that convergence, extreme economizing and digitalized “news products” will soon pay off for Postmedia, but not, as Olive argued, the escalating payouts continue to go to its American owners who keep the newspaper chain alive only to pick it clean beyond the bone.

If Canadians want a diversity of independent and reliable sources of professionally-curated essential information to get through their day – and at election times – the time has come to think about alternatives to machine-made journalism.

That may require more philanthropists funding truly independent media, encouraged by federal tax credits. But Canada could also emulate Europe where governments grant media outlets across the political spectrum annual subsidies, no strings attached, to keep alive diverse approaches to news and opinion.

The news media can be declared another national strategic industry and tighter controls imposed against monopoly ownership.

[LINK] "Let’s Talk About The Corporatization of Mental Health"

At Torontoist, Hana Shafi takes issue with Bell Canada's particular approach to mental health, one that overlooks the root causes.

A subway poster reads: “On January 27, let’s turn [sad face emoji] into [happy face emoji],”—a catchy slogan, but one that simplifies the complexities of mental illness. It’s an ad for Bell Let’s Talk Day, a campaign that seeks to end the stigma around mental health and donate money for the cause.

The campaign, which began in 2011, has raised more than $100 million for various research institutes, hospitals, and organizations. It’s a simple and effective concept: For every phone call and text made on the Bell network and for every Bell Let’s Talk hashtag used that day, the company will donate five cents to the cause.

Since the campaign’s inception, Bell has received praise for being one of few major Canadian corporations to start conversations about mental health. But for some mental health advocates in Toronto, Let’s Talk Day has not been enough.

With its simplistic focus on mental illness, detractors claim that Bell has failed to look at the bigger picture.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s most deadly disaster: the nightmare on the SS Noronic"

At Spacing Toronto, Adam Bunch describes the disastrous 1949 fire that killed more than a hundred people on the Noronic in Toronto Harbour.

It was late. The Noronic was quiet. The ship was docked at the foot of Yonge Street, gently rocking in the dark waves. Almost everyone on board was already fast asleep. It was two-thirty in the morning; most of those who had enjoyed a night out in the city had come back to their rooms and gone to bed. Hundreds of passengers were tucked beneath their sheets.

Don Church was still up, though, heading back to his room from the lounge. He worked as an appraiser for a fire insurance company, so he knew what it meant when he found a strange haze in one of the corridors. He followed it back to its source: smoke billowed out from under the closed door of a linen closet. The most deadly fire in Toronto’s history was just getting started.

The Noronic had first set sail all the way back in 1913: in the glory days of Great Lakes cruise ships. In the late-1800s and early-1900s, the Great Lakes were filled with luxury liners. The ships carried hundreds of passengers from ports on both sides of the border, steaming across the lakes in style. It was a major industry for nearly a century. As a member of the Toronto Marine Historical Society put it: “At one time there were more people asleep on boats on the Great Lakes than on any ocean in the world.”

The SS Noronic was one of the biggest and most decadent of them all. They called her “The Queen of the Lakes.” She had a ballroom, a dining hall, a barber shop and a beauty salon, music rooms and writing rooms, a library, a playroom for children, even her own newspaper printed on board for the passengers.

But as fancy as it all was, taking a cruise was also very risky. The Noronic was christened just a year after the unsinkable Titanic sank. And even on the Great Lakes, where there weren’t any icebergs lurking in the dark, there was still plenty of danger.

[LINK] "Lonely But Not Alone: A Planet Orbits its Star at 1 Trillion Kilometres"

Universe Today's Evan Gough notes the discovery of a planet separated from its star but almost a light-month.

The Royal Astronomical Society (RSA) has announced the discovery of a planet that orbits its star at a distance of 1 trillion kilometres. This is easily the furthest distance between a star and a planet ever found. For comparison, that’s 7,000 times further than the Earth is from the Sun. At that distance, a single orbit takes about 900,000 years, meaning that the planet has orbited its star less than 50 times.

The planet itself was discovered in an infrared sky survey by US researchers, and following astronomical protocol it was given the charming name 2MASS J2126.

[. . .]

A planet drifting through space by itself may not be a rare thing. 2MASS J2126 joined a list of other starless planets discovered in the last few years. The existence of 2MASS J2126 out by itself in space didn’t merit much attention. Only when a relationship was established between 2MASS J2126, and the star TYC 9486-927-1, did things get interesting.

Dr. Niall Deacon, of the University of Hertfordshire, is the lead author of the study. He has spent the last few years looking for young stars that have companions in wide orbits. Deacon and his team pored over lists of brown dwarfs, young stars, and free-floating planets, looking for relationships between them. Eventually they found that the planet 2MASS J2126 and the star TYC 9486-927-1 are both about 104 light years from our Sun, and are moving through space together. “This is the widest planet system found so far and both the members of it have been known for eight years, but nobody had made the link between the objects before,” said Dr. Deacon.

[LINK] "Plastic now pollutes every corner of Earth"

The Guardian's Robin McKie notes the terrible diffusion of plastic waste around the world.

Humans have made enough plastic since the second world war to coat the Earth entirely in clingfilm, an international study has revealed. This ability to plaster the planet in plastic is alarming, say scientists – for it confirms that human activities are now having a pernicious impact on our world.

The research, published in the journal Anthropocene, shows that no part of the planet is free of the scourge of plastic waste. Everywhere is polluted with the remains of water containers, supermarket bags, polystyrene lumps, compact discs, cigarette filter tips, nylons and other plastics. Some are in the form of microscopic grains, others in lumps. The impact is often highly damaging.

“The results came as a real surprise,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jan Zalasiewicz, of Leicester University. “We were aware that humans have been making increasing amounts of different kinds of plastic – from Bakelite to polyethylene bags to PVC – over the last 70 years, but we had no idea how far it had travelled round the planet. It turns out not just to have floated across the oceans, but has sunk to the deepest parts of the sea floor. This is not a sign that our planet is in a healthy condition either.”

The crucial point about the study’s findings is that the appearance of plastic should now be considered as a marker for a new epoch. Zalasiewicz is the chairman of a group of geologists assessing whether or not humanity’s activities have tipped the planet into a new geological epoch, called the Anthropocene, which ended the Holocene that began around 12,000 years ago.

[LINK] "Azerbaijan Turns to IMF, World Bank After Collapse in Crude"

Bloomberg's Zulfugar Agayev describes the economic catastrophe facing oïl-exporting Azerbaijan.

Azeri officials met for talks with the International Monetary Fund as the former Soviet Union’s third-largest oil exporter reels from the collapse in crude prices, with Finance Minister Samir Sharifov saying the government isn’t yet asking outside lenders for financial aid.

“We do have the right to borrow from the IMF and others,” Sharifov told reporters on Thursday in the capital, Baku. “But we aren’t in an urgent need to borrow now. We aren’t burning. We can borrow in three months, five months, at year-end or next year.”

Discussions with the IMF and the World Bank focused on programs to liberalize the economy and improve the business climate, Sharifov said. While these plans may require financing, no decision has yet been made. The Financial Times reported earlier that the IMF and the World Bank are discussing a possible $4 billion emergency loan package for Azerbaijan.

The Azeri central bank moved to a free float on Dec. 21 after burning through more than 60 percent of its reserves last year to defend the national currency as crude prices tumbled. The manat, which hadn’t depreciated against the dollar in a decade, nosedived by about half last year and slumped further to record lows this month, stirring public unrest over rising prices for food and other essential goods.

Azerbaijan relinquished control of the exchange rate after its former Soviet allies Russia and Kazakhstan moved to floating currency regimes in the past year.

[ISL] "Deirdre Kessler named P.E.I.'s 6th poet laureate"

Yay! CBC reports on a much-deserved honour for writer Deirdre Kessler.

Deirdre Kessler has been named P.E.I.'s sixth poet laureate.

Kessler has written two dozen books for children and adults. She also teaches creative writing, children's literature and a course on Lucy Maud Montgomery with the English department at the University of Prince Edward Island.

The poet laureate's role is to create awareness of the important role that poetry plays in the literary life of the province and to serve as a cultural ambassador.

"My first response to being asked to be poet laureate was to feel completely daunted. The former poets laureate have set the bar high. My second responses were to be honoured and delighted," said Kessler in a news release issued by the province Thursday.

Kessler plans to gather the surviving retired poets laureate — Diane Hicks Morrow, Hugh MacDonald, David Helwig and John Smith — for an afternoon public reading of their poems. (Frank Ledwell, who died in 2008, served in the role from 2004 to 2007.)

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• As noted by The Dragon's Gaze, Centauri Dreams hosts an essay hotly defending the argument that KIC 8462852 has dimmed sharply.


• Crooked Timber looks at the links between classical liberalism and the refusal to aid the victims of the Irish famine.


• D-Brief notes that ancient Babylonian astronomers were close to developing calculus.


• Joe. My. God. notes that a large majority of Germans and a majority of Australian MPs back marriage equality.


• Marginal Revolution speculates that much of China's growth slowdown is a consequence of declining construction.


• The Planetary Society Blog shares photos from Chang'e 3.


• Peter Rukavina describes his work creating an online Schedule for Charlottetown transit.


• Savage Minds considers authenticity in relationship to digital models of artifacts.


• Science Sushi, at Discover, notes the complex social lives of at least some octopi.


• Transit Toronto notes rising GO Transit prices.


• Window on Eurasia looks at the decline of the Russian Orthodox Church's presence in Ukraine.

[LINK] "The Neurologist Who Hacked His Brain--And Almost Lost His Mind"

Wired's Daniel Engber has a long-form article about a neurologist, one Paul Kennedy, who tried to anticipate the future by installing a primitive mind-machine interface in his own brain, and nearly died. We are not yet ready for this.

When Kennedy had arrived at the airport in Belize City a few days earlier, he had been lucid and precise, a 66-year-old with the stiff, authoritative good looks of a TV doctor. There had been nothing wrong with him, no medical need for Cervantes to open his skull. But Kennedy wanted brain surgery, and he was willing to pay $30,000 to have it done.

Kennedy was himself once a famous neurologist. In the late 1990s he made global headlines for implanting several wire electrodes in the brain of a paralyzed man and then teaching the locked-in patient to control a computer cursor with his mind. Kennedy called his patient the world’s “first cyborg,” and the press hailed his feat as the first time a person had ever communicated through a brain-computer interface. From then on, Kennedy dedicated his life to the dream of building more and better cyborgs and developing a way to fully digitize a person’s thoughts.

Now it was the summer of 2014, and Kennedy had decided that the only way to advance his project was to make it personal. For his next breakthrough, he would tap into a healthy human brain. His own.

Hence Kennedy’s trip to Belize for surgery. A local orange farmer and former nightclub owner, Paul Powton, had managed the logistics of Kennedy’s operation, and Cervantes—Belize’s first native-born neurosurgeon—wielded the scalpel. Powton and Cervantes were the founders of Quality of Life Surgery, a medical tourism clinic that treats chronic pain and spinal disorders and also specializes these days in tummy tucks, nose jobs, manboob reductions, and other medical enhancements.

At first the procedure that Kennedy hired Cervantes to perform—the implantation of a set of glass-and-gold-wire electrodes beneath the surface of his own brain—seemed to go quite well. There wasn’t much bleeding during the surgery. But his recovery was fraught with problems. Two days in, Kennedy was sitting on his bed when, all of a sudden, his jaw began to grind and chatter, and one of his hands began to shake. Powton worried that the seizure would break Kennedy’s teeth.

His language problems persisted as well. “He wasn’t making sense anymore,” Powton says. “He kept apologizing, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ because he couldn’t say anything else.” Kennedy could still utter syllables and a few scattered words, but he seemed to have lost the glue that bound them into phrases and sentences. When Kennedy grabbed a pen and tried to write a message, it came out as random letters scrawled on a page.

[URBAN NOTE] On the arrest of our Toronto police officers charged with obstructing justice,

This, reported by the Toronto Star's Wendy Gillis is horrific. And now CBC is reporting that a fifth policeman is implicated? The Toronto Sun goes into more detail about the careers of the police involved. Suffice it to say that if this did happen, these people deserve prosecution.

Last fall, the conduct of a group of Toronto police officers was described by an Ontario judge as “egregiously wrongful.”

On Thursday, their alleged behaviour was put in criminal terms: perjury and obstruction of justice.

Four officers — two of them experienced major-crimes investigators — are facing a total of 17 charges stemming from a 2014 drug bust, after which a judge ruled police had “fabricated” a story that involved “planting” heroin in a car to justify a search.

Soberly announcing the charges against his officers Thursday, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said there would be a review of the four officers’ prior cases conducted by the force’s professional standards unit and the Crown Attorney’s office, “to see if there is any other cause of concern.”

It is not known how many other cases will need to be reviewed. Together, the four officers have more than 50 years on the force.