[CAT] Shakespeare, stretched

[PHOTO] On the signs of global warming in Toronto

Late last night, this is the weather forecast I was provided with.



I would note that we are now in the middle of February. Spring-like weather like this--extended spring-like weather like this--is not natural.

We have broken something.

(Below, by the way, is my backyard.)

[LINK] "Why the world needs World Anthropology Day"

Savage Minds' Alex Golub wrote yesterday about the importance of anthropology, on what turns out to have been World Anthropology Day.

Today is World Anthropology Day, a global celebration of all things anthropological. The American Anthropological Association beta-tested this new holiday last year as ‘National Anthropology Day’, and we had a splendid time celebrating with delicious recipes and reminiscing about Alessandro Volta (and more). But ‘world anthropology day’ is a better fit, not only because it is more inclusive, but because it helps point out just how tight the fit is today between the world and anthropology.

Anthropology — and I’m using the term here to mean the American version of it that I practice — is just about a hundred years old. It’s been stretched, shredded, critiqued, defended, and expanded on like the Winchester Mystery House. And while there have been a lot of fair criticisms of the discipline over the years, it’s fundamental approach and findings seem more relevant than ever. Partially this is because they have stood the test of time, but partially it’s because the world of today needs them now more than ever.

At its heart, anthropology’s core finding still largely stand: Human beings are a single species. There are not naturally distinct ‘races’ some of which are superior to others. For most of history human beings have been, on the whole, connected rather than isolated — most of our customs and cultures were borrowed from other places. All human groups must meet the challenge of making a living, but our culture displays a more or less coherent degree or patterning or structure which cannot be reduced to genetic or environmental factors.

In fact, it’s hard to come up with human universals. Sex matters everywhere — but it can range from a loving affirmation of connection to a thrilling display of mastery over a humiliated other. All cultures make ‘art’ — except for this to work you have to define art so broadly that it just sort of means ‘stuff’. Everyone dies, but everyone does different things with the body. Everyone needs to need, but not eating or only eating certain things are a remarkably common part of culture. And in fact, starving one’s self is a surprisingly common thing to do. Human life is precious, which is why some people insist it must be preserved, while others exult in taking it. Everyone needs to sleep — although I think they have a pill for that now. Even basic things like ‘marriage’ are extremely hard to define when you look at everything in the ethnographic record that looks like marriage.

Anthropology tells us that we basically share a common composition, but have a bewildering variety of learned behavior. It teaches us that people who are different from us are not an inferior species of faux-human, nor are they mad, pathological, or sick. They’re just different.

[LINK] The Economist on the stagnation of Twitter

The Economist take on Twitter's travails is not encouraging.

Faithful followers of Twitter believe that Jack Dorsey, one of the social network’s founders, is the only person capable of turning around the struggling firm. Mr Dorsey (pictured below, during a recent Old Testament beard experiment) returned as its boss last year, taking over from Dick Costolo, who had led the company during a chaotic round of executive departures and strategic changes. True believers hope Mr Dorsey will be a reincarnation of the late Steve Jobs, who returned from exile to restore Apple to greatness.

So far, however, Mr Dorsey has yet to perform miracles. On February 10th Twitter reported lacklustre earnings for the first full quarter that he has been back in charge. It now has 320m monthly users, no more than it had in the previous quarter, and it is unlikely to turn a profit until 2019.

When Twitter went public in 2013, some believed it could become larger than Facebook, an older rival. Mr Costolo promised to build the “largest daily audience in the world”. Its prospects looked bright. Unlike Facebook, which began as a service on desktop computers, Twitter has always been popular on mobile devices, so it did not have to cope with a difficult transition.

However, it has become clear that Twitter will never become the giant it was supposed to be. The pace at which it is adding users has slowed far sooner than it did at Facebook (see chart). Mark Zuckerberg’s outfit, which now has 1.6 billion monthly users, has grown swiftly by buying potential competitors such as Instagram, a photo-sharing site. One sign of Twitter’s ill health is that its number of users in America has stayed flat, at around 70m, for a full year, suggesting that it is approaching a ceiling in the world’s most important advertising market.

[LINK] "Pluto’s ‘Hulk-like’ Moon Charon: A Possible Ancient Ocean?"

The Dragon's Tales linked to this intriguing NASA report.

Images from NASA’s New Horizons mission suggest that Pluto’s moon Charon once had a subsurface ocean that has long since frozen and expanded, pushing outward and causing the moon’s surface to stretch and fracture on a massive scale.

The side of Pluto’s largest moon viewed by NASA’s passing New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015 is characterized by a system of “pull apart” tectonic faults, which are expressed as ridges, scarps and valleys—the latter sometimes reaching more than 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) deep. Charon’s tectonic landscape shows that, somehow, the moon expanded in its past, and – like Bruce Banner tearing his shirt as he becomes the Incredible Hulk – Charon’s surface fractured as it stretched.

The outer layer of Charon is primarily water ice. This layer was kept warm when Charon was young by heat provided by the decay of radioactive elements, as well as Charon’s own internal heat of formation. Scientists say Charon could have been warm enough to cause the water ice to melt deep down, creating a subsurface ocean. But as Charon cooled over time, this ocean would have frozen and expanded (as happens when water freezes), lifting the outermost layers of the moon and producing the massive chasms we see today.

[URBAN NOTE] "Sister cities: One foot in Germany, the other in Poland"

This DW article looking at how German Görlitz and Polish Zgorzelec, divided after the Second World War, have been brought together in recent years is enlightening.

"Nowadays it looks very different over there!" A couple in their 50s has settled comfortably on a bench on the Altstadtbrücke bridge. Ice cream cone in hand, they gaze across at the other shore. To this day, "over there" still means the Polish side - Zgorzelec - to anyone who was born in Görlitz.

They are impressed with the colorfully restored houses on the banks of the river Neisse. "Back then," the man recalls, "everything over there used to be utterly ugly." The woman nods and says "Nu," which means yes in the local dialect.

On the Altstadtbrücke - literally, Old Town bridge - people from Görlitz, Zgorzelec and tourists come together. A constant stream of people cross this moderate construction placed where the river has a width of some 60 meters (200 feet). It is not apparent that there is a border here. There are no signs marking German or Polish territory and most definitely no border checkpoints.

For centuries the Altstadtbrücke connected the center of Görlitz with its eastern suburb, which today is Zgorzelec. In 1945, that bridge was destroyed, and the town divided into the sister cities of Görlitz and Zgorzelec. Ever since, the river has been the German-Polish border. In 1998, along with a dozen other German towns, Görlitz and Zgorzelec jointly declared itself to be a "Town of Europe." It's not an official title but more a means of self-expression, showing a commitment to the European ideals of understanding and integration.

The Altstadtbrücke was reconstructed in 2004 to mark the European Union's eastward expansion - that was the year Poland joined the EU - and it has become a symbol of a merging Europe.

"The construction of the bridge made a big difference for us," says Barbara Szutenbach, 52. "Those of us who come from Zgorzelec now know every corner of Görlitz." Szutenbach works at the Dom Kultury (Cultural Center) in the Ulica Parkowa, which is definitely worth a visit.

[LINK] "Latin America’s Indigenous Peoples Find an Ally in the Pope"

Emilio Godoy's Inter Press Service article is enlightening.

“We want Pope Francis’ message to come true…We want the rights of indigenous people to be supported, respected and strengthened,” Yuam Pravia, a representative of the Misquito native people, said in this city in southern Mexico.

Pravia, a Misquito indigenous woman from Honduras, was taking part Feb. 13-14 in a gathering of native people from Latin America in San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

The forum was part of the activities organised ahead of the pope’s Monday Feb. 15 visit to this impoverished state with a mainly indigenous population.

“With the ‘Laudato Si’ encyclical we defend the rights to land, territory and forests,” was the theme of the two-day gathering, which referred to the first encyclical in history dedicated to the environment, published by the pope in June 2015.

“We want tangible results, for each country to take the pope’s message on board,” Pravia, the representative of the non-governmental organisation Asla Takanka Miskitia-Moskitia Unity of Honduras, told IPS.

[LINK] "Activists fear missing Native American women were swept up in oil-worker sex-trafficking"

Mary Papenfuss' International Business Times article tells a story of horror on the Great Lakes. Ontario is a Great Lakes jurisdiction, too; the story must continue here.

Native American women are being murdered and vanishing in the US Midwest, and activists have complained that local police don't much care. They fear that the women are disappearing and being pushed into sex-trafficking rings to satisfy oil workers in North Dakota.

Three Native American women have been killed and two more have disappeared from northern Minnesota since May 2015 in a period of around six months in the sparsely populated region. A third woman was kidnapped but managed to escape.

"I think a lot of disappearances of young women can be tracked back to some sort of trafficking," activist Patti Larsen told The Guardian. Larsen is a member of Mending the Sacred Hoop, an organisation that works on bringing an end to violence against Indian women.

"There's a connection" between reservations and low-income areas of local towns and "trafficking and prostitution routes", noted sex-trafficking researcher Chris Stark. Native teenage girls are being recruited or groomed, he said, for the Bakken, an area of oil-rich fields in North Dakota, where tens of thousands of men have worked the last few years.

Native American women and girls tend to be easy targets for traffickers who seek to recruit for commercial sex work. Native American women are twice as likely to be sexually assaulted as women of other races. A 2007 study found that 24% of the women charged with prostitution in north Minneapolis were Native American, yet they comprised only 2.2% of the population.

[LINK] "Canadian tourism in Cuba: Will American travellers affect the experience?"

The CBC's Nicole Ireland looks at something I consider a bit of a distasteful show. Cuba is not ours.

The Yankees are coming. 'I think a lot of Canadians and others are probably wanting to get to Cuba before the American onslaught,' says Arch Ritter, an economics and international affairs professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.

U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement that he will make a historic visit to Cuba in March marks another step in the normalization of relations between the two countries — and once again raises questions about how the Canadian tourism experience in Cuba could change.

On Tuesday, the U.S. and Cuba signed an agreement to restore American commercial flights to the Caribbean country for the first time since the two nations became estranged 50 years ago.

During those five decades, Canada has been one of Cuba's main sources of tourism.

"I think a lot of Canadians and others are probably wanting to get to Cuba before the American onslaught," said Arch Ritter, an economics and international affairs professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. "It was very nice for Canadians to be there and they seemed to be welcomed by the Cubans, and I'm sure that's the case now for the Americans."

That "onslaught" of tourists from the U.S. has already begun, according to Jury Krytiuk, senior travel agent in the Cuban department of A. Nash Travel Inc. in Mississauga, Ont.

"There has been a stampede of Americans wanting to see Cuba before it changes," Krytiuk said. "It's just been chaotic."

[URBAN NOTE] "Will legal pot make Vancouver’s annual 420 rally go away?"

Stephen Quinn's report in The Globe and Mail made me chuckle.

The debate that erupted this week over the relocation of the annual 420 protest has led me to this conclusion: Please, please make marijuana legal as quickly as possible so these people go away.

Imagine, no need to gather by the thousands to demonstrate and demand their Jah-given right to get as baked as they please in public.

No controversy over licences, permits, locations or smoking on beaches.

Everyone can just stay home, order some extra pizza and scroll through Netflix. You may not even watch anything; just scroll.

I’m not exactly sure what it is about the annual 420 pot rally that rankles me so, but I do know this: As a spokesperson for the event, Jodie Emery isn’t doing anything to mellow my rankle. Or is it that she’s rankling my mellow? Or is it harshing? Sorry, I’m not really down with the pot-speak.

I had a conversation with Ms. Emery earlier this week best described as circular – for which I was branded “a square” and referred to as “Daddy-O” on Twitter. (For the record, not by Ms. Emery.)

And I get it – in this age of nearly legal marijuana, reminding people that for now, the drug remains illegal is kind of square. I mean, what with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise to legalize pot and the city permitting, ahem, medicinal pot shops, we’re well on our way there. There is as well the understandable restraint of police when it comes to enforcement. Nobody wants to see a dude smoking a little reefer hassled by the man, let alone thrown in the slammer.

All of that has emboldened the 420 forces, and sparked a battle between the Park Board and City Hall over the news that this year’s event will move from the lawn of the Vancouver Art Gallery to Sunset Beach Park on English Bay.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• blogTO notes some interesting-looking apartment complexes scheduled to be built in Toronto.


• Dangerous Minds notes that, in the late 1970s, Debbie Harry wanted to remake Alphaville with Robert Fripp.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes that the Hubble telescope directly imaged gas giant 2M1207b, determining its rotation about its brown dwarf primary.


• The Dragon's Tales looks at continuing developments in stealth technology.


• Far Outliers notes some grim Soviet jokes from the 1930s about famines.


• At The Great Grey Bridge, Philip Turner wonders if President Gore could have avoided 9/11.


• The Map Room Blog notes "Null Island", at 0 degrees of longitude and latitude.


• North's Justin Petrone grimly contrasts Estonian newspaper headlines before and after the 1940 Soviet annexation.


• The Understanding Society Blog considers ways of using schematics to understand society.


• Window on Eurasia shares an unconvincing argument that many minority languages in Russia are endangered.


• The Financial Times' The World blog considers the political impact of allegation Lech Walesa was a spy for the Polish government in the 1970s.

[LINK] "Ursula K Le Guin calls on fantasy and sci fi writers to envision alternatives to capitalism"

Open Democracy some time ago shared Araz Hachadourian's report about Ursula K. Le Guin's call for a new, imaginary science fiction.

In November 2014 science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K Le Guin was awarded the National Book Foundation’s medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

In her acceptance speech she called out publishers for turning literature into a commodity and charging libraries ridiculously high rates for books and e-books. Le Guin also explained how authors, especially fantasy writers, have a special opportunity to stand up to the corporate system because they can portray a world very different from the one we currently live in.

“We live in capitalism,” said Le Guin, “Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” It’s up to authors, she explains in the video below, to spark the imagination of their readers and to help them envision alternatives to how we live.

"Ursula Le Guin" (Watch on YouTube)