[CAT] Neighbourhood cat seen through the basement window

I have seen the cat pictured above make appearances around my apartment for the past week, but it was not until Wednesday that I was startled by some odd vocalizations on Shakespeare's part. There, on the other side of the glass, sat this cat.

[CAT] Shakespeare, intent

I think this may be one of the best photos of Shakespeare I have ever taken.

[URBAN NOTE] "Dispatches from Dunedin: Reuniting With The Jays"

At Torontoist, Stacey May Fowles writes about her experience trekking down to Florida to join the Toronto Blue Jays as they engage in spring training.

There’s something about your first annual spring training game that feels a bit like a long-awaited romantic date. There’s a hell of a lot of build up and anticipation, a lot of wondering what the day will look and feel like, a lot of nervous yet optimistic energy buzzing around as you take to the Florida interstate to finally be reunited. In fact, I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t carefully pick out an outfit the night before.

For diehards, it’s more than a little emotional to finally come back to the ballpark—any ballpark—after a long, dark, wintery four-month hiatus. If it happens in Florida, there’s a good chance that the weather will be beautiful and the mood congenial, making it hard not to get a little teary behind your sunglasses. All of that emotion is only heightened when the last time you saw your beloved he was gunning hard for a World Series championship. Spring Training may be, as they say, meaningless, but after what we all endured last October, it’s hard not to carry our lofty expectations with us as we push through that turnstile for the first time.

This year’s reunion between me and the Toronto Blue Jays didn’t happen at the team’s springtime home in Dunedin, but instead at Tampa’s George M. Steinbrenner Field, one of the Grapefruit League’s more majestic ballpark offerings. Steinbrenner is like a tiny Yankee Stadium substitute, still steeped deep in heritage and holiness, though its capacity is about one fifth its parent’s size. (It is, however, the largest Spring Training ballpark in Florida.) From the $10 open field parking lot, staffed primarily by polite retirees, the park is a quick walk across the bridge over Route 92. The stadium itself is tastefully decorated with a collection of pennant flags, each marking a year the storied Yankees have won a World Series—27 if you’re masochistic and counting.

In my day-to-day life, I’m egregiously early to pretty much everything (it’s annoying for everyone involved), and baseball games are no exception. Game time in Tampa is 1:07 p.m., and I’m already through the gate by 11, ready to take in every last drop before the first pitch is thrown. As I walk the concourse at Steinbrenner, down the aisles toward the field, dozens of yellow-shirted staffers, most of which are seniors, say hello and tell me that they hope I enjoy the game. It’s such a pleasant environment it almost feels suspect, as if it’s impossible for all of these people to be this nice in quick succession. I watch as a guy in a Jays jersey has a warm, friendly chat with a guy in a Yankees jersey, reminding me that in Spring Training there are no real pressing rivalries. The clock is set back to zero, and the slate is wiped clean.

The anthropology of being a sports fan is starting to interest me.

[LINK] "The Sadness and Beauty of Watching Google’s AI Play Go"

Cade Metz' Wired article reports from Seoul, where a Google-designed AI defeated a veteran player of Seoul in a beautiful if unorthodox manner. There are new ways of knowing the world about.

At first, Fan Hui thought the move was rather odd. But then he saw its beauty.

“It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this move,” he says. “So beautiful.” It’s a word he keeps repeating. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.

The move in question was the 37th in the second game of the historic Go match between Lee Sedol, one of the world’s top players, and AlphaGo, an artificially intelligent computing system built by researchers at Google. Inside the towering Four Seasons hotel in downtown Seoul, the game was approaching the end of its first hour when AlphaGo instructed its human assistant to place a black stone in a largely open area on the right-hand side of the 19-by-19 grid that defines this ancient game. And just about everyone was shocked.

“That’s a very strange move,” said one of the match’s English language commentators, who is himself a very talented Go player. Then the other chuckled and said: “I thought it was a mistake.” But perhaps no one was more surprised than Lee Sedol, who stood up and left the match room. “He had to go wash his face or something—just to recover,” said the first commentator.

Even after Lee Sedol returned to the table, he didn’t quite know what to do, spending nearly 15 minutes considering his next play. AlphaGo’s move didn’t seem to connect with what had come before. In essence, the machine was abandoning a group of stones on the lower half of the board to make a play in a different area. AlphaGo placed its black stone just beneath a single white stone played earlier by Lee Sedol, and though the move may have made sense in another situation, it was completely unexpected in that particular place at that particular time—a surprise all the more remarkable when you consider that people have been playing Go for more than 2,500 years. The commentators couldn’t even begin to evaluate the merits of the move.

Then, over the next three hours, AlphaGo went on to win the game, taking a two-games-to-none lead in this best-of-five contest. To date, machines have beaten the best humans at chess and checkers and Othello and Jeopardy!. But no machine has beaten the very best at Go, a game that is exponentially more complex than chess. Now, AlphaGo is one win away.

[LINK] "Do We Already Have Cyborgs in Our Midst?"

Gizmodo's Frieda Klotz describes the quiet introduction of the cyborg into our contemporary world. The future is here.

Michael Bareev-Rudy never expected to have his finger implanted with a magnet. But in November 2015, the 18-year-old decided to embed a tiny magnet in his index finger at an event held in Dusseldorf, Germany. A crowd gathered to watch as a man in a smart grey suit and green surgical mask carefully sliced open the sandy-haired 18-year-old’s finger.

“After this he cuts with a scalpel on the side of my finger – yes, he cuts my finger open,” Michael recalled moments later, looking decidedly pale as he smiled nervously before the flashing cameras. After sterilising the table and numbing Michael’s finger with a local anaesthetic, “he uses – I don’t really know how to describe this tool – it was like a pen, sharp on the end with a little spoon on the top. He carved a tunnel through my finger to get the magnet inside and then he tried to put it there.” Because the magnet refused to slip easily into the young man’s finger, they had to try six times before succeeding.

Afterwards Michael’s finger was still numb, meaning that the real pain would come later. A dissolvable string remained inside, which he would need to pull out within ten days. Michael had paid €100 for the magnet and implantation. “What can I say?” he laughed, gazing at his newly transformed digit. “I was sitting there thinking for a moment, ‘Why am I doing this?’ But on the other hand, I thought it’s a great opportunity, and I think it’s kind of cool to modify your own body – and yes, of course it hurts, but this is a small price for what I get.”

Michael, who studies electrotechnics in Cologne, looks like a pretty normal guy, sporting a black T-shirt with a red alien on the front. And that’s the point: Once the realm of piercers and body modifiers, tech implantation is fast becoming the territory of software developers, students and web entrepreneurs. Magnets allow users to sense magnetic or electromagnetic fields; RFID (radio-frequency identification) or NFC (near field communication, a related technology) chips, encased in biocompatible glass, can be programmed to communicate with Android phones and other compatible devices, allowing users to unlock their phones, open doors, turn lights on and off or even buy a beer with a literal wave of the hand. The connected devices of the internet of things are a gold mine for experimentation. Analysts predict that there will be 25 billion connected objects by 2020, and this swift rise gives implant technologies a wealth of new applicability and appeal. People with such implants we call cyborgs. And this event in Dusseldorf was dubbed ‘Science + Fiction: The world’s first Cyborg-fair’.

People have these visions that this is evil. But in the real world, it’s not.

‘Cyborg’ is a loaded and attention-grabbing term, bearing associations from sci-fi novels and Hollywood, and whether it’s an entirely accurate label for these activities is up for debate. Some commentators broaden the definition to include anyone who uses artificial devices, such as computer screens or iPhones. Others prefer to narrow it. As early as 2003, in an article entitled ‘Cyborg morals, cyborg values, cyborg ethics’, Kevin Warwick, the professor who pioneered the cyborg movement in the academic sphere, described ‘cyborgs’ as being only those entities formed by a “human, machine brain/nervous system coupling” – essentially “a human whose nervous system is linked to a computer”.

[URBAN NOTE] "How Buffy The Vampire Slayer helps Gord Perks be a better politician"

NOW Toronto's Jonathan Goldsbie interviews Toronto city councilor Gord Perks about the importance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in inspiring his politics.

Is it accurate to say that you find the show nourishing?

Yeah, in a way. It’s a show about how to be a moral actor in an immoral universe.

Explain.

Well, it’s a world dominated by demons and monsters and “Big Bads,” and all of the characters have to find a trajectory to living morally in that universe. And they’re all compromised. Sometimes they help each other, sometimes they set each other back. It’s an awful lot like being part of a government in our not-very-healthy society.

What's your favourite season in that respect?

Every season has its own take on it. That’s the marvellous thing.

I mean, The Master [the main villain of the first season] very much looks like a Nazi. The second season is about finding your own moral strength when everyone and everything you love abandons you. The third season is confronting your own dark side.

The fourth season is Frankenstein and the application of technology as a means of social control and how you respond to that. And the way that the characters respond to it is to literally become a collective and draw on each other’s greatest human strengths in order to find a way through.

The fifth season is about the choice between glory and commerce and beauty and actual filial love. The sixth season — it’s amazing I can just do this off the top of my head — is very much about trying to find your identity after losing your moral centre. And the seventh season is all about how to move from being an individual moral actor to being free to empower others to become moral actors.

And these are all struggles that all of us as human beings, and particularly those of us who try to be conscious and intentional of finding the good and the right in this world, have to reflect on.

They’re also very moving stories. It doesn’t matter how many times I watch the last few episodes of the second season, I cry every time.

[URBAN NOTE] "Dozens of ‘British home children’ lie forgotten in Etobicoke cemetery"

The Toronto Star's Christopher Reynolds reported on this appalling story. At least some of the children seem to have been outright murdered, others died of neglected, none have seen justice until now.

This story proves that Canadians are not polite. Rather, we choose not to talk about things. This is a choice on our part.

Charles Bradbury was still a child when his throat was slit with a razor on Feb. 1, 1897. His charred remains were found the same day in a burned-down barn near the Don River.

The live-in farm hand had quarreled with his landlord and employer before falling into a “sulky fit” and earning a “slight kick” from the plowman, a local newspaper reported two days later. The man was never prosecuted for his death, dubiously deemed a suicide.

Several news stories, a name and a number — 983 — scribbled onto a graveyard plot card are all that survive to mark the boy’s existence.

Charles is one of 75 children whose remains lie buried, unmarked and virtually forgotten in a pair of mass graves at an Etobicoke cemetery. They were drops in the wave of British home children, sent in droves from the U.K. to build a fresh life on Canadian soil.

Now a research group has dug up their identities, giving new life to youths all but anonymous in death. The revelation unfolded as part of an effort to reclaim the pasts of more than 115,000 children shipped across the Atlantic as indentured servants between 1869 and 1948.

“This thing at Park Lawn Cemetery was held under wraps for many years,” says Lori Oschefski, who heads the British Home Child Advocacy and Research Association.

[LINK] "Nigeria plotting return of bronze cock as Cambridge students push for its repatriation"

Broadly speaking, I agree with the movement to return a looted Nigerian artwork as described in the National Post by Javier Espinoza's article, originally published in The Telegraph.

Nigerian officials have already made plans for the repatriation from Britain of the controversial bronze “Cambridge cockerel” and its return to a royal palace, documents reveal.

It is understood the Nigerian minister of culture has been closely following a push by students at Cambridge University’s Jesus College to repatriate the statue, which was looted by British forces in the 19th century.

Sources said keeping the statue in the royal palace of Benin in Nigeria would be “in line with current protocol,” after which it would be decided if it belongs in a museum.

Jesus College this week confirmed the statue, which has long held pride of place in the college’s dining hall, is to be taken down and a debate about its future will be held.

If it is decided that it should be repatriated, it would be taken to the Nigerian royal palace, the documents showed.

[LINK] "Dropping loonies squeezes library budgets as costs for materials climb"

The Globe and Mail's Philip Moscovitch reports on how the falling Canadian dollar has hit libraries in Canada hard.

Every morning, Tom Hickerson turns on the TV and checks for the day’s exchange rate.

He is not a trader, banker or economist. But still, what he sees will have a major impact on the day ahead of him.

As the head librarian at the University of Calgary, Mr. Hickerson has watched in horror over the past two years, as the dropping dollar eats into his library’s purchasing power. Every drop of a penny against the American dollar takes a bite of over $100,000 out of his acquisitions budget.

The fall of the loonie – from just over 94 cents in early January, 2014, to the low 70s today – has left academic and public libraries with less money to pay for the increasing number of materials they are billed for in U.S. dollars.

Public libraries have made much of their transformation into digital hubs. In addition to allowing customers to download e-books and audiobooks, some also offer music and film streaming, as well as digital subscriptions to magazines like the New Yorker.

But these services all originate with American vendors – and when the Canadian dollar drops, the libraries’ costs go up.

Vickery Bowles, city librarian for the Toronto Public Library, said her institution spent nearly $1-million on currency conversion in 2015, out of a collections budget of $18-million. In 2010, the figure was $58,000. Most of those costs were for digital content. “That’s a huge difference and takes a real bite out of our collections budget,” she said.

[CAT] "Woman with 107 cats in home found guilty of animal cruelty"

Alyshah Hasham's report in the Toronto Star of the conviction of a woman in the Yonge and Eglinton area on charges of animal cruelty related to her cat hoarding is disgusting. How could she have let things get so out of hand?

For two years inside the non-descript home of a law professor, a nightmare was brewing.

“Wall to wall cats; floors, walls, furniture rotting and coated in cat urine, cat fur and cat feces. The smell was literally overpowering,” a judge said Thursday. “The first officer on the scene thought there might be a dead body inside the house.”

Hours later, as OSPCA staff in haz-mat gear were in the process of removing a feral colony of 107 cats from the home, homeowner Diane Way returned with a pull-cart full of cat food.

“This was a sad case,” Ontario Court Justice William B. Horkins told the court Thursday, after a 23-day trial.

“With apologies to Shakespeare, Diane Way loved her cats ‘not wisely, but too well’ and as with Othello, there were tragic results.”

[CAT] "Trump, Putin and Obama cat scratching posts"

I was amused by this item at Dangerous Minds.

If you just gotta have one [political leaders cat scratching post], there’s a more affordable option: Politikats’ Trump, Putin and Obama cat scratching posts! So far they’re only prototypes and it’s on Kickstarter, but if Politikats’ make their goal, each one will retail for around $139.00. Not too bad.

My only complaint is that The Donald’s signature combover could be a bit more extreme. Also, he’s not orange enough. Or mean looking enough.

Having said that, I’d really love to see my cat tear the shit out of Donald Trump. She’d show him who was the pussy.

Politikat's Kickstarter is here.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomy reports on the discovery of a repeating fast radio burst.


• blogTO lists the five most exciting neighbourhoods in Toronto, my Dupont Street rating there.


• Centauri Dreams studies the ecology of space colony agriculture.


• Crooked Timber notes the contrast between progress on climate change internationally and bizarre rhetoric in the United States.


• Discover's Inkfish reports on a study suggesting scenic environments do keep people healthy.


• Language Log notes difficulties with accessing Tibetan-medium education in China.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the authoritarian mindset.


• Marginal Revolution wonders why labour mobility in India is so low.


• Steve Munro looks at the TTC's policy on fares.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes yet another issue with the Nicaragua Canal.


• Towleroad notes Hillary Clinton's apology for praising the record of the Reagans on HIV/AIDS.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes an American custody order preventing a mother from talking about religion or her sexual orientation to her children.


• Arnold Zwicky notes some prominent children's graphic novels.

[FORUM] What do you think of the ongoing American election campaign?

I've been following the struggles of the Republicans and the Democrats and of Americans generally as much as anyone, and I've felt my reaction shift from bemusement to authentic concern. Donald Trump is a person who should never be in a position of actual power, it turns out, yet it seems like he's close, if not to the actual nomination then to a position of lasting influence.

What are your thoughts on the situation?