A Bit More Detail

• In remembering Stan Lee, CityLab points to the evocative image of New York City that he and Marvel Comics created.


• Global News notes that Calgary is approaching the day of its referendum over the 2026 Winter Olympics. (Calgarians, vote against the idea.)


• Guardian Cities shares these images depicting what London would look like if any number of plans for new architectural wonders had come to pass.


• CityLab notes how community activity helped reclaim Zeedijk street in Amsterdam.


• Guardian Cities shares photos of the final days of the traditional fish market in the Senegalese capital of Dakar.

• At Antipope, Charlie Stross examines the connections between bitcoin production and the alt-right. Could cryptocurrency have seriously bad political linkages?


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes GW170680, a recent gravitational wave detection that is both immense in its effect and surprising for its detection being normal.


• Centauri Dreams reports on a new study suggesting hot Jupiters are so large because they are heated by their local star.


• Crooked Timber counsels against an easy condemnation of baby boomers as uniquely politically malign.


• Daily JSTOR notes one paper that takes a look at how the surprisingly late introduction of the bed, as a piece of household technology, changed the way we sleep.


• Dangerous Minds shares a 1968 newspaper interview with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, talking about Charlie Manson and his family and their influence on him.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the opioid epidemic and the way that it is perceived.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Alex Harrowell suggests that the unsolvable complexities of Northern Ireland may be enough to avoid a hard Brexit after all.


• The LRB Blog describes a visit to a seaside village in Costa Rica where locals and visitors try to save sea turtles.


• Lingua Franca reflects on the beauty of the Icelandic language.


• The Map Room Blog shares an awesome map depicting the locations of the stars around which we have detected exoplanets.


• Marginal Revolution notes the ill health of North Korean defectors, infected with parasites now unseen in South Korea.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the revival of fonio, a West African grain that is now starting to see successful marketing in Senegal.


• Spacing reviews a fascinating book examining the functioning of urban villages embedded in the metropoli of south China.


• Strange Company reports on the mysterious 1920 murder of famous bridge player Joseph Bowne Elwell.


• Towleroad reports on Larnelle Foster, a gay black man who was a close friend of Meghan Markle in their college years.


• Window on Eurasia notes that, although Ukraine suffered the largest number of premature dead in the Stalinist famines of the 1930s, Kazakhstan suffered the greatest proportion of dead.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell has a photo essay looking at the Berlin Brandenburg Airport, still years away from completion and beset by many complex failures of its advanced systems. What does the failure of this complex system say about others we may wish to build?

• Charley Ross reports on an unexpected personal involvement in the disappearance of Kori Gossett. Did an informant know?


• Citizen Science Salon reports, in the time of #sharkweek, on the sevengill sharks.


• The Dragon's Tales links to an article on the Chinese base in Sudan.


• Inkfish has a fascinating article describing how New Zealand's giant black swans went extinct, and were replaced.


• Language Hat notes two obscure words of Senegalese French, "laptot" and "signare". What do they mean? Go see.


• Language Log argues that the influx of English loanwords in Chinese is remarkable. Does it signal future changes in language?


• Lawyers, Guns Money notes how Los Angeles and southern California were, during the American Civil War, a stronghold of secessionist sentiment, and runs down some of the problems of Mexico, including the militarization of crime.
  
• Marginal Revolution reports on what books by which authors tend to get stolen from British bookstores.
  
• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer suggests that Donald Trump is not likely to be able to substantially reshape NAFTA.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports from the recent protests in Poland against changes to the Supreme Court.


• Understanding Society takes a look at the structure of the cities of medieval Europe, which apparently were dynamic and flexible.


• Unicorn Booty shares some classic gay board games.


• Window on Eurasia argues that Russia is going to try to wage a repeat of the Winter War on Ukraine.

As the child of a Senegalese diplomat, Assane Kamara was accustomed to finding his place in unfamiliar lands. In his 24 years, he had lived in Ivory Coast, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Madagascar.

But his privileged upbringing veered off course in 2014, prompting his worried mother to launch a search for her son, and leading her from the family home in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, to Friday prayers in an Edmonton mosque.

As she forced him to return home, a member of the Kamara family said that the questions swirled. What had become of the young man sent for an education at Quebec’s Université de Sherbrooke? Why had he cut contact with his family and moved to western Canada? And who were the devout Canadian Muslims he now counted as his closest friends?

In the months following the intervention, three of those friends — Samir Halilovic, Zakria Habibi and Youssef Sakhir — would flee Canada to try and join Daesh, the Islamic terror group in Syria and Iraq.

Today, Kamara sits in a Dakar jail facing terrorism charges that were laid in February 2016, based on allegations he had planned to join a jihadist group, Henry Boumy Ciss, a spokesperson for Senegal’s National Police, told the Star.

The Ebola epidemic in Africa has continued to expand since I last wrote about it, and as of a week ago, has accounted for more than 4,200 cases and 2,200 deaths in five countries: Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone. That is extraordinary: Since the virus was discovered, no Ebola outbreak’s toll has risen above several hundred cases. This now truly is a type of epidemic that the world has never seen before. In light of that, several articles were published recently that are very worth reading.

The most arresting is a piece published last week in the journal Eurosurveillance, which is the peer-reviewed publication of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (the EU’s Stockholm-based version of the US CDC). The piece is an attempt to assess mathematically how the epidemic is growing, by using case reports to determine the “reproductive number.” (Note for non-epidemiology geeks: The basic reproductive number — usually shorted to R0 or “R-nought” — expresses how many cases of disease are likely to be caused by any one infected person. An R0 of less than 1 means an outbreak will die out; an R0 of more than 1 means an outbreak can be expected to increase. If you saw the movie Contagion, this is what Kate Winslet stood up and wrote on a whiteboard early in the film.)

The Eurosurveillance paper, by two researchers from the University of Tokyo and Arizona State University, attempts to derive what the reproductive rate has been in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. (Note for actual epidemiology geeks: The calculation is for the effective reproductive number, pegged to a point in time, hence actually Rt.) They come up with an R of at least 1, and in some cases 2; that is, at certain points, sick persons have caused disease in two others.

You can see how that could quickly get out of hand, and in fact, that is what the researchers predict. Here is their stop-you-in-your-tracks assessment:

In a worst-case hypothetical scenario, should the outbreak continue with recent trends, the case burden could gain an additional 77,181 to 277,124 cases by the end of 2014.

• Centauri Dreams reacts to yesterday's announcement that Kepler had found another 715 planets. What an embarrassment of riches!


• Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram mourns the freer blogging culture of old, before things because set and professionalized.


• A Fistful of Euros' Edward Hugh argues that, with a shrinking population and stagnant incomes, Japan-style deflation is inevitable in Spain.


• At Geocurrents, Claire Negiar summarizes the simmering separatism of the southern Senegalese region of Casamance.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen starts a discussion about the impact of bringing extinct species like the passenger pigeon back to life.


• The New APPS Blog's Mohan Matthen argues that an independent Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom should maintain a currency union. (I've made arguments against.)


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer maps the declining power of Chavista politics at the polls in Venezuela.


• Savage Minds has a neat interview with an ethnographer who is also a designer.


• The Speed River Journal's Van Waffle celebrates the avocado, with photos and recipes.


• Torontoist links to a cool video showing the exploration of some hidden nooks of the Toronto transit system.


• Window on Eurasia notes that, at least in terms of declared ethnic identity, Ukraine is as Ukrainian as Russia is Russians.


• Wonkman points out that mores in cities take a while to get used to, just like the mores of non-urban areas.

• 80 Beats reports that the drug Truvada failed to protect some participants in a study on HIV infection in Africa from infection as a prophylactic mainly because they weren't taking it.


• Far Outliers quotes from a passage in Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom to the effect that Prussia in the mid-19th century was becoming increasingly diverse, along ethnic and regional lines.


• At the Invisible College, Otto Spejkers refers to a legal dispute between Belgium and Senegal before the International Court of Justice over Senegal's failure to extradite Hissène Habré, former dictator of Chad. Inadequate national legislation (i.e. a failure in Senegalese law to require the extradition of non-citizens accused of crimes against humanity) is no excuse if international covenants also exist, it's argued.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Erik Loomis is quite right to argue that "the major problem with Hugo Chavez is that he is full of shit".


• Is Kazakhstan's denuclearization after the Soviet Union's end a model for Iran? Quite possibly, Registan argues.


• Kyle Bachan at Torontoist interviews the owner of the Silver Snail, a venerable comic book store set to leave its Queen West location after 36 years.


• Torontoist's Rachel Lissner reports on an effort in east-end Toronto to learn lessons in urban revitalization from the Australian city of Newcastle, in New South Wales.


• Towleroad reports on the launching of a concrete project to clone the woolly mammoth.


• At the Volokh Conspiracy Ilya Somin points out that although the Galactic Empire of Star Wars fame may have had famously unpragmatic leadership styles (and failings!), these principles suited an aggressive totalitarian state perfectly. Who said that the Galactic Empire was supposed to be a rational-bureaucratic society?

Senegal broke off diplomatic relations with Tehran last month, saying it had evidence that separatist rebels in the southern region of Casamance used Iranian ammunition to kill government soldiers in a clash on February 21.

In December, Senegal recalled its ambassador but then sent him back to Tehran after saying it was satisfied with explanations given about an arms shipment seized by the Nigerian authorities last October.

When a ship that docked in Lagos and 13 containers labelled as construction machinery were found to contain Iranian weapons, the authorities there seized the freight, made several arrests, and reported the find to the United Nations as a breach of the Security Council embargo on arms purchases from Iran.

[. . .]

In Senegal, Iran has spent years investing in building schools, promoting Islam, laying roads and setting up a carmaking plant. Its ambassador in Dakar, Jahanbakhsh Hassanzadeh, had voiced hope that as economic ties grew, Iran would emerge as Senegal’s principal Asian partner.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should have formally inaugurated the car plant in January, but this did not happen because of the shipment scandal, and because he sacked his foreign minister, Manouchehr Motakki, while the latter was visiting Senegal in December.

[. . .]

Iran’s engagement with some of the smaller African states has been most marked at times when it is under pressure; it began when the country was isolated during the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Under the presidency of Ahmadinejad’s predecessor Mohammad Khatami, a special council was set up to foster these relationships. But despite a flurry of visits, Africa was not at this point a key target of political or economic interest for Iran.

With Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005 and an increasingly hostile international environment facing Iran, the race was on to reach out to make new friends, and they no longer had to be Muslim states or neighbours. The new president stepped up efforts in sub-Saharan countries, going on visits and inaugurating construction projects. A meeting of African Union foreign ministers even took place in Iran.

At a diplomatic level, most African states are members of the Non-Aligned Movement and many are part of the Islamic Conference Organisation, while economically, they are open to the kind of investment and trade Iran can bring.

Despite the surge in interest in African states, Tehran has failed to achieve decisive progress. Even though it has 27 embassies across the continent, foreign ministry officials have acknowledged publicly that many African states remain little-known.

[. . .]

Just minutes after parliament confirmed Ali Akbar Salehi in office as Iran’s new foreign minister on January 30, it was announced that he would be heading off to Ethiopia to attend the African Union Summit. But a few hours later, news came that the trip had been cancelled because the minister was too busy.

A London-based diplomat from an African country, who did not want to be identified, said this erratic behaviour exemplified the pattern of Iran’s wider relationships on the continent. In other words, hastily-made decisions, hesitation and a failure to follow through are nothing new.

Senegal, Pakistan and Afghanistan, among the world’s 50 poorest nations, are turning to Islamic banking to spur economic growth by encouraging people to take out loans and open savings accounts.

Outstanding domestic bank lending accounted for 3.5 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product in 2008, 25 percent in Senegal, 27 percent in Nigeria and 46 percent in Pakistan, according to data compiled by the World Bank. The rates compare with 224 percent in the U.S. and 115 percent in Malaysia, a global hub for finance that conforms with Shariah principles.

Developing Islamic nations have shunned banking in part because of the religion’s ban on interest, limiting access to funds for project financing and stunting business growth, according to the International Monetary Fund. Governments should improve regulations, products and institutions that comply with Shariah law to accelerate the industry’s development, Patrick Imam and Kangni Kpodar, economists at the IMF, said in a telephone interview from Washington on Sept. 14.

“Islamic banks provide access to finance to a segment of the population that is underbanked,” said Imam. Once “they start putting money in these banks you start a process of financial intermediation, where savings are channeled from individuals via Islamic banks to investments,” he said.

[. . .]

The concept of risk-sharing in Shariah banking that prohibits interest payments would be more useful in Muslim countries because their economies are less diversified, the IMF economists said.

“In the Islamic banking system, both the bank and entrepreneur share the reward and failure, and in many developing countries such risk sharing might allow entrepreneurs to undertake projects that they couldn’t otherwise contemplate,” said Kpodar at the IMF.