as we were saying

Quote for the day

2011-10-11T08:05:00.003-07:00

Songs are thoughts sung out with breath when people are moved by great forces and ordinary speech is no longer enough.

-- Orpingalik, recorded by Knud Rasmussen

Heureux d'action de grâces!

2011-10-10T06:47:00.007-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

Kitsilano Beach Park, Vancouver

UBC Farm harvest; image source here.

The Living Bridges of Meghalaya

2011-10-09T08:09:00.005-07:00

VIDEO here.

Haida canoe: living icon of 10,000 year-old culture

2011-10-04T09:43:00.007-07:00

'The Everything Canoe'

The Tyee: Dug out of a single log, carved into a distinctive shape and steamed open to become a seaworthy vessel, the Haida canoe is connected to the forests, the ocean, supernatural beings, great voyages, war, trade, feasts and potlatches of the island archipelago of Haida Gwaii.. The Haida Gwaii Museum's recent publication, Gina Waadluxan Tluu: the Everything Canoe, was designed as a resource... bringing the rich history of Haida culture into school curriculums...

From the elders: "Canoes were part of everyday life... Everywhere they went was by canoe -- from the winter village to the different gathering grounds... They would follow the seasons... The islands' goods were bought and sold by canoe... The canoe shaped Haida expressions of welcome and agreement: "In Old Haida, when they said 'I agree with you,' they [used the word meaning] 'crew.'...One might say, 'I'm going to be your crew, get on with you.'"

Guujaaw, master carver and current Haida Nation president, worked on one of three canoes commissioned by the Skidegate Band Council in 2006... Guujaaw was also instrumental in helping Bill Reid create the initial 24-foot canoe that led to the creation of the Loo Taas... "It is important to know that the supernatural world is not in the past, but with us today. The more you experience the action and the way [the canoe] handles in the water, then the more you start to believe it."..

Several journeys have been made by Haida canoe in recent memory, including the return to Loo Taas to Haida Gwaii after Expo 86. But as Captain Gold explains... "Making that craft and that skill had to be relearned all over again."

Image: Torch relay in the Loo Taas ('water eater'); source here.

Feast day of St. Francis of Assisi

2011-10-04T09:20:00.008-07:00

St. Francis preaching to the birds and animals.

Image source here.

Quote for the day

2011-09-30T13:04:00.005-07:00

The Inuit word meaning 'to make poetry' is the same as the word for 'to breathe,' and both derive from the word for 'the soul.'

-- Jonathan A. Vance, A History of Canadian Culture

for Michaelmas

2011-09-29T09:32:00.007-07:00

Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, honours the greatest of all the archangels, the principal angelic warrior, who defeated Lucifer in the war in heaven. In some traditions this day is the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, including Gabriel, the messenger and Raphael, the healer. Michael is protector against the dark of night, administrator of cosmic intelligence, guardian of souls.

Saint Michael, protect us.

Image source here.

Today also is the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, first of the High Holy 'Days of Awe,' representing the creation of the world. The Day of Judgment and remembrance, it begins the time of our repentance, to be sealed on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, holiest day of the year. May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life and sealed to live.

Image source here.

Canada's reputation #1

2011-09-27T14:05:00.006-07:00

Canada has best reputation in the world

Vancouver Sun: Canada has the best reputation in the world, says a study measuring public perceptions of 50 countries around the world... The Reputation Institute study measures the trust, esteem, admiration and good feelings the public holds towards 50 countries, as well as perceptions of peoples' quality of life, safety and attention to the environment.

Results from 42,000 respondents worldwide ranked Sweden next, followed by Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand... The countries scored high for their steady democracies, high economic output per capita, focus on active lifestyles, well developed political systems and perceived neutrality to international political upheavals.

Image source here.

Poem for the day

2011-09-25T16:30:00.005-07:00

Human Chain

for Terence Brown

Seeing the bags of meal passed hand to hand
In close-up by the aid workers, and soldiers
Firing over the mob, I was braced again

With a grip on two sack corners,
Two packed wads of grain I'd worked to lugs
To give me purchase, ready for the heave --

The eye-to-eye, one-two, one-two upswing
On to the trailer, then the stoop and drag and drain
Of the next lift. Nothing surpassed

That quick unburdening, backbreak's truest payback;
A letting go which will not come again.
Or it will once. And for all.

-- Seamus Heaney

Happy Autumn Equinox!

2011-09-23T07:31:00.003-07:00

Hadden Park, Vancouver

Toward the Equinox II

2011-09-21T11:27:00.005-07:00

Tom Thompson, Autumn Birches (1916)

Toward the Equinox

2011-09-20T08:54:00.003-07:00

Spring and Fall

to a Young Child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed;
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Books are our friends VI

2011-09-19T18:13:00.004-07:00

Pie de Amigo (Foot of Friend) by Miler Lagos: 'An arc of stacked architecture books with one pencil placed in the leaves of each book that, if removed, would cause the whole piece to tumble.'

Feathers in amber: birds and dinosaurs

2011-09-17T07:44:00.007-07:00

Amber cache reveals feathered dinosaurs, birds shared habitat

The Canadian Press: An ancient deposit of amber from southern Alberta has revealed that birds with feathers not that different from their modern descendants shared habitat with dinosaurs still sporting the most primitive of plumages.

'We've got two ends of the evolutionary-developmental model co-occuring,' said University of Alberta paleontolgist Ryan McKellar, co-author of a paper on the Medicine Hat amber deposit in the journal Science... The amber deposit is from the last days of the dinosaurs [the Cretaceous period] between 78 and 79 million years ago.

Scientists have long known that some dinosaurs had simple feathers. Most of the evidence for that comes from fossils discovered in China. But those proto-feathers have been crushed into a thin film by the weight of millennia. In Alberta, however, the tiny filaments from both dinosaur and bird feathers... are so well-preserved that researchers can even guess what colour they were.

More images here:

Trove of Dinosaur Feathers found in Canadian Amber

Wired Science: 'These simple feathers clearly had nothing to do with flight, and probably had everything to do with thermal regulation. They were essentially a feather homologue of fur,' said paleontologist Alex Wolfe of the University of Alberta, a co-author of the new study.

Image source here.

Image for the day

2011-09-16T18:16:00.004-07:00

Blade of Grass (200X)

Dr. Donna Stolz

Nikon Small World 2011 - The World's Top Women Photomicrographers

Thanks, Greenpeace

2011-09-15T10:21:00.017-07:00

Amchitka: The Founding Voyage

VIDEO: 40 Years of Victories

VIDEO: A Conversation in Pictures (Rex Weyler and Kumi Naidoo)

Image source here.

Coral reefs signal mass extinction

2011-09-13T09:19:00.009-07:00

Coral reefs 'will be gone by end of the century'

They will be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by human activity, says top UN scientist

The Independent: Professor Peter Sale studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University for Water, Environment and Health.

The predicted decline is mainly down to climate change and ocean acidification. [Sale's] book, Our Dying Planet... contains further alarming predictions, such as the prospect that 'we risk having no reefs that resemble those of today in as little as 30 or 40 more years...'

Coral reefs... contain a quarter of all marine species, despite covering only 0.1 per cent of the world's oceans by area, and are more diverse than the rainforests... About 180 million people live within 100km of a reef, of which some 275 million are likely to depend on the reef ecosystems for nutrition or livelihood. Fringing reefs can also help to protect low-lying islands and coastal regions from extreme weather, absorbing waves before they reach vulnerable populations.

Carbon emissions generated by human activity, especially our heavy use of fossil fuels, are the biggest cause of the anticipated rapid decline... Climate change increases ocean surface temperatures... and leads to coral bleaching, where the photosynthesising algae on which the reef-building creatures depend for energy disappear. Deprived of these for even a few weeks, the corals die. On top of this comes ocean acidification. Roughly one-third of the extra carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere is absorbed through the ocean surface... The imbalance created makes it harder for reef organisms to retrieve the minerals needed to build their carbonaceous skeletons...

If past mass extinctions are anything to go by... reef disappearance has tended to precede wider mass extinction events... 'The losses of species that are occurring now are in every way equivalent to the mass extinctions of the past,' Professor Sale says... About 20 per cent of global coral reefs have already been lost in the past few decades... 'If we can keep CO2 concentrations below 450 parts per million we could be able to save something resembling coral reefs.'... The current atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is about 390 parts per million, but few experts believe it will remain below 500 for long.

Image: Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the planet's largest reef system and one of the seven natural wonders of the world, but it may not survive the century. Source here.

Image for the day

2011-09-11T08:59:00.007-07:00

Take heart.

Image source here.

Taken for a pipeline ride

2011-09-07T11:50:00.013-07:00

Overheard: Asia's View of Alberta, Tar Sands and Pipelines

If this insider is right, Gateway is purely a ploy and Canadians are rubes.

Michael Byers, The Tyee.ca: As I listen in, I hear from a consultant a startling analysis of what Asia really thinks... 'The Gulf of Mexico coast is the only place in the world with any significant capacity for handling bitumen... If the Asians buy any bitumen from Canada, they'll insist on a very steep discount, because they'll have to ship it to the Gulf of Mexico too.'... He chuckles. 'But we don't tell the Canadians this straight-out.'...

'But what about the Northern Gateway,' I ask,... the proposed 1,200-kilometre-long twin pipelines between Fort McMurray, Alberta, and Kitimat, B.C. 'Enbridge is a major player. Surely they would realize that there's no market in Asia?'

'Enbridge is a pipeline company, not an oil company,' he replies... 'They've promised to find a market, and nothing more. They don't care if it's at a discount.'... 'If the Canadians were smart, they'd build the capacity to refine all their bitumen at source, so as to ship a much more valuable product to Asia and elsewhere.'...

'But surely Northern Gateway isn't just about Canadian oil companies being taken for a ride? I thought that Northern Gateway was designed, at least in part, to put pressure on the U.S. State Department to approve Keystone XL.'... a proposed 3,190 kilometre-long pipeline that would transport bitumen from Fort McMurray direct to the refineries on the Gulf of Mexico coast...

'You're absolutely right,' the consultant nods. 'And not just in part. Gateway is all about putting pressure on the State Department.'

'But the people at the State Department aren't stupid,' I protest. 'Surely they can see right through this?' 'Don't count on it,' he laughs derisively. 'They're focused on the Middle East. They don't understand the Asian energy market. They really don't.' He leans over and whispers: 'And even if they did realize that Gateway is an empty threat, they'd still approve Keystone XL, eventually. No matter what the EPA says, the State Department isn't about to depart from its practice of approving pipelines from Canada. It'll just spin out the decision as long as it can, hoping the project dies for other reasons.'

Image: tar sand; source here.

Labour Day 2011: Jack is with us

2011-09-05T09:00:00.003-07:00

Taking a long break

2011-07-23T09:42:00.006-07:00

Back in September.

Image source here.

Quote for the day

2011-07-21T08:11:00.006-07:00

Philosophy as an Art of Dying

Costica Bradatan:

There is a point beyond which philosophy, if it is not to lose face, must turn into something else: performance. It has to pass a test in a foreign land, a territory that's not its own. For the ultimate testing of our philosophy takes place not in the sphere of strictly rational procedures... but elsewhere: in the fierce confrontation with death of the animal that we are. The worthiness of one's philosophy reveals itself, if anywhere, in the live performance of one's encounter with one's own death; that's how we find out whether it is of some substance or it is all futility. Tell me how you deal with your fear of annihilation, and I will tell you about your philosophy.

1600 years of English in 10 1-minute videos

2011-07-18T07:39:00.002-07:00

The History of English in Ten Minutes

Go here.

Adrian Gray, stone balancer

2011-07-16T12:38:00.002-07:00

The weird art of stone balancing

The Independent: Adrian Gray is a professional stone balancer. He started placing different shaped rocks precariously on top of each other one day because he wanted 'to make a beautiful family group of stones.' That was more than eight years ago, and he has since constructed all manner of impossible looking sculptures on the Dorset shoreline near his home.

'I realised that stones would balance in a really strange way,' he explained. 'People come up to me and ask if I've stuck the stones down with blue tack or glue. Then I simply lift off the top stone and they look astonished.'

To see examples of Gray's sculptures, go here.

Image source here.

Atospheric CO2

2011-07-14T11:22:00.003-07:00

As of May 2011

Source of image here.

Plants breathing

2011-07-12T09:17:00.004-07:00

Global Garden

Earth Observatory: Plants breathe. They take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into the sugars that become leaves, stems, roots, and woody trunks. What carbon dioxide they don't use, they exhale, releasing the leftover gas with oxygen. And after plants die, they decay, releasing the carbon to the atmosphere. The difference between the amount of carbon plants absorb and what they release is called net primary productivity. It is a direct measurement of how much plant matter -- from crops to forests or ocean phytoplankton -- Earth produces.

Image source here.

Pacific sea life moving east via NW Passage

2011-07-10T07:38:00.006-07:00

Pacific species migrating through warmer Northwest Passage

National Post: Set loose by an ice-free Northwest Passage, an invasion force of Pacific sea creatures are moving east to Atlantic waters... Last summer, European scientists were baffled when a grey whale appeared off Israel...

Killer whales have been capitalizing on the melting Arctic... Wary of the ferocious newcomers, bowhead whales, narwhal and beluga have all been spotted staying near shore and swimming in unnaturally tight formations. The Humboldt squid, a creature once seen only off the South American coast, has gradually worked its way north into ice-filled waters off Alaska...

The invasion is already bad news for Newfoundland's ravaged Atlantic cod. While the decimated cod stock may no longer be threatened by fishing nets, they are 'facing a potentially mutating ecosystem.. Arctic char are already facing tough competition for food by schools of east-moving capelin, a small forage fish...

An Arctic shipping traffic ramps up, the migration of sea life will only increase as crustaceans and plankton hitch rides east on Europe-bound freighters. Following the construction of the Suez Canal... the Mediterranean Sea became overcome with invasive species swimming over from the Red Sea... Species used to move freely between the Atlantic and Pacific, but they were isolated by the introduction of polar ice. Pacific and Atlantic counterparts are now poised for their first meeting in several million years.

Image source here.

Warmer water causing migration of species

2011-07-09T09:12:00.010-07:00

Scientists say warming waters reshuffling location of marine species

The Canadian Press: Some marine species are migrating to oceans where they were once extinct because of warming temperatures and polar melt, according to scientists who say the shakeup poses risks to entire ecosystems...

Chris Reid, a professor of oceanography at the University of Plymouth in England, said they discovered the presence of a microscopic plankton in the North Atlantic 800,000 years after it had disappeared from that area. It would be the first evidence of a trans-Arctic migration for plankton in modern times and one of the first times in tens of thousands of years that water has flown freely between the two oceans after ice retreated from the Alaska coastline... 'They are a marker of a major transition because the last time we had an opening between the Pacific and the Atlantic was about two to three million years ago,' Reid said. 'This could have big impacts on living marine resources as well as fisheries and aquaculture.'...

He said the species shuffle could shake up the marine food web and transform the biodiversity of the Arctic and North Atlantic ecosystems... Some changes in plankton life have been linked to the collapse of some fish stocks, as well as declines in fish-eating North Sea birds, the researchers report. Changes in tiny animals called copepods are threatening the food supply for fish such as cod, herring and mackerel... Some of the tiny creatures, which are rich in oil, are being replaced by smaller and less nutritious varieties because of warming waters...

Reid said species will extend their ranges if water continues to warm and could flourish, increasing the risk of algal blooms that involve harmful phytoplankton or species like jellyfish overtaking other marine life. 'Most of the impacts are so clearly negative and the scope of change so potentially huge that, taken together, they constitute brightly flashing warning signals,' said Carlo Help, director general of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research...

Researchers predict that by 2060, as the Mediterranean warms, one-third of its 75 fish species will be threatened and six will be extinct. The findings also raise alarms about chemical cycling in the Atlantic, one of the most crucial oceans in the world for climate change and the absorption of carbon dioxide.

Image source here.

Quote for the day

2011-07-07T06:51:00.002-07:00

Reihold Niebuhr:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope... Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

Flying lanterns over Poznań

2011-07-05T07:38:00.008-07:00

Latające lampiony Poznań - rekord Polski

Citizens of Poznań, Poland, celebrated the Summer Solstice by releasing more than 11,000 paper lanterns into the twilight. They were carried away by the wind. Watch the video here.

Petermann ice island now off Labrador

2011-07-03T08:07:00.006-07:00

Ice Island off Labrador

Earth Observatory: Nearly 11 months after calving off of the northwest coast of Greenland, a massive ice island is now caught up in ocean currents off the coast of Labrador. The ice island was formed when a 251-square-kilometre chunk of ice broke off the Petermann Glacier on August 5, 2010. The Canadian Ice Service has since been tracking the ice island, dubbed PII-A, via satellite and radio beacon...

The island has been slowly breaking up and melting... but it could eventually post a hazard to offshore oil platforms and shipping lanes off Newfoundland. Canadian fishermen captured this close-up video of the ice island. Environment Canada dropped a beacon on PII-A, which can be tracked by going here. Satellite images of the area around Newfoundland are available twice daily from the MODIS Rapid Response System.

Image source here.

O Canada

2011-07-01T07:32:00.001-07:00

Amazon flow reversed by continental tilt

2011-06-29T07:49:00.007-07:00

Amazon River Once Flowed Other Way

National Geographic News: The entire Amazon Basin, the world's largest river drainage system, once flowed in the opposite direction... Geologists in the United States and Brazil say the discovery that the river previously flowed east-to-west was accidental. The team was studying how swiftly sediment travels in the Amazon Basin from its headwaters in the Andes Mountains of Peru to the Atlantic Ocean...

'All the current indicators in the ancient sediments' -- including ripple marks and telltale mineral traces -- 'showed that the current, the river flow, was from the east to the west,' said study author Drew Coleman, a geologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill...

The Amazon was flowing west-to-east, as it does now, when the shift occurred. That reversal is 'almost certainly tied' to the breakup of the South American and African continents, which began about 130 million years ago, Coleman said. 'When that happened, the east coast [of South America] was uplifted -- and the whole river flowed the other way.'..

When the Andes Mountains started growing at about the end of the Cretaceous period (around 65 million years ago), the geologic tide began to shift again in favor of the Amazon's current west-to-east course... 'It flip-flopped pretty quickly,' he said, adding that the study reveals these shifts can occur on a 'continental scale.'... The study's findings highlight that 'the surface of the Earth is very transient.' [said] study co-author Russell Mapes, a UNC graduate student.

Image source here.

Oceans face 'mass extinction'

2011-06-27T08:50:00.006-07:00

Oceans on brink of catastrophe

Marine life facing mass extinction 'within one human generation'

State of seas 'much worse than we thought' says global panel of scientists

The Indepedent: The world's oceans are faced with an unprecedented loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory, a major report suggests... The seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted because of the cumulative impact of a number of severe individual stresses, ranging from climate warming and sea-water acidification, to widespread chemical pollution and gross overfishing.

The coming together of these factors is now threatening the marine environment with a catastrophe 'unprecedented in human history,' according to the report, from a panel of leading marine scientists brought together... by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The stark suggestion made by the panel is that the potential extinction of species, from large fish on one end of the scale to tiny corals at the other, is directly comparable to the five great mass extinctions in the geological record, during each of which much of the world's life died out... The panel of 27 scientists... also concluded:

The speed and rate of degeneration of the oceans is far faster than anyone has predicted;
Many of the negative impacts identified are greater than the worst predictions;
The first steps to globally significant extinction may have already begun.

World's oceans in 'shocking' decline

BBC News: The findings are 'shocking,' said Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director...IPSO's immediate recommendations include:

Stopping exploitative fishing now, with special emphasis on the high seas where currently there is little effective regulation;
Mapping and then reducing the input of pollutants including plastics, agricultural fertilisers and human waste;
Making sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon dioxide levels are now so high, it says, that ways of pulling the gas out of the atmosphere need to be researched urgently -- but not using techniques, such as iron fertilisation, that lead to more CO2 entering the oceans. 'We have to bring down CO2 emissions to zero within about 20 years,' Professor Hoegh-Guildberg told BBC News. 'If we don't do that... we'll see a very different ocean.'

Image: millions of dead anchovies floating at a marina in Redondo Beach, California, in March; source here.

Atlantic fish stocks in 1900 and 2000

2011-06-25T12:53:00.004-07:00

Plenty More Fish In The Sea?

What were the oceans like before over-fishing?

Click here to enlarge image.

The Guardian: This image shows the biomass of popularly-eaten fish in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1900 and in 2000. Popularly eaten fish include bluefin tuna, cod, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, pollock, salmon, sea trout, striped bass, sturgeon, turbot. Many of which are now vulnerable or endangered.

Dr. Villy Chistensen and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia used ecosystem models, underwater terrain maps, fish catch records and statistical analysis to render the biomass of Atlantic fish at various points this century (see the study here)... Professor Callum Roberts' harrowing book, The Unnatural History of the Sea... uses historical accounts of the ocean to depict the sheer fecundity of the sea in the times before industrialized fishing...

Each generation views the environment they remember from their youth as 'natural' and normal. Today that means our fishing policies and environmental activism is geared to restoring the oceans to the state we remember they were. That's considered the environmental baseline... This is a kind of collective social amnesia that allows over-exploitation to creep up and increase decade-by-decade.

Image source here.

The world's states: failed to stable

2011-06-23T07:25:00.006-07:00

The Failed States Index

A seventh annual collaboration between Foreign Policy and The Fund for Peace. Interactive maps here and here.

Most stable:

Finland 19.7
Norway 20.4
Sweden 22.8
Switzerland 23.2
Denmark 23.8
New Zealand 24.8
Ireland 25.3
Luxembourg 26.1
Austria 27.3
Canada 27.7
Australia 28.1
Netherlands 28.3

Summer Solstice

2011-06-21T06:46:00.002-07:00

and National Aboriginal Day

Nuxalx Sun Mask

Image source here.

To CHAT with dolphins

2011-06-20T13:51:00.004-07:00

Experts develop tools to talk to dolphins

The Independent: Off the Bahamas a dolphinologist and an artificial intelligence specialist thrown together on board The Stenella are this summer developing a piece of hi-tech gadgetry that will, if it works, fulfill the 1960's vision of talking to dolphins...

The Cetacean Hearing and Telemtry, or CHAT, interface... is an iPhone-sized device with two hydrophones attached and a unique one-handed keyboard... which, when combined, is designed to be worn around a diver's neck while swimming with wild dolphins. Inside this box is a processor that contains a complex algorithm or pattern detector that, it is hoped, will learn to identify the fundamental units of dolphin communication to enable humans to decode dolphin and then reply.

'CHAT is more more a potential interface than a translator as it is supplying us humans with an acoustic bridge to allow exchanges between two acoustic species,' says Dr Denise Herzing, of the Department of Biological and Psychological Sciences at Florida Atlantic University and founder of the Wild Dolphin Project... 'Most scientists create a system of communication and expect the dolphins -- especially those in captivity -- to learn it by using fish as a reward, but the dolphins are not empowered to use the system to request things from the humans.'...

With the summer a 'resounding success' so far for CHAT, Dr Herzing is confident that this only the start of a journey in two-way communication. After all, it 'would be nice if we'd had some practice with both etiquette and the ethics of interacting, as well as establishing some potential universal protocols.' Glimpses of which, she believes, she has seen already in the mimicry, imitation and synchrony dolphins have initiated to engage with humans.

Image source here.

Image for the day

2011-06-18T06:45:00.002-07:00

The Edge of the World

by Tang Yau Hoong, by way of the Behance Network

Canadian immigrants #1 in assimilation

2011-06-16T07:23:00.006-07:00

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research:

Comparing Immigrant Assimilation in North America and Europe

Jacob L. Vigdor, Adjunct Fellow: This report... introduces a series of comparisons among countries, using data from the United States and ten other countries drawn from the period 1999-2001. Although these international data are slightly dated, they are the most recent comparative data available, and few major changes are likely to have taken place since. The study's focus is the comparative progress individual ethnic groups, particularly immigrants from nations with predominantly Muslim populations, have made in the destination countries where they have chosen to reside...

Immigrants from Canada rank first in terms of overall assimilation, largely as a consequence of their high rate of naturalization...
Muslim immigrants, identified by data on religion in some nations and by country of birth in others, are most integrated in Canada...

Two facets of Canadian immigration policy may help explain the rapid integration of foreigners into Canadian society. First, the path to citizenship in Canada is short and easily traveled. Foreigners face a three-year residency requirement (it is five for legal permanent residents in the United States and as many as twelve in some European countries), and the nation has taken a liberal stance toward dual citizenship since 1977.

Second, Canadian immigration policy places a distinct emphasis on attracting skilled migrants. Thirty percent of foreign-born adults in Canada have college degrees, while the rate is 23 percent in the United States and 10 percent in Spain and Italy. Educational attainment is not a factor in the international version of the assimilation index, but the link between immigrants' level of education and their degree of assimilation is strong.

Full report, with graphs, is here.

Image source here.

Eating money

2011-06-14T07:05:00.005-07:00

The Midas Touch

Stomachs Too Big to Fail?

Lewis H. Lapham, at TomDispatch (from the summer 'Food' issue of Lapham's Quarterly):

The history of food reaches across a span of four thousand years, during most of which time the global economy is agrarian. Prior to the twentieth century, the changes were relatively slow in coming. Humankind is the tenant of nature, food the measure of both humanity's wealth and wellbeing. The earliest metal currencies (the shekel, the talent, and mina) represent weights and units of grain. Allowing for cultural difference and regional availability, the human family sits down to meals made of what it finds in the forest or grows in the field, the tables set from one generation to the next in accordance with the changing of the seasons and the benevolence of Ashnan or Ceres.

The contract between humankind and nature remains in force for as long as it is understood which one is the tenant and which the landlord. Over the course of millennia human beings discover numerous ways of upgrading their lot -- cooking with fire, domesticating animals and plants, bringing the tomato from Mexico to Spain, pepper from Sumatra to Salem, constructing the chopstick, the seine net, and the salad fork -- but the world's population stays more or less in balance with the world's agriculture because the landlord is careful about matching supply and demand...

The contract between landlord and tenant doesn't come up for review until the seventeenth-century plantings of capitalist finance give rise to the Industrial Revolution. Human beings come to imagine that they hold the deed to nature, persuaded that if soundly managed as a commercial real-estate venture, the property can be made to recruit larger armies, gather more votes, yield more cash. Add to the mechanical staples (John Deere's cast-steel plow, Cyrus McCormick's reaper) the twentieth century's flavorings of laboratory science (chemical pesticides, synthetic gene sequences), and food becomes an industrial product subsumed into the body of a corporation.

Image source here.

Tagish Lake space rock holds seeds of life

2011-06-12T07:57:00.006-07:00

B.C. meteorite suggests life on Earth came from space

Vancouver Sun: The space rock first made headlines in 2000, when it streaked across the northern skies and crashed to Earth along the B.C.-Yukon border... Now the rock is in the spotlight again, providing what scientists say are important new clues about the building blocks of life and how they formed in the early universe more than 4.6 billion years ago.

'What we are seeing are the ingredients of life,' said planetary geologist Christopher Herd at the University of Alberta. Herd and a team from NASA and several U.S. universities report in the journal Science that they have found several types of organic molecules of 'prebiotic importance' in fragments of the meteorite. And they say some of them were likely shaped by processes on their home asteroid billions of years ago.

This indicates that there may have been a 'Goldilocks window' when organic molecules formed on asteroids and may have seeded Earth and other newly formed planets with the chemical precursors for life to emerge...

The Tagish Lake meteorite is described as the most pristine ever recovered... Most meteorites that fall to Earth are made of nickel or iron. The Tagish Lake space rock is the much rarer carbonaceous chondite variety... The analysis turned up a dozen different amino acids, which are used to build proteins and other molecules common in cell walls... One also appears to contain evidence of amino acid synthesis on the asteroid. Herd said the best explanation he and his colleagues can come up with is that organic material was altered in parts of the asteroid by percolating water.

Image source here.

Ice melt in the northern Arctic islands

2011-06-10T07:31:00.008-07:00

Ice Loss in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Earth Observatory: The maps above show ice loss from surface melting for the northern portion of the archipelago from 2004-2006 (left) and 2007-2009 (right). Blue indicates ice gain, and red indicates ice loss... The Canadian Arctic Archipelago generally receives little precipitation, and the amount of snowfall changes little from year to year. But the rate of snow and ice melting varies considerably, so changes in ice mass come largely from changes in summertime melt. During the 2004 to 2009 study period, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago experienced four of its five warmest years since 1960.

'Huge swaths' of Canada inaccessible by 2050

2011-06-08T07:17:00.007-07:00

Canada has 'more to lose that it realizes': global warming report on Arctic

Postmedia News: 'Canada is going to be feeling the harsh edge of the sword more strongly than other Arctic states,' says Scott Stephenson, lead author of the study that forecasts that the Northwest Passage will be the last Arctic shipping route to become ice free. It also predicts huge swaths of Canada's landscape will become inaccessible by road by mid-century.

The implications could be 'profoundly negative' for remote communities and mining, energy and timber operations that now depend on winter ice roads, says the study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles... published in the journal Nature Climate Change... 'This study would suggest that Canada has more to lose than it realizes,' [said] senior author Laurence Smith, a UCLA climate researcher...

Remote communities that rely on winter roads will have to rely more on air cargo, which will 'dramatically' increase the costs of food and supplies... The 400,000 square kilometres that Canada is projected to lose access to is a huge area 'with all kinds of untapped potential,' says Smith. While building permanent roads might be an option in some areas, the costs will be high... Temperatures are expected to keep climbing well beyond 2050, making more of Canada's soggy northern landscapes inaccessible by land vehicles.

Smith says 'the other surprise for Canada is that the Northwest Passage... is one of the coldest parts of the Arctic, where water circulation is not as 'dynamic' as other areas... 'It'll be one of the last places to open up,' says Smith. 'It will be easier to go over the North Pole than throug the Northwest Passage.' As for the projected loss of land access, Smith says 'there's not much you can do other than to get the world and yourselves to reduce carbon emissions.'

Image source here.

The second mowing

2011-06-07T08:38:00.004-07:00

Rachel Cusk, 'Aftermath' in Granta 115: The F Word:

Our history teacher, Mrs Lewis... gave great consideration to Offa of Mercia, in whose vision of a unified England the first thrust of male ambition can be detected. and whose massive earthwork, Offa's Dyke, still stands as a reminder that division is also an aspect of unification, that one way of defining what you are is to define what you are not. And indeed historians have never been able to agree on the question of whether the dyke was built to repel the Welsh or merely to mark the boundary. Mrs Lewis took an ambivalent attitude to Offa's power: this was the road to civilization, sure enough, but its cost was a loss of diversity, of the quiet kind of flourishing that goes on where things are not being built and goals driven towards...

For in a way, the Dark Ages were themselves a version of 'the new reality.' the broken pieces of the biggest plate of all, the Roman Empire. Some called it darkness, the aftermath of that megalomaniacal all-conquering unity, but not Mrs Lewis. She liked it, liked the untenanted wastes, liked the monasteries where creativity was quietly nurtured, liked the mystics and the visionaries, the early religious writings, liked the women who accrued stature in these formless inchoate centuries, liked the grass roots -- the personal level on which issues of justice and belief had now to be resolved, in the absence of that great administrative civilization.

The point was that this darkness -- call it what you will -- this darkness and disorganization were not mere negation, mere absence. They were both aftermath and prelude. The etymology of the word 'aftermath' is 'second mowing': a second crop of grass that is sown and reaped after the harvest is in. Civilization, order, meaning, belief: these were not sunlit peaks to be reached by a steady climb. They were built and then they fell, were built and fell again or were destroyed. The darkness, the disorganization that succeeded them had their own existence, their own integrity; were betrothed to civilization, as sleep is betrothed to activity. In the life of compartments lies the possibility of unity, just as unity contains the prospect of atomization. Better, in Mrs Lewis's view, to live the compartmentalized, disorganized life and feel the dark stirrings of creativity than to dwell in civilized unity, racked by the impulse to destroy.

Image source here.

OECD: Canadians have 'better life'

2011-06-05T08:50:00.005-07:00

Canadians trail only Aussies in quality of life: Study

Postmedia News: Canadians have a 'better life' than anyone in the western world except -- by a narrow margin -- Australians... The Better Life Initiative survey marked a major attempt by the Paris-based OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development], an economic and social policy think-tank funded by its members, to provide a broader measure of a country's success than gross domestic product...

The index compares the 34 countries in 11 areas -- housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life balance. Canada ranked first in terms of access to affordable housing, second on 'life satisfaction,' and third on three categories -- safety, health and education.

Canada's worst score was in the area of governance, where it was near the middle of the pack. While 67 per cent of Canadians trust their political institutions, well above the OECD average of 56 per cent, voter turnout in national elections was around 60 per cent -- well below the 72 per cent average. The report, in a commentary on government transparency, noted that Canadians can't use the Internet or telephone to get information under Canada's access-to-information laws. 'In addition, there are no provisions for anonymity or protection from retaliation.'

In its breakout analysis for Canada, the OECD tossed in a poll result from 2008 that wasn't considered in Canada's overall ranking but may, according to an official, help explain why many in the country have 'better lives.' Roughly two-thirds of Canadians, or 66 per cent, 'reported having helped a stranger in the last month, the highest figure in the OECD' and well above the average of 46 per cent.

Image source here.

Watch the Earth move

2011-06-03T07:35:00.005-07:00

VIDEO: Earth Rotating Under Very Large Telescopes

NASA: Most time lapse videos of the night sky show the stars and sky moving above a steady Earth. Here, however, the frames have been digitally rotated so that it is the stars that stay (approximately) steady, and the Earth that moves beneath them. The video shows the actual rotation of the Earth, called diurnal motion, in a clear and moving way, as if the camera were floating free in space.

The telescopes featured in the video are the Very Large Telescopes (VLT) in Chile, a group of four of the largest optical telescopes deployed anywhere in the world. A discerning observer... may also note the use of laser guide stars, zodiacal light, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and fast-moving, sunlight-reflecting, Earth-orbiting satellites. The original video, on which the above sequences are based, can be found here.

Global Peace Index 2011: Canada #8

2011-06-01T07:23:00.015-07:00

Global Peace Index

Institute for Economics and Peace:

Canada jumped six places in this year's rankings whereas the US's overall score remained unchanged although its ranking improved from 85th to 82nd. Table of 23 indicators here.

Complete 2011 results, interactive map, video and reports

1. Iceland
2. New Zealand
3. Japan
4. Denmark
5. Czech Republic
6. Austria
7. Finland
8. Canada
9. Norway
10. Slovenia

Global warming: 'This is the worst news'

2011-05-31T07:25:00.004-07:00

Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink

Record rise, despite recession, means 2C target almost out of reach

The Guardian: Greenhouse emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency.

The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees celsius -- which scientists say is the threshold for potentially 'dangerous climate change' -- is likely to be just 'a nice Utopia,' according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA... 'I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions. It is becoming extremely challenging to stay below 2 degrees. The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say.'

Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire... 'According to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's] projections, such a path... would mean around a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperatures of more than 4C by 2100,' he said. 'Such warming would disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict.'...

John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, said time was running out. 'This news should shock the world. Yet even now politicians in each of the great powers are eyeing up extraordinary and risky ways to extract the world's last remaining reserves of fossil fuels -- even from under the melting ice of the Arctic. You don't put out a fire with gasoline. It will not be up to us to stop them.'

Image source here.

The Labyrinth at Chartres

2011-05-29T07:15:00.014-07:00

Chartres Cathedral

World War II:

All the glass from the cathedral was removed just before the Germans invaded France in 1939, and it was cleaned after the War and releaded before replacing. While the city suffered heavy damage by bombing in the course of World War II, the cathedral was spared by an American Army officer who challenged the order to destroy it.

Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith, Jr. questioned the strategy of destroying the cathedral and volunteered to go behind enemy lines to find out whether the German Army was occupying the cathedral and using it as an observation post. With a single enlisted soldier to assist, Col. Griffith proceeded to the cathedral and confirmed the Germans were not using it. After he returned from his reconnaissance, he reported that the cathedral was clear of enemy troops. The order to destroy the cathedral was withdrawn, and the Allies later liberated the area. Col Griffith was killed in action on August 16, 1944 in the town of Leves, near Chartres.

Image sources here, here, and here.

Graph of the day: Sea ice melt

2011-05-27T07:16:00.004-07:00

PIOMAS (Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System) April 2011

Click here to enlarge.

Image source here.

Report: higher sea level rise, more quickly

2011-05-25T18:26:00.006-07:00

Arctic Warming May Raise Global Sea Levels 1.6 metres

Reuters: Quickening climate change in the Arctic including a thaw of Greenland's ice could raise world sea levels by up to 1.6 metres by 2100... Such a rise -- above most past scientific estimates -- would add to threats to coasts from Bangladesh to Florida, low-lying Pacific islands and cities from London to Shanghai...

'The past six years (until 2010) have been the warmest period ever recorded in the Arctic,' according to the Oslo-based Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), which is backed by the eight-nation Arctic Council... The rises were projected from 1990 levels... Warming in the Arctic is happening at about twice the world average...

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its last major report in 2007 that world sea levels were likely to rise between 18 and 59 cm by 2100. Those numbers did not include a possible acceleration of a thaw in polar regions.

'It is worrying that the most recent science points to much higher sea level rise than we have been expecting until now.' European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told Reuters. 'The study is yet another reminder of how pressing it has become to tackle climate change, although this urgency is not always evident, neither in the public debate nor from the pace of the international negotiations.'

Image source here.

Dylan: 70 on 70

2011-05-24T07:05:00.005-07:00

70 reasons why Bob Dylan is the most important figure in pop-culture history

The Independent: Bob Dylan is 70 today. Andy Gill gives that many reasons why he is a pop-culture colossus

Bob Dylan in 1963. Image source here.

Beavers mitigate climate change

2011-05-23T08:15:00.004-07:00

The beaver's new brand: eco-saviour

Erin Aderssen, Globe and Mail: Our bucktoothed icon is hard-working and monogamous, steadfast and stable in the Canuck way... An increasingly vocal group of scientists and conservationists believes the dam-bulding rodent is an overlooked tool to mitigate climate change -- a natural remedy for our sick rivers and ravaged wildlife...

It's the beaver's avid dam-building that makes it a star in conservationists. In 2002, when University of Alberta biologist Glynnis Hood was in the middle of getting her PhD, the Prairies experienced the worst drought on record. She watched the wetland dry up... But where beaver dams existed, ponds remained. Poring over 54 years of historic aerial photos, records of beaver populations and climate data, she discovered that the ponds with active beaver lodges had nine times more water during droughts... In dry summers, the beavers kept water from trickling out and built channels to guide the water in; they had more impact than any rainfall... A pilot project found that beaver dams stored five to 10 times more groundwater reserves than rivers without dams, and slowed the spring runoff.

When beaver dams were added to wetland restoration efforts, the population of frogs, toads and songbirds rebounded. Native foliage returned. The dams created waterholes for moose and other animals... They slowed down water flow in rivers and shored up banks, while preventing sediment and pollutants from being carried downstream... Beaver ponds appear to be capturing the pollutants and breaking them down with bacteria...

The presence of beavers improves endangered fish stocks. Beaver ponds are deeper, which means that they thaw earlier and freeze later, giving juvenile salmon more time to grow. The bark and branches that beavers drag into the water add nutrients and draw insects, which the young salmon eat... Even in cases where beaver dams have been found to impede adult salmon... no research has suggested that it was enough to affect river-wide populations... 'It's about $10,000 a hectare to replace wetlands, and you've got something to do it for free,' Dr. Hood says.

Image source here.

'How your heart pounds inside me'

2011-05-21T12:56:00.004-07:00

Could Have

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck -- there was a forest.
You were in luck -- there were no trees.
You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant...

So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

-- Wislawa Szymborska, from the Polish

Marshall Islands: cosmos change

2011-05-19T07:48:00.006-07:00

The change of Cosmos

Skye Hohmann, New Internationalist: Climate change can strip away an atoll's natural physical defences... Flying in to Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, this is heart-wrenchingly obvious... Elevations average mere metres above the sea level. In December 2008, and again in February this year, abnormally high tides inundated the capital, temporarily flooding houses and roads and raising health concerns as waves washed over cemeteries and mixed raw sewage into the standing water...

The effects of rising sea levels are evident in coastline erosion, where waves have undercut coconut palms, felling the trees into the deceptively quiet turquoise waters of the lagoons. Changing weather patterns are beginning to erode the traditional knowledge so long essential for life on these fragile islands...

The culture on these islands is deeply interconnected with the land... Steps are being taken to enable inhabitants to remain on their traditional lands for as long as possible... It is perhaps for this reason that the Marshall Islands have no official resettlement plans...

Climate change has strengthened local distrust of modern, Western culture. [Peter] Rudiak-Gould says that the idea dovetails with local notions of cultural decline. 'When the term "climate change" was translated into Marshallese, they used a word for "climate" that means cosmos -- environment in the widest possible sense. So when scientists say that the climate is changing, what people are actually hearing is that scientists say that the cosmos is changing, and there's all sorts of evidence of that, not just environmental change, but social and cultural change...

There is little that Marshall Islanders can do to stem the rising tides. But reinvigorating traditional subsistence lifestyles means that islanders can control at least one aspect of their changing cosmos. While climate change may be eroding the islands, it's galvanizing Marshallese culture; this culture is greatly needed in such an uncertain time in this low-lying nation.

Image source here.

Immigrants make Canada safer

2011-05-17T11:48:00.004-07:00

Arrival of the Fittest

Canada's crime rate is dropping as immigration increases. Is there a connection?

Rachel Giese, The Walrus: In times of social upheaval and economic hardship, immigrants are a convenient scapegoat, accused of bringing with them an element of deviance and criminality... What few have bothered to ask is whether there's any merit to this belief... In Canada, an. overall drop in crime has paralleled the upsurge in non-European immigration since Pierre Trudeau championed multiculturalism in the 1970s... Could it be that immigrants are making us all safer?..

A University of Toronto study initiated more than thirty years ago provides some of the most convincing evidence to support the theory that immigration equals less crime... Immigrant kids were less likely than their peers to engage in delinquent behaviour... The disinclination to commit crime extended across all nationalities... The newer the immigrant, the better behaved he or she was...

Statistics Canada has now released findings from spatial analysis of crime data in Canadian cities that suggest the percentage of recent immigrants in various regions of Toronto and Montreal is inversely proportional to all types of violent crime... 'It acts as a protective factor'...

What ultimately set the first generation kids apart were three important protective factors: strong family bonds, commitment to education, and and aversion to risk. The traits required for a person to leave behind all that's familiar and take a chance on making it in a new country -- ambition, resilience, perseverance, imagination, optimism -- are conducive to the rearing of successful children; those children, in turn naturally feel an obligation to their self-sacrificing parents...

As each generation regresses to the [Canadian] mean, the mean itself has shifted and improved, thanks, it appears, to immigration making the country safer overall. Living in Canada may change immigrants, but not before they change Canada for the better.

Image source here.

'Eye of God'

2011-05-15T08:52:00.005-07:00

The Cosmos in close up

Author Giles Sparrow's Cosmos Close-up is a collection of photographs of the nearest vision of the universemodern technology can give us

Helix Nebula

At a distance of around 700 light years from Earth, the Helix Nebula is one of the closest planetaries... With an apparent size in the sky close to that of the Full Moon, it is also extremely large with a diameter of about five light years. Though difficult to observe with small telescopes because the light is 'smeared' across a large area, Hubble images have made it famous and given rise to the popular nickname 'Eye of God.'

Image source here.

Canadians most tolerant

2011-05-13T10:13:00.006-07:00

Canadians tolerant, hard-working -- but worry a lot, says international think tank.

At 84% on average, Canadians report the highest community tolerance of minority groups -- ethnic minorities, migrants, and gays and lesbians -- in the OECD, where the average is 61%.

Postmedia News: Canadians are hard-working, great readers, the most tolerant people in the developed world, and enjoy more 'positive experiences' than everyone but Icelanders, according to a new analysis of social trends.

But Canadians have a below-average participation rate in elections, don't produce many babies and, in one apparently contradictory finding, are more likely to report 'negative experiences,' according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [in] its Society at a Glance report, done every two years...

'Canadians have the second highest rate of positive experiences in the OECD after Iceland -- feeling well-rested, being treated with respect, smiling, doing something interesting and experiencing enjoyment,' the OECD said... At the same time, Canadians have (above-average) negative experiences -- pain, worry, sadness, stress and depression...

'Canada had the sixth-highest proportion of foreign-born people in its population, at roughly one in five... Canadian 15-year olds rank third in reading skills, behind only Korea and Finland.'

Key Findings: Canada (.pdf)

Image source here.

Interactive sky

2011-05-11T17:42:00.001-07:00

Phototopic Sky Survey

A 360-degree interactive map of the night sky, including constellations, bright stars, and objects. Click the 'i' button for constellations.

Ants form raft to survive floods

2011-05-09T09:14:00.008-07:00

The incredible floating fire ant

The Washington Post: When swept up by a flood, a colony of the critters -- thousands of them -- will save themselves by joining forces and forming a raft. They pile together and lock arms, legs and jaws. So bound, an ant raft can survive for months, sailing off to new lands.

Engineers studying animal oddities now report that together, the ants aren't just stronger. They're more buoyant. Airtight, even... 'Water does not penetrate the raft,' said Nathan Mlot, a mechanical engineer at Georgia Institute of Technology and lead author of the ant-raft report published in Proceedings of the National Academies. Even the bottom layer of ants stays dry... The uneven, hairy surface of the ant's skin explains this phenomenon. Bumpy, hirsute, or otherwise rough surfaces repel water... Duck feathers also repel water because of their tiny bumps...

Mlot and his colleagues gathered fire ants from the wilderness of Atlanta. Back in the lab, Mlot deposited colonies of 500 to 8,000 ants in large beakers. When gently swirled, each colony spontaneously formed a sphere. Mlot dropped these spheres into water... The ants on top of the ball crawled down to the water and grabbed onto other water-level compatriots. The next layer of top ants then crawled to the edge, and so on. In about a minute-and-a-half, each ant sphere flattened into a dome, then flattened further into a pancake shape -- a raft... This togetherness pushes each ant's individual air bubble against the next ant's bubble. The bubbles join, protecting the whole raft.

BBC VIDEO: Ants create a liferaft in the Amazon jungle

Image source here.

Found: Tom Thompson's 'Early Snow'

2011-05-07T07:32:00.005-07:00

Long lost Tom Thompson painting reappears after 53 years

Lost Tom Thompson sketch is being repatriated after spending five decades in the U.S.

Vancouver Sun: 'Early Snow': No one is quite sure when it was painted -- it could be anywhere between 1913 and '17. But there's no question it is one of the small number of paintings done by Thompson...' I am absolutely certain this is a Tom Thompson sketch, A.Y. Jackson' wrote on the back. A.Y. Jackson, of course, was one of the painters in the Group of Seven, and a close friend of Thompson's until Thompson's untimely death in 1917...

The Thompson painting... has been hanging in 'a little bungalow in Pittsburgh for several decades. 'It was a nice bungalow,' laughs Linda Rodeck of Sotheby's. 'It wasn't just anywhere... And the owner knew exactly what she had.'

Image source here.

Arctic sea ice second lowest on record

2011-05-05T17:09:00.005-07:00

Arctic Sea Ice

Earth Observatory: In March 2011, after a winter of growth, sea ice extent in the Arctic was the second lowest for the month of March since satellite records were first kept in 1979... Including 2011, the March trend in sea ice extent has been decreasing at a rate of 2.7 percent per decade. Visit World of Change Arctic Sea Ice to see the trend since 1999.

Taking a break

2011-05-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

Back after awhile.

Do it wisely, do it with care. Vote!

2011-05-01T17:43:00.007-07:00

Image source here.

Lá Bealtaine shona!

2011-05-01T06:47:00.005-07:00

Creekside Park, Vancouver

Will Harper provoke constitutional crisis?

2011-04-30T09:41:00.004-07:00

Harper refuses to say if he would accept governor general's decision on coalition (includes VIDEO)

Canada.com: Richmond Hill, Ont: Conservative leader Stephen Harper refused Saturday to say if he would accept a decision by the governor general to hand power to one of the opposition parties after Monday's election... After five weeks during which Harper has, on a daily basis, said that the opposition parties will form a coalition government if he doesn't win a majority, Harper would not say if he would publicly accept or oppose a decision by Gov.-Gen David Johnston to make that happen.

Under constitutional tradition, say experts, if Harper is defeated in the House of Commons by the opposition parties, it will then be up to Johnston to decide if he wants to ask one of the opposition leaders if they have the 'confidence' of the House and form a government. Only upon that invitation by the governor general would a new government be formed -- meaning it is Johnston, not Harper, who has the constitutional power...

At a campaign event Saturday... Harper was asked a direct question. 'Will you or will you not accept a decision by the governor general to call on the second party to form a government if you again lose the confidence of the House?'... Despite being asked repeatedly by a reporter to answer the question, Harper declined... His refusal to answer... raises fundamental questions about whether Harper will provoke a constitutional crisis in the wake of an election...

When a CBC TV reporter continued to press for an answer Saturday, Harper shot back, 'I've given you my answer.' Someone in the crowd shouted out 'Shut down the CBC!' prompting cheers from Harper's supporters.

Constitutional expert 'full of fear' of Harper majority

2011-04-29T08:36:00.010-07:00

VIDEO: Leading constitutional expert Peter Russell on Speak Up/Parler Fort. Watch it here.

"I've never been more worried in my entire lifetime about the possible outcome of an election. I really fear that if the Harper Conservatives were to win a majority in the the of House of Commons it would be an indication that parliamentary crime pays... I really tremble. I'm just full of fear... It's a scary election... and an important one for Canadians. Whether we really treasure the parliamentary democracy we've enjoyed... for over a century and a half. I hope all Canadians will really worry and think about it and try to prevent a majority from killing."

A must read -- and pass it on

2011-04-27T06:25:00.001-07:00

The daring Mr. Harper

Aaron Wherry, Maclean's: He is not creating alternate realities, he is simply daring enough to breeze past any assertion of reality which does not serve his purposes. He is looking you in the eye, shrugging and moving on. He is entirely undaunted by his own record of words and actions... What he has pitched throughout this campaign is a series of bold assertions -- or at least a series of assertions that must seem bold to anyone stubborn enough to hang on to recorded history.

Read the whole thing here.

Image for the day

2011-04-26T08:08:00.003-07:00

Northern gannet colony, Gaspé Peninsula, Québec

Image source here.

Abstraction of Destruction

2011-04-25T07:21:00.006-07:00

Facial Tissues, September 2005, Ontario

The Guardian: Paper pulp waste, resulting from facial tissue manufacture. At this factory, the pulp for the most popular facial tissue is produced. The wood fibre is obtained from the Kenogami national forest in Ontario, where the government subsidizes the cutting of old growth forest. The forest, once home for a multitude of species, is an immensely diverse and complex ecosystem and habitat, and will be replaced by a monoculture of factory farmed trees which will be cut again. This aeration pond is part of the effluent treatment system. The primary task of the treatment is to remove organics (wood fibre) from the water before it is returned to its source (typically a river). These ponds are filled with a mixture of micro-organisms that break down the organic material. The aeration is to break up particles in the effluent and to provide oxygen to the microbes.

From Abstraction of Destruction, J. Henry Fair's images of environmental degradation, most of them taken out of planes at 1,000 feet. The pictures appear in his recent book, The Day After Tomorrow: Images of Our Earth in Crisis.

God's wife Asherah: 'mighty and nurturing'

2011-04-24T06:41:00.006-07:00

God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible -- Almost

Discovery.com: God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar. In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopolou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter...

Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to Stavrakopolou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century BC inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Arjud. "The inscription is a petition for a blessing,... 'a blessing from Yahweh and his Asherah.'" Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found...

Also significant, Stavrakopoulou believes, "Is the Bible's admission that the goddess Asherah was worshiped in Yahweh's Temple in Jerusalem. In the Book of Kings, we're told that a statue of Asherah was housed in the temple and that female temple personnel wove ritual textiles for her."

J. Edward Wright, president of both the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, [agrees]: Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors... Asherah -- known across the ancient Near East by various other names, such as Astarte and Istar -- was "an important deity, one who was both mighty and nurturing."

"Many English translations prefer to translate 'Asherah' as 'Sacred Tree,'" Wright said. "This seems to be in part driven by a modern desire, clearly inspired by the Biblical narratives, to hide Asherah behind a veil once again."... Aaron Brody, director of the Bade Museum and an associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion, said... Asherah as a tree symbol was even said to have been "chopped down and burned outside the Temple in acts of certain rulers who were trying to 'purify' the cult, and focus on the worship of a single male god, Yahweh."

The ancient Israelites were polytheists, Brody [said] "with only a small minority worshiping Yahweh alone before the historic events of 586 BC." In that year, an exile community within Judea was exiled to Babylon and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. this, Brody said, led to "a more universal vision of strict monotheism: one god not only for Judah, but for all of the nations."

Wikipedia: Asherah in Israel and Judah

Image source here.

Trees reflected

2011-04-23T08:09:00.005-07:00

Ingrid Nelson, Pavement Trees: Last sumer I started shooting concrete and parking lots and dividing lines, fading paint and patterns... With all the rain this winter, my eye was drawn into the glistening cement and of course... puddles.

Our only home: Earth Day 2011

2011-04-22T06:46:00.005-07:00

Image source here.

Immigration experts warn against HarperCons

2011-04-21T07:05:00.003-07:00

Don't vote Conservative, newcomers urged

Toronto Star: In an unusual move, a group of Canadian lawyers and legal academics are urging voters not to support the Conservative Party in the May 2 election. "The Conservative Party has been telling visible minority immigrant communities, which it calls the 'ethnic vote,' that it is improving the immigration system," said the group in a statement released [April 20]. "A review of their record shows the contrary." The group, made up of leading immigration lawyers and professors across Canada, said the Conservative Party has misled the public, especially immigrant voters, by making twisted statements about the state of Canada's immigration and refugee system, in order to win newcomer votes.

Why 'ethnic' communities should not support Stephen Harper's Conservatives

From the statement:

Despite the media hype and government propaganda, Canadian immigration experts, both academics and lawyers, do not think that the Conservative government is doing immigrant communities any favours.

Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney and the Conservatives have target the so-calle 'ethnic vote,' hoping to convince immigrant communities that the Conservatives have made things better fot their communities and that these communities should support them. However, a review of the facts shows that this government's policies have not been friendly to immigrant communities. Moreover, the Conservative government has made a habit of using immigration issues to stir up anti-immigrant sentiments amongst other Canadians.

[See list of specific charges here.]

If you believe in the concept of family reunification, that is the ability of immigrants and Canadians to bring their parents, grandparents, children and spouses to Canada; if you believe in a fair and timely skilled worker program that recruits the best and the brightest from around the world to join our midst; if you believe in justice for refugees without automatic imprisonment; if you believe in spousal sponsorship processing that does not lead to the potential for greater spousal abuse and neglect, then you must not support the Conservative Party in the upcoming Federal Election on May 2nd.

Canada #2 'happiest country'

2011-04-20T08:54:00.008-07:00

Survey says: Canada is second happiest country in the world

National Post: According to a new global survey from Gallup, 69% of Canadians rated their lives as 'thriving' in 2010 -- putting the country in a tie with Sweden for second place in the rankings. The top spot belongs to Denmark, where 72% of residents are feeling pretty great about life...

Respondents had three options to choose from: 'thriving' -- where they classified their lives as 'a 7 or higher and their lives in 5 years an 8 or higher,' 'struggling,' or 'suffering.' Gallup's method is based on the Cantril Scale, which encourages participants to imagine a ladder with 10 steps (to signify a scale of 10). The top of the ladder is the best life imaginable, and as you can expect, 0 is the worst.

The top ten countries:
1. Denmark: 72%
2. Canada: 69%
2. Sweden: 69%
4. Australia: 66%
5. Finland: 64%
5. Venezuela: 64%
7. Israel: 63%
7. New Zealand: 63%
9. Netherlands: 62%
9. Ireland: 62%

The bottom 10 countries:
1. Chad: 1%
2. Central African Republic: 2%
3. Haiti: 2%
4. Burkina Faso: 3%
5. Cambodia: 3%
6. Niger: 3%
7. Tajikistan: 3%
8. Tanzania: 4%
9. Mali: 4%
10. Comoros: 4%

Image: Vancouver (Streeter Lecka/Getty Images); source here.

UBC lipdub video goes viral

2011-04-19T09:28:00.004-07:00

Stunning UBC student lipdub

More than 1,000 students appear in the one-long-shot wonder

Vancouver Sun: A UBC lipdub video, filmed in one long shot on the school campus March 26, has gone viral on YouTube. The filmmakers say proceeds from the YouTube views will be donated to charity. Be prepared to be amazed as scores of students lip synch to Pink's 'Raise Your Glass' and Marianas Trench 'Celebrity Status.' Watch the video on YouTube, at the official UBC LipDub website or in the online Vancouver Sun article (along with other student lipdubs) here.

Ice retreat, permafrost melt eroding coastline

2011-04-18T08:05:00.008-07:00

Study finds Canada's Arctic coastline eroding faster than anywhere else

Canadian Press: Scientists suspect that gradual washing-away along thousands of kilometres of gravelly northern shoreline is speeding up. And that steady erosion is already having profound effects on northerners, the majority of whom live along the coast.

'Every single element of the North is going to be affected, right from the engineering side to how the Inuit interact with their environment,' said Wayne Pollard, a McGill University geomorphologist who contributed to the massive, 10-country study...

Much of Canada's northern coast is composed of a kind of frozen goo -- an unconsolidated pile of rubble and mud cemented into place by permafrost. It has always been subject to erosion from wind and waves. The study concludes the vast Beaufort Sea coastline of the western Arctic is retreating faster than any other northern coastline. On average, the sea washes away a metre of it every year. In some places, the erosion reaches eight metres a year...

The study point out that the sea ice is crucial to protecting the shore. And sea ice, in the face of climate change, is undergoing its own retreat. This year's sea ice maximum was tied for the lowest on record... Permafrost is also becoming less stable as temperatures in the North increase...

The changes are already affecting traditional practices such as hunting seals, polar bears and beluga whales. People so attuned to their local environment that they can navigate in fog by the currents affecting their boats can no longer count on the old assumptions... Pollard said the study underlines how interconnected the shoreline is with both the human and natural world.

Image source here.

Citizenship guide: Canada as 'bellicose nation'

2011-04-17T14:12:00.007-07:00

Canada for Spartans

In the government guidebook Discover Canada, required reading for people seeking to become Canadian citizens, the word 'war' appears thirty-five times and Ontario and Quebec become a single region

Stephen Henighan, in Geist (Spring 2011): If I did not recognize the land described in Discover Canada, that was the volume's intention: to drive a wedge between old Canadians and new Canadians... between the liberal, statist, internationalist culture of the past and what the authors hope will be the conservative, militaristic culture of the future...

Medicare... is bypassed in a fleeting reference to the Canada Health Act. Tommy Douglas may have been voted 'the Greatest Canadian' in 2004, but his name does not appear here. The CBC, government aid agencies,... the right to unionize, gay and lesbian rights -- all vanish... Peacekeeping receives one grudging mention... Canada is a bellicose nation, adamant about its 'Christian civilizations' and fixated on 'the rule of law.'...

The only two waves of political refugees identified by the guide are Hungarians who 'escaped Soviet tyranny' in 1956 and Vietnamese who 'fled from Communism' after 1975... [not] military governments in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, or right-wing death squads in El Salvator or Guatemala... [or] men who came to Canada from the United States as refugees from the Vietnam War, and women who accompanied them. The dignity of General Pinochet takes precedence over an accurate account of the origins of Canada's population...

The bottom of the opening two-page spread on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship is emblazoned with photos of happy soldiers. Would-be citizens must study the names of all Canadians who have won the Victoria Cross... [Description of] The two Riel rebellions tilts the emphasis toward the battlefield... Tory gun-lovers can thrill to a photograph of a gun-wielding hunter (who, unassailably, is Inuit)...

The most enduring lesson... citizenship applicants can learn from this volume is that Canada is a country whose government misrepresents its past in order to deprive them of the information they need to engage in debate about its future.

Image from Discover Canada, page 9.

Virtual Choir: 'Sleep'

2011-04-16T14:15:00.005-07:00

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 2.0, 'Sleep'

The virtual choir combines more than 2000 individual YouTube videos of singers in nearly 60 countries singing parts to one song: 'Sleep' by Eric Whitacre, conducting. Listen to it here.

From space: How 'green' is the Earth?

2011-04-14T08:16:00.007-07:00

Thirteen Years of Greening from SeaWiFS

To enlarge image, go here.

Earth Observatory: From 1998 to 2010, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor, or SeaWiFS, made a simple but elegant measurement: how 'green' is the Earth. That is, how much chlorophyll -- the pigment that helps turn sunlight into organic energy for plants -- is present in the seas and on land. Those measurements offered a window into the planet's ability to support life. The long, well-calibrated data record also gives scientists one of the best benchmarks to study the planet's biological response to a changing environment.

The image above shows SeaWiFS data as a global average over the entire 13-year record. For the oceans, the colors represent the concentration of chlorophyll and indicate where phytoplankton most often bloomed since 1998. On the land, data are depicted as a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which shows the density of green vegetation. An NDVI of zero means no green plants and a high value (0.8 of 0.9) is a thick canopy of green leaves.

Border deal kept secret while planning PR

2011-04-13T08:58:00.006-07:00

Federal documents contradict Harper's office on perimeter security talks

The Canadian Press: Months before the Conservative government dismissed talk of a perimeter security accord with the United States as hearsay, senior officials were quietly discussing a draft of the border agreement. Documents obtained by The Canadian Press show federal deputy ministers considered a version of the accord early last September.

The planned perimeter agreement is intended to expand joint operations on security, creating a sort of continental fortress while allowing for smoother flow of goods, people and services across the 49th parallel...

Despite the advanced efforts, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper waved off questions about an accord in December when word began to leak out. 'No such announcement is planned. We don't comment on hearsay or speculation.' Less than two months later, Harper and U.S. President Barak Obama signed an agreement that could ultimately lead to a formal North American security perimeter. Critics say the federal government is risking sovereignty over key policies such as immigration as well as control of personal information about Canadians...

The newly released documents say the deputy ministers and security officials who met Nov. 22 were to be provided with a copy of the federal 'communications strategy' for the declaration, details of which are blacked out. In February, however the Toronto Star reported on a leaked copy of the strategy, saying the government purposely kept negotiations on the border deal secret while it planned ways to swing public opinion in favour of the deal. The newspaper said the 14-page public relations document suggested keeping a 'low public profile' in the months leading up to the announcement.

Image source here.

Tsunami debris on the way

2011-04-12T15:29:00.006-07:00

Where Will the Debris from Japan's Tsunami Drift?

IPRC: The powerful tsunami triggered by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake destroyed coastal towns near Sendai in Japan, washing such things as houses and cars into the ocean. Projections of where this debris might head have been made by Nikolai Maximento and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

For animated version, go here.

Failed HIV project only 'giant photo-op' for Harper

2011-04-11T06:12:00.007-07:00

HIV project Harper signed with Bill Gates fizzled soon after

The Toronto Star: A $139-million project to fight HIV-AIDS, launched by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a glitzy photo-op with Microsoft's Bill Gates, began to flounder within months, says an internal report... 'Very significant delays... have put into question the extent to which the initiative can achieve the expected results within the remaining time frame,' says the report, completed last August for the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The $62,000 study, commissioned from Goss Gilroy Inc. consultants, examined the effectiveness of the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative, created with great fanfare four years ago. A copy of the document was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, after a five-month delay.

The Prime Minister won headlines across Canada when he announced the project on February 20, 2007, smiling Bill Gates at his side.. But the report says the grand plans quickly became entangled in a cat's cradle of red tape... The most high-profile was a decision not to proceed with the pilot facility to produce HIV vaccine in Canada...

Stakeholder support for the facility seriously eroded in September 2007 when an international trial of a promising HIV vaccine was cancelled.. The vaccine was found to be ineffective. Program officials and others told Goss Gilroy that the unexpected cancellation immediately raised red flags about the proposed Canadian facility -- but few had the appetite to question in so soon after Harper's photo-op...

'A great deal of time, effort and money were wasted on a giant photo-op for the prime minister, says Terry Duguid, who headed a Winnipeg-based consortium that spent $750,000 applying to operate the pilot facility. 'It was just incompetence of the highest order... I think Canada's reputation has taken a big hit.'

Image source here.

Inequality: 'power of entrenched interests'

2011-04-10T09:29:00.008-07:00

What Causes Social Inequality?

From a review by Lars Osberg, in

The Literary Review of Canada:

In Power and Inequality: A Comparative Introduction, Gregg Olsen examines three 'Nordic' countries -- Finland, Norway and Sweden -- and three 'Anglo' countries -- Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States -- through the lens of social inequality... As well as inequalities of income and wealth, there are those of access to education, health care and housing...

The Nordic countries have substantially less social inequality than the Anglo countries:... 'social inequality is created, reproduced, institutionalized, legitimated and perpetuated by the people who hold the most resources in society.'... The power of the entrenched interests of the status quo has always been partly based on a combination of fatalism and collective failure of popular imagination. When most people really cannot conceive of a different organization of society, the default setting is that social inequality continues in the future as it has been in the past...

There have always been more or less sophisticated rationalizations -- along the TINA (There Is No Alternative) line -- for the perspective that 'things must be as they always have been.' In sociology, 'neo-functionalists' have argued that social inequality is the inevitable and natural implication of society's need to fill crucial roles and positions. Sociobiologists and social Darwinists have also claimed to find 'immutable laws' of social stratification... Although such theories may have been convincing when researchers could only examine a single country's data... they cannot survive cross-national comparisons because they offer no reason why countries might differ.

Image source here.

DND under 'political pressure' to hide Libya costs

2011-04-09T09:35:00.006-07:00

Cost of Canadian action in Libya still unknown

Postmedia News: The war in Libya has cost the United States more than half a billion dollars so far, but Canadian taxpayers appear to be in for a longer wait before they find out how much the military campaign will ding their pocketbooks. Some Canadian Forces personnel have told their families they expect to be overseas for up to six months...

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told American lawmakers that the conflict cost the country $550 million in the first week of action... Canada's Defence Department, however, will not be releasing its cost figures at this time and does not have a date set for when that might happen. 'The department is not the the practice of putting forward estimates that may be subject to change because of all sorts of variables that are still in play,' said DND spokeswoman Jessie Chauhan... She added that the numbers aren't 'hard and fast.'

But Liberal Sen. Colin Kenny said that isn't the case. 'DND does have the figures,' said Kenny, the former chair of the Senate defence committee. 'They know all of these numbers but they don't want people to know they're spending a hell of a lot of money on a place most Canadians couldn't find on a map.'

Kenny said DND has specific numbers on what it costs to run a frigate per day, as well as operational costs for CF-18s and other aircraft. Military officers privately acknowledge he is right. 'The only reason I can think of for not releasing such figures is that DND is under political pressure not to do that,' said Kenny... There has been no public discussion of how long the Canadian contribution will be required.

Image source here.

Arctic warming breaks NASA's temp chart

2011-04-08T07:39:00.007-07:00

Extreme Warming Forces Climate Scientists To Add Hot Pink To Temperature Map

ThinkProgress: As global warming from unlimited fossil fuel burning accelerates, the Arctic is being radically transformed. This winter saw large regions of Canada and Greenland about 10C above the historical average. Temperatures in eastern Canada in the dead of winter were a staggering 21 C above average.

The extreme Arctic warming is wreaking havoc with the polar ecosystems and is linked to the catastrophic snowstorms that pummeled the United States. In a summary of how global climate change is becoming observable to people in their daily lives, NASA scientist was forced to redraw his global map with hot pink. 'One sure bet is that this decade will be the warmest in history, Hansen writes in his survey (.pdf)

Ancestral message saved lives in Japan

2011-04-07T08:40:00.004-07:00

Residents of tsunami-ravaged towns forgot wisdom left by ancestors

The Toronto Star: Modern sea walls failed to protect coastal towns from Japan's destructive tsunami last month. But in the hamlet of Aneyoshi, a single centuries-old tablet saved the day. 'High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,' the stone slab reads. 'Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.'

It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along the northeastern shore.

Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old... The markers don't all indicate where it's safe to build. Some simply stand -- or stood before the tsunami hit -- as daily reminders of the risk. 'If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis,' reads one... One stone marker warned of the danger in the coastal city of Kesennuma: 'Always be prepared for unexpected tsunamis. Choose life over your possessions and valuables.'...

[In] the tightly knit community of Aneyoshi...'Everybody here knows about the markers. We studied them in school,' said Yuto Kimura, 12. 'When the tsunami came, my mom got me from school and then the whole village climbed to higher ground.'... Isamu Aneishi, 69, said his ancestors moved their family-run inn to higher ground more than a hundred years ago. But his three grandchildren were at an elementary school that sat just 150 metres from the water in nearby Chikei. The school and surrounding buildings are in ruins. Their bodies have not been found.

Image source here.

Fraser River too warm for sockeye

2011-04-06T10:14:00.005-07:00

Sockeye salmon at risk of overheating due to climate change

The Globe and Mail: Sockeye salmon in the Fraser River are facing such critically warm water in the summer that populations will either have to adapt or die as climate change pushes temperatures even higher, according to new research at the University of British Columbia. With oceans, lakes and rivers warming worldwide, the study holds a warning that fish stocks are facing increasingly dire environmental challenges...

Researcher Erika Eliason found... that sockeye, which migrate up to 1,200 kilometres in the fraser, are already 'near their upper limit' for warm water and any further increases could lead to the disappearance of some population... There are more than 100 sockeye populations in the Fraser and over time they have evolved in response to the specific environmental conditions they face during migration...

Ms. Eliason said it isn't known how long it takes a population to change physiologically to adapt to environmental conditions -- and it might not be possible for any of the populations to change fast enough to survive in the long run... The Fraser has warmed by about two degrees over the past two decades and the trend is expected to continue. The river is usually over 19 degrees in the summer, and often hits highs of around 21.5 degrees.

'They are all near their upper limit... 21.5 degrees C is already higher than the optimal temperature for every single population in the Fraser, she said. 'There is not much room there, for anybody.'

B.C.s sockeye salmon may not survive climate warming

Postmedia News: The salmon... appear to undergo 'cardiac collapse' when river temperatures get too high... The researchers found that the sockeye that spawn near the coast and have a much easier migration route, have much smaller hearts and less resilience than fish that make more gruelling trips... Sockeye that head farther up the Fraser have hearts almost 50 per cent bigger than the weaker populations, and had more developed cardio-respiratory systems that could handle hotter water.

In recent years the scientists say between 40 and 95 per cent of some sockeye populations have died en route to their spawning grounds... 'We think that fish can't swim at hot temperatures because the fish can't provide sufficient oxygen to their swimming muscles,' [Eliason] says. 'We think this is because the heart can't pump sufficient blood.'

Image source here.

Cons delay cluster bomb treaty to please U.S.

2011-04-05T11:38:00.006-07:00

Canadian ex-arms negotiator breaks silence with concerns about cluster bomb treaty

The Canadian Press: Canadian troops could be complicit in the deaths of innocent civilians if the government proceeds with weak recommendations in the international treaty to ban cluster munitions, says Canada's former lead negotiator. Earl Turcotte resigned last month from Foreign Affairs after nearly 30 years in the public service, the last decade of which was dedicated to disarmament issues.

Turcotte broke his silence and told The Canadian Press... that he was removed as the government's chief negotiator in part because he ran afoul of his superiors after senior U.S. officials complained he was too aggressive in cluster bomb treaty negotiations. Turcotte also registered a 'conscientious objection' to his bosses on how the government had planned to interpret a key provision of the Convention on Cluster Munitions -- Article 21.

The provision covers joint operations between countries such as Canada, which are expected to ratify the treaty, and countries that will not -- specifically, the United States... Turcotte said the true intent of the section is being subverted and would essentially 'aid and abet' the continued use of cluster bombs... 'Canada could be in part responsible for more civilian deaths because of the use of this weapon. That's just, to me, morally and legally unacceptable. I simply couldn't live with myself if I allow this go through unchallenged.'...

Canada was one of 108 countries to sign the cluster bomb treaty in December 2008, and it went into effect in August 2010 after being ratified by more than 50 countries. But critics say the government is dragging its heels on tabling legislation in Parliament that would ratify the treaty, unlike its speedy adoption of the Ottawa Treaty to ban landmines in the late 1990s.

Tucrotte said... 'In the inter-departmental debate, DND has prevailed. I think that they have gone too far and I believe they have done so largely to preserve what they consider to be the unique relationship that the Canadian military enjoys with the U.S. military. And I think they have been unduly influenced by their desire.'

Image source here (scroll down).

Cons try to gag report on Afghan prisoners

2011-04-04T08:59:00.006-07:00

Feds accused of trying to muzzle commission report into Afghan torture

The Canadian Press: The Conservative government quietly went to Federal Court last week hoping to impose limits on what a military watchdog can say in its final report into torture allegations involving Afghan prisoners. The Military Police Complaints Commission is currently reviewing evidence and writing its report after hearings into allegations that army cops turned a blind eye to suspected abuse in Afghan jails...

The government wants to exclude the testimony of diplomats and civilians who did not work for the Defence Department. Its lawyers also want any documents belonging to those officials, including reports that warned of torture or documented the abuse, excluded from the commission's findings... The commission's report is the last chance for Canadians to get a comprehensive account of what happened...

The government's refusal to hand over documents to both the commission and a House of Commons committee sparked a crisis in December 2009 where the Liberals brought in a contempt motion that threatened to topple the Conservatives. The prime minister avoided it by shutting down Parliament during the Christmas Holidays that year.

The government eventually agreed to let independent experts and a committee of MPS -- excluding the NDP -- to review what documents could be released. A year after the agreement, the committee has yet to release a single scrap of paper, although Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe has given them until April 15.

Image source here.

Books are our friends V

2011-04-03T08:43:00.007-07:00

Portrait of Anne Frank by Souverein,

crafted from the pages of her Diary.

New treaty 'taking our rightful place in Canada'

2011-04-02T10:11:00.006-07:00

Historic treaty will allow B.C.'s Maa-nulth First Nations to go beyond the Indian Act

Georgia Straight: Five First Nations will begin a new era of self-government as Vancouver Island's first modern-day treaty comes into effect. The Maa-nulth Final Agreement (.pdf)... has been in the works for 18 years. On April 1, a series of new laws [were] enacted to breathe life into what Huu-ay-aht First Nations hereditary chief Tom Mexsis Happynook says is a 150-year ancestral vision... 'We will be rising from the ashes of colonialism and taking our rightful place in Canada.'... The treaty will reinvigorate powers of Huu-ay-aht hereditary institutions; a system of government that combines hereditary chiefs with elected council members...

As part of the final agreement, the Huu-ay-aht First Nation will receive a capital transfer of $26.4 million over a period of nine years. They'll also receive access to natural resources they say are critical to economic stability. 'We will be able to climb out of the Third World conditions that Canadian First Nations live in across this country,' Happynook said. 'We now have the tools and the resources, both human and natural, to start rebuilding our economy.'... Those tools include an already successful forestry company, fishing opportunities, and cultural tourism...

Happynook said he anticipates that the process will eventually be simplified for others going through the negotiation process. 'I think that as time passes by that we will become more efficient at negotiating treaties in B.C. and that other First Nations will feel the joy that we're feeling right now,' he said.

The Maa-nulth Final Agreement is just the second modern-day treaty to be ratified under the B.C. Treaty Commission process. The Tsawwassen First Nation treaty came into effect in April 2009. The Nisga'a Final Agreement, the first modern-day treaty in the province, came into effect in May of 2000, and was not a part of the current B.C. treaty process.

The Maa-nulth treaty-implementation date comes about a week after a vote by the K'omoks First Nation on March 26 in favour of their agreement in principle. The eastern Vancouver Island community is one of seven First Nations across the province in advanced agreement-in-principle negotiations. The Sliammon community is one of three First Nations that have completed treaties that have not yet been ratified. [Two others] are completing their treaties, while another 27 First Nations are in active negotiations.

Image: Maa-nulth nations; source here.

'Canada has lost its standing' in human rights

2011-04-01T07:15:00.006-07:00

Amnesty International says Canada no longer leads on human rights

Globe and Mail: Canada has lost its standing as a world leader in pressing for human rights, in part by taking a one-sided view on Middle East rights issues... That judgment, according to Amnesty's global secretary-general Salil Shetty, is the cumulative effect of several moves in recent years, including a reluctance to sign new UN rights declarations, avoiding accountability for the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, and a failure to stand up for the rights of Canadians accused abroad, such as Omar Khadr, the Canadian detained in Guantanamo Bay... 'Globally, Canada's reputation as a reliable human-rights champion has dropped precipitously, Amnesty concluded...

Among other things, Canada's shift in the Middle East has including 'unflinching refusal' to raise concerns about Israel's rights record, and the government has stifled or defunded agencies that 'promote the rights of Palestinians'... Canada has lost the reputation for evenhandedness... Most of the steps criticized in the report came under Stephen Harper's Conservative government -- with the notable exception of the long-standing criticism of Canada's failure to shrink the gap in standard of living between aboriginal Canadians and most citizens.

Amnesty chief blasts Harper on death penalty, and Tories' right record overall

Canadian Press: Prime Minister Stephen Harper's personal support for the death penalty is 'outlandish' and out of step with the world at large, says the head of Amnesty International... Secretary General Salil Shetty... Shetty was in Ottawa to release a scathing report that accused the government of eroding Canada's global reputation as a human rights champion...

Shetty said his organization's latest death penalty report showed that 139 countries have abandoned executions. The only notable exception in the developed world is the United States... The report also notes that Canada has scaled back its efforts at the United Nations to work towards the abolition of the death penalty... Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976...

In January, Harper gave a grammatically awkward answer when asked by the CBC... 'I personally think there are times when capital punishment is appropriate. But I've also committed that I'm not, you know, in the next Parliament, I'm not, no plans to bring that issue forward,' he said. 'Why would he want to say or do that unless there's an expectation that it would bring some political gains,' Shetty said.

'The thing is, there seems to be quite a big gap between what Canadians think their values are, and the government's positions are, and the reality.'

Image source here.

Image for the day

2011-03-31T08:58:00.004-07:00

Resolute Bay by Yann Arthus Bertrand

The Path of Protest

2011-03-30T07:59:00.007-07:00

Arab spring:

an interactive timeline of Middle East protests

This is a screen shot. For the interactive version, go here.

Harper could stack Supreme Court

2011-03-29T09:21:00.005-07:00

Upcoming Supreme Court of Canada retirements make this a very important federal election

Charlie Smith, Georgia Straight: The next prime minister of Canada could be in a position to appoint four Supreme Court of Canada justices. The nine-member court's mandatory retirement age is 75, and four will reach this milestone by the end of 2015. Morris J. Fish will be the first to turn 75... Ian Binnie and Louis LeBel will be 75 in 2014, and Marshall Rothstein reaches that age [on] 2015.

For years, conservatives have wanted to rein in the Supreme Court of Canada, which has issued numerous decisions over the years that have enraged right wingers. Those rulings include striking down Canada's abortion law, 'reading in' sexual orientation to the list of equality rights guaranteed under Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and requiring that the Crown provide full disclosure to the defence in criminal cases.

In 2000, University of Calgary professors Ted Morton... and Rainier Knopff wrote a book called The Charter Revolution & the Court Party, which alleged that 'university-based intellectuals' had embarked on an 'astoundingly successful strategy' to promote an activist, rights-based agenda through the courts... Morton and Knopff, along with future prime minister Stephen Harper, were among six Albertans who signed [the] famous 'firewall letter' in 2001...

If Harper were to win a majority government on May 2 and later stack the court with judges who share the views of right wingers... this could have profound ramifications on the future of Canada.

Image source here.

Canada-US border 120 million years old

2011-03-28T08:13:00.006-07:00

Geological record surprisingly mirrors today's Canada-U.S. border

Postmedia News: Two scientists probing the ancient foundations of the Rocky Mountains have discovered -- to their great surprise -- that today's Canada-U.S. border also marked a clear geological dividing line during a key phase of the continent's formation more than 100 million years ago.

'The modern political boundary between the United States and Canada originated roughly 200 years ago,' states the summary of a study co-authored by geologists Andrew Leier of the University of Calgary and George Gehreis of the University of Arizona. 'However, it appears that even as much as 120 million years ago, rivers and sediments in the two regions developed their own distinct characteristics.'...

'Sand grains made of the mineral zircon show that Cretaceous sediment in the United States has a clear 'American' signature, whereas that in the Canadian Rockies has a different and definable 'Canadian' signature.' observed the researchers, whose study is published in the journal Geology...

The tiny zircons used to profile strands of sandstone on either side of the border not only showed that the rocks are different in each country, Leier added. 'Rivers were flowing out of these Cretaceous mountains, from west to east,' he noted. 'The second implication of the data is that the rivers that flowed from the mountains in the United States stayed in the U.S., and those in Canada stayed in Canada... 'There is no evidence that rivers were crossing what is today the border.'

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UN for small farmers, not corporate ag

2011-03-27T08:55:00.010-07:00

Groundbreaking New UN Report on How to Feed the World's Hungry: Ditch Corporate-Controlled Agriculture

Alternet: 'To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available. And today's scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production in regions where the hungry live,' says Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Agroecology is more or less what many would simply call 'organic agriculture,' although important nuances separate the two terms.

Used successfully by peasant farmers worldwide, agroecology applies ecology to agriculture in order to optimize long-term food production, requiring few purchased inputs and increasing soil quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity over time. Agroecology also values traditional and indigenous farming methods, studying the scientific principles underpinning them instead of merely seeking to replace them with new technologies. As such, agroecology is grounded in local (material, cultural and intellectual) resources...

'We won't solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations.' Instead, it says the solution lies with smallholder farmers.'... The report calls for investment in extension services, storage facilities, and rural infrastructure like roads, electricity and communication technologies to help provide smallholders with access to markets, agricultural research and development, and education... It notes the importance of providing farmers with credit and insurance against weather-related risks...

When asked to provide more detail about crop breeding, De Schutter... noted that genetically engineered crops not only carry environmental risks, but are also 'associated with unsustainable farming practices and with a worrying concentration of the seed industry... Rather than treating smallholder farmers as beneficiaries of aid, they should be seen as experts with knowledge that is complementary to formalized expertise.'

The entire report, 'Agroecology and the Right to Food' is available here.

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Evidence of people in Americas 15,500 years ago

2011-03-26T07:17:00.009-07:00

Humans in North America earlier than thought

CBC News: The recent discovery of ancient tools in a Texas creek bed shows human settlers arrived in North America about 2,500 years earlier than originally believed... 'We have found evidence of an early human occupation... 2,500 years older than Clovis,' [said] Michael waters from Texas A&M University. The Clovis people -- once thought to be the continent's oldest human culture -- go back to about 13,000 years ago, which would make these newly discovered artifacts about 15,500 years old. Details of the excavation are published in the journal Science.

For many years, the Clovis people were thought to have arrived here from Northeast Asia by crossing the Bering Land Bridge, which once connected Asia and North America... But no Clovis technology has been found in Northeast Asia... Meanwhile, the Texas excavation has revealed blades, scrapers and choppers in the 20-centimetre layer of earth below where Clovis artifacts had previously been found.

Settlers came to N. America thousands of years earlier

The Toronto Star: North America's first settlers have long been believed to have arrived from northeast Asia... down through the ice-free corridor in Canada. But at 15,500 years ago, said Waters, the two ice sheets were merged. 'giving credence to the idea that people came along the coast... Tied up in those bones is a lot of evidence of where these people came from. We can begin to mesh the archaeological evidence with the genetic evidence.'

The new cache of tools, studied since their discovery in 2006, represent a lightweight 'mobile tool kit' used by hunter-gatherers who could pack them up and move... The site produced a 'continuous record' of people coming back season after season, said Waters... 'These tools are recognizably different from highly distinctive Clovis tools, although they do share some similarities... Clovis tools could have evolved' from them. That would make Clovis tools North American-born.

The artifacts woud have been 'maybe 5 per cent of the material culture these people had. All of the clothing, the hats, the perishable objects, the wooden tools, are all gone. Using techniques developed in the last 20 years, scientists were able to date the tools, said Steven Forman of the Luminescence Dating Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois. 'The possibility is that pre-Clovis is all around us, but we just can't recognize it yet,' he said.

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