guns don't kill, people do

           We've heard that old tired refrain from gun nuts and reactionaries for many years. But the libertarian baffle gab conceals many issues. Let's look at a few..

             The registration and control of firearms in North America turns out to be a tricky business. This suggests that it is not as straightforward an issue as one might at first think. 

              Firstly, why - exactly - do we have so many guns in the hands of civilians? Polls indicate that something like 40% of US households possess one or more firearms. "In the beginning", Americans, it is argued, lived on the land and guns were a means of self-defense for isolated families and a means of obtaining food. Also their political tradition gives the People the right to change their government if it serves them badly. (One could argue that this is the right of every People, so why so many guns in N. America?)

            Today, though, most of us live in cities and obtain our meat from the store. Even the argument about the right to change government is a bit weak on at least two points:

1- Though the People may indeed possess the right to change their government if it represents them badly, is arming the average household the most efficient way to obtain good government? We are no longer living in the 18th century with a weak central State. Modern military weaponry is highly specialized, modern standing armies large, well trained and equipped. Are citizens' militias a match for these modern fighting machines? Sure, one can argue that technology is not everything. Did not the Vietnamese pull off the impossible: beat the American behemoth, the mightiest military power that ever existed? (The Americans could, of course, have dropped the Bomb on Nam but would that could have been political suicide, hindering, rather than facilitating their future access to relatively undepleted 3rd world reserves of non-renewable resources like petroleum.) And look at the trouble the West is having today controlling ISIS! Their technology is relatively primitive compared to the resources of the West and we are having a gawdawful time controlling them. 

        So while it is true that human willpower is a wonderful and powerful thing, do we really want to govern ourselves by facing off poorly trained and equipped citizens' militias against modern armies in our city streets? It seems there should be better ways to implement democracy in the 21st century.

2- Another, practical, problem arises when one starts to examine the views and goals of militiamen. While posing as citizen "patriots" and opponents of tyranny, they often promote reactionary, racist even (proto-)fascist worldviews. The links below present a fairly balanced (moderate) view of the affair, I think.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/05/southern-poverty-law-center-militias-gun-control/1964411/

http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/militia_m.html?xpicked=4&item=19

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/militia-madness 

          In the present context I can't help but think that our violent, militaristic culture accords a high status symbolic value to the gun and the cult which has grown around it: I have a Big Gun that can kill a lot of people in a short time; that makes ME a Real Big Man.

The gun is the Great Equalizer. It makes the small man equal to the tall man.
                                                               - anonymous (American)

         The need for the Big Gun and the cult grown around it may, in fact, be more psychological than political or material. The role the gun plays in the urban gang culture may be reinforced by our collective social values. Perhaps, at the beginning of the third millennium we need to ask ourselves: if we want to survive as a civilization, perhaps we need a new set of value to live by?

The background: December 6, 1989, avowed anti-feminist Marc Lépine walked into the École Polytechnique, Montréal and cold-bloodedly murdered 14 female engineering students with a rifle because "you're all feminists!" To do his dirty work, he separated males from females, then gunned down the women. Afterwards, as so often in these cases, Lépine took his own life..

           Québec society was heavily traumatised. This type of thing was only "supposed" to happen south of the Canada / US border, and most certainly not in peace loving, tolerant Québec! We lost whatever semblance we had of (false) innocence in the months following the massacre.

            Families were broken, scarred, destroyed in complex and ramifying ways. Ripples of violence spread out from the Polytechnique massacre for years afterwards. Some  of the men present were crushed by feelings of guilt: "We should have done something! We should have rushed him en masse even if he did kill a couple of us.." A few of those directly connected with the tragedy or members of their families committed suicide: "post-traumatic stress". No man is an island, they say..

            The pro-gun regulation movement in Québec was mobilized (or born?) in those days and years following the massacre. Some of the survivors, their families and the families of the victims started a popular movement which led to the Canadian Firearms Registry  of 1993 under the Federal Liberal government of Jean Chrétien. The original cost of the registry was set to be a modest $2 million. But implementation costs inexplicably ballooned to a (possible) $2 billion: a mind-shattering 1,000 fold cost overrun! (Does this make the Guiness Book of Records? It should.) 

             This was also the time of the downfall of the Chrétien government, plagued by corruption scandals, broken promises such as failure to live up to the Kyoto Accord on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, budgetary muckups in military spending resulting from the government's attempts to pander to neoconservative pennypinching ideology and severe (and probably unpopular) cuts to the armed forces.

           The successive revelations of cost overrun and redtape, combined with rise of the New Right, eventually spelled the death of Registry. I believe it served as a convenient scapegoat around which to mobilize the forces of the resurgent Right. Harper and his crowd never tired of attacking the Registry for both good reason (overruns, redtape, missed deadlines, incompetence..) and bad ones (inconvenience for traditional - rural - gunowners or the idea that "urban criminals don't register their weapons"). It is interesting to note that police departments were among the biggest defenders of the Registry, claiming that it was a valuable tool in assessing the danger of a potentially violent confrontation: domestic violence with or without seizure of hostages, arrest of a citizen on their property..

            The Chrétien government are the real villains of the piece. They have, in effect, dishonored the memory of the slain through their incompetent destruction of a piece of potentially valuable legislation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Firearms_Registry

http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/polytechnique-massacre-lives-forever-changed 

The final chapter:  "On October 25, 2011, the government introduced Bill C-19, legislation to scrap the Canadian Firearms Registry. The bill would repeal the requirement to register non-restricted firearms (long-guns) and mandate the destruction of all records pertaining to the registration of long-guns currently contained in the Canadian Firearms Registry and under the control of the chief firearms officers.The bill passed second reading in the House of Commons (156 to 123). On February 15, 2012, Bill C-19 was passed in the House of Commons (159 to 130) with support from the Conservatives and two NDP MPs. On April 4, 2012, Bill C-19 passed third reading in the Senate by a vote of 50-27 and received royal assent from the Governor General on April 5. The Province of Québec protested, appealing to the Supreme Court to save that portion of the database relating to the Province. "On March 27, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the destruction of long-gun registry records was within the constitutional power of Parliament to make criminal law, denying the Quebec government's legal challenge and allowing for those records to be destroyed." (Wikipedia) 

            Thus the Registry became history, in the grave 18 years after its passage (or 22 years if you consider the Province of Québec where it continued to be used by police until the court ordered the destruction of the database for Québec in 2015).

              Québec is debating whether to invest in its own, provincial, Gun Resgistry.

             But what does this pathetic "debate" over gun control say about our society? That our political parties are vacuous? (And if they are, why?) That they have no real positions on anything of importance and so are forced to appeal to the lowest common denominator (division, scapegoating, spreading fear and hate)?

extraterrestrial life in our solar system?

link to paper: Schulze-Makuche, Grinspoon (Astrobiology vol 5, number 4, page 560-5)

http://funkyscience.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/CarbonCycleTitan.pdf

video of Huygens's lander approaching Saturn's mysterious moon Titan:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/DISR/Multimedia/Movie_HiRes+Narration_25Apr06.wmv 

Is there extraterrestrial life in our solar system?

         Titan, a giant moon of the planet Saturn, formed at about the same time as Earth. Like Earth, Titan was hot at birth due to the kinetic energy (energy due to movement) of the infalling matter that formed it. Heat is a measure of the average velocity of the particles of a body. As planets and moons coalesced from gravitational attraction, a lot of fast moving matter got squished into small volumes, making those bodies quite hot. This is why Earth's core is molten. Thus, even though Titan formed far from the sun, life could have evolved on Titan after it cooled to the point where water and earthlike biochemistry became possible. Plant life would have been possible since Titan lies just on the outer limit of the zone of photosynthesis in our solar system (at ground level on the equator at noon, it is bright enough to read a newspaper on Titan).

         Today, however, Titan is cold (-180 C or -290 deg F) so, as it cooled, life would have had to develop alternative metabolic pathways and discover new liquid biosolvents (such as a saturated mixture of ammonia and water or liquid methane and ethane). Whether such an ad hoc conversion from one biosolvent (water) to another, low temperature biosolvent, is even possible is debatable. We just don't know.

          Titan is interesting for several reasons. It is the only moon in the solar system with a real (dense) atmosphere, weather and seasons. At sea level, Titan's atmospheric pressure is superior to Earth's! Like Earth, nitrogen is the major component of Titan's atmosphere. There are sizeable quantities of methane and hydrogen. There is no oxygen, however, and water exists only as a hard rock ice (or when finely divided, as sand).

         Titan's atmosphere is believed to photosynthesize the biochemical precursors to life (whether this process implicates life is, at this point in time, anyone's guess..) On Earth, those biochemicals led to life. But Titan may be too cold for life (or the life may be marginal and primitive). However, biochemists would like to study Titan's organic chemistry for clues to the origin of life on Earth. They believe that primitive biochemicals have been effectively stored at low temperatures for eons, possibly preserving the earliest stages of the evolution of life. 

            Precipitation, as snows or rains of hydrocarbons like methane, ethane or benzene, occurs. Small shallow seas or lakes of these cold, liquefied gases ring the polar regions. In some places depths of 170 meters (over 500 feet) are attained. The equatorial regions are quite "arid", in contrast.

 

 Saturn seen from its moon Titan (artist's rendition!)

The clouds and the rivers are of liquid methane and ethane, not water..

               If Titan were to possess life, it would have to meet the Four Requirements:

1- Adequate energy flux. Life requires energy for the biological work of self organization, repair and maintenance of internal structure: "autopoeisis".

2- (at least for "earthlike" life), an adequate biosolvent, available in sufficient quantities. For cellular, "earthlike" life, such solvents provide a medium for mobile biomolecules to achieve sufficient concentrations for effective interactions. Other properties may be important like the capacity to rapidly dissipate the heat of bioreactions to avoid damage to delicate structures or unstable molecules. What really constitutes a good biosolvent, under which conditions, is still in the early stages of investigation..

3- chemical cycling: auto-catalytic reactions in which the products are also employed as inputs to the reaction. The reaction effectively "makes more of itself"! In its globality, life may be seen as a bewilderingly complex self-organizing system of chemical cycling. Thus the human race regenerates its DNA anew each generation. Chemical cycling may be seen as the "first step toward life". It is occuring on Titan, indicating only that life might be there..

4- polymeric chemistry. Polymers string together similar molecular bits like the beads of a rosary or links in a chain. Variable bits - containing information (like the genetic code) - may be attached as side links to the chain. The result is long information bearing molecules which can be used as an "instruction set" to generate essential biochemicals (like proteins) or to fabricate a whole new organism (reproduction). Polymeric chemistry permits the storage and transmission of essential organizing / structuring information from one generation to the next. Thus life overcomes, transcends the mortality of individual organisms.

             If life were to exist on Titan it would need to assure an adequate energy flow. This could come from photosynthesis although using a different biochemistry than that of water based Earth life. 

Terrestrial photosynthesis, generic formula:

6 CO2 + 6 H2O + energy (sunlight) + Enzymes --->  C6H12O6 (glucose, sugar) + 6 O2

Six carbon dioxide molecule are combined with six water molecules using the energy of sunlight to create an energy rich sugar molecule and six oxygen molecules. The sugar, like a battery, stores the energy of the sun for later use. During such "controlled burning" the sugar is recombined with oxygen, releasing energy for biological work, and returning to the "initial point": 6 carbon dioxide and 6 water molecules. 

C6H12O6 + 6 O2 ---> 6 CO2 + 6 H20 + energy (used for biological work)

The cyclic nature of life could not be more clear - chemical cycling!

             In their "hypothesis paper" (pdf in first link above), the authors propose several plausible energy capturing cycles involving photosynthesis. One generic reaction is 

C2H2 + 3H2 --> 2CH4 + energy

This reaction involves in reality several steps, mediated by enzymes: the "generic" formula, shown here, merely shows the end result (which is all that interests us at this stage). In this plausible Titanian "respiration" reaction, one molecule of acetylene is combined with 3 molecules of hydrogen to produce 2 methanes and liberate biologically useful energy. Acetylene is an energy containing molecule created by inorganic (non-living) processes in Titan's upper atmosphere. It is created from the interaction of sunlight and hydrocarbons and, in effect, stores solar energy in the unstable acetylene molecule. At the temperatures prevalent on Titan, acetylene freezes out of the atmosphere after it forms and rains down on the surface, providing an accessible energy source for any enterprising organism to exploit. The above plausible generic "respiration" reaction would liberate the energy stored in acetylene by converting it into methane.

Does such a reaction occur on Titan? Interestingly, methane is unstable under the chemical conditions on the surface of Titan. Theoretically, it should occur only in trace amounts. But, instead, it makes up 5% of the lower atmosphere. Could this excess methane constitute a "biomarker" indicating that life if present? At present, we simply don't have enough information to answer this question. However, living processes tend to separate isotopes of a given element, favoring the lighter isotopes. The methane found on Titan is, in fact, isotopically "light" (elevated carbon 12 to carbon 13 ratio), suggesting that life might be responsible..

             But, once again, we just don't know! Our probes to Titan have not had sufficient resolution to answer the pertinent questions. In fact, we are still at the stage of generating plausible questions to be answered by future space missions..

             For example, would we know what to look for? One of the curious features of Titan's surface is its "freshness". Why is it so smooth? One possibility is that some of the energy flux through Titan's surface is of biological origin. Natural selection may have selected for organisms that liberate a lot of heat to melt ammonia / water mixtures, liberating a biosolvent thus allowing for more biological activity. Such organisms could employ the solar energy trapped in downfalling acetylene to produce heat to melt ammonia / water mixtures. The constant churning of semi-liquified areas by the liberated heat could explain the relatively smooth, fresh surface features of the moon.

               In sum, the probability of life on Titan is low but not demonstrably zero..

Towards a New Citizenship?

          This article is the follow up to,

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2015/03/reclaiming-citizenship.html

          Psychologists, studying the factors implicated in happiness, have concluded that 50% of the variation in happiness from individual to individual is due to genetics. Either you are born with genes that predispose (but do not condemn!) you to depression or you are not born with such genes. Thus half of our happiness or unhappiness is simply due to "Fate", "Karma" or "the hand we were dealt at birth". Another 40% of the inter-individual variation in happiness is due to our own good or bad choices in life. We may not be masters of our fate but we still have quite a bit to say about how the "hand we dealt" is played! Finally - and shockingly to those raised on the American social darwinist "Self Made Man" ideology - only a pitiable 10% of our happiness with life is due to our socio-economic status. (Yet another piece of evidence from the Real World suggesting that neoconservative ideologues have been selling us pipe dreams..)
 

           If I take responsibility for myself I must also take responsibility for the society I live in. As a social animal, I cannot be logically dissociated from my social milieu. I am created by the society I live in (it's values, school system, opportunities..) but I also, in a small way, create that society. Taking responsibility has a down side. It removes a convenient excuse for non-action: "Society is to blame for everything. I'm just a victim.." 

            Ironical reflection since such a position is usually associated with the conservative end of the political spectrum! I suspect, though, that the interpretation is a bit different where you stand on that spectrum..

           Traditionally, "responsibilization" is used by reactionaries as a justification for lack of compassion and social consciousness. The losers deserve their lot in life: they are either morally degenerate (lazy) or genetically inferior (Social Darwinism). By the way, Darwin himself had the brains to pre-emptively reject Social Darwinism, even before the term was invented. He believed that human evolution had, in fact, fostered co-operation among humans. See note 1.

           On the Left, "de-responsibilization" is used to justify inaction and political apathy (and their ultimate paradoxical outcome: anarchic violence including, as it ultimate form, self-immolative mass murder)

internal blog links:

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2015/01/book-review-zealot-cautionary-tale-for.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2014/10/climate-change-is-threat-multiplier.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2014/04/quebec-election-more-questions-than.html

            It's not obvious how the Left became the party of de-responsibilization. Part of the answer lies in reactionary propaganda, of course. In reality, sane Leftists do not deny moral responsibility, they simply point out that the playing field is not level, that some players are born with an unfair advantage and that this imbalance prevents us from achieving our full potentials as human beings and socieites. Marx and Engels probably hold a share of the blame in the "disempowerment" of the masses and the citizen. They believed that social and economic evolution were deterministic affairs, that the bourgeois capitalist society contained within itself the inevitable seeds of its own destruction. Today, we understand better. Despite deterministic laws (physics, chemistry..), their interaction in real world situations is highly unpredictable. This is why meteorologists cannot predict with accuracy what the weather will be more than 3 to 5 days ahead.

             Perhaps when folks - like classical Marxists - who believe that history is on their side discover that history is not on their side, their morale collapses. They had been conditioned to thinking in all or nothing terms. EITHER history is on or side OR it against us. In reality, of course, "History" couldn't give a fig. (The very notion of "History" is a human cultural phenomenon, it represents nothing "out there" in the real world).

            Whether emanating from the Right or the Left, de-responsibilization is used to justify social disengagement and moral idiocy. An extreme example I heard as I kid during the Soviet - American Cold War for geopolitical domination:

The (naughty) Scientists invented the A-bomb. Since I did not invent the bomb, I can blithely advocate tossing it around everywhere at the slightest provocation (real or imagined).

            One sees the insanity of the "argument" as soon as one applies it to guns: I didn't invent guns so I have the right to go around blowing away anyone I want, whenever I want, under any pretext that strikes my fancy. 

               The problem of what can only be called "existential disempowerment" - seeing oneself as cornered and under attack - is at the root of our current civilizational impasse. Tonight, not for the first time, I realized why the 20th and 21st centuries are so odious.

Odium: intense hatred combined with a sentiment of loathing, disgust or contempt

               These times are odious because of our failure to actualize our (enormous!) human potentials at exactly the point in history when their optimized deployment is most needed! More succinctly: our civilization is morally and spiritually bankrupt.

                Our dereliction, this failure to mobilize needed potential when it is most needed is obvious from the study of social insects like ants, bees and termites. These creatures have tiny brains with a few hundred neurons. Their behavioral repertoire is fairly limited as a result yet their collectivities - ant hill or bee hive - are behaviorally much, much richer than the individuals which comprise them. In the tropics where social insect evolution reaches its zenith, ant hills collectively engage in problem solving behaviors that would challenge mammals with much larger brains. Students of Self-Organization say that insect collectivities display "emergent intelligence" or "meta-intelligence": the collectivity is functionally much brighter than the individuals that make it up. With humans, today, we have exactly the opposite situation: meta-stupidity! Our collectivities are functionally much stupider than the individuals that make up those collectivities. Worse, contemporary human collectivities manage to exploit the intelligence of individuals (inventors, scientists, engineers..) to do incredibly stupid things at the collective level: global warming, overpopulation, industrial warfare, resource over-exploitation..

                 For our sins, we will pay deeply and tragically. I only hope that the survivors will have the wisdom to learn from error.

                 In an upcoming article, I will attempt to give an overview of the challenges we face and what newly empowered citizens and communities can do to increase their resiliency and capacity to adapt - even to thrive! - in the face of the wave of destructuring change we are living through..

notes:

1- That Darwin had the wits to see through the use of natural selection as a rationalization for social injustice is to his personal credit. Modern science has confirmed his insight that, compared to the "lower" (smaller brained) primates, humans are, in fact, very co-operative. But not all the news is good. Social animals tend to be the most destructive and aggressive. Exactly because social animals do combine and coordinate their efforts, they can do more damage!

reclaiming citizenship

The New Responsibility: citizen self-empowerment, taking responsibility for the little piece of turf I stand on. There is nothing novel in this idea. It's roots go back to the Revolutionary ideologues of the Enlightenment, those guys that brought us the French and American Revolutions (and later, the Russian, Spanish, and Chinese Revolutions. Even Canada had it's own scaled back version in 1837 - footnote 1). The term "citoyen", citizen was made a term of honor. As citizens, all should be considered equal (at least before the law). Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité! Libertad, Igualdad, Fraternidad!

            In periods of systemic breakdown such as we are living through (note 2), the suggestion that we cultivate virtue in our own backyard is, in fact, all that one could reasonably be expected to do! "Conquering New Worlds" is the project of another age: been there, saw that, now suffering the hangover from.. Our time of transition makes different demands on us, offers different opportunities. One of the more surprising of these new opportunities: our real - physical, living - world has a near infinity of ecological niches and few of these have been really explored or understood in any detail. Think of how the microscope opened up a whole new universe to human comprehension - all without moving a step, without crossing a sea. The "new" world of microbial life was literally hidden under our noses all the time! We simply didn't have the means to perceive it (esse est percipi! - what is perceived, exists..) Today, we need a new mental microscope to perceive the opportunities - and challenges - of the new (post cheap fossil energy) world we are entering. I suspect my perceived need to develop such a mental tool, led to my reconsideration of the old right wing buzzword, "responsibility"..

            Taking responsibility for one's own piece of turf means different things to different individuals. The existentialist philosopher, J.P. Sartre held that life is a "project" that we are responsible for:


"L'Homme est absolument libre, il n'est rien d'autre que ce qu'il fait de sa vie, il est un projet. Sartre nomme ce dépassement d'une situation présente par un projet à venir, la transcendance."

from http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

Wo/man is absolutely free, s/he is nothing other than what s/he makes of life, s/he is a project. Sartre considered this capacity to move beyond one's current situation via a future directed project a form of transcendence. (my translation, emphasis added)

           One recalls here Nietzsche's idea of "self-overcoming", of aiming high to hit high..

            For me, given the state the world is in, taking responsibility means the creation of Cultural Refugia to save the best fruits of the last 6000 years of Patriarchal Culture: calculus, the Periodic Table, the scientific method, the idea(l) of citizenship, democracy, human rights, feminism, Enlightenment Universalism (note 3). All the good stuff we want to save from the barbarian hordes.. All the good stuff we payed such a heavy price to obtain!

            Taking responsibility for one's own piece of turf implies, for an occidental, (re-)empowerment of the citizen (note 4). The citizen must take back control of our democracies which we have stupidly turned over to corporate interests in return for the cornucopia of mass produced goodies they have delivered us. One definition of fascism reads:

fascism: control or seizure of the State by the corporate elite

            Democracy means rule of / by the People. If we take this definition literally we must admit that, as citizens of democracies, we have let ourselves be brainwashed by the corporate agenda which is to maximize profits. Hyperconsummerism maximizes profits. We let ourselves be brainwashed / manipulated by the advertising industry to maximize the profits of multinational corporations.

             Unfortunately, we find it more convenient to displace responsibility for our moral failures than to assume blame (and the responsibility that comes with it). The corporations "program" us to consume (regardless of the cost to the environment and future generations). But if we take the definition of democracy seriously, we, the citizens, are ultimately responsible for the results because, under democracy, the citizen is king..

              Today, if we are to save at least some of the furniture (my Cultural Refugia!), we - citizens - must reclaim our authority from the corporate usurpers and the craven politicians who serve them. Reclaiming responsibility means reclaiming authority for the word "authority" implies responsible use of power - responsibility. By assuming responsibility for the turf s/he stands on, the citizen also self-empowers, assumes the robe of authority..

              In practice, this leads to the odd situation where a left wing critique of society leads - "paradoxically" - to a right wing conclusion: accepting responsibility in our personal life, for our personal relations with the people around us, accepting responsibility for our little piece of turf. If things are going to change, I must become the local center of change from which all change ripples outwards. The Buck stops with me..

              In practice, this is not an easy message to accept! People on the Left or Center of the political spectrum - even those of the moderate Center Right - accept that some, at least of the evils of society are structural in nature: They transcend individual actions or volition. Evils such as racism existed before my birth: they form part of the structure of social reality I was born into. If leftists feel they are losing ground, as today, it becomes tempting to  throw in the towel with the cry that "the System is rigged!" and we are its victims.

             The reality, of course, is that over the long run, everybody is the victim of somebody else (!!!) This why I am viscerally opposed to mass "compensations" to victims of slavery, war.. (without, of course, denying that criminal liability - for causing an accident or selling an unsafe product - is a desirable and useful category). Carried to the extreme, where does apportioning blame end? Blacks are compensated for slavery and racism, First Nations are compensated for having their land stolen, Canadian citizens of Italian and Japanese origin are compensated for incarceration in determent camps during World War II. 

             But once again, the devil is in the details! One can make a case, given evidence from the US an Canadian governments, that citizens of Japanese origin did not constitute a security risk and, if anything, were ultra patriotic to their adopted nations. On the contrary, Italian Canadians of the WW II generation have admitted that determent camps for Italian immigrants and new citizens were warranted: Mussolini was sending his agents to Québec to foment separatist dissension along racial and religious lines (appealing to common "latin blood" and the Catholic faith). Montreal's Italian community of the1940s was a hotbed of political agitation, threats, boycotts, beatings and the odd bombing. So who, then, "deserves" compensation for WW II determent: the patriotic Japanese but not the fascist-infiltrated Italian community? Who decides the good apples from the bad..

                 Pushed to its limits - women compensated for Patriarchy, for example - everybody would be compensating everybody else with no net gain or loss (except for the corps of money shufflers who, of course, would charge exorbitant fees - lawyers and their ilk..)

                 Victimization is a sordid human reality (and probably always will be). But a sense of victimization combined with powerlessness can create the toxic social environment we inhabit today. Researchers studying jihadist terrorists who were born in Western countries have noted that some of these people are acting from an intense sense of injustice at the evils inflicted on the Muslim world by the "Crusaders" of the arrogant West. We may choose to dismiss such indoctrination as mere "propaganda" but such an attitude misses the point! The brainwashed youth who joins ISIS may be doing so from noble motives: to avenge wrongs done to innocents (with whom they identify). It's hard to find sentiments more noble than that..

                 The common sentiment of powerlessness, of lack of control over our collective (or individual) destinies is, I suspect, a major breeding ground for the various forms of fanaticism and extremism we see around us, from  Global Warming deniers to European neonazis, American militias and jihadist martyr-terrorists.

                 How else can we counter these toxic byproducts of the sense of powerlessness, than through the (re-)empowerment of the Citizen, who is each one of us?

                 In order to regain any efficacy at all, the Left, in the coming increasingly turbulent decades, will have to address the question of individual responsibility and its relation to larger social goals. We have to face the question of the relation of the individual - his rights and duties - to his society. We will need to examine the nature of citizenship itself  in this dawning millennium.  

 internal blog links:

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2015/01/book-review-zealot-cautionary-tale-for.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2014/10/climate-change-is-threat-multiplier.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2014/09/do-you-know-fanatic-are-you-fanatic.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2015/02/book-review-dogs-are-eating-them-now.html

 notes:

1- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellions_of_1837

2- among the challenges the world faces: climate change, overpopulation, breakdown of essential ecosystems and the natural services they provide, depletion of non-rewewable resources, failure to make a speedy transition to renewable resources and energy systems when we still had time, over-exploitation of renewable resources (thereby functionally converting renewable resources into non-renewable, depleting, ones), the rebirth (or renewed vigor) of racism and religious fanaticism..

 3- Enlightenment thinkers like the 18th century German philosopher Immanual Kant held that human nature is universally the same but expresses itself differently in different cultures and historical epochs. "All men are brothers." 

4- Citizen / citoyen: definition, from http://www.toupie.org/Dictionnaire/Citoyen.htm

"Etymologie : du latin civis, celui qui a droit de cité, citoyen.

Historiquement, un citoyen est un membre d’une cité-Etat grecque, disposant du droit de suffrage dans les assemblées publiques. Il participe aux décisions de la cité relatives aux lois, à la guerre, à la justice, à l'administration...

Pendant la Révolution française, le terme "citoyen" a été réutilisé par opposition au "sujet" (du roi). Il permet de désigner tout homme sans notion de hiérarchie, par opposition à la Noblesse. A noter que, durant cette période, les termes "citoyen" et "citoyenne" ont été utilisés pour remplacer "monsieur", "madame" et "mademoiselle"."

etymology: from Latin "civis", one who has right to the city, a citizen

Historically, a citizen was a member of a Greek city-state, possessing the right to vote in public assemblies. He - only males had full citizenship - participated in municipal decision making relative to lawmaking, war, justice and administration.

During the French Revolution, the term "citoyen" was re-employed in opposition to "sujet" (a "subject" of the king). "Citoyen" designated any man without reference to position in the social hierarchy.. During the revolutionary period the terms "citoyen" and "citoyenne" were used to replace the traditional modes of address: sir, madame, mademoiselle,.. 

How stupid can you get, I mean, really, how S-T-U-P-I-D..

       In a move of stunning self-serving venality, the *&%?@+%!$& Harper government cut funding to a volunteer based program to re-integrate sex offenders into the community. Although Harperites like to preen themselves on their hairy chested individualism, this program, assisted citizen volunteers to leave a positive mark on society. (I guess it was the social - as opposed to personal wealth - aspect that bugged the Harperites so much.) 

        The program, Circles of Support and Accountability, was recognized for its value around the world. Not only was it exceedingly effective in reducing sex offender recidivism, it actually saved lots of money: incarcerating criminals is expensive and then there are the economic losses and health costs resulting from trauma to the victims and their families.
  
         Instead of accepting the results of a study which concluded the innovative and successful program was highly effective, Harper choose to take the low - the very low - road and toot his little horn of "Law and Order", playing the populist trump card for all it's worth. Don't forget we've got an election coming up.

What craven "@¦¬¾%¤¤£¢¢!     

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sex-crime-prevention-program-cut-by-ottawa-1.2979196

           Some days, folks, it is really, really hard not to detest..

Book Review: everything you wanted to know about mass extinction but were afraid to ask

Editor: Paul D Taylor: Extinctions in the History of Life. Cambridge University Press, 2004 / 2009. 175 pages, copious figures, extensive academic bibliographies for each chapter, excellent and concise glossary.
  
Abbreviations used in this article:

By: billion (1,000 million) years
Bya: billion years ago
CC: climate change
ME: mass extinction(s)
My: million years
Mya: million years ago

        

                                     inostrancevia, skull - Permian age

           The six chapters of Extinctions, each authored by a major researcher on mass extinctions (ME), are the fruit of a symposium convened by the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life. The aim of both the symposium and the text "has been to make accessible - at undergraduate level - key findings and current  debates concerning extinctions in the history of life". Hence: everything you wanted to know about ME but were afraid to ask..

            Extinctions is a wonderful book, rather well written (or edited) and intellectually stimulating to no end - for dinosaur geeks and budding paleontologists.. 
However, it could be a valuable text for some other classes of readers:

- Anti-Climate Change (CC) activists who want to assure themselves of a really scientific base for their argumentation. In the mind of many earth scientists, CC is the major driver of biological evolution on earth.

- Green Energy advocates wishing to present the risks posed by CC as arguments in favor of non-carbon based energy sources: solar, wind, tidal, geothermal..

- Anyone interested in "environmental issues" such as species conservation and habitat preservation. Knowing more about extinction mechanisms contributes to the development of better programs for preserving biodiversity.

- General - but informed - readers of ecology and earth science. Readers should be minimally "informed" as Extinctions targets an undergraduate (college / university) audience. You might find the text a tad difficult if you think that "Paleozoic" refers to the antics of Sarah Palin.


          As a kid, I was a dinosaur geek and could rattle off a bunch of species names and their descriptions. But I was puzzled by their disappearance. What would cause these great beasts to go extinct? Not obvious, that one..

                          inostrancevia (Permian age) - what, exactly, would it take
                              to kill these boogers off..

          As a kid, I was a dinosaur geek (still am) and could rattle off a bunch of species names and their descriptions. But I was puzzled by their disappearance. What would cause these great beasts to go extinct? Not obvious, that one..

          No one, back then - the 1960s - had a clue it seemed. One theory even claimed that the herbivores dies of constipation - from changes in vegetation - and the carnivores followed them into oblivion, a domino effect.. Dinos died of constipation, OK..

          I also learned about other mass extinctions, equally puzzling. In the Great Dying of the Late Permian, 250 Mya, most of the species capable of leaving fossils, on land and sea, went extinct. Why? No one knew..

          Today, extinction researchers can piece together the Big Picture of Evolution and ME patterns from the accumulated wealth of several centuries of classification of fossils. New scientific and statistical methodologies permit deeper understanding of the dynamics of extinction and recovery. Thanks to stable isotope partition measures, a deeper understanding of ancient climatic conditions and extinction / recovery mechanisms is emerging. And the Big Pic is truly fascinating!

           Earth scientist are more like detectives than physicists.  Like forensic investigators they work backward from evidence - sometimes disturbed - left at a "crime scene" (ME as depicted in the fossil record) to establish the events, the actors and their interactions. Who did what to whom, when and how.. Unlike the physicist, earth scientists cannot simply translate a hypothesis into an experiment and test it in the lab. Evolution's time scale is in My and its scope, the entire earth!

            Earth scientists - paleontologists, geologists, paleoclimatologists, paleo-ecologists,.. - work mostly with the clues Mother Nature has left behind. Like the forensic investigator, the earth scientist relies more on inference than experimentation (as physicists or chemists would do). Each branch of science eventually ends up developing its own particular style or blend of scientific methodology.

             Mass extinction (ME): a geologically"short" period of time during which the earth's biota is severely depleted. Species numbers - biodiversity - drop as extinction rates rise above normal or "background extinction rates".

             ME are, most realistically, a constructive factor in evolution, "removing incumbents and allowing other groups.. to prosper and diversify". In the long run this led to diversification and evolutionary "progress" (? bigger brains?). Although the anthropocentrism is obvious, we humans have "benefited" from increasing brain to body weight ratio among the "higher" vertebrates. This "cephalisation" appears to have been stimulated by past ME. We literally owe our human consciousness and intelligence to ME. If we believe that our consciousness and intelligence are gifts then we have ME to thank in large part.

            Contrary to popular opinion, ME are not responsible for the majority of species extinctions. ME occur at intervals of tens of missions of years. Probably more than 95% of species extinctions are simple background extinction events. The average life expectancy for mammalian species is about 1 million year - much, much, shorter than the average lapse of time between ME.

           ME are complex, multicausal events (the detective at the crime scene again! Who did what to whom, when and how..) Plants and animals tend to respond differently to ME. Genetic lines - clades - of plants generally include a broad range of morphologies: weeds, creepers, vines, little and big shrubs; little, medium sized and big trees... Thus, if ME selectively eliminates trees and shrubs, the clade will survive as weeds. Overtime, some of the weeds will re-evolve into new shrub and tree species. Thus plant clades tend to be more resilient than animal clades, although extinction levels at the lowest -species - level of classification may, in fact, be comparable between plants and animals.

             One hypothesis I initially rejected but now lean toward: ME are not really "abnormal" events at all, rather they represent the random coming together of severa; factors (no one of which would be lethal) into a Perfect Storm - or sucker punch. Thus the accepted view that the dinos were killed off by an asteroid strike (Alvarez 1980). is today seen as an oversimplification. True, the strike was a big one and, chemically speaking, occurred in a bad type of rock (carbonates, sulfur). But evidence increasingly suggests that the earth has experienced numerous large bolide strikes without ME. One ME researcher, Tony Hallam, has labelled the asteroid strike as the "coup-de-grâce" which finished off an ailing Gaian ecosystem already fragilized by CC.

             Among the potential causes of ME:

- volcanism (ejection of CC-producing gases like sulfur oxides, carbon dioxide and methane)

 - bolide impacts. Only one ME, the K/T extinction that killed the dinos, has been rigorously linked to massive impactors.

- sea level rise or fall

- ocean anoxia ("dead zones" lacking oxygen)

- CC: global warming or cooling

- changing continental configuration which modifies important atmospheric and oceanic currents which, in turn, regulate climate. In addition, large continental masses experience greater climatic extremes in central regions than smaller continental masses.

         Thanks to technical advances, all of these may now be detected and, to some degree, be quantified in the fossil record.

          One of the "constants" that has consistently emerged over the last few decades is the important role that CC plays in ME. Some form of CC is found in most ME even if, as stated earlier, it is "only" part of a Perfect Storm that kills massively.

           We need to pay heed! Today humankind is massively injecting gases into the atmosphere that, when massively injected into the atmosphere in the past (volcanism), are highly correlated with ME. Are we playing Russian Roulette with the air we breathe and the seas which feed us? The fossil evidence appears affirmative.

           And so, what to do? (addressed to the reader..)

           To repeat myself, this is a really great book for dino geeks and those with strong interests in the earth sciences, intellectual or practical. It summarizes, for an undergrad university readership, what is known today about ME and their impact on biological evolution.

            Extinctions raises interesting philosophical questions for those so inclined. There is, for example, the question of the significance of human "control over" nature as we (potentially) enter a new geo-biological age, the Anthropocene (footnote 1). In contemplating the fossil record of ME, I conclude that any possible viable human regulation of natural processes would be founded, not on domination or "power over" nature, but on balance and equilibrium, on justice and wisdom - a rather tall order, given the state of the world today! 

            In reality, human have "benefited" from past changes, both "normal background" extinctions and the dramatic large scale transformations we call ME. Without these changes we would simply not exist! Today, however, we find ourselves in the curious position of provoking changes which  - if past records (fossils) are reliable - will inevitably led either to the extinction of our species or, at the least, to the destruction of our "advanced" technical civilization. Ultimately one is led to a reflection on the very nature of human nature itself: given what we are doing to our planet, are we collectively MAD?

notes:

1- Anthropocene: to the traditional 5 bio-geological "eras" - the Archean, Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic - some contemporary thinkers have suggested that we are living the transition to a sixth era, one in which (human) consciousness becomes a major factor in biological evolution. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia Hypothesis (the earth as a living "macro-organism"), refers to this new epoch as the Awakening of Gaia in which Nature becomes fully conscious in wo/man. One could cite the French theologian Teilhard de Chardin as an intuitive precursor, who saw a "planetary consciousness" emerging as the unfolding of God's Plan. More recently the French philosopher / sociologist, Edgar Morin, has written of consciousness now becoming an active player in the evolutionary process. For Morin, this has become possible because of the recent rapid evolution of science and technology and the power they confer to manipulate genes, mind, matter and energy on increasingly larger and more integrated scales.
  
The bio-geological eras of earth

Archean, 4.5 Bya to 2.5 Bya: appearance of life, early primitive microbes

Proterozoic, 2.5 Bya to 550 Mya: appearance of stable continental masses, more advanced microbes (eurkaryotes)

Paleozoic, 550 Mya to 250 Mya: appearance of "modern" - multicellular, oxygen breathing - animals and plants

Mesozoic, 250 Mya to 65 Mya: age of dinosaurs, first appearance of mammals and birds

Cenozoic, 65 Mya to 18th century CE: age of mammals and birds, appearance of humans

Anthropocene, 18th century to ??
          

When is a Non-Profit organisation not?

           The message from the Harper government has been quite clear. They promised transparent government but what we got are information flows that accord with the Conservatives' probusiness bias. Thus if climate scientists produce results which do not accord with the desire of the petrochemical industry to maximize profits, they find themselves defunded or forced to go through a humiliating censorship before being allowed to speak to the press.

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/04/decline-and-fall-of-canadian-science.html 

 

             Scientists working in the environmental sciences have been particularly hurt. The Experimental Lakes project in Ontario was a federally funded program that studied the long term effects of atmospheric pollution (which Harper's friends, the Oil Patch, produce in large quantities). Harper cut funding to the world renowned long term study of freshwater ecosystems. Private interests had to bail out the project and provide it with long term funding. But why, for a totally petty saving, axe a world class long term study? Their work was recognized of great value around the world. Finding a sponsor probably was not all that hard: it's the principle - and the pettiness of the Harper crew - that galls and irks.. 

The following link gives links to previous related blog articles.

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/03/experimental-lakes-areas-curious-episode.html

The following link is a comment by two earth scientists on the resolution of the Experimental Lakes project funding cut:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/experimental-lakes-area-is-saved-but-its-a-bittersweet-victory-for-science/article17753956/ 

  
               The saga continues. Recently Dying with Dignity a group advocating for the right to die with medical assistance (euthanasia, if you wish..) lost its charitable status, presumably because it advocates for causes that Harper's political base doesn't like. Fundamentalist Christians in particular probably don't take to kindly to this one. 

               The up front, publically presented, rationale as usual is budget cutting to reduce taxes and government bureaucracy. (The do so want to help the harried taxpayer, don't they?) The Harper government has the right to revue the tax exempt status of nonprofit organisations in the light of a law which it passed. The (stated) goal is prevent "excessive" policy advocacy on the part of pressure groups, using nonprofit organisations as "fronts". On paper it sounds nice. In practice, that's one cool potential tool for imposing censorship, if there ever was one! (Especially if you are willing to bend or ignore your own rules to control the information flow..)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/dying-with-dignity-loses-charitable-status-after-political-activity-probe-1.2919706

                  As always, the devil lies in the details. A nagging question. Why are not organisations which support causes favorable to the Harper (neo)Conservative government not as stringently audited as organisations who support causes not so favored by the Harperites?

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2015/01/23/why-havent-any-harper-friendly-charities-been-scrutinized-keenan.html