A Bit More Detail

The news that the bacterium Yersinia pestis has been identified as the cause of the Black Death of the 14th century impresses me for two reasons. The first is the subtlety of the study.

The researchers studied DNA from the remains of 109 skeletons, now more than 650 years old, that were buried in the East Smithfield grave outside London’s old walls during the plague.

Poinar and his team took bone and teeth samples to get a hold of whatever small bits of DNA they could find. They then used a unique technique to look for Yersinia pestis among the morass of viruses, bacteria and human genes.

The researchers launched a protein-laced fishing line into this genetic pool designed to attract Yersinia pestis. Once the bacterium attached itself to the fishing line, the researchers used magnets to separate it out so they could map its genetic makeup.

Poinar said his team was only able to pull a small amount of the bacterium’s genetic markers. In all, the genetic string reaches more than 4.6 million units and Poinar’s team was able to capture about 50 to 60 units.

The second is the apparently very minor change it took for Yersinia pestis to become a mass killer.

The differences between Yersinia pestis and its soil-based cousin are small, said Hendrik Poinar, one of the lead authors on the study from McMaster University in Hamilton.

The task now is to determine how a harmless microbe turned into a deadly killer and better prepare for a future pandemic, Poinar said.

“The question is, can we identify what made the pathogen so bad?”said Poinar, an evolutionary geneticist at McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research.

“That’s the million-dollar question and we don’t have an answer yet, but that’s what we’re targeting.”

The study also suggests that the Black Plague was one of three pandemics beginning with the Plague of Justinian in 541 AD and culminating with the modern bubonic plague that is driven by international travel and trade.

Yersinia pestis is responsible worldwide for the deaths of approximately 2,000 people annually from the bubonic plague, but it is not nearly as powerful as the Black Death. Poinar said that no outbreak has been as deadly as Black Death.

“We’ve been relatively disease free,” Poinar says. “We’ve had infections such as HIV/AIDS that have killed millions of people, but not to the same extent.”

Details matter. Clearly.

Wallace Emerson Community Centre, from Dufferin, a photo by randyfmcdonald on Flickr.

The unique ringed entrance of the Wallace Emerson Community Centre–subject of an extended 2009 photo post of mine–is quite striking looking at it from the east side of Dufferin Street.

The newly-discovered planet of millisecond pulsar PSR J1719-1438 has gotten quite a lot of attention. In an era when exoplanets are found daily, it seems there’s still room for surprises.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

“The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon — i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun,” said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that are only around 20 kilometers in diameter and spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.

In the case of pulsar J1719-1438, the beams regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii, allowing astronomers to detect modulations due to the gravitational pull of its unseen companion planet.

The measurements suggest the planet, which orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes, has slightly more mass than Jupiter but is 20 times as dense, Bailes and colleagues reported in the journal Science on Thursday.

In addition to carbon, the new planet is also likely to contain oxygen, which may be more prevalent at the surface and is probably increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center.

Sources give planet J1719-1438b a density in the area of 23 gram per cubic centimetre. This is dense. Earth, at standard pressure and temperature, has a density of some 5.5 grams per cubic centimetre, and diamond itself has a density of 3.5 grams per cubic centimetre. Who knows what sorts of conditions reign on that world?

J1719-1438b is just one body of many illustrating that the term “planet”, as denoting a specific class of bodies that formed in specific ways distinct from other classes of bodies forming in other specific ways, is useless. J1719-1438b probably started off as a star.

[J1719-1438b] orbits the pulsar in just 2 hours and 10 minutes, and the distance between the two objects is [600,000 kilometers] — a little less than the radius of our Sun. Second, the companion is so close to the pulsar that if its diameter was any larger than [60,000 km] — less than half the diameter of Jupiter — it would be ripped apart by the gravity of the pulsar.

“The density of the planet is at least that of platinum and provides a clue to its origin”, said Matthew Bailes from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

The team thinks that the planet is the tiny core that remained of a once-massive star after narrowly missing destruction by its matter being siphoned off toward the pulsar.

[. . .]

Pulsar J1719-1438 is a fast-spinning pulsar that’s called a millisecond pulsar. Amazingly, it rotates more than 10,000 times per minute, has a mass of about 1.4 times that of our Sun, but is only [20 km] in radius. About 70 percent of millisecond pulsars have companions of some kind: Astronomers think it is the companion that, as a star, transforms an old, dead pulsar into a millisecond pulsar by transferring matter and spinning it up to a very high speed. The result is a fast-spinning millisecond pulsar with a shrunken companion-most often a white dwarf.

“We know of a few other systems, called ultra-compact low-mass X-ray binaries, that are likely to be evolving according to the scenario above and may likely represent the progenitors of a pulsar like J1719-1438,” said Andrea Possenti, of INAF.

The image of a glistening diamond planet is irresistible. What would it look like? astronomers have been asked in the various articles?

Just what this weird diamond world is actually like close up, however, is a mystery.

“In terms of what it would look like, I don’t know I could even speculate,” said Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester. “I don’t imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we’re looking at here.”

From what I know of colour in diamonds, Stappers is right. Diamonds’ colours are lent by pollutants, hard radiation (like that produced by pulsars, say) turning diamonds green, the diamonds made up of irregularly-sized and -shaped carbon crystals known as carbondados being black in colour, and so on. J1719-1438b is a wonder, but its wonders are going to be far subtler than non-stop shine.

A rainbow Theodore 1922 during Pride, 2011, a photo by randyfmcdonald on Flickr.

During Pride at the beginning of this season, men’s clothing store Theodore 1922 at 497 Bloor Street West in the Annex had a cute display in front.

When my Friday post about how historical and ethnic links were encouraging Vermonters to look to Québec came onto Facebook, commenter Ben wondered why Canadians of any language background would visit Vermont. It’s so like Canada, after all. Why bother to leave the country?

If you stop at the Canadian gift shop at the border north of Burlington, you see tons of Maple Syrup and related products. Like it’s something distinctly Canadian you will never see again. Then you drive into Vermont to find it chock full of Maple Syrup. The reality is, Vermont is more Canada- it’s just the US portion of Canada. No, if I was Canadian, I would keep driving until I reached something more exotic. New York City, or the New England coast.

Me, I put Canadians visiting border regions of the United States (and vice versa, too) down to another manifestation of the narcissism of small differences. Canadians and Americans–even French Canadian and Americans–have much in common: history, culture, economics. Canadians and the northeastern United States have more in common, and Canada and the northern half of New England have the most similarities of all. It’s not implausible to imagine that, given the prominence of French Canadian immigrants in local history and the far easier assimilation of English Canadians, for instance, that a majority of Vermonters and New Hampshirites and Mainers have a substantial number of Canadian ancestors. Visiting the northern half of New England, then, for Canadians, could plausibly be described as visiting someplace foreign that’s easily familiar enough to feel broadly home-like but just different enough to remind you that you’re in a separate country. I imagine that this might be the motivation for some of the cross-border regionalist efforts behind such things a plans to link Ontario to upstate New York via high-speed rail; I know myself that, driving through upstate New York, the differences between the republican and classically-named gridwork of that territory and the more organic and British/Canadian-themed landscapes of Ontario, were interesting. Taking advantage of the fairly trivial frontier to go abroad–in a fashion–seemed like a much less daunting task than, say, crossing an ocean or a continent, even. And more fairly to the people involved, if a boundary is fairly low and honestly fairly arbitrary, treating it as impermeable doesn’t seem quite smart. Let the people flow!

Perhaps western Canadians feel the same way about their bordering American states, too?

Livejournaler dewline‘s link to the eulogies given at Jack Layton’s funeral reminded me of something important. The Reverend Brent Hawkes of Toronto’s Metropolitan Community Church gave the longest of the speeches.

“Normally, it’s Christmas Eve, and the Metropolitan Community Church occupies this space. Normally, I look up there in the balcony and Jack and Olivia are sitting there. Normally, I greet them outside in the hall with their Santa Claus hats on.

People have said to me, ‘How do you prepare for this talk or speech.’ They say, ‘It’s probably the most crucial (speech) you’ve ever given. And I say, ‘Probably the most crucial, probably the most nervous I’ve been was my first meeting with my future mother-in-law and father-in-law.’ I know that I speak for everyone participating today that we are all so honoured to be asked. We are all so honoured to participate today, because we all want to give Jack justice.

Early in July, Jack and Olivia invited me to their home. To talk. The conversation began the way it almost began with Jack. ‘Friend, how’s John doing?’ John is my husband. And then, Jack said that … he wanted to talk to me about his funeral, and that he still intended to beat this. He still wanted to come back but he needed to cover every option, to make sure all of the plans were in place no matter what the result was. We talked about making the plans and filing the file and putting it in the filing cabinet – and hopefully pulling it out years later. And so we began a number of conversations about this service and about life and death and dying. And so today I begin to talk to you about life and death.

The interesting about Hawkes is that he’s one of the most prominent queer Canadians alive, a man who performed the first legally recognized same-sex marriages in Canada. (I shouted extra-loud praise to him this Pride when his float passed by.) The really interesting thing about Layton is that, a heterosexual man, Layton is a man who openly supported gay rights from the beginning of his political career in the early 1980s, fighting against HIV/AIDS and for same-sex marriage, and, incidentally, having a gay man as his spiritual advisor.

I like living in a country and a city where this sort of thing is matter-of-fact and unobjectionable–at least, publically unobjectionable. It’s nice that the space exists in Toronto to be queer and religious, to be queer and have that specific difference be just anoter one of those differences that don’t really make a difference, like (say) left-handedness. It’s really nice to live in a community where space for differences exists, and it’s nice to have that fact be so quotidian as to be not worth special mention.

The knotted tree, a photo by randyfmcdonald on Flickr.

Another resident of the southwestern corner of Dupont and Dufferin, this ornamental tree looks even more unearthly when it has its glossy green leaves out.

Canadians haven’t been feeling very hopeful about politics lately, about the possibility of new transformative visions, the chance of breaking from cynical and boring patterns to do something new. That’s the likely explanation for the surprisingly profound national reaction to the death of Jack Layton, culminating in the emotionally powerful state funeral held in downtown Toronto earlier today. As Michael Posner wrote in the Globe and Mail, Layton’s trajectory was that of classical tragedy, the story of a man who challenged the establishment and won, but had little time to enjoy it.

Reconstructed for the stage, the Layton saga might begin with his coronation as New Democratic Party leader in 2003. Initially, he is not been expected to win: rough around the edges, it is said, and a little too combative, the legacy of his confrontational years on Toronto City Council. He parlays his first ballot victory into steady increases in electoral support, almost tripling (by 2008) the party’s seats in the House of Commons.

But what is heroism without adversity? In 2010, the first alarm – a diagnosis of prostate cancer. He would beat it, he vowed, as his father did. And for a time, it seemed that he had. Then, in 2011, another ominous intimation – a left hip fracture and subsequent surgery, more evidence that life is what happens when you make other plans.

He exploits it – could you blame him? – brandishing the cane, a weapon as much as a crutch. Denying the active rebellion in his blood, he hobbles across the country, keeping the campaign’s punishing pace like a marathon runner. A hero of the old kind, defined by greatness. Plucky Jack. Committed Jack. Smart, courageous and, most of all, authentic Jack.

There is no drama worthy of the name without surprise. Again, Mr. Layton delivers. To his message of change – more correctly, the possibility of change – Quebeckers respond most enthusiastically. On election night, the NDP captures an unthinkable 59 of 75 seats, decimating the Bloc Quebecois, presumed voice of the province’s federal interests. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff had counselled Canadians to “rise up.” And they had – only not for him. Mr. Harper wins his long-coveted majority. Upon Mr. Layton, engineer of an historic rewiring of the country’s political circuitry, something else is conferred – honour.

Against all odds, Mr. Layton scales – cane in hand – his enormous summit. Just as the dramatic formula demands, Fate intervenes, not benign. This is peripateia, the abrupt reversal of fortune.

Six weeks after the election, in late June, pain returns, accompanied by stiffness, sweating, weight loss, the body’s determined insurrection. Tests confirm the family’s worst fears, metastasis to one or more vital organs. Aeschylus said “man must suffer to be wise.” Mr. Layton was nothing if not wise.

He now enters the ultimate war zone. Compared with this, politics is child’s play. And, after disclosure of the news, we all become reluctant spectators, horrified, because we know how the drama must end. We aren’t given the details. They were irrelevant. He wastes before our eyes.

Posner’s quite right. There was speculation early on that the stress of the electoral campaign had contributed to the rapid spread of Layton’s cancer, and that he either took the risk thinking his cause important or that he derived such morale benefits from the campaign that it held his cancer in check.

One argument heard repeatedly in the media is that the loss of Layton means a loss of hope in Canadian politics, that Layton can no longer make good on his desire to make things better and that there will be no one else.

Some have even gone so far to compare his death to that of Diana, Princess of Wales, whose sudden death in a car accident in 1997 sent shock waves around the world that reverberated for months.

Within the confines of Canada, Layton elicited a similar set of emotions, said Jill Scott, a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., who specializes in the social dynamics of mourning.

“She stood for a warm-hearted generosity, and a kind of naive faith in the goodness of humanity,” Scott said.

“In hindsight, we can say Jack Layton stands for a fairer, more equal Canada, for the ideals of standing up for the little guy, the oppressed, the marginalized, the homeless. Those are the things that we’ll remember.”

[. . .]

Layton was an island of idealism in a sea of cynicism, said Scott.

“With Jack Layton, we may also be mourning the loss of an era, the passing of a generation where politics mattered, where there was a certain kind of optimism,” she said.

The loss of hope can’t be taken for granted. (I speak, in the following paragraph, entirely of the NDP, largely because as the new strong challenger it seems best to bet on it as a regenerating factor.) Jack Layton’s public post-mortem letter was a powerful document that, as I wrote earlier, may have provided a critical amount of cohesion to the party, enough to keep it united behind the classical tragic hero Jack before the leadership campaign. The funeral itself was orchestrated to reinforce that message of hope.

As much as ever, crowds followed the late NDP leader’s message of hope and optimism, both figuratively and literally. Groups of mourners ran alongside the hearse carrying his casket as it moved through downtown Toronto, led by a brigade of pipers and flag-bearers.

They came in droves, many dressed in orange, and cheered him as he went. Some wore “Thank You Jack” t-shirts, and others carried treasured objects Mr. Layton had given them years earlier.

[. . .]

Those in attendance at the funeral routinely rose to their feet for a series of standing ovations. And the ceremony was full of music – one of Mr. Layton’s passions – starting with a movement of G.F. Handel’s Messiah through a sparing but moving rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” sung by Steven Page. Singer Lorraine Segato’s performance of “Rise Up” had spectators dancing outside in David Pecaut Square.

Stephen Lewis, who gave the first of three passionate eulogies, noted the way Mr. Layton died – “so suddenly gone, cruelly gone, at the pinnacle of his career.”

“Jack simply radiated an honesty,” Mr. Lewis said, something “we’ve been thirsting for.”

The service also paid tribute to Mr. Layton’s trademark stubbornness in pursuing his favourite causes, from homelessness and environmentalism to gay rights and HIV/AIDS campaigns. His son, Toronto city councillor Mike Layton, recalled his father’s refusal to turn back on disastrous father-son biking and sailing trips.

“This is how my father lived his whole life. … He’d pour everything into achieving a goal,” the younger Mr. Layton said. “‘You can wait until you have perfect conditions,’ he said, ‘or you can make the best of what you’ve got now.”

Several of Mr. Layton’s political allies and opponents noted the spirit of the occasion had allowed old foes to stand together.

[. . .] Mr. Layton also wanted desperately to help bring about an inclusive movement that would make Canada a more generous place, Dr. Hawkes said. Differing opinions would be welcome, but people would work with respect, with optimism in the face of defeats, and assuming the good intent in each other.

“If the Olympics can make us prouder Canadians maybe Jack’s life can make us better Canadians,” Dr. Hawkes said, before emerging from behind the lectern and pointing his finger at the thousands of mourners facing him.

“May we rise to the occasion, because the torch is now passed. The job of making the world a better place is up to us,” Dr. Hawkes concluded.

What do you think? Is there still hope for transformative change, hope for hope even, in Canada? Or is there not? Or was all this just empty rhetoric, with transformative change never really being on the menu?

Discuss.

Writer Ivor Tossell pointed out an element to the mass Canada-wide mourning for Jack Layton that I hadn’t noticed: for all the ongoing culture war between cities and suburbs, within Toronto and across the country, Jack Layton was a very strongly Toronto-identified man whose popularity doesn’t seem to have been harmed one whit. There is a culture war going on, but somehow the appeal of Jack was such that it allowed him to cross that cultural barrier (and others, too).

Research is called for, clearly.

Where the two main roads of Hilton Beach, Ontario meet at an angle in front of the Hilton Beach General Store, there is a floral planter (maintained by the St. Joseph Island Horticultural Society) with a flagpole in the middle. The flag is at half-mast.

Hilton Beach is the smaller of two villages on this island, possessed of a general store, LCBO, a large, modern marina, and a couple of waterfront patios that cater to island cottagers who come in for a meal, and the big-city crowd that boats down for the day. The big city is Sault Ste. Marie. This is where we are.

The flag at the crossroads is at half-mast for Jack Layton. It’s hardly the only flag at half-mast up here. I’m not even counting the poor Legion Hall in town, whose flag barely gets a chance to reach the top these days. The Husky truck stop at the edge of Sault Ste. Marie – a truck stop! – the kind with the flag the size of a football field, has lowered theirs too.

I want to shake these people. I want to say: Do you have any idea who you’ve lowered this flag for? Do you know where he lived? Do you know how close that place was to the CN Tower? Have you lost all sense of parochial grievance? If so, what do you have left that qualifies you as Canadians?

The fact that Layton achieved a national breakthrough in life while coming from exactly the wrong place for electoral credibility is just as remarkable as the outpouring of national emotion after his death. It’s worth remembering that his success this spring came – perhaps not despite, but at least while being – exactly the kind of person who is not supposed to win elections in 2011.

Never mind the fact that the guy was from Toronto, that great receptacle of negative emotions. The guy was from downtown Toronto. The guy was a socialist from downtown Toronto. The guy was a socialist who lived in a brick house in downtown Toronto with his socialist wife and spent his time pursuing a day-to-day socialist agenda of eating Chinese food and installing solar panels and worrying about the homeless. He rode a bike, for crying out loud. A bike! He wanted other people to ride bikes. He put little places to park bikes on the sidewalks and run bike lanes down the roads. He was a fussy downtowner who fussed about downtown.

Thursday afternoon at 3 o’clock I ventured down to Toronto City Hall to take a look at the impromptu memorial to former Toronto city councillor and (until his death) federal New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton. Earlier rain had washed away the chalk that covered the plaza, but the northeastern quadrant was again filled.

These women spent a while looking at the different chalked messages.

Note the prevalence of orange, the NDP colour, and the opened cans of Orange Crush pop including the one in front of the portrait in the foreground.