[LINK] Atlas of the Caucasian languages

The Linguarium series of language maps promises to be interesting, but it is the Russian educational institution’s Atlas of the Caucasian languages that is of particular note for its mapping of the many diverse languages spoken in that region. Map 18 in the series is of particular note, since it claims to show the distribution of Caucasian languages in their Turkish immigrant diasporas.

[LINK] The Industrial Revolution and the Little Ice Age

Will Baird wonders if carbon dioxide and other pollutants from the industrial revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries might have forestalled a return of the Little Ice Age.

[BRIEF NOTE] SimEarth Terraforming

The 1991 computer game SimEarth: The Living Planet, available here at Home of the Underdogs, is wonderfully addictive. I’ve known this ever since I got that wonderful hacked copy of the Commodore 64 version of SimCity back in 1990. SimEarth, though neglected, is particularly interesting inasmuch as ambitious players can try to terraform planets, to make Mars and Venus livable planets.

As it happens, I don’t seem to be a very good terraformer. I can only play with unlimited resources available to me, otherwise I end up with not enough ice meteors to create oceans (or, in Venus’ case, to keep the oceans from evaporating entirely), or with only prokaryotic life. Even then things can go badly”: Last night, one wonderfully terraformed Mars of mine was blighted entirely by an information-age civilization that I seeded, expanded to a global population of two billion, then collapsed and left the planet a desert. Again.

[LINK] Coming from outside

Via mouseworks, Wu Tingfang’s 1914 America As Seen by an Oriental Diplomat.

[MUSIC] Two poles

I took advantage of the firesale prices on offer at HMV to acquire, very cheaply, Everything But The Girl’s 1995 Amplified Heart (featuring “Missing,” both original and Todd Terry Remix) and Public Enemy’s 20th Century Masters greatest-hits album. Variety is good.

[LINK] La grande nation, post-colonial style

Guy (of Non Tibi Spiro) writes at A Fistful of Euros about France’s continuing efforts to engage critically, or not, with its history of colonialism and imperialism. Empire’s legacies are seductive, it seems.

[URBAN NOTE] Passion loose on the streets

In the course of my evening’s migration south Yonge Street, I passed that Foot Locker again. The memorial had grown hugely, flowers in vases and stuffed animals and impassioned memorial signs filling a third of the sidewalk, the crowds taking another third. One of the memorials announced a candlelight vigil being held at Yonge-Dundas Square just down the street even as I walked, and indeed there was a vigil, the CTV trucks bracketing a gathering that covered a tenth of the space of the square. I couldn’t hear the slogans being shouted, though; the wind was too great.

The lessons of (among other dramas) the third-season Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Gingerbread”have come to my mind frequently this week. Horrible crimes can easily unleash significant political movements, massive pressures for change. The key is to make sure that the change is sensible, and frankly, I don’t think that the current emphasis on law-and-order routines to the exclusion of deeper processes of social reform bodes well. That this is the season of a hotly-contested federal election only pushes the chances down

Martyrs are terrible things to have in functioning democratic societies, aren’t they?

[LINK] For better or for worse?

Norman Geras links to a remarkable story from Israel regarding a British woman who married a dolphin. It wasn’t a legal marriage, of course, but the ceremony did take place in Eilat. I want to know one thing: How did the dolphin consent?

[BRIEF NOTE] The Joys of Watching Conrad Black Being Black

Robert Siklos’ Shades of Black: Conrad Black – His Rise and Fall, a revised version of a 1995 biography that appeared when former international press magnate and future convicted felon Conrad Black was nearing his apogee, makes for compelling reading. The Amazon reviewer is right to note that McNish and Stewart’s Wrong Way goes into greater detail on the fine mechanics of the scandal that finally brought the man down, demonstrating how his fabled flaw sheer blinding arrogance provoked his enemies. Siklos’ book does a brilliant job of showing the profound and systemic flaws of the man throughout his life.

Black wants Canadian citizenship, you know, in case his acquired British nationality might keep him from visiting Canada after a conviction in the United States. This desire curious considering his stated opinions of the country.

Black’s request of Ottawa is especially curious considering some of his well-publicized criticism of his native country. In November 2001, in his first major speech in Vancouver after he officially became Lord Black of Crossharbour, he called Canada a “one-party federal state with no deliverance in sight,” and added, “Most Canadians remain resolutely oblivious to their country’s objective decline.”

Black attacked Canada’s universal health-care system, and “soft-left” policies that he said were driving as many as 100,000 skilled workers a year to the United States. “The head of the Canadian government says they will be replaced by Haitian taxi drivers. They will not,” he said at the time.

“To someone just arrived from Haiti or Romania, Canada is a far more satisfying place to be a citizen than it was to me,” Black said in his speech.

“Renouncing my citizenship was the last and most consistent act of dissent I could pose against a public policy which I believe is depriving Canada of its right and duty to be one of the world’s great countries.”

Perhaps we should poll Haitian-Canadians and Romanian-Canadians to see if they want to admit vainglorious accused felons with delusions of grandeur into the Canadian family. I’m sure that they’ll demonstrate a geater generosity of spirit than Black; it would be difficult not to do that.

[BRIEF NOTE] Was Burgess right?

I wonder if Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange was wrong only in predicting that the violent disenfranchised young men of the future would speak an argot heavily influenced by Russian.