Smilehouse

I will take this opportunity to formally announce the re-launching of a steady stream of my exploding meaning into the void. While I am confident that my content will soon focus on the sort of sarcastic social commentary typical of past posts, I would like to first offer a short celebration of one of the finer things in life: the primitive and sexual cult that is live rock and roll music.

In particular, I have gained sustained inspiration from Swedish pop-smith Jens Lekman’s concert this past Friday. It’s well known the world over that to hear Jens Lekman is to love him. I would also venture that to see Jens Lekman is to love him, so I ask that you let his pleasant mug through the doors of your heart, if you haven’t already:

I had been anticipating this concert for several months, but I was initially skeptical after sizing up the venue and its scant audience. Some half of the shabby but charming venue was closed, and the half that was open was nowhere near capacity as the opening act (the languorous “Taken by trees”) took the stage. The opening act elicited no strong feelings in me either way, and I began to anxiously cycle through a list of cynical explanations. Mainly, I began to worry that I was incapable of experiencing the euphoria that I had enjoyed at countless concerts in my youth, and that my previously rich inner-life had been made permanently bland by innumerable and imperceptible circumstances whose weight had finally achieved the critical mass necessary to crush my spirit. But all such sorry conjecture was soon forgotten as the crowd swelled and Jens Lekman stormed the stage with elephant force!

Backed by a 4-piece band of cherubic humans (in the sense of having child-like innocence, rather than plump prettiness, and in the sense of being human, and not computer as is often the case these days), the concert took an immediate tone of joy and exuberance. Throughout the generous set, Jens delivered his deceptively melancholy songs with confidence and charisma, all the while charming the pants right off me (he may have regretted that because my lower half stank that evening!). He was full of adorable tricks: he threw a pocketful of confetti, he signed his name into the crowd to match the lyric of a particular song, and at one point he even played the air-glockenspiel to finish one of his better known tracks, pointing into the air above the audience at the exact locations from which the sampled notes seemed to emanate. At several points in the show he pitched-up his samples, with the band seamlessly adjusting to the new and more danceable tempos. The mix of flute and string-inflected samples and the somewhat unconventional band format (bass, violin, keyboard, drums, and guitar) induced a frenzy of apprehensive shuffling amongst the predominantly dipshit/Caucasian majority. By the end of the show I was smiling to the extent that I could not remove the smile from my face. At first I considered this a good thing, but now I feel very sad and I’m still smiling.

The number of items that can be collected in support of this post’s title is already quite substantial and their accumulation shows no signs of slowing in the near-future. Among such highlights, it is worth mentioning that it was only a few weeks ago that funding was cancelled for a vast open-air research project that had generated over 1100 peer-reviewed papers over the past few decades and has been a key component in understanding and preventing acid rain pollution, among other pressing environmental concerns. The justification was that the project had outlived its use – the naïve flipside of George Bush’s “waiting for all of the science to come in” argument against signing the Kyoto Protocol. Earlier this month, hundreds of scientists gathered on parliament hill to protest the cuts to the experimental lakes area (ELA) project, among other scientific research programs1.

I think that it's also worth noting the decision by the Harper government to change the long-form census from mandatory to voluntary in 2010, claiming that many Canadians considered completing the census to be an invasion of their privacy. Even if we were to ignore the fact that no evidence to this claim was ever provided, frustration is still a valid response when we consider that Tony Clement (minister of Industry at the time) said that the lower response rate would be compensated for by an increase in the number of census forms distributed. That a government party would make such a startlingly ignorant claim with all of the resources available to it is also a demonstration of their arrogance: it is a fundamental, 101-level principle of statistical data collection that randomness must be ensured in order to accurately represent a population, and that increasing the sample size is not an adequate measure of compensation in almost all cases (including this one). We can now expect the government to lack data that would be essential for it to create policy addressing negative social trends within marginalized sub-groups, which, I would suppose, is just how the Harper government would like things to be. Munir Sheikh, the former head statistician of Statistics Canada, resigned in July of 2010 for the above-listed reasons2.

Putting aside funding cuts for environmental and ethical issues and statistical-finagling, what research does the Harper government support? The linked graph shows that the government’s funding for science and technology has actually increased in recent years.

So what gives?

Well, for one, the government has decided to defer much of this funding away from “pure” scientific research and towards applied and commercialized research fields. I mean, what is the use in understanding that we are poisoning and killing the world’s lakes and rivers? That can’t be turned into money. But wait! Earlier this month the Harper government decided to invest nearly 2 million dollars into a truly pure scientific question: do wind-turbines create low-frequency sound waves that cause significant physical and psychological damage to Canadians living within their vicinity3? You might ask why they are investigating the negative effects of this undeniably “green” industry that has not caused measurable harm to the populations of other countries that already use it extensively, and taking it away from research projects that often demonstrate the negative side-effects of the fossil fuel industry. You might ask…and you would be left with the sound of the wind blowing across an increasingly spoiled landscape as your answer.

1. http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/07/10/the-scientists-vs-harper/
2. http://www.vancouversun.com/news/StatsCan+boss+reflecting+after+census+mess/3305387/story.html
3. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/07/11/pol-cp-wind-turbines-health-canada-study.html

In the beginning momentum gathered slowly, imperceptibly. Across the nation and across the world pockets of disillusion and anger took root, their growth accelerating like cells dividing and filling a Petri dish, like molecules fusing within an exploding star. The causes of this revolt were many and at first seemed unrelated. Credit card interest rates and student debt. Countless loans approved for the already broke and indebted. A generation of university-educated people left working thankless jobs within oppressive corporate structures. Another “war for democracy” sponsored by the military industrial complex. An 18 year old woman jumping from the window of a computer parts manufacturer in China expecting to hit the ground only to be saved by a giant net. A Texas-sized patch of the Pacific Ocean with more plastic than phytoplankton. And so on…

People took to the streets. They gathered in symbolic spaces to shout these injustices at the perceived perpetrators of the evil force. Placards and megaphones were pointed at the glass fortresses and concrete asylums that hid the ruling elite. The resistance gained strength and organization through the cumulative impact of mass communications, public gatherings, coffee, beer, and sex.

The counter-strike came swiftly and forcefully. Police were brought to the frontlines and equipped with electric-shock inducing projectiles and other forms of experimental weaponry. Advertisers doubled-down to remind people that they are no good and should buy things. Products were built with even more social injustice in an attempt to increase guilt and passivity. Politicians took on more extensive public-relations efforts to appeal to the stubborn and out-of-touch grandfather that can be coaxed out of every man, and the man that can be coaxed from every woman.

As summer graded into fall, and fall to winter, a stalemate persisted. Lines were drawn and covert plans were drafted. Coded messages were passed between powerful figures and subtle gestures agreed upon to gain access to underground meetings. Strength and nobility blossomed in the hearts of many that began to expect that they would soon have nothing, whereas cowardice and vice grew in many others for the same reason.

It was during this tense and quiet time that the counter-forces struck in the most forceful and insidious manner conceivable. On the morning of the 25th of December, as people rose from their beds and dazedly wandered from their rooms, they found their living rooms and front parlors filled with lots and lots of presents. The kids were very happy and the parents proud. The revolution suffered a sudden and immediate defeat. Meanwhile, somewhere in the high north far beneath the surface where a cold wind sweeps across a barren landscape, Dick Cheney and Santa Claus were sharing a cup of mulled wine in front of a gently crackling fire…

Having thought up that title I was immediately set on keeping it, despite any confusion it may bring. Mainly, it would be fair to ask why I’m writing a review of a book that was first published 80 years ago and that almost every young person is forced to read in high school. Aren’t we done with it? Well, I too was forced to read it in high school, along with many other classic books whose contents I’ve almost completely forgotten, and having just finished it a second time some 12 years later I would guess that I was probably too dumb to have grasped its finer points the first go round (I don’t mean to imply that you too were dumb, gentle reader, except that I do mean to say that, which is to say that I don’t).

Brave New World is a novel, along-side George Orwell’s 1984, that is typically used as a reference point in class discussions and intoxicated late-night rants concerned with the direction that our society is heading. Like, did Huxley tap into a strong “wave” that allowed him to see what our future will be like, man (does anyone actually speak in this manner?)? In a strict sense, the answer is of course “no”. Technologically, the future he describes (some 400 years hence) is more advanced than ours in many fields, such as genetic engineering, but amusingly primitive in others. For example, near the end of the book a reporter wishing to record a conversation goes through the complicated and lengthy process of placing something I can only describe as a spring-powered hybrid between an aluminum hat and ham radio on his head. But it’s not for scenes like this that the reader is filled with anxiety while reading Brave New World. To make my point, I think that it’s worth considering this:

For anyone even vaguely familiar with Brave New World, I’m confident that you will grant me that Katy Perry would fit right into the plot, perhaps at the end of a male citizen’s day of work after he imbibes a few grams of soma and rides the pink dream unicorn with her to la-la-la-cutesy-pootsy-fuckey-land, singing “orgy porgy” all the way.

I should mention that the central premise of Brave New World is that its citizenry is conditioned, pampered, and entertained in the most vacuous manner and to the extent that they have everything they want and do not want those things that they cannot have (ex: books, apart from instruction manuals). Some of the most poignant scenes in this novel are descriptions of the conditioning process, which begins before birth. In one particularly cynical scene a room full of young children are repeatedly presented with books and bowls full of flowers, with frightening noises played loudly at the moment that they reach for them, conditioning them to associate negative feelings with these objects. Through such methods a culture is thereby maintained wherein even the sharpest individuals feel but occasional pangs of discontent, and even these individuals have no knowledge of history or of any other outside reference point that would allow them to describe alternatives. I will make the lazy and sophomoric (but probably still relevant) point that pervasive advertising pushes us in some degree towards such attitudes and ignorance. If I’m lucky, there’s the creepy and near-ubiquitous ad of the senior woman whom “doctor’s hate” peeling off her old face to reveal a younger one underneath it somewhere on this page. This would be appropriate because the physical side-effects of aging are considered so repulsive in the society Huxley describes in Brave New World that people are horrified when they finally witness a middle-aged woman raised without exposure to their “age-defying” products.

Anyhow, the book definitely stands up by my measure, and features some particularly provocative dialogue in the last 25 or so pages. I look forward to reading Huxley’s final novel “Island” next, which is apparently set within the same general fictional universe as Brave New World, but attempts to answer the question as to whether an enlightened, sophisticated, and happy society (i.e., Utopia) is possible, instead of pointing out the frightening possibility of one in which its citizenry is content but ignorant.

I always appreciate a good mystery, so I thought that I would write this post about three things that may turn out to have similar but extraordinary things hidden beneath the surface.

Although they are quite distant from one another, Antarctica, Europa (the 4th largest moon of Jupiter), and Titan (the largest moon of Saturn and the 2nd largest in our solar system) have attracted a fair amount of attention over the fact that they have, or may have, large lakes beneath their icy surfaces. The presence of the nearly 16,000 square kilometre Lake Vostok, sitting around 4,000 metres beneath the surface of the Antarctic ice-sheet, was confirmed in 1993. Whether Europa and Titan have sub-surface lakes or oceans is less certain, but over the last 15 years remote-sensing data has been collected by space probes that strongly supports this hypothesis.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of this topic is biology. In the case of Antarctica, scientists are eager to sample from and describe an environment that has potentially been sealed from direct contact with Earth's atmosphere for over 15 million years and that could contain undiscovered microorganisms. For Europa and Titan excitement is focused on the possibility of discovering the first example of extra-terrestrial life. To top things off, we can expect much of this discussion to move quickly in the near-future: although not without controversy, Russian scientists may gain samples of Lake Vostok water by the end of this year, and the European Space Agency is planning to launch a space probe in 2022 that will gather data about Europa's chemistry and gain Radar profiles of its subsurface to test the ocean hypothesis.

I think that it's worth briefly discussing how these subsurface lakes and oceans come to be, starting with Antarctica. The presence of lakes beneath an ice-sheet that has the coldest surface environment on Earth (including a world record low of -89 Celsius recorded at Vostok station in 1983) may seem counterintuitive, but their existence was first hypothesized over a century ago by Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin wrote that the considerable thickness of the Antarctic ice-sheet (over 4 kilometres in some areas) is sufficient to generate pressures at depth that are capable of decreasing the melting point of water by a few degrees1. When combined with knowledge of geothermal heat emanating from the continent's rocky basal layer, we have a picture that is simple and yet complete enough to understand the formation of subglacial lakes. The location and dimensions of Lake Vostok, and other sub-glacial lakes, were confirmed in the early 1990s following studies of Radar echo-sounding profiles of Antarctica, with the liquid surface of these lakes easily discernible because of the strong signal reflectivity of water. While there is uncertainty, recent research appears to favor the hypothesis that Lake Vostok formed beneath the Antarctic ice-sheet 15 million or more years ago, rather than before the formation of the ice-sheet as an open-air lake2.

I mentioned that Lake Vostok has potentially been sealed from the atmosphere for 15 million or more years, but I don't mean to give you the impression that the original lake water has remained throughout this span of time. The Antarctic ice-sheet is slowly but constantly flowing, and water from the lake is continually frozen onto the bottom of the moving ice-sheet, carried away by the sheet's flow, and then replaced with new glacial melt-water. It is estimated that this conveyor-belt-like cycle takes approximately 13,000 years to remove an equivalent to the lake's entire volume2. I mention this cycle because it helps in answering a key practical question for research at this site: how can we get a sample of Lake Vostok's water? There is concern that drilling directly into the lake could damage or contaminate its potentially fragile ecosystem, and scientists were initially unsure that they could gain a sample without taking this risk. However, it was eventually realized that it is not necessary to directly sample Vostok's water to sample some of its biota: by drilling close to the lake, but not actually penetrating its water, they were able to obtain ice-cores formed from frozen lake water that had microorganisms encased within it. The results showed familiar species of small rod-shaped bacteria, but there is still the expectation that unfamiliar microorganisms may await discovery in the lake's deeper waters or on its floor2.

While the great distances to Europa and Titan place constraints on our ability to collect information about them, space probes have gathered some amazing information in recent years. For starters, Europa looks like this (its diameter is about 3,000 kilometres):

If you've ever seen a picture of our Moon, of Mercury, or Mars, you might appreciate that Europa does not have nearly as many craters on its surface as do these other bodies. Europa is thought to be as old as these other objects, so the simple explanation is that it has been "resurfaced", causing the removal of many of the older impact craters. The most probable explanation for this resurfacing appears to be related to the great tidal forces exerted on Europa by Jupiter. Physicists predict that tidal forces generate enough heat through friction to melt ice in Europa's interior and create a global ocean layer somewhere between 10 and 30 km beneath its surface3. Occasionally, because of meteorite impacts or tectonic activity, this water may spill onto the surface and erase craters. The red colouration in the above image is thought to represent the residue of salts (such as ammonia) from such spilled water. You may also notice that the reddest areas surround the large cracks that cross the moon, and these cracks may be the source from which water spilled onto its surface3.

Saturn's moon Titan gained a fair amount of publicity in 2004 when the Cassini-Huygens space probe entered its orbit, with the Cassini satellite using radar to penetrate its visually opaque atmosphere and capturing images of hydrocarbon lakes on its frigid (-180 Celsius) surface. The Huygens module landed on its surface some 6 months later and took this picture:

The discovery of hydrocarbon lakes came as a surprise to many, but mega-props go to Carl Sagan (among other scientists) for predicting this as early as the late 1970s. A recent analysis of Titan's gravity field also indicates that the moon has a subsurface ocean, which would most likely be formed by a combination of radiogenic heating from its core and a very low freezing point due to a high concentration of salts4. Here's a cross-sectional graphic showing how Titan's interior is thought to be layered:

I realize that I'm breaking typical blog etiquette by writing at length, so I'll wrap things up. While it is out of my field, I do not think that it is possible to assess the probability of life occurring in the subsurface environments of Europa and Titan, but it seems that most scientists writing on the issue place the probability above 0. I could naysay based on the fact that both of these environments have more extreme physical conditions than Lake Vostok, and that life may have evolved under more clement conditions on Earth only to eventually adapt to the more hardy conditions experienced beneath an ice sheet, but I don't think that this would change much. Furthermore, many scientists are particularly hopeful about prospects for life on Titan because it contains an abundance of complex molecules that may have been part of the "primordial soup" from whence life began on Earth. Don't expect to wait too long to hear more exciting news about any of these places.

1. http://www.asoc.org/storage/documents/Other_publications/asoc_vostok_statement041408.pdf
2. Siegert, M.J. (2005). Reviewing the origin of subglacial lake Vostok and its sensitivity to ice sheet changes. Progress in Physical Geography 29, 2, 156-170.
3. Stevenson, D. (2000). Europa's ocean - the case strengthens. Science 289, 1305-1307.
4. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21988-titans-tides-reveal-hidden-ocean-that-could-host-life.html

Global illiteracy has halved since 1970, with rates having dropped most substantially in developing nations (global illiteracy is on the y-axis)1:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/World_illiteracy_1970-2010.svg

By itself, this trend is encouraging, and we can only assume that literacy rates within developing nations will eventually reach levels similar to those of developed nations (which are typically at, or above, 99%) if a comparable standard of living is eventually established. The realization of this possibility would certainly be further cause for celebration.

However, I would like to put a microscope to a couple of negative literacy trends within developed countries that have emerged in the recent past. To begin with, I think that it is worth considering how a person qualifies as “literate”. I’m confident that not even the most generous Canadian would describe 99% of their fellow citizens as being literate in the conventionally flattering sense (“he/she is quite a literate person”). In other words, we recognize that there is a great range of aptitudes within the 99% of Canadians that qualify as literate: from the ability to understand and analyze complex and abstract material at one extreme, to just barely being capable of reading and understanding simple and practical information (street signs, personal information forms, etc.) at the other. A legitimate concern that has developed in North America over the last twenty or so years is that the literacy rate (typically defined as including those with at least the bare minimum of literacy skills necessary to be a functioning member of society) has remained relatively stable, but literacy levels (degrees of literacy above the minimum) are trending towards the lower levels.

A 2007 study by Green and Riddell discusses literacy trends within Canada, some of which are fairly intuitive; literacy increases strongly with years of education as well as level of parental education, particularly the mother’s2. Less obvious is that an individual’s level of literacy is generally highest near the completion of their post-secondary education, for those that receive any, and that the level tends to gradually drop subsequent to this period. Perhaps the most disconcerting trend is that the mean level of literacy amongst university students is on the decline, meaning that successive generations are receiving a poorer education2.

First, let’s consider the trend of literacy decreasing subsequent to the completion of higher education. The most ready explanation for this is that only a small minority of university-educated Canadians end up gaining academic research (or similarly professional) positions, while most end up working in positions where they are unlikely to use many of the higher literacy skills that were gained during university. If such Canadians are unlikely to exercise their higher literacy skills at work, those skills will deteriorate unless they exercise them on their free time3. Sadly, the old aphorism that the brain is a muscle seems to hold true, and it seems inevitable that many clever young scholars will eventually be reduced to a literary digest of Sudoku and sleazy tabloids by the time that they reach senior age.

How, then, to explain the relative decline in literacy amongst successive generations of university-educated Canadians? While I am still a young man, I’m now old enough that I occasionally have to check myself against “kids these days” themed rants. Given that there has not been reported any significant genetic differences between the youth of today and that of 20, 40, or 60 years ago, any difference in literacy must be explained by external conditions. Perhaps the most likely explanation relates to changing demographics and access to education: higher education in Canada incorporates a population that is more broad and diverse than in past generations3, and a greater proportion of this educational group speak English as a second language. This being the case, those students whose literacy skills are clearly adequate may receive less attention than those of past generations, with one side-effect being a decrease in literacy levels amongst top performers. This conflict between equity/access and excellence in achievement is nothing new3.

There are many other variables within the literacy equation, but the final point that I would like to make is economic. Students typically complete university with a substantial amount of debt, and with increasingly thin prospects of getting a job within their field of study. It is now common for employers to require a bachelor’s degree for positions whose training could be adequately supplied within a matter of weeks to anyone with a high school education. This scenario has almost become a rite of passage for the present university-educated generation, and is certainly part of what feeds disenchantment towards educational and political systems. While I have been very fortunate, I can only imagine that it is a very bitter experience to take on a big pile of debt in pursuit of a higher education, after which you are most likely to get a job in an environment where you rarely exercise many of the skills that you worked so hard to gain.

References:
1. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, September 2010
2. Green, David A. and W. Craig Riddell (2007). Literacy and the Labour Market: The Generation of Literacy and Its Impact on Earnings for Native-born Canadians. International Adult Literacy Series. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 89-552-XIE, no. 18.
3. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-004-x/2007006/article/10528-eng.htm