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A New Look at Biology, Aging and (Im)mortality, Germs	 November 29, 2017 July 30, 2018
Why Do We Age? Because of Parasites. Or, the Red King Theory
So there's this paper I've been trying to get published for a little while. It lays out my hypothesis for why we age. You can see the preprint here on the bioRxiv server. The journal editors really don't seem to like it, probably because it is completely against the grain of current thinking, although a handful of people who have seen it on bioRxiv seem to like it quite a bit.
In the past, I had never been that interested in aging, because I get depressed when I think about degenerative diseases. I think it comes from when I was training as a doctor and I would see patient after patient with hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease. The older doctors taught me that our job was not to cure these patients–that was impossible–but to slow down the inevitable progression of these diseases. I didn't like that. I like to fix people, I like to fix problems, I like to fix companies.
But my interest was piqued when I read a review article in Science couple of years ago that declared that it was just a matter of time before we could reverse aging.
Aging as a reversible disease? Not a progressive, inexorable degeneration? Really? Now that's something worth pursuing.
We used to think that the body just wore out
Historically, aging has been considered to be the result of the body wearing out, much like a used car. There's a limit on how long an organic being can last. After a while, your repair mechanism just wears out. Makes sense, right?
A popular variant of this hypothesis is the theory that after you reproduce, there is no longer an evolutionary pressure on genes. So genes that make your body run down after you reproduce don't get weeded out by Mother Evolution. That sounds logical too, right?
Except… wait a sec. Human males can reproduce into their 90s and beyond. Why are men getting old and dying? Shouldn't men live a lot longer than women, who stop reproducing in their 40s?
And except except… why do women stop reproducing in their 40s? Because they get old. But why do they get old? Because they stop reproducing in their 40s. Say what?
Both of the above theories, and several other in the same vein, are degenerative theories. Basically, the body tries to keep going for as long as it can, and then poops out.
But maybe aging is programmed
The alternate theory, which is looking more and more likely to be true, is the theory that aging is programmed. We have a clock that makes us age at a certain rate. We have been evolutionarily programmed with planned obsolescence. When the clock strikes twelve, we turn into pumpkins by design.
This theory has been… not popular… among biologists. I think one of the main reasons is that no one has come up with a convincing reason why it would be a good thing for us to age. (Back to that question in a sec.)
But evidence is piling up that aging, in fact, is programmed. That aging can be reversed.
One of the strongest lines of evidence for this is that there are certain genes that control aging. In particular, IGFR, or insulin-like growth factor receptor gene, has been giving a lot of people pause. In nematode worms (yes, our favorite worm), mutation in this gene increases lifespan by 100%, or two-fold. The same mutation is found in dwarf bats that live much longer than other bats–40 years in fact.
In dogs, mutation in the same gene is responsible for miniature breeds, which as many readers will know live twice as long as large breeds. You may not know, however, that miniature breeds of dogs also almost never can get cancer. Cancer is the most common cause of death in most dogs except for tiny ones.
In humans, mutation in the same gene causes Laron dwarfism, which is found concentrated in one area of South America. People with this mutation hardly ever develop cancer or diabetes, although the effect on longevity is not clear.
Scientists have been finding other genes that seem to control aging across multiple species.
The point is, that there are genes that seem to control the rate of aging, which you would expect if aging was programmed, and not if it was not programmed.
Furthermore, it appears that transferring blood from young mice to old mice make old mice younger. And transferring microbiome from young killifish to old killifsh seem to make old killifish younger. (OK, on this one, I have write out the journal article title: "Young poo makes aged fish live longer")
There are even studies, almost completely ignored by the scientific community, that show that once flies get past a certain age, they seem be immortal, at least their risk of dying from aging seems to decrease. You can find them here and here. The studies are rather odd. They took millions of flies and tracked their lifespan. Most flies aged and died, but a small cohort basically seemed not to age. To tell you the truth, I don't know how to interpret this. Either there is something different about flies (horrors – that would mean flies are different from humans) or that there are a few humans on earth who stopped aging and they're hiding out somewhere… I mean, I like the TV show Highlander, but come on…
So, how do we explain aging? Why on earth would we be programmed to age? I mean, it would be great if that were the case, because as a drug developer, I would be much more excited about trying to reverse a programmed process than about reversing a non-programmed degeneration. The first is doable: if aging is programmed, we will one day be able to reverse it. The second is a Herculean task, and at best would be a patch job.
To answer that question, I'll have ask you for patience while I take you on a little detour. Two detours, actually.
How do other organisms age?
The first is to step back and think about aging across species. Almost all species age. But they do it differently. Some organisms slowly age then die. Others hardly age at all for a long time and then suddenly age and die. Salmon is a prototypical example. They age very rapidly as they swim upstream to mate, and then die after mating. And it's real aging. They get cataracts, their muscles degenerate, they get Alzheimers plaques (!) they look horrible by the time everything is done. And it's not just that the journey upstream is too strenuous. If you remove their endocrine organs, they look perfectly fine even after their upstream migration.
In fact, many organism only mate once in their lives. And they tend to age and die right afterwards. Humans, who reproduce multiple times, have a slow aging process, and die long after reproducing, are not really prototypical.
In many organisms, if you prevent them from mating or reproducing, you slow down aging dramatically. This is true in octopus–instead of dying within ten days, they will live for several months. In some annual plants, if you prevent the seeds from developing after flowering, they won't die.
The reverse is true as well. In many organisms, you can accelerate aging by mating or sometime simply by exposure to individuals of the opposite sex. This can be seen in nematode worms and in some insects.
So aging seems to be linked to reproduction, at least in many species. But not just any reproduction. To sexual reproduction. I haven't found much evidence of aging after asexual reproduction.
So that brings us to the second detour. Why do we have sexual reproduction?
That's actually a greater puzzle than aging. Aging you could at least explain (wrongly) that your body wears down. But why on earth would you take an organism that successfully lived until adulthood, take half of its genes, and shuffle them with half the genes from another organism? Why would you break up an NBA championship team when all the players are working well together?
The best explanation would be if the environment faced by the progeny were going to be different from the environment faced by the parents. If you knew your NBA team was going to face different kind of teams the next season.
This in fact, is the leading theory about sexual reproduction.
Red Queen Theory
Robert Trivers, one of the most original thinkers in biology, popularized what is known as the Red Queen Theory for sexual reproduction. The theory goes as follows. Organisms and pathogens are engaged in an arms race. Each is trying to stay one step ahead the other. As the pathogen evolves to better infect the host, the host evolves to be more resistant to the pathogen.
In order for the host to stay ahead of the pathogen or the parasite, it constantly shuffles it genes. It does so by sexual reproduction.
The name Red Queen comes from Alice in Wonderland, where the Red Queen tells Alice that in Wonderland, you run and run and end up in the same place, unlike in Alice's world where running gets you to a different place.
The theory has not been easy to test, but there is now evidence that higher parasite load triggers hosts to switch from asexual cloning to sexual reproduction. And there is also evidence that hosts and parasites do undergo cycles of genetic variation, host running from the pathogen and the pathogen running to keep up. And did I mention that in our friend, the nematode worm, that it switches from asexual to sexual reproduction under conditions of stress, and that sexually reproducing nematodes are much more successful resisting parasite infections?
So basically, hosts and pathogens are engaged in an infinite game of rock-paper-scissors. Sexual reproduction allows hosts to change from rock to scissors to paper. (Not to be too… geeky… but those who play Magic the Gathering will recognize this as switching of the meta: the card decks that are very successful when your opponents are all playing one strategy becomes very unsuccessful once your opponents start using a different deck.)
Red King Theory
So if I may be as bold to proposed the "Red King Theory": programmed aging allows faster switching of the pathogen resistance genes.
See, if organisms lived forever, then switching from rock to scissors to paper would be really slow. What you want to do, to keep ahead of the pathogens, is wipe the slate clean and reboot the population with the next iteration. Faster you can reboot the population, more successful the hosts will be.
Some organism do this in a really big way. Bamboo of a species, for example, will all flower at the same time and then all die. Same thing with cicadas. Biologists generally believe these species to evade macro-pathogens (i.e., the predators) but there is no logical reason why they wouldn't use the same strategy to evade micro-pathogens (parasites and infectious organisms). In fact, micro-pathogens are in general much more dangerous than macro-pathogens. Besides, parasites have evolved a counter-strategy to mass die off (multiple host lifecycle) and the poor macro-pathogens never had to (e.g., the poor pandas who starve when the bamboos flower).
I don't simply mean that by dying the hosts are reducing the total parasite load. That happens too, but what's more important is that just as the pathogens are evolving to be successful in infecting one type of host, the host pulls the rug out from under them and switches around the pathogen resistance genes.
(I know some people won't like this theory because it smacks of group evolution, but I think the knee-jerk allergic reaction to group evolution is overblown.)
There are some implications of this theory. It suggests that during asexual reproduction, organisms shouldn't age, or at least not age as quickly. It suggests that under high pathogen or parasite load, organisms should age faster. It suggests that aging, inflammation and reproduction should be linked.
It's certainly true that many aspects of aging, such as cardiac disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease are driven by inflammation. And there is evidence suggesting that aging and reproduction is linked. For example, lower levels of GnRH, an important sex hormone, has been linked to aging.
(It also suggests that thinking of evolution at a single organism level may be too simplistic. Environment is not static, and the most important part of the environment, namely the pathogen populations, may vary very rapidly. Success in the natural selection process may require success not just in one generation but over multiple generations, suggesting that a better model for natural selection may require viewing evolution in a multigeneration context. Specifically, rather than concentrating on the set of genes that are phenotypically expressed in one generation, it may be useful to consider also the unexpressed genes, that are available to be expressed in future generations and that have been expressed in previous generations, in evaluating fitness. It may also be useful to consider the ability to quickly switch expressed and unexpressed genes across generation when evaluating fitness.)
I any case, the take-away is that aging is probably a programmed, evolutionarily selected, trait. And that means that it may very likely be modifiable with pharmaceutical intervention.
Filed under: aging
Hand of God or A Viral Shockwave?
Branding and Corporate Culture

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Los Angeles Sued Over Oil and Gas Drilling Ban
Save on Energy Costs With This DIY Solar Oven
Gas and Coal Failures Widespread as Largest Grid Operator in U.S. Struggled to Manage 'Winter Storm Elliott'
Biden Admin Announces First-of-Its-Kind Roadmap to Decarbonize U.S. Transit by 2050
South Korean Company Plans to Invest $2.5 Billion in New Solar Panel Factories in Georgia
PFAS 101: Everything You Need to Know About 'Forever Chemicals'
forever chemicals
Step Aboard the Solar-Powered 'Tesla on the Water'
Sustainable Home Swaps 101: How to Make Your Own Laundry Detergent
Rhode Island Looks to Provide Solar Energy to Lower-Income Homes Through Inflation Reduction Act Funding
Light Pollution: Everything You Need to Know
10 Eco-Minded Books to Read in 2023
How to Be an Energy-Efficient Cook
Exposed: The Most Polluted Place in the United States
20 Fossil Fuel Companies Are Responsible for a Third of Carbon Emissions
Jordan Davidson
Oct 09, 2019 5:32AM EDT Climate
Chimneys and cooling tower of a coal fired power station in in dramatic sunset light. Schroptschop / E+ / Getty Images
New research has shown that just 20 fossil fuel companies have allowed their relentless greed to ignore decades of warnings about what their practices were doing to the world, as The Guardian reported. Their exploitation of the world's oil, gas and coal reserves is directly linked to more than one-third of the planet's carbon emissions.
The new research found that the top 20 companies on the list have contributed to 35 percent of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane emissions worldwide, which adds up to 480 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent since 1965. That date is notable, since in 1965, the president of the American Petroleum Institute informed his industry about research into climate change caused by fossil fuels. "The substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world's peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is running out," said Frank Ikard in 1965, as Desmog reported.
That, along with many other warnings, has been thoroughly ignored and pushed the world into a climate crisis. In fact, it stands in stark contrast to the industry's current position, which was articulated by the head of OPEC, Mohammed Barkindo, who said this summer that climate activists are the biggest threat to the industry and they are making false claims that mislead the public with unscientific warnings about global warming, as EcoWatch reported.
"Civil society is being misled to believe oil is the cause of climate change," said Barkindo.
Twelve of the top 20 companies are state-owned. As a whole, they make up 20 percent of total emissions, lead by Saudi Aramco, which alone is responsible for over 4 percent of global emissions, according to the new analysis by the Climate Accountability Institute, as The Guardian reported.
As for investor-owned firms, California-based Chevron is the largest polluter, second behind Saudi Aramco and just ahead of Exxon. Household names Shell, BP, and ConocoPhillips also made the list. Exxon, Chevron and BP each donated 0,000 to Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017.
Michael Mann, one of the world's leading climate scientists, told The Guardian that the findings highlighted the outsized contribution that fossil fuel companies make to the climate crisis. He called on politicians at the forthcoming climate talks in Chile in December to take urgent measures to curtail industry activities.
"It is a great moral failing of our political system that we have allowed this to happen." –@MichaelEMann https://t.co/D0lNhiTqUg
— Daniel A. Zarrilli (@dzarrilli) October 9, 2019
"The great tragedy of the climate crisis is that seven and a half billion people must pay the price – in the form of a degraded planet – so that a couple of dozen polluting interests can continue to make record profits," said Mann to The Guardian. "It is a great moral failing of our political system that we have allowed this to happen."
The study also buffers Elizabeth Warren's point during the climate town hall when she said industry needs to be held accountable, not individuals.
In response to a question Chris Cuomo asked her about light bulbs, she answered in exasperation, "Oh come on, give me a break," Warren said to Cuomo. "This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants us to be talking about. That's what they want us to talk about: This is your problem." She went on to say that the fossil fuel industry wants "to stir up a lot of controversy around your light bulbs, around your straws and around your cheeseburgers."
Richard Heede of the Climate Accountability Institute, who led the research seemed to back her statement
"These companies and their products are substantially responsible for the climate emergency, have collectively delayed national and global action for decades, and can no longer hide behind the smokescreen that consumers are the responsible parties," he said to The Guardian."Oil, gas, and coal executives derail progress and offer platitudes when their vast capital, technical expertise, and moral obligation should enable rather than thwart the shift to a low-carbon future."
Fossil Fuel Divestment Debates on Campus Spotlight Societal Role ...
First Major U.S. Insurer Begins Divestment from Fossil Fuels ...
DNC to Ban Fossil Fuel Company Donations - EcoWatch
Blamed for Climate Change, Oil Companies Invest in Carbon Removal
climate crisiscoalfossil fuelsoil and gas
Gas and Coal Failures Widespread as Largest Grid Operator in U.S. Struggled to Manage 'Winter Storm Elliott'


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Airman pleads not guilty in alleged rape
Feb 9th, 2018 · by Craig Anderson · Comments:
Zepplin Ray Taylor McGinness
DOVER — A Dover Air Force Base airman entered not guilty pleas following his arrest Monday in connection with the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl, court documents indicate.
The airman, Zepplin Ray Taylor McGinness, 21, also admitted to having sex with the teen at his Dover Country Club Apartments residence four or five times in the past two months, according to an arrest adavit filed by Dover Police,
An interview was held Nov. 30, 2017, with a U.S. Air Force special agent after the airman was read his Article 31 Uniform Code of Military Justice rights, police said in papers.
The airman and juvenile apparently met and communicated on the online meeting site Tinder, according to charging documents.
"Zepplin Ray Taylor McGinness specifically stated that the intercourse occurred in his bedroom and on his bed," a Dover Police detective wrote.
"He advised that the (14-year-old girl) visits his apartment regularly."
In papers, the girl was described as a runaway from Dover who had been located at the airman's apartment at 11 Greenway Square twice. The time of the alleged offense was listed between No. 11 and Nov. 14, 2017, documents stated.
Mr. McGinness was arrested without incident. The juvenile was returned to a guardian, authorities said.
On Friday, Dover Air Force Base leadership confirmed awareness of the four counts of second-degree rape without consent and endangering the welfare of a child (harboring a runaway).
"We are cooperating with local law enforcement agencies to ensure the investigation is completed fully," a statement read.
"Airman 1st Class Zepplin Taylor McGinness is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. However, we take all allegations seriously as sexual assault is a crime which violates our core values …"
DAFB referred charge-related questions to the Dover Police Department and Delaware Attorney General's office.
"Currently, this is an open investigation and the jurisdiction lies with the Dover Police Department," the statement continued.
"To protect the integrity of the investigation, only the Dover Police Department or the Delaware Attorney General's office may release specific information about the case."
A DAFB spokesman said Mr. McGinness is an active duty aircraft maintainer assigned to the 436th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. He has been at DAFB since October 2014.
Mr. McGinness was held at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna after initially failing to post $100,500 secured bond Thursday. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Friday in the Kent County Court of Common Pleas.
The airman remained on active duty status as of Friday afternoon, DAFB said.
Other DAFB cases
The Associated Press reported Thursday that the arrest came as a former airman who also was stationed at Dover awaits sentencing for sexual abuse of another teenage runaway.
Dalian Washington, who is to be sentenced Feb. 21, faces at least 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to child sex trafficking.
Washington and another airman, Akeem Beazer, were arrested last April after a young teen, who officials say had a troubled home life and often lived on the street, told a social worker that she had stayed on the military base and had sex with service members.
Beazer was sentenced last month to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to sexual abuse of a minor.
In October 2018, an airman stationed at DAFB was sentenced federally to five years of prison followed by 10 years of supervised release for having allegedly collected more than 10,000 images and 3,000 videos of children engaging in sexually explicit conduct, including but not limited to sexual intercourse, according to the United States Attorney District of Delaware.
Of the 162 identified victims, federal authorities said 16 came forward seeking restitution. The U.S. District Court awarded $48,000 in total restitution, for the known victims.
Reach staff writer Craig Anderson at canderson@newszap.com
Tags:Crime · Featured


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Janie Lois Barnes, 73
Janie Lois Barnes, 73, a McMinnville resident and White County native, was born Oct. 17, 1947 and died May 28 at St. Thomas West following an extended illness.
She was a private caregiver, and the daughter of the late James Franklin and Lula Fuqua Rollins. In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death husband, James Edward "Barney" Barnes, son George Christopher Holland, and brother Jim Rollins.
Mrs. Barnes is survived by children and spouses, Jamie and Heath Griffith of McMinnville, Tammy and Bob Ried of Florida, Jackie Holland Hawkins of McMinnville, Emily and Brian West of Murfreesboro, and Bud Holland of McMinnville, 15 grandchildren, Alicia Hale, Nick Ried, Matt (Lacie) Ried, Ashley (Micah) Black, Kristi (Kyle) Comfort, Christopher Thompson, Jack Holland, Christopher Holland, McKenley Holland, Jaelyn Holland, Holly Cherry, and Josh Thompson, 15 great-grandchildren, three sisters Juanita Jones of Nashville, Mary Cantrell of McMinnville, and Kathy (Jerry) Hudson of McMinnville, sister-in-law Mary Ellen Rollins, and life-long friend, Jack Holland. Several nieces, nephews, and cousins also survive.
Funeral service was held at 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 1, at High's Chapel with Steve Hillis and Don Griffith officiating. Burial followed at New Bon Air Cemetery in White County. Online condolences may be made at www.highfuneralhome.com.
High Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
(McMinnville, Tenn.) June 2, 2021


Mixed in the Six is extremely excited to announce our first ever comedy night in conjunction with the Gladstone Hotel!
We are lucky to have four extremely talented mixed-race comics on the stage this evening: Nick Reynoldson, Patrick Hakeem, Adrian Cronk and MIT6 OG Jen Sakato as the host for the evening's festivities.
An assortment of snacks and canapés will be served by Chef Haan Palcu-Chang and will highlight his mixed roots and the multicultural city he grew up in, Toronto. Vegan and Gluten-Free options will be available.
Growing up mixed-race in Scarborough, Nick Reynoldson has a unique view of the world. Sharp, smart and energetic this young comic is quickly on the rise. Nick has appeared in major festivals and television including; Just for Laughs, JFL42 New Faces, Winnipeg Comedy Festival, NXNE, MTV, MUCH, as well as multiple commercials.
This Montreal transplant brings high energy and sometimes even chaos to the stage. His mixed-race experiences are featured heavily in his act which has been performed at JFL42, Zoofest and on stages across Canada.
Adrian Cronk has been featured at the world-famous Just For Laughs Festival, been featured on CBC and Kevin Hart's Laugh Out Loud network.
His mixed-race experiences cultivated from Canada to the Carolinas have led to a razor-sharp sense of humor that is unique and hilarious.
Born and raised in Toronto, Jen Sakato's material is heavily influenced by being mixed-race. She has performed across Canada and Asia and the San Diego Comedy Festival.


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Ronaldo, Salah, Modric shortlisted for FIFA Men's Player of the Year Award
Ronaldo, Salah, Modric shortlisted for FIFA Men's Player of the Year Award
Shehu Sani is Suing EFCC N100 Million for Illegally Detaining him
#BNQuoteoftheDay
Ghana is Planning on Making the "Year of Return" a Permanent Fixture on its Annual Calendar
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been Honored with the First Belle van Zuylenring Award in Netherlands
Premium Times: OAU is Currently Dealing with another Alleged Sex-For-Marks Scandal
For the first time in 12 years, Barcelona and Argentina star Lionel Messi has been snubbed for the FIFA Best Men's Player of the Year award.
5-time winner Cristiano Ronaldo and UEFA Footballer of the Year Luka Modric who helped Real Madrid to a consecutive UEFA Champions League win have been shortlisted, as well as Mohammed Salah who was phenomenal for Liverpool in the past season.
Ronaldo was the highest goal scorer in the UEFA Champions League while Modric saw his national team Croatia to the World Cup Final and won the best player of the tournament.
Salah's phenomenal season saw him lead his Premier League club to the UEFA Champions League final.
The award ceremony will take place September 24 in London.
Related Topics:ArgentinaBarcelonaCristiano RonaldoCroatiaFIFA Best Men's Player of the YearLionel MessiLiverpoolLuka ModricMohammed SalahReal madrid
DSS says Journalist Jones Abiri was detained in interest of National Security
Eunice Atuejide isn't Happy with Donald Duke & his Statement on Gay Rights
ijebujesha
Luka Modric!!!!
Odion Ighodalo, Asisat Oshoala, Victor Osimhen Make CAF 2019 Awards Shortlist | Check out the Full List
Lionel Messi wins the Ballon d'Or for a record 6th Time
Paul Okoye has a Heart-warming Story about his Encounter with an International Footballer


A close-to-everything location, this luxury real estate community with three championship golf courses and a cosmopolitan atmosphere amid lush natural surroundings have made Lely Resort Golf & Country Club one of the most sought-after Naples new home communities.
Set in the heart of Naples, Florida, Lely Resort is just minutes from the beautiful beaches and the highly desirable Fifth Avenue Shopping District. Lely Resort has long been regarded as one of the premier communities in Southwest Florida, featuring a spectacular collection of new Naples homes. Lely Resort offers 8 unique neighborhoods with quality builders to choose from, with prices from the $200s to over $2 million and over 15 beautifully decorated model homes in Naples to tour. These exclusive Naples real estate homes feature all the finest appointments and many provide brilliant views of the golf course or protected nature preserves.


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Action: Use 'mussel socks' to prevent birds from attacking shellfish
Read our guidance on Key messages before continuing
A randomised, replicated controlled experiment in Canada found that fewer medium-sized mussels were taken from mussel socks with a protective 'sleeve', compared to un-sleeved socks. There were no differences for small or large mussels.
Background information and definitions
'Mussel socks' are protective netting materials designed to reduce predation by birds on shellfish. The socks are made from polypropylene material with a biodegradable layer sown around it. The second layer (which has smaller mesh openings) prevents mussels from migrating towards the outside of the sock in order to filter feed and so reduces the threat from predation. The mussels are buffered between these layers over winter until the following spring when the protective layer decomposes and allows mussel growth to continue unhindered.
Supporting evidence from individual studies
A randomised, replicated controlled experiment in October 2002 in three bays on Prince Edward Island, Canada (Dionne et al. 2006), found that mussel socks with a 'sleeve' of a biodegradable cotton-polyester mesh lost fewer medium-sized (20 mm) mussels to greater scaup Aythya marila predation than un-sleeved socks. Losses were similar for small (14 mm) and large (26 mm) mussels, but more small mussels migrated through sleeved socks (thus more vulnerable to predation).
Referenced papers
Barbeau M.A., Hamilton D.J., Lauzon-Guay J. & Dionne M. (2006) Protective socking material for cultivated mussels: a potential non-disruptive deterrent to reduce losses to diving ducks. Aquaculture International, 14, 595-613
Please cite as:
Williams, D.R., Child, M.F., Dicks, L.V., Ockendon, N., Pople, R.G., Showler, D.A., Walsh, J.C., zu Ermgassen, E.K.H.J. & Sutherland, W.J. (2019) Bird Conservation. Pages 141-290 in: W.J. Sutherland, L.V. Dicks, N. Ockendon, S.O. Petrovan & R.K. Smith (eds) What Works in Conservation 2019. Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK.
Overall Effectiveness Category: Likely to be beneficial
Effectiveness: 50%
Certainty: 41%
Harms: 0%
Where has this evidence come from?
Click here to see the list of journals searched for this synopsis, and here to see all the journals searched for all synopses.
Source countries
Use netting to exclude fish-eating birds
Deter birds from landing on shellfish culture gear by suspending oyster bags under water
Disturb birds at roosts
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An assessment by independent experts of the harms of this action to the target group of species/habitat, based on the summarized evidence (0% = none, 100% = major undesirable effects). Undesirable effects on other groups of species/habitats are not considered in this score. The harms score is combined with the effectiveness and certainty scores to determine the overall effectiveness category (for more details see https://www.conservationevidence.com/content/page/79).
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Playwork steering group calls for halt in standards review
New playwork body steering group asks sector skills council to rethink its position on Playwork Principles.
The steering group for the initiative to develop a new vehicle for playwork has written to SkillsActive urging the sector skills council to pause the current review of the national occupational standards to address widespread concerns in the field, including that the cornerstone Playwork Principles are to be dropped or replaced.
A statement by the Playwork Principles Scrutiny Group, has warned that 'the revised national occupational standards should not be informed by any statement other than the Playwork Principles. To do otherwise would represent a breach of trust between SkillsActive and the playwork profession'.
The steering group wants a fuller debate to engage the playwork community; and to ensure employers, awarding bodies and the government agencies they are answering to, respond to its deep concerns.
Practitioners are concerned that National Occupational Standards are missing the point of playwork. Photo: A.Voce
These have been further highlighted in a recent article by Shelley Newstead, the managing editor of the Journal of Playwork Practice. In a detailed and scholarly critique of the review, Newstead decries the failure of the NOS to reflect the essence of playwork practice and warns that playwork, as being developed within this framework, is in danger of 'turning into another form of the institutionalisation of children'.
While acknowledging, in its letter to SkillsActive, that the sector skills council has 'worked closely with an expert working group made up of playworkers in order to ensure the new NOS is as representative of and faithful to playwork as possible', the new vehicle steering group asserts that the abandonment of the Playwork Principles in full, as a cohesive statement, is unacceptable. It argues 'that good playwork practice must fully inform this review process rather than have to follow it. The cornerstone statements of good practice surely cannot be changed without the consensus of the practitioner community'.
SkillsActive has assured the group that its 'concern will be included in the (NOS) consultation report'.
The letter to Skillsactive from the steering group for a new vehicle for playwork can be read here.
Categories News Release


To celebrate I thought it was only fitting to throw a 90's party to celebrate. After all, that's when all us 40-year-olds were in our prime, right? Well, I'll tell you now, it's been a good 25 years since I've seen that much flannelette in one place!
Meanwhile, my other very talented friend and I headed to Woolworths with two trolleys and a mission to shop. My friend Linda (from Ever So Sweet) is just so talented with grazing platters and she put together the most amazing (and very un-90's) grazing platter for the party. We also did a dessert grazing platter full of fun lollies and cakes we used to eat in the 90's. How amazing did it look?
Because I knew the party would go late we also served up parties pies and sausage rolls, fish pieces, and some other hot food.
Then we hit up BWS for the alcohol. We were on a mission to make our favourite 90's punch – bin punch! Basically, you fill a plastic bin (we bought a new one I swear!) with juice, lemonade, champagne, vodka, and fruit. It was a hit on the night for sure! I also bought beer and wine and some Lemon Ruskies for the 90's nostalgia lol!
I'm normally the cake maker in the family but my sister really stepped up to the challenge and created a spectacular cake by hacking three Woolworths mud cakes and creating a chocolate drip cake that looked and tasted amazing!
Everyone dressed to the theme – So much flannelette, so many band shirts and I'd forgotten all about crushed velvet! Everyone looked amazing and it was so much fun. I made a massive Spotify playlist with all the best songs of the 90's to play all night.
I think we will have to do it again next year!
Looks like a fantastic night!!! That cake looks amazing!! 90's is a great idea for a theme!


Hideo Nakata (中田 秀夫, Nakata Hideo, born July 19, 1961) is a Japanese filmmaker.
Nakata was born in Okayama, Japan. He is most familiar to Western audiences for his work on Japanese horror films such as Ring (1998), Ring 2 (1999) and Dark Water (2002). Several of these were remade in America as The Ring (2002), Dark Water (2005), and The Ring Two.
Nakata was scheduled to make his English-language debut with True Believers, but later pulled out. He was later offered by DreamWorks to direct the movie The Ring Two (2005), which he accepted, making his English-language debut with a sequel to a remake of his own film.
Nakata made his initial breakthrough into film with Ghost Actress (1996). Although failing to attain any large-scale success, the film was responsible for leading to his directing of Ring.
Other Nakata films include Sleeping Bride (2000); Curse, Death and Spirit; and Chaos (2000). He directed the psychological thriller The Incite Mill which premiered on 16 October 2010 in Japan. He has now completed a Japanese ghost story, Kaidan. Nakata is currently working on Hearn, which is about the life of Lafcadio Hearn who wrote Kwaidan.
He is represented by United Talent Agency. His film Chatroom, was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
^ Schilling, Mark (18 January 2010). "Hideo Nakata to direct 'Incite Mill'". Variety.
^ "Nakata direct Incite Mill". DreadCentral.
^ "ENOUGH of These Underground Games. Hideo Nakata, It's a Little Late". BloodyDisgusting.
^ "New Trailer: Spend Some Time in Hideo Nakata's The Incite Mill". DreadCentral.
^ "Full Trailer for Hideo Nakata's 'The Incite Mill'". DreadCentral.
^ Leffler, Rebecca (15 April 2010). "Hollywood Reporter: Cannes Lineup". hollywoodreporter. Archived from the original on April 22, 2010. Retrieved 2010-04-17.
^ "Fujiwara Tatsuya To Star In Japanese Remake Of Haunters". Japanverse. Archived from the original on 2013-07-02.
This page was last edited on 2 April 2019, at 16:21 (UTC).


KUALA LUMPUR: A day after the controversial National Security Council (NSC) Act came into force, jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim filed an application in court on Tuesday (Aug 2) through his lawyer N Surendren to nullify the act that is said to be unconstitutional.
Anwar's lawyer said he is also seeking an injunction to stop the implementation of the act that is said to give extensive powers to Prime Minister Najib Razak – who chairs the national security council – to designate any security areas and direct the police and armed forces to conduct arrest, search and seizure without warrants.
Anwar's wife Wan Azizah who is also president of Parti Keadilan said the conference of rulers' earlier request for a thorough review of the NSC Act must be respected.
"Anwar as the opposition leader is taking the lead, showing us the way forward. We must fight back, the conference of rulers specifically asked for a review but it wasn't heeded, this is important," she added when asked for the jailed opposition leader's response.
Any action by NSC will also not be subjected to legal proceeding or actions.
While the government says the act will enable the various enforcement agencies to coordinate their responses in the event of a terror attack, civil rights groups and opposition leaders warn that the new act is easily open to abuse as too much powers are concentrated in hands of the prime minister.
Furthermore, the act is said to have usurped the powers vested in the traditional rulers as commander-in-chief of the armed forces under the federal constitution.
The NSC bill which was tabled in December 2015, was rushed through parliament and passed without obtaining royal ascent.
Under an amendment to the constitution, an act automatically becomes law after its gazetted for 30 days.
You are subscribed to email updates from Anwar Ibrahim.


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Tag Archives: belonging
August 29, 2020 by dereknewmanstille
An Interview with Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay
By Derek Newman-Stille
Today, I chat with CanLit scholar Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay about some trends in Canadian literature, ideas of belonging and the Canadian Nation State, and Canadian music. Thank you to Sebastian for joining us here and sharing his insights.
Spec Can: To begin our interview, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: Absolutely, I'm currently a PhD Candidate at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies at Trent University. I have a broad interest in Canadian literature and cultural history, specifically how they interact with ideas of nationalism(s) and national identity.
Spec Can: A lot of people hear "Canadian Studies" and they think this means pro-nationalist. Can you tell us a little about your perceptions of nationalisms and national identity?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: That is something that I have to constantly confront within myself and my work. I think that what Canadian Studies as an interdisciplinary field of study which includes within it the possibility of a multitude of interpretations and approaches to Canada's past and present has historically aimed to resist easy readings of nationalism. I understand why people would feel that way, however, the field was more of less created at a time in the mid-twentieth century when there was legitimate worry about the state of Canada. For many, higher education became the locus of their anxieties. We can debate in retrospect whether or not their concerns were justified, but we can't discount that these were real concerns being expressed. The field that would eventually find its home at Trent, is now one which is actively resistant to singular readings of Canadian history. In my own work, especially some of the papers I've given on Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip, have demonstrated is the untenability of a unified national culture in Canada. I feel like nationalizing statements which followed The Hip around for most of their career and culminated in the CBC produced "National Celebration" is wonderful, but the sentiments tend to fall apart as soon as you begin to expose them to level of scrutiny. I think that's a good thing, and from all the interviews and articles I've read with Gord Downie, he would have been the first to agree and resist that kind nationalizing message.
Spec Can: Can you tell us a bit about some of the anxieties that shaped the development of Canadian Studies?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: Gladly! In my opinion, the basis of these anxieties is the question of our relationship, in the twentieth century, to Britain on the one hand, and the increasingly powerful and influential United States. I would say these tensions have underpinned Canadian history since Confederation, and arguably before, but I think they begin to take on a popularized tone in the years immediately following the Second World War with the advent of new forms of mass media. Large numbers of Canadians suddenly became acutely aware of the fact that the majority of the television and radio shows they were consuming were American and the novelists and writers, and the magazines they wrote for were as well. Add to this the fact that Canadian universities were hiring almost exclusively British or American Professors and I think it's understandable that people became alarmed about the lack of Canadian representation in these institutions. One of the most illustrative novels from this period, in my opinion, is "The Watch that Ends the Night" by Hugh MacLennan where the main character George Stewart constantly reflects upon the generational and ideological shifts following the war and its relation to Canada's place in the world. He's also the host of a radio show and lives in constant fear of one day being made redundant by the growing popularity of television. These kinds of concerns would eventually lead to the Massey Report of 1951 which outlined the need for the government of Canada to intentionally promote and develop a "distinct" artistic culture. I use the word culture with hesitation as Vincent Massey was notoriously reluctant to use it in the report, due in large part to its slippery definition and my own reluctance to suggest there is any unified "culture" in Canada. We're lucky enough here at Trent to follow in the footsteps of founding President, Professor Tom Symons, whose report "To Know Ourselves" outlined the need for Canadian content in universities. Prior to that, there was of course the more radically nationalist document "The Struggle for Canadian Universities" by Robin Matthews and James Steele. Both documents provide the rationale for Canadians teaching Canadian topics in Canada, which at the time was quite radical. It's hard to place ourselves in that place, and I think it can be temping to under estimate just how palpable these concerns were for those involved in bringing about these changes. I just hope we never take it for granted!
Spec Can: Why, in your opinion, does Canada constantly seem to be seeking its own identity and trying to articulate what it means to be Canadian?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: Ahh, the eternal question!
Spec Can: What are some of your thoughts on the subject?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: In all seriousness, this is, for me at least, the motivating question behind my work here at Trent. I think it's based in the fact that as a nation, Canada has never really had a unified sense of self and as I said earlier, that's absolutely a good thing! I think it's been true at a broader constitutional level since confederation. While the original BNA Act of 1867 was a far from a perfect document, I think it achieved a certain recognition of the regional and ethnic differences of the nation, as these ideas were then recognized, again, imperfectly, and with terribly racist exclusions, but which set the stage for the next 153 years of searching for a some sort of a unified identity. I think the closest we've come is the Charter's vision of a civic, constitutionally endowed right to belong to and relate to the "nation" of Canada as one chooses at an individual level. It's imperfect, yes, but evolving and I would be out of a job if we ever settled it.
Spec Can: What got you interested in the work fo Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: You could say I was born into it, almost literally as my Mom was pregnant with me when she first saw The Tragically Hip perform. My parents are huge influences on me in many ways, but one of the biggest ways was fostering and encouraging my love of music as well as my love of reading and writing.
Spec Can: Oh wow, so it is very personal for you!
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: Yes it is. The Hip's music has always been in my life. When Gord Downie passed away in 2017, I was a year away from starting my PhD, but I remember thinking about how interesting it would be to work on a project that explored Canadian identity through their music.
Spec Can: Speaking of reading and writing, you mentioned that your research involves Canadian literature. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: Yes, of course! I'll admit that my interest in Canadian literature tends towards the conventional 'big names' of the post-war period through to 1960s and 70s and mainly with fiction. I spend a lot of time with Hugh MacLennan, Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, Adele Wiseman, Leonard Cohen, Robertson Davies etc. I'm also quite interested in the journalistic work of Peter Gzowski. My main interest, however, is in exploring how their work interacted with larger historical or social themes of those decades in a Canadian context. It's also the period of time when the idea of what we might call "CanLit" today really took shape alongside the necessary publishing industry. Today, there's a lot of criticism of CanLit both as an idea and an industry, much of which I think is absolutely warranted and important. The idea, in Alicia Elliot's provocative words, that CanLit is a raging dumpster fire motivates me to figure out how the fire got started. In a way, my focus on these writers is an attempt to perform a crime scene analysis to find out how the fire got started, while it's still raging, because it most certainly is!
Spec Can: What are some of the social themes that you notice keep being explored in CanLit?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: I think the biggest thing historically, and it's no surprise given the overall theme of our discussion, is the pervasive questioning of identity within Canada. To add to this, however, there is a constant theme of belonging, both to a community and within the nation of Canada itself. I don't think that these are necessarily unique to CanLit, but I do feel that the way Canada is constituted almost begs these questions rise up in literature written within it and about people living here, no matter where they were born. On a side note, I've always found it interesting that some of our foremost contemporary writers here in Canada came here as adults and have written so movingly about the experience and challenges of coming to live in Canada. Writers like Dionne Brand, Michael Ondaatje, and Rawi Hage spring immediately to mind when I think of this specific aspect of CanLit.
Spec Can: What ideas of belonging are explored particularly amongst marginalized Canadians? And what does this say about Canada's portrayal of itself as a "multicultural" and "welcoming" community?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: I think that it's important to separate the concept of multiculturalism from its legislative history. As legislation, it gives a name to the embodied experience of marginalized peoples in Canada without doing much to actively change the circumstances of their experience of belonging within the nation. You don't have to dig very deep into the writing of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) writers in Canada, both presently and historically, to understand the fact that issues of belonging have been at stake within the geographic space we now call Canada since the beginning of colonization and that these voices, though historically under represented and under studied, have always provided a critique of the Canadian state as a welcoming space. I think it's also important to recognize that the context out of which Official Multiculturalism came about was at a time of resurgent Québec nationalism which was seen as a legitimate threat to the unity of Canadian federalism. Playing minority interests off of each other is hardly the definition of being warm and welcoming, but it has certainly served its purpose of keeping the federation together, at least for now!
Spec Can: What are some other trends you are noticing in CanLit?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: I think the larger academic discussion over the past few years has been to rigorously question the project of CanLit. The collection "Refuse: CanLit in Ruins" has brought to popular attention the ways in which the publishing industry has worked to further marginalize BIPOC voices as well as those of women and members of the two spirit community. One of the most powerful arguments coming out of that collection is Joshua Whitehead's commitment to remain accountable to community while the larger CanLit project continues to remain complicit in exclusionary and silencing practises. I don't want to co-opt Whitehead's words here or use them to make arguments about other writers and their relations, but I do think that discussions around accountability to community instead of institutions is a major trend and conversation happening right now amongst writers and academics surrounding literary work in Canada. I think it's extremely important.
Spec Can: What things need to change to actually make CanLit responsible to the public? How can we make a socially just literature?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: I think a really important thing is to gain an understanding of the history of the writing in this country. Part of why I'm so interested in reading works written from the 1940s onwards is that it serves to remind us that the issues we're discussing have a history and that they're not new discussions in any way. I think we're better equipped to talk about the present when we have a firm understanding of the past. When I read people like Margaret Laurence, I get the sense that she would have been at the front lines of current debates surrounding racial justice and the necessity of the recognition of Indigenous rights. She, like all of us, was writing out of her own context and circumstance and is limited by that, but I think it's humbling to be reminded that we're part of an ongoing conversation about the concept of justice and are hopefully always making progress while also recognizing where new forms of injustice are located and never settling the conversation, either with the past or the future.
Spec Can: To wrap up our interview, is there anything further you would like to add?
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay: Thank you so much for the opportunity! This has been a lot of fun!
Spec Can: I want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview and share your insights with us.
Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay is a PhD Candidate at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies at Trent University. My main research interests include twentieth century Canadian literature and popular culture, specifically the interaction between political movements/ideologies and expressions of Canadian cultural nationalism(s) in texts written between 1940 and 1990. To this end, I have written and presented papers on the Tragically Hip and Gord Downie through the lens of cultural and celebrity studies. A related interest is in Canadian life-writing and biography in all its forms from across the twentieth century. I am currently working alongside Dr Whitney Lackenbauer, on the editing and publication of an Arctic Memoirs Series which will bring to light previously unpublished memoirs in accessible e-book format.
Interviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD ABD (They/Them)
Tagged belonging, Canadian Identity, Canadian Studies, CanLIt, interviews, literary analysis, literature for social change, research, Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay
October 20, 2017 by dereknewmanstille
Here Be MonstersA review of Michal Wojcik's "A New Bestiary" in Those Who Make Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories edited by Kelsi Morris and Kaitlin Tremblay (Exile, 2016)
Michal Wojcik's "A New Bestiary" is a posthuman tale about body modification. In this near future fiction piece, Mojcik presents a world where people are remaking themselves into monsters as a way to claim a new, non-human identity for themselves. Ranging from Centaurs to Satyrs to Merpeople to Cyclopes, these monsters are not merely evincing biological change, they are building new, resistant identities.
However, these identities surpass medical modification and the changing of the biological start to change the world, shifting the world to a new space of monsters, a new cartography and vision for the functioning of the world. Islands begin to appear in the ocean that hadn't existed before and the world seems to be altering itself to medieval settings in a form of vast restoration. Bodies are no longer scarred through their transformations and medical modifications, but are reborn as monsters. The medical is undone and replaced by the miraculous.
Wojcik offers a transhuman tale that questions the idea of the simple boundaries of human existence, inviting the reader to imagine the role of the monster as the ultimate outsider to challenge the simple boundaries policing human definition.
Wojcik's narrator, Melanie, originally biologically modifies herself as a way of speaking back against resistant classifications and to gain confidence. She embraces a chimera image of assembled animal and insect parts, not wanting to limit herself to existing monster imagery, but instead to construct a new identity. But her identity isn't just a challenge for others, it is an internalized question, an invitation for her to redefine herself and her place in a world that values normalcy even when there are possibilities for transhuman bodies.
Wojcik's "A New Bestiary" collides against normativity in our world, inviting us to reimagine our world and rankle at our restrictions. This is a story of home that asks how we define "home" and "belonging".
To discover more about Those Who Make Us, visit https://thosewhomakeus.wordpress.com
Posted in Fiction Book Reviews
Tagged belonging, body, change, cosmetic surgery, Diversity, home, human rights, identity, Kaitlin Tremblay, Kelsi Morris, Medieval, Michal Wojcik, Monstrosity, outsider, Posthuman, reviews, Transhumanism
October 3, 2015 by dereknewmanstille
Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 48: A Discussion of the Work of Max Turner
In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I interrogate the work of Max Turner, an author who explores the notion of the psychiatric institution through the perspective of a vampire. Turner sets his vampiric character in a former psychiatric institution in Peterborough Ontario called the Nicholls' Ward. In this discussion of Max Turner's work, I explore ideas of aging, coming-of-age narratives, expectations of young adult fiction, vampirism, assumptions about psychiatric institutions, and general ideas of home and belonging.
You can listen to this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio at the link below.
http://www.dereknewmanstille.ca/media/trentradio/150807_episode51_max-turner.mp3
Explore Trent Radio at http://www.trentradio.ca
This audio file was originally broadcast on Trent Radio, and I would like to thank Trent Radio for their continued support. I would also like to thank Dwayne Collins for his consistent tech support and help with the intricacies of creating audio files.
Make sure to allow a few minutes for the file to buffer since it may take a moment before it begins to play.
You can explore Max Turner's work at http://maxturner.ca/
Posted in Fiction Book Reviews, On Air
Tagged aging, audio files, belonging, coming of age, disability, home, institutionalization, On Air, Peterborough, psychiatric, reviews, Teen Fiction, Trent Radio, vampire, Young Adult
May 18, 2015 by dereknewmanstille
UNsettling Homelife
A review of They Have to Take You In edited by Ursula Pflug (Hidden Brook Press, 2014).
Home is a complicated concept, but one that we often pretend is easy. We project "home" as a place of belonging, of comfort, of ownership, and an extended form of selfhood, and we connect ideas to home like family, security, safety…. But these concepts are always open to challenge, to question, particularly by those whose home lives don't match the assumed standard. Ursula Pflug's edited collection They Have to Take You In blends the speculative and realist literature that borders on auto-ethnographic in cases to explore this multiplicity of "homes" and to challenge the safe, secure image of "home" that society prefers to construct to the exclusion of other options.
As much as They Have to Take You In is about home, it is more about exile: the experience of being Othered, of not being able to find that place of comfort and security that is promised through the notion of "home". The authors in this collection remind readers of the unsettling power of home, its ability to make people feel excluded because it focuses so strongly on the promise of belonging, and that sense of belonging only works for people in positions of privilege. The characters in these stories are Othered from a sense of home through poverty, homelessness, alcoholism, dementia, the need to escape from abusive homes, as well as a sense of wanderlust. The authors explore the possibility that sometimes you have to leave the place where you have settled in order to find home… and sometimes you can't ever find home, can't discover a place of belonging. The multiplicity of these narratives provides a space for exploring home as a place of security… and simultaneously suggests that, for some, ESCAPE from home is a place of safety.
Connected to home is the notion of family, an idea that has been shaped by historical circumstances (industrial systems, labour, political and religious ideologies), but that has pretended to be natural and enduring. They Have to Take You In complicates family as a natural category. In addition to showing assumptions about traditional family structures, these stories complicate these structures, invite speculation and open them up to question the ways in which "family" as a category can be exclusionary, delimiting possibilities for other interactions.
Many of the endings in these stories are open, uncertain things because the reality of home life is that nothing ever really ends and everything is always open to change and reassessment. Homes are places that are always complicated and always haunted by the potential failing of the home as a place of belonging, security, and safety. Deep down, we, as readers, know that while we feel safe in our homes, there are those who are homeless, those whose homelife is marked by domestic violence and who need to escape, those whose housing is precarious because of poverty, and so all houses are haunted places… haunted by the myths of belonging, security, and safety that are not as ubiquitous as they pretend to be.
To discover more about They Have to Take You In, visit Hidden Brook Press at http://www.HiddenBrookPress.com .
To discover more about the work of Ursula Pflug, visit her website at http://ursulapflug.ca
Tagged belonging, displacement, domestic abuse, family, home, homelessness, poverty, Ursula Pflug, wanderlust
Sharing Darkness
A review of Marie Bilodeau's Destiny's Blood (Dragon Moon Press, 2010)
Cover for Marie Bilodeau's Destiny's Blood courtesy of http://mariebilodeau.blogspot.ca/p/destinys-blood.html
The motivation to find home, to create a sense of belonging shapes much of our experiences. We are tied to ideas of family, place, and community. Marie Bilodeau's Destiny's Blood is an exploration of home from the perspective of loss, need, warring desires, and conflict. Even when venturing through the dark depths of space… we still keep getting called home, returning to a place of memories and we are always searching for a selfhood that is attached to the notion of connection.
Layela and her twin sister Yoma have been on the streets since youth, surviving through theft and constant movement to avoid any legal troubles, but after Layela was assaulted by a Kilita who ripped into her thoughts to see her visions, Layela's life has been shaped by trauma. Seeing the future in her visions, she is nonetheless constantly mentally returning to the past, to that moment of pain and horror that has shaped her. Seeking to create a future for herself that is calm, that contrasts with the horrors she sees in her visions at night, she decides to create a flower shop, to settle down amid the relaxing scent of vegetation and create a sense of belonging, a place to be home.
But the future persists and Layela is ripped again from the calm she attempts to forge around her pained heart when her sister disappears, she is arrested without warrant, and the police destroy the home she tried to create for herself. She is uprooted, pulled from the planet that she hoped to turn into her home and is once again tossed into the abyss of space and a future that is not as uncertain as it should be.
Destiny's Blood asks whether home can be a place one has no memory of, whether a distant star can call to one's blood and stir up a restlessness that can't find a home no matter how much one tries to create one. Layela is being called by the star around which she was born, a star that is linked to myth… and more personally to her own origins and sense of belonging and it is a star that feeds the universe with ether, a substance that several alien races depend on and that has dwindled in recent years, leaving many of them all but extinct.
Marie Bilodeau's space fantasy maps out ideas of destiny and the longing for home that shapes people, propels them into the void, searching for something constantly and unable to settle. She charts the way that that need to belong lets people react with extremes: willing to sacrifice the present for a past that lingers, willing to kill to create home. Longing is like pain, like the emptiness of space waiting to be filled by a sense of the familiar, a place of belonging. Her characters are motivated by a persistent sense of loss, and yet they experience it in unique and nuanced ways, illustrating the complexity of loss: urged toward a desire to escape, to forget, to hold on to anything possible, to protect, or even to hate, to delve into the seemingly endless pit of vengeance that the persistence of loss can create.
Destiny's Blood conveys a transient aesthetic, a constant searching that would be evoked by being tossed out across a cosmic void.
To find out more about Marie Bilodeau's work, visit her website at http://mariebilodeau.blogspot.ca/ .
To discover more about Destiny's Blood and other books in the destiny series, visit http://mariebilodeau.blogspot.ca/p/destinys-blood.html .
If you want to hear Marie Bilodeau do a short reading from the Destiny series, visit her author reading at https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2014/06/24/speculating-canada-on-trent-radio-episode-9-a-mythic-night-an-author-reading-by-marie-bilodeau-and-karen-dudley/
Marie Bilodeau and Derek Newman-Stille at Sadleir House for the author reading A Mythic Night
Tagged belonging, home, homelessness, longing, loss, Marie Bilodeau, reviews, sacrifice, Science Fiction, space travel, trauma
July 7, 2014 by dereknewmanstille
Home is a Place Created in Tales
A review of Amal El-Mohtar's Mon pays c'est l'hiver (Lackington's issue one, Winter, 2014 http://lackingtons.com/2014/02/13/mon-pays-cest-lhiver/ )
We pretend that home is an easy concept, something that comes easily, but Amal El-Mohtar's Mon pays c'est l'hiver poetically charts the challenge of home. We hold on to memories of a wintery, beautiful landscape. But our sense of place always shifts. Nostalgia is something that creates a home that we can never return to, an idealised notion of home that is forever slipping away.
Mon pays c'est l'hiver reveals that that wintery beauty of nostalgia is something created in the labyrinths of the self, in the complex passageways of the heart, made of memory and substanceless desire. Nostalgia can be something alluring, constantly calling us back to an idea of belonging that is always slipping away, always proving itself non-existent when played out in our current existence. Home is a changed place, and a place that is perpetually shifting and El-Mohtar reveals to us that we are always travellers, always venturing in and out of memories of different experiences… and that perhaps the best way for us to 'come home' is to create it, build it with stories and tales that abstract from memory, that create new realms of belonging.
To read Mon pays c'est l'hiver, visit Lackington's website at http://lackingtons.com/2014/02/13/mon-pays-cest-lhiver/
To discover more about Amal El-Mohtar's work, visit her website at http://amalelmohtar.com/
Artwork for 'Mon pays c'est l'hiver' in Lackinton's issue 1 illustrated by Paula Arwen Friedlander
Tagged Amal El-Mohtar, belonging, change, home, Lackington's, nostalgia, reviews, telling stories, winter
September 20, 2013 by dereknewmanstille
Opening the Mysterious
A review of Randy McCharles, Billie Milholland, Eileen Bell, and Ryan McFadden's The Puzzle Box (Edge, 2013)
Cover Photo of The Puzzle Box courtesy of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
When I first came across The Puzzle Box, the first image that came to mind was Hellraiser (1987), so I was prepared for my entire reality to be distorted and changed by opening the pages of this book. Like the puzzle box itself, opening these pages changes one, alters perceptions, and changes one's views of the world. But, it is not a Hellraiser form of change – nothing that utterly obliterates one's sense of comfort, rather it is a creeping kind of change, a gradual insertion of a new context to reality and a series of questions that opens the mind to new perceptions. There were no ultimate horrors within, merely mysteries, enigmas, riddles…. puzzles.
Mysteries are pedagogical and solving puzzles can sometimes be more about figuring yourself out than it is about solving the puzzle itself – it can be about unlocking your own mind. The puzzle box is a nexus for various intertwining stories in this novel, tying together disparate and unconnected lives, all linked by the need to discover something new about themselves and the freeing process of self discovery. Like our memories, the puzzle box can be unlocked, finding worlds of meaning within.
Opening the box unburies secrets, particularly those that characters create for themselves by hiding things deep within their own minds. The characters in the various stories in The Puzzle Box are outsiders, people struggling for belonging. The box helps them to discover complexities within themselves that they have ignored and hidden within them.
Danger and destiny intertwine when the puzzle box is opened and the box like life itself is a mystery with no answers but also simultaneously filled with essential truths.
To find out more about The Puzzle Box, visit Edge's website at http://www.edgewebsite.com/books/puzzlebox/pzbox-catalog.html .
You can explore reviews of the individual stories that made up The Puzzle Box at:
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/ch-ch-ch-changes/
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/immortal-complacency
https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/i-dream-of-djinn
Tagged belonging, Billie Milholland, distorted reality, Edge, Eileen Bell, Hellraiser, memory, mystery, questioning reality, Randy McCharles, reviews, Ryan McFadden, self-discovery
June 1, 2013 by dereknewmanstille
Abstract – Speculating Diversity: Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl In The Ring and the Use of Speculative Fiction to Disrupt Singular Interpretations of Place
A few readers have expressed some interest in my academic work researching Canadian Speculative Fiction. I have sent out versions of my abstracts for upcoming conferences to people directly, but I thought it may be worthwhile for me to post them on Speculating Canada so that people can see them.
For those of you who are not from academic backgrounds, abstracts are sort of like teasers for a paper that you are going to present at a conference. They give the reader a general idea of what the paper will be about so that they can determine if they would like to attend your conference paper or not.
The abstract below is for a paper I will be presenting at the Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy on June 7th in Toronto. You can explore the conference at http://www.yorku.ca/accsff/Introduction.html and determine if you would like to attend. I highly recommend it since it is of interest to academics as well as accessible for the general public.
Speculating Diversity: Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl In The Ring and the Use of Speculative Fiction to Disrupt Singular Interpretations of Place
In Brown Girl In The Ring, Nalo Hopkinson uses speculative fiction to suggest an alternative reading of the space of Toronto. In order to assert a form of belonging in a space that traditionally denies racialised and ethnic others, Hopkinson rewrites the Toronto landscape of the future. Denied a past in Canada because of the erasure of blackness from the Canadian landscape, she instead writes diversity into the Canadian future. Hopkinson uses the speculative fiction medium to take an iconic image of the Canadian cityscape, the CN Tower, and transform it through a Caribbean-inspired vodoun ritual into the world tree and pillar of the vodoun temple. Toronto becomes temporarily a space where the Loa (vodoun spirits) walk the landscape.
She transforms the Canadian landscape by disrupting notions of the set role that artifacts and architecture are constructed to represent and by suggesting another dialogic possibility. She reconfigures aspects of the traditional Canadian landscape into a traditional Caribbean landscape, marking the space as multivalent and subject to multiple interpretive frameworks. She illustrates that meanings are not static, but constantly shifting, being reinterpreted and reconfigured by new people with new ideologies and new systems of meaning. The CN Tower in Hopkinson's proposed future Toronto is not a static thing, but is rather transformative, changing with the populations that shift in Canada. The landscape and its meanings are constantly shifting as our social and political landscapes shift and things that are traditionally Canadian, like the CN Tower are able to shift as Canada's traditions and ideologies shift to include a more diverse group of Canadians with more diverse readings of the features of heritage.
Hopkinson sets her Toronto in the slight future, creating a city that has been ghettoised and cordoned off by the Canadian state. It has been designated an unsafe space and becomes a place where racialised people are trapped. Hopkinson plays with ideas of invisibility of difference by having her characters literally become invisible through Caribbean magic. She seems to be suggesting in her narrative that the only place that Canadian racial geographies can be transformed is in a science fictional reality.
Literature has the ability to create diverse spaces even when it seems as though it is impossible to transform the physical landscape. Speculative fiction can propose an alternative reading to the landscape and allow a space for diversity. For New Canadians, literature and the arts can become a space where the Canadian landscape can be transformed into an inclusive space that challenges dominant narratives of belonging and suggests an alternative reading of the world and its spaces. The meaning of objects can shift in the consciousness of diasporic people as they assert their own identities and prevent their erasure from the Canadian landscape. Hopkinson uses literature as a space for the assertion of the idea of home for people in diaspora.
Tagged abstract, Academic, Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy, belonging, diaspora, displacement, Diversity, home, Landscape, Nalo Hopkinson, place and identity, race, Toronto, vodoun
Creating Community in Isolation
A Review of Julie Czerneda's Riders of the Storm (Daw, 2008)
Displacement is a factor that is prevalent in the lives of many people who have had to leave home for whatever reason. The finding of "home" is a nebulous, complex, and constantly changeable phenomena. Julie Czerneda explores the search for home in a foreign and confusing space in Riders of the Storm. On a planet with three self-aware and hugely biologically different species (the Om'ray, Oud, and Tikitik), agreements exist to keep the balance between these three peoples from shifting. Czerneda focusses on one group, a small band of travellers from the Om'ray who defy social customs by their biological differences. They threaten the balance that the Om'ray seek to maintain by the fact that they are different, that they represent change in a society that resists change and prefers to conceive of existance only in the form of living people (ignoring notions of the past). This small group of travellers are manifesting new abilities beyond the natural abilities of the Om'ray, which include telepathy, healing, collective dreaming.
The telepathy of the Om'ray has created a notion of fundamental racism. Since they are only able to telepathically sense each other, they cast all other non-Om'ray groups as "not real". They see themselves as the centre of the world and believe that the world only exists where they are. They have created an isolated society both from other races, but also from other periods of time. They see their society as always having been the same, that history does not exist and isn't worth exploring because it would suggest that things were capable of changing.
Aryl Sarc has been forced to become the leader for her small band of Om'ray, leading them on a journey that they believe to be impossible because it represents the possibility of change, something her society resists, and the necessity of shifting the status quo. Aryl doesn't seek leadership, but she is a figure who represents change by her very body – she has abilities that are far beyond other Om'ray and the uncertainty within her body makes her more willing to accept uncertainties and therefore willing to confront challenges.
In a society that focusses on static notions of culture (the idea that things don't change) and has an interest in keeping secrets, Aryl tries to make everything open to her people. She is interested in opening questions in a society that largely accepts things unquestioningly. She and her group of exiles finds an abandoned Om'ray village, one that presents the inevitability that things do, in fact, change. It represents a place for a new start and one that embodies history, opened secrets, and the challenge and potentialities of a new future that is different from the now. The uncertainty of this village, Sona, makes it an ideal place for a changeable people.
The group of exiles have to create a new sense of home in a place that is embodied by history, a history that speaks to them (literally through dreams about the past and figuratively through their need to interpret objects that have remained). Those who have been exiled out of a fear of change, now have to live with change and the flexibility, fluidity, and the general flux that is represented by an uncertain future. They seek to create an idea of belonging in a place that is different, that has history, and that keeps reminding them that things can and do change. They are haunted by the reminder that the land they are on predates them.
Aryl becomes more comfortable with ideas of change and with notions that would have been considered threats to her society. She is able to help her society to accept and be comfortable with ideas of chance. Aryl's comfort with change makes her an ideal person to speak to people of other races – she is willing to speak to the Oud, the Tikitik, and even a human visitor to her planet. She is not restrained to notions of the Om'ray's singularity and superior significance. She learns to be willing to accept that those who are "not real", may in fact just be different and that intercultural communication, although uncertain and potentially confusing, is worth approaching. When trying to approach the Oud and Tikitik, she learns from the human visitor to her world, Marcus, that she will need to take into account both cultural differences and also biological differences since what is biologically normal for the Oud would be threatening for the more vulnerable Om'ray.
As outsiders wherever they end up going, Aryl's group of exiles create community through their willingness to accept change, to create community through difference and to cooperate with others who their society traditionally resists or views as insignificant.
You can explore Riders of the Storm and other books of the Clan Chronicles series through Julie Czerneda's website at http://www.czerneda.com/sf/clan.html .
Tagged alien, alienation, belonging, change, communication, community over individual, diverse species, Diversity, exile, fear, history, isolation, Julie Czerneda, multiculturalism, outsider, reviews, telepathy, travel
January 25, 2013 by dereknewmanstille
The Bookstore of Belonging
A review of Claude Lalumiere's The Door To Lost Pages (ChiZine Publications, 2011)
Cover Art for The Door To Lost Pages courtesy of ChiZine Publications
In The Door To Lost Pages, Claude Lalumiere once again shows his ability to add a hint of the mythic to the underpinnings of reality and challenge the hegemony of the real by suggesting that there is more to the world than what we deem to be real. Lalumiere creates the ideal bookstore, the one that every person who has been a social outsider dreams about, a place to escape from the humdrum world around them and find a place to belong and a place that acknowledges that reality itself may be more diverse than mainstream society accepts or portrays it to be.
Lost Pages is the ideal bookstore for those who have been cast as "weird" to find themselves. It captures the ability of bookstores to create a place of escape and comfort for many of us who are social outsiders. Lost Pages is a place OF the strange and FOR the strange. It is a physical embodiment of the fringe, existing on the edge of reality and changeable, only really noticed by those who need it. Lalumiere illustrates that stories and myths themselves are places of belonging, as uncomfortable, weird, and simultaneously homey as the people who read them. The space between words is one where one can discover a place of belonging, discover one self, and be able to be comfortable and even revel in being weird, different, socially abject.
As with many of his stories, Lalumiere's The Door To Lost Pages evokes in the reader a desire to question that reality is just what we see or make of it. He plays with intersections of multiple realities, duplicates, changeable worlds, and diversity of perception. He acknowledges that for a world of diverse people, the way we see the world, the way we define reality, is itself diverse, multiple, and changeable. We do live in a world of multiple realities and every person has their own reality, their own way of viewing the world and we neither can nor do see what others see, but we need to learn to try.
Claude Lalumiere evokes the dreaming mind, the subconscious, unconscious, superconscious, and the semi-permeable barrier between dream and reality becomes the space between one page and the next.
You can read more about Claude Lalumiere at his website at http://lostmyths.net/claude/ . To explore The Door To Lost Pages, you can visit ChiZine Publications' website at http://chizinepub.com/ .
Tagged belonging, books, bookstore, ChiZine, Claude Lalumiere, Montreal, multiple realities, myth, outsider, questioning reality, questions, reviews, story-telling, weird, Weird Fiction


text:
6081 Cloutis eller 1981 EE35 är en asteroid i huvudbältet som upptäcktes den 2 mars 1981 av den amerikanska astronomen Schelte J. Bus vid Siding Spring-observatoriet. Den är uppkallad efter den kanadensiske fysikern Edward Cloutis.

Asteroiden har en diameter på ungefär 2 kilometer.

Referenser

Huvudbältesasteroider
Småplaneter namngivna efter personer
Astronomiska upptäckter av SJ Bus
Astronomiska upptäckter 1981

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia