Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 31, 2013, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A13 W ASHINGTON - A tiny piece of God's design for the universe had been orbiting the cloudy blue planet Neptune for three or four billion years before a scientist named Showalter " discovered" it last week. Mark Showalter, PhD, is the principal investigator at the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in California. ( SETI's professional and amateur investigators have been harkening to music from other worlds since the 1980s and haven't heard a single semiquaver, but that is no reason to stop listening.) The previously unrecorded pebble, which Dr. Showalter noticed while analyzing photographs of Neptune's rings taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, awaits an official name from the International Astronomical Union. It will not be called Triton, Nereid, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Galatea, Larissa, Sao, Halimede, Lamomedeia, Psamathe or Neso, which were the only moons Neptune was known to own, before last week. ( Neptune's satellites are named for Grecian nymphs, 50 of whom lived under the sea in a cave with their dad, which is what my daughter is going to do when she hits her teens. Dozens of nympho- nyms still are available, including Doto, Seto, Cranto, Cymo and Drymo.) Astronomer Showalter, who also detected the 18th moon of Saturn ( Pan), the 25th and 26th moons of Uranus ( Cupid and Mab), and the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto ( Kerberos and Styx), reported Neptune Fourteen is a miniscule thing as moons go, a flake of rock and who- knows- what barely 20 kilometres long. In fact, Voyager 2 flew right by in 1989 and missed it completely. So I called the principal investigator and asked him a simple question: " What difference does it make how many moons Neptune has?" " That it is number 14 doesn't mean very much by itself," Dr. Showalter calmly answered. " But they are a piece of the story of how that system formed." Mark Showalter is one of seven billion Earthlings who have looked up at the sky in wonder. As a planetary astronomer, ( the field I studied in college before my celestial dreams degraded into sportswriting) he specializes in the ring systems of the gas giants of our solar system. " How does one feel when one discovers a moon?" I wondered, jealously. " I've done it before and there's still a rush," Dr. Showalter replied. " Is there any reason to explore the solar system except in the hope of finding life?" I asked him. " I' m pretty certain we're not going to find intelligent life on a tiny little rock orbiting Neptune," he said. The night after Mark Showalter announced the discovery of Neptune Moon Fourteen, Chris Hadfield starred at a reception at the Canadian Embassy in Washington. Most of the men present were in suits and ties, but they made International Space Station Commander Hadfield and his roadie, Dr. Tom Marshburn, wear their Neptune- blue jumpsuits, as if we wouldn't know them in slacks. Hadfield is one of only 500 spacefarers who have looked down from the sky in awe. Retired from rocketry at the age of 53, he made one fewer voyage into the unknown than did Christopher Columbus - though, of course, it is only the unknown on the first trip. I went up to him and noted a new moon of Neptune had just been discovered but, of course, he already knew that. " If there's a boat leaving for Neptune Fourteen tomorrow," I asked him, " are you on it?" " No," Hadfield said. " There are some things better done by robots and there are some things better done by people. We don't have the boats to go there." Like every astronaut and cosmonaut whom I have ever met, Chris Hadfield came down from orbit with a heightened sense of common cause with the people of the planet below. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no cynics in space. " It's difficult to get selected as an astronaut and fly in space if you don't have strong convictions," he said. " In space, those convictions get heightened. You find yourself laughing and crying much more." I tried to picture Major Tom in tears. " You start to think," Hadfield said, " about all those people you know in, say, Saskatoon, and how they're not that different from the people in a city in Africa that you've never been to - trying their best, raising their kids - and how your particular set of loves relates to everything else." Forty- four years after the first lunar landing, the blue still beckons: seven unwalked planets, 100 large and little moons, at least a million asteroids - one of them is 14143 Hadfield - and comets beyond counting. Two paths to the heavens are open: be born a lissome Greek mermaid, or study hard and learn to fly. Allen Abel is a Brooklyn- born Canadian journalist based in Washington D. C. 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Winnipeg Free Press Wednesday, July 31, 2013 A 13 POLL �� TODAY'S QUESTION Does Manitoba's growing debt worry you? �� Vote online at winnipegfreepress. com �� PREVIOUS QUESTION Are you satisfied with the service provided by Manitoba Public Insurance? YES 44% NO 56% TOTAL RESPONSES 3,005 Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 VOL 141 NO 255 2013 Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. Published seven days a week at 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 204- 697- 7000 BOB COX / Publisher PAUL SAMYN / Editor JULIE CARL / Deputy Editor V IDEO shows Toronto police had alternatives to shooting Sammy Yatim when they did. The SIU and Chief Bill Blair are investigating - and this time we need real answers. Much remains unknown about the events that led to the killing of Sammy Yatim. But this much seems clear: the 18- year- old didn't need to die as he did, in a storm of police bullets while cornered in an empty Toronto streetcar. There were alternatives, including holding off on use of deadly force at least until officers, or the public, were in more obvious danger. Video of the incident shows, although Yatim was armed with a knife, he wasn't holding hostages or charging at anyone. Yet something compelled police to open fire, discharging nine shots at Yatim and - seconds later - administering a jolt with a taser. The teenager, who had emigrated with his family from Syria just a few years ago, sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at St. Michael's Hospital. Whether officers broke the law, or failed to follow designated protocols, is a matter to be determined by Ontario's Special Investigations Unit. That agency has assigned six investigators, plus two forensic specialists, to probe the circumstances of police conduct in this tragedy. And Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair announced he is initiating his own investigation of officers' behaviour along with a review of the service's procedures, policies and training. The public has " every right to be concerned," Blair noted after he had expressed his condolences to Yatim's family and friends. " As a father, I can only imagine their terrible grief and their need for answers." But it's not just Yatim's family that deserves clarity; every Torontonian is owed an explanation for what happened on that streetcar just after midnight on Saturday. And it's important answers go beyond the narrow confines of this particular shooting. Yatim wasn't the first person to be felled by Toronto police bullets while acting erratically. Indeed, events like this happen with alarming frequency. Work is underway at the Ontario coroner's office in preparation for an inquest into the killing of three people with mental illnesses shot since 2010 by Toronto police while they were brandishing knives or scissors. A date for the beginning of that inquest is yet to be announced. And its purview won't include a host of other cases in which mentally ill people were gunned down by city police, including the 1997 shooting of a hammerwielding schizophrenic man, Edmond Yu, on a Toronto Transit Commission bus. Yatim's death marks just the most recent episode in a grim history. In light of that, it's vital to obtain answers to a broad range of questions. The suitability of training given to front- line officers warrants particular scrutiny. It's not at all clear enough has been done to instruct police on how to de- escalate confrontations with a mentally ill or disturbed person, or if that message is actually sinking in. One useful response in the wake of past shootings was creation of mobile crisis- intervention teams, consisting of a police officer paired with a mental- health nurse, skilled in defusing confrontations. No such team was on hand when Yatim was shot and it's fair to ask if this program should be expanded to put more units on the street. It seems a taser was deployed against Yatim only when it was too late, after he had been shot. Most Toronto officers aren't equipped with these stun guns and it's worth exploring whether more cops should be issued this potential alternative to drawing a pistol. Police culture puts a premium on responding to a crisis with decisive and direct intervention. But does that make it hard for officers to disengage, even when they obviously should? And if so, how is this culture to be fixed? In the absence of answers to these questions we're compelled to ask yet another: How many more deaths will it take to stop needless shootings such as that of Sammy Yatim? F EW environmental conflicts are as fraught and intractable as whaling. Under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, commercial whaling has been illegal since 1986. But the agreement contains a loophole: Signatories can still kill whales for scientific research. Since the ban took effect, Japan's whaling industry has continued to kill hundreds of whales annually, insisting the hunt is necessary for research. The meat of whales taken in the name of science can be sold legally, and it is in Japan. But Australia is now challenging Japan's claim of scientific whaling in the International Court of Justice, alleging it is simply a cover for commercial whaling. The court is unlikely to rule on the issue for several months, but already Japan is preparing for a potential loss by threatening to leave the International Whaling Commission and, in effect, become an " outlaw" whaling nation. The battle over whaling has pitted a handful of countries - primarily Japan and to a lesser extent Norway and Iceland - against dozens of anti- whaling nations and a tidal wave of global public opinion. But regardless of what one thinks about the ethics of whaling, its continuation makes no sense from an economic, political, ecological or cultural perspective. Economically, the industry survives only through heavy government subsidies. Industrial whaling in Japan is largely a post- Second World War phenomenon, so claims it is part of a deep cultural tradition are baseless. Few livelihoods depend on whaling and nobody will go hungry because of a lack of whale meat. In fact, demand for whale meat is at an all- time low, despite efforts to inculcate a taste for it in young Japanese through its inclusion in school lunch programs. According to the Ministry Fisheries, the industry is planning to ship 2,400 tonnes of whale meat this year, down almost a hundredfold from the 1962 peak of 233,000 tonnes. In Japan, the whaling industry employs fewer than 1,000 people, and those jobs are completely dependent on public handouts. According to a recent study by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Japan annually spends about $ 30 million subsidizing whaling. Whale watching, on the other hand, annually generates more than $ 20 million in Japan, as well as being a multibilliondollar growth industry around the world. Politically, whaling causes nothing but ill will and tarnishes Japan's image. The current skirmish is merely one example of how Japan has had to expend political and economic capital to support a deeply unprofitable and unpopular industry. Furthermore, in an effort to overturn the 1986 moratorium, countless Japanese diplomats have spent three decades cajoling poorer nations - most of whom have no interest in whaling - into joining the IWC and voting with Japan. Ecologically, whaling is unjustifiable. Most whale species are not even close to recovering from the massive population crash caused by commercial whaling. From a conservation perspective, it is very unwise to harvest a large mammal that reproduces very slowly. Fin whales - the second- largest animal ever to live on Earth and a species Icelandic whalers continue to hunt - gestate for 11 months and give birth to just one offspring every three years. Moreover, scientific studies demonstrate whales play an important role in ocean ecology. By feeding on deepwater plankton and excreting at the surface, they help prime the " biological pump" that ensures the continual recycling of nutrients throughout the oceans' depths. Ironically, the most compelling reason why nations should stop whaling may well be the least likely to persuade them to do so: the cultural shift in people's attitudes toward whales. The whaling industry is still struggling to come to grips with the fact that in Western culture, the whale has been transformed from mere blubber to a sort of Buddha of the deep - a gentle, peaceful and highly intelligent behemoth that has lived in harmony with its environment for millions of years. Such views reached a new level of intensity after Greenpeace began its spectacular protests against Soviet whalers off the coast of California in 1975. Not surprisingly, the idea such beings could be treated as a mere natural resource was abhorrent to these activists, and the general public, brought along by movies such as Free Willy , agreed. Even though many marine biologists find the Buddha- of- the- deep notion problematic, it has nonetheless indelibly shaped public attitudes toward cetaceans. It is hard to imagine how a small group of people who wish to continue killing whales could make any inroads into today's anti- whaling sensibility. The few remaining whaling nations should cut their losses - and whaling subsidies - and take advantage of the benefits that come from membership in the non- whaling community. Their hearts might not be in it, but they'd stand to gain far more than they would lose. Frank Zelko is an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont and the author of Make It a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism. - Los Angeles Times R USSIAN President Vladimir Putin's bizarre displays of machismo may get more laughs than his efforts at humour. That, at least, was the case with the giant pike Putin supposedly hooked in the Siberian region of Tuva. On July 26, the Kremlin released a video of Putin pulling a large pike out of a lake, lifting it by the gills and tenderly kissing it on the cheek. Presidential press secretary Dmitri Peskov explained for a long time Putin had no luck at Lake Tokpak- Khol in a remote corner of Tuva, bordering on Mongolia. Then a gamekeeper suggested he use a locally made spoon lure called the Czar Fish, and it worked. The gamekeeper " said he had never seen anything like it," Peskov said. " Putin caught a pike that weighed more than 21 kilograms. It took him 30 minutes to pull it out." As Putin lifted his catch out of the water with a hoop net, the gamekeeper cautioned him that the pike could bite. " I'll bite it myself," Putin quipped, according to Peskov. The fish story is clearly aimed at bolstering Putin's support in a country with an estimated 25 million fishing enthusiasts. It could backfire. Popular blogger Andrei Malgin published a mini- investigation of Putin's fishing vacation. Pointing out the trip wasn't on Putin's official schedule, Malgin dug up old photographs from previous Putin trips to Tuva he claimed looked remarkably similar to the new pictures. " Doesn't it look to you as if we are being fed canned food stored up some years ago?" Malgin asked his readers. Others agreed, pointing out similar details of his outfit. " What if Putin has been dead for years and we don't know?" one reader commented. Other bloggers noted Putin is wearing a watch that looks exactly like the one he gave to a gamekeeper on a previous vacation. " He gave away the original watch and then bought exactly the same kind for himself because he is attached to it," Peskov responded. The giant pike was another matter. Experienced fishermen simply could not believe it actually weighed 21 kilos - about 46 pounds. " Here's what I think about the pike," pro- Kremlin columnist Maxim Kononenko wrote in his blog. " Any fisherman can see that it simply cannot weigh 21 kilograms. For one thing, fish of that size are extremely rare. For another, it would be up to two metres long and you'd be able to fit a bucket in its mouth." Kononenko suggested the scale used to weigh the fish was in pounds rather than kilograms. If it read 21, it would mean the pike weighed 9.5 kilograms. Alfred Kokh, a deputy prime minister under former president Boris Yeltsin, took a more scientific approach. " Putin's height is 175 centimeters maximum," he wrote on Facebook. " Approximating the pike to a cylinder with a diameter of 10 centimeters and a length of 120 centimeters - a complimentary assumption - we calculate the volume of the pike to be 9420 cubic centimetres, or roughly 10 litres." Kokh's post received almost 1,500 likes. Again, Peskov had to defend the president. " I was personally present at the weighing, I saw the scale, and it really was over 20 kilos." By then, the fish's size and the circumstances of its capture hardly mattered: The Kremlin was on the defensive. In 2013, Putin is no longer a recent underdog turned leader. He is a dictator who has been in power for 13 years, and at least as many people mock him as admire him. He needs a change of public relations strategy no less than his country needs some change at the top. Leonid Bershidsky, an editor and novelist, is Moscow correspondent for World View. - Bloomberg News ALLAN ABEL OTHER OPINION Toronto police didn't need to shoot teen The Toronto Star Making a political cartoon Patrick LaMontagne is a political cartoonist whose work regularly appears on the editorial pages of the Winnipeg Free Press . He recorded a video of his process for editorial cartooning, from scanned sketch to finished image. Watch for his work on our Opinion pages in the paper and online. To view the threeminute video go to wfp. to/ cartoon. See video at winnipegfreepress. com �� Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield Whaling makes no sense By Frank Zelko By Leonid Bershidsky Putin's fishy story called crap, er, carp, er, pike There is no final frontier A_ 13_ Jul- 31- 13_ FP_ 01. indd A13 7/ 30/ 13 6: 47: 42 PM ;