Has the spectre of right-wing populism gone away?

In the aftermath of Emmanuel Macron' s strong win in the French presidential elections this week, many people around the world are breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief, and wondering whether the threat of a surge right-wing populism is finally receding.

Centrist M. Macron won about 66% of the popular vote, compared to white nationalist Marine Le Pen's 34%, an apparent runaway victory for commonsense and wisdom that extended across almost all demographics. But this still represents the French National Front's best ever showing at the national level, and the party could still do well in the National Assembly vote in June (without a supportive majority in the lower house, M. Macron's victory may well be a hollow one).

After populist victories in the UK Brexit vote and the US presidential elections last year, the spectre of rising anti-immigrant anti-globalization populism seemed more than likely. But, since then, Norbert Hofer in Austria, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and now Marine Le Pen in France, have all to stamp their right-wing vision on their respective countries. Britain's populist UKIP party was also almost blanked out in local council elections just last week. Next up is Germany, and few are predicting that Angela Merkel will lose control of Europe's biggest economy.

Italy, however, could be a different story, and the populist anti-Europe Five Star Movement has a handsome lead in the polls there, although a lot can still change in the run-up to the Italian election next spring. And the upcoming French National Assembly vote could have an influence on that too.

So, the forces of middle-of-the-road democracy can perhaps give themselves a pat on the back. But they certainly can't rest on their laurels, or slacken the pressure. The spectre is not yet at bay.

Mark Z. Danielewski's at it again in The Familiar

I have set myself the always-daunting task of reading another of Mark Z. Danielewski books, 2015's The Familiar Volume 1, subtitled One Rainy Day in May.

It is probably the heaviest book I have ever read, weighing in at 1,650g (for context, my copy of Ulysses only weighs 430g, my Complete Works of Shakespeare is 810g). The paper is very high quality and glossy, and there are at least 840 pages, if the book's sporadic page numbering can be believed. It even comes with convenient built-in page-marker ribbon. Like a Bible. My Bible weighs 730g.

But, being a Mark Z. Danielewski book, it is not only heavy in terms of grams. Reading it is not a passive exercise. There are a number of different story arcs under way (nine in total, I believe), each of which take place over the course of the same single day, and which may, or may not, eventually come together. Each story arc, helpfully identified by time-stamped colour-coded page corners, employs a completely different writing style, not to mention different typeface(s) - there is an appendix of typefaces at the end, for God's sake - different page design(s) and layout(s), as well as assorted other species of visual and literary trickery.

Indeed, like Danielewski's earlier book, House of Leaves, (which I have also reviewed in these pages), it is a graphic designer's (and typesetter's) wet dream. Some of this visual trickery even out-House of Leaves his own House of Leaves: blocks of text may be fashioned into shapes, or moulded around voids; pages may comprise hundreds of tiny lines, or just one word or phrase; text may be horizontal, vertical, or skitter around at random angles; it may appear as screenshots of a computer program, as a medical log, or as a full-body tattoo; it may wander drunkenly around the page, or spiral into nothingness with scientific precision; punctuation may be almost completely absent, or be replaced by computer-language-style nested parentheses; etc, etc. Eventually, the brain-jarring design innovations do calm down a little, as the "story" proper unfolds, but, in terms of typesetting, page layout and off-kilter presentation, there is very little that is not attempted here at some point.

And those writing styles? A few representative examples may help.

• One story arc is written in what I take to be Singlish (the almost impenetrable colloquial patois or creole popular on the streets of Singapore): "they saysay she tutor demons, lah. saysay mice dance to her finger snap and a pelesit does her bidding. saysay sa-ruckup rang bumi fly to her window and call her mother. they say-say a lot."
• Another is almost poetic in its pretensions, despite the geeky science-y subject matter it covers: "She scrolls to the peak of the present and still discovers the temple unmarred. The unplayed music of this structure never repeals its secrecy. At least on this edge, where the future waits, explanation and hope also wait."
• Yet another employs sassy, uber-urban, obsessively name-dropping, jargon- and acronym-laden, West Coast cop-speak, like Thomas Pynchon on steroids: "Helicopters still overhead, KTLA and LAPD. Journalists by van and taxi. Police Scanner Twittidiots. What a former South Bureau deputy chief nicknamed PeSTs. Supervising sergeant already running things. Even DRE. Though Ösgür has yet to sense any drug connect. It all looks Robbery-Homicide."
• Or how about skanky Latino underworld gang argot: "'¡Lo que es un escuincle!' Lupita laughs. Pleased. Almoraz holds his tongue. Most of the crew drifts into the kitchen, her latest cucarachas settling around Almoraz at the big table, same veteranos Luther's known over the years, none as old as Miz but a few getting there."

I could go on, but you get the picture.

This is probably not beach reading (the book's weight alone would preclude that). It's the kind of book you will either love or hate - there will be very little middle ground. My erudite bibliophile wife, for example, hated it, did not get past 50 pages or so. She found the constant type changes and the so-called "visual writing" (what Danielewski himself describes as "signiconic" work) distracting, annoying and self-indulgent, and the effort required to penetrate the text not worth the rewards. Me, I think I love it, although it's a close thing. Just having absolutely no idea what you are going to find on the next page is actually quite refreshing, the very epitome of a page-turner.

And the Volume 1 part? Apparently, this is the first installment in a proposed 27-volume serial novel, which Danielewski appears to visualize more as a television series than as a work of literature, and about which he laconically says, "The story concerns a 12-year-old girl who finds a kitten". He is currently churning out 800+ page volumes at a rate of one or two a year (four volumes are available as of early 2017). Never let it be said that Mr. Danielewski is not ambitious.

Guinness is now good for you AND vegan-friendly

Most people aren't aware of it, but Guinness has been using fish swim bladders as part of its manufacturing process for most of the last 256 years it has been in business. The company has been looking for a more palatable (and vegan) alternative for some years now, and has just announced that keg Guinness will no longer use fish bladders in its manufacturing process, with canned and bottled Guinness to follow by the end of the year.

Guinness, as well as many other British real ale cask beers and even some wines, uses a collagen product called isinglass, which is produced from the dried swim bladders of fish, as part of its filtration and fining (clarification) system. There is no requirement to state the use of isinglass on the bottle. As of a couple of days ago, draught Guinness in keg form - brewed at their huge St. James Gate Brewery and exported around the world for use in pubs, bars and restaurants - will be swim bladder free, and therefore totally vegan. All bottled and canned Guinness will also be vegan by the end of the year, as the new process is extended.

Now, I'm not vegan, but I am vegetarian, and when I found out that Guinness probably has traces of fishy bits floating around in it (courtesy of my daughter's Fermentation Biology course in university, as it happens), it was one of those small disappointments, like finding out that most Caesar salad dressing, Branston Pickles and Worcestershire Sauce have small amounts of anchovy paste in their ingredients (why would they DO that? - for the record, British Branston Pickles, available in Canada at British import stores, does not have anchovy paste in it, and neither does Kraft Caesar Salad Dressing, and Wizard's Sauces even make a vegan Worcestershire Sauce, although good luck finding that).

Guinness's change of heart comes after many vegan organizations lobbied and petitioned the company to change its manufacturing process (here is just one example of such a petition), so chalk on up for consumer activism. If you are interested, Barnivore has an exhaustive list of vegan beers and wines.

Denying all older athletics records a futile exercise in revisionism

A proposal by a European Athletics task force to effectively rescind all world records before 2005, on the grounds that they cannot be verified, has many athletes up in arms.
Under the proposal's provisions, a world record would only be recognized if it fulfills three criteria: 1) it occurred at one of an approved list of events, where top level officiating and technical equipment can be guaranteed; 2) the athlete has been subjected to an approved number of doping tests in the months leading up to the event; and 3) the doping control sample taken after the record was stored and made available for retesting for at least ten years. As the IAAF only started storing and retesting doping control samples in 2005, any record from before that date would therefore not meet the final criterion, and so any pre-2005 records would no longer be officially recognized.
I understand where this is coming from, and the need to regain the public's trust after a plethora of high-profile drug test fails in recent years. Many world records still date from the 1980s, when illicit drug use was rife and there was no out-of-competition testing (and what testing there was nothing like as sophisticated as today's is). Apparently, many of the athletes and athletics authorities in Europe are strongly in favour of the idea (the British much less so).
But, as some of the athletes affected by the proposal point out, such a move would be incredibly disrespectful to the drug-free majority of athletes, who have already had to compete against cheats in attaining their achievements. To lose out again as a result of this proposal, would merely add insult to injury. Tarring everyone with the same brush seems unnecessarily brutal.
Records will continue to be broken, and it seems to me that all that can be reasonably done is to make sure that all new records are legitimate. Denying all older records seems like a futile exercise in revisionism.
The European task force plans to recommend its radical proposal to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF, the main organizing body for international athletics worldwide) at its next major meeting in July this year.

US budget bill an indication of Trump's lowered expectations

In a measure of the depths to which the Trump administration has fallen, they are hailing the upcoming budget legislation - which still remains to be actually voted on, but which is widely agreed on in its essentials - as a "bipartisan win for the American people".
Its significance is that it will be the first major piece of bipartisan legislation to be actually passed during Trump's now more than 100 days in office. But it's worth a look at just how successful the spending bill actually is.
First and firemost, by agreeing something, anything, Mr. Trump has avoided the spectre of an embarassing government shut-down. It also includes $85 billion towards strengthening the US military, although that is much less than he was asking for.
But Trump's calls for substantial cuts in domestic spending on medical research, the Environmental Protection Agency and infrastructure grants, were all rejected. And, significantly, his signature call for a Mexican border wall was rejected out of hand. In fact, Democrat politicians are also calling this a win for the American people, so none of the two must be lying or exaggerating.
The bill receives its final vote on Wednesday, and then the whole thing will happen again in October when another budget bill is negotiated. But it's interesting to see just how much the Republicans have pared back their expectations, when faced with the reality of governing.

High Lake Ontario levels not the fault of Plan 2014

Lake Ontario, on whose shores I live, is currently about 60cm higher than normal April levels. We spent quite a while yesterday watching huge breakers crashing right over the boardwalk on our beach, and creating a whole new mini-lake on the widest part of the beach, something I have never seen in the 27 years or so that I have been here. Apparently, the last time the lake was this high was in the 1970s.

Some lakeshore property-owners have seen whole chunks of their gardens washed away. So, of course, people are worried about their property values and looking for someone to blame. In particular, many people are, without much evidence, laying the blame on the controversial Plan 2014, which was instituted earlier this year by the US-Canada International Joint Commission, after 16 years of research and negotiations, in order to help conserve threatened wildlife, as well as to protect communities downstream on the St. Lawrence that often flood in the spring, as indeed they are even now. That plan calls for higher high water levels and lower lows (Lake Ontario's levels are regulated to some extent through regulation of the Moses-Saunders Power Dam on the St. Lawrence Seaway near Cornwall, Ontario).

However, a spokesperson for the International Joint Commission estimated that only a few centimetres of the current high levels are attributable to Plan 2014. The rest (i.e. over 90% of it) is due to the record April rainfall, particularly in western New York state and further west in Michigan. The US Army Corps of Engineers concurs. Nevertheless, many lakefront property owners persist in blaming Plan 2014, and a couple of Republican senators are calling on Donald Trump to reverse the plan (opinions vary as to whether that is legally even possible).

Erosion of lake-front properties is a normal and expected phenomenon. One Niagara property owner estimates that they have lost about 50 feet (that's about 15 metres to you and me) in the 50 years they have lived there, including about 2 feet (60cm) so far this spring. Blaming it (incorrectly) on an environmental protection measure is totally unreasonable. Blame it on Mother Nature if you like, or blame it on man-made global warming and climate change, but don't blame poor old Plan 2014.

Meanwhile, it is still raining...

You don't have to get high to use medical marijuana

As Trudeau-era Canada moves to legalize marijuana, I am reading more and more articles about how efficacious medical cannabis can be. From PTSD to Parkinson's to arthritis to depression, more and more anecdotal evidence, and, to a lesser extent, clinical studies, are raving about its beneficial effects. It seems to be the panacea (or possibly the snake oil) of the age.

It is particularly, and increasingly, popular among the over-55 set, in which the kinds of aches and pains that cannabis seems well-suited to are rife. And, while many in this demographic are wary of lighting up a toke (many are ex-smokers who do not want to reactivate an old habit), they are increasingly equanimous with the idea of ingesting cannabis oils and lozenges. Equally, many older people really do not want or need the "high" that comes with smoking marijuana, or its addictiveness - let alone the drowsiness, nausea and constipation that can also be involved - but have found that they can obtain the medical relief they need from other aspects of cannabis, or at least that cannabis can reduce the need for other more dangerous or addictive medications like opioids.
That said, dosage, treatment protocols and some knowledge of the active compounds in cannabis are essential in making it a beneficial treatment for chronic pain and other ailments, and even many doctors are not yet au courant with these, and no standard dosages yet exist.

For example, what I hadn't realized is that, unlike in the case of most manufactured drugs, the marijuana plant has hundreds of chemical compounds which can affect a wide range of bodily processes. There are, though, two main active compounds which are thought to have therapeutic benefits: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). THC is the better known of the two, and is the substance that create the marijuana high (as well as having some medicinal effects). Complications arise, in that different strains of marijuana have different levels of each of these ingredients, and that no ideal level of THC and CBD has been established for treating particular pains. For example, CBD oil can be effective for osteoarthritic pain, but comes with none of the high, the addictiveness and the lessening of control that many people associate with THC.

The use of medical marijuana is nothing new, but its application has been severely constrained, and rightly so, until the data on its benefits and dangers are better understood. But as Canada and other jurisdictions move to legalize it completely, the science will have to grow up fast. As I start to experience the very early symptoms of arthritis myself, who knows, I may even find myself resorting to it in the future.

Some coffee shops start to ditch the obligatory wifi

An interesting current trend, although still in its infancy, is the movement of some cafes and coffee shops not to offer wifi.

Almost every coffee shop, from Starbucks, McDonalds and Tim Hortons to the little independent roastery on the corner, now feels obliged to offer a wifi internet connection, which is a good part of the reason why coffee shops are now dominated by young people silently tapping away on their computers, completely divorced from the world around them, and usually sporting a cold (or often empty) cup of coffee as proof that they did in fact buy something at one point. They may hog a table for hours at a time, something that cafes seem surprisingly acquiescent about.
However, café owners have also begun to notice that other people are often reticent to sit down at a shared table next to a laptop user, and may even leave coffee-less rather than do so. I often look in a cafe window and see the isolated islands of laptop-users, and think how soulless it looks.

So, some coffee shops in Vancouver and Toronto are bucking the trend and ditching the wifi for customers, in an attempt to return to an earlier time when cafes were social hubs full of conversation. It's a brave move, and some have seen their daily take reduced, at least in the short term, as a result. But I have to say it's nice to at least be given a choice of such an establishment.

Personally, I have never understood the attraction of using a computer in a coffee shop, with all the distractions and noise and obligation (as I see it, anyway) to buy expensive coffee at regular intervals. My university-age daughter assures me that she finds it conducive to working, and finds the background noise comforting, although every study I have ever read suggests that noise of any kind is distracting and detrimental to studying.

It will be interesting to see if the infant trend becomes a full-blown movement.