#FillTheBottle campaign a laudable start to demonizing cigarette butt littering

Kudos to a group of French teens who are trying to viralize (is that a word? well, it is now...) their campaign to stigmatize cigarette butt littering. The #FillTheBottle campaign encourages people to fill a water bottle with cigarette butts collected off the ground, and to circulate the "yuck" photos on social media, and it has already been taken up by thousands of people around the world.

Cigarette filters (or butts) have been described by a recent scientific study as "the most abundant form of anthropogenic litter on the planet". The filters are made from cellulose acetate, a synthetic product commercially derived from wood pulp. British American Tobacco claims that the filters take a few months to three years to biodegrade; the Keep Britain Tidy charity says it is more like 18 months to 10 years. They also say that plastics, lead, arsenic and nicotine leak from the filters over that period, affecting the environment and particularly doing harm to fish and other marine life. A photo of a seabird feeding a cigarette butt to its chick went viral quite recently.

It's certainly a pet peeve of mine, and I find it extraordinary how cavalier people are about throwing out butts, even when there is a good alternative disposal option nearby (which is rare, I have to say). You see people throwing them on sidewalks and roads without a thought, many of them people who would almost certainly not litter in other ways. Interestingly, the butts can actually be recycled, and the #FillTheBottle campaign is working with a French company called MéGo that processes and recycles cigarette filters. There is a proposal in Germany to charge a deposit on cigarettes, which can be reclaimed once the butts are returned, although it is still far from a working model.

I know that taking pictures of cigarette butts in plastic water bottles is probably not going to save the world, but here's hoping it makes a few people think twice before they do it. And would someone please tell my next door neighbour who goes though the process many times a day right in front of our house.

Why is Kashmir part of India anyway?

India's unilateral decision to scrap Article 370 of its constitution, which allows a limited independence ("special status") to its Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir, has attracted international condemnation and outrage in almost equal measures (and, I suppose, a certain amount of praise and tub-thumping within Hindu circles, although there have been protests against the action even within India). This effectively downgrades the region from state to territory, and reduces its semi-autonomous decion-making ability. Local Kashmiris are bewildered, frustrated and angry, and nuclear-armed Pakistan next door is threatening reprisals. The region is in lock-down with a strict curfew, and all communications with the outside world, including the internet, have been cut off. An already tense region, therefore, just became a whole lot tenser, and the situation could go in any number of directions.

There are various reasons why Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi has decided to make such a contentious move at this time, although his claims that his intention is to free Kashmir from decades of turmoil and violence are clearly disingenuous. But, to be fair, Article 370 was only ever mean to be temporary - despite having lasted 70 years! - and Kashmir remains one of the most militarized and unstable regions in the world, a situation that is clearly not sustainable in the long term (not that 70 years is exactly short!)

Anyway, make if it, and Modi's justification for it, what you will. My question was: why is Jammu and Kashmir in that position in the first place? Why did Hindu-majority India end up with a Muslim-majority province at all?

A little potted history: when British India was partitioned in 1947, generally speaking the Muslim-majority areas became West Pakistan (later just Pakistan) and East Bengal (later East Pakistan and then Bangladesh), and the Hindu-majority remainder became modern India. However, despite its clear Muslim majority (about 77%) and unequivocal claims from Pakistan that the region was theirs, the Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was undecided as to whether to join with Pakistan or India. In the resulting power vacuum, Pakistani fighters entered the region, intent on claiming it for Pakistan. Kashmir (in the person of Maharaja Hari Singh) then agreed to an "accession treaty" with India, in return for Indian troops pushing out the Pakistani invaders, and the region's uneasy relationship with India was begun. Arguably, then, it was the dithering of the Maharaja, and his failure to determine the future of his state before the transfer of power took place, that has led to all the bloodshed and uncertainty that has plagued this beautiful region ever since.

As a result of that first Kashmir war, both Pakistan and India came to control different parts of the zone, and a ceasefire line was established, although neither country surrendered its claims. A 1948 UN resolution, calling for the demilitarization of the area, was never acted upon, and the "reference to the people" (plebiscite) that was required as part of the Indian accession agreement likewise never happened, so its status remains anomalous (and, arguably, illegal). When India drew up its constitution document in 1949, Article 370 allowed Jammu and Kashmir to have its own separate constitution and its own flag, along with some limited autonomy over the internal administration of the state, particularly over citizenship and property rights (which, importantly, allowed it to block Indians from other states from moving there). 

Two inconclusive but bloody wars have since been fought over the state, which remains a potential flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed powers. Modi's precipitate actions this week might just have set the stage for a third.

RIP Toni Morrison, a great writer of any colour

American author and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison has died, after what her family calls a "long well-lived life". She was 88.
She was a great author, that much is undeniable. However, most of the accolades and eulogies after her death seem to revolve around her writing of the black American experience, particularly about slavery and its consequences. But surely that is not what made her writing great? She was not the first to write about black lives, although she was maybe the first to bring them, and particularly black female lives (and even more specifically, young black female lives), to a mass multicultural audience, and this is indeed an achievement worthy of celebration. But this, it seems to me, is not the same achievement as the quality of her writing - her use of language and her gift for piecing together a good compelling yarn - which reaches a level of greatness regardless of the social and political import of her subject matter. She was a great writer, not just a great black writer.
That said, to claim, as Dionne Brand does in today's Globe and Mail, that Ms. Morrison "was the greatest writer in English of the 20th century and the 21st", and that she "changed the texture of English itself" (whatever that might actually mean), is a clear case of excess and hyperbole. James Joyce changed English literature, as did Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett, and a (very) few others; hardly any individuals since Shakespeare can be said to have changed the actual language. Toni Morrison didn't really change literature or the language, but she used it very well for her own purposes.
So, let's celebrate her life and her art. But let's not wander off into the realms of, well, fiction.

Ten years later, Android still outsells iOS by nearly 6 to 1

Bloomberg Businessweek has produced an excellent potted history of the smartphone, and in particular, the ongoing battle between Apple/iOS and Google/Android. It outlines, in words and graphs, the precipitous growth of cellphone technology - the iPhone only came out in 2007 for god's sake, and Samsung popularized the Android platform soon after.
What I found particularly interesting, though, are the graphs showing iPhone and Android usage in different countries. Here in North America, we are used to thinking about Apple and Android phones as pretty much on a par, and the stats do show a 53% iOS and 46% Android split in both the USA and Canada (more iPhones than I expected, I confess). In Japan, Apple has even more of a lead, with 70% iOS and 30% Android, and Australia shows 57% iOS and 43% Android. But these are the only four countries IN THE WORLD where iOS outsells Android (the only other country where it comes close is the UK, which is split 49% IOS and 51% Android).
Everywhere else, Android has a massive market share, and what is noticeable is that the poorer the country the feebler the hold of Apple on its cellphone market. In most poor countries, Apple's market share is in single ďigits, sometimes as low as 1%. Which makes perfect sense, because the iPhone remains an expensive option, often more of a status symbol than a practical communications device. Richer countries outside of North America, like France, Germany, Spain and Saudi Arabia tend to have iPhone adoption in the mid-20%s, as do a few other outliers like Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Morocco and, perhaps surprisingly, China. Everyone else, though, below 20%, often below 10%. Overall, the world's smartphone users, prefer Android 85% of the time.
Basically, Android has democratized communications; if it were left to Apple, most of Africa, Asia and South America probably still wouldn't be able to afford a smartphone. I have to say, I find it quite gratifying, because for some reason I have always disliked Apple as a company. There's something just too slick about them, which grates, and I always hated their condescending and supercilious older advertising campaigns. When Steve Jobs' ranted "I'm going to destroy Android!" back in 2010, Andoid already had 85% of the smartphone market share. Well, it's exactly the same today.

Trade diplomacy as schoolyard bullying

More and more, high-level international trade diplomacy is starting to look suspiciously (and dispiritingly) similar to playground antics: a lot of shouting and bluster, the occasional underhand trick, and the even more occasional violent action. Like playground antics, it's discouraging and depressing.
As the USA and China face off like two schoolyard bullies unwilling to yield, and play around with hundreds of billions of dollars like they were Monopoly money, the playground parallels are hard to igore. "I'm going to slap tariffs on you!" Whack! "Tariffs right back at you!" Whack! "You're manipulating your currency - I'm telling teacher!" "Not so! I'm not buying any of your agricultural products unless you say sorry!" Whack! Whack! "So, meh!" In the meantime, bruises and wounds accumulate, and innocent bystanders are getting caught up in the fracas. It's not an edifying sight.
Unfortunately, there are no strong teachers patrolling the playground who can knock some sense into either of them. And neither of them is willing to compromise, let alone give in, even as their economies, and the world as a whole, pays the price. Come on guys! Grow up a bit!

Blaming mass shootings on mental illness is a red herring

I know I tend to do posts about gun control whenever there is yet another mass shooting in America (there have been many over the years - both shootings and posts), and really I'm over it. But I thought it worth commenting on Donald Trump's latest foray into the subject, in which he calls the latest shooters "twisted monsters", and tries to make a direct link between mental illness and gun violence: "Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun".
This, of course, is to try to take the focus off gun control in order to protect his gun-toting rural constituency. But it's a false conclusion. And don't even get me started on Trump's other solution to the problem: to extend the death penalty.
The mental health connection often comes up after mass shootings, but it's a red herring according to mental health experts,  researchers and criminologists. Some gunmen are indeed mentally unbalanced to some degree, but most people with mental illnesses are not violent, and are actually more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Research shows that a country's rate of gun ownership is a much better predictor of mass shootings than mental health. Even the US Secret Service has concluded that "mental illness, alone, is not a risk factor" in public mass attacks.
I don't have mental health statistics at hand, but there is a stark differences in the rate of gun violence in the USA and other Western countries which are not dissimilar in many ways. In 2017, for example, the USA saw 4.43 deaths from gun violence per 100,000 population. Now, this may pale into insignificance in comparison with ultra-violent countries like El Salvadora and Venezuela, which have rates almost ten times as high, and several other Central American and Caribbean countries are substantially worse, as do countries like the Philippines, Lesotho and Brazil. But these countries are beset by social and economic difficulties (not to mention gang and drug cultures) that put them in quite a different league to America.
When we look at other more comparable western democracies, though, the real differences appear. Canada, which arguably has a similar gun culture in some demographics, although much less so than America, has a rate of 0.47 per 100,000, an order of magnitide lower. And we think things are bad here! Denmark has a rate of 0.15, the UK 0.06. Most developed Asian countries have rates even lower. Clearly, there is something very wrong in the USA, and the big difference is not in mental health, but in gun ownership and gun culture.
So, in fact, it is the gun that pulls the trigger after all, Mr. Trump. And branding shooters as monsters, loonies or any of his other non-PC epithets is not going to help anything.

Prayers are clearly not going to help stop Amercian mass shootings

As El Paso and Dayton recover from the latest American mass shootings, the usual platitudes and bromides are being offered, including that good old chestnut "our prayers are with the families".

So, how are those prayers working for you, America? Maybe time to try a different tack? Or maybe you could pray in advance of the shootings, that might be more beneficial (but don't hold your breath on that one).

So, kudos to Rashida Tlaib (yes, that radical and refarious member of the infamous "Squad") for calling out First Daughter Ivanka Trump for her formulaic prayers tweet: "Your prayers aren't working. Try checking your dad on his tweets. 251 mass shootings in the U.S. in 216 days."

526 teeth extracted, all at one time

Well, put this one firmly in the "weird" category. A 7-year old boy in the south Indian city of Chennai has had 526 teeth extracted - all at once!
Young Ravindranath had complained of a sore and swollen jaw for years and, when it continued to get worse, he finally went to see a dentist and then a maxillofacial surgeon. When his jaw was opened up, the surgeon found a kind of sac which was filled with over 500 tiny teeth, ranging  from 0.1mm to 15mm, many malformed, but all exhibiting the usual crown, root and enamel coating of regular teeth.
Apparently, this is a rare condition known as compound composite odontoma, where abnormal teeth can form inside a mouth tumour, but scientists have never seen anything like this many superfluous teeth. Ravindranath is now pain-free, and apparently relishing all the attention his teeth has brought him.